Under current copyright law, Microsoft could make a good faith case
Ever heard of software "clean rooms"? - If a thousand monkeys did actually manage to recreate the windows source code they would not be infringing copyright, monkeys can't read so obviously they cannot be guilty of copying anything belonging to MS.
who goes "oh, whatever, we'll just match against whatever?"
As someone else suggested it's probably debug code that found its way into production. It's not a lack of skill problem it's a process problem, code reviews should have picked it up but obviously didn't, how it got as far as customers is the question MS should be asking.
When you were 13
1972 - Back then "John Wayne" and "Ringo Star" were cool names. Now get off my lawn you insensitive clod.
we don't take over places for strategic or tactical advantage
The post war history of Russia looks very similar. Sure you don't add territory, that would mean the conquered would have US constitutional protections. Rather they both install puppet regimes and pull the cash/power strings. Supposedly the cold war is over but if you look carefully many of the world's trouble spots are also points of disagreement between the veto wielding powers in the UNSC.
The democratic thing to do now is to let Russia have Crimea, that's what the majority of Crimea's people want. Do not create a new generation of exploding humans by punishing the ordinary people of Crimea in the same way the Palestinians have been punished for electing Hamas in overwhelming numbers.
Speaking of history, future text books will blame the Arab spring and in particular the Syrian civil war not on "social media" but on the preceding record drought years in the fertile crescent and across most of N. Africa. A drought that saw large internal displacements as people abandoned dry farms for work in the cities, cities that then saw food riots and social tensions between city dweller and refugee farmers. The leaked diplomatic cables will form part of the academic evidence and show how diplomats had worried about the tensions to the point of correctly predicting the city where the civil war ignited.
Of course once the shooting starts it becomes a "winner takes all" water war. The individual battles may be over a military base and the soldiers motivation may be preventing the slaughter of "his people". The Syrian civil war itself is about water, the problem is that this fairly obvious kernel of reason is buried deep inside an onion of political layers and is virtually ignored when discussing Syria, Egypt, Lybia, et-al. These people did not after 30yrs suddenly realise they were oppressed after signing up to facebook, they could not put enough food on the table to stop their stomachs rumbling. The stress was so great people started setting fire to themselves in protest, this is where social media came in and helped re-organise the deck chairs but did nothing to solve the problem.
"waves measuring almost 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) struck ahead of a tsunami that was expected to come ashore later"
If all else fails, lower your standards.
