I can think of legitimate reasons for a company to have a theme song. For example, what if you work for The Chicago Bulls Basketball Team, Inc.? (Yes, I believe that's the actual name of the company) Or what if you worked for "Hank's Theme Song Shop"?
Luckily, their theme song (the one they play at the games) doesn't have any words.
Although I would die laughing if I saw any Bulls players running around going "Nah nah nah nah nah, HEY!, nah nah nah nah..."*
*If you can't figure out what song it is, say the bold part out loud.
I, too, was somehwhat uncertain of KPMG's purpose.
But after hearing their theme song [akamai.net] (mp3 from the wired article) I understand. "KPMG/We're strong as can be/A dream of power and energy/We go for the goal/Together we hold/On to our vision of global strategy..."
As somebody who worked for a company that had a "theme song" let me just say: This is the surest sign you should quit that anybody could ever give you. Anytime there's a "song" it's because some corporate wonk made it up to raise everybody's spirits after a management fiasco.
Stock price down 72% from last year? No bonus again this year? Your CEO was given a $20 million golden parachute to resign for his incompetence? Let's all sing!
Most guitar dealers around here (Central IL) carry mostly Fender equipment. They'll have a few Gibson guitars, but even fewer basses. I've been searching for an SG style bass for months just so I can test it out before buying one.
I have a Gibson EB-0 from the early-70's... I don't like it, but that's why I'm trying to sell it. It's been re-finished in the last 7 years or so, and plays decent. Word to the wise: Gibson basses weigh in the neighborhood of 2 tons...
On our part of the ATT Cable network (Portland OR), all DNS pointed to the switch page. I had connectivety, but could only browse the page on how to switch over to the new system. (I still had an Excite IP, and external computers were able to get into my system for Web, FTP, TS, Mail, Etc...) I think the changeover was exceedingly smooth. They left a good window where both services were running concurently. Who could ask for more?
It seems you were one of the lucky ones...For me, the plug was just pulled. No transition, no nothing. Excite's little way of striking at AT&T, but also screwing the customers of AT&T and generally leaving a bad taste in our mouths.
At first I was impressed with the speed Charter moved everyone onto their network (in Wisconsin) but I was just thinking that it's probably not all that difficult. But really it's pathetic that the expectation level for cable TV/telecom customer service makes us actually "impressed" when it simply works like it should.
Indeed, not that big a deal. Local cable company network engineers change router settings, define rules for clients, setup DHCP, and they're basically done.
I'm just livid that 1) I got five emails saying when Excite gets turned off, I should visit newuser.attbi.com (link intentionally omitted) 2) That site didn't go up until the judge ordered the shutdown 3) Once it went up it was continually jammed until I was disconnected from the net. and 4) When I called the telephone number from the voice mail they left me, all the monkey on the other end of the phone could tell me was "Duh..."
I'm on through a free AOL account right now... The things I do so I can bitch and moan on slashdot...
Nevertheless, they were up to 73.4% of the design capacity of the network by 7/11. So (unless their business model didn't include making a profit until their capacity was saturated) I don't think lack of customers was the problem.
The biggest problem is they were giving $10 per month to the cable company for each subscriber. This, combined with the amount of debt they incurred building their giant network is what ultimately did them in.
Guess I better go on a porn/mp3 bonanza tonight...tomorrow it's back to the dial-up stoneage.
For example, we used to have "mail" as our pop3 and smtp address. now they change it to "pop" and "smtp" but it won't even freaking ping.
What I did here was find the mail-server name that my messages come through and point directly to that IP. This is how I got around losing email during the hundreds of @Home DNS failures I've sufferred through since installing the service here.
I can't choose my Cable TV company. Plus the Cable TV goes largely unregulated.
Cable TV is de-regulated, but I'd hardly call it "un-regulated". They still must kowtow to every small town city council in their service area, and still have to get a charter from the city to provide service.
And you do have choices: You can get sattellite, or you can buy an antenna and not have cable. (Or you could get rid of your TV.)
