[ale] (Advocacy) looking for opinions

[Jeff Hubbs]

I'm not so concerned about whether or not the link is an "advertisement" as
much as I am the notion that a state body would promote or suggest the use
of a particular product and do so in such a way as to suggest that the
product in question was a "preferential" way of accessing a public service
that they provide.  I think it adds gravity to the issue that the preference
in question covers an entire publicly-accessible access point to the
organization.  

I encounter a lot of people who believe that IE is the only browser that
really needs accommodating and I acknowledge that right now, circumstances
have led to IE being the best game in town at the moment, but I would like
to think I'm wise enough to realize that that has not always been so and
likely will not remain so.  

I am sure that there are many Web developers who toe the MS line 100% and
just don't give a rat's  about anything else (and don't really even KNOW
anything else, for that matter), but I am also sure that there are Web
developers who have an inborn comprehension that there are such things as
specifications and that there are reasons NOT to include things that fall
outside those specifications such that only the same company can "catch"
them (or companies who have been manipulated so as to catch them).  

As an aside, I just recently got caught up in a conflict between a Panasonic
film scanner and an SIIG SCSI card under NT - turned out that the scanner
required ASPI drivers that only came from Adaptec and the ASPI drivers would
ONLY work with Adaptec cards NOT because of necessity but apparently because
of some agreement between Adaptec and MS (backscratching of some sort).
This is exactly the kind of stuff that drove me to Linux in the first place,
but then again, the scanner didn't have a Linux platform solution either and
quite possibly never will.  

Going back to my earlier point for a second, I got TIRED of MS way back
when, when I was trying to resolve a problem with a DAT tape drive.  I get
TIRED of dealing with WINS.  I get tired of having to deal with SPECIAL MS
STUFF that ties my hands behind my back, especially where there are standard
mechanisms available to accomplish the same things.

Geez, I'm sounding like one of the Earthlink commercials.  





--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.