What do you mean "in charge of", did somebody pass a law stating that only Monsanto may create such vaults? If only they've had the initiative to do so, then kudos to them, they can do it under whatever conditions they like, anyone else is free to create their own vaults too. You're certainly not worse off, risk-wise, with the existence of Monsanto's vault than you would have been without it.
So anyone else (including you) is free to create their own vault, with more traditional seed varieties, which would more than likely also suffice for post-Armageddon or other scenarios. Surely you can't argue that we'd be better off post-Armageddon if Monsanto didn't create a vault AT ALL (unless it's Monsanto's plan to engineer an Armageddon with societal structure that leaves them with power afterwards). The way I see it, generally speaking the more such vaults we have the better - it doesn't take anything away from the world for anybody to create a vault, it only 'gives'.
Except there's one major problem with your approach: Blacklisting IP addresses is a badly flawed way of blocking spam. There are many scenarios (all common) whereby you end up blacklisting valid IPs (e.g. zombies on dynamic IPs, shared hosting, etc.).
From TA: "From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million" laptops made by competitors "in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success," he said in a recent interview. "My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It's in the education business."... sounds like the summary exaggerates Negroponte's feelings on the issue.
Uh, the SAT3 fiber cable wasn't built with any aid money, it was built with tax income from a previously nationalised and now privatived telecomms utility using income from mainly businesses and residents in South Africa itself. Those businesses forked over for it - and continue to do so - because there's a genuine need for it, so get a clue.
Yes and no. Actually I said "cheap food is driving out good food", but my whole point was that "cheap" is not necessarily equal to "bad" - we've just been brainwashed into thinking that - and that if economies of scale and demand could be used to make good food cheap enough (even close in price to the bad), then good food could also be driving out the bad food instead. We've been conned by marketing into thinking that "healthy" food is some premium niche market. Bollocks - that's marketing - there's a reason why many other countries (and earlier generations, even) eat both far cheaper and far healthier simultaneously. Only in Western societies do we now think that food must be expensive if it's good for you.
Ignoring government intervention for a moment: If lots of people made a decision to eat healthier, e.g. eat more vegetables, this drives up demand. That may temporarily even increase the prices further, but when demand is high AND prices are high, this attracts market entrants, as profitability is high in that sector. More farmers switch to growing veggies, new farmers start on veggies... supply increases, competition increases, and prices go down... but because there are more producers and the market is larger, greater economies of scale allow prices to be held sustainably lower. The trick is to get there. People "want" the bad cheap stuff because it's cheap... large economies of scale etc. then allow the "bad" stuff to remain cheap, which helps keep it in demand.
I was also struck by some of the 'honesty-based' systems in Malaysia. E.g. some restaurants had a buffet-like system where there are various types of dishes and you just go and dish up whatever you want and then eat it. At the end you go stand in a queue and then tell the cashier what you had, and they simply take your word for it and ring it up. And it works.
I guess you are not aware of the existence of the entire class of 'online reputation management' services? Most of this stuff is even automated, and there are companies that specialise in it, so basically you go to one of these companies, ask them "what are people saying about us" and their systems do the rest. A company like Microsoft unquestionably makes use of such services.
Even apart from that, it's natural for a manager of any software product to now and then google and sample what people are saying out there. In fact (as one) I find it hard to imagine that there might be a software product manager out there who *doesn't*.
... a comment from someone who has a grasp of how things work in the "real world".
Just because you *can*, theoretically, if you are technically literate, manage to keep using the old formats, does not mean that it's pragmatically feasible on a large scale in corporate/government etc. environments. (And do you think a company that spends so many billions on "usability testing", and whose business model is based on network effects, doesn't understand that? That would be so absurd as to be surreal.. "Microsoft ignores its business model" yeah right.)
Also it's worse than just the manager clicking "OK" - 2007 actually gives (every time you open and save a file) very severe-sounding warnings if you use the old formats along the lines of that you will 'lose information' unless you click OK or that your old documents are 'not secure' unless you click OK. NATURALLY any regular person will 'click OK'.
