Invisible wrote:
> A similar story happened at the beginning of the Microsoft story, but 
> since I don't recall the precise facts right now I'll leave that one.

IIRC, IBM wanted an OS and a BASIC interpreter.  They went to MS for 
MS-BASIC, and said, "By the way, do you have an OS?"  MS purchased QDOS 
from some other guy, then licensed it to IBM.

The other guy started b*tching because he only got the one flat fee 
instead of all those licensing fees, but hey, he's the one who signed 
the deal.

> Sure, nobody forces web developers to use IE-specific extensions. Yet 
> 90% of all websites work properly only if you use IE.

Have you surfed the Web recently?  I haven't used IE in years.  I've 
been using Firefox and, more recently, Chrome, and I can't remember the 
last time I had a page display incorrectly.

Granted, there are pages that check the useragent string, and then give 
you a *message* saying they might not work properly... but then they 
proceed to work properly.

> The way I heard it, it was more like "you will agree to these terms or 
> you can't have our product".

Yeah, that's called a "license."

> Yeah, well, when car manufacturers lobby the government saying "people 
> aren't buying as many cars as they used to; I think we should get 
> government subsidies", people just laugh and say "no". When Microsoft 
> lobbies for something, people seem to think they have a point.

I don't know if you read the news or not, but when the automakers in the 
US complain about people not buying cars, the USG falls all over itself 
trying to placate them.

They do the same thing for corn growers, too.

> Microsoft made their money from Windows. They can afford to give 
> products away with it for free. People who's entire business is selling 
> those other products can't do this. It's using sales from one product to 
> pay for another product; last time I checked, that's not legal.

Walmart and BestBuy do that every day... research "loss leader."  (To be 
fair, I think the practice could be illegal in the UK, but it's popular 
throughout the rest of the world).

>> Nobody's forcing you to use it.
> 
> I'm sure this one has been argued to death. While *technically* this is 
> true, the reality is that M$ has carefully engineered a situation where 
> little viable alternative actually exists. (Let's face it, if somebody 
> else was producing decent software, M$ would go under fairly quickly.)

So, first you complain that MS sucks, then you admit that everyone else 
sucks worse.

Maybe you just don't want to admit that making software is hard, and MS 
is doing they best they can given current market conditions and user 
requirements?

-- 
Chambers

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