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AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?
mizhi writes: "MSNBC reports that AOL6.0 will be bundled with Windows XP and given prominent placement on the desktop in exchange for exclusive Internet Explorer support. They're also talking about making Windows Media Player the exclusive player for AOL. No monopoly here... keep moving along..." What about MSN? Mozilla? If AOL isn't going to switch to a new Netscape or Mozilla browser to base their client upon, what happens to Netscape?
Netscape was killed off by the evil Microsoft empire.
Microsoft gave away for free the products that Netscape was making its biggest revenues on: web browsers and web servers. This left Netscape without the capital and market share needed to properly improve and market its products.
So you're right, Netscape Communicator was really poor quality and the bugs weren't fixed, but this was because Netscape had limited resources to use. If Netscape *had* focused on releasing a stable version of Communicator rather than adding extras, then right now you'd be accusing Netscape of having died because it didn't keep pace with IE.
It's being worked on..... http://winxplite.cjb.net
I just bought Win2k less than a month ago; the Dos/command-line window works fine and is REQUIRED to preform some of the more advanced operating system administration. Actually, if MS will offer Win2002, etc., as an alternative to subscription-based XP, I will certainly stay with MS. Win2k is a very good system, at least for what I want/need to do; the only way I'd even consider a complete move is if Adobe gave me free copies of Photoshop/Illustrator for Linux (getting the Windows copies was too expen$ive to replace).
Also, I am a webdeveloper with a non-tech-savy mother. I've found Mozilla STILL isn't as reliable for CSS/DHTML as I.E. is, and I have a hard enough time getting my mom to run I.E. -- she'd be lost if I told her to check her Mozilla build everynight, let alone if she didn't have the hand-holding features that I.E. excels in providing. The "unwashed" whom you claim WANT/NEED to tinker with the insides of their system will prob get Linux, or stick with Win2k (which is very configurable/get-your-hands-dirty, maybe you should try and USE Win2k BEFORE YOU FUD-lump it into the same category as XP). My point here is that computers are too usefull to be given ONLY to those who fully understand them -- I.E.+AOL VS Mozilla+Plain_Vanilla_ISP is almost like Automatic_Transmission VS Manual_Clutch; sure the clutch offers better preformance and "user" control -- but there are some people who just want to drive/websurf+email, and don't care that they're not using the most breathtakingly engineered way to do it.
You heard a rumor about WinXP? I heard a rumor that, late at night, WinXP will secretly start reading text from "Mein Kampf" to try and brainwash you into a Nazi while you sleep. Oh, let's DO discuss rumors, it's not like the TRUTH about WinXP is daming enough. No, I'm NOT going to put my torch away -- if it's a rumor than bringing it up is wrong, even if you say "it's just a rumor!" -- if it's just a rumor is it worth bringing up? Or do you just like to frett, worry, and namecall with Microsoft BEFORE you know that you have good reason to do so? Maybe WinXP WON'T force you to re-buy it when you upgrade your CPU; MS has been famous for coming out with a HORDE of bad ideas with each new operating system, few of which actually MAKE it to release (or make it past initial release -- channel bar). And your FUD-point makes no sense: if you're having to constantly subscribe to XP, you'll NEVER have to make a singular purchase for the system.
If XP DOES decide it needs to charge you a little more for your latest update because it has to upgrade itself to include suppport for your new processor, is that so bad? Does Win95 support all the new gadgets and things that Win98 does? Win2k? The only real difference would be that the update would happen automatically, as opposed to you flocking down to your puter store . . .
Again, it's POINTLESS to make a criticism about this unless/until we can actually SEE how it works AFTER RELEASE. I, frankly, would be glad to pay MS, say, $10/yr -- Win2k is $120, that's 12 years! Even at $20/yr, I've NEVER kept an OS for longer than 6 years! It's likely your "rumor" is true, except that its facts are a GREATLY distorted version of what, in reality, is a much more acceptable upgrade policy than your description of your rumor paints -- I heard a rumor that my Uncle died but he *really* was only very sick and is better now. See the distinction?!
There are enough problems with the subscription model of XP without having to worry about your FUD over new CPUs/disk-drives. . . Indeed, I wish someone would keep a laundry list as to what parts of XP are bad and are CONFIRMED (like cutting off support, system-wide, for MP3s by giving MS-MediaPlayer priveldged access to system multimedia) -- I have heard a lot of rumors and a few items which I can only assume are truths; I'd sure love a website that keeps track of the sins of XP yet filters out the FUD of "Oh no! It's Microsoft!"
Oh. This really is choice. Netscape is losing the Linux desktop (there is a good article about that and why the Linux distributors are rejecting Netscape on mozillaquest.com). Now AOL is rejecting Netscape and crawling in bed with Microsoft. Greed and stupidity rule at AOL.
Who cares why they pay me? The $$$ attracts chicks. Money. A home. A car. Sex. What else matters?
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.77 (X11; I; FreeBSD 4.3; en)");
For you FreeBSD fans, there's a recent port for Mozilla 0.9. The only thing I'm awaiting for is LDAP auto completion.
No, it is because MS does not longer feel AOL's browser as a threat. Well, I have to agree a bloated, hoggy browser based on mozilla cannot threaden MS' internet explorer. I am sorry, no matter how much you say about the hard working done at mozilla.org to make it leaner and faster, I don't think they archived anything. The nightly built is still bloat that make my linux machine's free memory dropped from 160MB -> 30MB once I browsed 3 or 4 Chinese pages. Yes, that is minus cache/buffer thing. Damn, I can run IE smoothly with 10s of windows open before I upgrade my machine from 64MB ram to 192MB. Well, I throw in the extra 128MB partily due to the dirt cheap price but meanly I heard so many people scream mozilla runs well with 128MB. Well, damn, mozilla nightly don't run well on 192MB of RAM on a due celeron box. Don't both with your ram upgrading plane. Now I have to believe mozilla has some design flaw make it totally hopeless on footprint and the speed departments.
Netscape and Mozilla are no match for IE and AOL knows it. Duh! Netscape is dead. When are you people going to realize that?????!!
I don't get it. Is there a problem here? Companies bundle products together all the time. Didn't Windows95 come with AOL, Compuserve and other clients?
MS was killed off by the evil Linux empire.
Linux gave away for free the products that MS was making its biggest revenues on: Operating systems and Office software. This left MS without the capital and market share needed to properly improve and market its products.
So you're right, MS Office was really poor quality and the bugs weren't fixed, but this was because MS had limited resources to use. If MS *had* focused on releasing a stable version of Office rather than adding extras, then right now you'd be accusing MS of having died because it didn't keep pace with Linux .
Well, they could have made it cross platform without designing a whole new freeking platform that is ITSELF cross platform.
... the jury is still out.
However, their new cross-platform platform DOES have a big advantage -- XUL. If XUL would be widely used, it would prove itself quickly. It alone could be a powerful weapon against IE.
So we have to decide if XUL was worth creating a new platform and lots of bloat for. Maybe
Like it matters anymore, anyway. Netscape is a non-issue now with Mozilla being more useful and stable than Netscape could ever hope to be. Don't believe me? Grab a nightly and see for yourself. It doesn't suck as much as it used to, and it sucks a lot less than Netscape ever did.
Or am I the only one that's had to write a script to killall -9 dead netscape processes and rm ~/.netscape/lock?
-A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'm Netscape's (well actually, Mozilla's) biggest supporter, and this really sucks, but it's just business. Everyone seems to have the solution for Mozilla, but how about this: Drop the cross-platform bull shit. "Winning the browser war" and "cross-platform browser" are mutually exclusive, because you can NEVER make a cross-platform app as fast as it would be if it was only developed for one platform.
:)
... flames) suddenly be dropped from my platform would make me loose a lot of respect for the mozilla team.
Truely spoken by someone who uses windows
Seriously though, if they were to drop the "cross platform" thing that would really suck for a lot of people, and probably most of the mozilla advocates would stop being mozilla advocates. Lets be honest, IE is a good browser. When I'm in windows, I use it because it's fast, renders well, and is compatible.
However, 99% of my time (that is, when I'm not playing blackandwhite) is spent in linux. Having the best choice for a browser so far (IMHO anyway, please don't start the konq vs opera, vs
I think that probably (and this is a pure guess) 80% of their use is by linux people who want something that doesn't suck as bad as netscape 4.x. Dropping cross platform in mozilla might be fine for windows people, but as a linux person, I really would like a browser that is great.
That you assume that Orwell's tale was applicable *only* to those given the moniker of 'government' is a sure sign of your own shallow understanding of that which you read ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I seriously doubt they can shoehorn two bloated peices of software on one CD.
</humor>
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I'm distinctly reminded of this:
. htm
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/nonagres
:wq
What about MSN? Mozilla?
I think you answer your own question there michael. If Microsoft switches from AOL to MSN as the default internet provider in Windows, then AOL retaliates by switching from IE to Mozilla. But if AOL switches from IE to Mozilla first, then Microsoft retaliates by switching from AOL to MSN as the default internet software that comes with Windows. The inter-relationship is too important for either of those scenarios to happen.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).
Um. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention? Mozilla (and therefore Netscape 6+) is easily embedded.
If Netscape had actually put some effort and planning into Mozilla, then you wouldn't have to ask 'What about Netscape'. They designed an entire fucking cross-platform toolkit instead of focusing on the real point--a good rendering engine and a good browser FIRST, then all the extras like mail, news and AOL/NSCP Instant Messenger.
