>>Ok, you're wrong. $30 Billion in the bank says that they aren't being hurt has much as they claim they are.
>
>There's that argument again. Just cause they're rich, does that mean they aren't entitled to what they're owed? Dumb.
>
>>Piracy in the USA is not wide spread or common. I have yet to see a single pirated copy of WinXX on any machine I've seen.
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>How do you know whats pirated and what isn't just by looking at it?

Generally, when they ask me questions, show me their WinXX box and ask where the manuals are, and I see a hologramed license or tagged item laying amoung the other contents. Or, when the yask me a question and I ask why they haven't called the store where they bought the WinXX from, they light up and say, "I should have thought of that!"

Besides, Mike, after long acquaintanceships one can usually tell which individuals honor their word, their character and their Faith. My son, for example, even though he is a salaried, exempt state employee, wouldn't defraud the state out of so little as 15 minutes of the required 40 hour week. He would not lie, even to his own detriment, and his word is as good as Gold. He has the ability and tools to rip CD, but he goes to the Library and checks out the classic CDs he wants to listen to. Did I also tell you he is frugal? :) On the other side of the coin are people who do illegal drugs, drive while drunk, run red lights, or speed up for yellows, cheat on their income tax, shop lift, steal other peoples code, lie about their job experience. bear false witness....... you know the kind.

By the way, if Gates authorized the theft of Stacker's compression algorithms, sent software coders masquerading as sales persons to examine Go corporation's pen code, and subsequently packaged their own pen code with technology that was identical to Go's, etc., does that make Gates a pirate? Maybe that's why he suspects everyone else of being one. To a thief everyone is just like him.