is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it.:)
I'm with you on that one. I have a television but I don't have cable or anything. Occasionally I'll rent a movie and watch it, but it's pretty much just used to hold down the table and hold up my vcr.;)
Sometimes I'll hear about an interesting show like Enterprise or Monk (which turned out to be lame, unfortunately, from what I saw of it) and sometimes I'll see it at a friend's house but otherwise I love not having the option of watching TV. I find that I'm *so* much more productive. Admittedly every minute that I would have watched TV I spend surfing the internet but that's generally much more intellectually stimulating anyway. I read ZDNet, CNet, CNN, Sci Fi Wire,/. (obviously), etc. and since I'm on the computer anyway I end up working on my pet computer programming projects too. Pretty cool. And what did I miss out on? Re-runs of McGuyver and some show about a snooty bitch stabbing vampires. (ok, the joke about buffy is totally unfounded, I admit. but that's beside the point.);)
i disagree. I think that advertising for *new* products is not only necessary for their survival but good in general. For example Gatorade just came out with their own bottled water.. (the commercial has athletes splashing out of droplets from the bottle. pretty damn cool commercial, i think) Anyway, on a whim I went ahead and tried it last week. It's OK.
Anyway, where I *don't* like advertising is when it's just there to jump in your face and say "Hey I just wanted to remind you to buy buy buy buy buy yet a-fuckin-nother Whopper!"
A better example for the first kind of advertising is when you have a product that people won't know how to use without being shown. Like let's say that Transformers Toys were brand new and being released for the first time. if you saw the box in a toy store would it have occurred to you how insanely kick-ass they were for little kids as toys if you hadn't seen *why* they were worth noticing?
or what about some company's super-cool new windows that make your heat efficiency in your house better?... anyway... I hate seeing McDonald's and Coke commercials but if it's a new product from someone then I generally don't mind them if it's sufficiently informative. i guess it sounds hypocritical written here, but... whatever.;)
yeah it's a lot like looking at your watch and then someone sitting with you notices and says "oh, what time is it?" and you have to look again because you really weren't paying attention the first time.. lol. that crap happens to me all the time!;)
uh... how's that? my school has signed up for the "we're microsoft slaves and proud of it" agreement but if you want to buy software from the campus store it's still pretty expensive... why's that?
I think this map of theirs would be viewed as invaluable to historians to see exactly how NY was "way back when in '02"...
For example in London there's a new Globe Theater to honor Shakespeare (interestingly enough it was an american actor that built it) but since no one has the plans to either of the original two Globe Theaters they had to guesstimate the new one. Luckily they found the foundations of The Rose theater and were able to use the info they gleaned from there to make the new one (e.g. a strange mixture of dirt and nut shells with cement to make the flooring...!?) Anyway, if they hadn't found the Rose they would not have been able to achieve their desired level of authenticity. Plans would have been invaluable.
how long do you think it'll be before MS fixes this loophole? I'll bet their lawyers are all in a huge board meeting right now talking on this very issue.
Isn't AT&T the company that was appending a $7 service charge if you used your own modem?? (see this story from slashdot.) What happened with that, did they get harassed into submission or something?
on how long before George Lucas sues? Remember the laser used in surgery(?) those guys called it a 'light saber' and got a fat law suit from lucasarts? mmhmm..
I agree. Omicron was a great game. I was really surprised though at how small the following for it is. Maybe it's because it came from a previously unknown software company, but, for example, if you go to google and type "Omicron The Nomad Soul" you only get 200 matches. Crazy. But, yeah, I agree. it really did feel like a new world. I remember actually having pangs of guilt when I found out that when I left the body of one of the characters that they turned into zombies basically, just standing there all ghost-like and transparent. "I've killed them!" heheh..
Really? I remember that area right behind where he was originally standing, but i don't see how it could possibly be useful. You can only hurt him by shooting him in the center of his back (once he's walking around) and if you're in that cave then he'll just *turn around* and then what're you to do?
I've been able to get him all the way down to about a quarter-inch of life left but by that time he's on insanely-super-fast mode and hopping around like a hare on a hot plate and inevitably just smashes you into the ground..
Re:Plots are all the same
on
Fahrenheit
·
· Score: 1
Personally my ultimate idea for a game would be a full 3D city/world where you could do anything you wanted - a fully realistic life sim, where you could lead as boring or interesting life as you pleased
Yeah, I'm waiting for Snow Crash: The Video Game as well.
