The author of a page chooses what standards to adhere to, not MS.
Very true, but MS does their damndest to make sure everyone uses their propriatary extensions and not standards.
I take it then that you would not trust any browser that came from a company.
No, I was simply saying that any one company controling the browser market would be a Very Bad Thing. The popular analogy is, what if a single company owned the patents on the printing press?
if AOL dropped the mozilla project right now, it would die.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. One of the nice things about Open Source is that a company dropping a product does not necessarily mean the product will drop out of existance.
Why does evrybody seem to assume the whole world will be jumping on mozilla as soon as its released. They won't, you'll just be coding another version of your page for yet another browser.
The idea is that, with a fully standards compliant browser supporting HTML, CSS, and DOM, you won't be coding another version of your page for yet another browser. You will be coding another version of your page for the last time. Because if NS5 and IE6 are both standards compliant, you can write one set of code that works for both.
I agree that backwards compatability will continue to be a pain. It always is.
Mozilla will be yet another not fully backwards compatible browser.
That is (unintentional, I think) FUD. Mozilla will not be backwards compataible with non-standard extensions. However, if you code your pages to use standards only, like I do, it won't be a problem at all. HTML and CSS are very forwards-compatible, by design.
So. The worst consumer electronics chain in the world (Radio Shack) is teaming with the company that makes the most bloated software in the world (Microsoft) running on the most bloated hardware in the world (Compaq).
This is actually convenient. I can avoid everything at once.
Re:now we should have new NT vs. Linux Benchmarks
on
Samba 2.06 Released
·
· Score: 2
they have fixed quite a few bugs, niggles and security issues, but I don't see much if anything that would make it faster.
As it should be. One of the reasons I like Open Source Software is that the programmers generally concentrate on real improvements, not arbitrary benchmarks.
Like the subject says, we need to break out the pen and paper (or keyboard and printer) to write our duly appointed Congressmen -- and women! -- and tell them that the US Patent and Trademark Office is royally screwing things up lately.
Don't send email -- Congress-people just do not take email seriously yet. (When they do read it, they send a snailmail reply back -- that gives you an idea of how they operate). Even phone calls are not as good as letters, because letters stick around when a phone call is over when you hang-up.
Congress created the USPTO, and they can modify it as needed. It is obviously not doing what it was intended to do, nor is it benefiting the people of this country.
We need to get moving, write our Senators and Representatives, and let them know what is going on. If enough people make their displeasure known, action will follow. Put the Slashdot effect to some use, and write Capitol hill.
For example, say someone created a program that to all casual glances looked and acted like a zip file, but when executed actually does not run the normal zip program, but it's own?
A.ZIP file is a data file, like any other. As far as the computer is concerned, a.ZIP is the same as a.GIF. If your computer "knows" to run (say) WINZIP.EXE when you open a.ZIP, it doesn't matter what has been done to the.ZIP, WinZip is still going to run.
Now, if you get a file called IAmAZipFile.EXE, complete with WinZipSFX icon, and you run it without virus scanning it, well... I hope you have backups.:) But that is not a.ZIP file, but rather, an executable.
It is possible someone could craft an unzip program (like WinZip) that takes some special action under special circumstances, but I have not heard of anyone doing that (yet). (Betcha a dollar that if someone does it, it will be Microsoft.;)
One thing the author keeps jumping up and down about is how we "won't need an IT department" anymore after the move to ASPs.
Ummmm, who exactly is going to connect up all thse network workstations to the net in the first place? Who's going to run the LAN? Remember, now, folks, your average biz user has about as much interest in IP subnetting as the contents of Rob Malda's stomach. And rightfully so -- the whole point of IT folks like me is so they don't have to worry about 40 acronyms that end in "P".
It would be nice not to have to fight with Windows/Office/etc. all the time, but I really don't see IT departments going by the way side just because you're dependent on the outside network now.
First, a disclaimer: I like NVidia and own one of their cards. However, it has been said that Sharky dislikes NVidia, so maybe our biases will cancel each other out. Now, some observations and opinions...
