Differences between version 5 and predecessor to the previous major change of MicrosoftDirtyTricks.
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| Newer page: | version 5 | Last edited on Friday, February 6, 2004 2:24:54 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 4 | Last edited on Friday, November 29, 2002 5:44:35 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -20,8 +20,10 @@
compared to
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='/common/css/GN/en-us/down-other/default.css' >
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='/common/css/GN/en-us/down-other/KBArticleV2.css' >
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='/common/css/GN/en-us/down-other/webparts.css' >
+
+Update - (early 2004). They seemed to have changed their mind about this... the microsoft websites now seem to work with non-Microsoft browsers (other than windowsupdate.microsoft.com, of course).
!!Read-only Changes to Windows Registry
The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE part of the registry is not writable by users without "admin" rights on Windows 2000 (and presumably XP). This breaks lots of software that stored program settings in here, meaning they either won't install, or won't run. Netscape 4.7 has (had?) this problem. To be fair, this might not have been done for the purpose of breaking software.
@@ -65,17 +67,13 @@
<DIV><FONT color=3D#0000ff face=3DArial size=3D2><SPAN =
class=3D109264301-18032002>when=20
is Hal getting here?
...
-* And another example that presumably looks fine on Outlook but prints 3 leading garbage characters on Netscape:
- X
-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
- X
-MimeOLE: Produced By
Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
- ...
- .
- Content-Type: text/html;
- charset=
"utf-8
"
- Content
-Transfer
-Encoding: quoted
-printable
- .
- =EF=BB=BF<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C/
/DTD HTML 4
.0 Transitional//EN
">
- <HTML><HEAD>
+
+
* Claiming the text is encoded using the iso
-8859
-1(7) standard, or the ascii(7) standard, while the text is really encoded using one of
Microsoft's own character sets, making some characters turn out
"weird
" - especially single
- and double
- quote marks, and copyright
/registered trademark symbols
. (These characters are deliberately encoded in positions that the [ISO] standard marks as
"reserved")
----
-lots of stories
about service packs breaking common applications?
+!!Microsoft Business Practices
+
+Windows 3.1 gave a warning message if it was being run on DRDOS rather than MSDOS, even though it worked just as well on either. Presumably this was to scare people into only using MSDOS.
+
+In the early nineties, a company named "Stac" had as its flagship product a program named "Stacker", that transparently compressed and then de-compressed files on-the-fly. This product had versions for MS-DOS version 5, [IBM]'s OS/2, and [Apple]'s [Macintosh] operating systems. Microsoft
+were interested in incorporating this functionality in their next version, MS-DOS 6, and approached Stac
about licensing. During discussions, Microsoft gained information about technical details of the software. When MS-DOS 6 came out, it included !DoubleSpace, which eventually a jury found infringed on Stac's patents, and Stac was awarded US$120 million damages. But by then it didn't matter, as their product was effectively marginalised. (Incidentally, Microsoft counter-claimed that Stac had illegally reversed engineered MS-DOS because they were using undocumented DOS functions). Also, MSDOS 6.0 included changes that broke Stacker, although the company quickly produced an updated version that worked with 6..
