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Your Qwest Leads To MSN
bee writes: "Qwest.net has announced an alliance with MSN that will 'transition' Qwest's dialup and DSL customers to MSN Internet Access. If you're a Macintosh user, you'll be able to continue on Qwest until they figure out what to do with you. Zero mention, of course, is made of Linux or BSD. Here's the FAQ they're pointing their customers to."
of windows-using Qwest users switching to another provider out of protest?
.. wierder. Still..
I mean, ok, obviously Qwest is happy (or at least satisfied) with throwing out the mac users and the linux users. And clearly the mac and *n?x users are going to have to find something else.
So, my question to the windows-using qwest people: if things turn out the way it looks like they will, and the mac-using and linux-using populace lose their qwest access, will you consider leaving qwest in protest? Or will it just be, hey, they'll accept MY hardware configuration, i'm ok, it isn't my problem?
Microsoft's newest tactic is amazing. In addition to their old tactics, they now have the new and amazing trick of buying customers. That's right, can't get a sufficiently high-quality product (or one that seems solid enough) that you can establish a user base through sheer quality of product? That's alright, you can always buy thousands of users from another ISP, or bribe anyone who is willing to develop for the directx apis or the xbox with gobs of money, so that you BUY an existing user base and create some sort of "momentum" for the platform. (Munch's Odysee will be a strong argument for claiming the xbox isn't vapour. It should be; microsoft paid good money to be able to produce the Oddworld Inhabitants as proof that there is, indeed, third-party support for the xbox. Except if you paid them off, can they *really* be called a third-party?)
Customers are now a commodity, to be bought and sold. Amazing. Customers are now what Labor was 100 years ago. Except this seems somehow
Think of it this way. You're a new computer user. You want to check out this thing called 'the Internet'. So you boot up your brand new out of the box computer and see an icon for MSN that gets you "connected to the Internet".
What do you think you'd use? It'd be easiest to just click on that link and follow the instructions. Other ISPs? What's an ISP?
Same reason AOL's going for the link on the desktop sales slant. Newbies will eat it up. They don't care if the connection is crap. It's what they're comfortable with doing. And that's probably all that's really going to matter to them.