The thing this review shows most is that drivers are everything. The ATI "won" on Direct3D benchmarks, but "lost" on OpenGL benchmarks.
ATI's MAXX card is the moral equivlent of SMP. If one processor is not fast enough, use two. This is a time honored technique, and perfectly valid.
I find it annoying that ATI has patented their "Alternate Frame Rendering" technique, when it is neither new nor innovative. Grrrr.
The reviews were done on very high-end (in fact, unavailable) hardware (i820 motherboard, 800 MHz PIII). NVidia's GeForce is largely designed to take load off of the CPU. It would be nice to know how well ATI's solution works on slower CPUs. For example, I have a 300MHz AMD K6-2. The GeForce's extra co-processing capabilities may make it faster on my machine then ATI's offering if the MAXX is CPU bound.
The GeForce is also something new: Those graphics co-processing features are its big selling point. None of the benchmarks used take advantage of those features. Tomorrow's titles which make use of the GeForce are likely to do better. Of course, today's titles do not, and my motto is "It is all vaporware to me until I can buy a product."
As a Linux Advocate(TM), I have to ask: Does ATI provide specs and/or Linux drivers? NVidia does.
In conclusion: It looks like the MAXX is a good product, and will give NVidia a run for its money. Good. I like choices. However, I don't think it is going to "kill" anything anytime soon.
I refuse to visit any site whose content was produced by MS' proprietary software which uses special characters which don't adhere to standard character sets.
Actually, if you look at the source, the mdash crap is HTML compliant. For whatever reason, they coded the ampersand (&) character to appear in the displayed text, rather then using it to code HTML. Real brain-dead on their part.
The funny part is, if you look at the HTML source, it is trying to be the HTML character entity reference —, but the ampersand is itself entered as an entity reference (&). That is the technique to use when you want to display HTML character references without interpretation, exactly as I have done here.
Meanwhile, if they has gotten it right and coded the sequence correctly, Netscape 4.x will ignore the sequence and display the HTML code, which is how Netscape handles character references it does not recognize. The result is the same either way!
LOL. I really can't wait for Mozilla to finish up. It is looking good. Still quite a way to go before a production release, but I can see an early beta within the next three to six months. Oh, for a stable browser under Linux...:-)
I'm frankly bothered by the fact that the Government seemingly chose to focus on the inclusion of IE with Windows.
Two answers:
(1) The Internet -- that is, the web -- is becoming the information medium of the modern age. Microsoft was using their market dominance to control the web, to ensure that only their software could be used to serve up web pages, edit web pages, and view web pages. Would you want one company controlling the printing press? I sure don't. I believe the US DoJ is right to go after Microsoft's illegal product bundling.
(2) The Windows+IE thing was really just the excuse the DoJ needed to get the ball rolling for broad anti-trust action against Microsoft. You cannot sue someone just for being an abusive monopoly; you have to pick something to fight over. #1 makes this as good a thing as any.
One of Microsoft's greatest innovations is the "Office Suite"
This is hardly Microsoft's idea. I was using AppleWorks before Office was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye. It booted and ran off of multiple floppies, on the Apple ][ with monocrome monitor. Whoo who!:-)
they make almost as much money on Office as Windows.
While this "feature" really is a horrible travesty and doesn't actually make sense
I've actually thought about this, and I think Microsoft made an acceptable decision here. *gasp* You see, having to drag'and'drop (in a single motion) files can be very inconvenient at times. Some sort of method to select files, remember that selection, and carry out an operation with that selection on a different target, is very useful.
Now, I can think of one metaphor that would work well, for me. "Pick Up" selects files, or adds them to the selection. "Drop" cancels the selection. "Move Here" and "Copy Here" complete the picture.
However, this whole thing also bears a strong resemblance to the existing Cut/Copy/Paste metaphor that users are used to. Using a familar metaphor is often good. And personally, I haven't seen anyone confuse the clipboard with the file manager, yet, although I am sure it happens.