I've heard this bit of wisdom bandied about quite a bit -- only problem with it is: it's not true. The Mozilla project is based around the core Gecko engine, which has been a good solid product for some time. They're also working on the extras, because without them, they really are dead. If you want just a good solid browser, check out K-meleon or Skipstone.
MS talking to AOL...
Hey, since the Justice Dept. would never allow us to do it, why don't you go buy up our competition(netscape, winamp, etc..) and we will cut you a sweet deal on the desktop.
go ahead and moderate this down, and i'm sure there's a million people that will swear to their dying day that mozilla kicks any browser's ass, but the latest version of MSIE does not crash, is stable, stable, stable, does not waste resources with stupid themable interface, does not have major parts of the browser written in java script, does not require 128 megs of ram to run and also does not include stupidity such as AIM clients and IRC clients. if I was AOL, i would have included MSIE too. at some point mozilla may become a better browser, but right now it is not. it is behind. you can either moderate me down and ignore the truth, or you can stop reading slashdot all day, learn some c/c++ and help out the mozilla.org crew. god knows they need it.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Being cross-platform and providing those other functions is vital to the Mozilla project. If they'd just done a simple, Windows-only, WWW-only program, what incentive would there be for people to use it, when IE is already there?
No, the true value of Mozilla (and the Communicator suite which preceded it) is that you have a consistent set of tools available on all platforms -- including future embedded boxes. Netscape knows that trying to compete with Microsoft on the Windows platform is suicide due to Microsoft's bundle-opoly. They control the integration framework and have the power to marginalize anyone who they consider a threat. By providing a complete Internet communication suite, Netscape can provide access to the Web and email (and now, instant messaging) on Windows, and then provide a consistent experience for those users who choose to migrate to another platform. That's been the Netscape vision from the beginning -- only Microsoft caught on to their game a bit too early for them to complete it, and took steps to grind them into dust.
The Mozilla project is still meaningful, and I believe it is one of perhaps three or four programs whose continued existence are absolutely crucial to the preservation of a world in which Microsoft does not have 100 percent market share of all three major sectors (desktop, server, and embedded).
This message has been proudly posted using Mozilla.
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
so remove the ads and turn of auto update..is a very simple process involving 3 dll's and 1 core file. Instructions can be found via a google search on remove adds from ICQ :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Ok.. so AOL wants to have AOL 6.0 bundled with WindowsXP, but AOL refuses to spend the cash on Exchange/Outlook for mail? IS it just me or is this really odd?
AOL Time/Warner: We want to go back 4 years in email/imap technology and use AOLMail for email because we don't want to spend the cash on Exchange Servers and Outlook clients.
BUT, we want AOL in WindowsXP and Internet Explorer as the web browser.
My question is, what's in it for Microsoft? Browser users? I guess the AOL sheep will use whatever is put in front of them..
I really dont get AOL Time/Warner. I think the higher ups are on crack.
Use the best tool for the job. I don't care what OS or if its open or closed source, just hte best tool for the job. AOL Time/Warner doesn't. AOL mail for crying out loud. Outlook kicks its ass.
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
Except for those of us who use Opera. Except for a bunch of proprietory MSIE extensions that I wouldn't allow to run in any case, Opera kicks ass.
For one thing, it's got a helluva great UI. Saves a lotta time in browsing. Makes me more efficient.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
SSL Support alone isn't the whole story.
If the site you want to connect to only accepts
keys from certain browsers, it does not matter
what your other browser can do.
Try to connect to the wells fargo online bank
with anything but an "approved browser" and
get back with me about SSL support.
http://www.wellsfargo.com/per/browsertest.jhtml
I've asked for a way to make Konqueror fool this
site into working, but I guess it isn't a
problem for anyone else.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Dear AOL,
Do me a favor? Buy Netscape / Mozilla. Pretend to develop it. Pretend to care. Let it die after about a year. In exchange for this we will put AOL X.0 on the next version of Windows. Cool?
-Bill
You're right on the money. Windows XP is yet another attempt at wiring the Windows interface for MSN access.
The last time MS tried this (with Windows 95), they had to face a fairly long federal trade commission investigation, and while no charges were filed, it started the log-rolling towards the anti-trust case.
By including the AOL software, they've basically bought off the only business with stature to file suit against them for extending their monopoly.
Besides, anyone remember the Bill Gates comment about including a can of Pepsi in every six pack of Coke/ That's exactly what they are doing now!
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Partially Correct: In ME it was not done so much to isolate the OS from the user,
as to remove all the legacy DOS cruft that was a large source of driver problems
for Windows 9x systems.
The irony is that the most significant reason that Win9x was ever created was because the users demanded support for "legacy DOS cruft". And, all things considered, Win9x did an excellent job of supporting ancient drivers while presenting an WinNT-like modern API to applications. It was a compatibilty-hack to transition users to a modern system, nothing more.
Since they removed the old driver support, there is no real reason for the OS to even be on the market. Resource requirements aren't significantly less than the real thing (NT) either. So ME was just really a pointless upgrade to fatten Microsoft's wallet and send one final parting shot to users that they better upgrade their stuff.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
WIndows XP does not force you to repurchase the product every so ofter, what utter nonsense. You have to activate the product, via phone or the web, in a 14 day period before you are forced to activate to continue using the OS. Activation means you tell MS you have a product key and the activation software creates another unique identifier based on the hardware in your machine. This does not mean you have to repurchase the product if you change hardware in your machine. It only means that you have to reactivate if you make a "sufficient" number of changes to your hardware. Now of course, since this is an anti-piracy measure, they aren't telling anybody how much hardware needs to change to trigger the re-activation process, but they have said its > 1 piece of hardware.
With the ease with which you can get information on this from beta testers, take a nanosecond to get some facts.
That's silly. After having used IE for so long, AOL users would probably leave AOL if they were forced to use Mozilla. AOL knows they're fucked if they foist that junk on their customers, so they're sticking with IE.
I know so many people here at Slashdot like to pretend that Mozilla is every bit as good as IE, if not better, but I'm sorry, it's not even close. If AOL switches, they might as well just start signing a good portion of their customers up for MSN, because this would be a big double whammy against their customers coming after the rate increase.
Cheers,
So, one of the coolest things about Mozilla is something that IE has already done for, oh, the past four years or so? Yeah, that browser sure sounds like it was worth the wait... :)
Cheers,
Ok, maybe junk was a bit harsh. Taking out all the political factors, it's not some horrible browser, and between Opera and Mozilla, I'd personally take Mozilla by a nose. I just do think it's a big step down from IE in just about every way, though. Hell, my biggest complaint about the IE6 preview release (other than the functionality that hasn't been completed, which I have no beef with) is the team putting in that Mozilla-like personal bar. If it was as easy to keep off the screen as the History, Favorite, and Search bars when I'm not using them, I wouldn't mind, but it seems like it's getting in my way too much, especially in regards to playing audio. I thought I heard that they were getting rid of this a while back, but if they don't, Mozilla will have made up a good chunk of ground on IE, and least in my own opinion.
Cheers,
"They designed an entire fucking cross-platform toolkit instead of focusing on the real point--a good rendering engine and a good browser"
You are so right on this point. I always wondered why the heck they bundled all the other crap with the browser. It was far more annoying than useful, even for the clueless novice user it was useless. Messenger sucked, composer sucked, and I resented the fact that I had to wait for all that crap to download.
I stopped using windows netscape @ version 4.7, and only fire nutscrape up when i'm proofing my web work for "the other browser"
Exploder rocks. plain and simple. I hope people quit using netscape soon so i can quit setting up extra style sheets.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
These monoplies confuse me...
Well, seeing as Ashcroft, the AG, is firmly in MS's pocket (http://www.opensecrets.org/)...
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Now, at the same time, they fund the Mozilla effort, which as time goes on, should probably be little drain on their resources due to increasing community involvement. So overall investment there is small and it continues to give them a platform to work with on Embedded devices and non-windows desktops. As the market share of Embedded devices vs. Desktops shifts, AOL will have mozilla there to fill that need.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Uh, I thought he was reviling against the DMCA. And there were big opressive corporations in 1984 too... It's the combination of the government and the corporation that is terrifying.
And then you had to go trolling and complaining about the moderation. I guarantee, the moderators are just as foolish as you are. This will continue unabated.
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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
They can't do that. MS was convicted of being a monopoly under US law. They have appealed the penalty but not the ruling. As such they still operate under monopoly regulations. If they tie their browser to their server like that the company will face heavy monotary fines or may ever have its corporate charter revoked.
You also forget MS is nothing compared to IBM. Check out where the real influence is and the market is showing that. More companies are adopting linux becuase of IBMs influence. This would be a direct attack on IBM and would most likely blow up in MS's face.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Well when you start doing webapps instead of just webpages you will see how much IE bites. Netscape may not have all the rendering right but dealing with it server side is far better then IE. Ie lies about support content types, ignores the http/1.1 caching directive headers and many other issues. It really bites when you click on an item on the page and the page does not change because IE cached it despite being told not to.
I even went to microsoft.com and found the headers that tell IE not to cache in their knowledge base and it still does. You see the problem is IE is a very broken browser and caches by url so when you are doing stuff purely server side so you can change the page without changing the url IE will often show the wrong version.
IE iimplemented the HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 spec very badly and it causes me many problems because they can't build a working web browser.
I have explained to many customers what the problem is and none have had a problem using netscape, mozilla, netscape 6, or konqueror to work with the web apps.
Despite what many think IE is not making the web more content rich it is holding it back. You can do things server side to completely replace frames, make 100% spec pages that render beautifully on everything except for IE which will ignore much of it because of its stupid caching issues.
