Grorge,

>snip<



>< s >The Easter Eggs have been around for awhile and they're pretty well known. I personally think that they're kind of neat. My favorite was the credits in Win 3.1. But, yeah, it's hardly a reason for purchasing a product.

Right.

>
>>Essentially I do not think MSFT would do this
>>
>>Everything I've seen would lead me to believe that Microsoft would never do this. Didn't they just recently fire three programmers for putting some 'extra' code in a product? They are too smart to do that as they are in no way going to take the chance.
>
>I don't recall, but I think I mentioned MS software failing because it used an undocumented feature in a DLL. I'm not 100% certain that it's the case, but I can't think of anything else that would cause. Remember Microsoft Fax? It came with Win 95. It won't run properly under Win 98. The fix is to replace the MAPI32.DLL in Win 98 with the one that came with Win 95. It's even documented in the MS KB.

Hmm.. For some reason I seem to recall that they put some kind of backdoor code into a product and someone found it out and exploited it. I've got to think that MSFT is particularly touchy about this kind of stuff right now. <g>


>
>>Then, what's the government's case? I still think that a lot of this is political.
>
>>*shrug*
>
>To sum up the government's case (and probably badly< g >) it basically revolves around MS supposedly using its position in the marketplace to gain dominance for a particular product. In this case it's the browser. The contention being that by tying it to the OS, they sought an unfair advantage. If this is true, then wouldn't you agree that the remedy is extreme? Certainly, I may be being simplistic in my summation, but my recollection is along these lines. I certainly don't recall any indication that any other products were involved.
>
>Political? You bet.


I think you pretty much nailed it. What gets me George is that this kind of behavior is applauded in smaller companies and disparaged in larger ones. Every company out there worth their salt will use its position in the marketplace to expand that position.

I mean, isn't that what competition is all about??? *bg*

Best,

DD