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I started trying out some of the queries. Google was third on intranets and nowhere to be found for restaurants. Google does have prime spot, including the blue bar on top for others.

Also, Google has only 51.41% of the search market, which means the search ad market:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 4

Last I heard, 51% isn't a monopoly.

Finally, even if there isn't a direct payment, there is an opportunity cost. Google promotes the ads that get clicked on the most so they make more money. If there is a Google ad in the top slot, that means they didn't get a click they could charge for.

Check out http://www.hitslink.com/

I've been using them for several years and they're very good. The only downside is that you have to have a small bit of javascript on every page in order for it to track that page.

I would argue that it's common knowledge
that Firefox
doesn't have
anything like
50% of
the browser market,
with most estimates
coming in
at less than
25%.

At least not in the OS department:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 5

Mac OS's market share is only 0.01% higher than it was in October 2005. If you take a look at how it has been fluctuating, you'll not think it to be too likely that it is bound to climb substantially higher in the near future.

I agree with the impact of non-professionals. However, if you believe this site then this whole holy war is moot because most people probably got XP with the "computer store box". Speculation, maybe. This chart is 40k samples in size, which is not perfect.

Also, SP2 is invasive. There's no argument. There was a warning article from MS about SP2 before it came out. Maybe there is no excuse, but in shops where "the ghost image" is already bloated and dying, there is going to be major IT complications / cost.

Maybe they're being percieved as an alternative but they show a frightening inability to convert that into sold systems.

As of June the 1st they still have a personal computer marketshare of 3.8 percent which doesn't seem to have moved since October of last year. In fact, in 2002 that figure was around 3.5. 0.3% growth in three years is nothing to crow about, let's be honest.

If anything, Apple should worry that though Windows XP might be losing market slightly, it isn't to Apple. It's this wonderful category 'Other' they should be worrying about.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 3

1) Shows that safari is increasing (up ~1% in a year)

2) The difference is 0.02%! - What is the saying - Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics? (Mark Twain) That is clearly smaller then the error bars but they do not report that. Now back to your regular ranting.

Yes, the link provided in the story, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 5, lists the market share of the various Windows versions, Mac, and 'other'. And the Aug 2006 stats show WinME+Win98 at 3.5%, and 'other' at 2.07%. But that 2.07% isn't all Linux, not even close.

If you look at another link on the same site, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2, the share is broken down into much more detail (rather than throwing the low share OSes into 'other'), and Linux is listed at only 0.47%.

Yes, the link provided in the story, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 5, lists the market share of the various Windows versions, Mac, and 'other'. And the Aug 2006 stats show WinME+Win98 at 3.5%, and 'other' at 2.07%. But that 2.07% isn't all Linux, not even close.

If you look at another link on the same site, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2, the share is broken down into much more detail (rather than throwing the low share OSes into 'other'), and Linux is listed at only 0.47%.

Man, I was beginning to think I was the only one who could see it.

Search isn't the product - it is the honeypot used to sell searchers to marketers. Many love to argue that you can't have a monopoly on search because the ease of changing search engines. Crock of shit, but ok. How about a monopoly on search engine advertising? When you advertise to A little over 50% of US searchers and almost 70% worldwide, you are approaching a monopoly. The trend just shows it going up and up.

Open your eyes people.

But lets leave off the 'Parroted' snipes. I made some what I believe legitimate statements along with some open questions. Your post, aside from being somewhat abrasive, clearly addressed some of my questions and others a tad more hastily (probably because you quickly scanned my original post).

As for the 80% of revenue, we have to play this game in terms of volume. I absolutely agree Apple would be taking a hit in hardware based revenue and then the dual hit with the loss of platform control, which is certainly nothing to snuff at. Which I do mention.

But on the flip-side there's the increase in revenue generated through software sales.

Here's the sticky part, you seem to have understood that I believed Apple, by following my off-the-cuff remarks, could dominate the OS market and de-throne Microsoft.

But both you and I know nothing is that simple. Microsoft is quite entrenched. But Apple could increase its market share and if the numbers provided by 'hitslink.com' are to be trusted it wouldn't take much to make a significant increase. Which translates into revenue, which might help off-set the loss of some of their hardware revenue (I'd assume they'd still be in the hardware market and still be the first choice for believers and high-end users).

And lets be fair, OS/2 is not a decent analogy. It did fail, but there are a lot of reasons for that and I don't see a strong connection.

Frankly, no-one with a strong platform has ever tried to challenge Microsoft. Thats just a fact. Apple does have a strong platform and could, thats just another fact. How it would work out is impossible to foretell.

