IE is Evillllllll

[Gurm]

Ok a couple of points:

Paddy:

The reason your windows die is that "child windows" (i.e. right-click on a link and pick "open in a new window") run in the same process as parent windows. Therefore, hose one, hose 'em all. However, if you click the IE shortcut a dozen times, crashing one only crashes the one.

Now, something that bothers me is that all MS products are strangely linked to the MS TCP/IP stack which is fairly buggy. So you can get all your IE windows to stop responding because one of them is hogging the stack. However, kill the offending one and all the others come back to life. And it's not just IE that has this bug - it's all network programs (newsreaders are particularly bad if you're trying to do a mass download or flag a huge group).

Jammrock:

Netscape Excommunicator is a festering boil on the ass of networking, and has been since they rushed version 4 to market. And "mozilla" is garbage. If I wanted my desktop to look like Linux I'd install Linux.

Denty:

Linux will NEVER compete for the "joe-casual" user. Not because it CAN'T, but because the authors are fundamentally opposed to some of the things you have to do to the OS to make it mass-market ready. If your entire OS is "open-source" then nobody can be held accountable for mission-critical bugs, now can they? If I buy SunOS and discover that there is an astonishing memory leak under certain conditions, I can call Sun and demand a hotfix. If my grandma can't figure out how to make her snappy new install of Windows ME connect to the internet, she can call Micro$oft. Who can you call if your Mandrake 7.1 install fails to see your modem? Mandrake? Yeah, right! It's an "open-source" modem driver written by some kid from Hoboken. Is Mandrake gonna wade through the source with you on the phone? And then are they gonna explain to my Grandma (who still isn't on the internet because the modem doesn't work) how to download and install it? Are they gonna give her a crash course in makefiles and fed-ex her the fix? Don't make me laugh!

All:

I think you all need to learn something. Microsoft is NOT a monopoly. They never have been. They lose market share hardcore to better programs.

Quicken beats the living crap out of MS-Money any way you look at it. Would Intuit sell? No. Does MS try to bundle Money with all their OS sales? Yes. Does it help? No - people still buy Quicken.

OS/2 made a serious dent in Windows, until IBM stopped promoting it. OS/2 Warp was WORLDS better than Windows 3.1, and arguably better than the first release of Win95. IBM stopped pushing it and it failed.

Until Office 97 came out, I had Wordperfect installed on my machine. Word97 was just BETTER. Some would argue with me - many of my friends kept with Wordperfect until they sold out and became Corel or Lotus or whichever bad bundle they are now. However, you can't really argue that Word 2000 isn't the best word processor for Windows. So what happened? Wordperfect fell behind, that's all.

IE didn't beat Netscape because MS bundled it with the OS. It beat Netscape because it was BETTER. IE4 was better and... this is important... it was FREE. Did MS make it free purposely to squash Netscape? Maybe, but that's not illegal. If I sell you a Ford Explorer and GIVE AWAY a CD player as a promotional deal... is that illegal? NO.

If Ford mandates that no new Ford Explorers will be sold with any stereo other than Ford's, is that illegal? NO.

Does it stop you from taking your shiny new Explorer out to Circuit City and having them drop in an Alpine or Nakamichi unit? Nope, it doesn't. But unless you disassemble the entire vehicle you'll never get Ford's factory wiring completely out of there. And you're stuck with Ford's antenna and power supply.

So why is it all of a sudden "illegal" for Microsoft to bundle a browser for FREE with all their OS's and then demand that you not pre-install a competing browser?

Is Ford a "monopoly"? No. Neither is Microsoft... IF the browsers are your primary argument.

And any MS basher will immediately pull the browser out of their ass and start talking about it as if they have half a clue - which they don't.

Now... we come to the BIG clincher. Are some of MS's OTHER practices illegal? Did they use their position to destroy other companies? Did they engage in other iffy (or downright illegal) practices? Yes. Quite possibly. Probably.

