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To: RussP
Imagine an Internet in which you have second-class or no access if you don't use MS products. That's where we could well be today if MS were allowed to do whatever they want.

Sounds like paranoid delusion to me, how exactly are you claiming that will happen? This better be good, since you're asking me to support leftist socialists like Stallman instead.

24 posted on 12/11/2006 5:49:32 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle

Hey, I agree 100% with you on Stallman's politics. He's way out there on the Left. But that's irrelevant. His "copyleft" concept may have saved the software world from total domination by Microsoft.

If he and his fellow "hackers" (in the positive sense of the word) are willing to share the fruits of their labor, how can you complain about that?

Suppose someone could produce a quality car and copy it for $0.01 each. If he was willing to give you one, would you complain and insist on paying GM their "fair" price of $25,000 instead -- in the name of "capitalism"? Of course not.

Now let me try to explain how MS tries to control Internet access. Something like 90-95% of the users out there use IE, their browser. They can subtly and secretly violate Internet standards in such a way that only *their* Internet servers are compatible with their browser.

So if a company uses non-MS servers for their corporate website, the visitors have problems, and the company loses business. That puts pressure on the company to use MS servers, and it tends to induce users to use IE just to avoid the potential hassles.

I understand that those kinds of problems did occur in the past, but fortunately MS could not make it work because they not dominate the server market as they do the browser "market." But you can bet it wasn't for the lack of trying. And if Apache and Linux hadn't been around, MS would now have an absolute stranglehold on the Internet.


25 posted on 12/11/2006 7:29:31 PM PST by RussP
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To: Golden Eagle
Sounds like paranoid delusion to me

You've never heard of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" (testimony here (.doc))? You've never read Microsoft's own "Halloween document" showing how they like to screw with standards in order to quash competition and own the functional area of the standards?

73 posted on 12/14/2006 12:41:23 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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