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Microsoft To Delay IE "Smart Tags" Release
Erbo writes: "CNET reports that Microsoft has decided to drop Smart Tags from Internet Explorer 6.0, the version that will be packaged with Windows XP. They may be resurrected later, though, so don't yank those META tags out of your pages yet. Smart Tags are still part of Office XP, too."
...to let the coders have time to finish the rest of the technology that goes with the smart tags, the smart-image, for example. Yes that's right, no longer will you have to worry about non-microsoft related content on your website, smart-image will instantly replace your graphics with better and prettier microsoft ones.
If the users want to enable SmartTags in their browser it's their problem. I'll never change my HTML because of what M$ do. I follow the W3C standards and that's all.
SmartTags is just another anoying feature that'll drive users away from IE.
Just out of curiosity I recently downloaded the latest IE6 preview version that does come with smart tags, after having installed it, it took me quite some time to actually get the things to work. In addition to IE6, you were required to download a smart tag library ("Smart Tags for the everyday web") and you needed to enable the feature. From then on, some very well-known company names had smart links!
Surprisingly, both the "Smart Tags for the everyday web" library as well as the smart tags option itsself show up as seperate programs in Add/Remove Programs, so you can actually de-install them in a snap.
Having browsed using this version of IE for a day now, I couldn't find any benefit in the smart tags though, in fact, they maked many web sites look ugly. The content of the smart tags is completely useless IMHO, as the names that do show up are really "big" names that everybody knows anyways...
Oh well...
> (i) Smart tags were disabled by default in IE6.
So what ? How this implies that they will not be default in 6.1 ?
> (ii) Smart tags were provided by filter DLLs which in turn could be provided by ANYONE, not just Microsoft.
First, using DLL (ie: code, if I read you correctly) for this is very very very virus/troyan friendly. Second, 90% of the people would not get past the default installed ones, so, in IE7 or 8, they'll get encarta and msn links all over the web.
> (iii) You could select which filters were enabled - if you don't like the ones from Microsoft then just don't even enable them
Most people won't be tech-savy enought to do that. And how can you guarantee that the option to turn off the various Smart tags will be easy to find, and will not jump around from versions to versions (there is a lot of precedent of microsoft moving preferences around between releases of its browser)
Of course, you'll get gentle reminders like "Warning: you have removed MSN SmartTags. The web page may not display exactly as intended. Link to related content will be missing. Do you want to put MSN SmartTags back [YES] [No, but remind me later]"
And I can bet that couple of years after that, you'll find that passport.com will not work (or will be a hell to use) if SmartTags are not enabled (ie: navigation will be provided mostly by smart tags).
*OF COURSE*, SmartTags are not a bad idea. There are a very good idea, like web-annotaions. The problem here is microsoft leveraging its old DOS monopoly into a desktopOS monopoly, then a web browser monopoly, then an information provider monopoly.
Microsoft is just too big to be allowed to do anything like SmartTags. Resistance is not futile.
Cheers,
--fred
Thank you.
Don't count them out, though...we may have won this round, but I'm under no illusion that this is a permanent victory. As I posted last night to the Smart Tags mailing list at Yahoo! Groups, "'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'"
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
If I'm not mistaken, the Apple 'Lisa' did this in 1984.
http://www.archaic-apples.com/lisa/lisa-retro.html #6
Given that the case is going back to a lower court, I have read one account that suggests further hearings can happen including a look into Microsoft's present actions. Personally, I think even without 'smart tags', they are still playing complete brinksmanship, but if they _also_ rolled out smart tags, it would just get ridiculous. Any lawyer would make mincemeat of them- a convicted monopolist doing an end run on all of HTML to present advertising links under its central control? Give me a _break!_ So, Microsoft is not _incredibly_ stupid, just incredibly arrogant. Even they can see that this would be a slamdunk in court, and so by some mysterious coincidence just before the appeals court ruling comes out, they back off on Smart Tags. We're not going to see the original concept for Smart Tags while the case is in court, it would be just too damaging legally to Microsoft's antitrust case. I guarantee you the lawyers said, "What are you, CRAZY? Put that away until we win this completely! Then you can have it." (Not that the MS lawyers are totally free from craziness themselves- but they can at least spot how damaging this would be to their case.)
Yeah, but some Microsoft applications still require rebooting, either before the install can complete or after the install is finished. I believe Office 2000 still does this.
Why must I reboot to install a word processor?
It could equally well be said that if you use Netscape on Linux to view a page that the designer laid out in Internet Explorer on a Mac, you're not viewing the page as the author intended.
Or, for example, if you use one of the many utilities that strips out banner ads.
Get over it! You know why HTML has header tags to describe headings, why we have title, and body, and ordered lists and all that other stuff? It's because you say what it is, and it's up to the client to decide how it looks. This is how it was back in 1994! And And Netscape had their "What's Related" (I don't remember the exact name) facility that could take you to other pages that might be relevant to what you're doing.
If there's a way to switch your "smart tags" provider to someone other than MSFT, then there's whole new business opportunity right there.
Honestly, Microsoft are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Ask yourself, honestly, if this were a funky new feature in KDE, would you be as bitter?
Wouldn't the use of SmartTags result in an unauthorized derived work and therefore open the user up to lawsuits as well as the purveyor of the tools used for committing the crime (i.e., Microsoft)?
OpenSourcerers
Sure, and if a woman walking down the street fails to wear a sign saying "Do Not Rape Me", then she has given an implicit license to all rapists to procede with their business.
OpenSourcerers
Suppose I ran a proxy service that "annotated" pages for people this way. Would the proxy service be guilty of re-publishing?
Suppose I granted licenses for my proxy service to run as a DLL on the same computer as the browser?
OpenSourcerers
Sarcasm accomplishes nothing.
Getting back to the discussion at hand: breaking the law is breaking the law. It is not the default situation that the victim has to take special action to hinder the criminal.
OpenSourcerers
Not a criminal offense: true enough, poor choice of words on my part. Perhaps I should have said "offender"?
I still disagree that a publisher needs to take explicit action to keep from issuing an implicit license.
Suppose I run a proxy service that marks up pages and then sends them on to the browser for rendering. Is that a copyright violation? Would I as a web site operator have to carefully comb my logs to make sure that this was not happening in order to protect my IP?
If that is a violation but it is argued that when it is under the control of the user it is not, suppose the proxy service was user-configurable? Is it still a copyright violation because of republishing or is it not?
If it is argued that it would not be a violation if the action took place entirely on the user's PC, suppose I license my proxy server to run as a DLL on the user's PC but otherwise the effects are exactly the same. Is that a violation?
While I can see that annotating a page yourself (like writing in the margins of a book) should be allowed, to me this is more like someone else writing in the margins before you have seen the book and then selling you the result.
If I have to take explicit action to protect my work then the appropriate course of action is to sue for copyright violation, not to add some "anti-copyright violation" kludge.
As someone else observed here, it is like intercepting a TV signal. While the response to that observation was that only the layout, not the content is affected I would counter argue that suppose the interceptor buffered the program and zapped the commercials to 1/100th their normal length. The content would still be there but the "layout" has been altered. Still a violation of copyright as far as I can see.
OpenSourcerers
Suppose the rebroadcaster altered the "layout" (or "presentation") of the program by reducing the "space" of commercials to 1/100th of the normal amount?
Also, hasn't the retransmission of a completely unaltered signal been found to be a copyright violation anyway (that Canadian company that was retransmitting TV over the Internet).
Also, I don't see exactly why the format of publication has anything to do with the issue. By publishing on video tape or paper I am aware that someone could alter my work on the way to the consumer, that doesn't mean I have given my permission for that to happen.
OpenSourcerers
It is somewhat different when I publish in a public forum on a system I do not own or control.
Btw: In the case of Slashdot, I do own my comments (per the disclaimer at the bottom of the page) but that's not really relevant.
As to my hypotheticals, the point of those was to show that there are ways of looking at this in which the position the courts might take is a bit clearer. My opinion is that the medium of release has nothing to do with whether or not your property is protected by law.
As far as the mention of rape is concerned, I used the rape analogy on purpose because rape victims are often accused of failing to take appropriate measures to protect themselves from harm or even "asking for it" by being (publishing) in the wrong place or dressing (programming) in a way so as to invite the offense. To me, the same tactic is being used here: making the victim the guilty party. Victims do not have to proactively protect themselves from violations in order to be protected by law.
OpenSourcerers
It's an open source product. How the hell can it be cancelled? Besides, Mozilla *is* better than IE, especially when you compare the startup time under Linux (a doubleclick versus reboot and installation of Windows).
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
So, instead of Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the wanted search phrase in a new browser window with Google, you click a purple line that Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the wanted search phrase in a new browser window with Google? Oooh, that sounds very useful. About as useful as a blow in the head.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Well in part you are correct. The smarttags in Office XP do what you say.
For instance if I type in a word somewhat incorrectly, like 'TRavesty', it will auto correct it, but have a blue line under it that if I click on I can tell it to leave it the way it was.
But Smart Tags in Office XP also work exactly like those in IE. At the rollout demo, someone from West Publishing showed how they had made a Smart Tag filter with which if you clicked on a Legal Reference it would go out to Westlaw and pull up the full text of the case.
It's really actually quite cool.
Hmmm. Maybe I should try and stir up a public outcry about them dropping Java from IE6 then...
(I work for a startup that currently relies on a Java applet for some of it's features).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
comme from betanews. In case the link does not work, try this one http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=993720201
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
The problem with this is that the "supplement" comes from the MS point of view.
Think about a smarttag that links the phrase "buy tickets" to a MS-sponsored ticket seller.