That is why there are very few web programmers because they get sick and tired of dealing with IE and all of the crap it causes.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Wow, things are NOT looking good for Netscape. Thank goodness Mozilla has started to become usable (I wish SSL would work though).
Not so loud!
Blar.
I don't even proof for Netscape anymore. Our pages work in Netscape 6, Mozilla, IE and Lynx.
If someone is still using Netscape 4.x, that's fine, but I'm not going to write two fifty-page web sites, one of which is a hacked, broken, non-standard monstrosity just so those people can see our site without a bunch of errors.
..and I'm *certainly* not going to waste time on two sets of stylesheets, Javascripts, etc. Every minor update to the site would take days.
To saturate the market, ms had bundled IE with everything from ITmagazine cd's, to computers, to even peripherals.
Sheesh, I remember that time. It was almost impossible to get any CD that didn't have Internet Explorer bundled into it. Everyone I know was up to their flippin ears in spare IE CDs. I'm surprised they didn't give IE CDs away in cereal boxes too.
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"It hasn't really improved, while Internet Explorer has made leaps and bounds, coming from behind, overtaking, and leaving the Netscape crowd in the dust"
I hate to point out the gaping flaw in your reasoning here, but of course Netscape got left in the dust - that is exactly what happens when a competitor cuts off your distribution channels - you can no longer afford to improve the product - helloooo, thats exactly what Microsoft did to Netscape, that is actually called "killing them off". How do you improve your product when you've been cut out of the market?
How short our memories are. IE3 and IE 4, the "competition" for NN4 at the time, were also crap products, incredibly unstable and buggy. Now a couple of years later everyone seems to have forgotten that, and now everyone compares the Netscape of 2 to 3 years ago to the Internet Explorer of today. Hardly a fair comparison.
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(gloat)Just another nail in the M$ coffin(/gloat)
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Has anything realy improved since IE4, beyond minor tweaks and small, incremental steps towards (not to, but towards) standards compliance?
How about a massively sped-up rendering engine?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Bingo! Glad I searched for the word "bargaining" before I posted. I think that they were prepared to go with Netscape for the client, but if they were going to get a better deal with Microsoft, they're going to take it. I don't think Sun would be particularly pleased, though.
I imagine they were prepared to go either way - to use it as a bargaining chip to keep AOL on the desktop, or to attempt to make AOL/Netscape the desktop for internet appliances.
Since AOL is the money maker, not netscape, it does of course make a lot of sense.
Of course logically they will need to maintain Netscape as a viable threat in order not to get expunged from the Windows desktop at some point in the future.
Now that the "We'll make money from our automatic update service!" Eazel/Ximian mentality is collapsing, hopefully there'll be more clever angles like this to work.
I take it you have not been following Ximian recently? Their partners include HP, not to mention the fact that Sun and Compaq have joined Ximian's GNOME Foundation. There are some VERY heavy players backing Ximian GNOME as the next generation UNIX desktop, and they're in the prime position to (as they currently are with HP) get development contracts for new features and provide support to the large UNIX players.
I'd say that their business model has never wavered from reasonable. People poo-poo Ximian because they do not understand it, and they associate the failure of Eazel with Ximian.
There's always talk about how "we" certainly aren't going to pay but "Joe Sixpack" will cover the cost of our free lunch.
The desktop consumers of UNIX have always been the financial, educational and scientific communities. Mozilla, Ximian and Linux have been quickly or slowly, but always steadily converting each of those markets (or, as with Ximian, converting the market leaders in those areas).
It may be AOL's view that Mozilla has done it's job by forcing Microsoft's hand. MS wants to keep it's lead in the browser world, and if threatinging them with AOL conversion to Mozilla get AOL placement on the XP desktop, well it was worth the money they paid....
I'm not saying that I would be happy with that attitude, but is there any business reason for them to not think this way?
exactly, and IE on mac is better than Netscape6 anyway. Seriously, I don't worry about MS browser monopoly anymore because there won't be anymore new version on majority of the users IE6 will not be available on win98 win95, which is over 50% of the user base. If a good OS such as win2000 can't get people to upgrade, there's nothing else MS can do to make people upgrade.
I do most of my work on flash. (yechen.org) While I understand theres a few bugs on flash5 player. I'm not going to do anything flash6 only when it come out, cause flash4/flash5 that comes with the browsers IS going to be the standard for the next 5-8 years. That's it folks. There's no more browser war, there's no more standard compliment war. IE5+flash5 is the net.
Tino
You can say it again, brother. Amen.
The cross broser support is so impossible that I have moved to flash for most stuff.
But the real battle takes place with the "last mile" to consumers. As long as there is a truly open Internet accessible to all, there's a limit to how much damage these kinds of consolidations can do.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Monopolies in different fields cooperating isn't much different than a small group of competitors cooperating to screw their consumers, e.g. airlines, RIAA labels, California electricity providers.
AOL-Time-Warner is a weirder beast than a straight monopoly, however. They have enough clout to dictate certain things, within limits, and in a Microsoftian way, their power in one area can be used to force their hand in others. Putting them together has consequences I don't want to see.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
It (Open Source) has produced some pretty good stuff in it's day... Does Mozilla need AOL? If AOL drop Mozilla, aren't there enough skilled Open Source developers out there with an interest to take it over?
In fact it might be a good thing... I find Mozilla too big and cumbersome, maybe someone with a different focus might decide to split it into its component parts and we could even get a nice lightweight, standards compliant and stable browser out of it.
This doesn't NEED to be a Bad Thing(tm). Open Source has a way of coming up with the goods.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
I know its not free, its not open source, but it is fast, small, efficient, not very crashprone - way better than IE for anything. And all linuxed out! Yippee!
Juln
Is it true that, as the story implies, AOL now takes up over 80MB? If so, what's in that? Not localization information, since it's just the english version... shouldn't it be getting most of its graphics and such on demand from the 'net? I just don't get it.
I've had this sig for three days.
First of all, if IE is really a superior product to Netscape, and AOL is a fine ISP for most people's need, and if you have an option to use something else in either category if you so choose, then I don't see this as being anti-competitive... it's benefitting normal consumers. This is in the same vein as MS's consumer OS virtual monopoly being a lot more beneficial to consumers than having 10 different popular OSes with lesser features - as long as you can choose to use another operating system at any time. (When motherboard chipsets and hard drives begin to support only Windows and AOL, then I'll worry)
Second, Netscape is not dead, as long as AOL doesn't kill them off. Of course, this is virtually what's happening here, but neither AOL nor Netscape itself (pre-merger) showed any serious committment to providing consumers with something better... they were sitting on top of their own monopoly on the browser scene. Even now, Netscape and Operal are the popular options for non-Microsoft (or Apple) operating systems. They're not eliminating competition, they're simply taking the fight a step further. There's still a market for the other browsers, though.
Third, none of you people use Windows or AOL anyway. This helps all the people that use AOL and Windows. And it doesn't hurt anyone that doesn't. This does not affect the Linux crowd at all.
Finally, this saves me a step in reformatting... now I don't have to go in the junk mail pile for an AOL cd anymore. And it saves trees and plastic.
Then again, I've already been assimilated, so it's too late for me.
Server-side includes and shell/sed/awk scripts are your friends. :-) You can structure a site so that it spits out standards-compliant code for real browsers, yet is able to hack a page on-the-fly to deal with Nutscrape's borkenness.
If it were entirely up to me, I'd tell the Nutscrape users to bugger off, but I had to put together a corporate website that had to be viewable with the widest range of browsers. I've since adapted the code to my homepage as well. View it with IE/Mozilla/Opera/Lynx/iCab/whatever and you get standard HTML 4.01 and CSS 2 (or is it 1?). View it with Nutscrape and you get a hack job that looks more or less like what real browsers produce with standard code.
(As an aside, iCab renders the page incorrectly. The funny thing is that it doesn't complain about invalid HTML or CSS. Given that it's a beta, it's more than likely a bug that'll get worked out. IE and Opera render the page correctly. Last time I checked it (which was some time ago), Mozilla worked OK as well.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
If you look at the way AOL positions/uses Netscape, this become obvious. AOL is not a software company (even though they write software), their only real product is their service (exempting the large Time-Warner chunk, of course).
LoL. The flamers come out to play. I must admit, I'm impressed by the number of IE advocates on this board. I was expecting more Konqueror users to rear their ugly (geeks are rarely pretty, males anyway) heads. I personally don't have much use for a site that I cant view in lynx, save for my daily does of comic sites. As near as I can tell, between Mozilla and Opera, cross platform users (those of us who use MORE than one OS, and admit it) have a pretty decent choice. I don't blame the IE advocates for being that way. A lot of sites are (sadly) written with IE in mind, and only IE in mind. I remember a day when people wrote thier sites with netscape in mind, because, if it worked in netscape, it worked in IE. The reverse was not (and is not) always been true. But it's not always fair to judge IE as a better browser, just because sites are written for it. It's kind of like saying that windows is a better OS because it runs .exe files better than WINE. Bad compairison. But, you cant argue with results either. It's really a toss up that falls down to preferences. I really like the amount of options that opera gives, I like the standards and power, and portability of mozilla, and I like the support of IE. I guess I won't truely be happy until we get those all rolled into one, but then again, I like to swap around and have a choice as well. Guess I'm fscked until I write my own ;)
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Can we officially declare it now? Netscape is dead, long live Mozilla.
How we know is more important than what we know.
MS and their annoying things. Now that MS has officially announced the death of the annoying clipit. They replace it with an even greater annoyance. AOL. Hmmm.. Can I have clippy back?
