SARC lists the following ICQ virii in its I Index:
ICQ.81493.PWSteal
ICQ.82424.PWSteal
ICQ.Flooder
ICQ.PWS.Trojan
ICQ.Revenge.Trojan
ICQ.Trojan
ICQ2000
ICQPass
Unfortuantely, SARC is uncharacteristically vague on these virii with very little info beyond "NORTON Anti-virus catches this" Time to check McAffee's and CERT:)
I can't recall a single movie of late that he hasn't started off by saying "this movie sucks"
Funny - I don't recall him saying that about any of the 3 movies he reviewed above. In fact I thought he gave well thought out commentary on the movies (even if he got his blondes confused) Face it - JP3 does suck. But he bailed on a crappy movie to see three others, two of which he generally seemed to like and didn't use the word suck anywhere in the review. So is it Jon that's biased against movies or you who are biased against Jon?
IMHO I'm glad he reviewed these movies instead of JP3 cuase everyone knew it was gonna suck anyway:)
While I commend Alan on taking a stand, you have to wonder what effect it will have. How much power do the conference organizers have? Even if programmers boycotted conferences en masse, would it have any effect and would there be a receptive ear in Washington? I sincerely doubt it. Not until we elect representatives that a) aren't beholden to corporate America and b) understand technology, the DMCA will remain the law of the land unfortunately. And the likelyhood of A & B happening are slim and none so its likely the only way the DMCA will go down is in the courts and even that is iffy. Not trying to be depressing, but our representatives don't know squat about the Internet and buy into the media hysteria hook line and sinker. And good luck finding main stream media that portrays hackers (NOT crackers) in anything but a bad light.
While I think this is a great idea, I worry that this will cause problems for average users AND I doubt vendos like Microsoft will bother. Ever tried to browse the web with IE set to the max security level? Lots of stuff stops working! RedHat did the right thing w 7.x by locking down most services so you had to open them up if you needed ftp, telnet, etc. But when it comes to Java, web browsing and other stuff, locking it down will only frustrate users who are used to browsers just 'working' - Imagine if they get hammered with popups about enabling cookies, Javascript, Java, etc.
I'm not saying that this is a bad cause, it's a noble one, but it seems that much more work needs to be done on the underlying security risks of certain platforms vs. just running them at a 'secure' level
Well then apparently there are different policies depending where you are. I know people on Verizon who cannot send email using external servers due to Port 25 restrictions - perhaps this is a throwback prior to Verizon being created and thus different customers have different setups.
If you have a secondary email account (I have 6 from 4 different ISP's) then you should set up your secondary accounts to use the correct servers.
Problem is you CAN'T DO THIS with Verizon since they block ALL outgoing SMTP traffic except traffic FROM their email servers. Thus, your client CANNOT use a secondary email server to send email - the traffic is blocked - plain and simple. Thus this decision means you MUST send email from verizon's domain or not at all unless you use a web based client to send email directly from your secondary ISP's servers OR find an ISP willing to redirect a higher port > 1024 to port 25 on their mail server to get around the Port 25 traffic blocks.
If Verizon were to combine their anti-forgery rule with a 'you must use our mail hosts' rule, that would be a serious inconvenience to legitimate users.
That's the point. They ALREADY block outgoing Port 25 traffic so, yes, that is why this is such a big deal. The only way for Verizon customers to send email from their own domains is to either switch ISPs or find an email hosting company that can accept SMTP mail from a higher port that won't be blocked.
You obviously have never run a small business. Small business owners want their business to appear biger and more professional to be attractive to customers. Sending email from address X reply to address Y appears amateurish and presents them as technically challenged. Small companies need Internet access and sometimes Verizon is the only game in town. You used to be able to host email at a web hosting company till ISPs started blocking ALL outgoing SMTP traffic. So much for that. So folks found they could send using their ISP server while still using their domain in their email. Now Verizon is blocking that. Its sad and in teh end will only hurt Verizon.
I'm lcuky enough to have an ISP that doesn't pull hair-brained schemes like this - but they are small and understand who their customers are. However, one company I host email for found that their ISP started blocking outgoing port 25 - they couldn't use our server anymore - till we just redirected a high port (like 3000 or something) to port 25 on their email server - they updated their clients and it works fine - ISPs can't block ports > 1024 without causing major disruptions in client traffic.
So now those of us hosting small (and even large) ISPs/hosting companies are faced with not just fighting spammers, but fighting brain-dead ISPs who would rather impact their customers in the name of blocking spam. Problem is there is ALWAYS a work around!