Suppose I have a document with the following line:
"Well, we tried to buy tickets for the show at the theatre, but they were sold out. Luckily, we were still able to buy tickets for the movie through a small online retailer known as [booga]" ([] denoting a link).
MS changes that to:
"Well, we tried to [buy tickets] for the show at the theatre, but they were sold out. Luckily, we were still able to [buy tickets] for the movie through a small online retailer known as [booga]" ([] denoting a link).
...with the words "buy tickets" linked to THEIR choice of ticket-seller, when you were obviously trying to point people to a different one.
Granny isn't going to understand the difference between smarttags and regular links. She will follow the "buy tickets" link, and not realize that you, as the author, had no intention of sending her there.
That's the problem here. Ignorant or un-informed people who don't understand the technology, and MS using their dominance in the browser market to change the web into the image THEY want to project, not the one that the authors of the content want to project.
Microsoft and trademark lawsuits
In two words... tradmark violations.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Everyone misses the point.
M$ says, "you can modify your web page to disable them."
There are a billion or so web pages out there. M$ knows this. M$ knows that no one is going to modify a billion old web pages. Therefore, "you can disable them" becomes meaningless because no one will.
The more socially acceptable plan - where a header enables tags - would never never achieve any market penetration for the same reason. No one is going to alter any of those billion old pages. Further, no one is going to add it to new pages.
The only way for M$ to impose this on society is the way they did it. Just because its being pulled today, doesn;t mean that it won't reappear in 6.1 or so. Plus, M$ will have an additional reason to make you upgrade to 6.1 - SmarterTags!
Don't worry - they'll be back.
But they're staying in Office XP, yet not in IE6?
The article doesn't say that, exactly. It says that Smart Tags won't be included in one particular future release and won't be in the first retail version of XP. Smart Tags will stay in Office. The speculation about removing Smart Tags from XP and IE being good PR is the opinion of the CNET writers. The speculation about Smart Tags "returning" to IE is by an outside analyst.
So it could be a bit of misdirection. "Oh, no, it's not in the OS." But if it's still in the browser,...
as long as you aren't a business or anyone trying to actually make money off the net. If you want to lock you site down feel free, you can even take it off the net. That will show people and I am SURE M$ will regret your departure A LOT...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yes, Msft is backpeddling fast (off by default, now delaying deployment) - but what they are doing is *PROBING* the limits of what they can get away with in taking over technology & media - thank goodness there are computer savvy people NOT on the Msft payroll who can act as watchdogs to alert and interpret to the general public just what this 'new, nifty, for your benefit' stuff IS and how it can be used for their own nefarious ends.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You're suggesting something that has no benefit to anyone at all, whereas Smart Tags (while you may find them intrusive) actually have a pretty good use.
Suggesting? No, I'm not suggesting... I wouldn't ever want a browser to do this. But as long as MS is modifying content by adding links to point people to MS-affiliated sites, then why wouldn't they also modify content by deleting links that point people to MS-competing sites? Different side of the same coin. If they're allowed to get away with the one, what'll stop them from doing the other?
--Jim
...and maybe someone else has posted this thought, because it's a logical extension (or inversion?) of the "smart tags" idea. What if Microsoft turned this idea around, and also invented "untags", that would take hyperlinks pointing to competitor's web sites and "unlink" them? For example, their browser could turn
<a href="http://redhat.com">Redhat</a>
into plain old
Redhat
Would even Microsoft be arrogant and audacious enough to try to get away with this? I hope we don't find out. This Orwellian notion of on-the-fly content modification - "for the benefit of the user" - just scares the stuffing out of me!
Where do you want to stay today?
--Jim
Or, like I do with gTags, only match words the user explicitly selects. If they went to that model, then all words become potential tags, and it's even possible to use the tags in non-Microsoft applications.
Currently, you'd have to edit the XML file.
(2) Exclusionary tags.
It's on my TO-DO list to add better parsing of multi-word selections. That's not hard. Including regular expression matching is on my list too, but it may mean extending (gasp!) the original schema.
Too late.
I already did:
http://gtags.sourceforge.net
(Though I don't claim I invented it....)
I'm not so sure. (And I've seen the screenshots, and read quite a bit of the MSDN Smart Tag docs.)
While I think most people will realize they're taking different actions (clicking versus menu choices), I wonder how many will realize that this added Smart Tag functionality is being inserted by their browser, and not by the web sites they're visiting?
gTags uses the same XML schema as Microsoft Smart Tags. I've added the ability to create a Default tag which can optionally be used to "match" selected words that don't match any other (specific) tags.
I guess the main difference between gTags and Microsoft Smart Tags is that the user has to actively choose what they want to do.
gTags is alpha software, but seems to work well enough. Suggestions and contributions are welcome. Read more about gTags here.
That seems very narrow minded of you, I'm sure there are some perfectly good zero tolerance policies. Like, nonapproved drugs in the mental ward at the hospitol. The point is that zero-tolerance, turns life into a prision like state, so if thats what your intent is, thats your choice, but you should know beforehand what your getting yourself into before you set such policies.
lomg -> long
:)
(I even previewed and everything! I blame Microsoft, they're dynamically changing my content already...
deus does not exist but if he does
Maybe the tags Microsoft created were *Really* smart tags and they self-destructed while contemplating the meaning of their life...
:)
A little like the bomb in Dark Star, that had to be taught philosophy to dissuade it from blowing up while still attached to the ship?
deus does not exist but if he does
I was under the impression that it was possible to have some meta tags that would disable the smart tags if you were so inclined.
Hey, it's not going to take too lomg to add those meta-tags to every bloody web page out there, is it?
Sheesh... opt-out never works, at least not for all those people who get included against their will.
deus does not exist but if he does
.. would it not be possible to ship Apache with a default-setting that automatically sends the "stop smart-tags"-setting with all loads of the websites on the server.
Then it could be turned on or off individually for each virtualhost.
Of course.. this is not the way it should operate, there should be an "opt in"-tag instead of a "opt out"-tag.
You'd think by now, with so many articles on this subject on Slashdot and so many other sites, that everyone would know that this is done on the browser end. There's nothing in the page source itself that causes the smart tags to appear.
Of course, a proxy server that automatically inserts the magic META tag that turns the smart tags off would be helpful.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
But this is actually a very promising sign. Like Intel before them (the processor serial number disaster) Microsoft has tried to do something really BAD, been taken to task for it, and actually backed off.
Is Microsoft actually considering getting responsive to its users? This could actually be a really good sign since this is the first time (that I can remember) that they have backed off of adding any new feature. Even a year ago I think they would have just gone ahead, arrogantly certain they can do no wrong.
We can at least hope. Maybe, eventually, they'll even get rid of Clippy.
Microsoft had said that if Smart Tags had been included with IE 6.0, they would be disabled by default. The user, then, would have to choose to have his content augmented with these tags. It's no different than reading wire news sources from Yahoo! News, which offers more information about selected keywords (President Bush, the Taliban, just about any publicly-traded company) right there in the news article. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Similarly, if you don't like Smart Tags, you don't have to enable them. Simple as that.
For more information, click here.
The Smart Tags in Office XP are for Office applications. For example, if I have Bob Smith in my Outlook address book, Word will offer to enter Bob Smith's address when I type his name at the start of a business letter. Similarly, Excel can use MSN MoneyCentral to import stock price data.
The regular Office XP smart tags can be turned off, just like any superfluous MS Office "feature." Think of them as less intrusive versions of "it looks like you're writing a letter."
For more information, click here.
The linked site has something that Slashdot has never provided: a screen shot of Internet Explorer 6 with Smart Tags enabled. Although the site presumably contains many buzzwords (XML, SOAP, and even "Smart Tags") only one word is actually given the dreaded purple underline. That word? "Microsoft."
The suggested links aren't even as blatantly pro-Microsoft as you might think. It looks like they're the same content you could get about any company from any financial news site (news for MSFT, report for MSFT, chart for MSFT, etc.) and an option to search the web for the company name. In fact, when you search for "Microsoft" on MSN, there are still anti-Microsoft pages linked after the more relevant ones. (Check out link #25. Most people searching for just "Microsoft" aren't looking for MS-bashing, either.)
Please, stop overreacting until you've actually seen what Smart Tags do. The article cautions that Smart Tags are still in Office XP. Those are safer still: the usual company stock-price import facilities, as well as the option to automagically import addresses from your Address Book. That makes life simpler when you're typing a letter.
No, I'm not a Microsoft supporter or shareholder, but the constant MS-bashing is completely uncalled for. (Notice also how I did not use "Micro$oft", "M$", "Microsquish", or any other stupid manglings in my write-up here.)
For more information, click here.
There was nothing wrong with the technology itself (something most people don't seem to realize), just the potential for abuse by Microsoft (who doesn't have a great track record).
Actually, in this case it wasn't even Microsoft that people were worried about, it was unscrupulous web page authors. To add a smart tag entry on the client, all you have to do is add an <object> tag and some special XML to the top of your page, and voila the user has a new smart tag. There's nothing to stop someone from adding a smart tag entry for, say, "The Silmarillion" that will take you to some cheap-ass porn site (or worse yet, a Terry Brooks fan club [shudder].)
This is not the only objection, btw. I personally have a problem with MS's attempt to "embrace and extend" the anchor tag, especially when XLink is an official W3C recommendation and does the same thing.
- Rev.It sounds like you don't even need to know the facts to have an opinion. You've shown that you really have no clue what Smart Tags actually are, so before you make more of an idiot of yourself, here's some facts:
Dude, calm the fuck down. We're talking about smart tags ferchissakes. It's nothing to get your panties in a wad about. The guy disagrees with you. Play nice. People will be more apt to listen to you.