Yeah, too bad it's not DOS. NT has never ever ever never not ever had DOS in it.
What it does have is -- and if you'd read that label again you'd see this -- a command prompt which looks and acts like a DOS shell. This command prompt, however, isn't DOS any more than running Bash on a Win98 machine makes it Linux.
--
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
How is this good for me? I'd love an answer other than "Ayn Rand Said So."
Ayn Rand had a chip on her shoulder and chose to express it with radical economic theories. Her theories weren't right in the '30s and they're not right now.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Disclaimer: Is joke. Very Funny. You laugh now.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Windows bundled with AOL.
- You can write your own mozila GUI using XUL
- You can embed mozzilla in your C++ application
- there is an Mozilla ActiveX component
- Mozilla can be embedded in Java applications.
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The write-up is just plain wrong.
The article (and the original BetaNews article) do not say that AOL has agreed to exclusively support IE. It is just that IE is currently the browser in AOL 6.0. AOL 7.0 is still planned to support Gecko (but maybe not exclusively.)
There are a bunch of replies saying that AOL may be using Mozilla as a threat against Microsoft, but just as logically Microsoft is now offering AOL a place on the Windows XP CD so that AOL has something to lose down the line.
A) Netscape, as a whole, never had any interest for AOL. They were not going to include an entire Netscape install in their clients. (Why would they want 2 different email clients to confuse the user?) It was ALL about the layout engine for them to embed in their AOL client, and I agree that there's a lot of smack to be talked about Netscape 6 as a whole, but the layout engine is actually very smooth and very fast. For proof, try a windows mozilla build, and then click on the MFCembed.exe, or whatever it is called. It's just the layout engine embedded in a tiny MFC app. It's faster than hell!! Even without IE's preloaded DLL shinanigans, it loads and renders VERY fast. That's an amazing accomplishment.
B) Do you really think the quality of Netscape had anything to do with this decision? This is pure marketing, people. Microsoft has all the power in the world, and AOL NEEDS to be right there on the desktop when Joe User turns on his new Gateway, or they're history. If Microsoft had said "Sure we'll put it on the desktop, but you have to dance on your head." AOL would have to comply.
I'm Netscape's (well actually, Mozilla's) biggest supporter, and this really sucks, but it's just business. Everyone seems to have the solution for Mozilla, but how about this: Drop the cross-platform bull shit. "Winning the browser war" and "cross-platform browser" are mutually exclusive, because you can NEVER make a cross-platform app as fast as it would be if it was only developed for one platform.
Oh well... I think the AOL linux dumb terminal thing (that I've actually seen and played with) will still work out, and it uses mozilla's layout engine. This deal doesn't say anything about AOL not trying anything else like this, so maybe it will take off.
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Don't get me wrong, please. I'm for open-source software fully, but you sound like an irrational radical when you say "well, my program is the best because it's open-source." It adds a certain appeal and quality to a program (the fact that it's open-source) but it does not make it a better program. Open-source is great, but the focus with open-source is not necessarily to put out a bug-free, low-resource, easy-to-use program that writes the books on usability; rather, open-source is about innovation. This isn't bad, but open-source programs tend to lose a bit in the refinement area. A program designed by geeks and programmers will not seem easy to use for a technological neophyte.
That said, IE or other closed-source programs don't fit the bill to a T, either. In those situations, though, this is due to corporations fighting to release a new "feature-filled" program two weeks before the other guy, regardless of whether it's even remotely stable.
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Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
That said, Konqueror is not bad, but compared to IE5.5?? I'm using Opera 5 right now (I'd used Opera 4 but found it lacking) and am satisfied for the most part...it even uses the backspace as a "back" hotkey like IE5.5.
---
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
I typed the first message in this thread in mozilla 0.9 I think, and I used mozilla for a week or so and was not very satisfied with it. I found no real improvements over Netscape 4.7 at all. Both Netscape and Mozilla are slow on my computer for some reason, and both have small quirks that have irked me from the beginning. But those are more a matter of personal preference.
---
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Thanks for the tip! When I find a second computer to move Linux to, I'll put Win2K back on this one and try winamp3!
---
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Yes, this is true. Windows Media Player is slow, bloated, and hogs resources. Winamp is still a far superior player than WMP. MusicMatch Jukebox is the only thing that competes with Winamp on my desktop, but that can seem rather bloated at times as well; it does, however, manage my mp3 library much better, and utilizes ID3 tags much more than Winamp. But Winamp will always hold a special place in my heart. *insert dreamy sigh*
---
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
AOL 6.0 bundled into Windows XP... sigh. As if all the shit crammed into Windows 2000 wasn't enough. I hope they at least only put it into the consumer version and not the server releases as well.
"If AOL isn't going to switch to a new Netscape or Mozilla browser to base their client upon, what happens to Netscape?"
Netscape will continue to be annoying, bloated, unstable, crappy, etc. AOL will keep supporting it at the behest of Microsoft, which wants to look competitive. Eventually AOL will let Netscape proper fade away as Mozilla and its derivatives continue to get better and more popular.
Really, though, when you think about it...what group of people are most likely to say "I hate XP"? Now, isn't that the group most likely not to use AOL in the first place?
Conversly, arn't the people that are most likely to roll over and take what Microsoft gives them also more likely to just accept that AOL is part of their "computer experience".
I'm not necessarily calling the average computer user stupid, just...inexperienced. Nieve is more like it. They don't know any better, so they get taken advantage of by computer companies. Microsoft and AOL arn't the only ones, but they are the biggest.
So is it a bad move by AOL? Probably not. AOL has proved that it doesn't value customer retention half as much as it values new customers. If it did, we wouldn't use AOL CDs like Legos. By the time these users "graduate" to MSN, there will be a whole new set of nieve users to fill their coffers.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
The five-year contract between the two companies that guaranteed AOL prominent placing on Microsoft's Windows operating system in exchange for exclusive support for Internet Explorer on AOL's online service expired in January.
In other words, the story as posted to Slashdot skews the perception AWAY from the actual events. The deal is to put the AOL installer on the XP install disc... Nothing more. AOL can use Komodo/Gecko in their next revision, but it's not ready in time for XP's launch, so they're using their current installer. We should still expect to see Komodo in the future, and the article says absolutely nothing to indicate otherwise.
& yes at one time they were boughten up by AOL... But uh not that logn afterwards they bought themselves back. Yes, that does in fact mean they haven't been owned by AOL for some time now...
& I still iwsh the ICQ guys (mirabalis) had done the same as nullsoft...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Why is this news now?
Because the contract expired in January... and many people guessed they would switch to Moz which would drastically decrease the percentage of microsoft user agents out there in the wild. This affects web developers, linux enthusiasts, and other people interested in the news!!! read the article (that applies to the moderators who modded that up too).
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
What about that marvellous (Windows) media player Winamp? Nullsoft are owned by AOL!
And sorry, from a technical standpoint, IE is king of the browswer world right now. I recently go the latest Opera, and I *really* like it, but it does have some issues, but its well on its way. Netscape has sucked the past 3 years. Lynx is great for what it is (but I am hardly on a unix console anymore, so no reason to go text only in the land of Fat Pipes (tm)).
Anyway, less bitching, more coding. If you don't like it, go fix it. Seriously, all huge companies have to start somewhere, go create a software juggernaut that can fight these bad boys. Upstarts win in the end, but like science vs. the Church, it takes hundreds of years. So why fight the system as a hacking punk when you can do it much better as a businessman on their terms?
Except... for those of us who use Konqueror, or other open-source browsers.
IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).
WTF is Gecko then? Seems to work pretty well in Galeon.
You don't even have to buy it. You can just plain download the ISO-images...
...someone comes out with a patch for XP Lite, a la 98lite?
Got Rhinos?
what happens to Netscape?
Netscape 4.x? Hopefully it dies and is no longer packaged with stuff.
Netscape 6... hopefully it becomes much better, tightens up, etc, so that it's good enough that people would rather use it then IE.
This is, of course, all in my own little idealistic world free of monopolies and other bad things. Well, I can dream, can't I?
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
is it just me, or is 84 megs an awful lot for aol? it seems an effective way to cut down on bloatware is to include it on the windows cd. imagine if ms did this. or maybe offer certain companies a certain size, say 10 megs, to include what it wanted. it's not gonna happen, but if it did, it would surely produce some interesting ideas on how to combat this. one last though, is aol using the best compression? very simple idea, but i'd like to know.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
So the deal basicly is:
Microsoft will work with AOL to make it possible for AOL 6.0 to run on XP as they come out and even put AOL 6.0 on the install CD.
AOL will not launch an attack against XP, but will support it and the fact that AOL 6.0 is running on XP and even bundled to it will help Microsoft to launch WinXP effectively. Something that otherwise might not happen at all.
What is at stake here? Why is Microsoft dumping MSN's business in favor of AOL? Because they make a shortterm sacrifice for a long term gain!
In other words, Microsoft is trading its future and maybe even survival for just dumping MSN business a bit in favor of AOL.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
By the time XP is released, IE6 will be included in it.
I've ignored all the Netscape 6 naysayers (because most of them don't understand what NS6 is, and it's relation to Mozilla). I know that Mozilla is a superior product. Netscape only hurt themselves when they released 6.0 as a branch from m18, instead of waiting longer.
I've read reviews of the various IE6 betas written by technically inclined windows programmers (read: non-m$ employees) that say the IE6 betas are worse than NS6, which did have it's problems. This decision may be better in the long run anyway.
I think most people fail to remember what Mozilla is. It is much more than a browser, it's an application platform. Go to mozdev.org for proof of this.
