The settlements relate to college students who had been selling illegal copies of Microsoft's software through auction sites out of Sacramento, California and Chicago, Illinois.

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He wrote dispatch software for ambulances and cop cars, dropped out of college (twice), took up botanical drawing, became a certified masseur and, later, dabbled in fashion design.

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Without the software, if a college or business wanted to subscribe to some kind of online database, they'd have to create hundreds or thousands of accounts, one for each individual user.

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Troy Onink is the CEO of Stratagee.com, a college planning firm that provides college planning services to families and college planning software to financial advisors, admissions consultants and schools.

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Nowadays the average software-engineering qualification becomes obsolete in around five years, so a student fresh out of college may be more valuable to a company than a 40-year-old.

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