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Microsoft to Pay AOL $750M in Settlement
aoteoroa writes "Microsoft will pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AOL on behalf of its subsidiary Netscape last year, the companies said Thursday.
At first blush the deal looks good, but I can't help but wonder how a deal that ties AOL to IE again will negatively impact my favorite web browser." Here's a news.com story that also covers it. Is the browser war over? If so, it sure was anticlimactic.
The browser wars are over? They are just starting to get interesting again. Safari for the Mac is one of the fastest and innovative browsers on the market. The Mozilla browsers continue to spawn lots of innovations and now seem focused on ease of use and performance. Things are just starting to get interesting again.
The big news in this article is that MSFT might be successfully pushing windows media player into the AOL empire. *shudder*
Also frightening, this deal gives AOL seven years to use IE royalty free - hopefully AOL continues to look towards a gecko based browser for their legions of users.
AOL will also be licensing Windows Media 9, which could affect WinAmp.
This deal could mean more AOL content will require MSIE and WMP9. Since AOL for Mac OS X uses Gecko and WMP9 isn't available yet, that would mean Mac AOL users wouldn't be able to access that content - exactly the way Microsoft likes it.
It seems AOL either has no idea what they're doing, or has decided they're no longer interested in Netscape or NullSoft. Is it possible both might soon be for sale? Clearly they no longer fit into the rest of the company's plans.
Of course, it would be ridiculously amusing if AOL suddenly announced that they were switching to Gecko anyway, even though they have a license to use MSIE for free. We can dream, can't we?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I still run Windows on a day-to-day basis for most of my activities, but boot up Linux a few times a week... The SCO has brought about some negative energy towards Linux and themselves, but it's nice to see that Microsoft still has a lot of its own. $750 million is a large chunk of money, but its too bad it really won't affect Microsoft... Maybe if more people started filing suits with them... Hmmm...
I have to agree with the poster on this. I'm really
disappointed by this development. I would rather have seen an
agreement that required Microsoft to bundle AOL and Netscape
with their operating systems for the next 7 years. As much as I
get bugged by AOL's marketing, I really detest the thought of
these two combining forces.
I hope some of the states stick it out, and take the Anti-Trust
suit to the Supreme court. I think it would be incredibly
beneficial for the industry as a whole if Microsoft got busted
into chunks.
Sadly this ruling is nothing to Microsoft. $750 million is
something they can afford to pay using some interest from their
massive cash reserves
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
The browser wars aren't over until IE and Netscape are but smoldering craters, and Mozilla is the victor.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
"The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate, which Microsoft has sought for years."
:)
Isn't that a major concession from AOL? Weren't they the ones claiming that was "impossible"/"too expensive"/"too difficult"???
--Darren
p.s. "Microsoft will help distribute AOL CD-ROMs to PC builders around the world." Yay! More coasters!!
Money shifted from one giant corp to another, big deal. How will this help their customers?
That was never the point. This is all about the executives at both companies making boatloads of cash, which they will.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
With $40+ Billion sitting in the bank (not including assets) this appears to be another slap on the wrist for Microsoft. I was hoping AOL might stick this one out longer. I guess when your company is struggling, $750 mil doesn't sound so bad after all.
AOL receives a long-term, nonexclusive license to use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 software, which offers playback, delivery and rights management for digital media.
AOL will receive a seven-year, royalty-free license to continue using Internet Explorer on its flagship online service. Microsoft will provide beta tests of future Windows versions and allow AOL to participate in tests of its upcoming "Longhorn" operating system at the same time and on the same terms as other software vendors.
The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate, which Microsoft has sought for years.
Sounds like Microsoft is getting everything they want...
Corporations don't exist to help their customers, they exist to employ people and make stockholders money.
In the rare occasions that corporations DO go out of their way to help the customer, it usually costs them money. In my experience, few businesses will do anything 'benevolently' if it doesn't lead to revenue. Not a lot of reason to.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Well, it's official Netscape is dead, I guess.
And its sad, with so many other great alternatives out there based on their original source, Mozilla, Safari, etc.
But I think what bugs me most of all is that despite having some passable alternatives to IE, none of them will ever overtake IE.
