Example of why AOL-TW is such a crap company

[Asher]

They don't even support their own products!

The new AIM Express beta, for example, is IE-only. http://beta.aimexpress.aol.com/

Not to mention using IE in AOL.

So let this be a lesson to you: it is stupid to fund development of projects to never use them yourself, then give them away for free!

God bless stupidity.

[SlowwHand]

AOL was my first ISP. AOL breeds ignorance.

[mrmitchell]

AOL was my first ISP. AOL breeds ignorance.

NOW we know what caused your opinions!

[St Leo]

Trillian and Gaim 0wn IM clients anyways. Whoop dee doo.

BTW, Asher, it's also stupid to develop standard Windows dialog boxes and then not use them in one's own products.

[Ted Striker]

AOL is a wack company.

Another example of a dot com mistake

Once Gray Davis is out of office and AOL Time finally splits, the last remnants of this damn dot com era will have left us.

[Ned]

I understand that AOL had to use Internet Explorer because of a settlement with Microsoft.

[JohnT]

Someday, somebody is going to write a definitive history of this merger, and I'll bet it will make for fascinating reading.

[JohnT]

I agree, though: together they are a crap company. But they were a buy at $10 last March and I believe that some of the parts are likely more valuable than the whole - so look for some divesititures going on in the next few years. However, at least in the first quarter they made $400 mil in net income as opposed to the $45 billion hit they took December 2002.

[SlowwHand]

Mitchell, I was going to start a...thread for you, but you can forget that now.

[:) Smiley]

They are a crap company that sells lots of crap products to crap people. Sorry if I offended anyone.

[Asher]

Originally posted by St Leo
BTW, Asher, it's also stupid to develop standard Windows dialog boxes and then not use them in one's own products.

No it's not. Why don't you sit down and think about this one?

MS made standard Windows dialog boxes because stuff like the print dialog can take quite a while to develop, and most programs (and most programmers) may not have the time or money to reprogram something so basic (but more complicated than you might think).

MS provides stock functionality and dialog boxes for developers who don't want to make their own -- it's the little things like that which make Windows far better to develop for than Linux. It is certainly not a stupid idea, the fact that you think it is tells everyone why the usual Open Source mindset like yours won't ever be prevalent because they don't understand some very basic things about people and development.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Smiley
They are a crap company that sells lots of crap products to crap people. Sorry if I offended anyone.

And yet, sometime in the next 35 years, they will successfully manage to declare themselves the legitimate government of the United States of America. Don't ask me how I know; I'm not at liberty to discuss it.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Asher

No it's not. Why don't you sit down and think about this one?

MS made standard Windows dialog boxes because stuff like the print dialog can take quite a while to develop, and most programs (and most programmers) may not have the time or money to reprogram something so basic (but more complicated than you might think).

MS provides stock functionality and dialog boxes for developers who don't want to make their own -- it's the little things like that which make Windows far better to develop for than Linux. It is certainly not a stupid idea, the fact that you think it is tells everyone why the usual Open Source mindset like yours won't ever be prevalent because they don't understand some very basic things about people and development.

Asher, I think there has been a communication breakdown here.

I'll reiterate my position:
Standard Dialog Boxen - Good
Not using them in own products - Bad

The fact that the Open dialog in Word 2000 is inferior to the Open dialog in Notepad -- no resizing capability and a different set of Look In... places -- because Microsoft decided to hack together a custom-written cludge for it is infuriating.

[Asher]

That's because the revamped Word 2000 open/save/etc dialog boxes came before the new MFC ones (OpenFileDlgEx, rather than OpenFileDlg, etc).

The new MFC ones are slightly improved over the Office ones, but the Office ones will use the MFC ones in the next version.