But if you don't think there would be a note-worthy migration to Apple you're kidding yourself. Its trendy. Its different. It looks nice and it does everything 90% of the users need it to do.

All the while Vista languishes with rewrite after rewrite, components being scrapped. Seems like a fine time for making in-roads.

Which is why I believe Apple is simply not willing to go up against the 10,000 lb gorilla. Sure, drivers would be a drag, but Apple would simply point back to the manufactures. I mean if you really want Apple without the Windows headaches, buy Apple manufactured/Apple certified/Apple endorsed hardware (oh wait, another revenue stream).

Anyway, I'm not saying Apple will or should go after Redmond. I'm simply stating that if they were willing to make some hard decisions they are the only players that have something resembling a serious chance. That doesn't mean taking 90% of the market. That means displacing Windows systems in large enough numbers to get into the double digits. (IMHO) Doable.

Maybe you're not part of the iPod generation, but there is serious interest out there. And it just so happens that Apples ported the OS completely to Intel's architecture. Interesting, but your right, Steve might be perfectly happy with what they've got. I'm sure the board is happy and their customers seem happy.

So why are macs getting more games than Linux? Are there really more Mac users than Linux users?

Anyway, if you develop a game for a PC, you're already most of the way towards developing for any console. Renderware is a great example -- just pick some middleware, even something as simple as SDL, and you've got most of your porting done for you. It amazes me that people still choose DirectX for PC games.

the government has never openly declared critical Linux updates an imperative? Why Windows?

Well, possibly it's because windows has a +90% share of the desktop market, whereas linux has a 1% share or less.

And yes unusually for a slashdot post, I will cite a source :

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2
br> Cue twenty or more posts screaming "that's only because people hack firefox to identify itself as IE on XP".

Well, this is one firm's results and we all know how sometimes findings can be biased. If you want the full report from onestat, it is here with all browsers covered.

Interestingly, Adtech found similar results (~12% in Europe) while The Counter put Firefox at more around ~9-10% for those months. Net Applications placed Firefox at around 10% also. Of course, Wikipiedia has a decent article on this with combined data at the bottom.

I guess 13% seems like kind of a stretch and 10% seems a bit more realistic. I don't know what makes any one source more reliable than the other though as none of them really talk about their strategy for attaining these statistics.

The big question shouldn't be "where is Firefox's percentage" but instead "how do we make Firefox more appealing to non-technical users?" Because it's clear that the technically savvy people have adopted Firefox but you'll never make it past 15% of the population with that attitude. I hate to say it, but introducing some functionality that Internet Explorer doesn't have might be the only way to accomplish that. And when you do that, you lose the stability and security that made it so popular in the first place. Solution? Perhaps a MySpace plug-in in light of recent news? :)

It's not irrelevant. The SOFTWARE is free, and you've got that already. Support you may have to pay for. The marginal cost of the software itself is zero - it costs nobody nothing for you to have a copy once the software is made in the first place, so being a freeloader is harmless (in fact beneficial for a number of reasons) to a free software product. The cost of upgrading and supporting and keeping the software alive, however, is non-zero. That means someone actually has to do some goddamn work. And workers need to eat. And to eat they must be paid. You see?

They don't charge for support for anyone else, then why with windows 98? Hmm.. I'm thinking of a conspiracy were microsoft benefits. Nah.. thats just me looking behind the seens, determining that Win98 has a bigger market share then linux and trying to determin who has the most to gain from not supporting a certain market claiming the user base is too low when they continue to support markets with even smaller shares. I mean, if we applied these standards across the board, then it is logical that linux development would stop too. after all it costs money to support something for a system nobody uses right? thats your entire theme behind calling me name right?

Someone gave me an ice cream yesterday. Does that mean they have to give me one today?

You know this isn't even the same reality. My god are you that desperate to prove a point that you will try to cloud the issues at hand just to get a one liner in?

Jesus H. Christ, how the fuck did a pathetic leeching slug like you make it into adulthood by demanding that other people work for you for free? Haven't you had your face punched out a few times already?

Apearently you realized how bad an analogy the above was. You decided to resort to name calling when you saw it going downhill. Good one tobey!

Hey, for starters, to say Windows XP has built-in security is pretty laughable. And yes, they only care about security for your operating system if it's not HUMUNGOUS AMOUNTS OF UNPAID WORK to support it. They don't care about security for the DOS Firefox or the Amiga 500 Firefox or the Cray sodding One firefox either. Nor should they, because, unlike you, they're not morons. They put their resources where they think it'll do the most good.

