Message-Id: <199603152039.PAA08078@jacana.lcs.mit.edu>
To: webmaster@MIT.EDU, sipb@MIT.EDU
Subject: why does SIPB end up promoting microsoft?
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 15:39:00 -0500
From: Adam Holt <holt@graphics.lcs.mit.edu>


To the maintainers of http://www.mit.edu & http://www.mit.edu/why-notscape.html

Unless you have been asleep for the last 6 months (or stoned for the
last week anyway!), you should be aware that Microsoft has just forced
AOL and Compuserve to use its Java-hostile browser (ActiveX, antithesis
of cross-platform, will be "preferred") in exchange for (truly)
priceless icons on the Win95 desktop.

It should be deadly obvious what is happening here.  Microsoft WILL
leverage the 40-60million unix-illiterates who have Win95 on their
desktop by next year at this time.  Why?  Because, as Gates says in March 25th
96 BusinessWeek, "we wake up in the morning thinking about browser
share".

Have you noticed that AT&T's WorldNet and Prodigy have so far been
refused icons in Win 95?  Does it come as a coincidence that these 2
services do not use MS Internet Explorer?  Dare I say... YET?  Does
anyone have any illusions that Gates is beginning to use MS IE to
control the Web -- by prostituting Win95 desktop real estate?

Only the most idealistic fool will look at today's browser market and
claim that any browsers but Netscape, Internet Explorer (and Lynx in
low-bandwith countries) will have standards impact.  Pay attention: AOL
just abandoned the $10+ million it spent on Booklink's browser.  I was a
bigotted W3 supporter from the start in 1994 (against Netscape tag
theatrics) and am a dedicated/obnoxious Linux/GNU devotee like the rest.

But it's time to get real.  Gates has smelled the COFFEE.  Can you?

It's time to start looking at the future and examining the long term
consequences of your actions.  Kinko's is about to open its corner shop
web page publishing segment across the US.  Sad to say, they are not
looking at Arena -- they are looking at Netscape and MS IE "compliance".

Your page (www.mit.edu) has high responsibility due to its prominence.
I suggest you take current market conditions into consideration and fine
tune your message.  You choose what you want to say.  I don't care.
Just take into account the reality of market conditions -- I believe
that your page increasingly constitutes an advertisement for Microsoft
(T-shirts will be coming...).  The stark reality is that Microsoft is
using the W3 standards body as a pawn to subvert Java.  PLEASE AT LEAST
RECOGNIZE THIS FACT ON YOUR PAGE.

Bill Gates has stated countless times plans to use his possible future
Net dominance to capture a fixed percentage of every net transaction.
WARNING: Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear...

RSVP,
	Adam Holt


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Do we really need to save the trip half a block to the video store and
therefore spend billions of dollars for a new infrastructure?
Or are there educational and democratic uses?		...PGP key by email