Could someone tell me, does this guy *actually* not understand that the first amendment doesn't cover Germany
Actually, constitution is an expression of "human" rights, not "American rights" or "Virginian" rights.
What the constitution does not do (as you so clumsily pointed out) is guarantee these rights to people outside this country.
And I never said that people outside of this country were guaranteed these freedoms by our laws. Please see the EU human rights charter. Europeanns do have free expression.
Let me put it another (simpler) way so you can understand: Just because the people being censored are "not Americans" doesn't mean they are devoid of human rights.
It may be the law, but if they went to court, would it hold up? Based on what I read on the EU rights page, nope.
If the habits of China and Saudi Arabia are wrong, then so is this, regardless of what specific speech they're trying to ban.
, or, er, did he just vote for Bush?
Voted for Harry Browne, libertarian. Sounds like you're a Gore liberal.
Which explains why you're so supportive of a government effort (any government's effort) to censor "hate-speech". What you're missing is that "hate-speech" and "hate-crime" laws in general are misguided because they don't punish actions, they punish thoughts. Thought-crime is the scariest concept I can wrap my little ape-evolved brain around.
Also, in typical ultra-liberal fashion you've deftly changed the focus from substance to a (poor) joke at the expense of a decent president. You failed to answer the question: What "major advantages" do citizens get from having internet censorship?
In America, for example, Freedom of Speech is enshrined in law - this gives an enormous amount of protection to citizens from their government, which is good, but also ensures the right of racists and others to say what they like, and recruit new members.
Actually, this has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with the freedom to assemble peacably.
Maybe we should ban that too?
The same with speech - given no censorship, and no ability to assert local laws over internet content has major disadvantages, as well as the obvious advantages.
I have a hard time seeing the "major disadvantages" of an uncensored internet. Please document these disadvantages so we can all understand how censorship is good.
In fact, I also want to know what benefit does any citizen (not government agency) get from censorship of the internet? What are these alleged "advantages" to citizens whose net access is being filtered by the government? Who knows, if the advantages are good enough, maybe I'll start writing to congress to have my internet censored.
Germany may be protecting its citizens from hate speech, but remember this: All persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. Just because you're saying "nigger" and I'm saying "potato salad" should not affect our protection by the first amendment.
I mean, if I hate potatoes, wouldn't talking badly about potato salad be "hate speech"?
Direct quote from the downloads page for the new 0.9.6 release...
We do not guarantee that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org domain is Year 2000 compliant.
Does this mean I have to set my clock to 197x again?
When does the Mac OS X build come out? Every time there's a milestone build they instantly post the OS9 version, and several days later we see the OS X build. It seems logical to me to reverse this if possibble.
A lot of will get iBooks this fall and christmas, pre-loaded with OS X. Many people buy Macs because they don't like the quality of Microsft software, and they will seek out products like Mozilla. It would make sense then to set our best foot forward.
How do you build the concept of project management into an open-source project? How do you get volunteers to focus their work? The Salvation Army gives ranks and has a formal heirarchy...Maybe it's time...Can I be a Captain of TCP/IP?
I don't like the idea my files of certain types are "Forced" to certain places. If I'm working on a project at work, do I want all the files together in one folder named Project or to have the various files scattered through ten folders.
Maybe it's the Mac user in me, but I want a folder with all of them together.
However, I guess it wouldn't be too bad if the "Database Layer" access was integrated to every app, and you could label files so that if I did, say,
select * from disk1 where file_label like 'Project%'
So I get all project files from my whole FS. This sounds a lot like a much more advanced, integrated Sherlock from Apple. Actually fairly cool although so far, I've only really needed to use Sherlock once or twice.
Also, I'm not advocating using SQL as the iface to the "database layer", just an example...Users should have a nice friendly search box.
If we are allowed to track down spammers we could fight them much easier.
So laws are bad but lawsuits are good? You and I are definitely not on the same page.