Why? Because it takes the backing of a major corporation to build a browser that will appeal to non-slashdotters. Unfortunately, in terms of usability, the Mozilla and its derivatives fall WAY short. And if the history of open-source is any indication, they'll never catch up.
. Sad day for those of us wanting to use something other than IE.
No. IE hasn't done anything innovatve in years. Mozilla, Firebird, Camino and Safari on the other hand keep pushing the envelope.
.com) bubble burst, M$ moved on.
Microsoft's browser is in the dark ages. I'm not sure they care anymore. When the internet (aka
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Okay, now I know I should be flaming Microsoft and everything, but wasn't this purely a case of better product? I seem to remember IE being the big pretender, only to constantly revise it's software into something that was actually better than Netscape's. Anyone who actually tried to design for 4.7 and its ilk was faced with probably one of the more buggy products. IE(before Mozilla) was one of the products I gave Microsoft credit for.
Well, let's see... The world's largest media company teaming up (formally or informally) voltron-style with the world's largest software company? I think not. They should be in competition with each other, not buddying up their buddy lists so there will be some sort of interoperability between MSN Messenger and AIM. Any level of collusion across markets, specifically AOL and Microsoft, sounds like a rainy day to me.
It should make us nervous whenever companies of this size adopt a cooperative, rather than a competitive, stance towards each other. Why was this case really settled? Probably because they both were able to agree to cooperate in the future on new DRM. Caveat Emptor!
sig my booty, check my website
Its too bad that there arn't any winners here. Satan can pay Satan all he wants.
AOL and Microsoft are not the same company, and Microsoft is the winner here. AOL has something like 30 million customers, and for the forseeable future most of them will be using Internet Explorer and Windows Media. The more people use IE, the less reason developers have to produce standards-compliant content in favor of IE-specific content, and the less reason people have not to use FrontPage or other products which work well with IE.
The more people use WMP, the less reason content producers have to use QuickTime or Real in favor of whatever Microsoft is selling for content creation and delivery.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
When asked for comment on whether Safari was at risk, Apple CEO Steve Jobs replied, "Nah, we offered them a free, unlimited iTunes account in exchange for a perpetual license. They snapped it up."
All your code are belong to us.
--- SCO Group
More info about the settlement deal on the MS site. The biggest coup for MS in this deal might be the collaboration with AOL on DRM. Where does that leave Apple and Real? And the Instant Messenger portion of the deal might also turn out to be a big win for MS.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
For Microsoft, the $750 million payment is not exactly a significant dent in its cash hoard of more than $46 billion.
Do you realize how much money that is? So how did this work? Microsoft use's its monopoly to establish another one in web browsers through unfair business practices (which they were because Microsoft is a monopoly) and years later just pays $750 million to make it go away.
Essentially Microsoft just bought the browser wars . Thats a scary thought... and makes me wonder, has the US ever seen a company quite like Microsoft? Someone that expands and conquerors so easily. Someone who in a few years could hold a monopoly on 3 or more different industries. This is nuts. I doubt Standard Oil was ever this big. Maybe AT&T but even thats streching it. Hell, Microsoft even won its anti-trust case.
This is getting kind of scary *crawls into hole*.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Let me just point out that this links to money.cnn.com, and CNN is owned by AOL/Time-Warner, which also owns Netscape. Yet they make no mention of it in the article. I guess just about everything is owned by them, these days, so it's sort of taken as a given. Also intersting to note that they use a Netscape bar at the top (I have no idea why they still brand it as such, as most people associate Netscape with a browser--not the "Netscape Network," although I guess it sounds more professional than "AOL Network"). Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
Microsoft did not play quite fairly. When one installed the latest internet explorer, they were also changing windows DLLs that are preloaded on boot. This gives Internet Explorer a significant speed and stability boost. Netscape, on the other hand does not have that liberty.
I believe there was a quote from the antitrust trial in which a memo was brought forth by the VP saying that Windows should be altered "so that running any other browser should be a jolting experience for the user"
Microsoft may have made a better product in the end. But it came with cheating and sabotage.
I don't think AOL really had any intention of using Mozilla for their browser. It was more of a threat than anything. It actually makes a lot of sense because if AOL had let netscape totally die, then IE would probably be the only browser period (aside from fringe players). Then where would AOL be? They'd be completely at the mercy of Microsoft, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens to a business then...