The bottom line is, if you are faced with this problem and can find someone else with an email server - see if they can either redirect a high port to port 25 on their firewall or on the mail server itself.
Well Athlon users don't have much choice as the VIA chipsets are used in most mobo's Even new boards with teh AMD 760 are not using the AMD southbridge - they are using the VIA one...
Boy does THAT bring back memories! NCSA v1.x on an HP-UX v9.x system using good old Mosaic. I bet if you asked 100 Apache admins what NCSA was at least 50% would give you a blank look!:)
</Offtopic>
This is a pretty cool idea. I can imagine modelling a candle flame is hard enough. Trying to model all the forces and flows inside a combustion cylinder must be mind boggling! Who knows - maybe there is a 'next generation' combustion engine that will allow for better emissions till fuel cells and the like are usable for prime time. Of course if Congress won't get off their butts and actually raise fuel efficiency standards by more than a gallon, well, all the research in the world isn't gonna help:(
The really bad speeds, down in the 20-40K/sec range, are usually associated with specific sites and I think indicate either network problems outside @Home's network or bandwidth or server problems at the site I'm accessing.
It may not be a problem on the site at all - I've heard a number of sites are throttling bandwidth on a connection basis - ie you can't download beyond 40 KBps or so to conserve bandwidth on their links.
Yup. That's why you don't see anyone on the 'net who's from Australia
Ya - I should have said in 'NOBODY in the US' since many other countries havce had metered phone service for years. We got spoiled by flat rate phone service and now demand it for other communications services. But I still believe in teh US, anyway, metered ISPs are a non starter regardless.
I've got a DSL line at home and no cell phone. Somehow, I get by.
No doubt - I've got friends just DROOLING over 3G till I ask them 'why?' I mean besides using your cellphone like a blackberry for email, what the hell do they need it for? I guess IMing over cellphones could be cool, but not THAT cool. Just talking on my cell costs me enough - I don't need to add wireless web costs to it to browse websites on tiny LCD screens. Sure the stuff will get bigger - but who wants that? I got my cellphone cause it was SMALL really small. I can read alert emails from my servers if necessary, but beyond that - I use it to talk - thats it. I sure as hell aren't browsing yahoo with it - don't need to.
I honestly think 3G is gonna be a flop outside of non-stop travelers and even then - its just not gonna see that much use IMHO because it is reaching a point where folks can't justify the expense. Sure the Blackberry concept and wireless Palm devices are doing OK, but they aren't racking up huge subscriber growth. And they use a platofmr you can actually read stuff on. But at some point it loses the appeal - I mean why carry a cellphone that can receive email when teh person can just CALL if it is urgent. If you really need somethign for remote email you'll already have a blackberry and will upgrade, but I doubt you'll see folks flocking to 3G like some analysts swear will happen.
What will kill this is ISPs charging per MB of traffic
No that will kill the ISPs cause NOBODY will pay for metered Internet access. Numerous companies tried and failed and realized that folks simply won't go for it and there will ALWAYS be someone else out there offering flat-rate service taking your customers.
My guess is they will try to ban use of the link by others who aren't part of your household or on your property or some other bullshit that won't be encforcable.
What brilliant software designer thought that it was a good idea for MSN Messenger NOT to store the buddy lists locally?
So you could access it from another computer which you were validated on. Of course - it seems to me that using a local CACHE of the data would be a brilliant idea - if you change your list offline - local changes and sevrer gets updated, etc. If hte server was down, you could still send stuff to folks peer to peer if you had a local copy stored - course with ICQ you'd be stuff offline if the servers died...
I guess we would all be more trusting if it were Verisign and not MS
Hardly - its not that I don't TRUST the authentication of Passport. Its the fear of a company like Microsoft storing all this personal data of mine to access other sites, pay for stuff, etc.
Most people would probably spend most of their day hitting "Reload" to see if it's finally up yet.
This crowd? Nah - we all wrote scripts that sent us email alerts to our cellphones when slashdot came back up and we could finally find 'CowboyNeal' somewhere in the HTML source:)
Same here - I just called them, asked for service, they showed up, dropped the modem on my desk and left. Case closed. No contract, nothing. So I wonder who REALLY owns the modem:)
Try this on for DSL strangeness. I have SDSL - works great has for years (I got DSL EARLY) Anyway, last week, my uploads pretty much dropped to 1bps - constant timeouts, etc. Anyway, my ISP was gonna get me a new modem but hasn't come out yet. WEll we have this hellacious thunderstorm come through this morning, lightening hit right near by shaking the entire house - DSLWAN light starts blinking (no connection) and poof, it comes back online a minute or two later - I run a DSLReports test - works fine!