Smart tags were provided by filter DLLs which in turn could be provided by ANYONE, not just Microsoft.
This is exactly the problem: anyone (and everyone) can add smart tags. I have a problem with this on two fronts: a) smart tag spam, where some unscrupulous web page author throws in a smart tag header at the top of the page, and b) I don't want anyone changing the content of my page, and I have the law to back me up on this. The web page I made, hyperlinks and all, is my creation.
Users have the right to render web pages in whatever way they see fit. If they choose to parse and annotate them before rendering that is THEIR choice.
They certainly do. They could switch to Netscape 4.x, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, or whatever. However, I am primarily a Microsoft customer. We do custom ActiveX component development for the financial industry. We do a lot of business with MS. As a customer and web developer, I have some problems with smart tag technology and am going to make that known. Other than smart tags, IE6 looks to be a pretty good browser.
If Microsoft's customers don't want it, don't you think they should at least listen?
- Rev.Didja know that to add Smart Tags on someone's system you just have to put in some properly formattted XML at the beginning of your web page? So say you "accidentally" surf to some porn site with this crap in it, now everytime you type a document in Word XP the word "the" is underlined in purple with a link to the porn site only a click away.
This is an egregious example, but not *too* egregious. It's a good thing that MS is taking these out of IE6, which otherwise looks to be a fairly decent browser. (Still pulling for Mozilla, but increasingly skeptical... <sigh>.)
- Rev.Back in the early days of the web, HTML was simple and the format of web pages was determined by the user. /.ers from around the world still scream at yell when a web site tries to overcome the default formatting that user has set up. "HTML is a guideline for formatting and rendering." Your page will be rendered in whatever format the user chooses. It doesn't matter if the default is crappy. (Times Roman? For a compter monitor?) If the user doesn't change it, it is what the user wants.
When I designed my page with images, lynx has no right to display my pages if it can't display those images the way I intended. Well, that's just stupid. Lynx can display pages anyway it pleases. Why should IE be any different?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
It sounds like you don't even need to know the facts to have an opinion. You've shown that you really have no clue what Smart Tags actually are, so before you make more of an idiot of yourself, here's some facts:
(i) Smart tags were disabled by default in IE6.
(ii) Smart tags were provided by filter DLLs which in turn could be provided by ANYONE, not just Microsoft.
(iii) You could select which filters were enabled - if you don't like the ones from Microsoft then just don't even enable them
(iv) Users have the right to render web pages in whatever way they see fit. If they choose to parse and annotate them before rendering that is THEIR choice.
(v) Microsoft never was any part of the "transaction" unless the user invited them. Are you suggesting users don't have that right?
The simple fact is that smart tags were a good technology and the Slashdot bigotry just saw the word "Microsoft" there and started frothing at the mouth. Perhaps if you did some research, looked at some screen shots (which you openly admit you don't want to do - perferring to live in ignorance) and got yourself informed you could actually argue the facts and not the strawman in your own mind.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Nah - count the number of anti-tag posts to pro-tag posts. I'm way in the minority here.
;-) So occasionally I like what MS produces. Is that such a crime? At least I'm using by intelligence to figure out what is good and bad, rather than taking the sheep mentality around here "MS bad. Linux good. Baa"
Of course, I'd rather be a called an "MS shrill" than be a Slashdot sheep.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The user would still have to click 'Ok' to accept the download of the ActiveX DLL to enable the new tag (unless they had already trusted executable content from that author). This means that an unscrupulous web page author would still need user permission to enable their tags.
The 'special XML' only creates a tag on the current page, not globally.
In other words USER permission is always required to enable a smart tag in exactly the same way USER permission is required to download any DLL. Microsoft isn't extending the anchor tag at all here - they are adding a user controlled annotation to web pages which is something very different to publisher controlled linking (ie anchor and xlink).
Check out the SDK. It has lots of facts you seem to need.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Interestingly enough, the news reports I got from Yahoo said that the smart tags were in fact disabled by default. This is what confused me so much about the general media's behavior in the area. The fact that the tags had to be enabled by the users seemed to get lost in the general frothing at the mouth.
Personally I'm disappointed in the whole thing. I think it is a waste of what could have been a good thing for users. I know MS has a bad record for forcing things on users, but by leaving the tags disabled by default they seemed to be doing the right thing this time. Oh well - I guess MS won't ever do the right thing by the Slashdot crowd.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Dude, calm the fuck down. We're talking about smart tags ferchissakes. It's nothing to get your panties in a wad about. The guy disagrees with you. Play nice. People will be more apt to listen to you.
Yeah, Ok. I probably deserved that. Thanks. I just get tired of the "I don't need to look at facts - it's MS and it must be bad" post that I was was replying to. It's just bigotry at its worst.
Smart tags were provided by filter DLLs which in turn could be provided by ANYONE, not just Microsoft.
This is exactly the problem: anyone (and everyone) can add smart tags. I have a problem with this on two fronts: a) smart tag spam, where some unscrupulous web page author throws in a smart tag header at the top of the page,
Smart tag headers at the top of pages only apply to that page. It's hard to be unscrupulous if you can only modify your own page. If you use the OBJECT tag then the user has to accept the download of executable content (assuming you have the tag digitally signed). In that case, the user is still accepting the tag as something they want and it isn't forced on them.
and b) I don't want anyone changing the content of my page, and I have the law to back me up on this. The web page I made, hyperlinks and all, is my creation.
The user has the right to annotate your web pages (automatically through their chosen tags) if they choose for their own private use. There is no law you can invoke that prevents them doing this. Copyright can only be invoked if the user republishes your work - which they aren't doing. If the law was really on your side, do you think LexisNexus would be providing tags?
If Microsoft's customers don't want it, don't you think they should at least listen?
Definitely. I've yet to see anyone who actually understood the technology complaining about it. What really happened is that Yahoo put out an article and the whole internet just went mad without any facts behind them. Did you actually download the SDK and read it? If not then shame on you!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Umm... I do use Office XP. I'm not suggesting he was wrong in what he said about Office XP. I'm saying he's wrong in the comment he made saying the tags in IE6 are somehoe different to the tags in Office XP. They arent - they behave the same way and do the same thing.
I wasn't even Microsoft bashing.
Read the SDK. Read my other comments. Look at what IE6 actually looks like.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I am a person. I would use smart tags if I got to control what filters were enabled and what wasn't.
You're implying I'm not a person?
As for the rest of it, it's a strawman. The "people" I was talking about were the ones with a clue, not the ones you suggest I was talking about.
If anything, you are making the "if you said this other thing then you'd be wrong" argument.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
What you are asking is whether XML at the top of one page will affect the rendering of another page. Of course it is possible, but only in the most obvious of bugs in the renderer. This isn't even executable code we are talking about here, or a scripting language - just tags.
Let me ask another question - how are you sure a anchor tag on one HTML page wouldn't affect the same word on another page? It's possible but a very bizzare bug.
If you want to see the code, download the SDK and look at it.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Anyone should be allowed to create new technologies - complain about their leveraging of them when it happens, not because it has the potential of happening.
Do you apply this logic to Carnivore and Echelon as well? "Sure, go ahead and monitor all my emails and phone calls. I won't complain unless I find out that you misused them."
Of course I apply the same logic to Carnivore and Echelon. Carnivore and Echelon are the implementation of sniffing technology, and are bad. Sniffing technology in itself isn't bad and is used by network admins and ordinary developers every day. The equivalent would be for you to argue that having network cards with the ability to go into promiscuous mode is bad because Carnivore and Echelon use them. Do you honestly thing libpcap is a bad thing?
I know how they work. I also know, as does Microsoft, that the majority of nontechnical users will not be able to tell the difference between an actual hyperlink and a smart tag.
You obviously don't know how they work. You do realize that to follow a smart tag, you don't just click on the word? You hover over the word. An icon appears above the word (alongside the other icons for resizing pictures, cutting and pasting text etc.). You click on the icon. A menu appears with the list of topics provided by all smart tag filter DLLs. You then click on the topic from the popup list. I put it to you that almost ALL nontechnical users will be able to tell the difference between a word you can click on (a link) and a smart tag (the hover/click icon/click menu thing). Because you are too stubborn to see the screen shots, you are just showing off your ignorance. Face it - the user interface for a smart tag is nothing like a link.
Furthermore, Microsoft also knows that most users rarely install additional software, and will thus be left with the default MS-created set of smart tags.
How many IE users do you know with Flash installed? How many installed the Comet Cursors? What about Shockwave or Real Audio? Maybe even Quicktime? Users are quite accustomed to downloading plugins and DLLs for their web browser. What makes you think users are going to be any different with smart tags?
Maybe the initial set of tags are fairly innocent, but it is not unreasonable to believe that that could change.
It's not unreasonable to believe that Konquerer won't do this as well. In fact, you have (again) decided to go for an as yet unrealized implementation as an excuse for picking on the technology. Going back to Carnivore and Echelon - do you believe libpcap is a bad thing?
Decide whether you really are bigoted enough to say Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to create technology because they might misuse it.
As you know perfectly well, nobody is attempting to get smart tags declared illegal. Several people have simply said that they think it's a bad idea. Are you such a bigot that you can't tolerate differing opinions?
I never said anything about illegality. I'm just saying you seem to think Microsoft (and only Microsoft) doesn't have the right to create new technology. You are entitled to your opinion, and I'll fight for your right to have your own opinions. I just can't help it if your opinion is based on prejudice rather than fact.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
So read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/long
term/microsoft/documents/gatespart5.htm
It's a broken link. Got another copy lying around? I'd be interested in reading it (as opposed to some others who won't look at the other side of the argument)...