Think about it this way: If you've ever played Max Payne or any of the Tomb Raider series, then I figure it'll be something like that--except that you buy it level-by-level, month-by-month.
Most likely you'll buy those levels for el-cheapo as well, since who the hell would pay anything more than a few bucks for a single level? Anyway, add that the episodes are supposed to take 8 hours to play, which sounds like a healthy amount of game-time for a month by non-obsessive-types (the entire game of Max Payne probably took less than that for me), and it should last them long enough that any gamer will be able to decide for themselves, "ok, sure, i'll download the new one at the end of the month for another $5."
Also, you can think about it like this: You get to test out a game for only a few dollars before investing a large amount of money and time. The on-line games like Ultima Online and EverQuest are the opposite. You go and pay $50 (when they were new) and what do you have? Nothing but a box and a CD you can use as a coaster, unless you pay another $10 (or whatever) a month! So for $60 you've bought a month's worth of game-play. If you don't like it, too bad.
I have also played Quantic Dream's debut title Omicron: The Nomad Soul. Through it QD has demonstrated fantastic story-telling as well as great gameplay. If they can hold onto that, then I think their new game will turn into a big moneypot, or at least deserve to.
The thing I loved most about Omicron was something that apparently we'll be able to do here to some extent: switch characters dynamically and at-will as the game is played. In Omicron, if you ever died you would become the next person to touch you (usually the morgue-guy or a physician) or if you needed to have access to an area you simply over-took someone that had that access (e.g. a police officer to get into the police station). Very fun.
Also, Omicron attempted to cross genres, (which is why the article at ferrago.co.uk mentioned it as ambitious) in that it was 3rd-person-adventure-style most of the time, but in combat situations it either became a 1st-person-shooter or a side-view-street-fighter-type game.
The only problem I had with that was that the first-person-shooter was a bit limited (e.g. you always walked instead of ran, you couldn't strafe, etc.). Thus in the final battle which *really* needs strafe and the ability to run, I could never get the damn Boss killed. Every once in a while I'll pick the game back up and try to beat him again but after a couple hours I get pissed off and throw it back on the shelf. *sigh*;)
Anyone know any cheat codes for Omicron? I'd love to see the ending;)
... is that there is no direct way to contact the other members of the group before you meet. For example in my group (Nashville) we had 3 venues to choose from, a TGI Fridays, a Starbucks, and some other place whose name I didn't recognize. From the name it sounded like it might be someone's apt complex. I wanted to ask the members what the deal was with the last entry and who it was that was willing to host 15 (though there could have been as many as 45!) people in their home for the evening but obviously I couldn't do that..
I noticed in another city's group that someone had posted a URL link in his "personal description" that went to his website where he had set up a Forum so that his group members could communicate before they actually met. Did any of you have any other methods of reaching the group before you met up and presumably exchanged email addresses?
But the point is that if the major difference between Netscape and Mozilla is "polishing" then I would still think that Mozilla's chance to become a standard browser *itself* would be just as much a reality as Netscapes chance to regain even a small fraction of its former market share.
After all, the major difference I saw between the two was AOL slipping little ad-fliers under every virtual carpet and into every virtual droor of my computer. If that's polishing send me back to Mozilla!
Another question though is that, since Mozilla's major funding comes from Netscape/AOL/TIME/Warner, I would think they would be rather irate to see Moz take off as a browser (as compared to their own). Maybe not, maybe it would be more like "well, at least we're taking market share away from MS"... but... I dunno:)
a companion article..
on
Built For Use
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This article presents "7 simple things most web-users don't know exist." Everything from editing the URL bar manually to produce desired results to new browser windows.
"In one study, a site provided links to related books on Amazon.com, which opened in a second browser window. Using Amazon wasn't relevant to our test, so as soon as the page came up the users tried to back out. One pair of users, upon discovering the grayed-out 'Back' button, looked at each other with something akin to horror. "
Granted these people might be techno-shmucks, but I think we geeks seem to forget that too easily. I found a lady just last year still using win 3.11 as her OS and was *irate* to find out that she was being forced to upgrade to a brand new PC. I had to spend hours with her explaining the new OS and even then she was *not* happy with the situation. These people do exist!;)
Someone at mozilla.org could make some use of that book, methinks. Their website is not made for the average joe. Granted it has gotten better but it's still chock full of unexplained keywords and high expectations of the customer's tech-savvy. I can just see sending my mom to download Mozilla and telling her 'just look for links that say "downloads for windows", don't get sidetracked by trying to figure out what Mozilla is. Just download it and find out later.' It would be nice if someone went through with a user-friendly stick and beat every page, at least a little bit.
