At some point you have to boil things down to something concrete, AKA a product in particular that is in violation. So yes, it is products. If there were no products there would be no market? comprende?
The courts were not fooled, they were just castrated before they could do anything about it when Bush was elected using MS's campaign contributions.
hahahhahahahahahahaha, the second you said Bush you shot yourself in the foot, what on god's green Earth does Bush have to do with the success of Microsoft Windows. Jesus Christ people have officially gone off the deep end.
Not so. The developers of both are paid. You pay for IE every time you buy a computer that has Windows bundled with it. It is not itemized so that you know how much of your money goes to that, but you've paid nonetheless. Worse, even if you plan to only use Firefox, you already paid for IE and there is no way out of it if you're trapped on the Windows monopoly
You could say that about any.exe that is installed with Windows. I paid for notepad.exe and calc.exe but I really wanted to use emacs! Of course you pay for things that come on the system. You aren't "trapped on the monopoly", what you do is visit getfirefox.com and click a single link and you can log onto slashdot in firefox and complain about how much it irks you that you had to use IE once while you installed firefox. Other users on this thread have already mentioned this same scenario, but you have failed to acknowledge it, most likely because it isn't convenient for hating on Microsoft. If I buy an Apple I'm forced to use Safari just as much as I'm forced to use IE on Windows, is that not true?
Have you done Web development? Billions are spent every year working around MS's failure to properly implement standards. People are coding to 8 year old standards, because MS stopped adding functional support for new standards.
After reading your comment it makes me wonder if YOU have done any web development. I concede to the fact that Microsoft doesn't irresponsibly throw in unproven code into their architecture. Microsoft has customers, Firefox has users. Microsoft introduced the technology behind AJAX, so I guess they are stagnating the industry huh? Good things come from proprietary features.
Even IE7 completely fails to implement any real XHTML and misses half of CSS2
Completely fails at real xhtml? By that I'm assuming you mean it uses the tag soup parser, which might be true, but I would hardly constitute that as a "complete failure" because the browser does accomplish its job, which is to deliver web content to 700 million windows users. "Half of css2" is completely false information. It implements almost all of css2, obviously you have been reading the completely bias and botched analysis over at webdevout. Not to mention the fact that some of the "bugs" in their implementation are not bugs, but simply difference of opinions about what the expected behavior should be. The technical problems with IE go beyond what you seem to think is Microsoft intentionally stagnating the industry, there are very serious issues that come into play with a 700 million user base that are just not there with less mature applications and platforms such as firefox or safari. Give their user base and APIs time to mature and they will be in exactly the same boat.
And for the record, yes I have done tons of coding with all of the object models so please don't even attempt to insult my intelligence with regard to the technology.
The coders at Opera created a better browser than IE6 and maintained it that way for years
Marginally better? Ever heard of cost/benefit? If something is better, that doesn't necessarily warrant a switch. There is a cost associated with switching, a cost that obviously didn't yield any reasonable and practical gain from the users. It's really as simple as that.
When MS sells a Windows license and gives part of the money to the IE developers, do they also give a similar amount of money to the Firefox team?
Giving the money to the IE developers is the same thing as paying their employees, giving money to the firefox team would be the same thing as charity. It takes only a shred of common sense to see how illogical that is.
To be in compliance with the law MS must treat IE and Firefox exactly the same, as though they were both produced by other companies. If they bundle IE, they are legally obligated to bundle Firefox and any other browser someone asks them to. And, they're legally obligated to collect money to pay the developers of that product, just as they do IE
This makes no sense to me, if I make a product I have to act as if another company created that product? Not only that, I have to pay my competitors salaries? Why is it illegal for Microsoft to package a web browser with the OS? Do they also have a monopoly on explorer.exe? Where do you draw the line at what is considered an operating system component? The MSHTML engine is used throughout windows and could very well be considered part of the OS.
