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No XP-Smarttags in Europe
nils23 writes "There's a story on heise.de that says that M$ won't include their SmartTags (tm - probably...) in the European release of Windows eXPerimental.. The reason is not, they claim, any privacy or Anti-Trust issues, but the problem of maintaining the content/links to Microsoft. It's in german. Use the fish, Luke." I'd be fine with this if they only did it on pages that included a tag that said the author of the page approved the feature. I for one don't want Microsoft choosing where links on a Slashdot story go. Imagine what links they could choose for words like Linux or the GPL.
Think I'm kidding?
We'll see. There may be surprises. In particular, the arrogance of Microsoft in trying to seize control of all communications everywhere reminds me strongly of things like the dotcom bubble. News flash: just because _they_ are certain they will triumph and never give an inch and march on a road of bones etc etc chanting "Microsoft, kill 'em!" does NOT mean they are right. That's their fantasy. They can be as 100% convinced of it as anyone ever has, and act as if it's already reality, but there are still many toes that get stepped on by _that_ fantasy.
One of them is governmental autonomy, in many senses- including the autonomy of the _American_ government. The administration can be stupid, but if the actual power in the world begins to shift (as the money has shifted away from countries and towards multinational corporations) it _will_ be noticed. I would bet you anything that the NSA has many detailed plans in store for use in the event of Microsoft gaining unprecedented power in the cybersphere. The question is whether Mossad or the intelligence services of Iraq or China etc. _also_ have detailed plans for what to do in that event.
Anyone as arrogant and sloppy as Microsoft is a walking target. We should not so much fear them on a basis of their gaining that much power- we should fear them because, if they do gain that much power, they'll be useless, out of their depth, and easy prey for _many_ different problems not of their own making- indeed, not even acknowledged by them.
If Microsoft lives to unite all information and communications in one MS-controlled centralised format, that's one thing (and inherently bad, but let's overlook that for now). The trouble is, it equates to a digital monoculture- and there ARE people out there who live to invent digital Monoculture Blight, or to invent systems to surreptitiously enter the databases of such a digital monoculture and do whatever they want.
Whether Microsoft wants to do bad things to its 'customers' is moot. If I was an enemy intelligence apparat what I would want to do is this: five minutes before the invasion, thousands of key United States individuals and companies are penniless, their funds transferred overseas to a certain hostile nation. Digital hotlines between those people and their financial advisors have had their wirescrambled- DNS lookups no longer relate to anything sensible. All recorded telephone and postal addresses for defense industries have had one number changed. A fair amount of the actual military computer systems are hardened and impossible to compromise... but instructions for use and maintenance were produced in Word, and some small changes in meaning were introduced throughout thousands of hundred-page documents and maintenance manuals, to be proliferated as new materials are printed...
Good morning, America. Funny how a little dirtbag country would be daring actual physical attack on such a *ahem* powerful, computerised nation...
(and I'm no chest-thumping militarist but I hope to hell the NSA _are_ reading this, or projecting scenarios like it. Who says Microsoft themselves have to be hostile, or that they have to replace all military systems for there to be a massive risk involved with their course of action? I have to wonder, just how many foreign intelligence agents are working _at_ Microsoft _right_ _now_, and who, exactly, would notice? Given that MS wants to bring so much 'in-house', why would such an operative even need to put 'back doors' into anything? The data is steadily coming right into Microsoft's lap, as if MS was somehow mysteriously endowed with the credentials to be wholly, utterly trustworthy, just because they 'mean well'. What a set-up...)
</joke>
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Our company is located in Sweden, but we only use english software for several reasons (one is shoddy translations). Therefore, we buy US English versions of all software - including Windows 2000. Does this mean that they must deliver a GPS kit with every license, and check in which country you are located?
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Have you ever noticed that whenever Microsoft calls something 'Smart', it's definitely a feature you want to disable?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Assuming your (self-admittedly) silly idea that they didn't include a checkbox in the configuration dialog, you ignored my main point:
Mozilla isn't written for you. It's written by the authors, for the authors. At no point can you gripe, since you are just as equal as them, with just as much potential ability to author the same thing without infernal widget "B" (in this case, "smart tags", which I personally like the idea of).
Since the playing field is completely leveled, the software out there (in OS/FS) should eventually conform to a developer driven bell curve - the majority of the software fits the majority of the desires of the majority of the people. But there will always be fringeware, patches and forks for those who want it.
In the traditional software development model, you have a choice - any color, as long as it's black. Microsoft *could* say: "All web pages shall have a light pink background", and the world will accept it. As long as they don't go *too* far, people will just accept the status quo.
