The latest example of the brazen manner in which the company reacts to problems which it has, in the main, created, is the suggestion by its corporate vice president for trustworthy computing, Scott Charney, that a tax be levied to pay for the inspection and quarantine of infected PCs.

Charney was speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco and the only reason I can think of why people did not laugh in his face is because of the power Microsoft has in the computer industry.

Viruses, worms, malware, scumware, adware - these are all Windows infections. One rarely hears of Mac users experiencing these problems. I have been running Debian GNU/Linux on my workstation for nearly 10 years, I'm nothing short of a vey heavy internet user, and I have never had any kind of infection.

What Microsoft has done with Windows is like someone removing all the defences a human has against disease and then trying to sell medicine to cure the diseases which said human then contracts.

There are some parts of this report that make me laugh out loud. For example: "When a computer user allows malware to run on his computer, "you're not just accepting it for yourself, you're contaminating everyone around you," he said."

I have a solution, Mr Charney and I won't charge you a dime for providing it either: stop running Windows. Switch to Mac OSX, GNU/Linux, or any of the BSDs. You will stop contaminating all and sundry.