Something else to consider:If Microsoft hadn't done it but someone else that company would now be having the same market position Microsoft enjoys with the same resulting envy, jealousy and petty hatred against them!Microsoft's business practices are no worse than those of any large corporation, in fact on many fronts they're better.It's only the massive customer base that makes a lot of people feel that Microsoft is worse (if 1% of customers complain and you have 100 customers you're the only one complaining, if 1% complain and you have 500 million customers there's 5 million people complaining).

>Something else to consider:>If Microsoft hadn't done it but someone else that company>would now be having the same market position Microsoft enjoys>with the same resulting envy, jealousy and petty hatred>against them!Yes, probably true. There would be someone else doing the same thing. But that doesn't mean we should just let everybody do whatever they would like to do. Most MS criticism is not based on jealousy.>>Microsoft's business practices are no worse than those of any>large corporation, in fact on many fronts they're better.>It's only the massive customer base that makes a lot of people>feel that Microsoft is worse (if 1% of customers complain and>you have 100 customers you're the only one complaining, if 1%>complain and you have 500 million customers there's 5 million>people complaining).Most big company's have their secrets and unethical behaviours. It will always be that way. The big difference between the IT industry and other industries however is the products they sell: If you need a new car, you either buy it from one brand or the other. The same goes for washing machines, televisions, food and other stuff. In the IT business things are different; competing products must interconnect. Your mail reader must work with a mail server, your browser must understand the layout of all web pages. If anyone of these parties starts misbehaving, it pretty easy to force out any competition. That's what all the discussion is about. It's about giving everybody a fair change on the marketplace.

and that's why there's open standards which everyone (including Microsoft) complies with.But let me ask you... If you decide on a new car, can you get competing products integrated as easily as software from competing manufacturers?Say I want a Ford Focus but I'd rather have a BMW engine and Volkswagen windows.That's the equivalent of getting a IBM PC with an Iiyyama screen and Microsoft Windows.

>ah, more Microsoft bashing from some know-it-all kiddo who>gets all his "facts" from slashdot...Now, really, was your post necessary? I am intrigued by these pro microsoft comments; I am interested to hear why MS isn't so bad, but your just showing your ignorance by comments like that.

No problems here...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/76919.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/76920.jpg

Hey! I never said that story was true, I posted it here partially to find that out! Just because some one posts it here, doesn't automatically mean it true!:-mad

Or that they belive its true either.

"Hey! I never said that story was true, I posted it here partially to find that out! Just because some one posts it here, doesn't automatically mean it true!"Too late to backpedal now on this one... You didn't begin your story with "a popular rumor has it...." or "this bit of fiction...." And now by your own admission, you posted a story which you knew very well could be fiction. This is the type of junk about Microsoft that has been fodder for bashers for years. "Loose lips sink ships"...

I have never met, and never likely to meet Bill Gates but I can believe John's description of him.However Micorsoft's business practices leave a lot to be desired IMHO and agree with Metamarty's post.I do wish Jeroen would take off those rose tinted glasses for a while and look at how MS got to be so big. Not by inovative software but by copying, buying out, or otherwise extinguishing the competition, the browser wars was a prime example.As for creating standards, the only standards MS are interested in are those which they themselves create for their own software that everyone else has to adhere to.As one example, when there was an alternative to IE for a browser it was well known that IE was the least compatible with the WW3 standards and yet those standards were thrashed out by the software houses who developed the software so you would think they would adhere to their own standards.The road to MS dominance is littered with dubious business practices and crushed competitors who could not stand up to MS because of there wealth.For a lot of people, at least this side of the Pond, the deal with the DoJ was so incerdible it was a farce.Micorsoft's attitude to Open Source and Linux over the last 3 - 4 years also makes humerous reading and the court cases against Lindows, Lin-, or whatever they have to call themselves these days, just beggars belief.BillyG may be a nice man, MS is not nice for inovative software and open standards.FS is my preferred civil flight sim but the competition is running on a shoestring so a comparison is meaningless. However given the money MS can throw at FS I would expect it not to have the 'bugs' and errors well documented on this site not would I expect the current version to break features which worked in the previous version(s).I'd better stop before my blood pressure takes hold :-)

lolIrksome ostentatious programmers! :-lolJay BirchCFI, CFII, MEIAzalea Air, Inc. (KBFM)http://www.clearedasfiled.com/images/simpics/jaycfi.gif

>I do wish Jeroen would take off those rose tinted glasses for>a while and look at how MS got to be so big. Not by inovative>software but by copying, buying out, or otherwise>extinguishing the competition, the browser wars was a prime>example.>A war Microsoft didn't start...>As for creating standards, the only standards MS are>interested in are those which they themselves create for their>own software that everyone else has to adhere to.>hmm, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about and are only following the anti-Microsoft party line.>As one example, when there was an alternative to IE for a>browser it was well known that IE was the least compatible>with the WW3 standards and yet those standards were thrashed>out by the software houses who developed the software so you>would think they would adhere to their own standards.>Shame isn't it that Microsoft didn't win by bullying the others out of business but by sheer force of quality?Windows NT4 and Windows 95 shipped with IE2 or IE3. Have you ever tried those and compared them with competing products at the time?Obviously not, or you'd know that IE was at that point far inferior.It was only when IE4 was released that IE exceeded the quality and feature richness of Netscape, which released at about the same time Netscape 4 which was a disaster to put it mildly.Where IE4 complied with just about every W3C recomendation out there as well as with almost everything that was at that moment under proposal to the W3C (including I may add proposals from Netscape themselves which even Netscape didn't comply with yet), Netscape 4 was completely non-compliant leading to websites created to comply with W3C standards more often than not not working on Netscape 4.Netscape 4 didn't even support Javascript properly. Sidenote: Javascript was designed by Netscape inc. ...Netscape lost due to their own failures, noone forced them to release a product as buggy as they did.But it gets worse. Whenever Netscape released an "update" to NS4, it was always guesswork whether code written to work with an earlier version would still work.I've written against Netscape 4 myself (it was corporate standard at my then-employer). We had a testlab with some 5 machines each running different patchlevels of Netscape 4 just to see if some code written against 4.72 would not crash 4.76 or 4.02 (for example).With IE all you need is one machine with the lowest version you want your code to work with. If it works with that it works with everything newer as well.>The road to MS dominance is littered with dubious business>practices and crushed competitors who could not stand up to MS>because of there wealth.>Not quite. Microsoft has purchased other companies, there's nothing wrong with that.Their wealth means they are able to develop products faster than others, I grand you that.It also enables them to do more marketing.But since when is it a crime to use your corporate assets?>For a lot of people, at least this side of the Pond, the deal>with the DoJ was so incerdible it was a farce.>Yes, to all those who don't know the facts and listen only to the "Microsoft is evil" chant.>Micorsoft's attitude to Open Source and Linux over the last 3>- 4 years also makes humerous reading and the court cases>against Lindows, Lin-, or whatever they have to call>themselves these days, just beggars belief.>Ever heard of trademark infringement? Guess not, or maybe you have but think Microsoft has no right to protect their own as is blatantly obvious from the rest of your post.>BillyG may be a nice man, MS is not nice for inovative>software and open standards.>Again, you have no idea what you're talking about...>FS is my preferred civil flight sim but the competition is>running on a shoestring so a comparison is meaningless.Ah, so suddenly Microsoft is not evil?If they're as bad as you describe I'd immediately stop using all their products and switch to competitors no matter how bad those competing products are.After all, they can't be worse than Microsoft products...>However given the money MS can throw at FS I would expect it>not to have the 'bugs' and errors well documented on this site>not would I expect the current version to break features which>worked in the previous version(s).>Yes... again that attitude.You obviously have no idea about the complexity of software and the things people will call bugs that aren't.If I'd gotten a Euro for every reported bug that isn't I'd never have to work again.>I'd better stop before my blood pressure takes hold :-)>Yes, go and switch to a Mac and leave us alone. After all, Intel and AMD are as bad as is Microsoft, destroying the competition in the CPU market.And don't forget to not use NVidia or ATI graphics cards either, they have together destroyed the competition through the unfair practice of building quality components at low prices the competition couldn't compete with.

>As one example, when there was an alternative to IE for a>browser it was well known that IE was the least compatible>with the WW3 standards and yet those standards were thrashed>out by the software houses who developed the software so you>would think they would adhere to their own standards.Still no doubt in my mind that it's thanks to MS that we are able to do most of the things we do so easily.Regards the quote above - I've dabbled in Web page design ( for fun) over the past 4 years- starting with the most basic template type things and moving later into playing with HTML etc. I stress here and now that I'm no expert, but when it comes to testing a page one normally tests it out on as many available browsers as you can( EG Netscape/Mozilla/aol etc ) - not just IE. However the fact is that a simple page with few complications frequently require adjustments to work properly in non IE browsers. Fine - OK but the adjustments seem to be different for each browser. The only one which is tolerant enough of errors etc to produce a working result quickly is IE.Bottom line is - as far as IE is concerned - if MS can do it - why can't the others- is it because they try to hard to be different?Whatever the answer - it's a fact that MS has made it easy for the amatuer to play around whilst other browser designers/OS designers etc often seem to have made things as difficult as they can for people to use.Dave

For Web pages and Javascript, I always use Opera. They have stricter W3C compliance and far better error handling in javascript. And about the question where we would be without MS, have you thought about Apple? I'm definitly not an Apple fan, but it's just to indicate that more companies are capable of creating user interfaces.

Dave,I am a bit more involved in webdesign; I have been at it for years. Let me assure you IE is the non-compliant one. Of all of the pages I have made, Mozilla, Opera, Firefox(the little cousin of Mozilla), always will display the page the same way(or the slightest variations, nothing to get upset about). And in all honesty if you stick with basic HTML you will be fine even with IE. However, Microsoft has decided to take the W3C standard and manilpulate it a bit. I don't suppose there is anything wrong with that, business is business. However, by taking a public standard, manipulating it, you create a small problem. Nothing gets me set off faster than to browse to some website, and have it NOT display right because the webmaster put things in there that only IE would display right; it displays these things right only because they aren't part of the W3C standards. I can give you a perfect example: www.zabartcc.org Click on the roster. If you are in IE, you won't notice a thing. However, if you are in FireFox(my current browser of choice), it won't look so good.I do not understand why you would desing a site that wasn't fully browser compliant across the board. I also don't understand why Microsoft has thrown the W3C standards out of the window. Oh well, the part of a poem whos name I don't remember comes to mind: "Mine is not to wonder why, mine is but to do and die."

If you'd read instead of ranted you'd have learned a bit by now, but obviously that wasn't your intention.Yes, there's stuff that IE can do that's not W3C compliant. But that doesn't mean that W3C compliant pages won't display, in fact they'll display better than in most or all other browsers.I've been doing web programming professionally since 1999, I've been around the block a few times.I've had to work with pages that had to work with different versions of Netscape 4, it was a disaster.The Javascript and HTML engines were so messed up and non-standard compliant that it was impossible to get code to work that would not crash one subversion or another.There was one site we were given to fix where a simple piece of Javascript would, when run in IE, work perfectly but when run in NS4 would crash the computer.I checked that code against the Javascript specs as published by Netscape themselves and it was perfectly valid!Same with HTML. Netscape extensions are a mess, Microsoft extensions comply with draft standards which were then under discussion at the W3C and were in part adopted and became the HTML 4 DOM.Opera is supposed to be pretty decent too, I've never had to program against it (having been involved mainly in projects targeting single platforms for use on intranets).I did work for an e-commerce site for a while where we did target different browsers.All code I wrote I checked against the W3 standards using the tools the W3 provides for that purpose.In IE5 and 6 that code shows up perfectly, in Netscape 7 it looks decent but in NS 6 or earlier it's a complete and utter mess.Now, where's the standards compliance if you can't even write code that complies with the standards and looks as intended in Netscape?Where's the standards compliance in Netscape if it crashes the computer on encountering a piece of code that according to their own publications is correct?Netscape lost the browser battle through their own failing to produce a quality product after Netscape 3 (Netscape 6 just was too little too late).Web designers abandoned them because it was impossible to predict what code would do when used in one version that was written against another (so no future proof code...).When a serious security leak was detected affecting both IE and Netscape 4, Microsoft put out a fix for that in days, Netscape needed months. Where's the customer care in that?