Oh sure it's "trivial", if your dictionary defines "trivial" as "something that only a tiny percentage of the most computer literate users would ever be inclined to do or even understand and realise you can do".
Out there in the real world "trivial" means something else entirely - fortunately for Microsoft.
100% spot-on. I've been using Office 2007 myself and it perfectly describes the behaviour - they are so clearly artificially trying to "push" people into the new format to get those critical market network effects (no-brainer, actually, why WOULDN'T they?). Seemingly however the answer is "forever"... people don't seem to have a limit on how long you can keep doing this to them, they'll keep falling for it over and over, perhaps the "new look" makes them feel better about shelling out more money for an "upgrade" that they didn't need at all, I don't know.
The reality is that you actively and continually have to work at PREVENTING 2007 from saving under the new formats. I have older Excel documents that I often work with and every single time I open them and work on them and save I get sometimes multiple warnings about various reasons why I "should" save as the new format - with defaults always set to save as the new file format. The reasons include highly exaggerated dire-sounding warnings that I'm going to lose information (even for the most basic spreadsheets imaginable) or that my documents are 'not secure' - serious-sounding things that ANY naive non-technically literate user would naturally say 'yes' to). I have to be *continually* vigilant, if I just once accidentally press 'Enter' or something on the default out of all the times I continually get hassled - every single day! - it'll save a document under the new file format. 2007 is so damn eager to convert my documents to the new file format it's really continuous work preventing it from doing its DEFAULT behaviour of doing so.
In general one sometimes needs to upgrade a file format, yes, but this is NOT what's happening with Office 2007. I have the most unbelievably INCREDIBLY SIMPLE Excel spreadsheets from the previous Office (believe me, just a few columns with numbers and a sum is enough to trigger this shit), and when I try save them with the new Excel 2007, I get all sorts of dire-sounding warnings suggesting I'm going to lose all sorts of information if I don't save under the new format, every time I save. Then I also continually get hassled almost every time I open and save a document about how the format it's in is not secure enough and that it could be more 'secure' if I used the new file formats. And so on and so forth - one gets hassled so much that eventually any sane person is either going to break the screen, or just acquiesce and start using the new formats, and THAT'S what Microsoft is after, because the moment I do that (I'm the owner of a small business) it means upgrading every machine I interchange documents with, i.e. our whole network. So far I'm still "holding out" on principle, but everyone has their limit, and as Office 2007 gains 'critical mass' it becomes easier to give in.
They are just 100% doing their usual nonsense of forcing people into unnecessary upgrades and lock-ins that they don't need.
Office 2007 sucks ass, it's a POS. The interface is impossible to "get used to" no matter how long you use it (I've been using it for a long time now, and you cannot get faster than the old menu system with it - it makes OpenOffice look/feel good to use!), and the better aesthetic look* is only there to make you feel less bad about the fact that you're spending money on an upgrade that you don't need. I'm not aware of any new feature that I want/need, actually, and I long to uninstall this thing and put Office 2003 on instead, but it's a 2007 license.
The "editors" can do whatever they want (short of breaking the law e.g. libel), it's their site. If you don't like it you don't have to read it, or you can start your own site. You're of course also welcome to ask that they 'excise bias', as you have done, and they are free to ignore you, but I don't see how can you decide what is the "proper venue" for anything on someone else's website, that's absurd! They *created* slashdot, I think whatever they decide is the "proper" place for X or Y, *is* then the proper place.
So you think people should completely unnecessarily die in order to raise awareness of problems? I don't get that viewpoint, sorry.
(And if you don't realise that there are literally thousands of cases where revealing your identity for stating the truth will get you killed, then you don't understand enough about the free speech issue to be commenting on it meaningfully, not by a long shot.)
I still don't see why the Slashdot crowd cares one way or the other about the length of copyright terms
Discounting the general ideological issues for a moment, I think most sensible people are (and should be) at the very offended by the fact that corporations can clearly purchase laws at will to artificially protect particular business models. I think everyone with any sense (except perhaps Disney execs) would at least like to see this corruption and "crony capitalism" brought back under control, and the cry for copyright period "reform" is an expression of that.