Re:Spielberg annoys to the end
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
Ok, i realize that this thread left the main window 2 days ago, but i thought i'd stick this in anyway.
# The protagonist could have just asked to be locked in a room until the murder date had passed thereby making the prediction bunk.
If that were the case then everyone charged with a future murder could do the same thing... Besides, since we know the boss man needed him out of the way, if he had come in to be isolated for 36 hours (as boss-man suggests over the vid-phone), i think we all know that boss-man would have immediately had him arrested and thrown into the jail thing.
* Upon being cited for a future murder, the protagonist decides that he should run, for no other explanation than, "everyone runs".
He thinks that the new guy from the gov't set him up through a newly found loophole. His apparent option would be to prove that he was being set up. And anyway, even if it were just a split-second decision to run away, once you've started running you can't just say "OK, let's work this out rationally." The cops would just take him out and lock him up for murder.
# After having his eyes replaced to get past security, he goes to his office and uses his old eye in a baggy to get in.
I agree on this one. They definitely would have changed his access rights. but then again, this has never happened before, no one from pre-crime has ever been a killer before, so in the confusion of "what the hell?!" they apparently just didn't think of it. conceivable, but doubtful that he would get away with it. FURTHER, having used his eyes to scan into the future crime dept and steal a precog surely by then they would have found someone to say "Oops, we forgot to remove his rights!" and strip him of his security, which would have disallowed his wife entrance to the prison area at the end of the movie.
having Speilburg explain a completely typical ending over and over
This one sucked. sorta, "yeah you explained that already." but also he needed to present the point that Cruse's character had actually figured it out. before, only the government guy had and he was killed. I'm not sure how he could have done it without explaining it twice. though the movie he presents to everyone in the ball seemed pretty self-explanatory. In that case, though, he would have needed to find a way to babble on *something* until the two could meet... *shrugs*
I'm looking around and all i see are a bunch of people rambling on about rounding. the point was to discuss problems we've had.
so. at an acm programming team contest we had to find a series of numbers that were cubes of other numbers.. i don't remember the details but basically what was happening was that every four or five iterations we'd be off by some miniscule amount (at least as far as the example was concerned). it turns out that the pow() function in c++ is done through some crazy natural log thing (that i understood at the time) and because of all the flipping around eventually there is some minor precision loss. anyway, so after digging around forever in our code we finally changed the lines of y=pow(3,x); to y=x*x*x; and got the right answer.
further, at that same contest we kept turing in this one program that was behaving *perfectly* for us. we turned it in over and over and over after making minor changes that we desperately made until finally we gave up and asked the proctors to take a look at. apparently the judges were using some dos-based pre-made script to compile, run, and test our Visual C++ programs... and when we just used the "!" icon in the IDE it was compiling the programs with different compiling options. It took us another 20 minutes after it was revealed to us that this was even possible.. we were checking in a loop to the size of a string, that is, the possible length of a string, not the actual length. so if we had string1[30] then we had a for loop going to 30 instead of the number of characters in string1. using the standard build this was OK, MSDev was apparently "smart enough" to stop for us but because of the more strict (and accurate) methods of the judges we lost an insane amount of time on that program.
*sigh* we only got 3 programs of the 7 provided. still, i was proud considering it was my first one:) anyway, I don't think that second one counts as a "bug" in Visual C++, it just, well, sucked.
just as a side-note here, i wanted to note as a reply to the comment of: "Nobody trying to make any money on the web will render their services incompatible with user's browsers."
I'm a windows user pretty much, but I'm making a gradual transition of weening myself of MS. For example as a webmaster of several sites, since i've always been in charge of choosing servers, I have been able to leisurely learn how to navigate Linux through an ssh terminal.
