You would be wrong on both counts! I actually started using Apple products before they were even known as Macs, just good old IIc and IIe. I also have one machine running Ubuntu, one running a nicely stable CentOS and in addition to a Mac and three different Windows machines. I AM not arguing which platform is better, simply that Linux and Mac have a long way to go to get to where people are with software choices on Windows. Someday they may well bring about the downfall of MS...just not in the near future.

Neither Apple nor any Linux distro is really in the position to displace MS at this time, which is why I estimate 2-3 years. Neither have the software variety that users are used to. Apple has to avoid cheesing off MS to some extent because the Mac version of Office still sells a good number of copies. I know enough Mac users that would get realy annoyed if they had to learn crappy software like OpenOffice or whatever else passes for productivity suites on Mac and Linux. Maybe if this were two or three years from now when Mac actually managed a third to a half of the OS market....

If I were Microsoft I would simply stop licensing Windows for any computer sold in Europe. Why screw around anymore - if people are not smart enough to go out and download a browser of their choice why should the company go through any more time or hassle. This should bring computer sales to a screeching halt until software companies can manage to offer anywhere close to the depth of software that is available for Windows. I figure two or three years anyway. The really interesting part is that this is based on Opera whining. Opera is what? Number 4 in the browser market? Next up they will be whining that Google has to be shut down so they can try to out do Chrome.

You may never have harassed someone into feeling bad but I am pretty certain you are not a saint and at sometime in your life you have said or did something to make someone feel bad. That is just one of those ugly little facts of life. Rumor has it, if one believe the new testament, that even Jesus Christ himself made people feel bad. I think many people can agree that Ms. Drew did something really stupid but again, doing stupid stuff is a fact of life. We all do stupid things, and I do mean all as in everyone. We now live in a world where kids can not receive an F in school because it might hurt their self esteem, everyone has to be included on a little league team because if not it might hurt a kid's self esteem...this goes on and on. Guess what? It is an annoying crock of steamy, hot doody. It is very bad that a girl killed herself, but where was that girls parents. Did they smother the child with over protectiveness, were they simply not involved. They are as equally quilty in this mess. You can not, nor should you protect a child from everything. This is how nature works. You ever watch a litter of puppies as they grow? Eventually one emerges as the stronger animal, the future leader. The interaction between the pups is very much like the proverbial school yard. It was not too hard to know the prosecutor in this case had a very weak position to start with, hence the conspiracy charge. Conspiracy charges get thrown in as a way of trying to get a conviction on something. Much like a Hail Mary pass in football. I could tell you I was going to go out and pee on a telephone pole, and when I got caught, you could be charged with conspiracy to deface public property because you knew ahead of time. Makes sense doesn't it?