Microsoft (remember them?) is about to launch a couple of new software tools. Code-named 'A1' the products are virus-checkers and spyware-checkers. Initially, they will be free, keeping true to a long Microsoft tradition of annihilating the competition. Then at some point they will be offered as subscription services. Let me see if I've got this straight... instead of fixing the bugs in their products, they create a new product line which might (or might not) stop a bad guy from doing horrible things with those bugs. The difference lying in which particular code reaches your computer before the other does. And at some point, they are going to ask you for money to perform this service.

Now a dishonest software company that had a slumping stock value might use something like this to create infinite cash flow by uhm using some idle talent to write the very worms and virii that another division is writing software to protect against. In fact several of the leading anti-virus companies are suspected of doing this very thing. But of course we don't have to worry about Microsoft being dishonest - do we?