My girlfriends friend, who is also a girl, was having problems with her Windows computer. I went over to her house, fixed all her windows problems, and when I was making sure her cable modem worked, I opened up IE. The default home page was the cable company's home page with **5** popup windows. I asked her very politely if she liked popup windows. She of course said "hell no." I told her I could install a browser that was small, fast, and didn't accept popups. She was very, very surprised that there was such a thing. I installed MozillaFirebird and put a shortcut on her desktop called "Better Internet Browser." Her whole family now uses it.
The browser wars will only be over when everyone agrees on what a "better browser" is.
I've heard that Time Warner/AOL might be looking to split from their merger. Maybe Microsoft paid out the 750 million because they have plans to buy AOL.
Try 4.2 billion. That's not a great return on investment...
What this settlement reflects is that the Time Warner part of AOL-TW is now firmly in control, and America Online people are not.
The Time Warner people are interested in selling media content for profit, not in technology battles like the AOL people. Hence the Windows Media 9 and DRM parts of the settlement.
Why continue to fight technology battles like IM or browser technology? There's no money in that. Nor is there money in continuing to make enabling technology like browsers etc. to sell your content for profit. Thus, the TW people are happy to use Microsoft browser technology and that's why the 7 year technology agreement is in there.
The AOL access business is slowly dying as people move to broadband, and the AOL-software-only subscription isn't going to replace that anytime soon. Sure, why not cooperate on IM formats? Not cooperating only opens AOL up to FTC complaints, and IM interoperability was at some point inevitable.
Microsoft was going to have to cooperate with AOL on Longhorn compatibility anyway; they give up nothing with that part of the settlement. Handing out AOL discs to system builders isn't much of a hit, either.
This is clearly the TW people saying "Take the $750 million, stop fighting battles that make no money, and go back to what made us huge long before AOL came along - selling content."
They say that $750 million is nothing for Microsoft as they have over $40 billion in the bank, but that's still almost 2% of their tresury, quite a significant amount for such a huge corporation. Am I the only one who thinks that 2% is a significant amount to be lost in a lawsuit?
No, it wasn't. I wouldn't exactly call an 80% loss a "good return" on an investment.
AOL took $750M from Microsoft in the Netscape suit. How many threatening letters to developers and users of Netscape patented technologies, perhaps even those in Mozilla, will that pay for? How quickly after AOL begins such a scheme will Microsoft donate another couple million to license that IP for use in IE?
Is there a planet I can move to that has a constitution banning all private possession of intellectual property?
I didn't get a chance to chime in on this in the Munich story, but my money's on Microsoft in that one too. MS doesn't like to lose. And just try to measure the egg-on-face value of that!
The culture of fuck-over-at-all-costs comes from the top down, from Gates down. It's pervasive.
Yeah... but this is cash.
That was mainly fake internet money - a stock swap during the boom probably wouldn't look that expensive now...
This is finally it: The beginning of the endgame between Closed and Open Source, the last battle between Good and Evil, Armageddon in the software universe. AOL is doing so bad that "AOL Time Warner" has been considering dropping them out of the mother company's name; and Microsoft for all its resources can't help but feel the penguins and daemons breathing down its neck if even places like Munich will not heel when they call. Their backs are not quite against the wall, but their bums are touching brick, and they will not go away without one hell of a fight. I think it is safe to say that this is the worst threat that Open/Free Software has ever faced, given the sheer political and financial clout these two companies have combined.
Oh, and think of the irony that it comes at a time when Neo is in a coma and has been revealed to be not the Saviour, but the Angel of Death; when Buffy has been discontinued; and when Nanny Ogg is feeling just a wee bit under the weather...were these not omens that we failed to heed? How could we be so childish to believe these signs were just random events in popular culture...
But now we'll never know...
- adam
Many people have already commented on it, but if a company can make money from selling a browser, the browser war can't be over just yet.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I hope the settlement is hard cash and not Windows XP licenses ;)
.... ... }
int main (void) {
as he takes a billion dollar bill from his wallet: "Got change?"
