Windows come with an FTP client, but you usually have to enable the service. Microsoft has never prevented me from using that crappy Netscape. Programmers always copy each other so nothing new there. Why reinvent the wheel?
Every version of windows has an ftp client, it's just not graphical. Code: c:\> ftp ftp.mozilla.org not too difficult. The direction they were headed was to make all the UIs for the OS using the browser, making it impossible to use any other browser for that purpose. You could still install another browser and use it, but if you made that browser the default browser the OS would stop working. Exactly, the regulators make sure there is competition which is good for you since it forces Microsoft to constantly improve. If not for the regulators firefox probably wouldn't run on windows nearly as well as it does, Microsoft would have ensured that IE always outperformed it so it could keep it's monopoly. It's what they did for many years before the regulators finally put the clamp down on them.
You need to be specific, as the ones I remember are: - One where Microsoft was forced to release its interoperability information. As in tell everyone some details of how windows worked, not change it. - The one where Microsoft was forced to sell XP without media player. I didn't think that applied to XP. - The web browser one, which hasn't reached the trial yet. How did those judgements cause Microsoft to have to break Vista ? Or was it one I forgot about ? Either way, you will have to be specific about which lawsuit it was and how it caused Microsoft to have to break parts of Vista.
Not true, if you wanted to be an FTP server you might have to start a service, but the command line client has always been there. That's not how Microsoft does things, a perfect example is Java. Sun wrote Java to be a language that you could compile and run on a variety of operating systems and devices. One of the first things Microsoft did was "extend" the language, ie they came out with a version of Java that supposedly ran faster, but had proprietary Microsoft hooks so the code would no longer run on other operating systems. Luckily Sun sued and won and Microsoft decided to write a new language just like Java but call it C#. The MO is, take existing software, create Microsoft version that is able to use the existing documents, but once saved can only be used by Microsoft. Advertise new format as "better/faster", give away early versions and/or bundle with the OS, drive the competitor out of business, profit!
OK then, so it does. I beg to differ on the "difficult" comment though. Maybe most people here could work out how to use a command-line FTP client, but a hypothetical great-aunt Doris probably won't get very far. "Default browser" would be taken with a grain of salt, though. It would be default only for the WWW. I'm not going to pretend MS wouldn't do something like that if it benefited them, but I struggle to see how it does. They don't actually make money on IE itself; only on some things that use it, which can be made to work with alternative browsers as well. (Incidentally Microsoft is a lot better at doing this than some other companies have been...)
It's good to be the best, but it's better to be the only! Microsoft made a concerted effort to run everyone else out of business, by making similar products, packaging them with the OS and in some instances actually making competitor products crash. Once the other companies are out of business Microsoft can charge anything they want. Throughout history inventors rarely made a lot of money from the things they invented, people who came in later and built on the inventions typically make the most money. Look at Microsoft's history, they bought the first version of dos and sold it to IBM. They copied windows from Apple/Xerox, when the world wide web hit there was no IE because Microsoft was still trying to copy AOL with their Microsoft Network. Microsoft waited patiently while the first browser was was fought. Only when Netscape won did Microsoft come out with their own browser which was very similar to Netscape only Microsoft added "extensions" to javascript which would "make developer's lives easier", when in fact they were helping to distribute web pages that would only work with IE. I don't know if it still does but for a long time IE would actually tell web servers it was talking to that it was a "Netscape" browser.
Yea there is no way anyone would be able to do the following: Code: c:\>ftp ftp.mozilla.org ftp> get mozilla-latest.exe ftp> quit c:\>mozilla-latest.exe Besides like I already said, they weren't blocking Microsoft from distributing IE, they were blocking Microsoft from making 3rd party browsers unusable for Windows users.
Which would require them to split off IE and sell it separately. That sort of thing doesn't tend to make consumers happy. (And yes, there is an alternative; Apple.) How are people going to know how to use said FTP client and where to go? You'd need to give them instructions on what to do first off; how do you get this to them?
Hardly they can keep bloating the OS with everything they sell and just increase the price of the OS. They could have also shipped with a stripped down web browser and charged people for an upgrade. There was an old version of windows that only allowed a handful of incoming connections unless you upgraded to the server version. People noticed that when you upgraded no new software was downloaded it just tweaked registry parameters so they eventually figured out the magic keys to set to unlock this functionality. Microsoft will purposely cripple it's own software to get you to pay them more money. (They are certainly not the first company to do this, IBM did the same thing with their mainframe computers, it had a real "go faster" button) They wouldn't have to, they could use IE to download it. I never said that Microsoft shouldn't ship windows with IE, I was pointing out the inaccuracies in your posts: "The guys who think a web browser is an optional piece of software that shouldn't be bundled with an operating system" This is wrong, it's ok to be bundled not ok to lock out alternatives. "The only alternative would be bundling a few other browsers with Windows" This is wrong, there are a variety of ways to install other browsers without IE "FTP clients don't come bundled with Windows - and even if they changed that, you need to know the address of the FTP server." This is wrong, it does come with a client, if you can figure out a web address you can certainly figure out an ftp address, in fact people did so for many many years before http traffic hit the internet.
unfortunately, the government will keep microcrap in business as linux would be too much like saving money.
Increasing the price of the OS doesn't equate to making IE pay, because they can increase its price without putting Internet Explorer into it. Shipping with a stripped-down version doesn't give much of an advantage either because if people go looking for another browser they could find competing browsers as well as Microsoft's version. I'm not talking about what you think, I'm talking about the European Commission's view on the subject. The only way my statement could have been inaccurate was if "tying" isn't referring to bundling, but their reference to an "artificial distribution advantage" makes it seem unlikely it could mean anything else. Guess I should have said only good alternative. That doesn't actually answer the question; who is there to tell you ftp.xyz.com or even www.xyz.com exists? Before the web (and especially the search engines it brought) this information could get to you one of two ways; it was pre-installed into the computer (which gives the vendor control of what you can see, and probably doesn't get updated much) or someone told you through advertising, manuals or something like that. Whether you can understand how to use it is immaterial if you don't know it exists in the first place.
I can see how someone who wasn't using the internet before the web might think this, but as with most of your misinformation you are totally wrong. We had email, newsgroups, gopher, known ftp sites that you get ftp server names from and just plain common sense. I don't have to google "mozilla" when I already know there is a mozilla.org they normally put up ftp.mozilla.org. Not that any of this matters because you still appear to be under the delusion that me and/or the European Union ruined Vista by try to force Microsoft to not ship IE with Windows. /boggle