washington d.c. trying to stop windows xp

[Greg Harris]

"Microsoft critics scored an important new ally Tuesday as New York Sen. Charles Schumer urged the government to seek a court-ordered block against the release of operating system Windows XP until the company makes major changes to it."
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[Andy Ceponis]

Even though i am one of those "anti-MS" people i think they are going about it the wrong way. They are ignoring the monopoly issue and just trying to hinder MS in every other way possible. I for one want XP to come out so i can upgrade to it. Who cares if they put all their own shit in it. I use all third party software anyways.
I agree that something needs to be done about MS's strong arm tactics, but this isnt the solution.

[Glen Tanner]

That's nothing. I heard Microsoft is trying to patent 0's and 1's!
see!
[This message has been edited by Glen Tanner (edited July 26, 2001).]

[Greg Harris]

true, andy... who cares if they put their own stuff with the OS. but, i do not like the idea that they are not including the JVM with XP. i just put whatever i want on my system and pretend windows is not really there. of course, there is always my linux machine.
good one, glen. the onion always has some funny articles!

[Glen Tanner]

I agree, Greg. Rodney King said it best: "Why can't we all just get along?"

[Angela Poynton]

I could be wrong here (I'm sure someone will correct me if I am) but as Java programmers we would all have a version of the latest JVM on our machines anyway, so for us, no problem. This will affect the average (non-programmer) user. I'm assuming that they won't be able to view applets, and I'm sure there are other consequences too. I suppose in turn this affects us again, since if it becomes apparent that the majority of people can't see applets, the market for them on websites will almost dissappear and the market for Java Developers may cool down. Of course we can still have JSP and Servlets and I don't think this will have a HUGE affect on the Java industry, I just think that Microsoft are making a rod for their own backs since people are going to start complaining if webpages don't come up properly.

[Greg Harris]

you are right, angela... it will not affect us directly because we will have java on our machines anyway.
but, it could go 2 ways for the average web surfer. one, they will get frustrated with websites that have applets (because they cannot see them) and just not go to that site anymore... two, they will get frustrated with windows XP and find a different browser.
i personally think microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot on this one.

[Glen Tanner]

Me too.

[Matthew Phillips]

Everything that I am hearing about XP makes me think that Microsoft is looking to shoot themselves in the foot. Every idea seems to be a bad one.
Matthew Phillips