RC:

You redeemed yourself in my mind. That was well written, insightful and intelligent. I congratulate you if that is an original thought, really.....

I just got a funny feeling when we got down to the last paragraph or two. It is clearly an MS bash.... But it is an intelligent one so we don't need to arguing about that.

You accurately identified a viable issue - that of the requirement of shareholders to profit from their investment. But you messed up on the conclusion, IMO, that MS can't serve both populations. They can when they have such a huge installed base. Of that installed base there are the "educated" and the "uneducated". These populations will be fairly evenly split between corporate and personal in terms of cash spent. So, MS can fulfil the corporate desire for trying to stop malware/spyware at a high profit, thus satisfying the shareholders and, at the same time, allow the "assault" on the personal users, (while selling the OS for little but reaping the revenue from those who might pay them for "ways in"), which also fulfils the desires of the shareholders.

In the end I think it's a conspiracy theory... It's a good one though.... and well put...