@hogleg: No we hate MS because of the crappy/buggy products. Not because their ideas weren't original.
@Rookie One: Greed is ok with me. It is the lack of quality in their products that I am sick of. Of course, no one is forcing to use MS, you make that choice yourself. You have every right to swith to an apple or a linux/unix based os.
@kai0ty: You are right, it isn't stolen it is called "Lack of inginuity." And this is how capitalism works. If one person comes up with a better product then the other, the go for it.
MS, didn't "steal" google to make MSN, they just started with the same idea heading in a bit of a different direction. So please stop bitching, competition is good for the consumer.
@hogleg: They copied it in the sense of "idea" not the original product. MSN, is NOT a copy of google by any means. It is meerly the same idea.
Besides, what gives good the right to have the only good search engine? Nothing! This is capitalism, and MS is just trying to capitalize in the search engine market too, nothing wrong with that.
@Bjarne BZR: lol, don't blame the "stupid" companies. It is the person who makes this decision believe it or not. If people start all of a suddent switching to linux, game companies would be scrambling to make games for that particular OS. But as it stands no one wants to leave Windows because many users are average. And they don't are about the small details.
@Master-Of-Fungus-Foo-D: you are not very knowledgeble in this market are you?
No offense of course.
A monopoly ONLY EXISTS WITH THE GOVERNMENTS HELP. Any monopoly out there in the US is created by laws and "features" that allow it to become a monopoly. Try and sell energy in your city, and you will get thrown into jail faster then you can say "Damn."
Your town has 1 energy source, and if you try to intervene in that market you will get busted by the government. So who is making it a monopoly? The government.
... In a free society a monopoly cannot exist by its nature and virtue. Lets take a look why...
When a company is the sole provider of said product i.e. "moon" rocks, it has the right to charge what ever price it wants. Now, if it starts charging too high a price, other people see this and are attracted by the oppurtinuty to the large profit at a high price. Thus creating competition thus lowering the prices to the market equilibrium.
-Take a look at the Cranberry industry in 1998 in the US. A barrel of cranberys cost around $80. When people saw this price gouching, TONS and TONS of business's opened to make that profit, and in one year the price went down from $80 to around $8 a barrel due to competition.
-Take a look at the Napa Valley Wine region (in California, USA). It was making a ton of money of wine sales because there were only 1 or 2 growers, but in 2 years the prices came down about 200% due to competition between more growers and producers.
-Master-Of-Fungus-Foo-D, a monopoly only exists with government help. When the Gov grants a special privelages to some companies which cannot be achieved that the free market, it is creating a monopoly.
Here is a tip, try to start your own water business in your town i.e. pumping water, cleaning it and taking it to people homes through pipes, you will be fined and possibly jailed. Why? because the government granted that right to another company. And you have no right to get into the market, thus that 1 company becomes a monopoly.
@Rookie One: Their prices aren't low, or high for that matter. They are at the market equilibrium. If you are willing to pay $100 for XP, then MS has no problem selling it to you at that price.
Note this isn't a fight for MS, rather a fight for capitalism.
Open-source projects don't give any warranty, but in most cases the community helps you out in solving your problems in a very short time, whereas you can never be sure how long will you wait for a solution from M$ or if you'll get it at all.
) for spyware. There's also been a fuss that it deletes IE(xploiter), but I'd say that was a joke...