So perhaps this isn't such a stupid idea after all. Microsoft Windows has some good UI design features. Not a lot, but a few. Given their crummy implementation, though, I'll take Linux any day.
It doesn't really matter how you get to those drive letters, the fact that new storage must be mounted with a new root, and cannot be added to an existing filesystem, is a serious design flaw.
(If you had symbolic links at the file system level, you could fix it, but NT doesn't have those, either.)
Backslash as a path separator: not a problem. Are you serious? How is this better or worse than a forward slash?
Because POSIX, C, and half of everything else in the world use the backslash as an escape character, and the forward slash as a file name seperator.
Please note that Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and original programmer, agrees that he blew it on this one. The reason they used the backslash is that they had already taken the forward slash for a switch character in MS-DOS 1.0, which didn't even have subdirectories.
A single-user mentality: not a problem. I'm a single user (tee hee). Seriously, our company uses both NT and Solaris servers, and their performance is interchangeable.
I like how you counter the problem I point out with a different answer (i.e, moving from singler-user-mentality to performance). Have you been taking Bill Gates lessons?
The singler-user mentality is a problem because it means NT is designed to be operated by one person at a time, sitting at the local system console. File and print sharing are nice, but true multi-user applications (i.e., more then one user running an application on the same machine at once). Windows Terminal Server tries to do this, but there are many implementation problems traced to the fact that the NT kernel assumes that only person at a time is using the system and they are sitting at the console. (This also leads to security problems.)
Disorganized directory structre: not a problem.
You cannot make a problem go away just by saying it is not a problem. Your main answer seems to be "I don't care", or maybe "It doesn't effect me often enough". Well, I am happy you are willing to settle for crap -- some of us are not.
System crashes: not a problem.
Again, you try to wish the problem away by using an example only tangentally related. The problem is that in the NT mentality, occasional system failures and forced reboots are acceptable.
Now, since you seem to want to get into anecdotal stories: I once had to use NT server to check implementation of some cross-platform Perl scripts. NT crashed with a BSOD twice in as many weeks, under light use. I was not impressed. Meanwhile, NT 4 still requires a reboot to enable your modem!
API: not even an issue - remember, I'm looking for legacy DOS problems.
Huh? This is a problem that comes directly from DOS. A lot of the NT brain damage is still tied to the ancient DOS API. FindFirst, FindNext, anyone? Okay, sure, there is plenty of new brain damage, too. How does that help?
You're not looking for real answers, you're looking for an opportunity to try and defuse known defects in your favored OS with bogus arguments. Are you a Microsoft astroturfer, or are you simply trolling for flames? In any event, if that is all you can do, don't waste my time.
It is pretty obvious that all you guys are poised at your swivel chairs, in anticipation of seeing MS lose the trial so you can say 'I told you so'.
So what if we are? If we all believe Microsoft is wrong, and we are involved with computers, wouldn't you expect us to be happy? Should we be saying instead, "Oh, darn, Microsoft isn't going to get away with breaking the law."
Rejoicing when right triumphs over wrong is normal.
This whole thing is totally ridiculous. Would you ask Coca Cola to include a pepsi in every six pack?
Perhaps yes, if Coca Cola controlled 90% of the world's supermarkets, and forced you to buy a six-pack of Coke every time you went through the checkout lane.
More importantly; why the heck does this affect you guys?
Whether it does or does not is immaterial; the fact of the matter is (as I see it), Microsoft broke the law and deserves to be punished.
As it happens, this does affect me very much. Thanks to Microsoft, I am typically forced to buy a copy of Windows with a new PC, myself and my friends are continually stuck with an inferior product which we are coerced to use, and I find it hard to get support for non-Microsoft products because OEMs are afraid of Microsoft.
you are really not really affected by this whole IE/Netscape fiasco anyways
Wrong. If Microsoft uses their market dominance to turn the web into a Windows-only system, it affects me very much.
if MS do lose out in the end, what will you personally gain?