Been here, done that. At this moment it is waaay too late. The answer is "stop whining". There will always be vocal people (like you) that will be ready to give yet-another chance to microsoft.
Hey, I'm ready to give anyone and anything another chance. Linux deserves chances too despite the fact that plenty of "stable" releases at the moment have severe VM problems. Doesn't stop me using it because it works damn well where I do use it.
What IS happening is that microsoft pushing a techonology that enable them to have even more control than before. What IS happening is that I scream BEFORE they deploy it, not AFTER.
Remind me again how Smart Tags give Microsoft control when they are an open interface available for anyone to write to? If you don't want them, don't enable them. I can see this is just going around in circles anyway.
> Let me help you out:
No thanks. I don't give a fuck about how smart tags works. I don't care about learning how anything microsoft related works. This is irrelevant.
Fine. Stick your head in the sand. Be ignorant. All I can say is that your attitude is closed minded and you are hurting yourself in the end. No matter which way you look at it, I've more choices and more freedoms than you do because you refuse to look at all options. If you refuse to learn about a technology then you have no right to argue for or against it. Ignorance is never a good platform for conducting an argument.
So, you are admitting that smart tags technology can be misused.
Of course it can be misused. EVERYTHING can be misused. I never said it couldn't be misused!!
At that point, the problem is not *if* microsoft will misuse it, but *when* (Microsoft have misused almost every technology they could get their hands on, from multiple incompatible versions of microsoft basic they burned in various ROM of personal computers maker in the early 80's, to artificial limitation and test in late 80's DOS, to private Windows 3.x API used for imposing their office application in the early 90's or the de-facto desktop OS monopoly used to get a de-facto web-browser monopoly).
Yes microsoft should not be allowed to create technology they could misuse. In fact, microsoft corporation should be splitted into several different entities, to try to correct the damage already done. Maybe you have heard about that thing. (Note: it is probably not referenced in the smart tags SDK).
Oh, witty today aren't we? So you wouldn't mind then if the parts of Microsoft that got split up used Smart Tags? How about if Netscape implemented them rather than Microsoft? I only read the SDK because I actually wanted to know what I was talking about. Obviously you are more than happy to argue without that knowledge. Your loss.
This is my opinion, and I won't move away from it.
...and there is the difference between you and I. I'm more than happy to change my opinion if someone proves me wrong. You are not. If someone came out and said Microsoft would be much better off shipping the Smart Tags in Office XP with the web linking stuff enabled, I'd be with the crowd calling them a fool.
I consider that microsoft have destroyed most of the computer science area (since about the famous "640K ought to be enough for everyone"), and have transformed what was (and still is) my passion into a marketing-driven junk. Call this bigotry if you want, I don't care.
(Shrug) Whatever. You can believe that, but it reminds me of people who waste their lives bitching about how the South lost the war. The world is the way it is today and nothing will change it. Let's look to the future and make it better for all of us without the irrational prejudices.
For the record, it is your attitude (looking at Microsoft XP-screenshots, getting the latest Microsoft SDK about the latest junk they produce, evangelizing for the use of a technology without examining the concerns of the others) that I call bigotry. We are all someone else bigot.
Actually, your definition of a bigot is wrong. The only reason I used the word bigot ("a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong" - Cambridge Dictionary) is the statement refusing to look at a screen shot. Of course since then there's been plenty more. Someone who refuses to even consider the other side of an argument is a bigot. I'm more than happy to consider the arguments against Smart Tags - I just feel they are more founded in prejudice than in reality, fighting the company and not the technology. Of course, I'm always happy for someone to change my mind. It's happened more than once.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Fair comment, and I should have recognized it as such the first time.
Would it be better if I phrased my inital comment as "People should be able to enrich their web surfing if they want to?"
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
You mean like proxy filters that remove the doubleclick ads?
I take it you understand they are even more insidious as they are removing income from the web site owner because doubleclick doesn't get their hits.
What about anonymiser.com which does exactly what you describe?
Actually - it's a very interesting point. I believe in the first case you are possibly running a little on the wrong side but the second case is probably ok because the code is actually installed by the user and not just proxyed.
IANAL. What do you think?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
It is not ok for companies to republish your copyrighted material. What it is ok (as far as I understand copyright law) is for the user to annotate your copyrighted work for their own purposes. I believe this comes under "fair use"?
Microsoft is NOT the only company that provides tags - there are about 30 of them, including some high profile legal firms. Get that part right, please. The user actually enables the tags and so it can easily be said that the user inserts them.
The user controls whether they want the material annotated or not. They have to specifically enable it.
What really interests me is why this is suddenly such a big deal with IE, but never was with Office. From my understanding, a lot more commercial contracts are emailed around as Word documents - what happens if you get the Pepsi marketing blurb as a Word doc and find it annotated?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Umm.. where did you get that info?
From the SDK: "First, it is quite possible that the same text is recognized by two different smart tag types. For example, "Greal" could be recognized as a CompanyName and ChemicalName types. In this instance, both smart tags will recognize this text and as a result, a user is presented with a cascading menu where action options from these two different smart tags are combined."
I think you are mistaken about this whole default thing?
Smart Tag filters apply to every site, not just your own. They are just given a stream of text to filter using the following method:
STDMETHODIMP CSTRecognizer::Recognize (BSTR Text, IF_TYPE DataType, INT LocaleID, ISmartTagRecognizerSite * RecognizerSite)
There is actually no way to restrict your tag to a certain set of sites or documents (that I can see).
The cross compile is only required if you want to use VC++. If you use Metrowerks or something else then you will be fine. Does VC++ actually do OSX?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
My understanding from reading through the SDK is that the text from the web page/document is passed to each of the SmartTagger things. Nothing is actually "returned" from the Recognize tag, it is expected to call back to the "Site" for each tag it recognises. The Site (Word/Explorer/Excel) then collates the list of callbacks into a simple 2 level menu (one for each tagger) and hence there is no need for a "default" tagger.
There is definitely no interface to detect what site you are browsing because the content passed to you isn't necessarily web content - it is sometimes Word documents and sometimes Excel docs.
I've written to this type of interface before in context menus - calling a whole stack of things to get a list of what to put on that menu.
As for non-MS compilers: you may be right. To be honest I've never tried and was wonder what your feelings would be. I honestly don't know how hard it is to program COM objects on a Mac, or what the COM support is even like. Thanks for the reply.
As for your "inflammatory question" - yes, I have. Yes - it was for an MS system (I actually prefer programming Windows to Unix). I know damn well they have plenty of ways to "lock you in" - when programming for Windows if you try to go outside the MS recommended way then you suddenly find yourself writing about ten times as much code as before to get a similar effect.
I know it's "textbook loadable module" stuff, but I don't think it is implemented anything like the NDIS stack. It's far more like the COM Object stuff with xxx and xxxSite for callbacks.
Take a look (quickly) at the SDK and send me an email on what you think. I'd value your comments as it does sound like you have more programming experience than I do (only really since 88).
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Ok. I agree with your last sentence "The only thing that happens when the user turns on smart tags is that the user asks the third party to treat your copyrighted material".
Now, is it legal for you to present a textbook to a friend and ask them to annotate it before you read it. I think this is a similar case? The fact that it is possibly for commercial gain may change it a little though.
Is it sufficient for the user to request the annotation, or is that not enough?
IANAL. I honestly don't know. I thought I had it figured out but you've given me some doubts.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Ok. I can respect your point of view now. Maybe I've been putting my argument badly, maybe I'm too tired, maybe I'm just too quick on the flame.
I was upset that my argument was being rebuffed without being considered. Now I find you had considered it and I feel silly, or feel like I was quite successfully baited. Whichever, your points make sense.
My main argument was that I was disappointed to see the technology being removed from the browser. I was never really happy with MS even shipping disabled filters with the browser - just not sure how to express my feelings without having the slur come across the technology as well.
An Office / Windows split may be good for MS. Jackson's split certainly wasn't (the dev tools and COM libs going to Office was just daft). It's a murky problem and I don't envy the next judges job. I hope he does it well.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
That's an interesting point. I wonder how it will^H^H^H^H would have worked? I guess when I get RC1 I'll find out.
I know in Office XP there is the 'Options...' tag at the bottom of the menu, but I didn't see it there on the screenshots.
I'm concerned about MS shipping tags with the browser... even disabled ones. I like the technology and its potential, just (as someone else pointed out) the combination of MS and technology does tend to lead to abuse.
I guess it comes down to how should you feel when a bad company invents good technology? Personally I like WinXP as a core OS (ignoring the GUI). I like most of BackOffice. I even get along fairly well with Office itself. I just don't like some of the business practices that you get with it. If I didn't know who made things, I would prefer to use Windows+Office+BackOffice+DevStudio over anything available on Linux. Knowing where it comes from gives the dilemma of depriving yourself by depriving MS or helping MS by helping yourself.
Hell of a position. I tend to help myself, and advocate the technology when I like it. I choose to help MS in the hope that it will end up for the greater good.
...it must be late. I'm raving.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
There was nothing wrong with the technology itself (something most people don't seem to realize), just the potential for abuse by Microsoft (who doesn't have a great track record).
What would have been nice is if the smart tag technology was left in the browser but either left disabled, or even better, left enabled but with no default filter DLLs. That would have given the USER the power to control what they wanted and not Microsoft.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Wrong. Smart tags are available from many different places. They are just an ActiveX DLL that conforms to a certain interface.
Check out www.officesmarttags.com for the list of companys already providing tags. If you want even more information go to msdn.microsoft.com and you'll find out that you can write your own Smart Tag filter in about 10 minutes with VB.
