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good to see a survey with "I don't care" option.
all surveys should have a similar option
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I don't think it is a good idea. This just comes down to corporate greed at the expense of consumers. I don't how this can be anything but a big open door for viruses and spyware.
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 BeLHold wrote: big open door for viruses and spyware
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Nope, because I can see this becoming a problem with spyware and viruses. Programs changing it so that their crappy search programs and toolbars get installed not only in your browser, but in your OS as well. Yay.
Whatever happened to being able to file things properly? My desk is the veritable embodiment of clutter and I'll find you something within a minute, if it's there.
Need Another Seven Acronyms...
Confused? You will be...
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Excellent post - I was going to make the same simile & similar points myself, but you've put it so well - 5!
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Imagine a world where /insert your favourite car manufacturer/ bought all the other manufacturers or drove them out of the market. Nobody complains, actually everyone is happy, because now the cars get more unified, every switch stays roughly at the same place. Nomore breaking off the turn signal lever just because your buddy's car, which you borrowed for the day, has the transmission at a different place.
But now the company aquires Goodyear and brands it MoodSear, because it seems like the next logical step. They are not the experts when it comes to tires, but customers who buy cars need tires. Now they want to make sure only Bridgestone gets used and they weld them in place right in the car factory. And because the lifecycle of the tires would be way less than that of the car, they switch from inflated tires to solid rubber tires. Well, the ride gets a lot more bumpy and the customers are actually complaining about that. But they can't reasonably switch to a different car brand. Because all there is, is Minux, they do have a rich set of tirebrands and are way more flexible in steering wheel choices. But to buy one of those it takes a trained professional. And driving for the first couple of days can be tricky. So a clever guy came up with a solution. He welds an adapter into the Bridgestone tires that can now plug into a regular inflatable tire. Unfortunatelly now your car is (including the adapter) about 1 meter broader all over sudden. So parking is a bitch. And you can never go the top speed because that would cause the adapter to break.
So what do you choose? Bumpy ride, scary Minux or loosing speed? Why did this not come up (yet) when it comes to cars? Because of numerous competitors that are roughly comparable.
Oh, and only true car fanatics would actually argue about steering wheels...  Those car geeks... *shakes-head-in-disbelieve* 
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I'm not sure if you are trying to support my argument or go against it here?!
All the car manufacturers do keep buying one another. There is a vastly reduced number over what there used to be. And there are not too many tire manufacturers either.
I am sure there are examples, but I cannot think of a major competitor Microsoft has ever bought. Dos had Dr Dos. Windows has always had Macs to compete with. Wordperfect lost their position to Word, Lotus 123 to Excel, Netscape lost to Internet Explorer - and to show real competition does exist Firefox is starting to beat Internet Explorer. Microsoft buys lots of small companies with cool ideas, but that is like pharmaceutical companies buy small companies that have invented cool products, and I am sure car manufacturers buy engine and alternative fuel engine companies too. Quite simply it is cheaper than R&D.
In fact I would be more worried by Google who seem to buy just about anything with a domain name, and especially by Oracle who truly is systematically buying all the competition.
All in all I believe competition is good, and I believe Microsoft allows competition, but it so often gets accused of not doing so. I assume a huge proportion of the people on this website make their livings off creating software and services that work on the Microsoft platforms. Computers have come forward in leaps and bounds over the past 25 years that I have been involved with them, and the Microsoft has been heavily involved in all of that.
As for being a car geek, I have a huge mortgage and two kids, so I am stuck in the worlds most boring car with no likelihood of change in the near future
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The idea of forcing product onto the user is quite frustrating. We buy the OS to host applications, the applications we run on Vista or any other system should be fully configurable such that the user has the ability to make the choice to run it or not. If Microsoft would focus on competition and product quality, they would actually produce excellent products as they have at times. When they focus on this principal of "leveraging their platform to eliminate competition", they genuinely hinder their end users and their ability to perform their best. Users loose by having to use product which may or may not meet their needs and run additional unnecessary overhead when the product clearly doesn't meet their needs. Competition is the best way for a company to make the best choices for themselves and the end users. My 2 cents ... thanks for listening
Thanks
Brian
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El Gato wrote: Competition is the best way for a company to make the best choices for themselves and the end users.
Yes Yes and again Yes! I whole-heartedly agree with all you said, but quoted my favoite point.
What frustrates me is that there isn't an easy option to get rid of the junk! My sister had the 'friend' who got her computer for her, (on the cheap, right!) steal the pass-code for MS Office 2003 90 day trial. I can't uninstall a program that wasn't ever installed. I can't delete the *#&&^% thing! If there was just some way to say, "no thank you, please leave the computer, now" and be done with it, I wouldn't mind it being there in the first place!
