JFreak said:
...and in that regard all non-IE browsers are only a good thing.
I echo those sentiments completely.
And I would go a step further (beyond browsers) in that I really don't think that two dominant computing platforms are much better than one... the computing world would do much better if there were four or five. And Windows users would be better off in such a situation even if they were still the majority platform at something like 50% market share... because the other platforms help create a buffer from attacks on their platform.
The ills of a homogeneous environment were proven decades ago in the agriculture industry. When people planted field after field of the same crops, they became vulnerable to viruses and pests. Entire crops were lost as these viruses and pests were able to move unchecked from field to field.
Currently most large scale farms will not harvest similar crops next to each other and will instead plant something different between them to act as a buffer to slow the spread of such contaminants.
It was this argument that was put forth by both government and university security experts in the mid 90s in suggesting that federal, state, local, corporate and educational computer networks not be homogeneous (I wish I still had some of those reports, they were very interesting and foresaw much of what people are dealing with today).
It should also be noted that people at Microsoft are aware of the dangers of having a homogeneous environment, but the culture within Microsoft is that of a state of fear. Difficult as it may be to believe, Microsoft honestly thinks that it is constantly on the verge of collapse. They see their dominance as momentary which is why they are willing to take some of the most extreme (and anticompetitive) measures in any area they set out in. And what they have found is that it is easier to deal with the massive attacks on their users, the law suits, the settlements and the penalties than it would be to innovate and compete on a level playing field.
This isn't meant as an excuse for their actions, just to point out the mind set (and internal culture) that turned Microsoft from the company it was in the early 80s to the one it is today.
While it would definitely make my work easier if IE was standards compliant, things could have been worse if things like Visual J++ and MS-HTML had gotten a foot hold.
