>>Microsoft and Borland are not going to make major inroads into the Far East because of the pirating. In fact, Korea just swung to Handcom Office, a Linux product, and China is going with RedLinux. But, Microsoft's and Borland's major market is right here, in the Western Hemisphere, where a different ethic resides. Pretending that pirating is as bad here as it is in the Far East is ludicrious, but an argument Microsoft frequently makes to cloud the issue and slant legislation toward its favor.
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>I think pirating in the Western Hemisphere is just as bad. But nobody knows the extent of all pirating for sure. Didn't they just intercept a boatload (no pun intended) of pirated software from Asia in Los Angeles ahile back?
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>Dan

For a long time Microsoft turned a blind eye toward folks using their copy of WinXX on more than one machine, especially at home. They needed the 'market share'. Now that they have a market monoply they don't look the other way.
You buy a box that comes with WinXX preinstalled (hard not to these days, unless you are a knowledgable power user and hardwire lover). Later, you buy another box that has WinXX+1 presinstalled. For some reason you wish to swap them, so you do. Now you have two PCs, both containing a purchased copy of WinXX, but you also now have two 'pirated' copies of WinXX, according to MS.

Or, say you didn't swap the OSs on the old and the new PC. You just give away the old PC, plus its OS, to a charity, and only run the new PC. You no longer can use that copy of WinXX on the old PC, obviously, but the charity is now a 'pirate' for accepting it. According to MS, the charity, or you, must delete the perfectly good copy of WinXX from the PC and the charity must pay MS to replace it with the same thing. I don't know what your sense of ethics is on these matters but my sense says it is nonsense driven by greed.

While I am ranting I'd introduce another grievence: that MS can't be sued for its own violations of the EULA (because the judge ruled the OEM sold the license, not MS) but MS can sue the consumer for violating the same license. This is pure evil. Secondly, MS & other unethical software companies greased congress to the point that they passed laws exempting the software companies from product liabilities. If auto makers did that folks would be up in arms. They are rapidly approaching that point with the software houses.

enough said.
JLK