[CLUE-Talk] Big Oops

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Dave Anselmi wrote:

*snip*

> But, MS isn't an OS company, they're an application company.  The value of
> Windows is $0 - because there are viable alternatives for that price.  What
> MS does well is applications.  (See "In the Beginning was the Command Line"
> by Stephenson - it's his idea).

That doesn't have much bearing on the suit, however. The suit is concerned
with Microsoft using their OS monopoly to dominate other markets
illegally.

> So, can MS remove IE and still provide their apps?  No.  I recently
> installed some MS development stuff.  First I had to upgrade to IE 6.
> Although the OS is relatively independent of the apps, all the apps hang
> together.  So, perhaps the app that depends on IE is explorer (the shell).
> Perhaps it's the Office suite.  Perhaps it's just tech support needing to
> tell users how to find knowledge base articles.

They don't depend on explorer, per se, they depend on some of the
libraries. However, Microsoft wants to force people to use IE6, so they
force you to install IE6 at the first opportunity - in this case when
you install their developer stuff. They could have just as easily
put the required libraries on the disk with the apps you wanted.

> Most likely what MS means isn't "can't technically" but "can't while
> maintaining our projected profits".

Exactly. Which is what I keep trying to tell people (CLUEbies aren't
in this category) -- Microsoft's goals (and most proprietary software
manufacturer's) are in direct opposition to their customer's goals
in many ways. You want to buy an application and use it at the lowest
possible cost -- which means buying an application and using it for
a long period of time (to reduce training and integration costs).
You also want flexibility, so if you find a cheaper platform or
want to create custom apps, all of your data is accessible.

OTOH, Microsoft wants to make sure that you have to continue pouring
dollars into their bit bucket -- which means frequent upgrades (or
subscriptions). They also want to lock you into their "solutions"
which means that they have to find ways to restrict their customers
from using competing products -- and ways to force people who
don't use their products to migrate to them.

In short, the customer comes last when it comes to M$. Always.

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
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"Don't make us bite you in hard-to-reach places!" - The Tick