Has any of that been argued, proven, or even understood by anyone involved? No, not really. They're just concerned that the browser beat Netscape's shitty inferior product.

And as for the "MS is withholding information" argument - that's bullshit too. When Sun brought out Solaris, they charged THOUSANDS PER SEAT for the compiler to go with it. If you wanted to use Gnu's compiler, more power to ya. But if you wanted Sun's compiler, you paid through the nose.

Microsoft does the same thing. It's called an MSDN subscription. If I whip out the latest MSDN CD I have EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF DOCUMENTATION NECESSARY TO FULLY INTEGRATE MY SOFTWARE WITH WINDOWS.

It's obvious that it can be done... EASILY. Look at all the excellent software that does it. Symantec manages to do it, time and time again, with every single piece of software that they write. Lots of shareware programs do it. Why can't Lotus SmartSuite? Well, we could blame IBM corporate policy, or IBM programmers - but it's not because the information wasn't available. Period. Is that information available to Netscape? Yup. It's available to ME, for Chrissake, and it's even AFFORDABLE. A few hundred measly bucks for the keys to every MS API known to man!

And last but not least - price.

Everybody else can charge whatever the hell they want for software, but when MS overcharges, it's a monopoly? Come on, people. Get real. Videogames routinely sell for $70. That's WAY too much. It's way out of line, even counting inflation.

Have you priced corporate licenses for other software lately? Have you seen how much a bloody TELNET program costs? Microsoft is the least horrible offender. Many companies don't even have "upgrade pricing". To make Exceed work with Windows 2000 you have to buy it all over again! I mean, really - it's obscene! Have you priced Photoshop recently?

And Sun themselves used to charge more for their OS than for the machines it ran on! Just because they changed their practices (RECENTLY, I might add - as in since they decided to accuse MS of the same things they themselves were doing) doesn't mean they haven't been guilty of them.

Ok, I'm done ranting - FOR NOW. No more spurious bullshit arguments though, ok?

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[This message has been edited by Gurm (edited 26 September 2000).]

[Nuno]

Gurm is right.

[Pertti]

No Gurm is just blinded by BG

"The reason your windows die is that "child windows" (i.e. right-click on a link and pick "open in a new window") run in the same process as parent windows."

Whenever you are navigating in the net, this is probably how everyone does it, so the "separate process" checkbox has no real meaning.
I can't imagine anyone going through the pain of opening a new IE window and copying the shortcut and pasting it into the new window when they want to keep the original page (a link page ?) open.

"Linux will NEVER compete for the "joe-casual" user. Not because it CAN'T, but because the authors are fundamentally opposed to some of the things you have to do to the OS to make it mass-market ready"

Linux only needs a widely accepted wordprocessor and spreadsheet, which can read and write Word and Excel compatible files.
The "Joe casual user" hardly makes OS and application installations by himself, but lets someone with the knowledge do it for him to the extent of everything being operational (and who will also teach him how to use the necessary programs).

We do agree on MS applications being crappy, and if MS didn't force them upon us, there would be no problems.
It doesn't matter if the program is free, or even if they paid me to use one, if it sucks, I won't let it near my systems.

The IE issue is not about browsers, but the way they are messing the OS with it.
If the brand new Ford Explorer stopped in the middle of the freeway, requiring a battery removal to get it going again, just because you fast forwarded a CD on the bundled CD player, it would be the same thing.
Or, if parts of the fuel injection control were installed into the CD player, allowing you only to change the face plate of the buggy player, that would also be at the same level as the issues with Windows and IE.

Pertti

[Wombat]

Let's see:

>. If your entire OS is "open-source" then nobody can be held accountable for mission-critical bugs, now can they?

Have you read the MS EULA lately? They aren't responsible either. In fact, they'll deny the bugs are there. And if MS won't fix a bug in the OS your screwed. In Linux, bugs are there for everyone to see. In the unlikely event that nobody will fix a bug, you can always do it yourself, and cheaply.

