(Yes, I am being purposefully provocative. It's fun sometimes.) ;-)

Microsoft has done some anti-competitive things in the past, and the DOJ has fought them. But are we really so stupid as to think that Microsoft isn't a huge, nay, massively humongous benefit to the U.S. economy?

Apparently, slashdotters and others in the open source community don't see the fact that MS brings in a ridiculous amount of money to the U.S., employs hundreds if not thousands of developers (many of whom have become wealthy) and establishes numerous charitable programs, trusts, scholarships, and on and on.

Some Asian countries have begun to adopt open source software as an alternative to MS. What does this mean? Very simply, it means that a bunch of mostly American coders have written and given away free software that enables some of the biggest economies of the world to stop sending money to MS, and thereby stop sending money to the U.S. These guys have, in my opinion, undermined a major source of revenue for our country, and a major center for U.S. dominance of the software industry.

Needless to say, I find this stupid and upsetting. Next, why don't we also give away all our dominance in secondary education? Oh, I forgot, we're already doing that. Maybe we could give away free drugs to everyone, undermining our drug industry too, and free processor designs, so Intel and AMD employees could spend more time with their families rather than working all day... Sounds great.

Ok, I know tons of people will disagree with me. That's fine. I disagree with them. You know, when you look at the people who espouse free software, they are either in a position to benefit from it (by getting something for free, or by promoting an unknown product), in academia, or in a service or consulting position, usually. Why? Because they don't have to or want to make money from software. But what about the people who do want to make money from software? What about that industry in our country?

I've got my civil procedure test Monday night. Yesterday I went to BarBri to watch their 7 hour review video. It was a good way to keep myself engaged and get through all the material. For those of you that don't know, civil procedure is just all about the procedural rules of federal courts, with a bit about the states, although they're all different...

Lots and lots of rules to go over..... only one more after that, which is Criminal Law on Thursday. Then I'm actually done with my first year... So close, yet so far away.