But the whole concept around not supporting win 98 is that microsoft is developing security updates for XP and not win98 and that it is cheaper not to develope for 98 because there isn't very many users. So wich is it? Is XP more secure or not? Or is it just that the userbase is too small. Well if it is the later, then i would be worried about *nix support because the *nix base is even smaller.

What would Mozilla gain, otherwise? A loss of marketshare in exchange for a gain in developer resource seems like a fair tradeoff to me. If Microsoft is paying off it's only competitor, then we're talking anti-trust lawsuit time. Your paranoid theory about Mozilla stealing Microsoft's source code is laughable. Really. If that was the case, then the code would be written out pronto, and the person who submitted it would have his gonads diked out too, you mark my words. Why would Microsoft not just sue the shit out of Mozilla if they found a copyright breach? Kill the competition outright rather than risk yet another antitrust lawsuit by colluding with it.

Well, i didn't say someoen did, i said that could be one of many scenarios. But even without it, Hoiw about a scenario that says drop support for

Did it ever occur to you that actively supporting and upgrading your software costs time, money and effort? irelevenmt

Yes, it has. And the availibility ot use product like mozilla also directly influence those decisions. Interestingly enough though, there are more win98 users then linux users. Should they cut support there too?

How much money or code have you contributed to the Mozilla project lately?

Thats completley irelevent. Mozilla is advertising it to the public not to the public the pays them. Is this free software or some strangle pay software?

Why the hell do you expect them to continue supporting your rotten, deprecated, old OS just because you want to keep using it?

Because they have been supporting it. They also have been taunting that you gain security by using mozilla/firefox compared to IE. They built this whole premis around being more secure and better. They are now telling me they only care about security if it is already built inot the operating system (ala 2000/XP)

Instead of being grateful for having some zero cost software, complete with the source code and the liberal license terms to run on your machines, and for supporting Windows 98 for years, you're actually moaning about people not working for you forever *for free*? It's inconsiderate, selfish, tossers like you that make me tempted to turn into one of them libertarian assholes.

What a crock of shit. First, Grateful is a reletive term. SO it is a moving target and nobody caN Be grate full enough to everyone. It ios simply impossible. Second, Nobody said i wasn't gratefull. All i did was express displeasure, make the statment that i am going to hacve to find another browser and question the motivation of the move. I do find it strange that getting rid of 98 is beneficial to both microsoft and mozilla when before the last release cycle and the anouncments of the upcomming Vista releases it only benefited microsoft. Realy the only valid motivation being expresses for the decision is "it wil be easier". Kinda make you wonder if that really is the only reason. And in case your wondering, I have everyright to question a company's moyivation when they are peddling a product. Especialy when it is somewhat tied to another company who has a history of sabatoging other peoples software.

No you moron, it's very easy to tell. They didn't. Mozilla isn't any kind of strategic ally of Microsoft, they're an enemy. It boils down to the firefox devs not wanting to divert large amounts of developer time and effort on something only a few thousand people actually need.

Keep believing everything the marketing department tells you. Sheep generaly follow the shepard and stay with the herd.. Ok moron. Mozzila doesn't need to ba an ali if microsoft. then need to be dependent on them. The bulk of thier target audience is running on windows. Now a simple scenario that could be transpiring is microsoft sugesting a lawsuite for some mozilla advancement that code only have been atained by looking at the leaked source code that was out a while back. Then microsoft says we will never pursue it if the help migrate some people from win98. While technicly this would be ilegal, legalities of stuff like this has be ignored in the past. There are several other possibilities too. It is hard to say because all those deals would take place behind the sceenes. It is just ironic that now microsoft new operating system is going to be released, mozilla who can and does program for ev ery other platform out there decides it doesn't want to deal with win9X. I'm going to bet that some severe security issue will come around with mozilla and be disclosed right around Vista's release time and you cannot get a patch without upgrading your operating system.

But he

The number of Windows 98 users doesn't merit businesses supporting them.

According to the following page (look Slashdot - I'm citing my sources) 3.15% of users online are running Windows 98. That's hardly infinitesimial, certainly not ignorable. For comparison, this same page states Mac OS * at 4.19% and Linux at 0.40%. Dispute the accuracy - I certainly shall - it comes from statistic botherers on commercial websites. The 'mainstream web' we could call it.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2

So Microsoft, running windows 98 connected to the net certainly isn't impossible in 2006, even if it *is* ridiculous. Maybe we should just block them from browsing, demanding the upgrade.

