[Novalug] 10k Web Treasure Hunt, FF users need not apply?

[jecottrell3 at comcast.net]

As they say, those who do not understand History are Condemned to Repeat It.

UNIX/Posix was the original Open Standard that freed Government and Industry from the Vendor Lockins of IBM, DEC, and the BUNCH. In fact, .GOV made Posix compatibility a Mandatory Standard on all its computers.

And yet, people willingly put their heads back into the noose with Microsoft. It boggles the mind.

As for those "huge sites that will be IE only", many State and Federal .GOV sites are/were only accessible by IE.

JIM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Hans" <mhans at oqtol.com>
To: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
Cc: "Novalug" <novalug at calypso.tux.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 11:02:57 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Novalug] 10k Web Treasure Hunt, FF users need not apply?


I laugh because it's funny, I haven't heard anything so absurd in years. The web has supposedly freed us from the costly desktop lock-in/updates we once suffered, why would anyone tarnish that platform ? <--(that's a rhetorical question) 

As someone who's heavily invested in the web as a platform (think HTML5 knocking out proprietary plug-ins, not just tables stapled to simple CRUD sql statements) it's funny to hear differing statements. While I was at Googles I/O developer conference I talked to several MS people who belive "browser compadibility" and following standards the key to IE8's future sucesses. I guess some people on the team didn't get the memo. 

Lastly, what are these huge sites that will be IE only? Thats a past problem in my eyes, if "most people" couldn't get onto facebook/myspace/youtube etc... they would switch browsers. I doubt any of them (or others) would sacrifice any user base to be IE8 only anytime soon :) 

Cheers, 
Michael 


On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Gregory Maxwell < gmaxwell at gmail.com > wrote: 





On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Michael Hans< mhans at oqtol.com > wrote: 
> So I was reading Paul Grahams YC Hacker news site and saw "$10k is buried 
> here from MS" and was slightly intrigued. It's a web treasure hunt for 10k 
> but here's the rub, visiting with FF the page tells me "get rid of my 
> browser or get lost" & "it won't help me solve the clues, only IE8" can. I 
> almost died laughing, IE8 is my only savoir to the web :) 
> 
> If you need a pick me up you can check it out yourself... 
> http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/ 

You laugh, but so long as 'everything' works in IE it only takes a few 
modestly popular websites being IE only to pull back significant 
userbase. 

Most people don't care what browser they run, they just want stuff to work. 


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