And if you think that my example is ridiculous, remember back when web pages used to have grey backgrounds, and domain names didn't default to .com? (Try typing "yahoo" into any browser... it will 'correct' you to "http://www.yahoo.com". IMO, far worse than smart tags).
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Whups - that wasn't meant to be condescending - more of an admission that I wasn't clear the first time.
Buggy software is buggy. Buggy is rarely a feature people want. Why does OS/FS need to be looked at differently? If an mp3 player can't play an mp3 it is worthless.
Okay... I just wrote all the stuff below to answer that. But what does buggy software have to do with Smart links? Anyway... here's your answer:
No it isn't. *That's* what I'm getting at - first off, it might be an excellent example of a flawed concept. And very often, the edges of software (the infamous CVS version) are quite buggy, but offer features that a more timid (read: commercial) release attitude would prevent.
Take a mythical MP3 encoder - it fails on about one in twenty songs. But it encodes about 600% faster than anything else out there. Is that inacceptable? Sure, if you're trying to sell it. But I might use it, and accept its flaws... and someone else might add a "drop back to lame on failure" feature to it. With no release or profitabilty pressure, and an acceptance of potential problems, you gain flexibility (how many times do you see programs with a "USE WITH CARE - UNTESTED" option on them in OS/FS? How many times for commerical programs?). It might be five years before someone figures out how to automatically tell if the song was encoded incorrectly, and drop back to a different algorithm... but in OS/FS, it will be passed around and played with throughout those five years until it hits the right person who realizes the code fix.
So out of that festering pool of code rises the *good* software - that which is stable, has advanced features, and is easy to use. Most of them have been around for a long time - Apache, Linux, bash, gcc... and now that they work, the programs that run on top of them are starting to mature... KDE, Gnome, XFree86, ReiserFS... and soon, once they are mature, we'll have the final end user apps maturing to the level of "stability, features, usability".
But *THAT* not where the end is. When the "perfect server/desktop experience" is done, people won't stop. There will still be the new OggVideo encoder out there that whups every other ones ass in speed, and crashes on this or that movie. And there will be people who use it.
And out of that pool of buggy but impressive code, the next great programs will arise. When a commerical company dies, the code and thoughts and concepts die with it. That never happens with FS/OS.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
There are two major differences... first, Everything2 is (more or less) community built. That implies quite a bit, some of which is good, some of which is bad, but certinly means that one entity can't control the content.
The second and harder to understand thing for most people is that Mozilla can be changed - it isn't written for you. It's written for the person who wrote it. And you can change that by writing it yourself, taking any of the existing code out there. Like KDE's Konqueror, which can render with either KHTML or Mozilla's rendering engine - open source is all about infinite choice, and a total potential spectrum of all possibilities. That's why software patents damage Open Source and certainly Free Software.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Could we / should we to add an Apache feature that automatically adds the meta-tag to turn off smart tags to each page served, unless the user specifically requests smart tags.
:-)
This could be a selling point. "Make sure you're web pages aren't cross-linked to a competitors".
Hell. if it's a popular enough feature M$ might have to copy this "innovation"
Content, and the laws governing how links are controlled and how responsibility is doled out for those links is certainly different than in the US.
Could this be preventing M$ from deploying smart-gag over there?
davejenkins.com |
Microsoft does outside of the USA without Smart tags Microsoft will not build the disputed Smart tags into Germany into the new operating system Windows XP
Way to go BabelFish!! You have sucessfully created a CmdrTaco Post generation engine.
kudos
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Erm, why would I want to provide my own smart tag entries? If I wanted something linked, dont you think I would just hyperlink it instead of futzing with making a special tag for it that only IE will see????? I already provided my own smart tag entries. They are called hyperlinks. please leave them alone
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
It's very simple. I downloaded a file from a web server. This file is now MY file on MY hard drive. If I want to view it with notepad, I can. If I want to edit this file to make every single word go to everything2.com, I can. If I want to use services that insert new links into this file on my hard drive which might be of interest to me, I can do that, too.
Many people get in a big stink if other media publishers try to limit what people can do with the content after it has been transfered ( DeCSS, etc ), so why are web publishers in some magic bubble where it's Right that they own the content after the customer has it? If I want to run any arbitrary program on a file on my harddrive, I damn well can.
if mozilla did this but linked to everything2, the slashdot crowd would have a field day and claim how "innovative" and "clever" they were...
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GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Microsoft, the big ol' international company that markets Visual Studio in about 60 different languages, much less Windows, much less Internet Explorer..._this_ is the Microsoft that's pulling SmartTags in Europe because of language issues?
Excuse me if I don't think that's quite the reason.