Microsoft Hatred FAQ

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:48:18 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org...
What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

That's a false analogy. A better analogy is, "go to your local car dealer
and see if you can buy a new car with the tyres of your choice."

Even non-technical types can choose to run a non-Windows operating system
on an Intel-compatible PC. So why do the tier-one vendors and all laptop
manufacturers make their machines available only with Windows? Or on the
very few occasions they will offer a naked PC, the price is the same as
for PC + Windows.

I'm aware of talk that Dell is selling Linux PCs at Walmart for less than
the same hardware plus Windows. Talk is cheap -- I'm not aware of anyone
who has actually seen these Linux PCs. I'd love to know either way.

(Oh, and since I am in Australia, and we haven't yet been invaded by
Walmart, I can't go and look for myself.)
--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #52

Mike Schilling

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...

Which standards? W3C doesn't make standards (they talk about working
drafts and recommendations), so nothing to warp there for MS.

Umm, a recommendation *is* a standard.

And Microsoft must disagree with you. When the spec editor for XML took a
consulting gig with Netsacpe, they insisted he be fired. (See
http://www.textuality.com/xml/Opinion.html)

Oct 16 '05 #53

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:47:09 +0000, John Bokma wrote:

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web based,
and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions matter? It
doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example, OpenOffice. Yet
people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one reason is that people
like to belong to a group. So even if it really doesn't matter which OS
you are going to use to access a web application, or even which browser,
people will pick a certain browser, and a certain OS, just because.

Dude, do you think that Microsoft gives a rat's tail[1] for what a handful
of computer enthusiasts and geek programmers pick? They want to control
the business world, and believe me, corporations don't pick the OS of
their computer because they want to join a community, they pick the OS
that lets them run the applications that their business needs to run.

Operating-system independent browser-based applications threaten the
ability of Microsoft to tie that choice to Windows. That is why MS decided
to bundle IE with Windows and (try to) kill off Netscape as a competitor.

[1] Or any other part of the rat.
--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #54

Gunnar Hjalmarsson

[ Followup-To set to the less inappropriate alt.religion ]

Xah Lee wrote:

Microsoft Hatred, FAQ

Once again you fools have been tricked by the XL troll to hold an
endless off-topic discussion in several groups.

--
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
Email: http://www.gunnar.cc/cgi-bin/contact.pl

Oct 16 '05 #55

Matt Garrish

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...

"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Eventually the hope is that your OS and browser
will become the only means of accessing the internet. And if your OS
and browser are the only way to access the Internet, who in their
right mind would use another system?

It's not happening, so what are you talking about? Any developer hoping
the above has no clue what he/she is developing.

What happened is irrelevant to what the desire was of M$ when it set out to
take the browser market away from Netscape. When you control the OS market
and make your browser a tied component of it and to the benefit of yourself
only, you limit the ability of anyone else to compete.

I'm still waiting for you to enlighten the rest of us as to the real reason,
though. The anti-trust case that they lost would tend not to bode well for
whatever altruistic argument you might have. I'd also like to hear how MS
Java and jscript show a desire for people to be using anything but M$
products to access or publish pages on the Internet?

Matt

Oct 16 '05 #56

John W. Kennedy

Tim Roberts wrote:

"Jeroen Wenting" <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote:
Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either.
If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and there'd be no
other software manufacturers at all.

This is wrong. The dictionary definition of a monopoly is when a
manufacturer has all or nearly all of a market. Microsoft DOES have a
monopoly on PC operating systems.

That, in itself, is not necessarily illegal. However, Microsoft then USED
that monopoly power to stifle their competition, and that IS illegal.

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

So they can disrupt standards and make it extremely difficult to create
websites that work both with IE and with any non-Windows browser. The
most blatant example is that, a full five years after XHTML came out, IE
doesn't render it at all.

A few years ago, they did the same thing with browser plugins. IE used
to support the same plugins that Netscape did. Then MS arbitrarily
designed a new way of doing plugins that can only work with Windows (and
which, incidentally, opens security holes), and removed support for
standard plugins. As a result, plugin makers have to support two
different plugins, or else choose between compatibility with IE and
compatibility with everybody else.

The message -- "co-operate with us, or be punished".

--
John W. Kennedy
"...if you had to fall in love with someone who was evil, I can see why
it was her."
-- "Alias"

Oct 16 '05 #57

John Wingate

Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc John Wingate <jo****@worldpath.net> wrote:
Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc Jeroen Wenting <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote:
Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful
than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
mainframe terminals.

Uh - when microsoft produced dos 1.0, or whatever it was, I was sitting
at my Sun 360 workstation (with 4M of RAM, later upgraded to 8M),
running SunOS 3.8 or thereabouts.
Peter, if you are serious, and not just pulling our legs, your memory is
failing.
Well, it might be a bit off. I am talking about 1986.
MS-DOS 1.0 came out in August 1981; SunOS 3.0 in February 1986.

Seems about right.

So what version of msdos was around at that time? Obviously I didn't
use it!

In 1986? That would be version 3. I have MS-DOS 3.10 (Victor/Sirius
version corresponding to 3.1 for x86) dated 1986.
Sun Microsystems was incorporated (with four employees) in February 1982.
There never was a SunOS 3.8. (SunOS 3.5 was succeeded by 4.0.) And I'm

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

Dunno. The first version I used was 3.4, in 1987.

--
John Wingate Mathematics is the art which teaches
jo****@worldpath.net one how not to make calculations.
--Oscar Chisini

Oct 16 '05 #58

"Mike Schilling" <ms*************@hotmail.com> wrote:

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...
Which standards? W3C doesn't make standards (they talk about working
drafts and recommendations), so nothing to warp there for MS.
Umm, a recommendation *is* a standard.

No, it's a recommendation, an advise, nothing else. Otherwise they would
call it a standard. Why do you think W3C calls it recommendations? Because
it are no standards. There is an ISO HTML standard though, but when people
babble about HTML standards they talk about W3C *recommendations*.

"Recommendation
Specifications published by the W3C. They cannot be officially called
"standards," since the W3C is a consortium that does not have the status of
the standard body reserved for the ISO and national standard bodies. The
specifications, which are finalized and approved by the Director, are then
called "W3C Recommendations.""
(Quote from an O'Reilly book)
And Microsoft must disagree with you.

So that must mean you're right? Then wonder why there is an ISO standard
(yes) for HTML.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #59

David Schwartz

"Måns Rullgård" <mr*@inprovide.com> wrote in message
news:yw**************@ford.inprovide.com...

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes:
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org...
What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.
Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

That's more like buying a computer without a CPU, which I can in fact
do. Buying a computer without ms windows is more like buying a hifi
set without a Britney Spears CD. I can do that too.

I guess I wasn't explicit enough. Most people who want cars also want an
engine. Some don't. Dealers could sell cars and engines separately. They
just (generally) don't. There is nothing illegal or immoral about this.

DS

Oct 16 '05 #60

David Schwartz

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web based,
and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions matter? It
doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example, OpenOffice. Yet
people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one reason is that people
like to belong to a group. So even if it really doesn't matter which OS
you are going to use to access a web application, or even which browser,
people will pick a certain browser, and a certain OS, just because.

You don't get it. The point is, you can pick any Linux distribution and
still use the same applications. This is exactly what Microsoft *doesn't*
want. They want applications to be locked to Microsoft OSes. For then to do
this, applications have to be as tied to the OS as possible. The browser as
a target platform threatened this Microsoft vision, so Microsoft reacted by
trying to corner the browser market and balkanize Java.

You can agree or disagree with the rationale and by sympathetic with or
antagonistic to Microsoft's motive. But these are historical facts.

DS

Oct 16 '05 #61

Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:47:09 +0000, John Bokma wrote:
Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web
based, and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions
matter? It doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example,
OpenOffice. Yet people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one
reason is that people like to belong to a group. So even if it really
doesn't matter which OS you are going to use to access a web
application, or even which browser, people will pick a certain
browser, and a certain OS, just because.
Dude, do you think that Microsoft gives a rat's tail[1] for what a
handful of computer enthusiasts and geek programmers pick?

So you missed the point again.
They want
to control the business world, and believe me, corporations don't pick
the OS of their computer because they want to join a community, they
pick the OS that lets them run the applications that their business
needs to run.
So basically you're saying that even if web based applications become
the shit, everybody keeps running Microsoft? So I am right :-)
Operating-system independent browser-based applications threaten the
ability of Microsoft to tie that choice to Windows.
Ah, sure, you really think that a business is going to run office
applications on a web server? Are they already moving to Linux with
OpenOffice (free as in speech?).
That is why MS
decided to bundle IE with Windows and (try to) kill off Netscape as a
competitor.

So and when exactly do we see the web based office?

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #62

David Schwartz

"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au...

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:48:18 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org...
What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

That's a false analogy. A better analogy is, "go to your local car dealer
and see if you can buy a new car with the tyres of your choice."
How is that better? Nothing in your car depends upon what tires you have
on. But all of the rest of the software on your computer is dependent upon
your choice of OS.
Even non-technical types can choose to run a non-Windows operating system
on an Intel-compatible PC. So why do the tier-one vendors and all laptop
manufacturers make their machines available only with Windows? Or on the
very few occasions they will offer a naked PC, the price is the same as
for PC + Windows.

I don't really know why and I don't particularly care. I think it has a
lot to do with support costs and may also have to do with the type of deals
Microsoft offers.

The point is, they do. And there's nothing unusual, immoral, or
problemmatic about it. If you don't think the total package is worth the
total package price, buy elsewhere.

DS

Oct 16 '05 #63

Peter T. Breuer

In comp.os.linux.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:

I guess I wasn't explicit enough. Most people who want cars also want an
engine. Some don't. Dealers could sell cars and engines separately. They
just (generally) don't. There is nothing illegal or immoral about this.

There would be if an engine manufacturer refused to provide car
manufacturers with ANY engines for any model, unless all buyers were
charged for THEIR engine in every model, whether their engine was in
there or not.

You want to cease this line of apologism.

Peter

Oct 16 '05 #64

"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote:

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...
"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Eventually the hope is that your OS and browser
will become the only means of accessing the internet. And if your OS
and browser are the only way to access the Internet, who in their
right mind would use another system?

It's not happening, so what are you talking about? Any developer
hoping the above has no clue what he/she is developing.

What happened is irrelevant to what the desire was of M$ when it set
out to take the browser market away from Netscape. When you control
the OS market and make your browser a tied component of it and to the
benefit of yourself only, you limit the ability of anyone else to
compete.

I'm still waiting for you to enlighten the rest of us as to the real
reason, though.

The same reason why Google is into IM, GMail, WIFI, and many other things.
And Apple into music, phones, you name it. Just don't bet on one horse.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #65

Tim Hammerquist

Jeroen Wenting <jwenting> wrote:

Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either.
If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and
there'd be no other software manufacturers at all.

Interesting. Standard Oil only had about 2/3 of the oil
refining market when they were split up. And Microsoft has
a fair bit more of the home computer market than that.

The fact is, while Microsoft is not the only firm in the market,
and are not a "pure monopoly", they are a de facto monopoly, and
have been found on multiple occasions to violate many of the
same practices which Standard Oil performed and caused to become
illegal.

Microsoft is a monopoly, as defined by US Antitrust Law. And as
they've been found similarly guilty by other governing bodies,
it doesn't seem to be a purely American deduction.

I won't deny that Microsoft has done possibly more than any
other single entity to further the mass adoption of public
computer use. I also won't deny that they used a combination of
good products and good business tactics to get to the top of the
industry. I also can't in good conscience call them "evil".

I will, however, say that they have engaged in immoral[*],
unethical, and illegal practices to artificially maintain and
augment their position in the industry and has not yet provided
products/services to back it up.
[*] Yeah, I know. What place do morals have in the business
world. I'm an idealist. Sue me.

Cheers,
Tim Hammerquist

Oct 16 '05 #66

Tim Hammerquist

David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new
car without an engine.

Even if you want to equate a car's engine with a computer's OS,
a better indicator would be to ask the car salesman if, when you
take the car home, are you legally prevented from being able to
remove the engine, or replace/upgrade parts?

Tim

Oct 16 '05 #67

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:28:02 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

That's a false analogy. A better analogy is, "go to your local car dealer
and see if you can buy a new car with the tyres of your choice."

How is that better? Nothing in your car depends upon what tires you have
on. But all of the rest of the software on your computer is dependent upon
your choice of OS.

Within rather broad limits, you can put any tyre you like on your car, but
it is not practical to change your engine.

Within rather broad limits, you can run any OS you like on your computer.

Car manufacturers *like* the fact that there is enormous competition in
the tyre market. If (say) Bridgestone had an effective monopoly, they
could charge whatever they liked and car manufacturers would have to pay
it, or else not sell cars at all. So car manufacturers do not discourage
consumers from choosing their own brand of tyre. If you, the consumer,
cares enough to ask for Brand X tyres on your car, the dealer will fall
over himself to please.

PC manufacturers, on the other hand, do discourage consumers from choosing
their own brand of OS. As a result, the royalties they pay to Microsoft
per PC is frequently more than the profit they make. Most white-goods PC
resellers are lucky to make $50 profit on a PC, *before* wages.
(Presumably Tier One vendors make more than that, but not that much more.)

And that is the mystery that needs to be explained. H-P/Compaq, Dell,
Toshiba, and all the other Tier One and Tier Two vendors have no problem
selling servers without operating systems. Some will even pre-install
Linux on them for you. So why are consumers forced to make the choice of
either paying for Windows with their laptop, or no laptop at all?

You will notice that only 30% of servers run Windows (lots of competition
in the server market) and over 90% of desktops (no competition in the
desktop market). Coincidence? I think not.

--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #68

Tim Hammerquist

Greymaus <gr******@cableone.net> wrote:

Was that the Color Computer III running OS9 Level II for an
operating system, that you're talking about? Motorola 6809
processor? HELLUVA little computer! OS9 was a bit quirky,
though, even for a UNIX clone.

I loved my little CoCo! I had the original CoCo, upgraded with
the 5 1/4" floppy drive, and later upgraded the whole system to
CoCo 3 with OS9.

<3 <3 <3

Of course, it all went downhill from there. MS-DOS 3.1, Pascal,
Windows 3.1...

*sigh*

10 years later, things picked up. Huzzah!

Tim Hammerquist

Oct 16 '05 #69

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 05:26:51 +0000, John Bokma wrote:

Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:47:09 +0000, John Bokma wrote:
Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web
based, and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions
matter? It doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example,
OpenOffice. Yet people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one
reason is that people like to belong to a group. So even if it really
doesn't matter which OS you are going to use to access a web
application, or even which browser, people will pick a certain
browser, and a certain OS, just because.

Dude, do you think that Microsoft gives a rat's tail[1] for what a
handful of computer enthusiasts and geek programmers pick?

So you missed the point again.

"Again"?

What exactly *is* your point? You seem to be oscillating from "Microsoft
doesn't care what browser people use" to "Microsoft cares deeply what
browser people use". I don't understand what you are trying to say.

They want
to control the business world, and believe me, corporations don't pick
the OS of their computer because they want to join a community, they
pick the OS that lets them run the applications that their business
needs to run.

So basically you're saying that even if web based applications become
the shit, everybody keeps running Microsoft? So I am right :-)

No. My point is, IF web-based apps become popular, and back in the 1990s
people thought that they would, and they would run on any browser, then
you could run your browser on any operating system on any hardware. That's
what Microsoft wanted to stop, by gluing the browser to the OS.

Operating-system independent browser-based applications threaten the
ability of Microsoft to tie that choice to Windows.

Ah, sure, you really think that a business is going to run office
applications on a web server? Are they already moving to Linux with
OpenOffice (free as in speech?).

As I said, back in the 90s that's what people thought, including Microsoft.

As for OpenOffice, yes, there is a slow migration away from MS Office. If
you are in the US, the UK or Australia, you probably won't have noticed
it, since it is a tiny trickle in those countries. But in the emerging IT
markets of Asia (especially China), Europe and South America, that trickle
has become a steady stream.

Especially now that Gartner has claimed that migrating from current
versions of Office to Office 12 will cost ten times more for training
alone than migrating to OpenOffice, I think we can expect to see that
trickle start gushing in the next twelve months or so.

That is why MS
decided to bundle IE with Windows and (try to) kill off Netscape as a
competitor.

So and when exactly do we see the web based office?

Rumour has it that Google is preparing to do exactly that.

Personally, I don't see the point. I would never use a web-based office
suite, but then I don't even like web mail.

What's more important these days from Microsoft's strategic planning is
multimedia. Yes, they want -- need -- to keep control of the office suite,
Office gives them something like 1/2 their revenue. But for the long-term,
they want to lock folks into their proprietary Internet-based multimedia
systems (e.g. streaming wmv over mms) because they think that this will
give them control of a very lucrative business. I can't really disagree
with them.

--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #70

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

John Wingate <jo****@worldpath.net> writes:

In 1986? That would be version 3. I have MS-DOS 3.10 (Victor/Sirius
version corresponding to 3.1 for x86) dated 1986.

Yes, a better example of existing platforms (when PC-DOS 1.0 was
shipped with IBM's PCs) is CP/M, which QDOS -> PCDOS -> MSDOS was a
bastardized clone of.

Oct 16 '05 #71

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:

No, it's a recommendation, an advise, nothing else.

It is a de facto standard instead of a de jure standard.

Sort of how the SMTP "recommendation" is the de facto standard for
internet mail instead of ISO-MOTIS (built on the X.400 spec).

Oct 16 '05 #72

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes:

How is that better? Nothing in your car depends upon what tires you have
on. But all of the rest of the software on your computer is dependent upon
your choice of OS.
Which cars let you install another engine as easily as you can install
a new operating system? Admit the analogy sucks, like all car-computer
analogies invariably do.
I don't really know why and I don't particularly care. I think it has a
lot to do with support costs and may also have to do with the type of deals
Microsoft offers.
Microsoft apologists always assume that training cost for Windows
users are zero, that people "know" Windows from the start. If that was
true, there would not be a multi-million market in Windows user
support.
The point is, they do. And there's nothing unusual, immoral, or
problemmatic about it. If you don't think the total package is worth the
total package price, buy elsewhere.

But when Microsoft were doing their illegal arm-wringing of dealers,
there was no "elsewhere" to go.

Oct 16 '05 #73

Roel Schroeven

John Bokma wrote:

jo*@invalid.address wrote:

John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:

"Tim Roberts" <ti**@probo.com> wrote in message
news:a1********************************@4ax.co m...
>Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about
>browser wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion
>dollar a year market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

It really isn't that hard to understand that web-based
applications that work in any browser on any OS threaten
to make it irrelevent what OS you're running.

And it's even easier to understand that your statement is nonsense.

It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you pick, all use the
Linux kernel. On all I can run OpenOffice, and get the same results.
Yet people seem to prefer one distribution over one other.

He was talking about the browser war, and gave a pretty good reason
why it was important. So you respond by pointing out that people
choose a linux distribution for personal (non-technical,
non-marketing) reasons. I think I missed the connection.

web based applications that work with any browser make OS irrelevant ->
not true, since for OpenOffice it doesn't matter which Linux
distribution one runs (or even if it's Linux), yet people seem to make a
point of which distribution they use.

You make the point yourself now: if web based applications work with any
browser, people can freely choose their distribution based on their own
preferences.

- An application works in IE, Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, Lynx, Links,
Opera, ... -> users can use it with any browser on any OS
- An application only works in IE -> users are forced to use Windows (or
one of the other few OS's that IE exists on)

--
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton

Roel Schroeven

Oct 16 '05 #74

Jeroen Wenting

"Peter T. Breuer" <pt*@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote in message
news:t3************@news.it.uc3m.es...

In comp.os.linux.misc Jeroen Wenting <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl>
wrote:
Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more
powerful
than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
mainframe terminals.

Uh - when microsoft produced dos 1.0, or whatever it was, I was sitting
at my Sun 360 workstation (with 4M of RAM, later upgraded to 8M),
running SunOS 3.8 or thereabouts.

And how many people who now have $500 PCs ($200 of which is the cost of the
OS) would have been able to afford those?

My point is that Microsoft made computers that were more than glorified
gaming consoles affordable for the common man.
They are the ones who lowered the price of shrinkwrapped software for home
and office application from thousands or tens of thousands to hundreds of
dollars.

Oct 16 '05 #75

Jeroen Wenting

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org...

"Jeroen Wenting" <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> writes:
Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's
not monopoly, i don't know what is.
They got where they are by CHEATING. That is why they are evil, not
because they have a large market share.

no, they got their by clever marketing and generally having a product
that
was easier to use for the average user than anything the competition made
and a lot more powerful than other products created for their main target
market.

What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.

And were later forced to rescind. The judge who wrote that opinion is well
known for his anti-Microsoft activism.

Prices would be far far higher than they are today

I disagree. Before Gates decided to sell BASIC, software was very
cheap. It started getting cheap again in the late 80s. Now that cheap
software is threatening MS, they're doing their best to shut down all
the sources of quality cheap software, with there usual disregard for
truth, legality, ethics or the good of either the customer or their
business partners.

WordPerfect (to take an example) cost several thousand dollars.
When Microsoft released Office 4 for a few hundred WP was forced to lower
prices radically, and so was Lotus (to name a few).

IBM's prediction that there would be 5 computers (not counting game
computers like the Comodores and Spectrums) by 2000 would likely have
come
true.

I see. You're a troll.

nope, I'm just sick and tired of trolls like you calling everyone who
doesn't share their hatred of Microsoft a troll.

Oct 16 '05 #76

axel

In comp.lang.perl.misc Matt Garrish <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote:

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market. Why would you risk anything to own it?
It may not be worth loads of money in-and-of itself now (don't forget
Netscape wasn't always free, though), but if you control how people view the
Internet you can make a lot of money in other ways, especially if you build
your browser into your operating system and warp standards so that people
who design sites take advantage of the proprietary features. Eventually the
hope is that your OS and browser will become the only means of accessing the
internet. And if your OS and browser are the only way to access the
Internet, who in their right mind would use another system?

There was a time in the early-mid 1990s that Microsoft was making noises
about setting up a 'commercial Internet' through which they hoped
to control all online trading (with a percentage of each transaction
going to themselves of course). I forget the exact details but it
seemed a very real suggestion at the time.

Axel

Oct 16 '05 #77

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:49:58 +0200, Jeroen Wenting wrote:

My point is that Microsoft made computers that were more than glorified
gaming consoles affordable for the common man.
Microsoft has never made a computer in its existence. Not one. They are a
software company. The only hardware they sell are keyboards and mice.

They are the ones who lowered the price of shrinkwrapped software for home
and office application from thousands or tens of thousands to hundreds of
dollars.

Yeah, if you ignore Apple, Wordperfect, Adobe, Aldus, Wordstar, and dozens
of other software suppliers.

Is it possible for you to get your arguments even more wrong? What's next?
Microsoft invented the transistor?
--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #78

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:54:20 +0200, Jeroen Wenting wrote:

What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.
And were later forced to rescind.

False. When the Bush administration took over from Clinton, they didn't
follow through with punishing Microsoft for, e.g. perjury, but they didn't
"rescind" the judgement.
The judge who wrote that opinion is well
known for his anti-Microsoft activism.

Well, that sure answered my previous question.

Remember, Microsoft has been found guilty of illegal practices in *many*
civil suits, and settled out of court many more, plus TWO American DoJ
investigations by two different judges, plus Japan, the EU, and a number
of individual European nations.
--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #79

Fredrik Lundh

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

Microsoft has never made a computer in its existence. Not one.

http://www.microsoft.com/xbox/

</F>

Oct 16 '05 #80

Michael Heiming

In comp.os.linux.misc Steven D'Aprano <st***@removethiscyber.com.au>:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:49:58 +0200, Jeroen Wenting wrote:
My point is that Microsoft made computers that were more than glorified
gaming consoles affordable for the common man. Microsoft has never made a computer in its existence. Not one. They are a
One should be lucky.
software company. The only hardware they sell are keyboards and mice.
They are the ones who lowered the price of shrinkwrapped software for home
and office application from thousands or tens of thousands to hundreds of
dollars.

Yeah, if you ignore Apple, Wordperfect, Adobe, Aldus, Wordstar, and dozens
of other software suppliers. Is it possible for you to get your arguments even more wrong? What's next?
Microsoft invented the transistor?

Let's not forget about the Internet, they invented together with
Al Gore and of course the wheel!

Honestly, for anyone serious, there are "The Halloween
Documents", which should give enough information about FUD...

http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

At least, a nice troll bait the OP launched, even if obvious
enough, extensive cross-posting and "Microsoft" right in the
subject. ;-)

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zv*****@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 390: Increased sunspot activity.

Oct 16 '05 #81

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 12:54:48 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Microsoft has never made a computer in its existence. Not one.

http://www.microsoft.com/xbox/

Does Microsoft actually make the Xbox or just sub-contract it out?

Either way, your point is taken. But since the OP did explicitly contrast
the supposed Microsoft PC revolution with games machines, I think my
insignificant error is forgivable and understandable. The Xbox is not a
general purpose computer, it has limited software other than games, and
Microsoft gets really, really REALLY upset if you try to install another
operating system on it.

--
Steven.

Oct 16 '05 #82

Peter T. Breuer

In comp.os.linux.misc Jeroen Wenting <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote:

"Peter T. Breuer" <pt*@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote in message
news:t3************@news.it.uc3m.es...
In comp.os.linux.misc Jeroen Wenting <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl>
wrote:
Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more
powerful
than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
mainframe terminals.

Uh - when microsoft produced dos 1.0, or whatever it was, I was sitting
at my Sun 360 workstation (with 4M of RAM, later upgraded to 8M),
running SunOS 3.8 or thereabouts.

And how many people who now have $500 PCs ($200 of which is the cost of the
OS) would have been able to afford those?

Well, I almost bought my Sun workstation after three years, as it had
depreciated to nearly nothing in value! As I recall, it would have been
about 2000 pounds then if I had decided to buy it. That was a bit more than
the price of a new 286 at that point. But it had scsi disks! And 8M of
ram instead of just 640KB! And a huge monitor (what were those sun
monitor sizes?) instead of a tichy 640x480 PC screen.

If I recall right, the first computer I bought (after the Sun)
was an 8088 "portable". I sold it off almost at once in favour of a
386sx20 portable with 1MB of ram and 20MB of disk which cost more than
1000 pounds sterling. I was able to run linux on that machine, after
upping its memory to 3MB.

Peter

Oct 16 '05 #83

Tim Tyler

In comp.lang.java.programmer Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote or quoted:

Uh - when microsoft produced dos 1.0, or whatever it was, I was sitting
at my Sun 360 workstation (with 4M of RAM, later upgraded to 8M),
running SunOS 3.8 or thereabouts.

And a mean game of tetris it played too. Chess wasn't worth the
humiliation at level 5.

I believe every researcher in britain got one as a matter of course, but
they only replaced the perq machines that everyone had had to put up
with before then. The vaxen running hpux or so were plentiful too, and
had fine monitors, tending more to the PC shape. We'd made our own word
processor machines and spreadsheet automatons before that. It didn't
take that many components, just a good engineer and a room full of
lackeys with soddering irons. The BBC were selling kits too (what were
they? Ataris?), not that I ever fell for that.

Acorn computers. Manufacturers of the best computer I ever owned.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ ti*@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.

Oct 16 '05 #84

Rhino

"John W. Kennedy" <jw*****@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:4m*******************@fe10.lga...

Rhino wrote:
Everyone
else was still using typewriters - which was IBM's bread and butter in those days - for their business needs.

Oh dear, no. Not quite. There were, going back decades, machines that
used punched cards, relays, stepper wheels, and punched cards. It was
/that/ that was the foundation of IBM's business, and IBM had an
effective monopoly. This was not altogether due to evil; their one
competitor, Remington Rand, made machines that were slightly better, but
had to be factory-programmed, whereas IBM's machines used panels full of
jumper wires, and the panels themselves could be swapped, so that you
could have a "program library" of prewired panels. Which would /you/ buy?

Remington Rand made a similar mistake with computers. They wouldn't give
you a programming manual until you contracted to buy the bloody thing.
IBM pulled ahead of them during the year when Univac computers were real
and IBM computers weren't, and they never looked back.

Sorry, my mistake. I knew that IBM had collators and such things back in
those days but I didn't know what percentage of their business they
comprised. I used to work with a long-time IBMer who had started out in
marketing in the 60s or so and I got the impression from him that
typewriters were still the bulk of IBM's business. Perhaps he was just in
that division and didn't know the "big picture".

My apologies for inadvertently misleading anyone. These events took place
before my time so I probably should have researched more before making those
remarks.

Rhino

Oct 16 '05 #85

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <ja********@hotmail.com> wrote:

John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:
No, it's a recommendation, an advise, nothing else.

It is a de facto standard instead of a de jure standard.

Yup, a recommendation.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #86

Tim Tyler

In comp.lang.java.programmer Steven D'Aprano <st***@removethiscyber.com.au> wrote or quoted:

I'm aware of talk that Dell is selling Linux PCs at Walmart for less than
the same hardware plus Windows. Talk is cheap -- I'm not aware of anyone
who has actually seen these Linux PCs. I'd love to know either way.

See:

``Dell's Open PC Costs More Than Windows Box''

- http://hardware.slashdot.org/article...id=190&tid=137
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ ti*@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.

Oct 16 '05 #87

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...
Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web
based, and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions
matter? It doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example,
OpenOffice. Yet people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one
reason is that people like to belong to a group. So even if it really
doesn't matter which OS you are going to use to access a web
application, or even which browser, people will pick a certain
browser, and a certain OS, just because.
You don't get it. The point is, you can pick any Linux
distribution and
still use the same applications. This is exactly what Microsoft
*doesn't* want. They want applications to be locked to Microsoft OSes.
For then to do this, applications have to be as tied to the OS as
possible. The browser as a target platform threatened this Microsoft
vision, so Microsoft reacted by trying to corner the browser market
and balkanize Java.

And when are we going to see this browser as a target platform?
You can agree or disagree with the rationale and by sympathetic
with or
antagonistic to Microsoft's motive. But these are historical facts.

No: the historical fact is that MS whiped Netscape of the planet. That
you come up with "They were afraid that everybody would be running NS
Office online using Netscape" is just a guess.

MS just seems to ignore a certain development for some time, then state
it's not significant, and next they are an important player. This is not
limited to "MS missed the Internet, almost...". They don't miss
anything, they just don't jump on every hype.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #88

Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 05:26:51 +0000, John Bokma wrote:
Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:47:09 +0000, John Bokma wrote:

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web
based, and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions
matter? It doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example,
OpenOffice. Yet people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one
reason is that people like to belong to a group. So even if it
really doesn't matter which OS you are going to use to access a web
application, or even which browser, people will pick a certain
browser, and a certain OS, just because.

Dude, do you think that Microsoft gives a rat's tail[1] for what a
handful of computer enthusiasts and geek programmers pick?
So you missed the point again.

"Again"?

What exactly *is* your point? You seem to be oscillating from
"Microsoft doesn't care what browser people use"

I didn't write that.
to "Microsoft cares
deeply what browser people use". I don't understand what you are
trying to say.
Neither that. I wrote: People *care* what OS they are using. Hence, even
if there is a standard web platform for applications, and it doesn't
matter what you use, people still will prefer MS over others. Even if
they can't see any difference. I already wrote: look at CDs. There are
several factories producing CDs. There are labels put on the same batch
of CDs. So one can buy brand X, and brand Y, but basically you buy CDs
made by factory Z, batch W. And yet people make a great deal about how
much better X is compared to Y for burning CDs.

So even if the OS doesn't matter from a technical viewpoint (which I
don't see happen soon), people are able to attach matters to their
choice. It's like those cookies that every year get more tastier,
better, etc.

So basically you're saying that even if web based applications become
the shit, everybody keeps running Microsoft? So I am right :-)

No. My point is, IF web-based apps become popular, and back in the
1990s people thought that they would,

Some did, some didn't. I didn't. I always said the Notworking computer
was just that: not working.
and they would run on any
browser, then you could run your browser on any operating system on
any hardware. That's what Microsoft wanted to stop, by gluing the
browser to the OS.
And how exactly was that going to work?

Ah, sure, you really think that a business is going to run office
applications on a web server? Are they already moving to Linux with
OpenOffice (free as in speech?).

As I said, back in the 90s that's what people thought, including
Microsoft.

So, you have contacts in high places, or you make it up? *I* didn't
think that back in the 90s, and I remember quite a lot of people didn't
think it either. The diskless Networking computer had quickly a harddisc
added, and I, and many others said: what's the difference? How much does
a harddisc save and how much costs does it add not having it? The
picture was clear to me, and others back then: thin clients are not
happening. The whole PC idea is that you can shop your hardware, put it
in a computer, and have your own *Personal* computer.
As for OpenOffice, yes, there is a slow migration away from MS Office.
Yup, like the slow migration away from MS as an OS.
If you are in the US, the UK or Australia, you probably won't have
noticed it,
I am in Mexico, am Dutch, and have been living in NZ for 2 years. The
only companies who say that it's going to happen are the ones that do
Linux support (go figure).
since it is a tiny trickle in those countries. But in the
emerging IT markets of Asia (especially China), Europe and South
America, that trickle has become a steady stream.
I am in Latin America, and it's not happening here as far as I know.
Especially now that Gartner has claimed that migrating from current
versions of Office to Office 12 will cost ten times more for training
alone than migrating to OpenOffice, I think we can expect to see that
trickle start gushing in the next twelve months or so.
LOL, well, I am not going to hold my breath.

That is why MS
decided to bundle IE with Windows and (try to) kill off Netscape as
a competitor.

So and when exactly do we see the web based office?

Rumour has it that Google is preparing to do exactly that.

Yeah, rumours.
Personally, I don't see the point. I would never use a web-based
office suite, but then I don't even like web mail.
Yes, I agree with you. But, like I explained in a related thread
somewhere else some time ago, a web based office will get users. As I
said, I live in Mexico. Most people here don't have money for a PC (and
no, they are not going to buy those miracle machines like AMD is
promising), so they go to Internet cafes when they need one. Students I
know already rely a lot on Hotmail, Gmail, etc, to store and exchange
their homework. They edit it in an Internet cafe, email it, etc. So I am
sure that in Mexico, people might going to switch to web based office.
What's more important these days from Microsoft's strategic planning
is multimedia.
And advertising, which is quite related of course.
Yes, they want -- need -- to keep control of the office
suite, Office gives them something like 1/2 their revenue. But for the
long-term, they want to lock folks into their proprietary
Internet-based multimedia systems (e.g. streaming wmv over mms)
because they think that this will give them control of a very
lucrative business. I can't really disagree with them.

Yup, I don't see MS disappear very soon now, nor do I see major shifts
(like desktop to network) happening very soon.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #89

Roel Schroeven <rs****************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:
web based applications that work with any browser make OS irrelevant
-> not true, since for OpenOffice it doesn't matter which Linux
distribution one runs (or even if it's Linux), yet people seem to
make a point of which distribution they use.

You make the point yourself now: if web based applications work with
any browser, people can freely choose their distribution based on
their own preferences.

Yup, and what will they pick?
- An application works in IE, Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, Lynx, Links,
Opera, ... -> users can use it with any browser on any OS
I think that we both understand that one browser will be more compatible
then an other. It will only happen if all use exactly the same render
engine, or all web recommendations are frozen. And if that happens,
people selling stuff will find ways to make their version just a little
better.