>If I buy SunOS and discover that there is an astonishing memory leak under certain conditions, I can call Sun and demand a hotfix.

Have you watched Sun lately? Their servers have a huge bug in the large-cache setup, but their customers were under NDA and not allowed to talk about their problem. Please, Sun support is crap.

>If my grandma can't figure out how to make her snappy new install of Windows ME connect to the internet, she can call Micro$oft. Who can you call if your Mandrake 7.1 install fails to see your modem? Mandrake? Yeah, right!

Actually, it does work that way. If you buy the RedHat distro, you get RedHat support. And they do actively fix bugs, not to mention support OS development. They'll wade through the source for your grandma, and autorpm can install the fix without your Grandma lifting a finger. And she probably won't have to reboot

>Don't make me laugh!

Don't be some d*mn beligerent whenever somebody here disagrees with you.

[Gurm]

I had a good long "all-fired-up" response but my one-way cable modem just ate it. Therefore, I'll summarize:

1. All Linux Geeks have forgotten how long it took them to learn Linux. Nobody learns Linux in 24 hours. There will never be a "linux in 24 hours" book. Or a "linux for dummies" book. It's too damn complex. They've forgotten that it took them a couple years of college plus a high school career as a computer nerd to get this proficient with the OS.

2. UNIX (and by extension Linux) is almost 40 years old. By the time it is "easy to use", which by any estimates is 5-10 years from now, it will be a 50 YEAR OLD OS. I say let the damn thing die already and try something new.

3. Come up with some new arguments. I come off as belligerent because I'm really #$*%ing sick of everyone saying things like:

"MS is a monopoly!"
(Translation: "I don't know the legal definition of monopoly!")

"MS stifles creativity!"
(Trans: "I don't remember how bad software was before Win95 came along!")

"MS charges too much!"
(Trans: "I don't understand economics!")

"Linux is easy to use!"
(Trans: "I'm that guy from the SNL skit who makes fun of people who can't program their own OS patches!")

"Windows is buggy!"
(Trans: "I've never used any other OS, or have crap hardware!")

"Windows crashes a lot!"
(Trans: "Someone set my machine up wrong" or "I've never used a Mac and therefore don't know what crashing REALLY is!")

If you just watch the 10 o'clock news and then try to argue politics or the world situation with me, I'll get the same way. I friggin' love people trying to explain to me why the ISRAELIS are being SOOOOOO unfair in the whole Middle East thing. Next one to say that gets a swift Uzi to the side of the head for completely misunderstanding the situation.

Come up with some new arguments is all I'm asking. And try to understand the situation before making an argument. I know all the sides, and I think people are making a big deal about not a hell of a lot. Should MS be reprimanded, sanctioned, and perhaps split up? Sure.

But are the people arguing for this aware of the ramifications and reasons for this? Almost without exception... no.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Jammrock]

Wow, Gurm is all worked up. Looks like I'll haft to calm him down. Here's what me thinks of your rants:

1) Just because you think Netsacpe is a festering POS, doesn't mean it is. You know your stuff, but your opinion doesn't speak for everyone. I happen to like Netscape, I happen to like IE. I use them both, as many people do. Is there a problem with that? Remember, IE (and M$ networking for that matter...don't make me quote you) is not perfect by any means, and you admitted that in your rants.

2) I never said M$ was the worst offender of licensing fees and overpriced software, because they aren't. I know programs that cost so much they put all M$ apps to shame. Werdna simply said M$ prices were dropping and I corrected him, because they're not. It costs upwards of 50% more to license Win2k over WinNT, depending on how much M$ likes you. 50% is a lot more than the inflationary value.

3) Linux will become whatever the programming world wants it to be. If the Linux community ever got their heads out their butts they could put a hurt on Windows, like OS/2 did to Win3.11. I just don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.

