It's time to move on; time to grow up. Time to put away the whining and temper tantrums of a child and live in the adult world of personal responsibility and accountability. When something sucks, it sucks, no matter how much you want it not to suck. Vista is great? The Zune is great? Windows 7 is great. Sure. You can piss in a tall glass with shaved ice and a bendy-straw, and you can call it lemonade, but I'm not drinking it.

Bottomer line: Just because there may be innocent people in jail, that doesn't make it right when Microsoft or anyone else breaks laws that are in place to protect free trade, all your dubious rationalizations and ridiculous reasoning notwithstanding.

I'm very much aware that there are thousands of people who lost much or all of their life savings investing in Microsoft. It comes across loudly and clearly, if only in the tremendous level of denial regarding Microsoft's considerable failures. It's not my problem that you people lost your shirts, hoping against hope that MSFT would return to the salad days of 20% returns on your investment. It also comes across in the anger and venom that MSFT investors demonstrate in forums such as this one: everyone else is wrong when they criticize obvious flaws in Microsoft products and in their business model and management decisions. We're all just Microsoft "haters" and "bashers." Right. So that makes a shitty product like Vista a great product because people with the ability to think critically don't like crap.

"The very fact that lately Microsoft has been losing market share to Apple because of the problems with Vista is evidence that Microsoft isn't--and can't, legally--use force to stop others from selling products."

Your statement doesn't make any sense. If you're saying that Apple's gaining market share at Microsoft's expense means that Microsoft cannot LEGALLY inhibit competetion, well, yeah, that's what the antitrust case was about. In effect, the antitrust case stemmed Microsoft's ability to stifle competition. The fact that this changed as a result of the ruling does not mean that Microsoft never engaged in the illegal practices for which they were prosecuted; the very illegal practices which gave them a huge and unfair advantage over everyone else who provided similar products and services.

Your bias is obvious; your logic is screwed up.

Microsoft would not be so good at doing this were it not for a customer base so fond of wearing blinders. And, oh, their customers and apologists are very adept at tolerating just about anything but the truth.

Youre memory is rather, well, selective. What I recall is the United States Department of Justice successfully prosecuting Microsoft for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in violation of restrating of trade. In effect, they were adjudicated as guilty of aggressively blocking existing and potential competitors from operating within competing markets. That's a crime, and they were found guilty. Live with it.

This is all nonsense. Microsoft manufactured this debacle in the service of demonstrating a false demand for their new OS (aka, Vista Service Pack). They've been doing this crap for years. The answer to the question about how they could have screwed up something that was so simple is obvious: they have more to gain from the publicity about screwing up with a phantom hoard of Microsoft OS junkies than they do in getting it right. Microsoft never leads with getting-it-right...that's not their strong suit. Getting it sold is what they do.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are so willing to walk blindly into Microsoft's dark night. I hope none of you play poker. Then again, if you do, let me know when I can get into a game with you.