# britannica.com
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 7, 1999, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833 "1999-11-07T14:42:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@omni-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omni-not)
#### Post date: [November 7, 1999, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/1 "1999-11-07T14:42:00Z")
Not a question. Just to let you know that the Encyclopedia is now fully operational (might have been for a while, actually) and is truly an excellent source of information. Go check it out: I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
[http//www.britannica.com](http://http//www.britannica.com)
P.S.: I’ve noticed that the search engine is sometimes case-sensitive.
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omniscientnot, in a previous incarnation.
The hyphen says it all…
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### Author:  [@omni-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omni-not)
#### Post date: [November 7, 1999, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/2 "1999-11-07T15:10:00Z")
Thanks to jti in MPSIMS. The URL should read:
> **[Encyclopedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/)**
>
> Explore the fact-checked online encyclopedia from Encyclopaedia Britannica with hundreds of thousands of objective articles, biographies, videos, and images from experts.
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 7, 1999, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/3 "1999-11-07T17:18:00Z")
I never could get in the store there to buy it for about $50 after rebates. So I didnt get to find out if that is the full version or just some short cut.
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### Author:  [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)
#### Post date: [November 7, 1999, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/4 "1999-11-07T23:40:00Z")
Try going to [http://www.britannica.com/](http://www.britannica.com/) .
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Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it. Georges Santayana
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### Author:  [@sixseatport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sixseatport)
#### Post date: [November 8, 1999, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/5 "1999-11-08T15:57:00Z")
I don’t know if anyone cares, but I work for Britannica, and I want to apologize on behalf of the company for the outages of the new website a couple weeks ago. We got a few more hits than we were expecting (by several million).
I’m not sure how unusual a problem this is for companies new to the Internet. The IT department over here was running around like mad trying to get everything back up. I think they bought and had up-and-running something like 100 new high-speed servers within a week. Anyway, I hope it stays up…
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 8, 1999, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/6 "1999-11-08T16:14:00Z")
sixseatport, I was always able to get on, I just went to [eb.com](http://eb.com) instead. But being you work for them & I can’t get into the store, maybe you have a discounted encylopedia on cdrom for me to buy? I bet employees get nice discounts…how many cd’s is that?
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### Author:  [@sixseatport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sixseatport)
#### Post date: [November 8, 1999, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/7 "1999-11-08T16:31:00Z")
handy, last I heard they’re still updating the content of the online bookstore, which means it will still be a day or two before it’s up. They do sell a lot of CD-ROM encyclopedias, though. The 2000 edition should be in stores soon.
(btw AFAIK employees don’t get a set discount, but every now and then they have little in-house ‘fire sales’.)
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### Author:  [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)
#### Post date: [November 9, 1999, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/8 "1999-11-09T02:28:00Z")
The website works now. I just looked up Benjamin Franklin. And he wasn’t too happy about it, either, _badda-boom_.
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Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it. Georges Santayana
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 9, 1999, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/9 "1999-11-09T23:37:00Z")
Right. November 15th you can Buy EB2000 at $70, get $30 more in rebates, plus get the whole encyclopedia, plus a few extra books along on 3 cds. wow.
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### Author:  [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)
#### Post date: [November 11, 1999, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/10 "1999-11-11T04:24:00Z")
We have the Britannica CD ROM. It’s unnnecessarily comlicated, with a sort of outline of articles under a main heading. Also, it’s a very boring looking text, my kids would never use it for that reason.
You could easily organize the same material in a bit more modern way.
Haven’t gotten to the www site yet.Haven’t tried.
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 11, 1999, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/11 "1999-11-11T16:41:00Z")
How many cds is yours sunbear?
Mickeysoft Encarta is only 1 cd but it seems easy enough to use.
If EB is three cd’s then it must be more extensive.
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### Author:  [@sixseatport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sixseatport)
#### Post date: [November 12, 1999, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/12 "1999-11-12T06:26:00Z")
handy, please pardon the corporate plug:
Current versions of the Britannica CD have over 75,000 articles, containing over 44 million words.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but I heard that encarta has something like 20,000 articles – less than one third.
Sunbear, if you don’t like the interface or presentation in the version you have (it sounds like the Multimedia edition), then take a look at the Standard edition – much simpler, much more straightforward.
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### Author:  [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)
#### Post date: [November 11, 1999, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/13 "1999-11-11T23:35:00Z")
Mine’s 2 Cd’s.
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [November 12, 1999, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/14 "1999-11-12T14:29:00Z")
Not to mention that Encarta is known to include deliberate lies, so as to be politically correct in the respective language editions.
It shouldn’t be surprising, after all – does anyone expect honesty or integrity from Bill “Microsoft is fully committed to OS/2, and the _Wall Street Journal’s_ story that we plan to replace it with something called ‘Windows NT’ is completely false” Gates?
* * *
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
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### Author:  [@heretic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heretic)
#### Post date: [November 13, 1999, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/15 "1999-11-13T06:25:00Z")
When was Microsoft fully committed to an IBM product?
ben
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### Author:  [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)
#### Post date: [November 14, 1999, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/16 "1999-11-14T00:52:00Z")
Should Bill Gates be committed?
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Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [November 16, 1999, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/17 "1999-11-16T17:53:00Z")
OS/2 was a joint IBM-Microsoft product.
Except, that, in hindsight, it’s fairly obvious that it was never seriously intended to be a Microsoft product. Microsoft used it as a way to learn from IBM how to build a decent operating system and then stabbed IBM and all the OS/2 customers who’d believed Microsoft’s promises in the back. They lied about it right up to a couple of weeks before announcing Windows NT.
As a result of this perfidy, software technology in the PC industry lost about ten years, and thousands of people lost their jobs and reputations.
* * *
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
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### Author:  [@heretic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heretic)
#### Post date: [November 17, 1999, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/18 "1999-11-17T06:46:00Z")
If that’s the case, more fool them for trusting MS, that’s what I say.
I had thought the big problem with OS/2 was that they attempted to reverse engineer Windoze and failed to convince The Buying Public that they had done so satisfactorily.
ben
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [November 17, 1999, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/19 "1999-11-17T02:46:00Z")
sixseatport wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> I want to apologize on behalf of the company for the outages of the new website a couple weeks ago. We got a few more hits than we were expecting (by several million).
Tsk tsk tsk. Didn’t your IT department see the IBM commercial with the stupidity support group, where the bigwig of some company sank a bazillion dollars into a one-time-only commercial for their website only to have their site crash because they “forgot to warn the web guys”?
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [November 17, 1999, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britannica-com/4833/20 "1999-11-17T14:57:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I had thought the big problem with OS/2 was that they attempted to reverse engineer Windoze and failed to convince The Buying Public that they had done so satisfactorily.
That was OS/2 2.0, done by IBM alone after Microsoft’s betrayal. However, it was not a question of reverse-engineering; IBM had (legally) the original Windows 3.1 source code, and the system worked pretty well (considering the inherent difficulty of making code written for a nonpreemptive, unprotected system work on a preemptive, protected one). But then Microsoft started its API-of-the-month strategy, which not only made it impossible for OS/2 to keep up, but pretty much killed all competition in the applications market.
* * *
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
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