I think Hans summed it up quite well, but perhaps didn't go far enough with his thought. Hans Franke wrote: So, if I happen to be the manufacturer of digital cameras, and I write a program that rearranges the bits on a flash card that was formatted by a microsoft operating system, and that operating system is fooled by my arrangement of the bits, I have to pay microsoft? Even worse is the manufacturer of media. Who is to say that the manufactured is not using a microsoft operating system to format the media in the first place. So now he has to pay a quarter of a US dollar for each piece of media that he formats with his microsoft operating system. When will this trickle down to charging the end users for each disk they format, or for each document they create? "Well, it's only the big manufacturers they are going after." Right? "In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me - and by that time no one was left to speak up." Pastor Martin Niemoller, Dachau, 1944 Quick! Somebody contact the press! Oh, that's right, we're not supposed to talk to the press. ;-} And besides, such a story in the press would probably just make microsoft stock go UP! Now that's a sick thought. Mike.