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There is a difference between Google and Microsoft - Microsoft does list phone numbers for support and you can call them up and actually speak to someone at the other end - and they do provide a paid option for support for many of their products. They also sell many of their products through VARs (value-added resellers), who are generally quite helpful if you get stuck or need help.
What surprised me most was the key role that some Microsoft innovations - like ActiveX played in making cloud computing possible.
It won't be the first of the last time, that a famous scientist has made a statement or prediction that proved to be false. At the close of the 19th century, Lord Kelvin the most reputed scientist of that era, boldly stated, "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible". This was in 1895, just 10 years prior to the Wright brothers proving him dead wrong. Those who advance the "seems impossble so it cannot be true" argument, need to remember this and all previously considered impossible stuff that became possible. These include airplanes, meteorites (yes, once considered impossible by scientists), analysing stars, existence of black holes, nuclear energy, space flight, and teleportation using quantum entaglement....
Just because it is seems unreasonable to you in human terms, is precisely why it may be perfectly reasonable to (what you admit) to be non-human entities! And just because it is unreasonale or implausible to you or anyone else does not mean it is not real or not happening. Quantum physics seems very implausible to me but that has no bearing on it being true.
Making hypothetical statments about the motivations of an alien mind that may be millions of years ahead of us, and then using the implausibility of it as an argument to dismiss any contrary evidence, is the weakest argument against this phenomenon. But it is always repeated in every single discussion about this topic by someone!
Read any of the books above or watch this Yotube documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk where hundreds of high ranking officials in Govt, military, aviation etc. are willing to go on the record and testify under oath, of some of these events.
Yes, sadly most people who dismiss UFOs, have not viewed or read - let alone examined the mountain of data and evidence that exist. Yes, evidence does exist - often as multiple cross-referenced radar readings, abnormal radiation levels, and even physical traces where UFOs have been observed. The true skeptic would not dismiss this out of hand, without some actual personal investigation into the subject.
Trying to make sense of why or why not an advanced species that has mastered space and time, would want to do something so pointless as visiting planet earth, is the weakest argument one can make against this. Just because you cannot understand their motives, and it sound implausible, hence it cannot be true, is like a caveman trying to understand why modern humans stare at flat luminicent screens while tapping and clicking away randomly in front of it for hours.
Yes, I have read that book and several others on the subject and have been blown away. As both an open-minded and scientifically minded skeptic, it would be intellectually dishonest - even foolish - to deny that something extraordinary is going on that is worthy of investigation by science. While most cases can be explained away, about 5% of the cases deserve further study. For example, there are well documented cases of objects spotted moving at speeds of 20 or 30,000 miles per hour and making right angle turns and other impossible maneuvers, backed by both air and ground radar readings, and dozens of eyewitnesses. Or of massive objects the size of a football field gliding at low speeds, with no sound at all, over an entire city, and observed by hundreds of people. Something strange is going on in our skies, and sadly mainstream science and media are dismissing it, even ridiculing it.
While it does sound absurd, it should not be ruled out. Absurdity is a frame of reference and relative to our own knowledge and advancement. So a jumbo jet or even an LCD TV would seem absurd to someone living as recently as 200 years ago. So what could a species that is millions of years ahead of us, do is hard to fathom, let alone put limits on. The funny thing is most scientists on the one hand do accept that the universe must be teeming with life. What they just cannot accept is that it maybe be visiting planet earth. Why not? The standard argument is that the speed of light places limits on how far one can travel, the nearest star being 4 light years, it would take thousands or millions of years to travel the distance (the FTL argument). And yet the very same scientists, advance theories of wormholes, 10-dimemsional space-time, alternate universes that may exist right next to us. All of which may be harnessed by a species millions of years ahead of us to permit them to jump across space-time or even dimensions.