Just in case there might still be someone Out There who remains unaware of just how evil Internet Explorer really is: it seems there’s an intentional feature that causes Explorer to ignore the settings you install, even if you explicitly change them.

Oh, and there’s a “mistake” [their word] in the Explorer code that causes it to ignore files from competing vendors, so you can’t see them even if they exist!

RealNetworks also complained that the search feature in Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system fails to find RealNetworks files.”It was clearly a mistake by the search team,” Averett explained. She said the problem was fixed two weeks ago – over a month after the states’ top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft’s wrongdoing.

Now, I’m no fan of Real Networks– they’ve done their share of shady stuff as well– but this is way over the top.