Mr. alephnull I would abandon all hopes for intelligent discussion if I were you. You provided a nice article that 95% of the users did not bother to read.
There is a difference between driving your competitors out of business by offering lower prices or higher quality products and killing the competition using illegal methods. However the best you got so far were generic answers like "so what, every company aim to be number 1", "they deserve it, if they got where they are it is because they are the best in the industry" and "Mr. Gates donates money to the poor so any critics to Microsoft business practices are not valid".
It doesn`t matter if it is about Apple, Nintendo or Microsoft, these business practices should be discussed and criticized. MS may deserve praise for several other of its activities (Ok, I admit I am not serious on this one), but that should not make their illegal activities acceptable.
By the way, my favorite state of nature (if they were real) would be Locke`s. Even so I would chose fear of being murdered over living in a tree house alone.
Satan said:
"You are for ever angry, all you care about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine."
