Witness the last court order which told MSFT to remove all files that ship with Explorer.
Sure, Bob, I haven't seen the old "compliance with a raise middle finger" defended in a while, except on broader "antitrust is unfair, so both middle fingers would be better" grounds. There's this tired legal concept of "good faith effort", but that couldn't possibly apply to a situation like this.
It's all beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, but the brilliant minds of Microsoft could have come up with something a little better. If they'd been willing to lift some finger other than the middle one. You think when Bill gets his holy grail speak recognition thing integrated, it's going to work like that? Very innovative solution to the "do what I mean, not what I say" problem.
Your interpretation is also highly dependent on the "IE4: everything done to Windows 95 since the retail release" definition. Lots of apps, from Microsoft and others, got distributed with lots of Windows updates.
A bit more diplomatically, here's an excerpt from a month-old infoworld column, still a favorite of mine.
Popular Idea No. 3: Microsoft should be free to decide what is part of the operating system. If Microsoft had waited, merging Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer into a single Windows 98 utility, I doubt Justice or anyone else would have taken action.
Internet Explorer isn't part of Windows 95, though, any more than it's part of the other operating systems you can get it for. Proof: As astute observers have pointed out, Microsoft categorizes Internet Explorer under business software on its Web site. You won't find it listed under operating systems.
Internet Explorer is an application, not an OS function. Microsoft bundled some OS kernel updates and some Internet Explorer functions into the same DLLs. That's all. (from infoworld.com )
Cheers, Dan. |