If I worked in the Mozilla group, I'd feel pretty worthless right about now. I wouldn't be surprised if AOL/Netscape abandons Mozilla entirely after this. What's the point? Mozilla will never ship with AOL, and AOL doesn't seem to think it's bad that they'll be using IE forever. The sun is setting.
# Erik
$oftware vouchers??
It's got a lot of those small features that make Apple stuff so damned cool.
Stop/Reload use the same button, depending on whether or not the page is loaded. Why didn't anyone else think of this?
The bookmark manager is so sweet it's been known to make grown men cry. So cool that the Camino guys are working on copying it.
Three meg or so download. Remember when Opera could claim this?
SnapBack makes getting back to search results very easy.
Spell-checking in textareas. No tpyos in this post!
So, no, it's not going to revolutionize browsing or anything. Since browsing technology has likely reached it's apex, all that's left are the small things.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
some points:
.75 bil USD from MSFT is a win for them. It's .75 bil USD more than they'll ever get from Moz users
1) AOL cares nothing about the browser wars - they wanst customers - period
2) AOL getting
3) Since when did 'we' care two hoots about what AOL did or didn't do? Now, if they bought a gnu/linux vendor and started to ship knoppix-like CDs with everything locked down so their tech-support was even easier.....
4) APPLE used KHTML cos they liked it. Next iteration, they might use a different renderer for safari. They're allowed to! It's not political for them.
5) Isn't the desktop more important than the browser? Isn't the browser less important than the 'suite' of Net-scraping-tools these days? Isn't there space for a start up to run a bare bones distro w/ moz, OO, and some neat GNU audio/ video apps that the end-luser doesn't realise is a distro? Isn't that where the sweet spot is?
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Safari is innovative? only because Apple had access to some very nice open source browsers.
Repackaging an open source browser and fixing a few bugs isn't innovatation my friend. It's probably the Microsoft dictionary definition of innovation.
Winners
MS - they get off the hook by giving up $750m which others have pointed out they can easily afford given their cash reserves. More guaranteed market share for IE. This isn't a penalty, its an investment for them.
AOLTW - Given how the AOL division is a primary cause of the massive amount of AOLTW's debt, getting the $750m looks great on their balance sheet. If I'm not mistaken, dealing w/ AOLTW's debt was one of Dick Parson's most important charges when he took the helm.
Losers
Mozilla et. al - Having a Gecko based AOL client would have given an instant boost to Mozilla's marketshare / mindshare which negatively effects...
Web Standards - Anything that boosts IE and lessens Mozilla increases the likelihood of MS induced standards
Consumers - Less competition (browsers, streaming media formats), more MS entrusted DRM
Jeesh - what exactly does antitrust even mean in today's business climate?
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
I think so, yes. If you look at whos working on Mozilla lately, it becomes clear that quite a lot of the former Mozilla employees have moved on to other jobs/lives but still hack on Moz. I don't know the numbers, but looking at blogs, email addresses and so on makes it look like the Mozilla hacking community is pretty spread out these days.
I'm not sure how much that applies to the innards of Gecko though.
I'm not sure now, but seems like just a week or so ago I was reading that. If that happens, AOL will need all the cash and free software it can get, which is exactly what this settlement does for them, coincidentaly. Being able to still use IE will cut them a lot of development R&D slack for a long time, so I bet they won't care what label is on the browser.
Here's a hoot of a thought, I wonder if any MAJOR ISP would consider being all free software based, and ENCOURAGE the alternatives out there, instead of defaulting to the borg? Maybe even an offshoot branded browser, moz based perhaps, for those folks who just love to be able to "insert a disk, klik hier, and get the intarweb"? maybe even an entire distro, that came with signup, had support with it? Geeks still wouldn't need it, but just maybe....
consider, the earthredrakemoztooiannetlinux ISP/OS/browser/office/etc combo
might help a scosh with funding of whatnot.. I know I'd sign with them.
just a few thoughts..
With around 95% of the market it makes sense that Microsoft hasn't really been adding new features to Internet Explorer.
But I'd guess that with the growing dissatisfaction with pop-up advertising and the growing popularity of Mozilla's (or Firebird pop-up blocking they might have to rethink this soon.
Quack, quack.
This isn't a settlement, this is MS paying US$750million so that they can have AOL users using MSIE. Probably a bargain.