Microsoft no more controlled smart tag content than they controlled where you surf in your browser. Sure they put a lot of default links in your Favorites menu, but it didn't stop you getting to Slashdot did it?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
You forget that copyright only applies if the user republishes the work that they annotated with the smart tags of THEIR choice. Because this is not happening you don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Do you honestly think LexisNexus would be providing a smart tag filter if there was a legal problem with them? Perhaps you should get a little informed before you go off with bizzare schemes designed to infringe on a user's rights with published material.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The smart tags in Office XP are IDENTICAL to the smart tags that were going to be in IE6. If you even bothered to do just a little research on msdn.microsoft.com you would have found this out very quickly.
Smart Tags were simply provided by a filter DLL and could do pretty much anything - the default ones in Office XP just link names to your contact list and so on, but you can enable the ones that link 'MSFT' to investor.msn.com for stock quotes and the like.
The Smart Tag technology was a great idea. People want to be able to enrich their web surfing - I for one wouldn't mind having a Slashdot tag enabled that provided an option for me to check out related stories on Slashdot - but the thing is most people didn't even understand what Smart Tags were (as evidenced by your post). It would have been good if MS left these in the browser but with NO filters enabled by default. That way a clued in user could simply enable the ones they wanted and browse the web the way they wanted to.
When it comes down to it, so long as it is the user is in control of what they view there can be no complaint from web publishers. Users have the right to render web pages in whatever way they feel, and if that includes user specified smart tags then I think more power to users is a good thing.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
And when I *finally* got thru to the M$ page about SmartTags... er, did anyone else find the subject header for the last section on http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smartt ags/default.asp to be uncannily accurate? It reads:
... d'ya think maybe the day will come when every click on a SmartTag link will report your location to M$, so it can ding the appropriate advertising partner for a clickthru, not to mention tracking your habits? (Gee, wonder what happens when you click on a "Microsoft" SmartTage on some warez dude's page.)
End User Privacy
While we're being paranoid (I too suspect some SP will "break" the opt-out in IE6)
And people complained about being tracked by mere cookies...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Of course, he doesn't mention the fact that ignoring published standards has the same effect
I would have to disagree on this one. Ignoring standards might force a change in the development of a page, but not in the content. The issue here isn't forcing developers to use MS's "stantards," but on MS's ability to actually alter the web pages themselves. While I can deal with the lack of standards compliance (and I have), the fact that MS can change links on my page at their will is far too disturbing
> How many times do you see a URL listed on a web page that isn't a link? It'd be nice if the browser could at least make those links automatically.
yes, that would be useful.
Now please correct me if I'm wrong.. but wasn't there a problem in the US where you werent allowed to link to DeCSS, but you WERE allowed to give the link as plain text? Could have some legal implications..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Hell yeah, I am on Windows XP beta2 right now, and using Mozilla instead of that sneaky evil IE. The interface might still be a little sluggish, but It's not that bad really. I've not had it crash yet.
I bet that the only thing Microsoft removes is the Easy GUI way of turning Smart Tags on.
I don't think they'll even attempt to comment out/remove the Smart Tags code. It might not even be that easy.
The first person to find the Registry entry that turns Smart Tags back on wins a free beer (or root beer).
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Can someone please post the link to the information on what META tag must be used to disable the Smart Tags? TIA.
you can easily extend IE to do approximatly what you want (this feature is pretty well documented at msdn.microsoft.com, though i had never heard of it until i stumbled across it). go to the text for the registry entries here, take the text, save it in a text file with the .reg extension, double clicking it should add it to your registry. Then whenever you select text in IE and right-mouse click whatever actions you have added will show up in the menu (you have to start a new browser to see this).
this registry file is formatted for Win2k (there is probably an easy conversion to NT4.0, but I know that this form won't work out of the box)
j
How to live with smart tags?
,Netscape Navigator 4.72 or Opera5 (the code the copyright holde delivered and nothing else). This means there is to be no advertising linked to the content of the page as provided by the copyright holder. The use of easily identifiable advertising that is not linked to the content of the page shown (as currently in Opera5 add sponsored mode) is allowed.
You have got a succesfull site with lots of page hits. You supply your visitors with a lot of material that is copyrighted (copyright owned by you, otherwise you have to make arrangments.). You supply webpages and Microsoft Office documents.
You don't oppose innovation (and you don't feel like changing your server settings for every possible internet product that gets released), so you will not be turning of smart tags in your webserver.
Get a copy of IE6 that has smarttags active and send it to the independent party mentioned in the terms of use. Get a copy of office software using smarttags and send them to the independent party for checking how it works with your copyrighted material.
You add a new part to the terms of use of your website:
The reuse of copyrighted material available on this website is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder (this info should be there now).
If you wish to change the representation of the copyrighted material you find on this website, a fee has to be payed by the organistion or company that gets a benefit out of the alterations. The intended representation is as seen in IE5
***Fees for Non Commercial change in representation.***
The insertion of a non-commercial (informative) link to a company or organisation that doesn't sell (or which parent company or parent organisation does'nt sell) any product costs $ 10.000 per 3 months. The price for a click through is $ 0.1. To use this tarrif ($ 0.1 per click through) you have to provide the owner of this site every 3 months (before april 15, juli 15, oktober 15 of each year) a list of click through received from changed representations of copyrighted material. If no such information is provided to the owner of the copyrighted materials a fixed amount of $ 10.000 per 3 months has to be payed to the owner of the copyrighted material provided here. THe total maximum cost of this arrangement will thus be $ 20.000 per 3 months.
***Fees for Commercial change in representation.***
The insertion of a commercial link to a company or organisation that does sell (or which parent company or parent organisation does sell) any product costs $ 20.000 per month. The price for a click through is $ 1. To use this tarrif (1 per click through) you have to provide the owner of this site every month (before the 15th of the next month) a list of click through received from changed representations of copyrighted material. If no such information is provided to the owner of the copyrighted materials a fixed amount of 20.000 per month has to be payed to the owner of the copyrighted material provided here.
The use of changed representations by commercial and non-commercial companies and organisations will be checked by an independent party. Every month this party will check whether changed representations of the copyrighted material are still being used for commercial or non commercial reasons. This independent party wil search for this use and will click on links to establish an unidentified number of click throughs to make sure the information sent to the copyright holder, by the organisations making use of changed representations, contains the right information. These click throughs will not be charged.
Failure to meet these terms of use will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
P.S. These terms of use should get you some distance. But to get it realy going, you have to check with a lawyer to make sure this works as intended and secondly, you need an independent party to check your website/material with IE6 or office XP. Then wait for the checks to arrive.
P.P.S. This system can be used in every country of the world. So if its one down, 240 left to go.
P.P.S. You didn't ask for them to change your copyrighted material did you?
You'll notice they used the same strategy in court. Can we get away with a faked video? No... er... Sorry, we gave you the wrong video. Yeah... that's the ticket. We must have left the right one back in Redmond. Yeah... that's it. We wouldn't dream of (getting caught) commiting purjury in federal court, oh no...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In a press release today, Microsoft announced the implementation of a new feature called "Smart Icons." These icons, when linked to a program for which Microsoft has a competitive product, will actually execute the Microsoft product instead of the one from their competitiors. "We feel that this will improve the users' computing experience," said a Microsoft marketing person, "Many people use icons incorrectly to run programs written by our competition. These programs are obviously inferior and less innovative than similar Microsoft products." Microsoft claims that this continues their trend of first-class innovation in the industry.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's so obvious that the poster has no idea what Smart Tags are or how they work. I wonder how this post got modded up to +5.
Smart Tags are a great idea and I, for one, want them. I want my browser to be smart about what I see and automatically provide me the ability to navigate from and gain more information about the words that I see in my window.
I wish that instead of pulling the feature entirely, they had simply shipped the technology with the Smart Tag recognizers that point to their own stuff being a downloadable add-in (or disabled). That way no one would be able to cry foul about what they shipped because Joe Yahoo! can write his own Smart Tag recognizer to work with the technology, maybe making the links to Yahoo! instead of MSN.
And for the sake of completeness, the above example assumes, wrongly, that Smart Tags would be installed on your computer without authorization by the user. I have no problem with a pop-up dialog coming up when I visit a porn site that asks me if I want to add a smart-tag recognizer from that site onto my computer.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Exactly. That would be an example of MS enabling users with innovative new features. But MS wanted to go one step farther and assume that we'd always want to go where they told us to.
Making the news of this technology public well ahead of its release, with public documentation of how it is used, so that others could release filters simultaneously thereby giving users the option...that would be smart. Which is probably why MS didn't think of it. I think SmartTags might actually be a good idea, if I had control over which were used, with no defaults assumed. I might actually make use of a Slashdot filter, for instance. It would also allow sites to supply their own filters for common terms they use, meaning less <abbr title="whatever"> (and similar) markup. (Not that the same couldn't be done by search-and-replace in a preprocessing step...)
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
It strikes me odd that Microsoft didn't think of the obvious solution. Instead of a webmaster having to turn OFF SmartLinks with that tag, they should have to turn them ON with that tag. That way no one's content gets modified without permission, assuming that the presence of the tag is a sign of permission. So why didn't they do it that way? ... Oh, wait, right, because no one would use them .