While it's true there are no "FAX Police" after the government banned "junk fax", this isn't a fair comparison to internet spam.
Main reason is that there was never a burgeoning "FAX Community" that was trying to exist without government regulation.
Just so you know, being against a large, unwieldly government isn't "hate-mongering" or "Republican". Republicans are just as interested in a large government with high taxes as the Democrats, they just favor it in a different way, slightly smaller, slightly lower taxes way.
Now that something that's 1) backwards compatible and 2) fast fast fast exists, I predict the rise of massive wireless networks. Some professionally built for official purposes, and some built for shits and grins by maniacs...
My reasoning here is that a lot of people who are interested in the wireless network have held off waiting for a faster standard to work with. I personally can't wait to play Rogue Spear on the net from my hammock in the yard with my g4 titanium.
Anyway, how is contracting 2 teams any different from Best Buy closing 2 unprofitable stores?
The biggest difference is that the cities where those stores are located didn't pay to build the stores, and aren't stuck owning large, useless facilities after Best Buy pulls out. I mean, what use is that godawful ballpark the Twins play in once they leave?
(Hell, the Congress is stepping on Baseball threatening their specific anti-trust protection because they want to close down two teams, why can't they redirect that attention to where its needed)
While I agree that the RIAA needs to see some anti-trust scrutiny, Major League Baseball is acting just as monopolistic as MS or the RIAA. Your statement above shows that you may not have been following the baseball contraction issue as closely as I have.
The baseball situation is that they want to close down the two teams that are making the least money. Reason? The cities won't submit to paying for new baseball parks for the team to play in. Never mind that a spiffy new ball park like Enron in Houston, or PacBell in San Francisco cost between $500 million and $1 billion to build.
If the taxpayers resist paying for it, the team threatens to move. If they move (or in this case, just disappear) the league always says "you'll have first pick in future expansion opportunities", but any time you bring in expansion baseball, the league demands an "Expansion fee" from the city.
The dillemma these people have is that they can either be extorted for $500 million for a stadium now and keep the team, or get a new team in 10 years when the economy is better, still have to build a stadium for whatever a stadium costs in 2011, and also pay an "expansion fee".
In any other business, this is a shakedown. But it's the worst kind of shakedown, it's a shakedown for TAX money.
Nobody mentioned credit card payments for each page!
Payments would probably be aggregated and traded between ISPs and hosting services -- you'd only pay 2c extra on your monthly bill.
I didn't mention giving cards to each site either...I'm talking about the amount of overhead to track every persons page views, and the costs associated with collecting those "pennies". The ISP would surely have to buy some large, expensive software package to track these charges, and that cost would be passed on to consumers. Also, since they're providing this "Service" to site operators and incurring expenses in the process they'll definitely ask for a "juice" for funds routed.
At the end of the day, site operators will be lucky if they see 1/10th of that penny.
Think about this: If I am an average "one-or-two sites" surfer, penny a page will be a money losing proposition for the site operators. Why?
Credit card transactions cost money. Unless the surfer is being billed quarterly, you're talking about a three or four dollar charge each month. Ask any merchant that takes credit cards and they'll tell you it's not even worth their effort to take the cards for transactions less than $20. If it's more than four or five bucks a month, that's way too much. I mean, I'm already paying $45/month for my cable modem, add on twenty more bucks and I'm over my budget for the month...
And at that point we the citizens take over where the system did not, and knowing that these bastards did wrong, we line them up and execute them with a CNN crew standing by. The end.
If they get protection, we wait for the right moment. In no way, shape, or form will they be living within the month of being set free.
Frying those folks in Waco was nothing. Time for the real tough love.
Short answer: "Doubt it."
First, if for any reason these people could not be jailed or executed legally they would be deported to a friendly nation with looser laws that would facilitate their punishment/execution.
Second, you don't want to live in an America where random vigilantes can execute people and get away with it. At that point, you're living in a country like Somalia, with war lords running the country.