Now, ideologically, I'm not convinced anymore that we necessarily have a right to "demand" the complete opening of someone else's work to us... I'm currently leaning toward a perhaps libertarian-like view whereby the content creator should be the one who decides, at time of creation, how long the copyright period should be for that work. If I write a novel or a software program or create a cartoon character, and I believe in that "social welfare", then I should be able to write on my work "Copyright (C) 2007 Beanthere, period 14 YEARS", and that should have some legal weight behind it as an expression of how long I wish the copyright on my work to last. It's my hard work, after all, and nobody else lifted a finger, so why shouldn't I decide if I want the copyright to be five minutes or five years or five thousand years? At least in principle.
An interesting question would be, would almost all content creators just write "FOREVER". (Obviously not all would, as OpenSource software proves.) And if so, would that be bad? If so, for who? Who would be locked out - those who don't create anything and want "social welfare"? Or could there be some kind of "brownie points" systems whereby those who have created something of value could "exchange their points" to get access to the protected works of other content creators. (Oh wait, I think there is such a system already, it's called "currency".)
Uh, this will probably come as a surprise to you "global warming" in the sense you put it IS a well-known natural phenomenon. Nobody in the "general scientific community" contests that, in fact it's all part of the science of "global warming" (the modern context). There are natural cycles. The whole point of the science is that it shows this isn't just another "natural cycle" we're in. Perhaps you should read up on it sometime.
Thing is, if you want to make money doing something, you have to conform to the market. That does equate to a lack of freedom in any way, even in a monopoly market with powerful players. Lemme try another analogy here. Say you wanted to manufacture and sell car parts. Naturally they have to fit existing cars - does that mean you are not "free"? That the current car manufacturers have too much "control"? No, not at all. (You are free to make and try sell car parts that don't fit any cars at all. You are free to get financing and start your own car company and create a new car. You are free to do something entirely different. You're free to move anywhere you want within the country to do any of these things.)
I personally can't stand Microsoft and their crap, but I must at least admit that in their entire history I've never known them to use physical force / coercion or more generally literally restrict anyone's actual freedom in order to make someone adopt the product. As far as I know they've never 'taken out' any competitors mafia-style, or prevented anyone likewise using physical force from competing. They've been dishing it out, but the world has been willingly bending over and saying "thanks, give me more, less lube this time" for decades now. Even the shady OEM deals where they push OEMs into putting Windows on every machine sold, the OEMs signed up for it, and it's not like the world ultimately didn't *really* have any choices... OS/2 was there, and competing companies like IBM (and Borland and Caldera and old-Apple and WordPerfect in various other markets that MS took over) all had the opportunity etc. to make a run of it. When MS started dishing out their free Internet Explorer crap gazillions of people signed up in droves drooling for it even though every other news article said its standards support was crap and its security sucked even worse, and yet back then there WERE choices because IE was at least as crap as Netscape. People just can't get enough of rubbish, but that's not Microsoft's fault, blame your fellow mankind for making bad choices with their freedom.
You remain wrong. Firstly, I'm not forced to use "vector graphics" at all, and I don't. Secondly, I'm not forced to use any particular format. Does a rep from Microsoft come round to your house, hold a gun to your head and shoot you if you don't? You are WELCOME and FREE to use formats that nobody supports. Users are FREE to download whatever plugins they need to view your site with *whatever* technology you use on it. NOBODY is stopping ANYBODY - I don't the words "freedom" and "control" mean what you think they do. FREE!!! Get it? What you are talking about is network effects, and it's true that if you actually want millions of people using Microsoft-specific technology to view your site THEN unless your site is so damn compelling you can convinve them otherwise you'll have to use some Microsoft-specific technologies. But that STILL does not mean there is no freedom, because let me ask you this: HOW do you think it came to be that millions of people purposely adopted Microsoft-specific technologies? Answer, they CHOSE TO, using their FREEDOM. The problem we have here is that most people are too dumb to make smart technology choices, and that Microsoft commits fraud by lying to people about what they're getting - but none of these take away the fact that there is still freedom. Any other company or organisation is free, yes super-FREE (sorry I have to keep repeating it) to produce and push alternate techologies, and every user has the complete liberty to choose those alternate technologies, and the explosion of alternates like Apple and Firefox proves this.