Me, personally? In the near future, almost nothing. But again, this isn't about me, it is about the people of the USA vs. Microsoft. (In the more distant future, a world that MS does not control looks much more appealing to me.)
And we all know that whatever happens nothing is going to put a dent into Microsoft...
You are wrong there, as well. The government is the one thing that can hurt Microsoft. It is within their power to, for example, force Microsoft to openly publish the {APIs|source} to Windows. No amount of money is going to save Microsoft from a court ruling. (If you are thinking of bribes, well, that was Al Capone's defense as well. He died in Alcatraz.)
It is interesting to note that much of Bill Gates's wealth is tied to stock price. If MSFT tanks because everybody decides to abandon the sinking ship, Bill Gates will be significantly less rich then he is now.
Technically, no. The term was originally coined in response to Vision. Vision was from the same people who made VisiCalc, the first spread sheet program. Vision was supposed to be a complete office suite, complete with a multi-tasking, windowing GUI. (Sound familar? MS Windows was as much in response to Vision as it was to the Mac.)
The company (I forget their name) showed a very impressive demo with multiple windows all running at once. Only one problem -- the product never actually existed. The demo had no functionality, it was just eye candy, not the real thing. The product was never delivered, despite the company having built up a huge expectation for it. It would be like if Microsoft announced next week that they were canceling Windows 2000 and getting out of the OS market. In response, the term "vaporware" was created.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of a page chooses what standards to adhere to, not MS.
Very true, but MS does their damndest to make sure everyone uses their propriatary extensions and not standards.
I take it then that you would not trust any browser that came from a company.
No, I was simply saying that any one company controling the browser market would be a Very Bad Thing. The popular analogy is, what if a single company owned the patents on the printing press?
if AOL dropped the mozilla project right now, it would die.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. One of the nice things about Open Source is that a company dropping a product does not necessarily mean the product will drop out of existance.
Why does evrybody seem to assume the whole world will be jumping on mozilla as soon as its released. They won't, you'll just be coding another version of your page for yet another browser.
The idea is that, with a fully standards compliant browser supporting HTML, CSS, and DOM, you won't be coding another version of your page for yet another browser. You will be coding another version of your page for the last time. Because if NS5 and IE6 are both standards compliant, you can write one set of code that works for both.
I agree that backwards compatability will continue to be a pain. It always is.
Mozilla will be yet another not fully backwards compatible browser.
That is (unintentional, I think) FUD. Mozilla will not be backwards compataible with non-standard extensions. However, if you code your pages to use standards only, like I do, it won't be a problem at all. HTML and CSS are very forwards-compatible, by design.
I use IE5 because it is a really really good browser ... available now at the same price as Mozilla.
You mean you pay the same amount of money for both products.
Price? What price is giving a single company (any single company) control of the future of the information age? A lot more then money, I would say.
"Remember, it's spelled N-E-T-S-C-A-P-E, but it is pronounced Mozilla!"
5. There is no basis for the "Lin-nucks" pronunciation.
6. "Lin-icks" is a subtle variant on #5.
I am fairly confident #6 came into use because it rhymes with Unix (you-nicks) and Minix (Min-icks), both of which Linux has as ancestors.
(Personally, I use #6, mainly because it is what I heard first, but that's just me.)
So. The worst consumer electronics chain in the world (Radio Shack) is teaming with the company that makes the most bloated software in the world (Microsoft) running on the most bloated hardware in the world (Compaq).
This is actually convenient. I can avoid everything at once.
they have fixed quite a few bugs, niggles and security issues, but I don't see much if anything that would make it faster.
As it should be. One of the reasons I like Open Source Software is that the programmers generally concentrate on real improvements, not arbitrary benchmarks.
Like the subject says, we need to break out the pen and paper (or keyboard and printer) to write our duly appointed Congressmen -- and women! -- and tell them that the US Patent and Trademark Office is royally screwing things up lately.