Now before all you wiseasses say "You should have power cycled your modem!" Been there done that MANY times over last week. Guess a good surge now and then can straighten things out! Talk about flakey!
It doesn't cost them any significant amount of money to keep up, so why are they doing this?
Its the same reason they can pagers and cellphones as soon as earnings slip - they think it'll solve all their problems.
Around 1994 or 95, I created and ran a central web server for NORTEL's Intranet in North Carolina up until late 1999. The web hit NORTEL like a ton of bricks to the point UC sent us threatening letters about our widespread use of Mosaic (Netscape didn't exist yet), We hosted about 800 websites, many for official projects but many for personal web pages as well. It was pretty wide open - just sign up for an account using your employee credentials and you got account space. Obviously folks who abused it were kicked off - but since your account was clearly tied to you, nobody did. I can't recall one instance of being asked pull down an offending site.
Anyway - the web was a huge part of NORTEL's employee life. Web servers ran on lots of desktops or on central servers like the one I had deployed. We used the web to vastly improve our communication across labs in the US, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere. It also gave employees a place to express themselves. Heck - the server I ran was just an HP C Classs with 100GB of RAID-5 running HP-UX and Apache. It did great - even with folks adding all sorts of tools, database frontends, you name it.
Well, sure enough, as you all know NORTEL stock has cratered like many other tech companies. Well, according to friends who still run teh server I created, NORTEL is now instituting a company wide policy where every website on the companies Intranet must be registered with a central authority. They will review what is submitted, accept what they find 'useful' and then will proceed to shutdown all other unapproved web sites and servers.
Its funny because they will probably spend magnitudes more $$$ trying to reign in teh web on their INtranet vs what it really cost them. Again, a knee jerk reaction at cost cutting when the real problem is - lack of sales and too many employees (which they've resolved by cutting 1/3 of their workforce)
So it shouldn't surprise you. Executives STILL don't realize that if you work your employees into the ground without giving them some outlets and places to express themselves and unwind, they'll be less productive and you'll lose even more money! I've always been amazed by it. Profits go down, they institute some stupid cost cutting policy (pagers, vacation carry-over, less health benefits, personal web pages, sports leagues, etc) and then they wonder why productivity is lower and they are losing even more money.
Its too bad really, but I guess its a fact of life. If you aren't happy in your job, you'll just get fired and they'll hire someone else for half your salary to work into the ground who needs the paycheck badly (been there, still there:) )
From his site: Disclaimer No. 1: I'm just a beginner in many of these languages, so if you can help me improve any of the solutions, please drop me an email. Thanks.
Me thinks that his email server will be slashdotted before his website is with every geek in teh world telling him how to improve the programs he wrote.
Which is a good thing - I'd love to see before and after results with after being after all teh/.'er changes are added - course that assumes/.ers would be able to agree on the best route of action. ROFLMAO!
Seriously - very interesting project - he'll ctach flack for being a newbie I'm sure - but a great endeavour all around. More power to him!
My point (yes, i have a point) is that for certain things, software developers everywhere (not just OS developers at M$) have to make assumptions for "general use".
Sure - and that is the normal argum,ent out of Redmond. But read the article. Its not that Microsoft software popped up by default, its that it took a nine click cumbersome process to even get the Kodak software to be the default. "General Use" would be during the install, the program says 'Make default photo editor/printer' and you say yes or no - but the WIn XP interface did not provide for that (though the article seemed to hint that the latest builds took a step in that direction)
Kodak can release an update that automatically sets theirs to be first, eliminating the tech support issues.
Only if the API supports it - otherwise without the source you'd be hard pressed to modify teh behavior of the OS with a patch. Which is why bundling, though not inherently wrong, can be so dangerous and abused.
I'm with you here and its part of their strategy I'm sure. I loathe Micro$oft - hate them profusely (sp??) But in my 'day-job' hat - you just cannot beat their Office suite. No way. Office 97 was a huge step forward as was OLE. O2K, well, that was milking the cash cow (so's XP I'm afraid) But the bottom line is Office has been a HUGE driver of people to Windows as the ONLY OS in town. Sure they put forth a minimum of effort to port Office to Macs to fend off the anti-trust hawks, but beyond that, without Office, Windows may not have been the monopoly OS it is today. But it is.
IE probably wouldn't be what it is today if it was developed by a third party company - no way. But now that it is THE best browser hands down, not because its so great but Micro$oft made it the 'most compatible' browser around and worked on the backend to screw up web standards to work best with their inferior browser - voila - best in class. IE drives more people to Windows and keeps ones wanting to leave from going (what?? You want to run Linux? What will you do when you cna't view websites (which they fail to mention are using Microsoft twisted standards that have been forced down webmasters throats, etc, etc)
I yearn for the day when an Opensource offic esuite can match MS office in funcitonality that MATTERS and customers realize that less CAN be better because there is no denying Office is gettin gdangerously bloated. At some point customers will say ENOUGH! I don't need all these useless wizbang gidgets. I want WYSIWYG word processing, good slide package, email, and a spreadsheet with native web tie ins. But Smart Tags and all this other crap - who needs it?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortuantely, SARC is uncharacteristically vague on these virii with very little info beyond "NORTON Anti-virus catches this" Time to check McAffee's and CERT :)
Funny - I don't recall him saying that about any of the 3 movies he reviewed above. In fact I thought he gave well thought out commentary on the movies (even if he got his blondes confused) Face it - JP3 does suck. But he bailed on a crappy movie to see three others, two of which he generally seemed to like and didn't use the word suck anywhere in the review. So is it Jon that's biased against movies or you who are biased against Jon?
IMHO I'm glad he reviewed these movies instead of JP3 cuase everyone knew it was gonna suck anyway :)
* Removed all documentation referring to the GEMINI table type. GEMINI is not released under an Open Source license.
Not that I disagree with them doing this since the table isn't open source... but this fight seems to be getting nasty!
While I commend Alan on taking a stand, you have to wonder what effect it will have. How much power do the conference organizers have? Even if programmers boycotted conferences en masse, would it have any effect and would there be a receptive ear in Washington? I sincerely doubt it. Not until we elect representatives that a) aren't beholden to corporate America and b) understand technology, the DMCA will remain the law of the land unfortunately. And the likelyhood of A & B happening are slim and none so its likely the only way the DMCA will go down is in the courts and even that is iffy. Not trying to be depressing, but our representatives don't know squat about the Internet and buy into the media hysteria hook line and sinker. And good luck finding main stream media that portrays hackers (NOT crackers) in anything but a bad light.
OK - Now that I've calmed down....
While I think this is a great idea, I worry that this will cause problems for average users AND I doubt vendos like Microsoft will bother. Ever tried to browse the web with IE set to the max security level? Lots of stuff stops working! RedHat did the right thing w 7.x by locking down most services so you had to open them up if you needed ftp, telnet, etc. But when it comes to Java, web browsing and other stuff, locking it down will only frustrate users who are used to browsers just 'working' - Imagine if they get hammered with popups about enabling cookies, Javascript, Java, etc.
I'm not saying that this is a bad cause, it's a noble one, but it seems that much more work needs to be done on the underlying security risks of certain platforms vs. just running them at a 'secure' level
Well then apparently there are different policies depending where you are. I know people on Verizon who cannot send email using external servers due to Port 25 restrictions - perhaps this is a throwback prior to Verizon being created and thus different customers have different setups.
Problem is you CAN'T DO THIS with Verizon since they block ALL outgoing SMTP traffic except traffic FROM their email servers. Thus, your client CANNOT use a secondary email server to send email - the traffic is blocked - plain and simple. Thus this decision means you MUST send email from verizon's domain or not at all unless you use a web based client to send email directly from your secondary ISP's servers OR find an ISP willing to redirect a higher port > 1024 to port 25 on their mail server to get around the Port 25 traffic blocks.
That's the point. They ALREADY block outgoing Port 25 traffic so, yes, that is why this is such a big deal. The only way for Verizon customers to send email from their own domains is to either switch ISPs or find an email hosting company that can accept SMTP mail from a higher port that won't be blocked.
You obviously have never run a small business. Small business owners want their business to appear biger and more professional to be attractive to customers. Sending email from address X reply to address Y appears amateurish and presents them as technically challenged. Small companies need Internet access and sometimes Verizon is the only game in town. You used to be able to host email at a web hosting company till ISPs started blocking ALL outgoing SMTP traffic. So much for that. So folks found they could send using their ISP server while still using their domain in their email. Now Verizon is blocking that. Its sad and in teh end will only hurt Verizon.