No. Corporations exist to make their executives money. Tell what you just wrote to the stockholders of WorldCom, Enron, ....
Mind you, I consider this a Very Bad Thing. I don't like seeing any company, much less Microsoft, control such an important technology so thoroughly. And MS's sloppy attitude towards W3C standards (especially CSS) drives me up the wall. But simply creating superior browser technology is not going to win back all those desktops. It doesn't matter if kHTML or gecko are more innovative or standard-compliant. Nor does it matter who has the coolist features. And least of all does it matter that MS used dishonest and monopolistic tactics to gain 90% of the browser market.
What matters is that IE has that browser dominance, that people are not going to switch back just because some geek tells them their browser is technically inferior. Nor do they crave standards compliance: that just means that other browsers don't render all their IE-specific web apps "correctly".
Don't put your hope in AOL switching to Gecko, either. First of all they won't do it -- they can afford a few license fees in order to avoid making life even more difficult for their subscribers. Second of all, AOL doesn't have that much of a future -- web users are getting more sophisticated, and realizing they don't need that bloated and obsolete client to access the Internet.
Flame on! I know you guys don't want to hear it. But yeah, MS has won the browser wars.
... Unless just working reliably and quickly counts as innovative. ...
...this day and age, a piece of software working reliably and quickly is innovative.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
How much would it cost some rich OSS supporter to burn millions of Mozilla CDs and distribute them in the mail or the malls? Highlighting the pop-up blocking would be enough for many non-geeks to switch.
If Microsoft can pay $750M and get an advantage, maybe a player like IBM could help protect its investment in WebSphere, Java, Notes, and SameTime for 1/10 of that.
... and for the forseeable future most of them will be using Internet Explorer ...
AOL's version of IE has little or nothing to do with the regular MS offering. Most AOLers do not know or care what code base delivers their webpages.
Any browser functionality is encapsulated within the AOL interface, and you never know if it is Netscape, IE, or whatever.
This is slightly skewed from the topic at hand, but I just can't help it.
I just realized tonight that I actually feel now that AOL and MS users actively *deserve* what they get from these companies. How many years now have people been trodden over and acted like they enjoy it? I think maybe they actually *do*, but I just don't care anymore, and at this point, if I'm sitting near someone who is trying to open a corrupted word document or wrangling with AOL tech support I just sort of laugh inwardly. I used to feel sorry and identify with those problems. Now it feels like justice.
I know it's elitist and all, but I seriously wonder sometimes if many of the people out there using MS and AOL are the kinds of people the Free Software Movement should be wooing. I work in a menial tech support job (where I'm forced to actually help, and not just smirk) at the moment, and the amount of stupidity out there in the user population is staggering. These are people studying and teaching at a major university, some of whom are involved in incredibly complex subjects... and they don't "get" what a file is versus a folder, or what an email "address" is. And part of this stems from the watering down of the tech world by companies like this to the point now where everyone bases their idea of what a Killer App (tm) is on the abilities of either the mythical "Joe User" or someone's grandma. And I've got to say, if I ever run into either of those two people, the stupidity confronting me will probably be my end.
How does this relate to the MS/AOL/IE/Netscape/$$$/Free Speech/Beer topic? Well, I'm not sure, except that I think maybe it's not such a bad thing that 90 % of people use Windows. After all the years of dumbing-down, it suits most of them.
Flame away... it's just my mood tonight.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Regardless of whether this:
'"Netscape is less and less of a priority for AOL Time Warner, and this is just another step in the slow sun-setting process of Netscape Navigator," said Hilal.'
reflects some prediction of what AOL will do about Mozilla, I don't think these commercial folks understand what being open source means. Mozilla can and will outlive AOL. It will not die. If IE expands a little more, so what? It already dominates, but that doesn't mean the open source community has given up and fallen in line. The grunt work of Mozilla has been accomplished. The browser is out there now, and has taken on a life of its own where it counts most - in the computer savvy world. Sure, there may come a time when open source is the last fortress in a Microsoft world, but it will hold out as long as there are people to back it. Maybe there will be parts of the web that will be closed to non-Microsoft users, but so be it. Free software will live on. Ironically, a Star Wars line seems appropriate here - "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Microsoft can't kill open source completely, unless they get legislation passed that makes it illegal in various countries. I doubt even they can do that much damage to the legal system. But they can and will crack down on Microsoft "pirates" as hard as they can, to make as much as possible off of license fees, as soon as they think they control things so tightly in the computer world that no one will be able to get buy without paying them. That process has already begun. They moved too soon on that, and it's starting to make some businesses wary while they can still do something about it. I hope Microsoft makes piracy impossible and forces companies to pay as much as possible for each version of Windows. It's the best way to drive people from it. Greed is destructive in the end.
