Sorry, I forgot IE was the reference browser for the Internet and Microsoft failed, or wait, it wasn't, and developers only tested with IE? Who's problem was this again?
I wasn't blaming Microsoft, only stating the problem. However, bundling IE with Windows and giving it the dominant marketshare, and breaking as many standards as they did, exacerbated the problem. If IE was mostly compliant, I really wouldn't care -- let people use IE, I'll develop on Firefox, and things will mostly work.
Compare this to standards which actually work -- I hit "print to PDF" or "save as PDF" on Linux, in a browser or an OpenOffice document, open it on Acrobat Reader on Windows, and it works. Take any PDF from the Internet, open it in Okular on Linux, and it works. People who know will tell you ways in which Adobe may have broken the standard, but they generally work. Contrast this to having to test in every browser, and run it through the w3c validator...
Standard file compression, which one, are you serious?
zip is a standard, which is probably why it's used as the container format for everything from Chrome extensions to ODF documents to id software games.
Now, are other compression formats warranted? Sure, but the one that's most visibly included with Windows is zip, and it's interoperable.
ZOMG, Microsoft the monopoly is bundling file compression utilities with Windows, what about WinZip?
And I don't have a problem with that.
My problem isn't that IE has huge marketshare -- I don't like it, but I can live with it. My problem is that IE has huge marketshare and consistently breaks shit, and I as a web developer have to spend something like 25% of my time supporting it.
Contrast with zip -- I can use the zip commandline tool on Linux, or the Rubyzip library in Ruby, or WinZip on Windows, etc, etc, and they'll all open just fine with "Compressed Folder" on Windows.
Do you see the difference? Microsoft actually got the zip support right.
Gimp isn't RedHat is!1
If you're being serious, you're a moron. If you're being sarcastic, you made my point for me -- what, exactly, does RedHat have a monopoly on?
It's a bit like accusing Apple of abusing their monopoly on desktop computers. Why does nobody care that Safari is the default browser on OS X? Simple: Apple doesn't have the monopoly. Microsoft does, which means they have to play by different rules.
I'm not talking about monopolies, I'm poking fun at the reactions to them. If RedHat were found to be a monopoly, would random ballots make any more sense?
Only if RedHat were actually abusing their monopoly. Even then, I'd only care if they were doing so in a way that actually breaks standards. They want to include Gimp? Fine. They want to include a version of Gimp that makes PNGs that no one else can read? Fuck 'em.
You and I both know that many, many flamewars would end if every distro offered to log you into KDE or Gnome, listed in random order.
Indeed, Ubuntu solves this by making that choice for you. However, this is mitigated by several facts:
And so on -- all of which aren't true of browsers. Also, Gnome and KDE both have decent market share of the small market of Linux desktop environments...
And maybe I'm hanging out in the wrong forums, but I don't see Gnome/KDE flamewars... ever. I've flamed against KDE myself, but I use it, and that was about how they handled KDE4 -- nowhere in that discussion was it a Gnome-vs-KDE thing.
Now, you've made perhaps one good point:
It's like we've opened this big "So You've Got Yourself a Monopoly" book, flipped to Ch. XVIIJ "Punishments", and... oh, there's a blank page! Well, just make stuff up, that feels good, run with it.
Well, yeah, we do kind of have to figure out what actually applies to the situation. Telling Microsoft to simply abandon IE would probably be too harsh. Actually splitting the company up didn't work, or was rejected for whatever reason -- and likely wouldn't help.
The random ballot, as ludicrous as it sounds, is likely to do two things -- it will probably actually improve the use of alternate browsers in the EU, which is the point, and it won't favor one browser over another. It certainly won't harm users, and it seems really unlikely that it'd spread to other applications, making this somewhat of a storm in a teapot.
Now, you may be right in that, without actually hearing all of the discussion that went into this decision, it may be a bad precedent and it may be repeated ad-absurdum as you've described. And if that happens, I'll pull up my post here, and explain why it made sense for browsers, and why it doesn't make sense for whatever ludicrous example people try to apply it to.
Thats just your opinion. I don't agree
Are you a web developer?
the billion net users who aren't web developers don't give a shit either.
Much like they "don't give a shit" about driving SUVs, getting their PCs filled up with spyware constantly (and then buying a new, "faster" computer that only feels faster because it's clean)...
Of course, Firefox has been winning by actually being a better product, largely winning users with extensions. But most users, when it's actually explained to them what they're doing, are willing to use an alternate browser if it makes my job easier, as long as it doesn't make things worse for them.
They want to site to work. Period.
Which is generally what happens now -- except it's also going to work faster on other browsers. Unless something's changed recently, IE still comes in dead-last in performance.
NO browser supports all standards.
And all of them except IE support the standards, in general, better than IE. When flaws are pointed out with the Acid tests, all of them fix these flaws faster than IE.
I can build a website in Firefox, and have it work in Opera, Konqueror, Chrome, Safari, Galeon, Epiphany, iCab, every browser, and have it break in IE, taking several hours a week -- on a good week -- to fix.
But if you read my post, you'd know that:
To this day, if I want to be taken seriously as a web developer, I have to spend roughly 10-25% of my time hacking in support for IE6.
Again, I have to ask, are you actually a web developer?
You're just upset because its MS thats at the dominant position.
No, I'm upset because IE, and IE6 in particular, actually severely increases the amount of time I have to spend building a website. It makes my job harder, and the job of pretty much any web developer. It means I have to actually reboot, or fire up a virtual machine, because you know there's going to be something different.
I realize I have to test in every browser anyway, if I'm going to be diligent. Yes, I sometimes find minor differences between them, but nothing like, oh, the difference between the standard box model and IE's box model.
My Grandma doesn't. And shes pretty sane, thank you.
Perhaps I should've said "sane and informed" -- does she actively disagree with me, or does she just not have an opinion at all?
I also said, enough sane people, so your anecdote fails.
Also, it's been awhile since I checked, but I bet my grandma uses Firefox.
Thats how it works.
I didn't ask how it works. I know how it works. I asked how it should work.
You think this is going to stop at Browsers?
Yes, and if you actually read my original post, you'd know why.
Or in other other words if the entry to any market is high you want to government to "level" the playing field
There's a high barrier of entry, which is in itself a problem. And then there's actually abuse of monopoly.
The crux of your argument is stupid. I pointed that out.
Without bothering to register or sign in, thus limiting effective moderation, and making it difficult to carry on a conversation.
I call it like I see it.
That'd be more impressive if you actually saw it -- maybe developed some reading comprehension.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.