ONE of the most powerful software creators?
Well, yes, I deem myself to be THE most creative and powerfull software developer in the world

... Adobe comes a close second place though *pats adobe on the back patronisingly.
It is quite glitsy you're right, but its not as 'glam' as the Microsoft site, which is definatly a good thing. I've not had the privialage to play with CS3 properly yet but I'm sure its an incredible piece of software.
Unfortunatly I think that untill all software becomes web based (wont be long now) we're never going to be able to stop piracy, if you're distributing software on disk or download then it'll be copied in the blink of an eye no matter what you do about it, its very sad, but its the same with movies, untill we're all working with streaming media piracy is inevitable.
Interestingly enough though, I was reading that Adobe are about to release a very large segment of thier software as open source which will extend that 'real-world workers' concept that you were talking about, enabling the products to grow to meet the requirements of the users much quicker, very exciting!
Rob