[SARCASM]
Sounds like a bright future that our brilliant attorney general has prescribed for us...
[/SARCASM]
Having this sort of thing in place is antethical to the entire concept of freedom and the dream that is America. Also exactly what I was afraid of.
Allow me to paint a new nightmare scenario for you: We catch 50 guys in the al Qaeda network. They ran the operation for bin Laden. We tape priveleged conversations between the accused and their attorneys. After this information is used in the trial, they are convicted.
On appeal, their convictions are overturned because of this foolish behavior.
Microsoft's biggest selling point in the past has been that it was the de facto standard on the desktop. As a sysadmin, I'm glad that Windows has a standard look and feel, because many of my older users didn't grow up with computers and have a hard time working with them anyway. However, as a geek, I see that there is definately a place for Linux, both at home and in the workplace. Despite what Microsoft says, Linux is becoming a player in the desktop and server game, albeit slowly (for now). As Linux gains "market share," interoperability, and open standards will be more important than ever. Many people will have several different platforms. If MS refuses to "play well with others," they may lose some customers. MS boxes will be with us for a while, but working with the guys from Samba may prolong their lifespan.
Mod me down as off-topic, but there are too many people on this site with the ability to moderate. This message is clearly not a "Troll" of any kind, but it was moderated as such.
I mean, shit, did Bill Gates become a moderator here and I missed the email?
When you ask questions like "I understand that you do not want to allow any changes to a pay period after the checks have been cut, but then what are we going to do when travelling workers report their hours late?"
I applaud you for knowing what your software is actually supposed to "do" in the real world.
That is the biggest problem where I work. We make a healthcare product, but the vast majority of the people writing the code and specifications have never worked in a hospital in any capacity. A lot of them have never even VISITED a hospital in this country (many are immigrants who haven't been sick in the U.S. yet.)
Could you give an example of this, where the intent was clearly to alienate other users? What do you want Microsoft to do, make sure that every browser works the same?
They don't have to do anything about other browsers except design THEIR browser to use open standards. Try logging onto any of the personalization features of a website belonging to MS. Expedia, for example, is god awful in Mozilla. Not necessarily visual elements, although those can be interesting when pop-ups come along, but functional things: The calendars for flight dates doesn't work, etc. Sites designed by MS are notorious for locking out 3rd party browsers: Remember last year when the British government put several major social services online with Microsoft technologies? This is a government site, but if you're using a Mac, Mozilla, Opera, or anything except IE on Windows, you can't login. (Don't know if that's been rectified or not...)
Microsoft's attempt to block non-IE users out of MyMSN was just a way of testing the waters, to see if they could get away with it. Make no mistake, if nobody had made a big deal about this lockout, it quickly would have uniformly spread to all MS web-sites.
Want to read your Hotmail? Download 200 MB of Internet Explorer 7.0!
I could go on...
IE offers a lot of "features" that other browsers don't have. Proprietary features.
Exactly the point. The beauty (and future) of the internet is it's unique ability to provide clear, consistent communication around the world. If I must change my site's design because, based on MS' interpretation of standard HTML, my site displays with the graphics in wrong places, and java buttons intentionally hosed up for ANYBODY that's an impediment to communication, caused by Microsoft.
So they make the browsing experience better for IE users--
...at the expense of competitors' products on the web, and the consumers who use those products.
One of the purposes of the web is communication. How effective would the English language be if in New York the word "Chicken" meant small bird with feathers, and in New Jersey it meant "Your mother is a whore"? It's the same thing on the web: Unless all users have equal functionality, the software companies and developers are not serving the public's interest, which I think is in efficient, clear communication and commerce worldwide, platform independent.
The fact is everyone (not just Microsoft) would benefit from open standards. Whatever proprietary "features" (your quotes, but I liked them) MS incorporates into the browser could easily be reproduced and incorporated into a standard web development language.
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily, their theme song (the one they play at the games) doesn't have any words.