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Is this a new MS tactic for avoiding the DOJ? Announce something and see how much public outcry there is before deciding whether to back off it or not? It sure is cheaper than fighting the gov't directly in court and finding out the hard way.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Regarding SmartTags: How do I turn these damn things off? I know what you're thinking... Advanced Options dialog check box, right? Wrong. I have seen a screen shot of where this option is supposed to be and it doesn't show up and I am stuck with them. Windows 2000 w/Service Pack 2 IE: 6.00.2462.0000 Thank you in advance for the help, Waiting for Mozilla to Get Really Stable
The smart tags for IE 6.0, on the other hand, were considerably more insidious. Walt Mossberg's WSJ column today makes the argument that Microsoft has a responsibility as the creator of the most used browser to faithfully reproduce the original web page author's intent when their browser displays a page. Of course, he doesn't mention the fact that ignoring published standards has the same effect--not that Microsoft would ever do that.
~=Keelor
SmartTag technology does in fact provide a significant benefit to casual web users
This is true, but naive.
There are many situations where a similar benefit can be obtained (targetted adverts in TV breaks), but not without a cost. The cost is either the over-emphasis of one aspect (the one behind the tag) when another might have been better, and
If I want to find "Home Insurance", then I should use a directory - not just choose the one deal on offer, chosen for me by Microsoft.
Make no mistake, this technology isn't about "helping people find stuff" (even if they're too dumb to work Google, the human race's most powerful ever creation for knowledge retrieval) -- it's just another channel for push advertising. These are blipverts, they're out of my control, and they can get the hell out of my web browser. What is "Debt advice" going to be smart-tagged to ? The local Citizen's Advice Bureau ? - or Honest Frank's Cheap Loans and Betting Shop ? Pay-for-placement behind Smart Tags is going to make you wish for the good old days of email spam !
Smart Tags have a big failing in that they're also extremely dumb. They do simple text recognition to recognise the concept they're attempting to match on, and that's just not good enough. Should the word "monopoly" be linked to "board games" or "anti-trust legislation" ?
Microsoft, in their wisdom, have devoloped a feature we call "DumbTags" that adds Microsoft chosen links to your pages based on keywords. They have thoughtfully added an opt-out feature, and you can be protected from having your readership redirected by your friends in Redmond if you merely manually update every page and script on your site to include this meta tag:
<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" CONTENT="TRUE">
There are a number of valid reasons to reject this opt-out model, and this page explores the possibility of engineering DumbTag free swaths of the internet.Suggestions
Lets consider how DumbTags might be made opt-in through technological means.
Perl: Change the HTML generation modules such as CGI.pm to automatically add the protection unless the meta tag is defined.
PHP: Add a preprocessing phase where the protective tag is automatically inserted into head blocks?
Web Servers, Proxy Servers: addition of a default filter that adds the protective meta tag automatically to pages unless overridden. Server users could of course turn off this feature...
Tools
Automated Removal: We are looking for links to programs that can traverse directories and automatically update static HTML files with protection.
Advocacy
What you can do to stop DumbTags:
Please send feedback, suggestions, and comments to shaun@atrium.com.
From www.atrium.com/dumbtags.html
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. [H.S.T.]
Talks break down.
Microsoft is *not* activating smart tags at this very moment. They will in later versions when all complaints by all parties are settled. At this moment they do not have the diplomatic time to settle all differences. -> Read this bit in an article in my own (non English) language.
So Internet Explorer (Gates) is going to be like commercial television (Murdoch).
Smart tags are going to be a form for providing commercial information - not necesary Microsoft information because that would mean a monopolistic action. So Microsoft could be paid to (unwanted) link to your site using a smart tag, like commercial television provides (unwanted) commercial information on tha telly.
So what is the difference between Gates and Murdoch? Well, not every browser has smart tags. How will Microsoft prevent you from being exposed to Smart Tags in IE? Simple - Hailstorm - the passport system, you won't be allowed to use Netscape for some utter bullshit reason they can think of.
--
Bizar technology?
Said the IE 6 product manager. "We can't include Smart Tags if they don't require rebooting!"
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
Actually, it was because nobody could figure out how to keep the references to evil monopoly from pointing here
They may have come from the same .dll, but they do entirely different things. The Smart tags in XP are more useful and don't revolve around sending you to other msn sites, but integrate Outlook, Excell and the other Office applications more seamlessly. They can be useful.
I use both now products now, and for the record, you can turn off the Smart Tag features all together in both IE6 and Office XP.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Another response noted that KDE will lauch a browser for it with a middle mouse button.
MS will have to follow the leader to arrive at the worst possible soloution. Your source code will have a purple squiggly line under it like this:
Red Hat
Special characters will show up in your source code too!
Who here uses MS junk except at work anyway? Yeah, I made my wife an MS box and I do use it because of driver company extortion, but I use it less and less.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Microsoft has not invented anything here. We are talking about a hyperlink! These things have been around since someone invented a GUI (1960s).
What Microsoft has done is to litter other people's work with links of Microsoft's choosing. This is what the Washington Post author who broke the story found out. When he visited his own paper's sports page he found it covered with stupid little purple squirmy lines like Word spelling errors. They pointed to broken links and MicroStupid's own little search engine.
You've even deluded yourself into thinking smart tags are even remotely like normal links - sorry this isn't the case.
You are so right! Nothing normal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't know what product you used but it definitely was not Office XP. In Outlook I noticed SmartTags in the following scenarios
- I type a date and I get a Smart Tag menu that prompts me to see if I want to schedule a meeting on that date or if I want to see my calendar for that date.
- I type a name and I get a Smart Tag menu that prompts me to see if I want to send the person an email or add the person to my contact list.
- I type an address I get a Smart Tag menu that prompts me to see if I want driving directions that links Expedia .
This is the same technology that would have been used in MSIE just that most of the Smart Tags would have been of the last type. Do you actually use IE 6.0 or Office XP or was this just a speculative opinion?--
Technical difficulties, morals or listening to massice consumer response. You be the judge, on the next Jerry Springer
Joe McGuire
tinfoil.music
tinfoilmedia
Smart Tags are a way for an outside agency to modify my pages on the fly, in ways I do not approve of.
No, Smart Tags are a way for the end user to use your pages in ways you have not anticipated. Whether or not you approve of this is irrelevant - if you don't like it, don't use HTML, use something with well-defined display characteristics instead, such as PDF or Flash.
Why should I, or any author, surrender that control?
What makes you think you have that kind of control? Go read the HTML specification (any version) at the W3C, and please point out the part that requires a specific rendering for each element. Show me the part that says "a user agent must not deviate from these display requirements."
Yes, it's like intercepting your local TV station's signal and inserting advertisements for your company, and then broadcasting it to the rest of the city. I'm pretty sure that is illegal.
What you're describing would certainly be illegal, but what you're describing is nothing like smart tags.
If you want to compare them to the TV world, Smart Tags are closer in nature to the brightness, contrast, and tint controls - they allow a user to alter the presentation of a signal (page) they've received to suit their own needs.
This is not copyright or trademark violation, nor is it evil - in fact, it's exactly what TBL had in mind! HTML was specifically designed to be presentation-agnostic. If you can't deal with that, you shouldn't be using HTML - you should be using something that's layout-oriented instead, such as PDF or Flash.
You choose the format in which to publish your content. If you choose blindly, without understanding the limitations and advantages of the different formats available to you, then shame on you, not Microsoft.
But they're staying in Office XP, yet not in IE6? I thought Office XP used the IE component for rendering HTML?
What would probably make the most sense in that case is to just incorporate SmartTags into 6.0 but not have the checkbox to turn it on available in the preferences.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The first occurence of the word "job" on each page I have visited today goes to hotjobs.com, this a massive advertising gimic by hotjobs or what? Hehee, strange at least.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
http://www.redhat.com/ could become http://www.redhat.com/ or even http://www.microsoft.com/.
It is linkified alright, but remember, where do they want you to go today?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Smart Tags are just another way to wedge in control and wrest it from content creators toward content "providers" and content controllers.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
But they're staying in Office XP, yet not in IE6? I thought Office XP used the IE component for rendering HTML?
No, silly! That would mean that IE and Windows were 'seamlessly integrated' and that Windows wouldn't function properly without IE and Microsoft would be forced to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows...
wait a minute...seems there is something a little funny about that, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Haven't we had court cases that ruled that "framing" someone else's content was not permitted?
How fast would I get a letter from microsoft if I put up a proxy server that inserted "slashdot tags" in MSNBC's content?
I'm using microsoft XP currently, and I have to tell you that smart tags rock! If you type in an address you can click on the smart tag to get a map for the area the address is in. Thats just one example of what they can do. I can see the problem with smart tags in IE 6.0 but there is nothing wrong with them in Office XP.
Nope, clippy is supplied with XP.
He's just off by default.
Microsoft is however concerned about whether or not they are able to sell their products. In my company (big bank) management had allready decided to update our entire website so it couldn't be smart-tagged. Seems our management would have a problem with the fact Microsoft links every occurance of the words 'bank', 'loan', etc. to one of our competitors. Not that we mind advertisements. We just mind other banks advertising on our site. If other companies have reacted the same (as can be expected) and word of this has gotten out to Microsoft, it's no wonder they've reverted their decision. It'll make sure they'll sell more, so removing the Smart Tags is a Smart Move(tm).
The cynic in me sees a strange result of this decision: if Microsoft is able to embed Smart Tags in their OS, but leave it out of their browser, then perhaps the OS and the browser are not one and the same, contrary to Microsoft's defense in the Monopoly case. Just a thought.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Not surprised they removed it. It was a bad idea anyway. Maybe there slowly tring to move them in instead of "forcing" on to people. Its a famous MS tatic.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Woohoo!
---
When it comes down to it, so long as it is the user is in control of what they view there can be no complaint from web publishers.
The problem, as I see it, is that Microsoft would not merely be the company providing the smart tag technology, but they would also be the company choosing the smart tag content.
