We've seen it for decades now, the Microsoft Empire oozing into everyone's life on multiple fronts so as to "force" us to yield to their presence in ways akin to the Borg. But they have some sinister cousins out there in this big world as well -- Marketing Professionals and never should the two be allowed to come together (especially when lawyers are involved and lots of money). But it would seem that WINDOWS 7 was "Their idea"... it is overloaded with advertising hype and a multitude of links that take you to everything superfluous with little to no practical support when it comes to actually being able to "work"... but then the wps is WORKS, a deliberate installment that forces the user to buy OFFICE in order to have the more universally used WORD. Not only does this put more bucks into the Microsoft vaults, it deprives those that survive on a minimal budget of "global" access, so to speak. This would include penalizing students (from middle school age up) for not being able to "properly format" their reports, presentations, etc. (so much for teaching them how to actually read, write, spell, punctuate and so forth... make them computer dependent and dumb).
Microsoft has worked hard when it comes to its quest for world dominion and keeping its "competition" at bey. If you use Firefox/Mozilla as your browser they deny you access to certain resources (or at least make it more difficult to access). The new OS hitting you with a barrage of "invitations" to change browsers, to change your start-up page and my favorite of all favorites, force you into buying/subscribing to a handful of Norton security products & services... this would include base protections that used to come standard on all PCs... as did a rescue disc which now cost you an addition $100.00 to obtain.
As someone that grew up in the 70s I have memories of when the Telephone Company (Ma-Bell) was vivisected because it was a "Monopoly"... the U.S. Government forced it to break up as several different companies independent of one another. Yet, we have seen laws against monopolies, usury actions, etc. slowly and quietly altered in ways that open the flood gates to abusive corporations like Microsoft. But it is very much a valid sense of "Conspiracy"... one that is legal and "sanctioned" by how business is done in the 20th/21st century...