Dan
Shohom67
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Microsoft is attempting to put Anti-Virus companies out of business by including a lame excuse of an Anti-Virus program in with Windows so they can control what is reported about holes in there software. What stops them from changing the search results from removing non negative Microsoft results? They have a standard policy of bending the truth to make there negative actions to sound like they are heroes. An open search will allow continued required honesty from Microsoft because others are watching. They need oversight for the safety of us all.
Everyone's entitled to my opinion
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To me, one of the successes of Windows is that it is easy to develop applications for it, and with the amount of money MS no doubt makes from its development platforms, it is no doubt encouraged.
Being able to replace Vista search with Google search, Apple search or the search company I am going to start this afternoon and sell for $500 million next week is good for the user, just like having Firefox is good, like having any choice is good.
But Microsoft gets so much negativity from people and governments, and to me most of that is wrong. Momo makes accessories for cars, boy racers buy their steering wheels. Does Ford have to make cars where you remove the steering wheel and easily attach a Momo steering wheel? Does GM? Does anyone. Cars are far more integral in our lives than computers, have been around longer, and the steering wheel is far more important to a car than the search facility is to an OS. So why is there not pressure on the car manufacturers? This applies to most industries.
Microsoft has invented some things, stolen some things etc etc, they might not be as sleek with marketing or presentation as Apple, as cheap as Linux, but over the years they have delivered great products that most people don't mind using. You ever heard accountants, secretaries, call centre help desk people arguing about Macs, MS or Linux? It is just us IT geeks.
Personally I hope Google and Apple do get a bigger share of the market, competition is good, and I am really looking forward to all the antitrust cases that will come against them as they get a bigger share.
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Well put Andy.
Microsoft is amazingly cooperative with the market that surrounds it. Agreed - how many other industries provide direct plug-in and cross-compatibility between their components and those of their competitors? Microsoft should NOT have to accomodate Google or anyone else unless they WANT to - they should not be forced to.
-cb
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how about the telco's. without global cooperation we couldn't verbally communicate to just about any place on the planet. How many telco's are there ? well at least one per country so that's 200 for starters!!
Any telco that couldn't connect with all the other telco's would not be in business for more than a day.
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pjd1001 wrote: how about the telco's. without global cooperation we couldn't verbally communicate to just about any place on the planet. How many telco's are there ? well at least one per country so that's 200 for starters!!
I think it depends on what feature you're talking about. Plugins to an O/S might or might not be considered a "basic" feature. Yeah, the telco's cooperate globally as far as communication goes - but then again it's not easy to buy two different makes of phones and hot-swap pieces and parts is it? Ever notice how many different kinds of power chargers there are? They're all "compatible" in that they'll plug into 60/50Hz 110v, but you can't buy one from Motorola and plug it into a Casio.
As you point out, a certain amount of interoperability is what makes the "system" work - but to regulate things down to the level of *forcing* any particular manufacturer to be plug-compatible with any other is not the correct approach. If we're going to do that then let's just end the free market as we know it. Make it illegal for Linux, BSD or any other O/S to exist - by LAW Windows is now the ONLY O/S. By LAW Google is the only search engine and BY LAW you must drive a crummy Ford when you'd rather drive a Honda. "1984" could then become a reality.
-CB
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true!
And also, is microsoft, even if their search engine is not as good as vistas, they'll still keep theirs...
Yui-Ikari
http://www.mindcontroll.com/yui/lala/phpBB2/
yui.project@gmail.com
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It's the standards from the ITU, IEEE etc that allow us to mix and match at the unit level - hence I can talk to you on your CDMA Nokia phone from my GSM Motorola phone, my Nortel router can communicate with your Cisco router and the network can be managed with Tivoli running on an IBM whatever. These manufacturers are not forced by statutory LAWS to allow this to happen, but the laws of common sense and sound economics.
rgds phild
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Limiting search in a specific location in HD
Importing & exporting index data
Indexing file and folder names as well
Mahmoud Zidan myblog[^]
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Should Google or another company be able to replace Vista's Solitaire with their own? Or is Solitaire an inherent part of the OS? 
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
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Solitaire is an evil Monopoly!!!
I wanted to bundle my own trial version of Solitaire+ in Dell's Vista PC, but I'm unfairly disadvantaged by this free version of Solitaire!!!
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Super Lloyd wrote: I wanted to bundle my own trial version of Solitaire+
LOL. 5. I think perhaps "Super Minefield" or "Minefield+" is more appropriate to this discussion...
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I have recently upgraded to Vista Business, and it has not got Solitaire, Freecell or Hearts, so I think the market is wide open for Google to take move into these areas.
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You're joking! Fancy graphics in Solitaire was a major reason many people upgraded.
Oh, and I barely use Google at the worst of times - I use www.Clusty.com and it has never failed me. The day it does, I'll use Yahoo. Just an obsession I have with not using Google.
TBH, I'd rather write my own...
-- modified at 13:55 Wednesday 27th June, 2007
Yet another spam post on yet another forum!
I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to.
I love being a student.
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