Why would someone want to steal the junk that Symantec puts out? Maybe Apple.

I wonder what micorosft would do if they didn't have such a large bank account. I mean it seems like they get sued left and right, by everyone. I seriously doubt this is just people wanting a free piece of the Microsoft fortune.

You have to admit, if you have a very large bank account and you want to use something, even if its not yours and its stealing. Your going to drive on, because you know the billions you rake in, will more then pay for the millions you have to pay out as a settlement. Spend a million, make a billion. Microsoft knows its going to take so long in court, the company could be dust long before anything happens. The technology put out, vista for example will be adopted by millions before the file even sees a judges eyes. So in the end what can you do? Take the slap, write a check or whatever else. if you have a great wodnerful tech, and microsoft targets you. it's buyout time or bankruptcy time. So hunker down.

Microsoft has nothing to worry about, the only time they were sweating is when that judge ordered a breakup, that was overturned now Microsoft hit the resume button. Too bad they suck at just about everything, even vista integrating every known component there is, sucks. Antispyware, calender, media player, browser, search, sidebar/dashbar/widgets.

Owell, at least they are implementing versions of these things right? Shows some initiative they know whats cool and useful. Sad thing is, R&d is done for them, by everyone else. They just rebrand the idea, introduce it as their own. Tab browsing for example, given to the masses by ie7 right.

lol, what are you carrying on about?

I don't know who is in the right but your sentiment doesn't sound very logical. Rather than license tech, steal it and face the possibility of being sued? Not likely...what's more likely is that terms of Veritas' license got lost in translation or changed somehow when it got taken over by Symantec and since MS had already built it into Vista, oh well....which is probably why it's been settled quietly and amicably. We could hypothesize for quite a while, the point is that there's no reason to villainize MS over this, whether they are true villains or not.

Vista sucking is of course purely your opinion, but I don't see what that has to do with anything here. I don't understand the problem with MS choice to integrate software, keeping in mind that you can replace, in every way these compononents with those of your choice. I like it, you don't...it's a matter of opinion.

And yes, it's great that they're implementing 'versions' of these things. I call it evolution. If companies weren't willing to port/copy/imitate the 'good' or popular things out there then there would be no evolution in technology. Products would stagnate and die with the death of parent companies (inventors) and so on and so forth. What do you want/expect?

R&D is done? I won't take that on. I won't say Vista is revolutionary, I've never thought it was but it's a step in the right direction. And sorry to break it to you but rebranding ideas is a thing every company does nowadays. Not only ideas but products and services as well, there's nothing wrong with that.

Why get paid once, when you can get them to pay you twice or even three times...

What Symantec was really pissed about is that MS saw that Symantec products were a piece of sh** and decided to start working on bringing the security of their OS in house. Yes MS has a long way to go but they will get there eventually.

well, i agree, but i just want to say that i just dumped symantec because of their endpointprotection product. I am using forefront as interm soloution until i decied what i want to use, that said forefront works much better then any symantec av product i have ever used.

it seems that symantec is sinking and just tring to stay aflot lately.