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> It's difficult to see how you could make a web browser more attractive
> to the casual user than IE already is
BINGO!
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> >>> Do you also think Coca-Cola is wrong for banning pubs and restaurants
> >>> from selling Pepsi?
> >>
> >> Yes. (It's news to me that they can legally do this...)
> >
> > Both Pepsi and Coca Cola do this in the US. They offer a nice rate
> > if the business signs an exclusive contract. It really, really sucks.
>
> They offer a nice rate if the business signs an exclusive contract? Or
> they won't sell to the business at all if they don't sign an exclusive
> contract?
Coca-Cola Enterprises ATM. If a customer wants a Coca-Cola cooler (fridge) for
Coca-Cola products then they get it free of charge. If they want it for other
products they get charged a rental fee. If they want a vendor (can/bottle
dispensing machine), either it belongs to CCE and it is stocked by CCE then the
customer gets a percentage of the profit or they can rent it from CCE and stock
it themselves. The fountains (those terrible machines that you see in pubs and
MacDoughnuts etc.) are owned by CCE and rented to the customers, they buy the
syrup themselves.
Stephen
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>> (Recall that Java isn't like C; the source files have to have
>> particular names, and have to be located in particular folders, and so
>> on.)
>
> As so the IDE is not really to blame then if you haven't followed the
> Java rules exactly.
I did follow Java's rules. Apparently not VS's rules though...
>> Well, it's not like anybody showed us how to use the software...
>
> LOL. Reminds me of when you said that 3D Studio was rubbish, but it
> turns out you were just guessing how to use it and got stuck (surprise
> surprise!).
It's an IDE. It edits text files. How hard should that be?
>> Who knows? Perhaps in the 7 years since then, VS has become actually
>> useful in some way. But I doubt it...
>
> Yeh I doubt it too, I guess all those companies than spend tens of
> thousands of dollars on VS licenses are just doing it for fun. I guess
> all their employees are secretly using notepad...
Well, I'm sure if they've spent money on licences for something, people
are going to use it, no matter how lame it is. (Where I work, people use
Word...)
I'm just saying. Word hasn't changed noticably since 1995 or so. I see
no particular reason to except VS to have changed drastically. (It
probably supports quite a few languages that it didn't back then, mind
you...)
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scott wrote:
>> From what I heard, Internet Explorer was stolen from a company called
>> Spyglass.
>>
>> Spyglass were selling a web browser, M$ licenced the code from them,
>> developed IE, and then gave it away for free (in violation of the
>> terms of the licence with Spyglass). Spyglass promptly went bankrupt
>> before they could sue M$.
>
> Oh joy, another one of your completely made-up stories bashing MS :-)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.
...this page does not exist?
>> The way I heard it, it was more like "you will agree to these terms or
>> you can't have our product".
>
> That's impossible, because as pointed out you can just go to a normal
> shop and buy it if you can't get it directly from MS. The worst MS
> could do was "you will agree to these terms or you will have to buy it
> at the normal price the public pays for it".
I was under the impression that they could put terms into their licence
to prevent companies doing this. But IANAL...
>> 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".
>
> Or offer 2000 GBP for your old cars if you buy a new one :-)
I have no idea who came up with that one, but it seems like a pretty
dumb idea to me...
>> Like, if Tesco decided to start giving away a free bestselling book
>> with every purchase, they'd have a problem because they'd be using
>> grocery sales to put book sellers out of business.
>
> That's not illegal. In fact it's common practise for supermarkets to
> use "loss leaders" like petrol and milk/sugar that actually lose them
> money, to encourage people to come in and spend on the more profitable
> items. What *is* illegal is if the manufacturer tries to tell Tesco
> what price they should sell at.
Tesco might sell petrol at a loss, but they don't give it away *for
free* to get you through the door, do they?
> Charities are for being fair, businesses are for making money and
> crushing the competition.
Well, fortunately not everybody thinks like that. Otherwise nobody would
bother making any actual *products* at all, they'd all just find ways to
screw customers out of their money without providing anything in return.