Don't send email -- Congress-people just do not take email seriously yet. (When they do read it, they send a snailmail reply back -- that gives you an idea of how they operate). Even phone calls are not as good as letters, because letters stick around when a phone call is over when you hang-up.
Congress created the USPTO, and they can modify it as needed. It is obviously not doing what it was intended to do, nor is it benefiting the people of this country.
We need to get moving, write our Senators and Representatives, and let them know what is going on. If enough people make their displeasure known, action will follow. Put the Slashdot effect to some use, and write Capitol hill.
For example, say someone created a program that to all casual glances looked and acted like a zip file, but when executed actually does not run the normal zip program, but it's own?
.ZIP file is a data file, like any other. As far as the computer is concerned, a .ZIP is the same as a .GIF. If your computer "knows" to run (say) WINZIP.EXE when you open a .ZIP, it doesn't matter what has been done to the .ZIP, WinZip is still going to run.
:) But that is not a .ZIP file, but rather, an executable.
;)
A
Now, if you get a file called IAmAZipFile.EXE, complete with WinZipSFX icon, and you run it without virus scanning it, well... I hope you have backups.
It is possible someone could craft an unzip program (like WinZip) that takes some special action under special circumstances, but I have not heard of anyone doing that (yet). (Betcha a dollar that if someone does it, it will be Microsoft.
One thing the author keeps jumping up and down about is how we "won't need an IT department" anymore after the move to ASPs.
Ummmm, who exactly is going to connect up all thse network workstations to the net in the first place? Who's going to run the LAN? Remember, now, folks, your average biz user has about as much interest in IP subnetting as the contents of Rob Malda's stomach. And rightfully so -- the whole point of IT folks like me is so they don't have to worry about 40 acronyms that end in "P".
It would be nice not to have to fight with Windows/Office/etc. all the time, but I really don't see IT departments going by the way side just because you're dependent on the outside network now.
FWIW, the review says that image quality is very good. Did you read the review?
First, a disclaimer: I like NVidia and own one of their cards. However, it has been said that Sharky dislikes NVidia, so maybe our biases will cancel each other out. Now, some observations and opinions...
;-)
The thing this review shows most is that drivers are everything. The ATI "won" on Direct3D benchmarks, but "lost" on OpenGL benchmarks.
ATI's MAXX card is the moral equivlent of SMP. If one processor is not fast enough, use two. This is a time honored technique, and perfectly valid.
I find it annoying that ATI has patented their "Alternate Frame Rendering" technique, when it is neither new nor innovative. Grrrr.
The reviews were done on very high-end (in fact, unavailable) hardware (i820 motherboard, 800 MHz PIII). NVidia's GeForce is largely designed to take load off of the CPU. It would be nice to know how well ATI's solution works on slower CPUs. For example, I have a 300MHz AMD K6-2. The GeForce's extra co-processing capabilities may make it faster on my machine then ATI's offering if the MAXX is CPU bound.
The GeForce is also something new: Those graphics co-processing features are its big selling point. None of the benchmarks used take advantage of those features. Tomorrow's titles which make use of the GeForce are likely to do better. Of course, today's titles do not, and my motto is "It is all vaporware to me until I can buy a product."
As a Linux Advocate(TM), I have to ask: Does ATI provide specs and/or Linux drivers? NVidia does.
In conclusion: It looks like the MAXX is a good product, and will give NVidia a run for its money. Good. I like choices. However, I don't think it is going to "kill" anything anytime soon.
Just my 1/4 of a byte...
I refuse to visit any site whose content was produced by MS' proprietary software which uses special characters which don't adhere to standard character sets.
Actually, if you look at the source, the mdash crap is HTML compliant. For whatever reason, they coded the ampersand (&) character to appear in the displayed text, rather then using it to code HTML. Real brain-dead on their part.
My post here (#64) has more info.
You remind me of the babe....
The funny part is, if you look at the HTML source, it is trying to be the HTML character entity reference —, but the ampersand is itself entered as an entity reference (&). That is the technique to use when you want to display HTML character references without interpretation, exactly as I have done here.