Dracos
Microsoft has negotiated better end of the deal though, because of the exit price. When Microsoft it wants to back out, they simply delete an icon on their desktop. When AOL wants to back out, they have to retest/redo all their content and interoperability with the broswer or platform with which they replace IE. With time, the investment will become so large that AOL will be handcuffed to whatever terms Redmond demands.
But I wouldn't worry AOL, its not like Microsoft to take advantage of another company. "Hello, broker? Sell AOL!"
Good Lordy, whatever happened to the day when the whole AOL thing fit on one little floppy that was easily removed from the magazine shrink-wrap?
But Steppenwolf will apparently not include Komodo, AOL's new software currently in alpha testing
I trust they're not referring to Activestate's Komodo IDE, and that Komodo is merely a project name. It would be a shame to have one Microsoft partner sue another.
--
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Thanks for the link, but hold off on the rhetoric unless you have something a bit more substantial to back it up.
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Instead of writing crappy web pages for a specific non-standards-compliant browser, you could create GOOD webpages that work within standards and can be viewed/used by ANY browser
You haven't done any web development, have you. If you code according to standards those have to be 1995 standards because Navigator doesn't dig anything more recent .
I have been using mozilla since some of the VERY early builds and watched it mature pretty damn slow. The mozilla builds for the past 6 months at least have been pretty good. I don't buy for a second that your machine with that much ram runs mozilla slowly. I use a Pentium II 366 laptop with 128MB of ram and it runs just fine. Starts up in around 7 seconds or so sometimes 15 if my load averages are pretty high. BTW the xp req that I have heard are crazy, recommended ram is around 256 I believe. Min is 128, not positive but that is what I remember.
Actually with any X system I've seen that sentence could be continued with any software name. There're four reasons to use windows: good font rendering (IMO better than Macintosh for example), IE, Adobe's software and games. I can play windows games with wine and biggest titles have native ports, there's konqueror, mozilla and galeon and latest GIMP is almost usable when compared to photoshop. I'm still lacking proper font rendering and good vector drawing program for X. I'm afraid that I see freehand or illustrator equivalent on X before seeing decent font rendering. Unfortunately.
I look forward for berlin.
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Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Clearly anybody who recommends xfig as a replacement for illustrator or freehand hasn't used neither of those products.
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Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Style sheets where made so designers can give more fexability. Sure you can change all the link colors. But that has been done using HTML for ages.
The thing with style sheets, it that they keep things consistent when you want it, alow you to give more control to you users, and give you tools to be able to sperate style from content. That way. people who don't like flashy web sites, and visit there favorite sites, do not have to put up with little bits like tables, images, differnt BG colors for differnt parts, border, whatever. That where intended just to make the site look good. Thats why they are called style sheets, people who don't want and style, can(or should be able to) turn them off.
Or, a designer can set up a differnt style sheet for diffent browsers IE: WebTV, brial browsers, PDA, WAP, Lynx, printers etc... And not have to go though the bullshit process of creating a differnt version site for each one. No more special prinible versions needed. No more seperate sites for differnt browsers.
The W3C is is not responsible for bad web-designers. That's like sayaing Linux encorages bad programing. What a complete load of bull.
BTW. I find you statement a bit unrealistic anyway. Even slashdot have customised colors.
If /. used CSS, it would be a big improvment for people on both sides of the field (plain vs stylised). Unfortunatly, untill browsers that support standards are more wide spread (and browsers that don't support the latest standards, but support what they support well) it's just not worth the effort.
Appart from the fact that browsers don't support them very well. The only reason sites fall apart, or don't work with style sheets is becasue the people who made the site don't know how to use them.
"Not if you choose "Light" mode. You see, Slashdot does give users this option, and, unlike style sheets, it works. More sites should do that."
NO, once again, that the fault of the designer. There is nothing wrong with style sheets. Have you even used them before? Other than just to chnage the font?
Why should a good, usefully standard be dropped just becasue people don't know how to use it, out of there own ignorance?
I have already made a verson of /. which looks the same when viewed with style sheets, and looks like light mode when stylesheets are turned off.
It works fine. So don't give me any of this stylesheets are bad crap. you just need to get off you ass and learn how to use them.
AOL has been using IE exclusively pretty much for a few versions now, and Microsoft has been bundling their software as part of ICW and ONline services since Win95.
IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).
Yes, Netscape runs on more than 3 platforms, but Java supports inheritance last I heard.
Still -- this makes one wonder, why did AOL buy Netscape unless simply to scuttle it completely??
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
- They designed an entire fucking cross-platform toolkit instead of focusing on the real point--
Precisely! Generally, when I build houses I like to pour the foundation last.I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
AOL/Time Warner should merge with Microsoft. Then have Intel join the bunch, and while they are at it, throw in Standard Oil and all those older guys. This all reminds me of Dune (by Frank Herbert), where one company, CHOAM, runs all legit business, or how about William Gibson's sprawl series (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), where a few extremely large companies absolutely control people's lives. You are born into a company and stay with them until you die. All other business, no matter how small or big has been deemed illegal or black market in William Gibson's world. So, why not just fast foward to what all of the controlling super powers in the world want: a few really really big companies should be formed after behind-closed-doors mergers, and make scary demonizing commie stuff like Linux, the FSF, and GPL style open source - make it all illegal.
Don't mod me down, I am just the messenger of future times.
IIRC, AOL has been bundled with every M$ OS since Win98. Does anyone remember if it came with Win95? (I didn't have a computer yet) What's the big deal about 6.0 coming with XP?
If you don't like it, don't use it.
"2. XP, according to rumor, is time-limited, so the user has to pretty much re-purchase it every so often, or their box quits running XP."
Incorrect: The Beta version is time-limited (as are most MS betas), and the
release will be time-locked until registered. Nobody is going to buy into that
"re-purchase every so often" line.
"6. Starting with Win2k/ME, Microsoft has been working to isolate the functions of the operating system from the user, the most obvious of these attempts being the removal of the option to boot to a DOS prompt and the loss of a DOS window in the OS as shipped."
Partially Correct: In ME it was not done so much to isolate the OS from the user,
as to remove all the legacy DOS cruft that was a large source of driver problems
for Windows 9x systems. All versions so far have had a DOS Window in the OS as
shipped, even ME. I suspect XP will be the same, since many of the admin functions
were still accessible thru a command prompt.
"7. Another rumor has it that once XP is installed on a machine and registered to it, if the user upgrades either the HD or the CPU they have to buy another copy of XP, because theirs won't work and can't be reinstalled. (Yes, I did say this was a rumor. Put the torches away.)"
Thank you for stating it as a rumor (puts flame-thrower down), but the conclusion
inferred from the rumor is completely incorrect. You might have to contact MS to
reregister the existing license, (which some will consider bad enough), but you
will not have to purchase a new copy. This is illogical anyway, how would the
new copy (from CD) know any better than the old copy (from CD) whether or not
you are "allowed" to reinstall?
If you are going to blast at MS for FUDding, then it is a good idea that you take
care not to FUD yourself in the points you try to make, please.
Microsoft has pulled another genius maneuver out of its proverbial ass! They do this, and since AOL is competing with MSN's service and browser, it isn't seen as attempting to use a monopoly to their advantage. They're hurting from this, right? Wrong! They do this, and everybody who uses AOL (granted, that's a crapload of people who otherwise wouldn't want XP) gets a computer with Windows XP on it. Not only that, but Microsoft has the upper hand for the future with this deal too. Since AOL converts to IE, absolutely EVERY SINGLE STANDARD WILL BE DEVELOPED FOR IE! Because now the critical mass uses it. Don't be too quick to say that AOL is using Microsoft and keeping them honest by funding Mozilla. Microsoft knows Mozilla is inadequate, and as long as they know, they can let AOL threaten them all they want. In fact, good ol' Billy might hope to force AOL's guard down long enough to stop the funding of Mozilla, and once that happens, IE is the only browser there is.
Not to mention the fact that AOL just got trapped behind a big old fence of their own contraption. If they try to continue their current business tactics (which, by the way, are much worse than Microsoft's), Microsoft can let them go ahead and do it, and then when the deal breaks down (and it will), Microsoft has the perfect scapegoat: AOL doesn't want to play nice (and they don't).
Congratulations Billy and Steve, you guys win again.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
AOL got a place on that desktop in exchange for not using Netscape. And that was back
when Netscape, was independent.
Fast forward to present day. AOL's purchase of Netscape has been worth it just for the
leverage it gives them against Microsoft.
Is that the only reason for keeping Netscape around though? No. AOL has been slowly
acquiring all the tools for dominating the user experience. Lets go through the checklist.
- Web browsing: Netscape
- Media: Winamp, Spinner
- IM: ICQ (bought essentially so they could let it stagnate while they pumped up AIM)
- Content: Time-Warner
Eventually they will declare all out war on Microsoft. Until that comes together, they play for time
with tactics like this agreement.
Why do you think they made a version of AOL for Linux? What Linux user is going to use
AOL for crying out loud? Approach it from another angle though, and it makes sense.
A prepackage pre-installed AOL on Linux on a commodity PC would, in effect,
be a Internet appliance for the masses.
I'm not saying it is going to work. I'm saying they are going to try
Here comes the flamish rant...be ready.
I'll admit I'm not the best-informed luser in the online world, and I go a lot on third- and fourth-hand information sometimes (because that's all I get). But how does what you've been so kind to straighten me out on affect the conclusions? Not at all, IMO.