My question to you is, of all the people you know who took the time to learn Linux, how many of them are displeased with it? Now ask, of all the poeple you know who took the time to learn Windows, who are displeased with it? I bet the most of the Linux people are happy, and only about half of the Windows people are satisfied. At least that's the way it is in my corner of the world.

4) You may say M$ is not a monopoly, and maybe you know something about law that I don't. What I do know, is that a Federal Judge said M$ is a monopoly. I'll admit that I don't know more about law than a federal judge, so I'll end there.

5) In my opinion, Office 97 is a festering piece of the ass end of retarded donkey. Outlook 97 was one of the worst programs I ever had to work with. They had to initially release Outlook 98 for free just to calm down all the pissed off customers. I would take WordPerfect 8 over Word 97 anyday, and Office 2000 over both, but that's just my OPINION.

6) You may say bundling IE with the OS didn't have anything to do with IE beating out Netscape, but you're wrong. Humans are naturally lazy. Why go out and download Netscape on your piss slow 28.8 connection, when IE is sitting on my desktop in an undeletable icon? If you don't believe me, you should come out and do desktop support at my job. People use IE because, "it's just always been on my desktop."

You can use the M$ Money arguement all you want, but have you ever heard an M$ Money commercial? Ever heard a Quicken commercial at tax time? I have every year for the past 5 years. Ever walked into ANY computer store at tax time? What's the first thing you see? A giant Quicken display. Get the idea? Quicken was smarter, first and advertised, that's the difference, not the software.

And what about that shiny new stereo? Who are the only people that go out and buy a new stereo for their car? Audiophiles, or people who are not satisfied with the factory stereo. What do 90% of the people do? Use the factory stereo, because it's there and it's good enough. And Ford is not a monopoly because they don't even own 20% of the world car market. M$ owns 90% of the world consumer OS market. BIG difference.

7) $70 for a game? Only if it's a Collector's Edition, with a DVD, Soundtrack, RPG game, signed manual and putier figurine. Where do you buy your games? Games sell for around $50, $60 for consoles. And after the first week you can usually pick it up for $40 or less. It's been that way for a decade. I used to sell games for a living, I know.

Calm down Gurm, just because you say so, doesn't mean your right There are two sdes to every story.

Jammrock

[Paddy]

Cheers Gurm for clearing that up mate!

[Pertti]

Gurm,

Do you mean that it only takes 24 hours to learn the inside and outs of whatever Windows ?
Why are there so many people having problems with it then ?

The fundamental problems with MS/BG are:

1. For some reason, they are obsessed with the MacOS, trying to re-create the damn thing for PC:s, and trying to force us to use an OS we chose to ignore.

2. The success of PC:s was/is based on the fact that the user had the control.
Being able to build and configure an affordable computer to suit ones individual needs, and being able to choose the programs, based on the capabilities of the programs and ones own personal preferences, out of several available.
MS is now trying to take this freedom of choice away from us by bundling everything and the kitchen sink in to the OS, without giving us even an option of not installing the unnecessary, unwanted and useless applications and features.

3. Whenever MS makes (read: buys or steals) an application, they change the OS to suit the needs of that (Mickey Mouse) application, neverminding the needs of more professional and more productive applications, which usually get hurt in the process.

4. Once MS found out about the Internet, they went bananas over it. BG doesn't seem to understand that not everyone has a fast, fixed and free connection to the net, and there are lots of reasons for having systems with none whatsoever means to connect.

When you make letters, memos, charts, technical drawings or save your work on a CD-RW, what the F*** do you need to have an MS/BG browser installed for ?

When you read between the lines, it is quite clear what BG is trying to do, and by doing it gradually over the years, he is given permission to do so by people who are too blind to see it.

Fortunately Linux has already won a foothold at schools, not only as a funny hobby of some odd geek, but it is being used as a tool in teaching the kids the ideas in computers and computing.

5 years is a long time. If you looked 5 years into the past in December -95, what did you see ? (skip the image of me tweaking MSDos3.3 ) and that was THEN !!, the speed of the progress has increased a lot since those days.