:-)
Meanwhile, if they has gotten it right and coded the sequence correctly, Netscape 4.x will ignore the sequence and display the HTML code, which is how Netscape handles character references it does not recognize. The result is the same either way!
LOL. I really can't wait for Mozilla to finish up. It is looking good. Still quite a way to go before a production release, but I can see an early beta within the next three to six months. Oh, for a stable browser under Linux...
I'm frankly bothered by the fact that the Government seemingly chose to focus on the inclusion of IE with Windows.
;-)
Two answers:
(1) The Internet -- that is, the web -- is becoming the information medium of the modern age. Microsoft was using their market dominance to control the web, to ensure that only their software could be used to serve up web pages, edit web pages, and view web pages. Would you want one company controlling the printing press? I sure don't. I believe the US DoJ is right to go after Microsoft's illegal product bundling.
(2) The Windows+IE thing was really just the excuse the DoJ needed to get the ball rolling for broad anti-trust action against Microsoft. You cannot sue someone just for being an abusive monopoly; you have to pick something to fight over. #1 makes this as good a thing as any.
Just my 1/4 of a byte.
One of Microsoft's greatest innovations is the "Office Suite"
:-)
This is hardly Microsoft's idea. I was using AppleWorks before Office was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye. It booted and ran off of multiple floppies, on the Apple ][ with monocrome monitor. Whoo who!
they make almost as much money on Office as Windows.
More, I am pretty sure.
While this "feature" really is a horrible travesty and doesn't actually make sense
I've actually thought about this, and I think Microsoft made an acceptable decision here. *gasp* You see, having to drag'and'drop (in a single motion) files can be very inconvenient at times. Some sort of method to select files, remember that selection, and carry out an operation with that selection on a different target, is very useful.
Now, I can think of one metaphor that would work well, for me. "Pick Up" selects files, or adds them to the selection. "Drop" cancels the selection. "Move Here" and "Copy Here" complete the picture.
However, this whole thing also bears a strong resemblance to the existing Cut/Copy/Paste metaphor that users are used to. Using a familar metaphor is often good. And personally, I haven't seen anyone confuse the clipboard with the file manager, yet, although I am sure it happens.
So perhaps this isn't such a stupid idea after all. Microsoft Windows has some good UI design features. Not a lot, but a few. Given their crummy implementation, though, I'll take Linux any day.
(1) Drive letters: not a problem. UNC pathnames.
It doesn't really matter how you get to those drive letters, the fact that new storage must be mounted with a new root, and cannot be added to an existing filesystem, is a serious design flaw.
(If you had symbolic links at the file system level, you could fix it, but NT doesn't have those, either.)
Backslash as a path separator: not a problem. Are you serious? How is this better or worse than a forward slash?
Because POSIX, C, and half of everything else in the world use the backslash as an escape character, and the forward slash as a file name seperator.
Please note that Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and original programmer, agrees that he blew it on this one. The reason they used the backslash is that they had already taken the forward slash for a switch character in MS-DOS 1.0, which didn't even have subdirectories.
A single-user mentality: not a problem. I'm a single user (tee hee). Seriously, our company uses
both NT and Solaris servers, and their performance is interchangeable.
I like how you counter the problem I point out with a different answer (i.e, moving from singler-user-mentality to performance). Have you been taking Bill Gates lessons?
The singler-user mentality is a problem because it means NT is designed to be operated by one person at a time, sitting at the local system console. File and print sharing are nice, but true multi-user applications (i.e., more then one user running an application on the same machine at once). Windows Terminal Server tries to do this, but there are many implementation problems traced to the fact that the NT kernel assumes that only person at a time is using the system and they are sitting at the console. (This also leads to security problems.)
Disorganized directory structre: not a problem.
You cannot make a problem go away just by saying it is not a problem. Your main answer seems to be "I don't care", or maybe "It doesn't effect me often enough". Well, I am happy you are willing to settle for crap -- some of us are not.
System crashes: not a problem.