And has Microsoft come out and said how much that "reactivation" is going to cost the average luser? Example: I decide I want to take my home machine, which for some reason is running XP, and build a video editing system into it. Upgrade CPU, larger primary HD, add a SCSI-U2W controller and a RAID array. I'm pretty sure that'll trip the process. Especially since the CPU upgrade will probably mean a mobo replacement too, which means it can't reference the BIOS serial. Oh, my goodness...this guy's pirating XP! He needs to buy a full license! Yes, I can hear that one coming 'round the bend. It's a sickening sound.
Thanks, but no thanks...I'll stick with 98SE for my gaming and mandatory office things, and the Linux distro du jour for online things. If I can possibly avoid it (and trust me, I can), I'll never pay another cent to Microsoft.
'Nuff said.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Gee, that's funny, the NT box I use at work has a selection on the Start menu called "Command Prompt" and it has the MSDOS logo next to it. And I can add the same thing to ME by creating a shortcut to COMMAND.COM...fancy that.
And they accuse me of ignorance and not having facts straight...
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
I'm not sure, but I think I may be missing something, so I want to list off what I see going on...(these are in no particular order, except as they come to mind)
1. AOL is the most expensive national dialup ISP going.
2. XP, according to rumor, is time-limited, so the user has to pretty much re-purchase it every so often, or their box quits running XP.
3. (this is one of the things I'm not sure of) AOL at one time was in the process of switching to Netscape/Mozilla as their embedded browser; at least, until this "agreement" came along.
4. AOL and Time-Warner currently constitute one of the biggest home-entertainment conglomerates going.
5. Microsoft and AOL are buddying up on software and content provision.
6. Starting with Win2k/ME, Microsoft has been working to isolate the functions of the operating system from the user, the most obvious of these attempts being the removal of the option to boot to a DOS prompt and the loss of a DOS window in the OS as shipped.
7. Another rumor has it that once XP is installed on a machine and registered to it, if the user upgrades either the HD or the CPU they have to buy another copy of XP, because theirs won't work and can't be reinstalled. (Yes, I did say this was a rumor. Put the torches away.)
What does all this add up to? IMO it's a combined attempt to make sure of three things: the general user base doesn't ever get its unwashed fingers inside the workings of either their machine or the fancy, overpriced and oversized OS that Microsoft demands drive it; the user only can use the software and content that Microsoft (with AOL at its side) approves of; and no matter what happens, both Microsoft and AOL are guaranteed their revenue streams pretty much in perpetuity.
Would someone please tell Microsoft and AOL that they're about 17 years too late for this crap? And all the FUD they can spread won't change the fact that some of the "unwashed" they want to protect from such things as working code can, in fact, make their own good decisions? AND this is really the worst time for them to be trying this, with the (admittedly myopic) eyes of the USDOJ, among others, gazing down upon them?
Okay, that's my rant for the day. Thanks for paying attention...I'll be here until Saturday. Don't forget to tip your waiter.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Most non-technologically literate, people have no idea that they have a choice. "If it is installed on my computer, it must be okay. Afterall, Microsoft is the biggest company around."
Although I find it depressing, most people would have no clue that there are superior product to what MS offers in a lot of cases--or that MS has destroyed technology that had been superior.
Let's face it, Windows is easy to use; AOL is easy to use. They may not be great, but they are easy. Most consumers are looking for less complexity out of their computers, not more. And having to look for better tools would add complexity not reduce it.
Of a merger between AOLTW and MS.
*shudder*
---
Check in...(OK!) Check out...(OK!)
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
To me, this looks like MS has pretty much decided on merging MSN with another major content / access player at some point down the road. The idea being that if MS were to give up MSN as a content entitiy and merged it with, say, AOLTW, they could probably negotiate a very sweet deal and get to focus exclusively on what makes them powerful - proprietary achitectures and platforms. Pretty frightening - all your platforms are belong to MS, all your content are belong to AOLTW!
If you want a free world, then use mozilla not netscape. The only company worse than Microsoft is AOL. My only concern is why nobody is using mozilla to brand their own browsers? It seems that if mozilla were using the linux model we would see various distributions with their own features that are outside of AOL control. Is this what is happening
Konqueror's UI is awesome and even better than IE's but IE is more stable and does more.
After all my comments about the Illuminati, its about time I tell everyone who they really are...BTW - this will be my last post, for I'm sure they'll come after me for releasing the truth...
The illuminati is.... Disney, AOLTW, and M$. They've been working together for a long, long time, but are slowly becoming a force that the world will see, but by the time everyone realizes it, it will be too late. They will control everything (they already control everything, but when they are one company, you won't be able to live without their products and support).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Preach on brother. Years ago Netscape was cool and was a great product. Now at best it is a bunch of trying to build everything but the kitchen sink into it. Gekko lives on. Throw out the rest.
It makes a certain amount of sense. (to me at least) It even makes sense that AOL will keep funding development it to keep Microsoft honest.
Of course this does make it a little tough to figure out who the good guy is here...
anyone else ever notice that internet explorer 5.5+ doesn't properly handle pragma: no-cache? hmm, maybe shitty software? Nah
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
They get Aol 6 incorporated into XP.
Then the AOL 6.1 upgrade option has "Do you want to upgrade to browser to the superior performance of the Latest Browser?" with the options:
"yes I want to upgrade"
"No thanks, I'm happy with inferior performance"
In other words, borrow a page from the MS upgrade language handbook.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
is IE "the best browser"? If it crashes... the whole bloody system crashes. I run Opera || Mozilla. Everywhere. And yes, they can and will crash. Just like every other program. But, and however, the system keeps going. ;^)
I can understand AOL's position. It is job security in the isp market. They are the media monster. They don't have to worry about transmission of data, they just have to worry about some other company making inroads to their clients(endusers, not users of broadband). So, it is a logical choice to re-strike the deal with microsoft. May not be what we want, but then on the other hand, we(mostly) are budding idealists with blurred vision of reality.
I just want some proof that IE is better than anything else, other than possibly a high-colonic. I don't find sites that are made for Netscape. I do find sites made for IE. So why is it that people bitch about "Propietary Netscape Tags"?
ok, that was a rant, but I really do want proof.
I understand and appreciate that point of view. I've done my fair share of web development with netscape and have been just as fed up as others with all of it's crap.
However, I can't agree with that point of view simply because I don't use windows. I have used IE on friends and familly's windows machines and I agree that it rocks. But the more I see web pages come up with messages that say "Get with it! Netscape is dead! Switch to IE like the rest of the world!" the more angry I get.
You see, I can't switch to IE because I choose to not use a system on which IE is available. I agree that this is my choice and I have to live with the consequences. But please realize that not everyone can "get with it" because not everyone uses winblows. Maybe 95% do, but I am in that 5% that actually likes to get some work done. If you don't want to support me that's your choice, just realize that I can't "get with it" like you suggest I do.
And I realize that you personally have probably not done something like what I have mentioned. I just felt that this was an appropriate opportunity to express how I feel on that issue :O)
However, the desire for an IE for Linux has encouraged me to start the Cheetah Web Browser project.
--
Garett
AOL has been bundled with Windows since 1996 . Why is this news now? AOL 6.0 and XP are just upgrades.
sulli
RTFJ.
I think another thing that is killing Netscape is the fact that they released Netscape 6.0 based on Mozilla 0.6 code, which of course meant it sucked like a vacuum cleaner for many end users on anything besides a computer running at 233 MHz or faster. :(
And Netscape 6 can't render many web pages correctly; its interface is a mess compared to the cleanly-designed interface of the current Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1.
First off the reason netscape4 was the last good browser, was that ms crippled demand by overloading supply, using the classic supply and demand formula.
Ms began bundling IE for free, right when netscape 4 came out. To saturate the market, ms had bundled IE with everything from ITmagazine cd's, to computers, to even peripherals. My 3dfx voodoo1 card for example had IE on the disc that came with it.
The problem for netscape was it was free for hobbyists, but not bussinesses.
How can you spend millions developing something and then giving it away in the bussiness world?
Remember Netscape's revenue was %70 dependant on sales of its browser. Would it make bussiness sense to invest money into something that can't make a profit?
Bill Gates used a little trick with the most elementry forumula according to ex-ms employee's. Profits = Demand/Supply.
Bill, just over supplied the market and saturated the hell out of it to bring down demand. He learned this in Harvard. After ms saturated the market, the cost of development was more then the market's value of the product. Effectively it was killed right out of the water before IE even began to get better. IE was improved to convert the remaining users who kept using netscape after they cut their development efforts.
The browser market was effectively taken over by microsoft using illegal bussiness tactics. Ms just used money from another market (OS's) and used it to cripple another. Kind of like standard oil selling oil below costs in area's where there are competitors. All the new features of IE 4, 5, 5.5 came after aol gave up on it. So it was ms who stoped them. If netscape kept trying to improve netscape, they would of went under by now. Netscape just got into other markets where ms wasn't at to recieve profits.
Very sad really.
http://saveie6.com/
Actually that is a user problem, if one could teach people that RTF works well and they can easily save in that format under office (any version) there is no problem. Besides, I heard "yes but I have Office 2000 and my bussiness partner only Office 95 so he has to upgrade" I just show them the "save as 95 document" (or RTF for the matter) and they look at me in amazement. Okay, I agree, rendering is not always perfectly the same, but to do bussiness it is about content, not about layout! (And embedded excell sheets don't work, but I don't see those very often)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Compare Mozilla against IE, the current browser AOL supplies. Their customers would revolt if forced to switch.
The fact is, Mozilla is bloated, slow, and unstable, and even though I'm rooting for them, even an AOLer can see that IE is better. Maybe AOL just doesn't want to deal with a bunch of support calls...
