Anyway, the recent government actions against Microsoft are reprehensible to any person who values liberty. Microsoft is being punished for its success.
No, Microsoft is being punished for consistently attempting to eliminate all competition for PC computer software. MS achieved a monopoly on the operating system. Fine. They've pretty much earned one in the Desktop application suite market. (Partly because they give themselves access to documentation and versions of the OS before anyone else, and partly because they don't document large portions of the API, but....) With the Web browsers Netscape had a clear market-share lead. Microsoft responded with a free browser. Remember, under current Anti-trust laws, Microsoft clearly qualifies as a monopoly. And giving away products in a potentially competitive market is clearly predatory pricing. (And frankly, it has the nice side-effect of eliminating any chance of choice for the consumer in the long run.) Check the surveys done (or published by, I'm not sure right now) Infoworld about where companies are planning on being in 6 months with regards to web browsers. The supposed Netscape dominance in the browser market is going to completely disappear. Isn't this enough to tell Microsoft that it has to limit its licensing deals some? Capitalism depends on competition to work, and we've seen several times in this country that it tends to break down when extremely large companies begin to dominate a market. Hence our antitrust laws. That's entirely what Microsoft is being sued under. (In principal, if not actuality..) Ryan Anderson - Alpha Geek PGP fp: 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`