I think the recent revelations reveal my point re: NSA. A significant amount of that NSA budget is being used to buy into product steering and development. This was rather obvious as details started coming to light. I never said Microsoft was "propped", but that is artificially stimulating a company based on a flawed reality of market and investment (i.e. consumers are not buying a product to increase this margin - and in fact these funds are making the product less viable from the consumer standpoint).