Anyway, one of the first steps for culling the ms influence was to try to avoid the Microsoft browser. Unfortunately there are dozens of corporate websites that I have forced me to switch to IE because the website doesn't support alternatives. For example flipdog.com, a really cool jobsearch tool, doesn't support mozilla/netscape's browser and because they have faulty code from an old version of dreamweaver (so turning it in to bugzilla doesn't work) mozilla won't work (ironically it's only two lines of javascript that need to be changed!). I emailed them and so did a mozilla hacker and we got the response, simply, that flipdog does not and will not support mozilla/netscape. Now, the only way for flipdog to change their minds is if they see a large base of people coming in using m/n instead of IE or if a large number of people politely suggest to them an alternative. (Go to the main page of flipdog.com and click the "tell us what you think!" link.) The point is that even with something as simple as an html + javascript website this very useful and popular jobsearch tool is doing exactly what you said companies wouldn't: cut off their nose to spite their face, so to speak. but you assume that they care! "Ahh, so 1 in 100 people will have to close their browser window and open a different one. big deal! If it saves us money in development, I'm all for it."
for ms-loving companies that don't have the budget of ebay it might not be worth it to go against ms's plans without prodding. who knows.
Slashdot Mirror
listen here:
http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/hud00058rad/http://ww w.cnet.com/radio/playlist/live.asx
is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it. :)
Sometimes I'll hear about an interesting show like Enterprise or Monk (which turned out to be lame, unfortunately, from what I saw of it) and sometimes I'll see it at a friend's house but otherwise I love not having the option of watching TV. I find that I'm *so* much more productive. Admittedly every minute that I would have watched TV I spend surfing the internet but that's generally much more intellectually stimulating anyway. I read ZDNet, CNet, CNN, Sci Fi Wire, /. (obviously), etc. and since I'm on the computer anyway I end up working on my pet computer programming projects too. Pretty cool. And what did I miss out on? Re-runs of McGuyver and some show about a snooty bitch stabbing vampires. (ok, the joke about buffy is totally unfounded, I admit. but that's beside the point.) ;)
Anyway, where I *don't* like advertising is when it's just there to jump in your face and say "Hey I just wanted to remind you to buy buy buy buy buy yet a-fuckin-nother Whopper!"
A better example for the first kind of advertising is when you have a product that people won't know how to use without being shown. Like let's say that Transformers Toys were brand new and being released for the first time. if you saw the box in a toy store would it have occurred to you how insanely kick-ass they were for little kids as toys if you hadn't seen *why* they were worth noticing?
or what about some company's super-cool new windows that make your heat efficiency in your house better? ... anyway... I hate seeing McDonald's and Coke commercials but if it's a new product from someone then I generally don't mind them if it's sufficiently informative. i guess it sounds hypocritical written here, but ... whatever. ;)
yeah it's a lot like looking at your watch and then someone sitting with you notices and says "oh, what time is it?" and you have to look again because you really weren't paying attention the first time.. lol. that crap happens to me all the time! ;)
(just so i'm not being overly vague: "because it's only 15 miles from Redmond...")
uh... how's that? my school has signed up for the "we're microsoft slaves and proud of it" agreement but if you want to buy software from the campus store it's still pretty expensive... why's that?
After we met through the slashdot.meetup.com thing last month a bunch of the Nashville /.'ers got together last week for a lan party ;) pretty cool! :)
I think this map of theirs would be viewed as invaluable to historians to see exactly how NY was "way back when in '02" ...
For example in London there's a new Globe Theater to honor Shakespeare (interestingly enough it was an american actor that built it) but since no one has the plans to either of the original two Globe Theaters they had to guesstimate the new one. Luckily they found the foundations of The Rose theater and were able to use the info they gleaned from there to make the new one (e.g. a strange mixture of dirt and nut shells with cement to make the flooring...!?) Anyway, if they hadn't found the Rose they would not have been able to achieve their desired level of authenticity. Plans would have been invaluable.
how long do you think it'll be before MS fixes this loophole? I'll bet their lawyers are all in a huge board meeting right now talking on this very issue.
kinda like those AOL CDs? ;)
As Far As I Know
Isn't AT&T the company that was appending a $7 service charge if you used your own modem?? (see this story from slashdot.) What happened with that, did they get harassed into submission or something?
on how long before George Lucas sues? Remember the laser used in surgery(?) those guys called it a 'light saber' and got a fat law suit from lucasarts? mmhmm..
I agree. Omicron was a great game. I was really surprised though at how small the following for it is. Maybe it's because it came from a previously unknown software company, but, for example, if you go to google and type "Omicron The Nomad Soul" you only get 200 matches. Crazy. But, yeah, I agree. it really did feel like a new world. I remember actually having pangs of guilt when I found out that when I left the body of one of the characters that they turned into zombies basically, just standing there all ghost-like and transparent. "I've killed them!" heheh..