Although I would die laughing if I saw any Bulls players running around going "Nah nah nah nah nah, HEY!, nah nah nah nah..."*
*If you can't figure out what song it is, say the bold part out loud.
As somebody who worked for a company that had a "theme song" let me just say: This is the surest sign you should quit that anybody could ever give you. Anytime there's a "song" it's because some corporate wonk made it up to raise everybody's spirits after a management fiasco.
Stock price down 72% from last year? No bonus again this year? Your CEO was given a $20 million golden parachute to resign for his incompetence? Let's all sing!
I have a Gibson EB-0 from the early-70's... I don't like it, but that's why I'm trying to sell it. It's been re-finished in the last 7 years or so, and plays decent. Word to the wise: Gibson basses weigh in the neighborhood of 2 tons...
It seems you were one of the lucky ones...For me, the plug was just pulled. No transition, no nothing. Excite's little way of striking at AT&T, but also screwing the customers of AT&T and generally leaving a bad taste in our mouths.
Indeed, not that big a deal. Local cable company network engineers change router settings, define rules for clients, setup DHCP, and they're basically done.
I'm just livid that 1) I got five emails saying when Excite gets turned off, I should visit newuser.attbi.com (link intentionally omitted) 2) That site didn't go up until the judge ordered the shutdown 3) Once it went up it was continually jammed until I was disconnected from the net. and 4) When I called the telephone number from the voice mail they left me, all the monkey on the other end of the phone could tell me was "Duh..."
I'm on through a free AOL account right now... The things I do so I can bitch and moan on slashdot...
The biggest problem is they were giving $10 per month to the cable company for each subscriber. This, combined with the amount of debt they incurred building their giant network is what ultimately did them in.
Guess I better go on a porn/mp3 bonanza tonight...tomorrow it's back to the dial-up stoneage.
What I did here was find the mail-server name that my messages come through and point directly to that IP. This is how I got around losing email during the hundreds of @Home DNS failures I've sufferred through since installing the service here.
Cable TV is de-regulated, but I'd hardly call it "un-regulated". They still must kowtow to every small town city council in their service area, and still have to get a charter from the city to provide service.
And you do have choices: You can get sattellite, or you can buy an antenna and not have cable. (Or you could get rid of your TV.)
Actually, constitution is an expression of "human" rights, not "American rights" or "Virginian" rights.
What the constitution does not do (as you so clumsily pointed out) is guarantee these rights to people outside this country.
And I never said that people outside of this country were guaranteed these freedoms by our laws. Please see the EU human rights charter. Europeanns do have free expression.
Let me put it another (simpler) way so you can understand: Just because the people being censored are "not Americans" doesn't mean they are devoid of human rights.
It may be the law, but if they went to court, would it hold up? Based on what I read on the EU rights page, nope.
If the habits of China and Saudi Arabia are wrong, then so is this, regardless of what specific speech they're trying to ban.
Voted for Harry Browne, libertarian. Sounds like you're a Gore liberal.
Which explains why you're so supportive of a government effort (any government's effort) to censor "hate-speech". What you're missing is that "hate-speech" and "hate-crime" laws in general are misguided because they don't punish actions, they punish thoughts. Thought-crime is the scariest concept I can wrap my little ape-evolved brain around.
Also, in typical ultra-liberal fashion you've deftly changed the focus from substance to a (poor) joke at the expense of a decent president. You failed to answer the question: What "major advantages" do citizens get from having internet censorship?
Actually, this has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with the freedom to assemble peacably.
Maybe we should ban that too?
I have a hard time seeing the "major disadvantages" of an uncensored internet. Please document these disadvantages so we can all understand how censorship is good.
In fact, I also want to know what benefit does any citizen (not government agency) get from censorship of the internet? What are these alleged "advantages" to citizens whose net access is being filtered by the government? Who knows, if the advantages are good enough, maybe I'll start writing to congress to have my internet censored.
Germany may be protecting its citizens from hate speech, but remember this: All persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. Just because you're saying "nigger" and I'm saying "potato salad" should not affect our protection by the first amendment.