Otherwise, I would agree that these are a good advance.
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
Attached to the headers of all my web pages, and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
But they're staying in Office XP, yet not in IE6? I thought Office XP used the IE component for rendering HTML?
^]:wq!^M
Clipp got fired/retired with the release of Office XP. Go and visit the website, it's quite funny. (Was reported on /. I just don't seem to find the link)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Ehm, yes...but actually I would prefer that it would open Eudora, because that is what I use on my Windows machines. Does it do that, or do I have to hack the registry manually?
Besides, I don't think saving the "user session completely" is a good thing. I do very different things every day: and it's not that I'm coding Java today that I will be doing that the next time I start my computer. The few clicks that I need to start a program won't kill my productivity. In KDE2, I never choose to "save a session". I don't need it, I know what I do.
The smart Start menu (like in W2K and 98) is a pain: I prefer to keep my Start Menu clean myself. Like grouping applications in one folder...ditching folders with company names,ditching links to helpfiles and/or textfiles, etc....You get a lean small start menu. Of course I turn of the "Smart Start Menu", because I just don't find it smart.
But of course you could call me conservative, I guess?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Microsoft
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Of course, IANAL, but I do watch LOTS of Law & Order. Notwithstanding:
Copyright and IP may not apply here, simply because it's an end-user modification. For example, while stations are required to rebroadcast NFL games unmodified, there is nothing which says the person receiving the broadcast cannot tailor it to suit his needs (let's say, a few years ago, you wrote some code to make that cool yellow line on the first down marker and watched games through your computer). This basically qualifies as an end-user modification, and an optional one at that. There would, similarly, be no copyright/IP issues if I tucked some code into Mozilla to statically change any unlinked reference to MSDN to a link to goatse.
This qualifies as end-user modification. It's like ripping the pages out of books. As long as you do not try to redistribute your changed version to the world at large, you're in the clear.
-wd
--
chip norkus(rl); white_dragon('net'); wd@routing.org
mercenary albino programmer for hire
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
Au contrair! The user chooses to use a product which modifies your page. The user chooses to leave the re-write setting on.
Let's say I make a website, one part of it is full of obscenity and nasty things which filter software (netnanny and what have you) blocks. The other part is full of good christian decency and all that stuff. I have copyrighted the website as a whole, but netnanny (or whatever) only displays the second (decent) half. Can I sue the makers of netnanny (...) for violating my copyrigh? Absolutely not. If you could, someone would have tried this already.
Let's say you buy a shitty, american-made (*wink*) television and your picture comes in fuzzy all the time. Can the broadcasters sue the TV manufacturer for affecting their content at the end-user point (by makiong a shitty product)? No. It's my your own damn fault for buying a shitty TV.
And if your content is rewritten by your shitty browser, it's also your own damn fault for using the shitty browser and not turning off the features. We still have a modicum of personal responsibility, at least in the western world, and even in the US. Let's *PLEASE* try and keep it that way.
-wd
--
chip norkus(rl); white_dragon('net'); wd@routing.org
mercenary albino programmer for hire
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
throx writes: The Smart Tag technology was a great idea. People want to be able to enrich their web surfing
How on earth do you know this with such certainty? Are these the same "people" that think that Word (the only word processor!) should automatically capitalize the first letter of whatever it thinks is a sentence? Are these the same "people" that buy so much Budweiser?
You make the fallacious "eat shit, 30 billion flys can't be wrong" argument.
throx writes: I am a person. I would use smart tags if I got to control what filters were enabled and what wasn't.
You just narrowed the group of people that you talk about from "everyone" to "throx". The narrower statement is a whole lot truer than People want to be able to enrich their web surfing, the statement that I did quibble with. I quibbled with it because it was a huge overgeneralization.
throx goes on to write: You're implying I'm not a person? No indeed. I merely pointed out that there's a difference between "everyone" and "throx". But when you wrote People want to be able to enrich their web surfing, you implied that I wasn't a person, because I wouldn't use Smart Tags, as near as I can tell from press descriptions of Smart Tags.
And no, my quibbling with your original statement was not a strawman argument. Your original statement was a counter-factual overgeneralization. Deal with it, rather than accuse me of your own logical fallacies.
I have to wonder if this is M$'s way of doing market research.
"Let's put it into a beta release and see if anyone finds it or complains about it."
Because I'm willing to bet if nothing is said or a stink not raised, they'll slip it into the production version. As for Office XP? I'm thinking that the "XP" stands for extremely possessive.
As in "All your files and information belong to M$."
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Smart tag headers at the top of pages only apply to that page.
.vbs attachments in Outlook, etc. (There are more, I'm just too tired to look them up now.)
Do you know that for sure?
MS software has a laundry list of unintended uses/abuses. Word macro viruses, those damn
I haven't seen the code, so I don't know how it could be abused, and given the MS track record on "functionality", I don't like it.
I fully expect that if it were rolled out, an exploit, would be found within weeks, if not days.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I think Smart Tags are a good idea. Navigating the web is hard enough these days if you know what you are doing and next to impossible for the occasional user. Has anyone seen a newbie try and find stuff on the Internet? If it wasn't for the default bookmarks and favs that Netscape and IE have, first time users wouldn't know how to find anything! By incorporating Smart Tags, Microsoft is appealing to the least common denominator. With the incorporation of Smart Tags into existing web pages, searching and navigating will be much easier. Especially on sites that basically suck and were made by someone who doesn't know anything about web design and web navigation. And that is about 80% of the Internet. Smart Tags will allow the Internet to go to the next level where people will be able to find things easily and make their time on the Net more productive. And by making Office have these tags, the melding of the Internet and your desktop will be closer to a reality. One day, thanks to Microsoft and all those "big bad" companies, you won't have to think about what search engine you should use because it will all be client side for the most part. Smart Tags will make this big mess called the Internet more user friendly and more integrated with our normal daily computer activities. Besides, can you imagine Picard and Data arguing over which search engine to use when those nasty Cardassians are firing away with some new raygun? I didn't think so.
And also, I seriously doubt that Microsoft will make a Smart Tag for that silly goatse.cx picture. I mean, what would the other links be, I shudder to even think about it. People let Link Exchange and other banner/link companies put whatever they want on their sites in the name of increased traffic, so what is the difference. And with web designers able to put Meta Tags in that block the Smart Tags I see it as a win-win situation!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
No sig
There was a recent article somewhere talking about that (and if I could dig up the link, I would) where those concerns were brought up. Sure, there's the obvious "answers" that any use of the word 'Microsoft' will point to their home page, and the like, but who decides? (Well, duh, M$ does, and that's the problem.) And what if you have a very anti-M$ page reporting on their utter slackness in all things programming? You sure as Hell(tm) aren't going to want to have every other sentence with a link to the evil ones themselves....
Now, my concern is this... they are putting links in my web pages (well, if I had any that were finished, that is), which, in effect, is helping them to advertise other sites. Any other media outlet would have some sort of financial contract for advertising, but here I'm "shilling" for free.
Okay, yeah, I can put my favorite links up on a page, and that's shilling too, but the difference is, I put those links on my page, and I know what they go to. I don't need any help deciding what should be linked to my pages.
All in all, it really boils down to one of two major possibilities: (1) They're going to try and sneak it all in later or, (2) They, for once, realized what an amazing can of worms they would open on themselves and decided not to go through with it. I'm keeping that meta tag handy though.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Maybe the tags Microsoft created were *Really* smart tags and they self-destructed while contemplating the meaning of their life...
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
Maybe configure it to parse information from Everything2 ?
If the technology to add configurable smart tags gets standardized and included in Mozilla, Konqueror AND IE, I may use them.
But ONLY if they are standard and implemented the same way in all browsers. Any proprietary crap, and I wont use the browser, or Ill filter the meta tags out of the HTML code.
--
What ? Me, worry ?
Thats exactlly what I want.
--
What ? Me, worry ?
with recent builds from Mozilla.org, I think they've surpassed IE in both features and performance....
at least where I live in Linux Land that's how it is.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
What other reasons are there to resist these smart tags? What if MS didn't control the tags, or had some manner of public voting system on them, so that the public could choose to link Linux to linux.com, linux.org, etc.
On second thought, thats probably not a good idea. You know some script kiddie is going to find a way to vote a hundred times for goatse.cx.
Also, what benefits do the smart tags have?
Captain_Frisk
Hmmm.. how do SmartTags stand when it comes to IP and copywrite? They are, in effect, taking the web page you have published and changing it (by adding the keyword sensitive links), and then displaying it to the end user. Perhaps IP and copywrite arent the right headings to think about this under, but there must be something in law to stop them modifying what you've published. If SmartTags are released, it means MS can change the content of whatever pages they see fit. What if someone's page is modified and the way it operates or the meaning it holds is altered? I think MS are entering a minefield, and perhaps *thats* why they have pulled it.
We are forgetting the obvious... how much would a company like X10 pay Microsoft for a Smart Tag on a simple character like a or worse... e? Imagine the new surfing experience then.... and we thought it was getting annoying now!
So why, if they've accepted this is an unpopular concept, have they taken it out only to keep it in scope for future versions? What does this say about how much attention they really pay to what users want?
It was hyped as a "great thing" in the new version of IE. Nobody liked it. MS realized the mistake of having hyped it to begin with. MS "withdraws" it from the gold code. Six months later, MS sneaks it into an IE service pack and doesn't tell anybody. Since it doesn't get hyped or announced, the uproar is minimal and it sticks around. If they get burned really badly by sneaking it in later, they can blame it on sloppy coding by claiming that IE6 SP1 was already in development before the IE6 code went gold, and they "forgot" to take it out of the SP code.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
According to MS, that is the correct META tag. The relevant link to Microsoft's site is: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smartt ags/default.asp
Of course, what they're really doing is secretly re-writing the smart tag code so that the META tag doesn't work. Then they'll sneak it out in a "service pack" for IE 6. Yeah, that's it!