The sad thing about freedom is that most people will live their lives never truly grasping what it is or that they have it. It's somehow comforting to tell oneself that one cannot make one's decisions, that they are made for us, because that is our nature.
OK, explain to me what your definition of "control" is. I've created several websites - several brand new ones just in the past few months. Nobody stopped me. I've placed pretty much whatever I wanted on those websites. Nobody stopped me. Thousands of people are visiting those websites. Nobody is stopping them. Nobody is 'controlling' their 'clicks'. Nobody has tried to shut my sites down. Nobody has tried to coerce or prevent others from accessing my sites. ANYONE CAN DO THIS. I'm just not getting the "control" part. Actually we have unprecedented freedom in this regard, and it's increasing all the time. I couldn't do this just a few decades ago, now I can attract an audience of thousands worldwide without even moving from my chair for whatever content I want. It's not zero-sum. You too have the power to put whatever you want on the Internet, and as long as it's basically legal, none of those big evil corporations that supposedly "control" the Internet are going to stop you, nor are they going to stop anyone from visiting those sites.
Huh? Nobody has removed any of the technologies or infrastructure for creating an 'old-style' Internet, with personal webpages etc.... everyone is now free to choose between the old and new, how is it "less" freedom to have more options than ever? I guess most people just genuinely seem to prefer the new 'socially networked' Internet, and that's why they're popular. Nobody is forcing them down anyone's throats.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean "in charge of", did somebody pass a law stating that only Monsanto may create such vaults? If only they've had the initiative to do so, then kudos to them, they can do it under whatever conditions they like, anyone else is free to create their own vaults too. You're certainly not worse off, risk-wise, with the existence of Monsanto's vault than you would have been without it.
So anyone else (including you) is free to create their own vault, with more traditional seed varieties, which would more than likely also suffice for post-Armageddon or other scenarios. Surely you can't argue that we'd be better off post-Armageddon if Monsanto didn't create a vault AT ALL (unless it's Monsanto's plan to engineer an Armageddon with societal structure that leaves them with power afterwards). The way I see it, generally speaking the more such vaults we have the better - it doesn't take anything away from the world for anybody to create a vault, it only 'gives'.
Cute, but many if not most laptops these days don't actually come with Windows CDs anymore.
Except there's one major problem with your approach: Blacklisting IP addresses is a badly flawed way of blocking spam. There are many scenarios (all common) whereby you end up blacklisting valid IPs (e.g. zombies on dynamic IPs, shared hosting, etc.).
From TA: "From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million" laptops made by competitors "in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success," he said in a recent interview. "My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It's in the education business." ... sounds like the summary exaggerates Negroponte's feelings on the issue.
Their 'big goal' is to actually just be able to ship *something*, in three years? 'Wow'.
Uh, the SAT3 fiber cable wasn't built with any aid money, it was built with tax income from a previously nationalised and now privatived telecomms utility using income from mainly businesses and residents in South Africa itself. Those businesses forked over for it - and continue to do so - because there's a genuine need for it, so get a clue.
Yes and no. Actually I said "cheap food is driving out good food", but my whole point was that "cheap" is not necessarily equal to "bad" - we've just been brainwashed into thinking that - and that if economies of scale and demand could be used to make good food cheap enough (even close in price to the bad), then good food could also be driving out the bad food instead. We've been conned by marketing into thinking that "healthy" food is some premium niche market. Bollocks - that's marketing - there's a reason why many other countries (and earlier generations, even) eat both far cheaper and far healthier simultaneously. Only in Western societies do we now think that food must be expensive if it's good for you.
