re:
Microsoft do not support any versions of windows except windows 2000 and windows xp. I am not too clear if they support windows millenium actually, but i suspect they are being deliberately obscure on that point.
The systems on people's machines do not belong to them when using any proprietary system. This is the case with SunOS, Solaris, MacOS, BeOS, as well as Microsoft windows. I actually have a feeling that the licence terms do allow you to own your own copy of GNU/Hurd/linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD, is this the case? At any rate, the effect of the licence has the same effect as if giving the administrator ownership of the system.
re: deliberately updating formats and programs so as to not be back compatible, this has been going on at M$ for ever too. The first program to use the .doc format was write.exe, in windows 2. I used that program the other day to make a small .doc file (tha version of write has three fonts, and they were built in to the program, not external font files) i saved the .doc and found it could only be opened in raw text mode in word 97 and word 2000. Why? word 2000 has umpty tum thousand lines of code, why can it not contain the necessaries to decode the original form of it's native file format when write.exe is only a few kilobytes itself? This is what's now happening on a much larger scale to the OS, to the utilities, to the very licence of windows.
also, "soon" we won't have control over our own machines? it has been the case for a long time, but people are only just starting to notice it. Too little too late, that instinct of the humans that fears change is too strong. It's the same reason i think that we will all die of pollution this century. Too little, too late.
Just my thoughts. What i'm saying is, the signs have been there since 1983, high time to take action...