We have now seen the Broomstick being replaced by an Uzi... what's next

[Paddy]

er.. I Gurm, IE still closes all ie windows even if they are not daughter ones...

[Gurm]

Ok I'm calmer now. Hehe.

Paddy:

E-mail me. It shouldn't work the way you're saying it works, and we can probably fix it but not in the middle of this debate. Hehe.

Joel:

If I am "large company X" and I decide to tell all my OEM's that they MUST bundle in a FREE item with my product, that is my prerogative. What MS did never cost anyone any money. Now, there are RUMOURS (which I have yet to hear backed up in court but which I believe may very well be true) that MS also insisted that those same OEM's _NOT_ put Netscape on those machines. THAT is, in fact, bad.

A further example:

HP sells Inkjet printers. HP decided to bundle Kodak's color technology as a software addon with their printers. Was is good software? No. Not at all. It was slow and ugly and made the computer crash a lot. So after a while they decided to incorporate that software into the printer. Did it improve the printer? Maybe. But it also made it substantially slower and more wasteful of ink. Is HP a _BAD_ company for doing this?

Jammrock:

Just because you think Netsacpe is a festering POS, doesn't mean it is. You know your stuff, but your opinion doesn't speak for everyone.

It's a festering POS only programming-wise. It has too many major bugs that Netscape has utterly ignored in favor of changing the mail and news interface 8 times. Netscape needs to do the following things to Navigator/Communicator for it to stop sucking:

1. Cut the load time in half. Preferably it would load in about 25% of the current time, or less.

2. Fix the memory leaks.

3. Make it stop crashing under Win32. It runs fine on every other platform.

4. Embrace ActiveX. Just do it. Who cares if M$ thought it up, it works... and a lot better than "plugins".

I happen to like Netscape, I happen to like IE. I use them both, as many people do. Is there a problem with that? Remember, IE (and M$ networking for that matter...don't make me quote you) is not perfect by any means, and you admitted that in your rants.

Yeah, I know. I have Navigator installed on my system as well. It's a knee-jerk reaction. Most people who run Navigator at this point have some make-believe "issues" with IE. That's all.

I never said M$ was the worst offender of licensing fees and overpriced software, because they aren't. I know programs that cost so much they put all M$ apps to shame. Werdna simply said M$ prices were dropping and I corrected him, because they're not. It costs upwards of 50% more to license Win2k over WinNT, depending on how much M$ likes you. 50% is a lot more than the inflationary value.

Just checked on this one. My local PC shop has Win2k Pro. for $169 (OEM) and WinNT 4 for $199 (also OEM). Pricewatch lists Win2k Retail at under $200. NT retail is very low now ($99) since it's being phased out. But I recall NT retail being $400 a few years back.

Linux will become whatever the programming world wants it to be. If the Linux community ever got their heads out their butts they could put a hurt on Windows, like OS/2 did to Win3.11. I just don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.

That's my point. I'm not saying Linux CAN'T be made easy to use. I'm saying it would take a concerted development effort that nobody in the Linux community is willing to make, because they are fundamentally opposed to things like standardization and centralization which are requisite in making an OS that can be used by the masses.

My question to you is, of all the people you know who took the time to learn Linux, how many of them are displeased with it? Now ask, of all the poeple you know who took the time to learn Windows, who are displeased with it? I bet the most of the Linux people are happy, and only about half of the Windows people are satisfied. At least that's the way it is in my corner of the world.

I agree. However, you have to understand the target audiences. I'm extremely happy with Win2k. Moreso than Linux. I wouldn't have said the same thing about Win95 or even Win98. Up until Win2k came out I had several OS's on my machine (Red Hat, Win9x, BeOS, and a legacy MS-DOS partition). Now just Win2k. Lots of geeks feel the same way.