Ignoring government intervention for a moment: If lots of people made a decision to eat healthier, e.g. eat more vegetables, this drives up demand. That may temporarily even increase the prices further, but when demand is high AND prices are high, this attracts market entrants, as profitability is high in that sector. More farmers switch to growing veggies, new farmers start on veggies ... supply increases, competition increases, and prices go down ... but because there are more producers and the market is larger, greater economies of scale allow prices to be held sustainably lower. The trick is to get there. People "want" the bad cheap stuff because it's cheap ... large economies of scale etc. then allow the "bad" stuff to remain cheap, which helps keep it in demand.
I was also struck by some of the 'honesty-based' systems in Malaysia. E.g. some restaurants had a buffet-like system where there are various types of dishes and you just go and dish up whatever you want and then eat it. At the end you go stand in a queue and then tell the cashier what you had, and they simply take your word for it and ring it up. And it works.
I guess you are not aware of the existence of the entire class of 'online reputation management' services? Most of this stuff is even automated, and there are companies that specialise in it, so basically you go to one of these companies, ask them "what are people saying about us" and their systems do the rest. A company like Microsoft unquestionably makes use of such services.
Even apart from that, it's natural for a manager of any software product to now and then google and sample what people are saying out there. In fact (as one) I find it hard to imagine that there might be a software product manager out there who *doesn't*.
... a comment from someone who has a grasp of how things work in the "real world".
.. "Microsoft ignores its business model" yeah right.)
Just because you *can*, theoretically, if you are technically literate, manage to keep using the old formats, does not mean that it's pragmatically feasible on a large scale in corporate/government etc. environments. (And do you think a company that spends so many billions on "usability testing", and whose business model is based on network effects, doesn't understand that? That would be so absurd as to be surreal
Also it's worse than just the manager clicking "OK" - 2007 actually gives (every time you open and save a file) very severe-sounding warnings if you use the old formats along the lines of that you will 'lose information' unless you click OK or that your old documents are 'not secure' unless you click OK. NATURALLY any regular person will 'click OK'.
Oh sure it's "trivial", if your dictionary defines "trivial" as "something that only a tiny percentage of the most computer literate users would ever be inclined to do or even understand and realise you can do".
Out there in the real world "trivial" means something else entirely - fortunately for Microsoft.
100% spot-on. I've been using Office 2007 myself and it perfectly describes the behaviour - they are so clearly artificially trying to "push" people into the new format to get those critical market network effects (no-brainer, actually, why WOULDN'T they?). Seemingly however the answer is "forever" ... people don't seem to have a limit on how long you can keep doing this to them, they'll keep falling for it over and over, perhaps the "new look" makes them feel better about shelling out more money for an "upgrade" that they didn't need at all, I don't know.
The reality is that you actively and continually have to work at PREVENTING 2007 from saving under the new formats. I have older Excel documents that I often work with and every single time I open them and work on them and save I get sometimes multiple warnings about various reasons why I "should" save as the new format - with defaults always set to save as the new file format. The reasons include highly exaggerated dire-sounding warnings that I'm going to lose information (even for the most basic spreadsheets imaginable) or that my documents are 'not secure' - serious-sounding things that ANY naive non-technically literate user would naturally say 'yes' to). I have to be *continually* vigilant, if I just once accidentally press 'Enter' or something on the default out of all the times I continually get hassled - every single day! - it'll save a document under the new file format. 2007 is so damn eager to convert my documents to the new file format it's really continuous work preventing it from doing its DEFAULT behaviour of doing so.