I've been able to get him all the way down to about a quarter-inch of life left but by that time he's on insanely-super-fast mode and hopping around like a hare on a hot plate and inevitably just smashes you into the ground..
Yeah, I'm waiting for Snow Crash: The Video Game as well.
Most likely you'll buy those levels for el-cheapo as well, since who the hell would pay anything more than a few bucks for a single level? Anyway, add that the episodes are supposed to take 8 hours to play, which sounds like a healthy amount of game-time for a month by non-obsessive-types (the entire game of Max Payne probably took less than that for me), and it should last them long enough that any gamer will be able to decide for themselves, "ok, sure, i'll download the new one at the end of the month for another $5."
Also, you can think about it like this: You get to test out a game for only a few dollars before investing a large amount of money and time. The on-line games like Ultima Online and EverQuest are the opposite. You go and pay $50 (when they were new) and what do you have? Nothing but a box and a CD you can use as a coaster, unless you pay another $10 (or whatever) a month! So for $60 you've bought a month's worth of game-play. If you don't like it, too bad.
I have also played Quantic Dream's debut title Omicron: The Nomad Soul. Through it QD has demonstrated fantastic story-telling as well as great gameplay. If they can hold onto that, then I think their new game will turn into a big moneypot, or at least deserve to.
The thing I loved most about Omicron was something that apparently we'll be able to do here to some extent: switch characters dynamically and at-will as the game is played. In Omicron, if you ever died you would become the next person to touch you (usually the morgue-guy or a physician) or if you needed to have access to an area you simply over-took someone that had that access (e.g. a police officer to get into the police station). Very fun.
Also, Omicron attempted to cross genres, (which is why the article at ferrago.co.uk mentioned it as ambitious) in that it was 3rd-person-adventure-style most of the time, but in combat situations it either became a 1st-person-shooter or a side-view-street-fighter-type game.
The only problem I had with that was that the first-person-shooter was a bit limited (e.g. you always walked instead of ran, you couldn't strafe, etc.). Thus in the final battle which *really* needs strafe and the ability to run, I could never get the damn Boss killed. Every once in a while I'll pick the game back up and try to beat him again but after a couple hours I get pissed off and throw it back on the shelf. *sigh* ;)
Anyone know any cheat codes for Omicron? I'd love to see the ending ;)
I noticed in another city's group that someone had posted a URL link in his "personal description" that went to his website where he had set up a Forum so that his group members could communicate before they actually met. Did any of you have any other methods of reaching the group before you met up and presumably exchanged email addresses?
After all, the major difference I saw between the two was AOL slipping little ad-fliers under every virtual carpet and into every virtual droor of my computer. If that's polishing send me back to Mozilla!
Another question though is that, since Mozilla's major funding comes from Netscape/AOL/TIME/Warner, I would think they would be rather irate to see Moz take off as a browser (as compared to their own). Maybe not, maybe it would be more like "well, at least we're taking market share away from MS" ... but... I dunno :)
This article presents "7 simple things most web-users don't know exist." Everything from editing the URL bar manually to produce desired results to new browser windows.
"In one study, a site provided links to related books on Amazon.com, which opened in a second browser window. Using Amazon wasn't relevant to our test, so as soon as the page came up the users tried to back out. One pair of users, upon discovering the grayed-out 'Back' button, looked at each other with something akin to horror. "
Granted these people might be techno-shmucks, but I think we geeks seem to forget that too easily. I found a lady just last year still using win 3.11 as her OS and was *irate* to find out that she was being forced to upgrade to a brand new PC. I had to spend hours with her explaining the new OS and even then she was *not* happy with the situation. These people do exist! ;)
Someone at mozilla.org could make some use of that book, methinks. Their website is not made for the average joe. Granted it has gotten better but it's still chock full of unexplained keywords and high expectations of the customer's tech-savvy. I can just see sending my mom to download Mozilla and telling her 'just look for links that say "downloads for windows", don't get sidetracked by trying to figure out what Mozilla is. Just download it and find out later.' It would be nice if someone went through with a user-friendly stick and beat every page, at least a little bit.
# The protagonist could have just asked to be locked in a room until the murder date had passed thereby making the prediction bunk.
