No politicians in that model? Cap-and-trade involves vast money flows that are not open to public scrutiny. If the penalty money goes into general revenues via a tax, then who gets the money will be somewhat more transparent.
Microsoft should just get smart and start charging for service pack updates to XP.
I'll switch to Linux as my default boot whenever Windows gets too expensive or too restrictive. Right now the cost of an OEM distribution is negligible.
You obviously don't understand what MS's market for desktop OS's is. They sell very few of them as boxed copies to individuals. They have a small market selling site licenses to corporations, but by far their largest market is computer OEMs like Dell.
Is that the case? I thought their big revenues were from site licenses, so they could protect their monopoly by providing Windows for little or nothing to OEM's. So that the price difference between a Windows and a Linux box is in the range of $25 (Lenovo) to $50 (Dell).
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. -- D.E. Knuth