In general one sometimes needs to upgrade a file format, yes, but this is NOT what's happening with Office 2007. I have the most unbelievably INCREDIBLY SIMPLE Excel spreadsheets from the previous Office (believe me, just a few columns with numbers and a sum is enough to trigger this shit), and when I try save them with the new Excel 2007, I get all sorts of dire-sounding warnings suggesting I'm going to lose all sorts of information if I don't save under the new format, every time I save. Then I also continually get hassled almost every time I open and save a document about how the format it's in is not secure enough and that it could be more 'secure' if I used the new file formats. And so on and so forth - one gets hassled so much that eventually any sane person is either going to break the screen, or just acquiesce and start using the new formats, and THAT'S what Microsoft is after, because the moment I do that (I'm the owner of a small business) it means upgrading every machine I interchange documents with, i.e. our whole network. So far I'm still "holding out" on principle, but everyone has their limit, and as Office 2007 gains 'critical mass' it becomes easier to give in.
They are just 100% doing their usual nonsense of forcing people into unnecessary upgrades and lock-ins that they don't need.
Office 2007 sucks ass, it's a POS. The interface is impossible to "get used to" no matter how long you use it (I've been using it for a long time now, and you cannot get faster than the old menu system with it - it makes OpenOffice look/feel good to use!), and the better aesthetic look* is only there to make you feel less bad about the fact that you're spending money on an upgrade that you don't need. I'm not aware of any new feature that I want/need, actually, and I long to uninstall this thing and put Office 2003 on instead, but it's a 2007 license.
The "editors" can do whatever they want (short of breaking the law e.g. libel), it's their site. If you don't like it you don't have to read it, or you can start your own site. You're of course also welcome to ask that they 'excise bias', as you have done, and they are free to ignore you, but I don't see how can you decide what is the "proper venue" for anything on someone else's website, that's absurd! They *created* slashdot, I think whatever they decide is the "proper" place for X or Y, *is* then the proper place.
So you think people should completely unnecessarily die in order to raise awareness of problems? I don't get that viewpoint, sorry.
(And if you don't realise that there are literally thousands of cases where revealing your identity for stating the truth will get you killed, then you don't understand enough about the free speech issue to be commenting on it meaningfully, not by a long shot.)
I still don't see why the Slashdot crowd cares one way or the other about the length of copyright terms
Discounting the general ideological issues for a moment, I think most sensible people are (and should be) at the very offended by the fact that corporations can clearly purchase laws at will to artificially protect particular business models. I think everyone with any sense (except perhaps Disney execs) would at least like to see this corruption and "crony capitalism" brought back under control, and the cry for copyright period "reform" is an expression of that.
Now, ideologically, I'm not convinced anymore that we necessarily have a right to "demand" the complete opening of someone else's work to us ... I'm currently leaning toward a perhaps libertarian-like view whereby the content creator should be the one who decides, at time of creation, how long the copyright period should be for that work. If I write a novel or a software program or create a cartoon character, and I believe in that "social welfare", then I should be able to write on my work "Copyright (C) 2007 Beanthere, period 14 YEARS", and that should have some legal weight behind it as an expression of how long I wish the copyright on my work to last. It's my hard work, after all, and nobody else lifted a finger, so why shouldn't I decide if I want the copyright to be five minutes or five years or five thousand years? At least in principle.
An interesting question would be, would almost all content creators just write "FOREVER". (Obviously not all would, as OpenSource software proves.) And if so, would that be bad? If so, for who? Who would be locked out - those who don't create anything and want "social welfare"? Or could there be some kind of "brownie points" systems whereby those who have created something of value could "exchange their points" to get access to the protected works of other content creators. (Oh wait, I think there is such a system already, it's called "currency".)
This CANNOT POSSIBLY be a troll - this is "-1 I don't agree with you".
Uh, this will probably come as a surprise to you "global warming" in the sense you put it IS a well-known natural phenomenon. Nobody in the "general scientific community" contests that, in fact it's all part of the science of "global warming" (the modern context). There are natural cycles. The whole point of the science is that it shows this isn't just another "natural cycle" we're in. Perhaps you should read up on it sometime.
Thing is, if you want to make money doing something, you have to conform to the market. That does equate to a lack of freedom in any way, even in a monopoly market with powerful players. Lemme try another analogy here. Say you wanted to manufacture and sell car parts. Naturally they have to fit existing cars - does that mean you are not "free"? That the current car manufacturers have too much "control"? No, not at all. (You are free to make and try sell car parts that don't fit any cars at all. You are free to get financing and start your own car company and create a new car. You are free to do something entirely different. You're free to move anywhere you want within the country to do any of these things.)
