Overheard about ... conspiracy theories

How can anyone think that Netscape crashing is a big deal? PC Week's Woodward/Bernstein wanna-be Spencer F. Katt somehow got that since some Microsoft Internet Explorer web page causes Navigator to crash, something's afoul.

Microsoft conspiracy theories are as legendary as those cooked up in college-level American politics courses. Who remembers the version of Lotus 1-2-3 that ate dust when Microsoft released MS-DOS 3.0? Or a Windows 3.1 beta that contained self-decrypting code to prevent running under DR-DOS? Everyone heard about Windows 95 scanning your hard drive for applications, dialing Redmond Central, and dumping the list into a nice fat Access database -- and Microsoft even had the balls to confirm the transaction with the user.

I'm sure Katt's garage freak smells conspiracy, but c'mon ... my copy of Navigator crashes all over the place, even on Netscape's own site. This isn't Jimmy Hoffa, it's Laura Palmer.

This is just swell. Sun's been crowing about Java's security while a handful of hackers were putting together a nice little library of goodies to take down your browser, take down your workstation ... even report your name and password to their server. Nice. Makes you Linux users think twice about running around the Web logged in as root, doesn't it?

So, Microsoft has thrown down the glove. They think that proprietary HTML extensions are just plain evil. Well, bully for them. It's nice to see a vendor take the high road ... especially after months of this same company pushing browser add-ons harder than a coke dealer behind the high school gym. Who wants a plainjane browser that conforms to stodgy standards? Microsoft knows what you want ... trademarked ActiveX™ controls, font typeography specification for a markup language devoted to divorcing content from layout, even support for Netscape's plug-ins.

Ironically enough, Microsoft flippantly refers to Netscape's plug-ins as "proprietary." Sure, they're so proprietary that Microsoft has now included support for 'em in their software. How proprietary can they be? To be more direct, if they were truly proprietary, how did Microsoft figure out how to crowbar them into Internet Explorer? Surely they didn't reverse engineer Navigator ... that would be an infringement on Netscape's software license, like what dirty old Stac Electronics did to wedge Stacker 4 into MS-DOS 6. No, they wouldn't have done that. Impossible. That would be criminal by the same precedent Microsoft's lawyers created two years ago.

At least, that's what my garage freak friend has been telling me.