I mean, if I hate potatoes, wouldn't talking badly about potato salad be "hate speech"?
Direct quote from the downloads page for the new 0.9.6 release...
We do not guarantee that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org domain is Year 2000 compliant.
Does this mean I have to set my clock to 197x again?
When does the Mac OS X build come out? Every time there's a milestone build they instantly post the OS9 version, and several days later we see the OS X build. It seems logical to me to reverse this if possibble.
A lot of will get iBooks this fall and christmas, pre-loaded with OS X. Many people buy Macs because they don't like the quality of Microsft software, and they will seek out products like Mozilla. It would make sense then to set our best foot forward.
How do you build the concept of project management into an open-source project? How do you get volunteers to focus their work? The Salvation Army gives ranks and has a formal heirarchy...Maybe it's time...Can I be a Captain of TCP/IP?
I don't like the idea my files of certain types are "Forced" to certain places. If I'm working on a project at work, do I want all the files together in one folder named Project or to have the various files scattered through ten folders.
Maybe it's the Mac user in me, but I want a folder with all of them together.
However, I guess it wouldn't be too bad if the "Database Layer" access was integrated to every app, and you could label files so that if I did, say,
select * from disk1 where file_label like 'Project%'
So I get all project files from my whole FS. This sounds a lot like a much more advanced, integrated Sherlock from Apple. Actually fairly cool although so far, I've only really needed to use Sherlock once or twice.
Also, I'm not advocating using SQL as the iface to the "database layer", just an example...Users should have a nice friendly search box.
While it's true there are no "FAX Police" after the government banned "junk fax", this isn't a fair comparison to internet spam.
Main reason is that there was never a burgeoning "FAX Community" that was trying to exist without government regulation.
Just so you know, being against a large, unwieldly government isn't "hate-mongering" or "Republican". Republicans are just as interested in a large government with high taxes as the Democrats, they just favor it in a different way, slightly smaller, slightly lower taxes way.
Now that something that's 1) backwards compatible and 2) fast fast fast exists, I predict the rise of massive wireless networks. Some professionally built for official purposes, and some built for shits and grins by maniacs...
My reasoning here is that a lot of people who are interested in the wireless network have held off waiting for a faster standard to work with. I personally can't wait to play Rogue Spear on the net from my hammock in the yard with my g4 titanium.
The biggest difference is that the cities where those stores are located didn't pay to build the stores, and aren't stuck owning large, useless facilities after Best Buy pulls out. I mean, what use is that godawful ballpark the Twins play in once they leave?
While I agree that the RIAA needs to see some anti-trust scrutiny, Major League Baseball is acting just as monopolistic as MS or the RIAA. Your statement above shows that you may not have been following the baseball contraction issue as closely as I have.
The baseball situation is that they want to close down the two teams that are making the least money. Reason? The cities won't submit to paying for new baseball parks for the team to play in. Never mind that a spiffy new ball park like Enron in Houston, or PacBell in San Francisco cost between $500 million and $1 billion to build.
If the taxpayers resist paying for it, the team threatens to move. If they move (or in this case, just disappear) the league always says "you'll have first pick in future expansion opportunities", but any time you bring in expansion baseball, the league demands an "Expansion fee" from the city.
The dillemma these people have is that they can either be extorted for $500 million for a stadium now and keep the team, or get a new team in 10 years when the economy is better, still have to build a stadium for whatever a stadium costs in 2011, and also pay an "expansion fee".
In any other business, this is a shakedown. But it's the worst kind of shakedown, it's a shakedown for TAX money.
I didn't mention giving cards to each site either...I'm talking about the amount of overhead to track every persons page views, and the costs associated with collecting those "pennies". The ISP would surely have to buy some large, expensive software package to track these charges, and that cost would be passed on to consumers. Also, since they're providing this "Service" to site operators and incurring expenses in the process they'll definitely ask for a "juice" for funds routed.