In other stories.. Debian server running continuously since 1998 succombs to infestation of termites.

Get Internet explorer!

Congratulations on your stand against Windows! Yet another naieve Mac user.
You smell like a troll. Consider that I run Linux. Consider than Linux and Linux-like environments (no more different than NT-like environments) comprise more of the server market than NT-alikes.

Yet the Linux servers don't get compromised, and the Windows servers do.

  You believe that because you are a Mac user that you are immune from spyware/malware/viruses. The fact of the matter is that you and two other people own Macs. Writing the above for your three users would be akin to Al Qaeda launching a large-scale terrorist attack in the middle of a corn field in Kansas. Sure...it's a terrorist attack, but who cares? Nobody was there to see it!
Nonsense. Look at all the publicity over those Mac "viruses" that require you to double click on an icon and type in your administrator password. A Mac virus would be absolutely HUGE news. Not to mention a Linux virus (the primary server platform) would be a real blockbuster, bigger than Windows worms.

Besides, less exposure is not an excuse for 0 viruses. Less exposure = less viruses. But in 8 years of OS X, we've seen 0. Not one.

And that's why even one automated remote exploit would be huge news.

Not to mention that OS X marketshare is greater than Windows 98 and ME, but we still see 9x viruses/worms circulating.

Make no mistake about it...if there were more than three Mac users in the world, all Windows users would be bashing Steve Jobs and not Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
Just like Apache (which is bigger than IIS, yet immune to worms). Just like Unix/Linux (bigger than NT). Just like Firefox, which holds 11% of the market now.

Look at MSSQL. 16% of the market; but that's where SQL worms attack.

Good luck with your Mac and the two games you play. But hey, you got pong, right?
Meh. I play World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom 3, Halo: Combat Evolved, all without booting out of OS X. I can boot into Linux and play Half-Life 2, Guild Wars, attleField 2, World of WarCraft, Dungeon Siege 2, Madden 2006, City of Villains, WarCraft III and Star Wars Galaxies, just to name a few.

Not to mention that Wine on OS X is about to natively support DirectX 9, and Cedega on Linux/OS X is in the midst of implementing Pixel Shaders 2.0 and above, using GLSL.

You're right, I cannot play ALL games. Just most.

"There is no "lack of Linux adoption"; at this point, Linux is the most common OS after Windows, with OS X trailing a distant third on servers and a closer third on desktops. Linux supports far more hardware than OS X, and far more hardware out of the box than Windows."

Really? According to these stat trackers, OSX's share is an order of magnitude larger than that of Linux. OSX is approximately 3% to 4%, and Linux is 1/10th of that.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/May/os.php

the most obvious is IE's dominance purely due to it's inclusion with Windows.

It wouldn't have anything to do with Netscape's browser sucking balls or Netscape trying its hand at the portal business at the wrong time or IE actually being BETTER at that time. You ignore alot of facts to supplement your own perceptions.

I do not see this with Google. First off, Google doesn't even have a 50% share of the global searches.

They have a little over 65% global. Your stats are for US.

You said a lot of things, but I'm I didn't get any actual critcism out of it.

That's because I didn't criticize. I merely pointed out that Google is well on its way to being the defacto search monopoly. I also gave parallels to what happened to Microsoft and what will happen to google.

There is no indication that they will ever be a monopoly

Its called a trend.

it is simply too easy to switch search engines.

It's simply too easy to buy an Apple or get a free Linux distro. The barrier to entry isn't the issue here, its the tendency of the user. The user doesn't want to switch search engines. Do you really think Joe enduser can tell bad search results from good? He is unmoitivated to switch.

As for Google offering the option to see other engine's results? They already do: it's called DogPile.

Google doesn't offer this, InfoSpace does. "They" is innappropriate here as it isn't Google doing it. Now, is there an option, yes. In the same way I have OS options, doesn't make MS any less of a Monopoly. Please don't try to blur the lines with semantics.

As I said, almost by definition, there will be no search monopoly because the cost of switching is almost zero to the end user.

And I said barrier to entry is not the defining point of monopoly, marketshare is. Googles trend since its launch has been increased market share every year. You assume the end user will know that there is a monopoly or will care. Thats alot of assuming to do. A monopoly in this case would be most relevant to the businesses involved with online components, not the end user.

Here's the thing, the end user you keep touting is Googles PRODUCT. Google uses search results to get the users and sell them to advertisers. You get a monopoly on that, there are serious issues that need to be discussed.

