I just got three Apple Imacs for the family, two regular and one weird half-a-soccer ball kind. The mice are something I have never seen before: they have red lights on the bottom like the old optical mice I used to use, but require no special finely-patterned board to run on like the old optical mice, and work just fine on any surface. I have no idea how.

My own computer is an Intel PC, and I just noticed that it has a Microsoft mouse with that stupid little rubber ball, and aside from cleaning dog hair out of it now and then has run flawlessly for years.

Now, as to our government's finely honed approach to the market system...

(Rant on idiotic attacks on Microsoft follows. Can be easily skipped by those who are tired of such things.)

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Yes! I bought three Apple computers! Despite Bill Gates' evil monopoly empire that is supposed to be such a threat, I was not accosted by the police for this, nor did I have to sneak over the Canadian border to buy them. I did have to pay more for them than I liked, but that's not Microsoft's fault.

Ironically, the Apple machines did come with Internet Explorer previously installed, no doubt due to midnight threats to Apple execs by Microsoft storm troopers, not because customers actually liked it or anything. I prefer Netscape, though, and despite Microsoft's vast and evil monopoly powers I had no trouble downloading and installing a free copy of a version of Netscape that ran in native mode on OS X and shunting the Evil Internet Explorer aside.* Exactly as I have done on every Intel PC I have ever owned. Easily. Without Federal troops running interference for me or forcing Microsoft to strip the IE browser from the system.

Before all this "monopoly" crap started, Bill Gates was pretty much apolitical. Donated a couple hundred thousand total to all political parties. Had no real political opinions--certainly he was not a strong capitalist.

In fact, he pretty much thought of politicians and political parties as irrelevant to the job of creating, manufacturing, and selling computer software. To your typical politician or government bureaucrat (who is uncomfortably aware that without the ability to fool voters and fleece taxpayers he would probably be nothing more than a cheap ambulance chaser somewhere at best, and a fry cook at worst), this perceived flaunting of their irrelevance was the worst possible insult. It is a capital error to let a bureaucrat know that you think he is a total waste of useful oxygen.

Gates was taken to Washington, and he was shown how these political thugs, who couldn't get a VCR to stop blinking "12:00" without assistance, could destroy him with a whim.

This wasn't about monopoly. This was about showing a company that had succeeded hugely in a largely unregulated free computer market exactly who really "owns the means of production" in this nation.

As Muad' Dib said, "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."

The entire attack on Microsoft, encouraged by competitors who apparently can't attract the number of customers they would like, was designed to pick up Bill Gates by the scruff of his neck and make him see who was boss. Only a few perceptive people in the computer industry recognized this.

Bill Gates, who has little or no philosophical underpinning to his politics, now "donates" millions a year in protection money to the government, like all the other big companies who have gone through similar learning experiences. He now lives in constant, low grade apprehension, just the way the thugs like it, and just like the rest of us "little people" do.

*Actually, I routinely switch back and forth between browsers. On my PC, both Netscape and IE are usually running simultaneously, with several windows open on each.