... OS/2 was there, and competing companies like IBM (and Borland and Caldera and old-Apple and WordPerfect in various other markets that MS took over) all had the opportunity etc. to make a run of it. When MS started dishing out their free Internet Explorer crap gazillions of people signed up in droves drooling for it even though every other news article said its standards support was crap and its security sucked even worse, and yet back then there WERE choices because IE was at least as crap as Netscape. People just can't get enough of rubbish, but that's not Microsoft's fault, blame your fellow mankind for making bad choices with their freedom.
I personally can't stand Microsoft and their crap, but I must at least admit that in their entire history I've never known them to use physical force / coercion or more generally literally restrict anyone's actual freedom in order to make someone adopt the product. As far as I know they've never 'taken out' any competitors mafia-style, or prevented anyone likewise using physical force from competing. They've been dishing it out, but the world has been willingly bending over and saying "thanks, give me more, less lube this time" for decades now. Even the shady OEM deals where they push OEMs into putting Windows on every machine sold, the OEMs signed up for it, and it's not like the world ultimately didn't *really* have any choices
You remain wrong. Firstly, I'm not forced to use "vector graphics" at all, and I don't. Secondly, I'm not forced to use any particular format. Does a rep from Microsoft come round to your house, hold a gun to your head and shoot you if you don't? You are WELCOME and FREE to use formats that nobody supports. Users are FREE to download whatever plugins they need to view your site with *whatever* technology you use on it. NOBODY is stopping ANYBODY - I don't the words "freedom" and "control" mean what you think they do. FREE!!! Get it? What you are talking about is network effects, and it's true that if you actually want millions of people using Microsoft-specific technology to view your site THEN unless your site is so damn compelling you can convinve them otherwise you'll have to use some Microsoft-specific technologies. But that STILL does not mean there is no freedom, because let me ask you this: HOW do you think it came to be that millions of people purposely adopted Microsoft-specific technologies? Answer, they CHOSE TO, using their FREEDOM. The problem we have here is that most people are too dumb to make smart technology choices, and that Microsoft commits fraud by lying to people about what they're getting - but none of these take away the fact that there is still freedom. Any other company or organisation is free, yes super-FREE (sorry I have to keep repeating it) to produce and push alternate techologies, and every user has the complete liberty to choose those alternate technologies, and the explosion of alternates like Apple and Firefox proves this.
The sad thing about freedom is that most people will live their lives never truly grasping what it is or that they have it. It's somehow comforting to tell oneself that one cannot make one's decisions, that they are made for us, because that is our nature.
OK, explain to me what your definition of "control" is. I've created several websites - several brand new ones just in the past few months. Nobody stopped me. I've placed pretty much whatever I wanted on those websites. Nobody stopped me. Thousands of people are visiting those websites. Nobody is stopping them. Nobody is 'controlling' their 'clicks'. Nobody has tried to shut my sites down. Nobody has tried to coerce or prevent others from accessing my sites. ANYONE CAN DO THIS. I'm just not getting the "control" part. Actually we have unprecedented freedom in this regard, and it's increasing all the time. I couldn't do this just a few decades ago, now I can attract an audience of thousands worldwide without even moving from my chair for whatever content I want. It's not zero-sum. You too have the power to put whatever you want on the Internet, and as long as it's basically legal, none of those big evil corporations that supposedly "control" the Internet are going to stop you, nor are they going to stop anyone from visiting those sites.
Huh? Nobody has removed any of the technologies or infrastructure for creating an 'old-style' Internet, with personal webpages etc. ... everyone is now free to choose between the old and new, how is it "less" freedom to have more options than ever? I guess most people just genuinely seem to prefer the new 'socially networked' Internet, and that's why they're popular. Nobody is forcing them down anyone's throats.