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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (23581)	11/17/1999 4:18:00 PM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

Ease of use does matter. The judge has (erroneously) found that the existence of applications leads to the primary appeal of an OS to the consumer. If this were the case, then Windows should not be in the forefront since MSFT's first and most important hurdle was to deal with the dearth of applications for Windows in the first place. One cannot ignore this fact. <Exactly. And that is at the heart of this case. Microsoft used contracts and partnerships to prevent competition in the market for these very "middleware" applications. As the judge points out, Microsoft introduced changes in Java that make it more difficult to port a Java app written in Microsoft's J using default setting settings. The box-maker restrictions and ISP agreements sought to bar from the market client-level tools that allow others to set standards for how the server-side application interacts with the client side.> That's not true. MSFT introduced no changes to Java. They made changes to their own proprietary implementation. If programmers did not want to use Viz J++, they did not have to. There are no contracts in place to force programmers to use MSFT development tools. There are no contracts that force enterprise consumers to buy "middleware" that won't run other JVMs. MSFT simply made better tools than most of the competition, hence the attraction. Java also runs better on NT, even more so than Sun's own Solaris OS. Show me evidence an example of a contract that prevents standard Java VM's from running on a Windows box. I doubt if you can.

To: RTev who wrote (23581)	11/17/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Respond to of 24154

RTev- Thank you for the analysis. I've read a few of your "How High" posts and they are even handed and insightful and I enjoy them. I'd like to respond with a technical analysis that differentiates between the word innovate and the word monopolize. The modern operating system provides the mechanism that allows programs to exchange data between themselves. Much as you type with your keyboard another program could bypass the keyboard and pass the information directly to the program that puts the letters on the screen. To give an example, press a button on an Excel spreadsheet and a portion of the data is passed to a Word document. The mechanism is open to all. So it could just as well be a Lotus 123 spreadsheet passing the data to a Word document. Now, the browser desktop metaphor is natural and useful. The problem is I use Netscape for browsing and I would like the operating system to use Netscape for systems functions. In the same way that Word and 123 can work together Windows could use either Navigator or Explorer or any other browser that followed the rules for it's systems functions if Microsoft desired. Microsoft choose to go the monpoly route and exclude any browser but Explorer. Harvey