"Allow them to leverage their monopoly and consumers suffer with higher prices, inferior quality, and a stagnating industry"
Higher prices ? Both are free. Inferior quality? probably, but that is arguable depending on the customer needs (IE can do tight integration using ActiveX/COM with desktop apps that is simply impossible in other browsers) I don't really want to get into a technical discussion about IE vs FF, but they are both very close in technology, despite what w3c evangelists say. Stagnating industry? The web is moving blazing fast and things change daily. The truth is, if someone (namely mozilla) had a truly innovative piece of code, the market would follow and drop IE, but the brutal reality is that FF isn't a panacea (at least not yet). I fail to see the point of your argument other than to provoke invincible ignorance towards Redmond.
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At some point you have to boil things down to something concrete, AKA a product in particular that is in violation. So yes, it is products. If there were no products there would be no market? comprende?
hahahhahahahahahahaha, the second you said Bush you shot yourself in the foot, what on god's green Earth does Bush have to do with the success of Microsoft Windows. Jesus Christ people have officially gone off the deep end.
You could say that about any .exe that is installed with Windows. I paid for notepad.exe and calc.exe but I really wanted to use emacs! Of course you pay for things that come on the system. You aren't "trapped on the monopoly", what you do is visit getfirefox.com and click a single link and you can log onto slashdot in firefox and complain about how much it irks you that you had to use IE once while you installed firefox. Other users on this thread have already mentioned this same scenario, but you have failed to acknowledge it, most likely because it isn't convenient for hating on Microsoft. If I buy an Apple I'm forced to use Safari just as much as I'm forced to use IE on Windows, is that not true?
After reading your comment it makes me wonder if YOU have done any web development. I concede to the fact that Microsoft doesn't irresponsibly throw in unproven code into their architecture. Microsoft has customers, Firefox has users. Microsoft introduced the technology behind AJAX, so I guess they are stagnating the industry huh? Good things come from proprietary features.
Completely fails at real xhtml? By that I'm assuming you mean it uses the tag soup parser, which might be true, but I would hardly constitute that as a "complete failure" because the browser does accomplish its job, which is to deliver web content to 700 million windows users. "Half of css2" is completely false information. It implements almost all of css2, obviously you have been reading the completely bias and botched analysis over at webdevout. Not to mention the fact that some of the "bugs" in their implementation are not bugs, but simply difference of opinions about what the expected behavior should be. The technical problems with IE go beyond what you seem to think is Microsoft intentionally stagnating the industry, there are very serious issues that come into play with a 700 million user base that are just not there with less mature applications and platforms such as firefox or safari. Give their user base and APIs time to mature and they will be in exactly the same boat.
And for the record, yes I have done tons of coding with all of the object models so please don't even attempt to insult my intelligence with regard to the technology.
Marginally better? Ever heard of cost/benefit? If something is better, that doesn't necessarily warrant a switch. There is a cost associated with switching, a cost that obviously didn't yield any reasonable and practical gain from the users. It's really as simple as that.
Giving the money to the IE developers is the same thing as paying their employees, giving money to the firefox team would be the same thing as charity. It takes only a shred of common sense to see how illogical that is.
This makes no sense to me, if I make a product I have to act as if another company created that product? Not only that, I have to pay my competitors salaries? Why is it illegal for Microsoft to package a web browser with the OS? Do they also have a monopoly on explorer.exe? Where do you draw the line at what is considered an operating system component? The MSHTML engine is used throughout windows and could very well be considered part of the OS.
Higher prices ? Both are free. Inferior quality? probably, but that is arguable depending on the customer needs (IE can do tight integration using ActiveX/COM with desktop apps that is simply impossible in other browsers) I don't really want to get into a technical discussion about IE vs FF, but they are both very close in technology, despite what w3c evangelists say. Stagnating industry? The web is moving blazing fast and things change daily. The truth is, if someone (namely mozilla) had a truly innovative piece of code, the market would follow and drop IE, but the brutal reality is that FF isn't a panacea (at least not yet). I fail to see the point of your argument other than to provoke invincible ignorance towards Redmond.