Summary: People's lives are put at risk due to Apple's and Microsoft's greed and secrecy

Microsoft has already fired an employee for daring to warn people about defective products that may cause death. Apple is doing something similar right now by attempting to gag witnesses of an iPod explosion. Nice move from Apple. That truly ought to resolve the problem of exploding iPods for good. If nobody hears about it, then no harm will be done (to Apple's bottom line). This is not an isolated incident by the way. According to The Times, "Last week it emerged that Apple had tried to keep a number of cases where its iPod digital music players had started to smoke, burst into flames and even burned their owners, out of the public eye."

Microsoft has actually just done similar things. According to IDG, Microsoft gagged people who are aware of Microsoft security flaws. From the news:

Yesterday, security experts involved with two separate lines of research declined to comment further about the findings they had already published, saying or hinting that they were doing so at Microsoft's request.

For Microsoft, this is part of a pattern. Security vulnerabilities too can cause death and evidence is abundant. ⬆

"It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is€ also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into€ computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows€ operating systems, are used throughout the United States€ Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United€ States in Afghanistan and elsewhere."

--Jim Allchin, Microsoft