I'm lcuky enough to have an ISP that doesn't pull hair-brained schemes like this - but they are small and understand who their customers are. However, one company I host email for found that their ISP started blocking outgoing port 25 - they couldn't use our server anymore - till we just redirected a high port (like 3000 or something) to port 25 on their email server - they updated their clients and it works fine - ISPs can't block ports > 1024 without causing major disruptions in client traffic.
So now those of us hosting small (and even large) ISPs/hosting companies are faced with not just fighting spammers, but fighting brain-dead ISPs who would rather impact their customers in the name of blocking spam. Problem is there is ALWAYS a work around!
The bottom line is, if you are faced with this problem and can find someone else with an email server - see if they can either redirect a high port to port 25 on their firewall or on the mail server itself.
Well Athlon users don't have much choice as the VIA chipsets are used in most mobo's Even new boards with teh AMD 760 are not using the AMD southbridge - they are using the VIA one...
Boy does THAT bring back memories! NCSA v1.x on an HP-UX v9.x system using good old Mosaic. I bet if you asked 100 Apache admins what NCSA was at least 50% would give you a blank look!
</Offtopic>
This is a pretty cool idea. I can imagine modelling a candle flame is hard enough. Trying to model all the forces and flows inside a combustion cylinder must be mind boggling! Who knows - maybe there is a 'next generation' combustion engine that will allow for better emissions till fuel cells and the like are usable for prime time. Of course if Congress won't get off their butts and actually raise fuel efficiency standards by more than a gallon, well, all the research in the world isn't gonna help :(
It may not be a problem on the site at all - I've heard a number of sites are throttling bandwidth on a connection basis - ie you can't download beyond 40 KBps or so to conserve bandwidth on their links.
Ya - I should have said in 'NOBODY in the US' since many other countries havce had metered phone service for years. We got spoiled by flat rate phone service and now demand it for other communications services. But I still believe in teh US, anyway, metered ISPs are a non starter regardless.
No doubt - I've got friends just DROOLING over 3G till I ask them 'why?' I mean besides using your cellphone like a blackberry for email, what the hell do they need it for? I guess IMing over cellphones could be cool, but not THAT cool. Just talking on my cell costs me enough - I don't need to add wireless web costs to it to browse websites on tiny LCD screens. Sure the stuff will get bigger - but who wants that? I got my cellphone cause it was SMALL really small. I can read alert emails from my servers if necessary, but beyond that - I use it to talk - thats it. I sure as hell aren't browsing yahoo with it - don't need to.
I honestly think 3G is gonna be a flop outside of non-stop travelers and even then - its just not gonna see that much use IMHO because it is reaching a point where folks can't justify the expense. Sure the Blackberry concept and wireless Palm devices are doing OK, but they aren't racking up huge subscriber growth. And they use a platofmr you can actually read stuff on. But at some point it loses the appeal - I mean why carry a cellphone that can receive email when teh person can just CALL if it is urgent. If you really need somethign for remote email you'll already have a blackberry and will upgrade, but I doubt you'll see folks flocking to 3G like some analysts swear will happen.
No that will kill the ISPs cause NOBODY will pay for metered Internet access. Numerous companies tried and failed and realized that folks simply won't go for it and there will ALWAYS be someone else out there offering flat-rate service taking your customers.
My guess is they will try to ban use of the link by others who aren't part of your household or on your property or some other bullshit that won't be encforcable.
Yeah, but God forbid he actually wins - then there will be NO dealing with him!
So you could access it from another computer which you were validated on. Of course - it seems to me that using a local CACHE of the data would be a brilliant idea - if you change your list offline - local changes and sevrer gets updated, etc. If hte server was down, you could still send stuff to folks peer to peer if you had a local copy stored - course with ICQ you'd be stuff offline if the servers died...
Hardly - its not that I don't TRUST the authentication of Passport. Its the fear of a company like Microsoft storing all this personal data of mine to access other sites, pay for stuff, etc.
This crowd? Nah - we all wrote scripts that sent us email alerts to our cellphones when slashdot came back up and we could finally find 'CowboyNeal' somewhere in the HTML source :)
Try this on for DSL strangeness. I have SDSL - works great has for years (I got DSL EARLY) Anyway, last week, my uploads pretty much dropped to 1bps - constant timeouts, etc. Anyway, my ISP was gonna get me a new modem but hasn't come out yet. WEll we have this hellacious thunderstorm come through this morning, lightening hit right near by shaking the entire house - DSLWAN light starts blinking (no connection) and poof, it comes back online a minute or two later - I run a DSLReports test - works fine!