This is clearly not the case with Windows - many people dislike Windows, but they have so much invested in it that it makes it almost impossible to switch for non-geeks, and annoying even for the technically saavy.

This is only true of businesses, and that is quickly coming to an end with web standards used for integration.

The end user has less than $500 invested in Windows and plenty of options for Operating Systems. The problem is that they don't want to switch. They don't want to learn how to do something another way. That is a tendency of people, not any business practice.

the most obvious is IE's dominance purely due to it's inclusion with Windows.

It wouldn't have anything to do with Netscape's browser sucking balls or Netscape trying its hand at the portal business at the wrong time or IE actually being BETTER at that time. You ignore alot of facts to supplement your own perceptions.

I do not see this with Google. First off, Google doesn't even have a 50% share of the global searches.

They have a little over 65% global. Your stats are for US.

You said a lot of things, but I'm I didn't get any actual critcism out of it.

That's because I didn't criticize. I merely pointed out that Google is well on its way to being the defacto search monopoly. I also gave parallels to what happened to Microsoft and what will happen to google.

There is no indication that they will ever be a monopoly

Its called a trend.

it is simply too easy to switch search engines.

It's simply too easy to buy an Apple or get a free Linux distro. The barrier to entry isn't the issue here, its the tendency of the user. The user doesn't want to switch search engines. Do you really think Joe enduser can tell bad search results from good? He is unmoitivated to switch.

As for Google offering the option to see other engine's results? They already do: it's called DogPile.

Google doesn't offer this, InfoSpace does. "They" is innappropriate here as it isn't Google doing it. Now, is there an option, yes. In the same way I have OS options, doesn't make MS any less of a Monopoly. Please don't try to blur the lines with semantics.

As I said, almost by definition, there will be no search monopoly because the cost of switching is almost zero to the end user.

And I said barrier to entry is not the defining point of monopoly, marketshare is. Googles trend since its launch has been increased market share every year. You assume the end user will know that there is a monopoly or will care. Thats alot of assuming to do. A monopoly in this case would be most relevant to the businesses involved with online components, not the end user.

Here's the thing, the end user you keep touting is Googles PRODUCT. Google uses search results to get the users and sell them to advertisers. You get a monopoly on that, there are serious issues that need to be discussed.

This is clearly not the case with Windows - many people dislike Windows, but they have so much invested in it that it makes it almost impossible to switch for non-geeks, and annoying even for the technically saavy.

This is only true of businesses, and that is quickly coming to an end with web standards used for integration.

The end user has less than $500 invested in Windows and plenty of options for Operating Systems. The problem is that they don't want to switch. They don't want to learn how to do something another way. That is a tendency of people, not any business practice.

Google's page defaults to Google's services, and that's fine. Why? Because Google (as of November 2005 - I can't find any more recent statistics) has 46.3% of the search engine market. While this is more than any of their competitors, it is nothing like a monopoly.

Finally, someone who gets it. At this point, they may not be considered a Monopoly, but they are well on their way.

The numbers you show are for the US. Here are the globals for 2006 (so far). Now, the part I find interesting is that google is listed multiple times here. Adding up all of thier listings I get 65.68% of world share. That is pretty damn close to the 80% you quoted. Now maybe their services are open source, but they bundle Firefox and Nortons in their download pack.

Thier Monopoly would also be in a less defined area than Microsoft's. Businesses will all be at the mercy of google is they wish to have a web presence. This can be directly paralleled to Microsofts API shenanigans and perhaps to their VAR relationships.

If they make their search engine the default in their browser, bundled with their OS, then they are using their monopoly position in two markets to attempt to gain a monopoly in a third.

Yes, but it has been legally cleared. To be fair, what would you have Microsoft do as a business entity (which they are), not a person (which they aren't). To not attempt to do this would just be plain stupid. If the courts stop you, fine - stop doing it. If they don't, well full steam ahead.

I'm not saying that your incorrect. They most certainly ARE using a monopoly position to gain leverage in another market, it just hasn't been ruled as anti-competative.

If Google has leading market share in the search marketspace, how can they claim that Microsoft's intent to default to MSN in IE7 is a not competative practice. I see how the argument works from the OS/effective monopoly perspective, but the argument seems a little weak if approached a different way.

IE defaults to MSN as it's home page, correct? Well, MSN search is there. Google's stating that people won't use their search because users won't change the toolbar default is equivalent to saying that people don't change their default home page - which is untrue.

Where does this end? The default home page? The toolbar option? At some point this gets ridiculous.

