The problem with creating a startup is the rapidly-rising entry barriers. Designing a machine that will perform to today's specs requires access to chips that are heavily patent encumbered, and that are increasingly being controlled by Microsoft.

Sorry if this offends any Austrian School devotees, but to me this is a classic example of market failure - a monopoly gaining such market power that competition is stifled by market friction, resulting in massive economic inefficiencies all round.

Here is a comparison of security software designed to block usoft telemetry reporting back to the home planet from Windows 7-10: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comp...

An easy to use one is AntiBeacon at https://forums.spybot.info/downloads.... and downloadable from http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE...

If you are using Windows 7 the steps below work so far to block W7 downgrades to W10 and the annoying goading.

suppress display of W10 update popup notices in Windows 7:
....control panel > all control panel items > notification areas icons
..or
....right click taskbar > properties > customize
then
......."GWX Get Windows 10" - "Hide icon and notifications"

to remove KB3035583 "update" pushing W10:
....control panel > all control panel items > programs and features > installed updates
........"Upgrade for Windows 7 for x64-based systems (KB3035583)"
............right click > uninstall

to view update history
....control panel > all control panel items > windows update > view update history

hide KB3035583 "update" to prevent future "offer"
....control panel > all control panel items > windows update > select updates to install
........important
............"Upgrade for Windows 7 for x64-based systems (KB3035583)"
............right click > hide update

prevent silent automatic updates -- notification only, to choose updates installed
....(updates are normally released on the second Tues of each month)
........control panel > windows update > change settings
............notify important updates
............notify recommended updates

To get rid of the Win 10 dialogue box, go to updates installed under Control Panel, about June they sent out update KB3035583 - uninstall it. They will continue to try to include it in updates from time to time, but don't allow it. That is where they got access. Before I got rid of it, they tried 37 times to update my Win 7 to 10! Luckily, I do not allow auto install.

Killsem, Kill sem all!!

Unless you are using W10 there is no reason to even get that message. Do you really think that the windows updates are required ? They aren't. I never allow windows updates on my computers (except when I was installing windows XP on a new empty machine and I wanted SP3 update.) I have good virus software protection and there is little likelihood that anyone would be interested in attacking my machine in a way that defeats that software. It is possible but not very probable imo. (I do take care on what software I load and what links I click in email and on web sites.) Your situation may be different, of course. If you have a company full of networked machines then the "security" updates may be more valid.

I have been delving into the world of secure communication, cryptography, cryptocurrency and P2P networking. I'm finding a lot of interesting ideas such as Ethereum (www.ethereum.org). The idea that we can conduct our business in a secure environment without the prying eyes of some oversight government agency is quite a step up in privacy. I'm hoping this will lead to decentralized money controls (such as bitcoin) and to a more crowd funding type arrangement where the social arrangement pitches in (for some reward) for purchase of real estate, business ventures and other high priced necessities. Let social contract fund the world, not the centralized banks. Centralized control of anything leads to corruption of everything under it.

I've seen a lot of chit chat on this board as to where should Galt's Gulch be.... Well, right here in cyberspace. If, as a society, we can learn how to work through pushing any type of governmental control systems to the peripheral of an enclosed domain that would be a cyber Coup d'etat! If society is to determine it's directions, we must develop the tools to move ourselves out of the control of centralized authority and into a means of social contract where no one entity has the ultimate power to determine right or wrong. If this means moving off the public networks and into the “Enlightened Net” (Don't like Dark net... seems a bit sinister) then so be it.

So here is my question for the group.... What would need to be done to make this happen?

And you are right about Apple. However, it is just a larger share of a declining market! Since 2010 the tablet market has out paced both desktop and laptop markets with both laptops and desktops declining in sales.

Agreed. There is no reason you can persuade me to believe that "requires" .docx. If it works, you get the marks. What is more important, the product, or the delivery method?

Problem is that OpenOffice can't even save a working presentation in .ppt or .pptx which auto-plays audio on each new slide or transition. This was a requirement of my last undergraduate assignment, and it drove me nuts. I had to beg the lecturer to let me submit the presentation as a PDF with accompanying audio files. Definitely did NOT help my final grade. :(

Micro$oft has objected strenuously to open source in past years, to the point of calling it a 'cancer' which will 'infect' everyone's intellectual property and destroy their ownership.

Personally, I love open source since it reduces market friction and helps create a much more efficient economy

It is. What a lot of people are missing is: how much of this does the government facilitate, directly or indirectly? That is, does the government make it any easier to form a true "company" than it was, in AS, for Midas Mulligan and Hugh Akston to form a "company" to grow tobacco, roll cigarettes, etc.?

The beginning of a major article on the subject of antitrust:

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ch 3. "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business"

"If I were asked to choose the date which marks the turning point on the road to the ultimate destruction of American industry, and the most infamous piece of legislation in American history, I would choose the year 1890 and the Sherman Act—which began that grotesque, irrational, malignant growth of unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable contradictions known as the antitrust laws.

"Under the antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. If he complies with one of these laws, he faces criminal prosecution under several others. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prose-cured for monopoly, or, rather, for a successful 'intent to monopolize'; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'unfair competition' or 'restraint of trade'; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'collusion' or 'conspiracy.'

"I recommend to your attention an excellent book entitled The Antitrust Laws of the U.S.A. by A. D. Neale..."

- and specifically on monopoly as a threat only when enforced by government:

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ch 7 "Notes On The History Of American Free Enterprise"

From the very first issue of The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 1 & No. 2 January and February, 1962 "Check Your Premises -- Antitrust: the Rule of Unreason" in addition to "Choose Your Issues"

"They seem to be a double move planned by the statists, one to destroy intellectual freedom, the other to destroy economic freedom. The chief means to the first is the Federal Communications Commission, to the second—the Anti-Trust laws..."

Opposition to anti trust laws is also discussed as a major theme in:

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 3 March, 1962 "Check Your Premises -- Have Gun, Will Nudge"

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 4 April, 1962 "BOOKS: Ten Thousand Commandments by Harold Fleming"

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 5 May, 1962 "Check Your Premises -- Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?"

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 7 July, 1963 "Check Your Premises -- Vast Quicksands"

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 8 August, 1963 "BOOKS: The Language of Dissent, by Lowell B. Mason"

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 3 No. 5 May, 1964 "Intellectual Ammunition Department - What is the Objectivist position in regard to patents and copyrights?"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. 1, No. 3 November 8, 1971 "The Moratorium On Brains"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. 1, No. 23 August 14, 1972 "A Preview"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. 1, No. 26 September 25, 1972 "How To Read (And Not To Write)"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II, No. 23 August 13, 1973 "Censorship: Local And Express"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. III, No. 4 November 19, 1973 "The Energy Crisis"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. III, No. 11 February 25, 1974 "Ideas V. Goods"

The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. III, No. 15 April 22, 1974 "Ideas V. Men"

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ch 11 "Patents And Copyrights"

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ch 15 "Is Atlas Shrugging?"

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ch 20 "The New Fascism: Rule By Consensus"

The Art of Nonfiction Ch 3 "Judging One's Audience"

The Ayn Rand Column "Progress or Sacrifice" July 1, 1962

The Ayn Rand Column "The Cold Civil War" July 22, 1962

The Ayn Rand Column "Government by Intimidation" July 29, 1962

(Some of the articles were later republished in anthologies other than Capitalism.)