>> Oracle didn't get to be where they are now
>> by stealing other people's stuff,
>
> Oh really:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
Buying something isn't the same as stealing it.
> As I said, pretty much any large company is going to have done some
> "unfair" things, otherwise they wouldn't have grown to be a large company.
So your basic premise is that the only way to be successful in business
is to lie, cheat, steal and try to fob customers off with cheap
defective goods at extortionate prices?
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> It's an IDE. It edits text files. How hard should that be?
LOL. Editing the text files is a fairly minor part of an IDE, and as you
say shouldn't be that hard. The complicated parts come when you start
configuring the build tools, using the debugger, and of course the form
designer. If you don't know how to use them properly it's going to be hard
work and very frustrating.
By the way, I don't know how you could ever write a program without using
the debugger, but hey maybe I just make lots of mistakes...
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scott wrote:
>> It's an IDE. It edits text files. How hard should that be?
>
> LOL. Editing the text files is a fairly minor part of an IDE, and as
> you say shouldn't be that hard. The complicated parts come when you
> start configuring the build tools, using the debugger, and of course the
> form designer. If you don't know how to use them properly it's going to
> be hard work and very frustrating.
Mercifully, VS seemed to already know how to compile stuff, so that
wasn't too hard. (Persuading it to build a JAR file was another matter...)
> By the way, I don't know how you could ever write a program without
> using the debugger, but hey maybe I just make lots of mistakes...
The debugger, at least, was relatively intuivite to use. IIRC, the only
tricky thing was figuring out how the hell to invoke it in the first
place. (Oh, and the fact that the bug is almost never where you think it
was, so you invariably put the breakpoints in the wrong place...)
Can you see why I like statically-typed programming languages? ;-)
On an unrelated note, the debugger that comes with GHC is... unhelpful,
to put it generously.
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>> Oh joy, another one of your completely made-up stories bashing MS :-)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.
>
> ...this page does not exist?
Make sure you include the final full stop.
> Tesco might sell petrol at a loss, but they don't give it away *for free*
> to get you through the door, do they?
No, but there's no law stopping them if they wanted to. Like when petrol
stations give away glasses or model cars or oil for free when you buy
petrol. WHSmith gave me a free newspaper last time I went to get some food
in there, I guess if there was a newspaper shop next door they might be out
of business by now?
> Well, fortunately not everybody thinks like that. Otherwise nobody would
> bother making any actual *products* at all, they'd all just find ways to
> screw customers out of their money without providing anything in return.
Generally you go bankrupt pretty quickly if you try to do that.
> Buying something isn't the same as stealing it.
Oh I see, so when you're talking about MS, "stole" means "bought", but when
you're talking about Oracle "stole" really does mean "stole" as in acquired
illegally without paying for it. Hmmm ok whatever.
> So your basic premise is that the only way to be successful in business is
> to lie, cheat, steal and try to fob customers off with cheap defective
> goods at extortionate prices?
You can't be general like that, most of those things generally lose you
customers and profit, but you can use your judgment in certain situations.
(eg if MS had told the people they were buying DOS from that they were
planning to license it to IBM, they likely wouldn't have been able to buy it
or been charged 100x more, and then MS probably wouldn't have existed
today).
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> Mercifully, VS seemed to already know how to compile stuff, so that wasn't
> too hard. (Persuading it to build a JAR file was another matter...)
Yes it has pretty good defaults that work straight out of the box (debug and
release). But there is a huge amount you can configure, especially if you
start adding custom build events and more complicated projects with
installers, dlls, database servers etc.
> The debugger, at least, was relatively intuivite to use. IIRC, the only
> tricky thing was figuring out how the hell to invoke it in the first
> place. (Oh, and the fact that the bug is almost never where you think it
> was, so you invariably put the breakpoints in the wrong place...)