If that were the case then everyone charged with a future murder could do the same thing... Besides, since we know the boss man needed him out of the way, if he had come in to be isolated for 36 hours (as boss-man suggests over the vid-phone), i think we all know that boss-man would have immediately had him arrested and thrown into the jail thing.
* Upon being cited for a future murder, the protagonist decides that he should run, for no other explanation than, "everyone runs".
He thinks that the new guy from the gov't set him up through a newly found loophole. His apparent option would be to prove that he was being set up. And anyway, even if it were just a split-second decision to run away, once you've started running you can't just say "OK, let's work this out rationally." The cops would just take him out and lock him up for murder.
# After having his eyes replaced to get past security, he goes to his office and uses his old eye in a baggy to get in.
I agree on this one. They definitely would have changed his access rights. but then again, this has never happened before, no one from pre-crime has ever been a killer before, so in the confusion of "what the hell?!" they apparently just didn't think of it. conceivable, but doubtful that he would get away with it. FURTHER, having used his eyes to scan into the future crime dept and steal a precog surely by then they would have found someone to say "Oops, we forgot to remove his rights!" and strip him of his security, which would have disallowed his wife entrance to the prison area at the end of the movie.
having Speilburg explain a completely typical ending over and over
This one sucked. sorta, "yeah you explained that already." but also he needed to present the point that Cruse's character had actually figured it out. before, only the government guy had and he was killed. I'm not sure how he could have done it without explaining it twice. though the movie he presents to everyone in the ball seemed pretty self-explanatory. In that case, though, he would have needed to find a way to babble on *something* until the two could meet... *shrugs*
so. at an acm programming team contest we had to find a series of numbers that were cubes of other numbers .. i don't remember the details but basically what was happening was that every four or five iterations we'd be off by some miniscule amount (at least as far as the example was concerned). it turns out that the pow() function in c++ is done through some crazy natural log thing (that i understood at the time) and because of all the flipping around eventually there is some minor precision loss. anyway, so after digging around forever in our code we finally changed the lines of y=pow(3,x); to y=x*x*x; and got the right answer.
further, at that same contest we kept turing in this one program that was behaving *perfectly* for us. we turned it in over and over and over after making minor changes that we desperately made until finally we gave up and asked the proctors to take a look at. apparently the judges were using some dos-based pre-made script to compile, run, and test our Visual C++ programs... and when we just used the "!" icon in the IDE it was compiling the programs with different compiling options. It took us another 20 minutes after it was revealed to us that this was even possible.. we were checking in a loop to the size of a string, that is, the possible length of a string, not the actual length. so if we had string1[30] then we had a for loop going to 30 instead of the number of characters in string1. using the standard build this was OK, MSDev was apparently "smart enough" to stop for us but because of the more strict (and accurate) methods of the judges we lost an insane amount of time on that program.
*sigh* we only got 3 programs of the 7 provided. still, i was proud considering it was my first one :) anyway, I don't think that second one counts as a "bug" in Visual C++, it just, well, sucked.
I'm a windows user pretty much, but I'm making a gradual transition of weening myself of MS. For example as a webmaster of several sites, since i've always been in charge of choosing servers, I have been able to leisurely learn how to navigate Linux through an ssh terminal.
Anyway, one of the first steps for culling the ms influence was to try to avoid the Microsoft browser. Unfortunately there are dozens of corporate websites that I have forced me to switch to IE because the website doesn't support alternatives. For example flipdog.com, a really cool jobsearch tool, doesn't support mozilla/netscape's browser and because they have faulty code from an old version of dreamweaver (so turning it in to bugzilla doesn't work) mozilla won't work (ironically it's only two lines of javascript that need to be changed!). I emailed them and so did a mozilla hacker and we got the response, simply, that flipdog does not and will not support mozilla/netscape. Now, the only way for flipdog to change their minds is if they see a large base of people coming in using m/n instead of IE or if a large number of people politely suggest to them an alternative. (Go to the main page of flipdog.com and click the "tell us what you think!" link.) The point is that even with something as simple as an html + javascript website this very useful and popular jobsearch tool is doing exactly what you said companies wouldn't: cut off their nose to spite their face, so to speak. but you assume that they care! "Ahh, so 1 in 100 people will have to close their browser window and open a different one. big deal! If it saves us money in development, I'm all for it."
for ms-loving companies that don't have the budget of ebay it might not be worth it to go against ms's plans without prodding. who knows.