Maybe Safari has some of these features, but it sure as hell didn't introduce them to the browser world.
Clever signature text goes here.
Did you catch the recent posting (that I'm too lazy to dig up) referenced an article showing how net adoption is actually tapering off around 44%, because the other half of people without net connections....*gasp*...DON'T WANT THEM.
Yes, there's still the unwashed that have been here for months/years, but they feel no motivation to hop in the shower.
The only real way to get people off IE is to get them off Windows, which does make sense to many people, as they'll save money. Wheareas all web browsers (except for Opera) are free-beer.
Otherwise these people have no motivation to switch if stuff Just Works. Those who will already have.
There is no new market. The Wild West is over. Sorry.
The browser wars are over the way that the Cold War is over. It is no longer the case of two contenders battling it out for dominance, with the consequence being that the consumer wins (since a split market means that developers would adhere to standards). Instead, one brower dominates the market, and the little browsers that "compete" with it do so by trying to keep up with its "functionality."
...but I'm using Opera and I think there's been one site in my last month of surfing that choked on it. I'd say the _standards_ won. I remember trying to do a website for our University with Netscape 4 as the Uni client, and it was a fucking huge PITA. No wonder so many sites (and thus people) stopped caring about anything but IE. Now, I use both Opera, Mozilla and IE and all three work very well, and I don't find it a *problem* to design something that looks good on all platforms anymore. Granted, you *can* make stuff that is IE-only, but before it happened almost automagically...
And yes, if I'm on the local variant of pricewatch, and the webshop was $2 cheaper but it doesn't work with my browser, I say screw it. Chalk up a lost sale. Same if I'm doing a google search and has opened ten windows. One refuses to load? Too bad, let's see if the other 9 have what I want. The only reason I'd fire up IE is because your site has something special(tm). And truth be told, most aren't that special.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The real horror will be when they bully hardware makers into DRM so that there are no free hardware platforms left. Free software can replace M$ garbage, but a gimped bios and bad laws can defeat that. My nightmare is pinging, DRM bios and the DMCA.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
" Oh, and think of the irony that it comes at a time when Neo is in a coma and has been revealed to be not the Saviour, but the Angel of Death; when Buffy has been discontinued; and when Nanny Ogg is feeling just a wee bit under the weather...were these not omens that we failed to heed? How could we be so childish to believe these signs were just random events in popular culture..."
Ummm, because they were? Because you don't have a firm grip on reality if these tidbits of pop culture seem like omens of fate to you?
Look, I love the Matrix too, but these people that mistake movies like it and other pop culture for philosopy (or even a religion...Hello, Canadian Jedis!) need to pull their heads out of their asses and start taking their lithium. It's a FUCKING MOVIE, folks. You'd have thought Jesus Christ was playing Neo in it as seriously as some people are taking it.
As cliched' as it sounds, I'm going to say it anyway. Move out of your parents basement and get a life. There's a real world out there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Microsoft just payed AOL $750 million in return for AOL continuing to use IE. If AOL didn't have Netscape to use as a bargaining tool/threat, there's no way they would have been able to get so much cash from Microsoft.
Netscape development just turned a big profit for AOL.
And for those who don't remember, Microsoft has quit W3c recently and some time ago it was revealed that they had filed for a patent describing the the use of "style sheets in a publishing system - 5860073" (which is CSS). A patent which they acquired back in 1999, and I believe right under everybody's noses.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
That's actually the very reason why I don't order from B&N any more. It chokes on Mozilla when you get to the checkout and all I ever got was a canned "your business is very important to us" response.
Yeah, I might be a stubborn son of a bitch, but if your business doesn't support standards I'm more then happy yo take it somewhere else.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk