Government funded research programs are all over the place, the CDC, NASA and DARPA are the three biggest examples I can think of right now who have done vast amounts of research that has trickled to the private sector and expanded the economy of the country. Bigger/more profitable economy means more tax revenue for the government, less taxes you pay and higher wages you earn. Everyone wins if you spend money on pure research. This is proven time again in both History and every strategy game I've ever played. :-) The next time you use your microwave powered by a nuclear powerplant to heat your chicken sammich to 160 degrees so you don't catch the salmonella (sp?) that the CDC warned you about... question your opinion on the value of pure research. It does alot more for your quality of life than you apparently realize.

Dammit! I'm a doctor not an automatic oiler!

Sometimes when you reinvent the wheel you get tank treads. I would surmise they're not strictly building a processor.

I hadn't considered that but that might be closer to the mark than the idea I had. They just recently snapped up Ageia and PhysX. I thought maybe they were working on some sort of hybridized CPU/GPU physics chip. Although if they were to put physics, ray trace/rasterizing and traditional polygon based graphics on a single "gpu" that would probably be worth owning during the transition to ray traced graphics... if there is one.

It's a bit dated at this point, but still an absolutely fascinating read. It explains String Theory in a manner easy (by 10 dimensional theoretical physics standards) to read format. It will give them an idea of what you can accomplish/learn/theorize with higher level math. He also has another book out I think the title was "The fabric of space" Author is Brian Greene. I could only put it down when my head started to hurt :-)

Hahahaha someone mod this up funny. (I don't have the Karma, I'm an evil bastard)

I'll take your word for it. I am, afterall playing devil's advocate for the devil himself. :-D

I'll reply to your last paragraph since that's really the meat of the conversation, point taken that the money involved in the "Microsoft Browser Download Center" wizard really would be pack-o-gum trivial. I don't recall anyone having serious problems running Netscape if they chose to, I never had any problems when I tried it, although for me it was slower than a root canal with a hangover. Although that's perhaps a problem MS could've caused. I always thought that it was just inefficient coding.

I'm pickin up what you're puttin' down, and all of that makes sense. So essentially by adding to development cost you're not changing the end price of the product, you're changing your profit margin on said product. Essentially they make less money (however slight the shift is) and avoid trouble with the DOJ. That slight loss of profit, however, would inevitably affect consumers negatively at some point. Microsoft stock may take a slight dip, they may have to lay off a few employees. etc. Getting back to the core of my question, how does forcing Microsoft to not package IE with windows benefit consumers? If the answer is it will stimulate competition, there's already competition. Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, Safari etc. are all healthy competitors to IE. I would surmise that most consumers when given a choice as in our thought example, would probably click Internet Explorer simply because it's familiar. Just as most consumers use Windows over Linux because it's familiar. If the answer is it will benefit browsers competing with IE, while that may be true is that really in the spirit of anti-trust law? Microsoft does not have, nor have they ever had a monopoly. It's true they're a HUGE juggernaut, and a difficult organization to compete with... but they have competitors. To sum up, kudos to companies like Mozilla who have found new ways to compete in an unfair environment, rather than pointing out the lack of fairness in the environment. :-) Capitalism at it's best.

Doesn't an additional development cost move the sweet spot though? I mean, I understand basic economics, but I'm not all that "into it." I would think any change in one parameter of your above equation would move the others. BTW I didn't mean to offend, I'm just playing devil's advocate for MSFT. :-)

The sarcasm! It is lost on you. :-D

OK, I'll bite... who pays for the development of this wizard? The very short answer is Microsoft does, the somewhat longer answer is we do. Why make them develop additional software the cost of which is passed to the consumer, that's a bit counter productive in an anti-trust case isn't it?

what am I going to use to download firefox? Do they really expect end users to learn to use FTP? I'm not sure the DOJ has thought this through.

I'd go with a Toshiba Tough book like this one http://www.bizrate.com/laptopcomputers/toshiba-toughbook-mdwd2-tablet-pc--pid619387597/compareprices.html Shop around I just grabbed the first link I could find. You might be able to pick up an older one on ebay on the cheap(ish) I remember back in the day when I was 3-4 playing with a Commodore Vic-20 which was pretty close to state of the art at the time. Toshiba Tough books are great, you can kick the thing down a flight of stairs and it will (probably) still work. :-)