Turning now to one of my other favorite targets, the Evil Empire of Microsoft. On top of the patsy deal they made with the government, news is slowly leaking out about other nefarious doings that the company has been engaged in.

It's pretty much been common knowledge that Microsoft threatened not to produce another version of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh if Apple didn't make Internet Explorer the default Web browser for the Macintosh operating system. Mind you, this was back in 1998, when Netscape was still far-and-away the better product. But Apple reluctantly agreed, since Microsoft Office was desperately needed by the Mac community.

Fast-forward to 2001. Apple has unveiled Mac OS X, a brand-new operating system that operates on a completely different basis, making it impossible to run current programs on the system unless they're written specifically for OS X. So Microsoft sets out to completely revamp Microsoft Office for Mac OS X, which seems like a great thing for them to do. However, now that the product has been released and acclaim is pouring in for it, someone took a closer look at the software licensing and found that the programs will deactivate after 1 year and require an annual fee to keep them running.

Now, considering that the program suite already costs $500, another $150 every year is definitely a hefty fee on top of the already steep cost of the initial installation. Microsoft already has a lock on the word processing/spreadsheet/presentation market -- I don't know of any offices that don't use Microsoft Office for this stuff, and most people use it at home as well because they're familiar with it -- so why are they being so grabby? It's this kind of thing that will keep me with the version of MS Office 98 that I've been running for 3 years without upgrading until they take out this stupid licensing fee that milks us dry, and I'll keep on using Netscape until it's proven that the program is responsible for toxic waste dumping in the oceans.