I have a question, though. What percentage of Linux users have a Windows partition "because I have to, even though I hate it" in order to get their useful work done? Most of the ones I know. Want to edit a Word document? Gotta run Word. (We've been over the alternatives before and they don't QUITE cut it... yet...) Want to edit some major graphics files? Gotta run Photoshop. Want to do SERIOUS page layout? Gotta run Frame.

You may say M$ is not a monopoly, and maybe you know something about law that I don't. What I do know, is that a Federal Judge said M$ is a monopoly. I'll admit that I don't know more about law than a federal judge, so I'll end there.

And the same federal judge is most likely being barred from hearing the case when (if) it comes back from appeals, since he has been overturned on 3 separate occasions by the appeals court for "failing to prove that the Sherman Antitrust Act has been violated". The Supreme Court won't even HEAR the case (by an 8-to-1 vote, with the only dissenter saying "well we could probably wrap it up in a couple weeks and be done with the whole mess") because there's insufficient legal grounds.

In my opinion, Office 97 is a festering piece of the ass end of retarded donkey. Outlook 97 was one of the worst programs I ever had to work with. They had to initially release Outlook 98 for free just to calm down all the pissed off customers. I would take WordPerfect 8 over Word 97 anyday, and Office 2000 over both, but that's just my OPINION.

I shouldn't have said "Office". Yes, Outlook97 was CRAP. Oh, the horror of that piece of garbage. And Word97 vs. WP8 was a toss-up, I admit.

You may say bundling IE with the OS didn't have anything to do with IE beating out Netscape, but you're wrong. Humans are naturally lazy. Why go out and download Netscape on your piss slow 28.8 connection, when IE is sitting on my desktop in an undeletable icon? If you don't believe me, you should come out and do desktop support at my job. People use IE because, "it's just always been on my desktop."

But Netscape had to drive the nails into their own coffin! IE3 was BAD. You can put it on the desktop all you want, when you go to a web page and can't see it because you "don't have Netscape", you spend the time and download the program. However, IE4 was good enough (despite its obvious flaws) that Netscape needed a competing product. Instead of taking the time to make one, they slapped an installer on Netscape4 and shipped it out the door despite it not being anywhere near ready.

You can use the M$ Money arguement all you want, but have you ever heard an M$ Money commercial? Ever heard a Quicken commercial at tax time? I have every year for the past 5 years. Ever walked into ANY computer store at tax time? What's the first thing you see? A giant Quicken display. Get the idea? Quicken was smarter, first and advertised, that's the difference, not the software.

Nah. Quicken's just better. I've used both and Money is next to useless.

There are lots of other examples. Nico Mac (Winzip) wouldn't sell to MS - instead they licensed ZipMagic who would. Nevod was the only company that would sell NAT to MS. Nobody was willing to sell an image editor to MS (thus theirs still SUCKS). Adobe beats the snot out of MS in every product category. The minute you go past wanting to VIEW (or play or whatever) a multimedia file to wanting to CREATE or EDIT the file, MS just can't cut it any more - and other companies have been more than willing to pick up the slack - and utterly unwilling to sell out (good for them)!

Also a couple of other points without the quotes:

1. Game prices - I just pre-paid $70 for the new Zelda on N64. Admittedy I haven't paid more than $40-$45 for a PSX or PC non-SE game for a while. But they're STILL overpriced.

2. I was simply making an observation with the Ford thing. All auto-makers bundle their own stereo (or an OEM stereo) with their cars. Yet the justice department and a "coalition of stereo-makers spearheaded by Blaupunkt" don't demand that users get their choice of customizable faceplates and stereos by any brand they want included by the dealer.

Pertti:

Do you mean that it only takes 24 hours to learn the inside and outs of whatever Windows ?
Why are there so many people having problems with it then ?

No, I mean that in 24 hours you can be functional with Windows, on the internet, and getting work done. In 24 hours of Linux training you will still be wondering what "can't mv directories across file systems" means, and why all your files have little drwxrwxrwx thingers next to them.

