>But, Mike, it IS a legal brief filed before the FTC, and as such puts the lawyers who filed it in legal jepordy of perjury if they were not truthful in their facts and logical in their assertions from those facts.

Lock 'em up, then. I just checked, and you don't have to complete a profile to get a Passport, as the document claims. All it wants is an email address. The document is apparently correct in that a Passport is required for support via the web (news to me, I'll admit). That's nothing new; one used to use a Microsoft Online ID to get web support. Don't want a Passport? Pick up the phone.

The main failure of the document you cite is that it's entire premise rests on the fact that "the Windows XP operating system leaves the user little choice but to employ Passport". That is a complete fabrication. I use the built-in Windows XP Passport login on my main work box for convenience, but not on any of my other XP boxes. Every Windows XP box I have works just fine w/o Passport, including Internet use.

Now that we've established that Windows XP works just fine w/o Passport, what about the rest of the document? Simple, if Passport and Hailstorm scare you, don't use it. If Microsoft doesn't get it right, then let it be an abject business failure.

I love the part where they talk about how Microsoft is going to charge users to "relay this vast amount of...information". What a laugh. The biggest question right now is how the heck we're going to make money on Hailstorm if we're not charging consumers to use it.