Again, you try to wish the problem away by using an example only tangentally related. The problem is that in the NT mentality, occasional system failures and forced reboots are acceptable.
Now, since you seem to want to get into anecdotal stories: I once had to use NT server to check implementation of some cross-platform Perl scripts. NT crashed with a BSOD twice in as many weeks, under light use. I was not impressed. Meanwhile, NT 4 still requires a reboot to enable your modem!
API: not even an issue - remember, I'm looking for legacy DOS problems.
Huh? This is a problem that comes directly from DOS. A lot of the NT brain damage is still tied to the ancient DOS API. FindFirst, FindNext, anyone? Okay, sure, there is plenty of new brain damage, too. How does that help?
You're not looking for real answers, you're looking for an opportunity to try and defuse known defects in your favored OS with bogus arguments. Are you a Microsoft astroturfer, or are you simply trolling for flames? In any event, if that is all you can do, don't waste my time.
Microsoft did not invent NetBlewie. IBM did.
Good link, thanks.
It is pretty obvious that all you guys are poised at your swivel chairs, in anticipation of seeing MS lose the trial so you can say 'I told you so'.
So what if we are? If we all believe Microsoft is wrong, and we are involved with computers, wouldn't you expect us to be happy? Should we be saying instead, "Oh, darn, Microsoft isn't going to get away with breaking the law."
Rejoicing when right triumphs over wrong is normal.
This whole thing is totally ridiculous. Would you ask Coca Cola to include a pepsi in every six pack?
Perhaps yes, if Coca Cola controlled 90% of the world's supermarkets, and forced you to buy a six-pack of Coke every time you went through the checkout lane.
More importantly; why the heck does this affect you guys?
Whether it does or does not is immaterial; the fact of the matter is (as I see it), Microsoft broke the law and deserves to be punished.
As it happens, this does affect me very much. Thanks to Microsoft, I am typically forced to buy a copy of Windows with a new PC, myself and my friends are continually stuck with an inferior product which we are coerced to use, and I find it hard to get support for non-Microsoft products because OEMs are afraid of Microsoft.
you are really not really affected by this whole IE/Netscape fiasco anyways
Wrong. If Microsoft uses their market dominance to turn the web into a Windows-only system, it affects me very much.
if MS do lose out in the end, what will you personally gain?
Me, personally? In the near future, almost nothing. But again, this isn't about me, it is about the people of the USA vs. Microsoft. (In the more distant future, a world that MS does not control looks much more appealing to me.)
And we all know that whatever happens nothing is going to put a dent into Microsoft...
You are wrong there, as well. The government is the one thing that can hurt Microsoft. It is within their power to, for example, force Microsoft to openly publish the {APIs|source} to Windows. No amount of money is going to save Microsoft from a court ruling. (If you are thinking of bribes, well, that was Al Capone's defense as well. He died in Alcatraz.)
It is interesting to note that much of Bill Gates's wealth is tied to stock price. If MSFT tanks because everybody decides to abandon the sinking ship, Bill Gates will be significantly less rich then he is now.
Daffy Duck's post is the funniest thing I've seen in a week. Someone moderate it up, quick!
Off the top of my head...
I am sure there are more.
Hell. They INVENTED the concept of Vaporware.
Technically, no. The term was originally coined in response to Vision. Vision was from the same people who made VisiCalc, the first spread sheet program. Vision was supposed to be a complete office suite, complete with a multi-tasking, windowing GUI. (Sound familar? MS Windows was as much in response to Vision as it was to the Mac.)
The company (I forget their name) showed a very impressive demo with multiple windows all running at once. Only one problem -- the product never actually existed. The demo had no functionality, it was just eye candy, not the real thing. The product was never delivered, despite the company having built up a huge expectation for it. It would be like if Microsoft announced next week that they were canceling Windows 2000 and getting out of the OS market. In response, the term "vaporware" was created.
Microsoft didn't even invent that much.
Borrow it from Cops.
"Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you..."
To Mr. Gates: You lose!