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Re: Repost: A brief history of Internet Explorer


Verily I say unto thee, that The Lost Packet spake thusly:
> amicus_curious wrote:
>> "Homer" <usenet@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
>> news:cqun56-d6v.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>> In light of the latest EU antitrust investigation into
>>> Microsoft's criminal behaviour, I thought I'd repost the
>>> following from 2006 (with updates):
>>> 
>>> Step 1. Like everything else Microsoft "innovates", they simply 
>>> assimilated the original product from another company, then
>>> turned around and screwed them:
>>> 
>>> [quote] Yes, Microsoft royally screwed over Spyglass by licensing
>>> their code and then turning around and giving it away for free.
>>> This obviously made it a lot more difficult for Spyglass to sell
>>> other licenses since their potential customers could just embed
>>> Internet Explorer for free. Not only did Microsoft destroy
>>> Spyglass' existing market, but Spyglass also accused Microsoft of
>>> not paying the required royalties on the code that they licensed.
>>> Spyglass has since been relegated to a niche market, and it is
>>> interesting to note that they don't even mention Internet
>>> Explorer as one of their accomplishments in their showcase. 
>>> [/quote]
>>> 
>> Considering that IE 1.0 was so well received and Spyglass did get
>> some $8 million bucks for their efforts, how much do you think IE
>> 1.0 was worth?  I would take the $8 million and smile myself.

How much was Spyglass' /future/ business worth?

Well I guess we'll never know, since Microsoft destroyed them with
illicit business practises. $8 million is poor compensation for losing
your entire future business, especially when the reason for that loss is
somebody else's criminal behaviour.

>>> http://sillydog.org/msbad.php#predatory
>>> 
>>> Step 2. Even the name was "borrowed" from another company's
>>> product. No problem for MS though ... just bleed them dry with
>>> ongoing legal fees ... their usual tactic:
>>> 
>>> [quote] Synet had already trademarked Internet Explorer as a
>>> brand name when Microsoft came calling, offering 75 thousand
>>> dollars for rights to the name. When they refused Microsoft stole
>>> the name anyway, and Synet went bankrupt fighting the software
>>> goliath’s lawyers in court. After filing for bankruptcy the
>>> company was forced to settle for a paltry five million dollars. 
>>> [/quote]
>>> 
>> Would you like to have 5 million dollars, homer?  I would.

Are you asking a hypothetical question, or making a criminal proposition
in the vein of Microsoft's standard business practises? You certainly
seem to have the same criminal mindset as Microsoft, as apparently you
think it's OK to destroy others' lives and their businesses with
criminal behaviour, so long as you subsequently silence their protests
with a fistful of cash, even if that cash is a small fraction of their
current and (now lost) potential future income.

So how far would *you* go to have $5 million, amicus_unscrupulous?

Well, you've already answered that question, haven't you?

>>> http://thepopulist.wordpress.com/2003/10/10/the-trials-of-microsoft/
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Step 3. Release a series of ever increasingly buggy and insecure 
>>> browsers (based on the aforementioned "acquired" code and name),
>>> which becomes increasingly integrated into the Operating System;
>>> thus infecting the OS with that browser's vulnerabilities. The
>>> good news is that IE attains a near monopoly position among
>>> browsers. The bad news is that neither Netscape, the US DOJ, nor
>>> the EU Commission agree that it's good news. The even worse news
>>> is that the vulnerabilities in what is now the world's most
>>> ubiquitous browser, transforms the face of the Internet into a
>>> swamp of malware, spam, and phishing.
>>> 
>> Why do you suppose that so many people want to buy a Windows
>> computer

Since when do these "people" get a /choice/, and therefore support your
claim that they actually "want" Windows?

[quote]
So why aren't there any dual-boot computers for sale? The answer lies in
the nature of the relationship Microsoft maintains with hardware
vendors. More specifically, in the "Windows License" agreed to by
hardware vendors who want to include Windows on the computers they sell.
This is not the license you pretend to read and click "I Accept" to when
installing Windows. This license is not available online. This is a
confidential license, seen only by Microsoft and computer vendors. You
and I can't read the license because Microsoft classifies it as a "trade
secret." The license specifies that any machine which includes a
Microsoft operating system must not also offer a non-Microsoft operating
system as a boot option. In other words, a computer that offers to boot
into Windows upon startup cannot also offer to boot into BeOS or Linux.
The hardware vendor does not get to choose which OSes to install on the
machines they sell -- Microsoft does.
[/quote]

http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/


[transcript]
But Microsoft doesn't need to worry too much if people are put off by
the cost of an upgrade. Vista will be pre-installed on almost all new
computers, so they'll get the big sales anyway.

*That's the genius of Bill Gates' business*.
[/transcript]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6340000/newsid_6348300/6348391.stm

Yes, pure "genius" ... like a racketeering operation.

Fortunately the EU Commission aren't convinced this criminal behaviour
is quite as "clever" as the MSBBC and Microsoft think it is.

>> when it is so flawed and irritating?

It /is/ flawed and irritating. It's also "pre-installed on almost all
new computers", which means that nearly every PC buyer pays Microsoft
for that flawed and irritating software, whether they want to or not.
It also means nearly every PC buyer is exposed to this flawed and
irritating software by default, perhaps without even being aware that
there are any alternatives. Therefore the question of what you presume
people "want" is rather moot, as they have little opportunity to express
what it is they "want", much less the opportunity to actually /get/ it
preinstalled on the hardware they buy.

