Quote: "You seem to miss the point. I use Netscape 7.2 as my default browser but I need IE to do stuff like Windows Update and other crap."
mine updates via Auto-Update, well erm.. automatically when a new patch/update comes out for anything that uses the windows service.
why would you need to manually update? Seems like a very pointless gripe.
Quote: "True, not for you, obviously. Although I find it hard to spot the sentences you didn't understand."
Has no one explain to you the difference between the words:
Total, Private, Business and Personal?
I mean askoxford.com might be the answer to quite a few of your issues. Though I feel more would be helped with a little visit to yell.com and looking up 'Therapist'. I'm sure they can do some regression crap or something and get to the root of your problems.
Quote: "After Bill shove $5 million up his ass and explodes, the world will be a better place."
There's several million people named Bill either by nick or register name, so you might have to widdle that list down a bit.
Also seeing as Bill Gates is technically a figurehead, the board as a whole makes the marketing decisions; he isn't the be-all and end-all of Microsoft. So even if he were to die, that wouldn't change anything; you'd just have to figure out who the heck WAS in-control.
Remember project like the X-Box Team, and even Microsoft Games are projects that Bill Gates is DIRECTLY opposed to. Microsoft Game Studios get less funding from Microsoft directly and more from the X-Box Team (from the internal profits) each month.
Quote: "The trouble is there will be no firefox. No one will be able to write a competing product without first reverse engineering the formats. Then there will be the small problem of the hundreds of microsoft patents that need to be licensed. Then after all that you will need to get the software onto the devices which will end up protected like xbox etc."
That is the heart of the argument really, or atleast it should be.
You don't need to reverse engineer any Microsoft products in order to use them or interact with the propriotry formats.
Everything is open to the public in those regards because if you take it off of Windows you have to play Licensing Fees.
Though how this is different from any other format is beyond me. Ever actually sat down and read the LGPL or GPL put out with many products. An Ex of my very Pro-Linux said the one thing she liked about the OS was the fact of no License Agreements; no EULA.
(L)GPL is identical to the EULA just for an Open Source system. Doesn't mean in any shape or form you can ACTUALLY use the source.. many people see a GPL and think 'woohoo open source'; you STILL have to License the software. Just because the Linux community rely on all of these variations doesn't mean your not legally open to being legally screwed if one company doesn't want you using thier software.
But, for the community it's put across with a friendlier face.
The way to get around it is to create formats that are open in thier own right.. like VRML, about the only sodding truely open format I know of.
It's designed to allow everyone to create thier own variation, but then the problem there is without ONE company to say 'this is the standard' like the ARB for OpenGL, well you get the chaos that is Linux. They're all tied by a common kernel; but what's inside is just a mess of non-compliant junk perticular to each personal build.
The only way they have compatibility to atleast SOME extent is to compile programs specifically for that system. Even that isn't a guarentee though.. your still looking at less compatibility than Windows 95 programs under Windows XP.
In the end your not forced to use these programs on Windows, and the Microsoft License states that provided your creating your application FOR Windows you don't have to license formats.
While this does push up the distance between Windows and other operating systems; think about that doesn't stop DivX from creating a Linux variation, or Quicktime.
But they only product Mac and Win variations. That has nothing to do with the way either company operates, it has everything to do with the development and compatibility of Linux.
Look at all of the claims against Microsoft ... TELL ME ONE, that another company isn't doing right now.
