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Wikipedia is one of the few organizations to which I donate actual money rather than time, materials and theft and my donation formula is usually very simple:

($ value of software I’ve stolen in the past year)/20 = Donation amount

In 2006 it was about $25.00 while in 2007 it was closer to $50.00 (CS2 was expensive, so was Server 2003).

Lately though, I’ve gotten most of my software through legitimate purchase and purged illegal software so my current tab is $10, $0 if you don’t count cheating your way into a closed beta.  What am I to do?  Sure, I could replace Microsoft’s free Movie Maker with Vegas or something and bump it to $35.00 but I’d never use it.

After considering my options, I’ve chosen instead to donate $1.00 for every DVD I rent from Netflix and rip putting things comfortably in the $40.00 region (I’ve been busy).

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I reinstalled Vista a day or two ago as an attempt to fix  problem with Team Fortress 2 that was actually being caused by RAM.  As I slowly installed each program suite and appropriately entered the registration code I realized I now have enough legit Microsoft and Adobe licenses that I can participate in the Customer Experience Feedback without fearing the Business Software Alliance busting down my door.

And it only cost about $1100 is software to do.