The problem doesn't stem from not being able to make a choice, because the settings can be changed. The problem stems from the public not even understanding the difference between the competitors and not caring to change. Who's fault is that? The entrenched vendor who has no reason to promote its competitors or the competitor who needs to make consumer education a priority?

In this case, how do you establish that? The OS is entrenched, but Google market share is significant over MSN's search. I mean hell, its almost 50%. How can you argue that your dominance is in danger by a company who holds 8%?

link shows 3rd Q sales. Just supposing they are averaged over whole year, then sorry, I have to drag out the old saw that Apple hardware lasts longer, gets handed on, say 4 years average life against 3 years for a typical PC. Then the surviving user base is ~4%. Don't beleive me.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2

That's because Linux people like to make statistics up.

Mac OS has 4.37% marketshare according to that. Linux has 0.32%, pretty soon there will be more people running OS X on Intel (0.08%) then Linux.

Well, I'm not going to nitpick with you over your opinions on firefox (though it's much better than you seem to think) but your idea that MS could possibly even be happy that firefox exists, let alone be behind some kind of conspiracy to make it, is completely not fucking based in reality. Firefox has almost double the marketshare of all other non-IE browsers combined . Firefox has more marketshare than Mozilla ever did, and IE now has less marketshare than it's had in a longtime. Hate the interface if you want, but you got to respect firefox for being the first f/oss browser to finally give IE some sort of competition.

Is that why Linux's OS share is at 0.32% (according to the same folks that are the source of the recent story about Firefox's breaking 10% in browser share)?

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2

And why do slashdotters insist on turning a Mac/Windows story into a Linux one (with the very first post, no less)? Do you guys think of anything other than Linux?

You had me up to that last point. Apple have something like 4% market share. That isn't competition, that's an insignificant niche market (at best).

you may be right tho - this may be a publicity stunt to try to make out that they aren't a total monopoly without any real competition

Not that weird. Yes, every other browser/client/server supports it. IE still has comfortably more than half of the browser market, even though it's in decline. So, if the NSA can't break AES, they ask M$ not to put it in, and a large chunk of the traffic remains readily readable.

"But," you may say, "anyone who knows what they're doing will use something more secure." True. However on one hand, crooks and terrorists are often (albeit not always) stupid, and might not always do so; and on the other hand, the easily broken traffic can be quickly sorted out, leaving a smaller quantity of harder-to-break traffic where content analysis is neglected but traffic analysis approaches become profitable. Limiting the capabilities of the drooling-luser set is helpful, because it makes it easier to pick out the bad guys who hide by leaving a smaller set of both the good and the bad guys who can hide. Rather than struggling to separate all the good from the bad, they can first quickly separate the smart from the stoooopid.

Of course, there's no proof the AC's assertion is true... but it doesn't matter much for the sake of arguement.

Eighty percent of the market uses operating systems other than Windows XP

Wrong. I hardly ever see a desktop PC running anything else, but I hate anecdotal evidence, so lets look at some figures. Type "XP market share" into google, and one of the top hits is this:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2

Which give a figure of 78% for XP. Now when I said "has 80+ percent of the market" I was talking about the current version of IE, which is available for 9x, so yes, I do claim that the excluded operating systems (Mac OS, any Linux OS, or any FreeBSD OS, or NT 4 or Win 3.1. Or Amiga OS, for that matter) total less than 20 percent of the market. If you claim different, please provide some figures

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.websidestory.com/news-events/press-rele ases/view-release.html?id=160

Which shows XP managed oa 20% market share of web browsing machines in less than a year. This is hardly surprising, as virtually every store bought PC sold in that time period came with XP pre-installed. The same will be true of Vista. It will achieve market share very rapidly, because every new home PC sold will have it already on the hard drive.

Now, given XP has about %80 of the market, and Vista will have IE 7 pre-installed, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. Here it comes:

Within 1 year of the release of Vista, all independent figures will show IE7 as having the largest market share of any browser.

Feel free to prove me wrong. But I'll need to see figures, sir!

Statistics

Safari is the #3 most popular web browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox, according to whoever these guys are. It's also the #1 browser on the #2 desktop OS. To ignore Safari is to embrace Microsoft's monopoly. Most of us here on Slashdot aren't particularly happy with that idea.

It's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to provide driver's for a minority operating system?

And Apple's Safari, supposedly, just hit roughly 3%. Are these percentages
better indicators of OS market share than actual purchase levels which don't
take into account pre-existing machines already in use?