Now before all you wiseasses say "You should have power cycled your modem!" Been there done that MANY times over last week. Guess a good surge now and then can straighten things out! Talk about flakey!
Its the same reason they can pagers and cellphones as soon as earnings slip - they think it'll solve all their problems.
Around 1994 or 95, I created and ran a central web server for NORTEL's Intranet in North Carolina up until late 1999. The web hit NORTEL like a ton of bricks to the point UC sent us threatening letters about our widespread use of Mosaic (Netscape didn't exist yet), We hosted about 800 websites, many for official projects but many for personal web pages as well. It was pretty wide open - just sign up for an account using your employee credentials and you got account space. Obviously folks who abused it were kicked off - but since your account was clearly tied to you, nobody did. I can't recall one instance of being asked pull down an offending site.
Anyway - the web was a huge part of NORTEL's employee life. Web servers ran on lots of desktops or on central servers like the one I had deployed. We used the web to vastly improve our communication across labs in the US, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere. It also gave employees a place to express themselves. Heck - the server I ran was just an HP C Classs with 100GB of RAID-5 running HP-UX and Apache. It did great - even with folks adding all sorts of tools, database frontends, you name it.
Well, sure enough, as you all know NORTEL stock has cratered like many other tech companies. Well, according to friends who still run teh server I created, NORTEL is now instituting a company wide policy where every website on the companies Intranet must be registered with a central authority. They will review what is submitted, accept what they find 'useful' and then will proceed to shutdown all other unapproved web sites and servers.
Its funny because they will probably spend magnitudes more $$$ trying to reign in teh web on their INtranet vs what it really cost them. Again, a knee jerk reaction at cost cutting when the real problem is - lack of sales and too many employees (which they've resolved by cutting 1/3 of their workforce)
So it shouldn't surprise you. Executives STILL don't realize that if you work your employees into the ground without giving them some outlets and places to express themselves and unwind, they'll be less productive and you'll lose even more money! I've always been amazed by it. Profits go down, they institute some stupid cost cutting policy (pagers, vacation carry-over, less health benefits, personal web pages, sports leagues, etc) and then they wonder why productivity is lower and they are losing even more money.
Its too bad really, but I guess its a fact of life. If you aren't happy in your job, you'll just get fired and they'll hire someone else for half your salary to work into the ground who needs the paycheck badly (been there, still there :) )
Me thinks that his email server will be slashdotted before his website is with every geek in teh world telling him how to improve the programs he wrote.
Which is a good thing - I'd love to see before and after results with after being after all teh /.'er changes are added - course that assumes /.ers would be able to agree on the best route of action. ROFLMAO!
Seriously - very interesting project - he'll ctach flack for being a newbie I'm sure - but a great endeavour all around. More power to him!
Sure - and that is the normal argum,ent out of Redmond. But read the article. Its not that Microsoft software popped up by default, its that it took a nine click cumbersome process to even get the Kodak software to be the default. "General Use" would be during the install, the program says 'Make default photo editor/printer' and you say yes or no - but the WIn XP interface did not provide for that (though the article seemed to hint that the latest builds took a step in that direction)
Only if the API supports it - otherwise without the source you'd be hard pressed to modify teh behavior of the OS with a patch. Which is why bundling, though not inherently wrong, can be so dangerous and abused.
IE probably wouldn't be what it is today if it was developed by a third party company - no way. But now that it is THE best browser hands down, not because its so great but Micro$oft made it the 'most compatible' browser around and worked on the backend to screw up web standards to work best with their inferior browser - voila - best in class. IE drives more people to Windows and keeps ones wanting to leave from going (what?? You want to run Linux? What will you do when you cna't view websites (which they fail to mention are using Microsoft twisted standards that have been forced down webmasters throats, etc, etc)
I yearn for the day when an Opensource offic esuite can match MS office in funcitonality that MATTERS and customers realize that less CAN be better because there is no denying Office is gettin gdangerously bloated. At some point customers will say ENOUGH! I don't need all these useless wizbang gidgets. I want WYSIWYG word processing, good slide package, email, and a spreadsheet with native web tie ins. But Smart Tags and all this other crap - who needs it?