How's that? Informative AND a parnoid flame, all in one post!
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
I plan to edit my browser detect scripts to sniff for IE 6, and then redirect users to a page telling them something like this:
Some big company got mad because they didn't like the comments that were "appended" to their site. They claimed it was vandalism and infringed their rights to present their pages the way they wanted. Eventually, the company that made the plug-in went under.
Some quick analysis of the comments on that story would show how many people stood in support of that software, but now stand against SmartLinks.
Personally, as much as I hate Microsoft, I think that they get a knee-jerk reaction from this crowd.
Raisinettes are my raison d'etre
Wouldn't the better method to block it be to modify Apache to automatically include the relevant statements on all web pages? After all, if MS wants to use its position as the dominant browser to instigate this, its only fitting to use the dominant web server to block it.
Now the question is, should the Open Source community start experimenting for alternatives to Smart Tags and try to beat M$ to the punch? Or is that just paving the way for further nasties?
GreyPoopon
--
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The serious problem of undesirable links being added to unwitting users' pages could be avoided by:
...
1) making the system opt-in,
2) making them visually distinct from regular hyperlinks in some way, and
3) providing the option to (un)subscribe to 'libraries' of rule-URL pairs assembled by whomever.
Come to think of it, this is nearly exactly what www.flyswat.com does. They have a IE for Win plugin available that adds links (that manifest as a weird puky green underline) to any page, and that can be easily turned on and off. I used it for a few days once, and found the easy links to bios and dictionary definitions genuinely useful. They also have "Booster Packs" available (http://www.flyswat.com/bp.html) in a number of fields. Of course, these packs are crying out for an open format for these packs would be no end of fun, and could provide neat opportunities for 'pre-annotating' all kinds of pages.
Imagine links from major brand names/ticker symbols to Corpwatch instead of MSN, or from Book Titles/ISBNs to ISBN.nu
Somewhat unrelated: I heard that MSFT had a patent on typing a verb into the address bar of a browser. I.e. locking up the address bar as CLI. Pure hearsay.
Why don't they just call it "Microsoft: All your bits are belong to us" OS or MAYBABTU OS. In fact, why don't we just put MS in our wills and as beneficiaries and just direct deposit our paychecks to MS. I wrote some songs, maybe I will give MS my copyright to them or maybe they already own them??
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
On an Unix with XFree86, try:
man xsm
Having GNOME installed, try:
man gnome-session
/me is in bright mood after setting Galeon up to be preloaded in the gnome-session and then brought up in a second.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
The attorneys for the MPAA and the RIAA used the DCMA as fuel for this entanglement stating "The Smart Tags in IE6 found every instance of DeCSS, MP3, Napster, MusicCity, Gnutella, Pr0n, DivX, Warez, 1337 $+uFf, and many other buzz words and directed unsuspecting netizens to contraband."
"This has completely undermined the entire media industry and taken profits out of the pockets of artists." said one representative of the RIAA.
Lars of Metallica was reported as saying "How many times do we have to fight this battle. Just when we think we know what's going on some one kicks us in the nuts and shows us we really don't understand the technology at all! This is a Greek tragedy!"
Contractual Obligation
Seriously? It would be very helpful to know of the tag used to block.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
And noone should care, because they do absolutely NOTHING. I purchased Word XP for my family's main machine, and the number of improvements over the previous version are a joke. Task Panes are OK, but they're not nearly as intuitive as simply dragging the toolbars to where you'd like to use them. And Smart Tags are barely used. Click an email address, it opens Outlook. Click a regular address and you can get a map. Big freaking deal.
And don't tell me "well, they're going to add features that will make them evil". That's bull. The way I see it, Smart Tags are going to go the way of IE Internet Channels: used for approximately 5 minutes then removed completely.
There are new features in Windows XP that Linux/FreeBSD should probably borrow from. Saving the user's session *completely* (including what programs are open, and where they are in those programs) is a good idea. So is the smarter Start menu. Smart Tags though? Fttt. They'll be out of here.
That's because it isn't such a bad idea.
How many times do you see a URL listed on a web page that isn't a link? It'd be nice if the browser could at least make those links automatically. It might as well turn some common terms into links while it's at it.
I just can't believe some people are complaining about this.
(1) Yes, they heard someone talking and decided it was rather an unpopular concept; but...
(2) they are not averse to resurrecting it in a later version.
To me, this is one of the most telling, and puzzling, parts of the tale. Microsoft have for years stated that changes to interfaces and methodologies come about as the direct result of testing with everyday users. (Presumably this is why they've thrown out all the old manuals ever written on how to design a user interface -- remember "consistency within menus" or "safer/safest button should be the default"?)
So why, if they've accepted this is an unpopular concept, have they taken it out only to keep it in scope for future versions? What does this say about how much attention they really pay to what users want?
I'm not a bash-MS-regardless type, but this and other recent policies (specifically the whole licensing idiocy) are really beginning to vex me.
Had this not come from M$ it might have been a Good Thing(tm). Reminds me of this story the other day about wearable computers. Folks at MIT were fantasizing about software that would help people remembering things: they could for instance attatch virtual notes to people's heads and have the computer display info on people that it recognized on it's own accord. Seems pretty cool to me. This whole thing is a highly sophisticated version of Smart Tags(tm). Nah, probably it's the other way around - Smart Tags(tm) are a very low-tech version of the MIT idea.
:(
But obviously, in the hands of M$ it sure to be the supreme censorware utility - one that no doubt only M$ controls
Hmm... gotta come up with a decent
There was a study done by Javeline Associates showing that SmartTag technology does in fact provide a significant benefit to casual web users. The success, shown with an experimental browser linking back to Google, showed that users were able to find information 5 to 15 minutes faster than they otherwise would have.
The real problem with Microsoft's implementation is the centralized, monopolistic control over the information provided back to the user... data which was designed to be collected and distributed to sales and marketing industries.
This behoovers Open Source developers to come up with a decentralized model and client software for SmartTag-type technology.
Good grief! How can anyone NOT see that Microsoft are simply and plainly greedy, predatory, amoral etc etc? No offence, but this seems to be a specifically American phenomenon: the ability to close the eyes and 'believe' obvious lies. Like 'Linux is for commies and hippies'. As I understand, the American concept of 'communism' (which incidentally is unrelated to communism and socialism elsewhere, just like US 'christianism' vs. christianism elsewhere; etc etc), is that is all about 'subversion', 'totalitarianism' and being 'undemocratic' - but surely, it is Microsoft that put these traits on display?
...
I wouldn't worry about smart tags, MS Passport, Office XP or the other rubbish they try to stuff down people's throats. These things are relying too much on huge, ultrafast machines, broadband connections etc, so when these things inevitably foul up, the users will be lost. And meanwhile, as they muck about with sorting out the problems, the freeware world goes on. And on, and on
Don't get me wrong - I'm not a communist (but I'm not scared shitless by it either), and I don't 'hate America'. But I honestly think that you Americans have this very big problem. Why not open your eyes, and keep them open? It's not dangerous, even if it implies some humbling insights into the nature of yourselves?
Smart tags wouldn't be so bad if they were actually smart. I'm not interested in having every instance of the word Microsoft link to www.microsoft.com, but can't we think of some useful implementations of Smart Tags? Just because it's from Microsoft doesn't mean the idea is completely without merit.
For instance, I might like to be able to click on a word, any word, and have it open up a window with a definition from dict.org. Not sure what LXHTMRAM is? The definition is just a click away.
Or maybe be able to pop up a quick Google search on the word (or words) you choose. In fact, multiple Smart Tags could co-exist. Just right-click and choose which one to implement.
I don't think it should underline keywords on a page, as it would screw with the graphical style. And of course it should never be activated by a simple (accidental) left-click, but those are two simple design issues.
Don't think MS would release useful smart tag packages? Well, you do realize that anyone can develop their own. My company, for instance, is developing a smart tag pack (for Office XP though) that'll let people grab flight data from their online database whenever someone types in a flight number. In the same vein, I'm sure that two minutes after the release, everyone would be developing their own smart tag packs for other people to download, providing useful links to dictionary definitions, image searches, or even relevant comic strips.
Hey, while I'm dreaming, it'd be nice if webmasters could specifically enable (or disable) certain smart-tag packages, instead of just disabling smart tags altogether. Oh, and third party browsers (Mozilla) could be developed to use the same smart tags. And MS could GPL Internet Explorer, and...
Sorry if I got out of hand. I just like the idea customizing my web browsing experience to add functionality. That's all.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
It seems that they've licensed some technology from eZula called HOTText.
If you want to see just how obnoxious these smart tags will be, give it a whirl. You have to wonder if there's a patent suit coming up on this (M$ vs. eZula).
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
and theyre still around...the plug-in has spyware in it of course
My cat's breath smells like cat food.--R. Wiggums
Someone should absolutely make an apache module, and it should come with apache if the smartTags is released! :-)
We should not use any of our energy on M$ without having to...
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
Smart Tags would prove a monopolistic tactic behind internet explorer being tied to windows to win the browser war (ie is actually better than netscape). With microsoft owning the browser market, then using that position (with smart tags) to push users to microsoft related sites, would prove more of the DOJ case. The case is still on just in a lower court. They need as little "continued monopoly" press as they can get. I'm sure they are not including it just because users complained... I seriously doubt they are not including it, "at this time" for the users purpose.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein