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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previous version is going to be outdated soon blah blah blah.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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On 07/10/09 08:24, Invisible wrote:
> 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.
"Thou shall not take all sources to be of equal value"
--
"Class, please! If you don't learn Roman numerals, you'll never know the
dates certain motion pictures were copyrighted." -- Mrs. Krabappel in
The Simpsons.
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
anl
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Invisible wrote:
> It's an IDE. It edits text files. How hard should that be?
It does a LOT more than just edit text files.
Code folding.
Syntax highlighting.
Auto-formatting (it works for me, sorry)
IntelliSense (the autocomplete thing you mentioned... again, it works
great for me)
Debugging
That's just the stuff I use on a regular basis. It's loaded with
features that I never even touch, as well.
>>> Who knows? Perhaps in the 7 years since then, VS has become actually
>>> useful in some way. But I doubt it...
Funny, I first used it back in the days of VC++ 6, and even then it was
considered better than the competition.
> 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...)
Actually, I really like the new version of Word (2007) as well. I've
never had any problems with it being unstable, OR with it not doing what
I wanted.
Maybe the problem is user error? ;)
--
Chambers
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Invisible wrote:
> Before Internet Explorer, web browsers used to cost money. After IE, it
> was basically impossible to sell them for money. Why would anyone pay
> money for something that they can get for free anyway?
I don't recall ever paying for Lynx or Netscape, before IE. And wasn't
there an NTSC Browser that was free, too?
--
Chambers
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>> It's an IDE. It edits text files. How hard should that be?
>
> It does a LOT more than just edit text files.
>
> Code folding.
Yeah, I guess that's vaguely useful...
> Syntax highlighting.
True. I'm used to using a text editor which does this for me.
> Auto-formatting (it works for me, sorry)
Apparently your coding style matches the hard-coded assumptions of the
software then. :-P
> IntelliSense
Could be useful - if it actually worked right.
> Debugging
Sometimes quite useful. Depends what the bug is.
>> 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...)
>
> Actually, I really like the new version of Word (2007) as well. I've
> never had any problems with it being unstable, OR with it not doing what
> I wanted.
I haven't seen Word 2007 yet. Still using Word 2003 here.
> Maybe the problem is user error? ;)
You know what? The Internet abounds with people complaining about Word
not working right, yet nobody ever seems to complain about Excel or
Access or PowerPoint or Outlook... Wanna take a guess why that is?
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Invisible wrote:
> If I wanted to be cynical, I could point out that I've never met anybody
> who owns a copy of 3D Studio or Paintshop *legally*. ;-)
Criminal! Criminal!
;)
I've met plenty of people who owned licences. Well, not 3DS, but
Photoshop (which isn't the same, I know, but pretty close for the
purposes of this discussion).
--
Chambers
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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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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> >> But they should call it Linux if they really base it on Linux
> >
> > I don't think using the linux kernel requires for the OS to have the
> > word "linux" in its name.
> As far as I can tell, if you want to be technical about it, "Linux" is
> the tiny bit of code that runs tasks, handles interrupts, manages memory
> and has a few device drivers.
In other words, the kernel.
> When you install "Linux", 90% of the stuff
> you're installing isn't actually "Linux" at all; it's mostly the GNU
> toolchain, GNOME or KDE, Firefox and half a million other 3rd party items.
You don't install "Linux". You install, for example, OpenSUSE, or Ubuntu.
or Debian, or...
Those are the kernel + gnu tools + extra distro-specific stuff, which
in conjunction form the OS.
> Whatever happened to HURD?
Linux ate it.
--
- Warp
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Invisible wrote:
> You know what? The Internet abounds with people complaining about Word
> not working right, yet nobody ever seems to complain about Excel or
> Access or PowerPoint or Outlook... Wanna take a guess why that is?
Because more people use Word than the others, so more people complain
about it.
Like I said, I use it all the time, and I never have problems.
--
Chambers
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scott wrote:
> 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).
They would exist, but they would be in their original business of compilers.
We'd probably all be running a variant of OS/4 or something.
--
Chambers
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