The fundamental problems with MS/BG are:

1. For some reason, they are obsessed with the MacOS, trying to re-create the damn thing for PC:s, and trying to force us to use an OS we chose to ignore.

Actually people WANTED Windows the way it is. Honest. Maybe not the IE integration thing. But the rest of it was user demand more than anything else. Nobody wanted MS-DOS any more...

MS is now trying to take this freedom of choice away from us by bundling everything and the kitchen sink in to the OS, without giving us even an option of not installing the unnecessary, unwanted and useless applications and features.

Such as? Maybe you don't particularly like Media Player, but the rest of us do. I no longer have to license 8 different players to see my files and that's cool with me.

Whenever MS makes (read: buys or steals) an application, they change the OS to suit the needs of that (Mickey Mouse) application, neverminding the needs of more professional and more productive applications, which usually get hurt in the process.

Again, this is something that lots of people CLAIM happens. In reality I can't (off the top, feel free to jump in with specifics here!) think of a single OS change or paradigm shift to satisfy MS's acquisition of Money, or NAT, or...?

Once MS found out about the Internet, they went bananas over it. BG doesn't seem to understand that not everyone has a fast, fixed and free connection to the net, and there are lots of reasons for having systems with none whatsoever means to connect.

This is an area in which we both agree. However, Linux is much the same way. While it doesn't demand a net connection, it certainly is heavily weighted towards running in a network environment. By default it includes daemons for remote shells, FTP services, and many more things... they're difficult to get rid of (not AS difficult as they could be, no) and a pain if you have no connection.

Fortunately Linux has already won a foothold at schools, not only as a funny hobby of some odd geek, but it is being used as a tool in teaching the kids the ideas in computers and computing.

THIS is news to me. I have yet to see a Linux box in any education institution lower than a college. Perhaps you are referring to Europe or more to the point Finland (you guys have ALWAYS been a bit ahead of us in the "computer geek" department)?

And we could spend another year arguing about education, especially computer education. So let's not open that bag of worms, eh?

----------------------

THANK YOU guys for finally NOT regurgitating left-over arguments. Keep 'em coming, I enjoy an actual debate.

And you're right, nothing is the way it is because I say so. But me saying so for my reasons is still better than someone else saying so because they heard someone else say it first.

- Gurm


------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Joel]

When you tell an OEM provider of personal computers that unless they use your product then you will pull the only viably avaiable OS from them, and then when that doesn't happen you integrate that product so tightly into the OS that to remove it causes damage to the OS, then you have a problem. And that is actually what Microshaft did with IE.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 27 September 2000).]

[Jammrock]

Damn, Gurm, I thought I had long posts. You just haft to be the M$ defender don't you? I guess somebody does.

Here's my final sum, in James Hetfield terms:

Windows Bad!

Windows 2000 Good!

Office Bad!

Office 2000 Good!

Thank you.

Jammrock

[Paddy]

I quite liked DOS to be honest.....

[Gurm]

Hehe. I guess I do tend to ramble on a bit.

I'm just a bit irked that IF the justice department wins, _I_ won't be able to get _MY_ work done for quite some time. Do you realize what a godawful ugly thing Windows 2002 will be if they are forced to reengineer it starting NOW? Urk! I don't even want to think about it.

Besides, as you said - someone has to do it. At least I'm not a "Bill Gates can do no wrong!" weenie.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Mark_Sinden]

Originally posted by Admiral:
"IE 5.5 beta was better than IE 5.0 and 5.5."

...unless you were running Outlook Express - the first version of IE5.5 Beta made a total hash of my e-mail, and I had to wait til I had time for a clean install of IE5.5 final release before it worked. Now it's just MEGA-slow. (P133, 64Mb RAM, Win98 SE, SCSI disks).

"MediaPlayer 7 beta was better than MP 7.
Hope it doesn't become a habbit."

Is that like a Hobbit with a tonsure? = )