At home I run windows on Pentium 200MHZ processor with 64MB of ram. Windows runs fine. I use for almost all of my computer tasks. I don't know what kind of (ab)use you put your machine through but it might not be configured properly.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
And thanks to Steve and AOL filing friends of the court briefs, noone would ever expect them AOL and MS to team up
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
If you notice, nobody mentions IE. IE is the browser for AOL 6.0. Does this mean that there's not going to be any more version of AOL released? think about it. If you think that Mozilla/netscape is dead, you're VERY wrong. Keep that in mind.
AOL v4.0 was distributed with Win98. Think about it. Don't jump to conclusions unless you know what the FUCK you're talking about.
anyone even casually invloved in web design (who's tried to code cross-platform sites) knows more then they'd ever want to about Netscape bugs and annoyances.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Ruin my mood, and just after good news like this:
EBN Online article
Next on the block:
Infineon in Mannheim, Germany
Oct 29, 2001, Wilmington, DE, Federal Court, Micron will ask that Rambus' patents be invalidated.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have an idea. Instead of writing crappy web pages for a specific non-standards-compliant browser, you could create GOOD webpages that work within standards and can be viewed/used by ANY browser (not just IE or NS...there ARE others...and the web is supposed to be based on STANDARDS, not M$ crap).
If you created pages that work with any browser, then you could lose the crutch of crappy graphical wizbangs and sounds, each a bandwidth hog, and stick to good, intelligent content.
Don't use asf, instead use mov or, better, mpeg for movie stuff...then ANYONE can see them. Don't use docs, use html (standard) or xml (standard) or just plain ascii text documents so that ANYONE can download/view them.
A good webpage is a page that doesn't require IE or doesn't require NS to view properly. All such pages indicate are poor coding and poor design, and a desire to prevent a lot of people from viewing your site.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Bullcrap. I am not even really talking about Netscape. I am talking about producing web pages that do not REQUIRE a particular browser in order to be useful and viewable.
That is EASILY doable - and I have written such pages. I was targetting getting information out to any and all, not just to people with Windoze or with the latest crappola video/graphics toys. That is fluff. It has a place but it is not the end-all be-all of websites.
There are enough graphics, sound, etc, libs and tools out there that do not require Netscape OR IE to be useable in any case. Stick with those instead of asf and such crap and you will allow ANYONE to view your page, including your animations or video, regardless of the browser they use (within reason...lynx and the like are not for graphics/sound. What the f*ck is SO damn hard about using tools that are platform/browser-independent?! NOTHING. Laziness and wanting to play with new useless tools for the hell of it is the only reason. That, or being employed by M$ and wanting to work with M$ to try to make the www belong to M$ (note: it doesn't and never will).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
It seems to me that AOL already used IE.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
Uhm, Outlook Express?
composer sucked
FrontPage Express?
where there's fish, there's cats
There was some noise a while back about AOL having Linux based (or other OS based) devices that were terminals for accessing AOL services.
Seems to me this announcement would pretty much shoot that all to SBN (some burning netherworld), what with IE for UNIX being a complete myth (other than an early bad version for Solaris and the Carbonized Mac OS X port which won't run anywhere else).
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Of course AOL will keep supporting Mozilla and WinAmp at some level. They make for lovely bargaining chips in negotiating with the Empire. This way AOL doesn't come as a begging pauper to the negotiations. Just making it onto the Win XP desktop must have cost enough as it is. We'll never know, of course.
This brings to mind an article in the recent edition of Boardwatch magazine by Dvorak in which he questions Microsoft's standpoint on MSN given the relatively quiet rollout of the new MSN browser, which basically made MSN free for anyone using that browser and having at least a MS Passport account.
Check out the Weekly rant..http://rabbit-trax.net/rant.php
Unless the font problems with konqueror on Mandrake and others is solved (probably mandrake's fault to some extent), there is no point of arguing.
On linux desktop you can enforce several fixed good X-font to be used in general. But when konqueror tries to display web pages, it encounters all kinds of fonts and half of the web sites become unreadable or annoying.
On the other hand, Having used tens of different windows desktops, I never had this much inconsistancy and annoyance before. There are things to be fixed before claiming a linux program to be better.
together with opera
Why would AOL spend so much money developing a product they have no intention of marketting to their own customers?
I see a AOL-TimeWarner-MS merger in the works.
Objectiv3 wrote:
.NET and retools Visual Basic and C++ (now C#) to look just like Java. Never mind that .NET is a couple of years from completion and J2EE is here now. About all MS is accomplishing here is to get both Sun and IBM angry at them. Well, those two and all of corporate America with half a brain.
;)
.NET represent two of them. In each market, MS is taking on some pretty powerful foes (Sun, IBM, Sony, and until recently AOL). Meanwhile, their attention is so wandering from their core business, Windows, that there has been talk of XP being pushed off to next year if it is delayed any further. That would give Apple's OS X a great window of opportunity to get established before it has competition. Apple's agreements with MS are up next year, and its marketing is starting to get more aggressive. Steve Jobs wants a nice fat slice of MS's desktop market share, and MS's angry customers may just give it to him. On the server side, MS only holds 41%, while Linux and the other unices hold 40% (Linux alone has 27%). Only two more percent to go, and UNIX can overtake MS! OS X may help out here too, as it has a great Java 2 implementation, and the Enterprise toolmakers are lining up to pay the new OS homage by porting their wares. Verizon just bought 600 G4s, and they sure aren't running NT!
> Your scenario is absurd. Microsoft, a
> publicly reviled company that was almost
> broken up due to anticompetitive practices,
> will now take over the Internet with a strategy
> that will turn everyone against them.
Isn't that exactly what they are trying to do? Check it out:
- MS bolts IE onto its operating system, winning the browser war, but loosing to the DOJ.
- MS tries to embrace and extend (and devour) Java. It looses to Sun, so it comes up with
- MS decides to move to subscription based model to milk its customers forever. Boy is that going over well.
- MS follows months of breakins and security problems with the startling announcement that we are all going to trust all our records to their servers (Hailstorm). This announcement is then followed by more months of breakins and security problems. Gee, I hope they are insured against hail damage.
- With XP, MS hopes to replace the MP3 music format with their own (for copy protection and world domination reasons). To that end, they cripple their own MP3 ripping software so that it produces music files of much lower quality than those of its own format. Now it has AOL to help it popularize its own format.
MS is pushing into a variety of new markets, the XBox and
Microsoft isn't all powerful. The fact that they can't even get a majority of the server market illustrates that point. Sooner or later their angry customers, powerful new competitors, their mistakes, and the various governing bodies of this planet will catch up to them.
"Mothra, she'll soon be here." "Mothra" July 30, 1961
Sorry, type... I have 768.. one 512 and 2 128s.. I only have 3 DIMMS.... and I have not seen the min requirements for XP as I am not too interested in them, but I would guess the ram required is around 40 megs and cpu is about 233.... not sure.... but my point is, it does not matter how fast your computer is... Mozilla, as much as I want it to be good, is just too damn slow.. I can live with a crash here or there.. but damnit I want something fast!
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
AOL knows their customers pretty well. The average AOL user is stuck with a sub 200 MHZ machine with about 32 megs of ram. Can you imagine running Mozilla on that? I have a 800 with 756 megs of ram and it clunks along when I try to use Mozilla. Also, AOL knows that their most avid and populous users are not computer literate. They would not want a drastic change in browser or functionality. KISS has made AOL billions and IE as much as I hate to say so is the best browser around.
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
You're confusing marketing behaviours. My latest corporate stuff from AOL/TW (which I have some shares I bought cheap after meltdown), indicates that AOL/TW intends to leverage Mozilla on the "free disk" path, not on the pre-installs.
By agreeing to be IE on pre-install, they get good icon placement. This doesn't prevent them from offering a "free upgrade" to Mozilla, nor does it prevent them from shipping tons of AOL disks with Mozilla to offer "superior performance and ease of use".
It's not an either/or kind of thing - it's marketing. Have at thee, marketeer!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
So you've gotten the rights to reverse-engineer the source code of a company more powerful than the US, faced off against them in the supreme court and won, and you're loaded with cash, but you can't afford a slashdot username?
I think if you want people to take you seriously you're going to have to reveal your identity, and maybe provide us with a hyperlink to your supreme court victory (I would think any /. poster would have submitted the story himself if he had won in the Supreme Court against MS). But at least you're not posting goatsex links.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Sounds like Microsoft is going to tie AOL into their system to suck them in. Then as people "graduate" to the real internet, it'll be an easy transition to MSN.
It's a good move for Microsoft, because AOL users would more likely get XP, since there would be no need for them to install the AOL client.
It's a verrry bad move for AOL, because in doing so they are exposing themselves to the "I hate XP and therefore I hate AOL" mentality. Childish if you ask me, but then we're talking about the general public.
As far as the other stuff AOL owns (Winamp and the like), I don't see AOL pulling the plug. AOL will feel it needs to remain more than a virtual subdivision of MS on the XP desktop.
For Netscape, couldn't care less, since Netscape no longer exists as an independant company.
As far as Mozilla is concerned, they need to ink a deal with SONY to be on the playstation.
That'll mean that every (nearly) 10-14 years old will get the Mozilla browser along with their game box (and isn't that what most home PCs are for these days?
"Piter, too, is dead."
Anyone else surprised by the size of the AOL install? I have never used AOL, so maybe it has a lot of nifty features, but that seems incredibly large. I still remember when AOL was distributed on floppy disks.