>> Do they look at the situation from a different point of view?

Try looking at the situation from a /moral/ point of view for a change,
assuming you have that capacity.

>> Perhaps they do not hate Microsoft and so cannot see the
>> conclusions from your logic.

Perhaps they /would/ if they read this:

http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653
http://boycottnovell.com/microsoft-critique-resources/
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/index.html
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/01/30/evangelism-is-war-memo/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/10/edgi-continued-dumping-vs-gnu/
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_findings.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/microsoft_killed_dell_linux_states/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/300590_software22.html
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/government-law/public-sector/news/index.cfm?newsid=6124&pn=2
http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14871/2/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/One-Laptop-Per-Child-Sabotaged-by-Microsoft-and-Intel-71941.shtml
http://slated.org/microsoft_kills_baby
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/12/16/xbox_scratched_discs_updated/
http://thepopulist.wordpress.com/2003/10/10/the-trials-of-microsoft/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_antitrust_case
http://www.msversus.org/

Condemning Microsoft's behaviour is no more irrational or unjustified
than condemning the actions of any other criminal. That's not "hating",
it's fully justified dissent. Of course, to someone like /you/ who
sympathises with criminals, it might /seem/ unjustified.

>>> http://tinyurl.com/ie-swamp (Google)
>>> 
>>> Step 4. Having killed off the proprietary browser market with 
>>> anti-competitive bundling, they no longer have any third parties
>>> they can steal^H^H^H^H^Hlicense browser technology from, so they
>>> simply copied^H^H^H^H^H^Hinnovated from the current leading
>>> challenger (Firefox) as best they could. Unfortunately the
>>> cloning process didn't go as well as planned, and they just ended
>>> up with YABB (Yet Another Buggy Browser):
>>> 
>> Well, enough people seem to be able to use it effectively.

Yes, especially the spammers, phishers and malware writers.

>> Look at all the money that Google makes from their website!  If IE
>> were so bad, you would think that it would be hard to do anything
>> on the internet.

That's non sequitur. The "Internet" is not the problem, IE (and Windows)
is, and it most certainly /does/ make life difficult for the millions
who suffer the consequences of Microsoft's insecure and buggy software,
even those who don't actually use that software, but suffer the knock-on
effects. This situation does not preclude Google (or anyone else) from
making a profit from the Internet, or even utilising the Internet at
all, but it nonetheless makes that proposition much harder, more time
consuming and more expensive than it should be, as companies and users
waste time and money mitigating the effects of Microsoft's incompetence.

>> Perhaps you have your head up your rear and cannot see or hear the
>> facts.

The "facts" are palpable and well documented. Try reading them, instead
of denying the truth. Perhaps if you extracted /your/ head from
Ballmer's arse you'd be able to see that truth.

>>> 08:04:01 up 90 days, 15:46,  5 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.05,
>>> 0.00
>> There are 5 people using your computer?  Doesn't that get a little
>> crowded?

Like Microsoft, it's patently obvious you have zero concept of what a
multi-user system is.

I find it interesting that you choose to respond to these very serious
issues with vacuous and irrelevant comments - proof (if any was needed)
that your position (and Microsoft's) is quite indefensible.

So in summary: You believe it's OK to break the law by stealing others'
products and identities, and, through a distended litigation process,
cause those others to go bankrupt in their attempts to seek reparation,
provided that after you have destroyed those companies - you then throw
a wad of cash at their feet to shut them up, even if that cash cannot
possibly compensate them for either the injustice of the crime, nor the
actual loss of future profits they would otherwise have enjoyed (not to
mention the loss of employee's jobs, and /their/ future security).

The result of this criminal behaviour is an (essentially stolen)
software application, which is then forced onto consumers through a kind
of protection racket organised between the gangsters who stole that
software (Microsoft) and their OEM "partners". You then claim that
consumers must therefore "want" this software, based on the fact that
every PC buyer receives it by default, whilst blatantly ignoring the
fact that they didn't actually request this stolen software - it was
forced upon them without choice (and at cost). You also then use a
similar argument to claim there can't be anything technically flawed in
this software, otherwise the Internet would be unusable, but this
hyperbole conveniently distracts us from the fact that the Internet has
indeed become infested with all manner of problems due to the insecure
and buggy nature of this software, and that people must therefore waste
their time, money and effort mitigating problems caused by Microsoft's
incompetence.

You then have the gall to denounce as "haters" those who justifiably
condemn Microsoft's criminal behaviour and technical incompetence, then
engage in irrelevant, vacuous, juvenile, and ad hominem retorts in an
attempt to support your indefensible position.

I don't know if, as your pseudonym suggests, you have ever actually
worked as a lawyer, but if so then I'd hope that you were disbarred, if
not for gross incompetence, then at least for unethical conduct, since
by all accounts you appear to be one of the most stupid and morally
reprehensible thugs I have ever had the displeasure of encountering.

> Virtualisation works on several scales of deployment, not just
> megacorps.

Not only is amicus_unscrupulous utterly devoid of any moral fibre
whatsoever, but like so many of his kind, he is blissfully ignorant of
everything outside his narcissistic little bubble.

-- 
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It
|  is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William
|  Pitt the Younger
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
 21:34:00 up 91 days,  5:16,  4 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.05, 0.01

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