Discrimination against computer operating systems

What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400 billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft software could apply?  Read this article, especially if you are a scientist using a Mac computer. People who tried to register online with FEMA after Katrina found the same thing.  Wasn't the point of the World Wide Web to eliminate communications problems between different types of computers? 

If you want to know the answer to that question read Weaving the Web by Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web.  One interesting factoid from the book: he was using a non-PC computer while working at CERN when he created the basic building blocks of the World Wide Web.