Gregg Hill wrote:
Alias,

I did not respond because I did not see that part in your post. I thought I
had read it all. OK, for your sake regarding this portion, I'll respond.

You are wrong in your assumptions about my upbringing. I was raised by an
atheist father and a Catholic mother who almost never went to church. I have
no faith in God.

However, my Dad was born in 1918, my Mom in 1920, and I in 1959, so my
values come from an older generation, the one that went through the Great
Depression. My grandfather (my Mom's father) was an Italian immigrant who
came here (legally) around 1910 or so with nothing but the shirt on his
back, and not speaking a word of English. He was 16 and worked in the rail
yards and coal mines for years, rather than just claim being poor as an
excuse to steal. He worked a few years and made enough money to go back to
Italy for a month or so, pump out a baby, then come back here to work some
more, then go back and make another baby, then do it again. Finally, in
1929, he had enough money to get the whole family over here. Imagine his
situation now, in 1929, right after the crash, with his family of three
kids, and his parents who were too sick to work much. He and his family
lived through the entire Great Depression. My Mom, who was the poorer of my
two parents, never stole anything from anyone (neither did anyone else in
the family, nor did my Dad), in spite of having to wipe her ass with a Sears
catalog because the family could not afford toilet paper. They lived in a
house with no electricity and had an outhouse. They were better off in
Italy!

Sorry, but being poor does NOT equate to having lower moral values. Having
low moral values is something you CHOOSE, because you CAN change that.

I didn't say that and apologize for mistakenly guessing at your upbringing.

Your attitude sounds like that of someone I worked with a few years back. He
had been in jail for stealing radios out of cars, and he told me that I just
did not understand being poor and not having food to eat. I asked him if he
and his stealing buddies spent every single penny they got from those stolen
radios on food. The answer was NO, some of it went to booze and drugs. I
then asked if he had approached the owner of each vehicle and had asked them
for a few dollars in exchange for washing their vehicle or some other form
of honest work. Again, the answer was no. He CHOSE to steal instead, rather
than even ask if there were some way to EARN the money for food.

I like your comment that, "...stealing anything worth less than 400 euros is
not considered a crime." But you did call it stealing, and that is morally
wrong. How many times do I have to explain to you that something does not
have to be illegal to be wrong? It does not matter the amount taken without
permission to be wrong. Raping a woman in certain countries is not
punishable by law, but do you consider it OK to do so if it happens within
the borders of that country?

I don't advocate stealing one dime from anyone. I do advocate fair use
in regards to software. You think they are both stealing and this is
where we disagree. I compared breaking the EULA to breaking laws like
prohibition, slavery, marijuana, etc. and you had no comment. If
everyone lock steps to Microsoft's rules not only will they not change,
Microsoft will believe everyone agrees with them.

I, too, have been poor, much poorer than you can even imagine and did
not steal either, even though I would not have had any serious legal
consequences because, like you, I don't think it's right to take
something that belongs to someone else.

See the difference?

Alias





"Alias" wrote in message
...
Gregg Hill wrote:

You are absolutely beyond hope if you cannot comprehend it now. I am done
with you.

Gregg
Promises, promises.

How come you didn't see fit to reply to this?:

You obviously was also raised with a Christian silver spoon in your
mouth and have no idea what it's like to be poor. To further ruffle your
moral feathers, in Spain, stealing anything worth less than 400 euros is
not considered a crime. In other words, if you walk into a store here
and steal a 300 euro TV, the worst that can happen to you is a fine and,
if you're poor, you claim insolvency and pay nothing and do no time.

You, I suspect, would like to go back to the times when, in England,
stealing was punishable by hanging and being poor was illegal and, if
caught being poor, was sent to the "poor house" to work for cruel.

To get back to your recently upgraded country, laws that people don't
agree to are traditionally broken in order to change them:

Prohibition

Segregation of blacks

Revolutionary War

Slavery

Marijuana.

Etc.

Using your "high moral" logic, blacks would still be slaves, no one
could drink alcohol, the USA would still be a colony of England and
Texas could still give you life for one joint.

Alias

I certainly hope you do not equate any of the above with using software on a
computer, which is a total luxury.

My logic would in no way condone slavery. While I do not have faith in God,
the Bible still has **tremendous** value in its teachings, such as "Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you." Even though I do not have faith
in God, I do realize that it isn't rocket science to know that you should
treat people as you would want them to treat you. If you do not want to be
owned, abused, whipped, or killed, then you should not own, abuse, whip, or
kill someone else. (Yes, that is a huge over-simplification of slavery, but
the discussion is not about that travesty in our history). The principal
applies to software. If you don't want people stealing from you, don't steal
from people (or from Microsoft).

I am adamantly against alcohol because of the damage I have seen it do to my
friends and to others, but I would not say that no one can drink it. It just
enrages me that some piece of garbage kills an entire family with his car
because he wanted to drink a beer. That beer was more valuable to him than a
human life, and that is just plain twisted.

The US would not be a colony of England, because when those people left
England to come here and start a new life, the British government had no
right to come here and force them to obey the laws of Britain. We had every
right to kick their butts out of here. Of course, the ones who came here had
no right to screw the Indians, but that is a whole other thread.

And as for getting life for one joint, man, I hope not, or our ex-toking(?)
President would be in deep doo-doo! Sorry, GW, that just slipped out!

I do not look at our planet as you do, with divisional lines drawn on a map.
That only leads to people hating each other just because the other guy lives
on a different piece of dirt, or worships a different deity. I hate to break
the news to you, but you are a human first, then a person of a certain
country and/or religion, or lack thereof. If all lines on all maps got
erased, and all religions ceased to exist, all you would have left is a
bunch of humans living on a big wet rock in space. You can change your
country, you can change your religion, but you cannot change the fact that
you are a human being. Look at it that way and you see the fallacy of war,
stealing from other people, hating your neighbor because he is Muslim or she
is Christian, etc.

Is it OK with you if I do not respond any further and actually spend my time
doing some work, or having fun with my wife? In closing, moral values are
something you choose. I choose to keep mine where they are and treat people
as I would have them treat me.

Take care, Alias!

Gregg