Yes, but that was in the Windows 3.1 days. And even then it would download additional artwork and other "features" when necessary. I recall back in the days there being several areas of AOL that would take 30 minutes or more to access for the first time because it had to download all the information for that area. In today's world of big hard disks and CD-ROM distributions, it makes sense to distribute as much of the data as possible on media instead of downloading it, especially when you remember that the overwhelming majority of AOL users are still using dial-up access instead of broadband.
Besides, IE5.5 by itself is a 20-30 MB download (depending on options installed). How big do you think that un-compresses to?
Conspiracy theory here... but I'm willing to bet that AOL agreed to this in return for MS backing off on the IM stuff.
Just a theory though. Time will tell.
And stop whinging about Netscape/Mozilla. We may all use it, but most of the world dosen't. Just as PDF has become the de facto standard for publishing whole documents on the web, (unfortunatley) IE has become the standard web browser. Accept it - Netscape's gone from the majority of computers.
I just had 6 units in 35 minutes - the opinions expressed may be those of beer.
Cue The Sun...
> AND this is really the worst time for them to be trying this, with the (admittedly myopic) eyes of the USDOJ, among others, gazing down upon them?
The DOJ now gets its marching orders from John "What Swastika?" Ashcroft and George "What Caribou?" Bush.
Bill Gates and Steve Case could deed themselves your indenturement, and these fixers would rubber-stamp it.
--Blair
I wouldn't be very surprised if it did.
The activation means that you XP is like a shareware.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Like... PSX2, AOLTERMINALS and whatever they make, so netscape has some value...
IMagine an AOLTIMEWARNER SETTOPBOX for CAble/Internet with built in browser (netscape)
No MS needed.
If Netscape had actually put some effort and planning into Mozilla, then you wouldn't have to ask 'What about Netscape'. They designed an entire fucking cross-platform toolkit instead of focusing on the real point--a good rendering engine and a good browser FIRST, then all the extras like mail, news and AOL/NSCP Instant Messenger.
--
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
This is incredibly stupid. It's like they're forcing people to become more and more ignorant. If we remember a while ago MSN's messanger was able to send messages to AIM/AOL users, and AOL stopped that from happening. Now it's like they're doing the opposite. There's less and less choice when you buy something from Microsoft, and more shit coming from other companies. You'd think after shelling out $200 for a worthless shit excuse of an operating system that they could can the enforcement of what software we use. We don't see this with the Linux distros, now do we.
Have you tried Konqueror?
I think all people that would like to see IE should try Konqueror. It can do things like flash out of the box and the GUI is better. (Especially bookmark-management)
And in the upcoming KDE2.2 release nice things like translation, W3-checking, DOM-tree-viewer and others are available. And it becomes MUCH faster too, because of a lot of optimizations. (And it will be even faster when gcc3 is out)
Roland
Konqueror is the only browser I know that lets you define a MINIMUM font-size.
That's the theory. The practice is that if a user tries to override or turn off style sheets many sites fall apart.
I find you statement a bit unrealistic anyway. Even slashdot have customised colors.
Not if you choose "Light" mode. You see, Slashdot does give users this option, and, unlike style sheets, it works. More sites should do that.
The W3C is is not responsible for bad web-designers.
No, but the W3C is responsible for the standards it releases and when it releases them.
Better yet, just turn away anybody who isn't using your favorite browser from your sites. It saves both you and the web browsing public a lot of trouble.
I don't think it's much better than Konqueror or the latest releases of Mozilla. IE is faster on low-end hardware, but that's easy to fix, and IE has its own set of really annoying behaviors.
You have it backwards from the situation as it stands.
..
.NET, HailStorm, MSN. Microsoft still has the same old mindset, just new playground partners and they've graduated to Junior High. Each of Microsoft's coming technologies is aimed /squarely/ at the AOL market. We all know what Microsoft is capable of when they are focused on a single target.
Microsoft is in a comfort zone. They're in a happy position, because they are about to release a product that will make the proverbial Anti-Trust Jury shit their pants.
This is not about Operating Systems.
Microsoft has already bulled the school-yard on that one, there is no one left to play with. They have gotten bored and moved on
.. and AOL sees them coming. AOL is sweating bullets knowing that Microsoft could strong-arm 1/4 - 1/2 of their customer base out from under them. How? Windows XP, IE,
You tell me they shouldn't be frightened. AOL has just woken up to the fact that they are on the defensive.
(Meanwhile, AOL is striving to keep/grow their ISP share by expanding into the OS field. Enter PlayStation 2 and Linux. This is also a defensive move.)
Jason
As many has said here today, and as I have said before. Netscape IS DEAD. Reaffirming what I've said, Netscape has no morale, for me it is, and until they prove me the opposite, will alway be a horrible browser.
I have a wmDockApp that kills netscape and does nothing more than this. I'd really like to use Internet Explorer, but I can't.
Whatever... I hope Mozilla doesn't get hurt with all this confusion. I really belive in Mozilla, and also believe that NETSCAPE IS DEAD!
Yes, you're all rigth. Netscape was extinct in the evolution selection.
Don't worry, I'm too busy [to|every]day
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
One of the issues currently facing AOL is the fact that the English language bundling of its client on XP requires about 84 MB, with another 42 MB if the Compuserve online service is added. Microsoft has apparently informed AOL that there is only 70 MB left on the XP CD.
Anyone else surprised by the size of the AOL install? I have never used AOL, so maybe it has a lot of nifty features, but that seems incredibly large. I still remember when AOL was distributed on floppy disks.
It's called "Opera" and it works very well. Go to www.opera.com for more information--and yes, they do have a Linux version. It's not arranged like MicroSchitt or NetScrape, but it does the job very nicely. (No, I am NOT getting paid to tell you about it.)
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
I too use a non-MS operating system at times. I remeber when it used to be that I would get turned away from sites because I used IE and would have to reboot and use Netscape. (I wouldn't use NS under Windows 'cause it was worse than the Linux versions.)
Anyway, MS has produced IE for other *nix versions, just not the ones that averave Joe would use: HP-UX and Solaris (other non-free OSs) Microsoft has reversed the playing field... Instead of providing an OS and set of applications that people can choose to use as an option, they are making it so that if you want to use or access data you HAVE to use thier operating sysem. Next, if you emulate or create an application to access the same data the can unleash the DCMA on you...
Contractual Obligation
IE is available for Solaris and HP-UX here - might be worth a try on linux.
Solaris is free. You do have to pay for the media, but you can install it on multiple machines and the source is also available.
I just have no comments. what a better combination. crash + crash --> super CRASH Here is the formula for them MONOPOLY + MONOPOLY = BULL **** WINDOWS XP + AOL = JUNK Last week I went to the beta test of XP, and how disappointed I am. I have to say that I WAS a Windows hardcare fan, but about a year or so, I like Unix better.
"Trying is the first step towards failure" - Homer J Simpson.
I am just curious to know how this is relevant to Slashdot posters. Personally, I have not used AOL as an ISP since I actually learned how to use my PC and the internet.
Maybe it was just me, I was plagued with disconnects, unbearably slow connections for gaming and the memory hogging client that I used to minimize in order to surf the net.
Of course, I do understand that this is interesting to note on Slashdot because Microsoft and AOL seem to be in a "Cold War" over market share. Then there was the constant battle over Instant Messaging.
It is just interesting to note that AOL needs to give up on Netscape to be preinstalled on Microsoft's latest OS.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
AOL has been bundling their product with nearly any company who will accept their money, except for Linux. It was just a matter of time before Microsoft did the same.
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
I just hope that the "Professional" version of Windows XP ships without the icon. One less thing I'll have to delete if I buy it (I don't intend to buy the "personal" version).
It's alpha only, but has nice library (that didn't work for me yet) and even displays shoutcast.com list of mp3stations (a MUST!)
Homesite supports mozilla for long time already, I am using it.
My version of windows 95 A (the diskette version) came with Internet Explorer 2.0 and Hyperterminal. IE 2.0 Didn't support gif89-A, Javascript, Java, or ActiveX (/me laughs).
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Does someone else see the conspiracy theory in this? AOL buys Netscape...runs it farther into the ground....and then announces they are supporting MS with Internet Explorer....a direct competitor of Netscape?
-
Steve and Billy sitting in a tree...K-I-S-S-I-N-G.....first comes Windows, then XP...the comes Netscape for bankruptcy
-------------------------------------------------
My sig of choice is Marlboro
You guys have it all wrong. In the last couple of years, MS has learned how to play nice with the other children. The REAL EVIL EMPIRE is the AOL Time Warner/Netscape/Sun cabal. Who's ambition is it to control both the media and the pipes? Who does not write code to standards? I run a network with WIN2K Advanced Server with 9x, NT, OS/2, MAC and a variety of Linux Distributions. The problem is never interoperability between OS's, except of course, older Mac's with all of their proprietary crap. The problems are always poorly written apps (including Netsacpe) and badly written drivers (including a plethora for 9x & Linux).
I think that including AOL 6.0 with Windows XP is a good thing; not because I am going to take advantage of that, but because there are millions of users who are members of America Online, and I feel it would be very convenient for them to buy the latest version of XP (most people don't see the pattern that Windows gets worse [more memory hungry, buggier, etc.] with each new release), and voila! -- they have AOL installed automatically. Personally, as long as the Windows installation gives one the option to disable installation of AOL, I don't see it as a bad thing. The ONLY bad thing I see in this is that the AOL program is steadily "bloating", and that's never a good thing unless size = # of features (and we know that that's not true with AOL). Anyway, I think it's a good thing that Windows and AOL are on the same CD-ROM, saving time and bandwidth for millions of people.