I peacefully disagree with you. A punishment should fit the crime, yes, but it should also have the effect of deterring others from committing the crime, and also it should be severe enough to actually cause the offender to flinch. When you're talking about a massive company (like Micro$oft)that has hundreds of billions of dollars at its disposal, that one Billion dollars becomes almost trivial.

I'm an IT professional in a small business environment. I spend several hours a day fighting spam, adware, and spyware. I could easily be spending that time improving our network, working with users, and getting important things done. As far as I'm concerned, adware, spyware, and spam are no better than viruses and trojans (and, as a matter of fact, they really are trojans in many cases).

People who write this stuff have no care for other people. They have no conscience, and they have no remorse for the damage that they cause. All they care about is their bottom line. As far as I'm concerned, they are no better than terrorists.

Sorry if I offended anyone with that last statement, but I stand by it. I've seen terabytes of information destroyed by this problem, and the loss of much of that information has destroyed lives.

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