Heavy irony here. I live in Champaign Illinois. Allow me to quote from the Microsoft Internet Explorer help, about screen.

"Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

So much for "innovation". Sheesh. I had to write a letter in response to the incredible wrongheadedness I saw displayed in the editorial. I am soliciting signatures to add to the bottom of the letter quoted below. Suggestions happily accepted.

"
To the editor:
\tWe take this opportunity to address the editorial of November 7 this year.
\tFirst, we find ourselves disappointed at the astounding lack of journalistic acumen displayed in this piece. When a news organ shows that its opinion is influenced more by marketing than fact, it simply confirms our deepening lack of respect for most US news media. Throughout the rest of the world Microsoft is almost universally considered the most immoral business in a field noted for its lack of ethics.
\tSecond, given the legal fiction that a corporation can be considered a "person", we note that the actions of the corporate citizen Microsoft, if committed by a private citizen, would be characterized as murder, racketeering, bribery and, most certainly, perjury. Microsoft, as shown by its own internal documents, performed the act of first degree murder in the premeditated killing of Netscape. As it is a corporate citizen rather than a private one, this act is heralded by the moneyed class as "good business practice". Since Microsoft is a rich and powerful "citizen", getting away with little more than a slap on the wrist is not surprising. Repugnant yes, but not surprising.
\tThird, we find it most surprising that you support the corporation that killed Netscape. Perhaps you have forgotten that Mark Andreesen , the developer of Netscape, performed this remarkable feat right here in our own community. Until its death at the hands of Microsoft, Netscape Navigator was an incomparably better product than Internet Explorer. We can only hope that it is simple naivete displayed in your closing paragraphs, "That\ufffds a heavy price to pay for the horrific crime of offering consumers better products at cheaper prices." This disingenuous statement has all the earmarks of a Waggener Edstrom (Microsoft\ufffds public relations firm) purchased "grass roots opinion". No one has ever accused Microsoft of having "better products". Among the technical world, Microsoft products have been, and continue to be considered shoddy, bug ridden and inherently insecure.
\tFinally, we professionals in the Information Technology field, continue to hope against hope that reason and justice will ultimately prevail and Microsoft will be handed an effective remedy to combat their years of illegal activities. Remember that they have been convicted of being an abusive, predatory monopoly. They have impeded innovation in the computing field, through these monopolistic acts. They have cost the worldwide business community billions of dollars in expense to deal with nightmare of bugs and security holes that are a "feature" of their products. As those of us in the IT community like to say, "Remember, Microsoft isn\ufffdt a technology company, it\ufffds a marketing firm." Given the fact that all of their "innovations" can be shown to be either purchased or stolen from other companies.
"\t

Wasn't this after ie was included witt windows and free? I mean, NN4 came out after they had already lost the browser wars, no?