At the end of the day, site operators will be lucky if they see 1/10th of that penny.
Think about this: If I am an average "one-or-two sites" surfer, penny a page will be a money losing proposition for the site operators. Why?
Credit card transactions cost money. Unless the surfer is being billed quarterly, you're talking about a three or four dollar charge each month. Ask any merchant that takes credit cards and they'll tell you it's not even worth their effort to take the cards for transactions less than $20. If it's more than four or five bucks a month, that's way too much. I mean, I'm already paying $45/month for my cable modem, add on twenty more bucks and I'm over my budget for the month...
Short answer: "Doubt it."
First, if for any reason these people could not be jailed or executed legally they would be deported to a friendly nation with looser laws that would facilitate their punishment/execution.
Second, you don't want to live in an America where random vigilantes can execute people and get away with it. At that point, you're living in a country like Somalia, with war lords running the country.
[SARCASM]
Sounds like a bright future that our brilliant attorney general has prescribed for us...
[/SARCASM]
Having this sort of thing in place is antethical to the entire concept of freedom and the dream that is America. Also exactly what I was afraid of.
Allow me to paint a new nightmare scenario for you: We catch 50 guys in the al Qaeda network. They ran the operation for bin Laden. We tape priveleged conversations between the accused and their attorneys. After this information is used in the trial, they are convicted.
On appeal, their convictions are overturned because of this foolish behavior.
Get ready, it will happen.
Mod me down as off-topic, but there are too many people on this site with the ability to moderate. This message is clearly not a "Troll" of any kind, but it was moderated as such.
I mean, shit, did Bill Gates become a moderator here and I missed the email?
I applaud you for knowing what your software is actually supposed to "do" in the real world.
That is the biggest problem where I work. We make a healthcare product, but the vast majority of the people writing the code and specifications have never worked in a hospital in any capacity. A lot of them have never even VISITED a hospital in this country (many are immigrants who haven't been sick in the U.S. yet.)
...To 1) Buy a winPC, and 2) Buy win98, just to play one game makes me a "Troll" then I say "Troll on!"
Troll...pffft.
...Is when the Macintosh version comes out.
Nothing in this world is worth going back to Windows 98 for...
They don't have to do anything about other browsers except design THEIR browser to use open standards. Try logging onto any of the personalization features of a website belonging to MS. Expedia, for example, is god awful in Mozilla. Not necessarily visual elements, although those can be interesting when pop-ups come along, but functional things: The calendars for flight dates doesn't work, etc. Sites designed by MS are notorious for locking out 3rd party browsers: Remember last year when the British government put several major social services online with Microsoft technologies? This is a government site, but if you're using a Mac, Mozilla, Opera, or anything except IE on Windows, you can't login. (Don't know if that's been rectified or not...)
Microsoft's attempt to block non-IE users out of MyMSN was just a way of testing the waters, to see if they could get away with it. Make no mistake, if nobody had made a big deal about this lockout, it quickly would have uniformly spread to all MS web-sites.
Want to read your Hotmail? Download 200 MB of Internet Explorer 7.0!
I could go on...
Exactly the point. The beauty (and future) of the internet is it's unique ability to provide clear, consistent communication around the world. If I must change my site's design because, based on MS' interpretation of standard HTML, my site displays with the graphics in wrong places, and java buttons intentionally hosed up for ANYBODY that's an impediment to communication, caused by Microsoft.
...at the expense of competitors' products on the web, and the consumers who use those products.
One of the purposes of the web is communication. How effective would the English language be if in New York the word "Chicken" meant small bird with feathers, and in New Jersey it meant "Your mother is a whore"? It's the same thing on the web: Unless all users have equal functionality, the software companies and developers are not serving the public's interest, which I think is in efficient, clear communication and commerce worldwide, platform independent.
The fact is everyone (not just Microsoft) would benefit from open standards. Whatever proprietary "features" (your quotes, but I liked them) MS incorporates into the browser could easily be reproduced and incorporated into a standard web development language.