Look at processors: which one would you buy at the moment? AMD? Intel?
and if you pick a brand, which type? As soon as products can't evolve
much more, the producers will find ways to make them even better
compared to last week.
- An application only works in IE -> users are forced to use Windows
(or one of the other few OS's that IE exists on)

Or wait until there comes a solution from a 3rd party. Force doesn't
exists with software unless you can manipulate the law to enforce it.
And I don't believe that everybody at Microsoft was/is that stupid to
think they can make that something they don't controll only works with
their software. Sure they can make it harder, like I said, you can
always add things, especially if you are the major player, but Firefox
is a nice proof that there is no such force, and I doubt that there are
people working at Microsoft in major positions who didn't see this
coming.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

Oct 16 '05 #90

joe

John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:

jo*@invalid.address wrote:
John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:
jo*@invalid.address wrote:

> John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> writes:
>
>> "David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > "Tim Roberts" <ti**@probo.com> wrote in message
>> > news:a1********************************@4ax.com... web based applications that work with any browser make OS
irrelevant -> not true, since for OpenOffice it doesn't matter
which Linux distribution one runs (or even if it's Linux), yet
people seem to make a point of which distribution they use.

A linux distribution isn't an OS, it's a distribution, so I'm not sure
what your point here is.

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web
based, and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions
matter? It doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example,
OpenOffice. Yet people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one
reason is that people like to belong to a group. So even if it
really doesn't matter which OS you are going to use to access a web
application, or even which browser, people will pick a certain
browser, and a certain OS, just because.

Thanks for spelling it out for me. Now could you spell out what this
has to do with Microsoft's intentions?

On second thought, don't bother, I think you're talking about
something else, and I'm not sure what that is.

Joe
--
Gort, klatu barada nikto

Oct 16 '05 #91

Mike Schilling

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn************************@130.133.1.4...

"Mike Schilling" <ms*************@hotmail.com> wrote:

"John Bokma" <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xn*************************@130.133.1.4...
Which standards? W3C doesn't make standards (they talk about working
drafts and recommendations), so nothing to warp there for MS.

Umm, a recommendation *is* a standard.

No, it's a recommendation, an advise, nothing else. Otherwise they would
call it a standard. Why do you think W3C calls it recommendations? Because
it are no standards. There is an ISO HTML standard though, but when people
babble about HTML standards they talk about W3C *recommendations*.

In that sense there are no standards in software. The ISO C++ "standard"
and the XML "recommendation" have the same amount of force behind them.

Oct 16 '05 #92

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:30:41 GMT, Tim Roberts <ti**@probo.com> wrote
or quoted :

Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful
than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
mainframe terminals.

Utter hogwash. Computer hardware would still have followed the path it
did. I suspect we'd all be using WordPerfect or AbiWord on some kind of
Unix clone, and I also suspect application integration wouldn't be as
commonplace as it now is, but it's silly to credit Microsoft with the
ubiquity of powerful computers.

Granted MS did figure out all kinds of ways to waste RAM and CPU power
thus forcing people to upgrade to more powerful computers. What might
have happened with someone else leading the charge it we would be
using less powerful computers but getting more spritely response.

That is like saying you credit SUV owners for any advances in
alternative energy because they helped burn up the oil faster.

MS has held BACK computer evolution by tying their OS so heavily to
the Pentium architecture. The chip architecture has nowhere near
enough registers. MS refused to believe the Internet was more than a
passing fad. They are still frantically patching security holes in
their OS over a decade later.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #93

On 15 Oct 2005 22:47:45 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote
or quoted :

Opera seems to be making money with it. Also, Firefox gets money from
Google kickback. Maybe MS had a similar idea in mind, but it failed
(remember how they wanted to add ads to keywords in webpages?)

There also had that Passport thing. They probably figured they would
take over Internet commerce and get rich off the user fees.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #94

On 16 Oct 2005 00:47:09 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote
or quoted :

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web based,
and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions matter?

The point is you make your choice based on quality of the OS and
distribution, not whether it can run a given piece of software.

Web apps, Java and other multiplatform tools force OSes to compete on
quality, not on proprietary lockin.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #95

On 16 Oct 2005 05:22:47 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote
or quoted :

No, it's a recommendation, an advise, nothing else. Otherwise they would
call it a standard. Why do you think W3C calls it recommendations? Because
it are no standards. There is an ISO HTML standard though, but when people
babble about HTML standards they talk about W3C *recommendations*.

What do you think the Internet is based on? RFCs. That stands for
"Request For Comment". It is an in-sort of Internet humour to name
standards that way.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #96

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:48:18 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.com> wrote or quoted :

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

Given that that the OS and the hardware come from completely different
companies, I think that a specious analogy.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #97

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:22:58 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.com> wrote or quoted :

I guess I wasn't explicit enough. Most people who want cars also want an
engine. Some don't. Dealers could sell cars and engines separately. They
just (generally) don't. There is nothing illegal or immoral about this.

I used to be a retailer of custom computers. MS used a dirty trick to
compete with IBM's OS/2. They said to me as a retailer. You must buy
a copy of our OS for EVERY machine you sell. The alternative is to
pay full retail for the OSes.

That meant a customer who wanted OS/2 had to effectively also buy an
unwanted copy of Windows. How could OS/2 compete?
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Oct 16 '05 #98