The DirectX debugger is pretty cool too, it can actually record every single
call to the GPU each frame and store it in a file while your program is
running. Then you can go back into the debugger and step through each frame
or call and see what is rendered on each call, check the textures and vertex
buffers etc. I found out I was drawing the terrain in my game 4 times each
frame this way :-)
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>>> Oh joy, another one of your completely made-up stories bashing MS :-)
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.
OK, well here we have a question of facts. One Internet source asserts
that Microsoft licenced a browser from Spyglass and then released it for
free in violation of the licence terms, and it put Spyglass out of
business before they could sue. Another Internet source asserts that
this was not in fact a violation of the licence terms, and that it
didn't kill Spyglass. At this point, I'm not sure who to believe.
>> Well, fortunately not everybody thinks like that. Otherwise nobody
>> would bother making any actual *products* at all, they'd all just find
>> ways to screw customers out of their money without providing anything
>> in return.
>
> Generally you go bankrupt pretty quickly if you try to do that.
Unless you're Microsoft, at least...
>> Buying something isn't the same as stealing it.
>
> Oh I see, so when you're talking about MS, "stole" means "bought", but
> when you're talking about Oracle "stole" really does mean "stole" as in
> acquired illegally without paying for it. Hmmm ok whatever.
If you pay to use some code in a certain way, and you use it in that
way, that would be "buying" it. If you pay to use some code in a very
limited way, and then go on to use it in a completely different way
while denying that you're doing so, that would be "stealing". Much like
all those DVD players which secretly use GPL code for their video
decoding in violation of the licence terms...
>> So your basic premise is that the only way to be successful in
>> business is to lie, cheat, steal and try to fob customers off with
>> cheap defective goods at extortionate prices?
>
> You can't be general like that, most of those things generally lose you
> customers and profit, but you can use your judgment in certain
> situations. (eg if MS had told the people they were buying DOS from that
> they were planning to license it to IBM, they likely wouldn't have been
> able to buy it or been charged 100x more, and then MS probably wouldn't
> have existed today).
Well, all I'm saying is that lots of other large companies seem to get
by without having to resort to cheating to stay in business...
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> OK, well here we have a question of facts. One Internet source asserts
> that Microsoft licenced a browser from Spyglass and then released it for
> free in violation of the licence terms, and it put Spyglass out of
> business before they could sue.
Care to quote the source?
> Another Internet source asserts that this was not in fact a violation of
> the licence terms, and that it didn't kill Spyglass. At this point, I'm
> not sure who to believe.
Try this official document from the US government archives:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/945256/0000950137-97-004112.txt
"On January 21, 1997, the Company amended its license arrangement with
Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") to convert Microsoft's existing license
for
the Spyglass Mosaic browser technology into a fully paid-up license in
consideration of an additional $8,000,000 payment from Microsoft."
Also I don't see how OpenTV were able to buy Spyglass for $2.5b in 2000 if
they had gone bankrupt :-S
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/327661
> Unless you're Microsoft, at least...
If MS suddenly released a product that nobody wanted to buy they would go
out of business quite quickly. The only way they can survive is by
convincing people that they want the next version of windows, and the
previous version is going to be outdated soon blah blah blah. It's the same
with phones, cars, computer hardware etc.
> Well, all I'm saying is that lots of other large companies seem to get by
> without having to resort to cheating to stay in business...
And all I'm saying is the, let's be honest here, pretty minor bad things MS
has done in its lifetime are not at all unusual in big business. That's why
I said that if you give me the name of a large company, I bet it has done
some similar minor bad thing too. The company I work for is currently in a
patent battle about some technology used in its displays, and it also got a
fine from the EU competition place for talking too much with competitors
about prices. Things like that just happen to big companies, it's normal,
and why every single big company has a sizeable legal department.
If you want to start to talk about *real* unfair and illegal business
practices then you need to look outside of the software industry. How about
pharma companies and pseudo-doctors pushing drugs that don't really do
anything (or worse cause negative effects), what about companies knowingly
selling products that will be smuggled into high-tax countries, or selling
cigarettes to children, or using toxic chemicals in children's toys?
Stealing some GPL code to put in a DVD player suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
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