Browser Wars: Microsoft Wins in Win98 Redux
Remember how, back when Windows 98 was released, there was a big scandal about how Microsoft integrated browser technology into the OS itself, making it difficult if not impossible for Netscape and other browsers to compete? Remember how MS was forced to leave Internet Explorer as a stand-alone app? Remember how Microsoft was on the verge of being brought to a well-deserved justice when, at the last minute, Bush was elected and had the courts do a 180-degree reverse on the issue with the brakes on full?
Well, here’s the latest chapter: IE will no longer be a stand-alone app, according to this CNet News.com article.
Immediately after paying off AOL, the present owners of Netscape, three quarters of a billion dollars and other considerations to effectively shut up about MS’s monopolistic practices, and after starting a campaign of aggressive pricing aimed to cripple any chance of Linux getting any market share and edge out new open-source version of Office Suites, MS now announces its next step in its plan to further dominate and monopolize the market.
What’s it to you? Aside from broken competition and major price hikes down the road, you might also find that this will help implement Palladium, and Microsoft will have a private key that will let them into your computer and be your own personal cybercop. Sounds nifty, right?
This is totally OT, but I can’t find any e-mail links on your site.
Your font size is ridiculously small. It needs to be about twice the size to be anywhere near comfortably readable. I don’t know if you’ve got 40/20 vision or what, but people will not go to a site if they can’t read it.
Simon:
Like many people, I don’t post my email address directly on the site because spambots get ahold of them and spam you half to death. I know, it’s happened to me. When you comment like you did, it gets back to me via email that mt.cgi produces.
As for font size, it is set to “small,” but I use both Netscape and Internet Explorer, on both a Mac and a Windows XP machine, and with the base font size set so most web sites appear comfortable, my own site comes up fine. You may want to check your own browser’s font settings, or, like most people when they find a page with small type, just increase the font size for viewing that page. There will be a command in your browser’s “View” menu, and usually an accompanying hotkey command.
thanks for the critique, though. If I get many more comments like that, I’ll consider increasing the font size, but I have seen computers where going to that size makes the type ridiculously large and screws up the site design. So many computer platforms, so many browsers, so many individual settings–someone will always be unsatisfied.
If you want people to come to your site, you need to set the font size so people can actually read it. I have no problems with any other site’s readability, but yours is bizarrely small.
Bringing this discussion back to the original topic, I am glad to see another gaijin who sees the problem this deal poses for, well, just about everyone.
I recently heard this agreement described on a morning radio show as “a great thing for consumers.”
To be accurate, the speaker probably should have said “this is a great thing for the full-spectrum domination of all consumers.”
You said it, Sako. As they say in “Matrix Reloaded,” it’s all about control. And people will probably accept this new style and use it for no better reason than that Microsoft tells them so.