It's time for another round of Microsoft-bashing -- you know how much fun that is. It's been a bad week for Bill, even if the only source of news you read is Slashdot. First comes the news that XP -- which, what with big brother-style product activation and that whole scary .NET idea already isn't too popular -- is also 11% slower than Windows 2000 -- at best. Having recently switched to Win2K from WinME, I have to say I've noticed the improvement, so I'm buggered if I'm slowing back down again just so that Microsoft can give away my credit card number. That being the second item -- apparently, the .NET Passport used by Hotmail has already been cracked. All you have to do is open a malicious e-mail sent to you in your hotmail account, and all your passport information -- including your credit card numbers, if you've entered them -- gets sent back to the hacker. Nice. So in case you were considering it, keep the hell away from .NET, and avoid Microsoft products if you possibly can.