OT: Wow is all I can say...

[Baron Munchausen]

Yeesh, Fyron. All of this can be summed up in a single word: manipulativeness!

Microsoft thinks of customers, markets, and even business law like a hacker thinks of a computer program. Just something to be manipulated to get what you want. The 'mandatory licensing' scheme for example. MS has forced all manufacturers of PCs to pay them for an OS install on every machine they ship -- even if there isn't a Microsoft OS installed. Every since the days of MS-DOS we have all been paying a 'Microsoft tax' for every machine we buy, regardless of whether we buy a Microsoft OS with it. And they have gotten away with this. Somehow or other this doesn't equal 'monopoly' tactics according to the US government. And then there is the old 'embrace and extend' trick where they seem to join a popular standard, like HTML, but instead of following the standard they add their own features to change it into something proprietary so they can lock out the competition. This is what killed Netscape. They are currently working on ways to do this to the entire Internet. That's what '.NET' is really about. Turning the whole Internet into a proprietary Microsoft system.

The real question to ask is why do you not hate Microsoft? Anyone who is aware of what they are doing should hate them.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Why hate them? It's certainly not going to bother them. It'll only bother you.

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, I am not talking about setting a portrait of Bill Gates on the wall and cursing it for a few minutes every hour on the hour. But when I encounter MS products, I know to be extremely suspicious of everything they do.