Calm down, folks; we know you just can't enjoy your weekends without your jolly dose of AtAT's traditional Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, and we're getting to it, we promise. But you really ought to bring up this compulsion at your next therapy session, because we're pretty sure it has something to do with a repressed memory of some awful childhood trauma of some sort. Like maybe your parents left you with your uncle for the day and he took you down into his soundproof basement and made you-- we can barely bring ourselves to say it, here-- use Windows. Or maybe even (choke) DOS. We hope in the name of all that's good and decent that it's not true, but if it is, you really should deal with the issue head-on. The first step to healing is admitting there's a problem. We're here for you, buddy.

Anyway, on to the heaping helping of therapeutic anti-Redmond abuse, which Microsoft has made all too easy this time around. It's true, folks; you don't need us to point out Microsoft's many flaws, because the company has done a pretty thorough job of cataloging them itself. Faithful viewer jkundert notes a CNET article (by way of MacDailyNews) about that "Redmond Justice Goes to Europe" miniseries that's been stretching on for a while now. Apparently the European Commission's 300-page report justifying why it's fining Microsoft €497 million for antitrust violations contains a doozy of an email message to Bill Gates from one of his many minions. Aaron Contorer, who was Microsoft's C++ General Manager in 1997, admitted to Bill at the time that "end users stuck with Windows, despite the operating system's shortcomings, based on the high costs of abandoning heavy investments already made."

Moreover, the guy mentions why third-party software developers keep writing software for Windows. In Aaron's own words, "the Windows API is so broad, so deep and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system, instead. It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high total cost of ownership, our lack of a sexy vision, at times, and many other difficulties. Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms but it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move... In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago."

Quite a series of admissions, hmmm? Now, legally, all this email does is provide further evidence that Microsoft does indeed hold monopoly power in the operating system market, which doesn't mean much since that fact has already been proven in court over and over again. From a Microsoft-bashing standpoint, though, it's pure gold. This is the smoking gun, people: a Microsoft exec admitting (albeit seven years ago, but still) that Windows is buggy, expensive, and lame, and that the only reason people stick with it is because they're trapped financially by their existing investment. And that, too, is nothing we didn't already know-- but it's nice to hear Microsoft unwittingly admit it. So here's the question, then: now that it's clear that Microsoft knew how badly it sucked even as it continued to rake in billions of dollars from its long-suffering customers, doesn't that make the company even more evil?

We'll give you a hint: three letters, starts with "Y," rhymes with "mess." And "darn tootin'" is an acceptable alternative.