Separate Code Files And Commingling?

ScottyB writes: "According to an article in the Washington Post, 'Microsoft Seeks to Revisit Code Ruling,' Microsoft is asking the Appeals Court to revisit the 'commingling' issue in its ruling." As the article states, "'Microsoft did not commingle software code specific to Web browsing with software code used for other purposes in the same files,' the company said. 'Rather, in organizing software code into files, Microsoft placed related functions close to one another' to benefit users.'" Wouldn't being in the same binaries or binary distribution constitute commingling?"

Comments

Re:Viral Code

[Anonymous Coward]

The following is not meant to be a troll, but an awakening to the people who think this is a troll

What would be funny is if the put it under the GPL instead of the LGPL.... it be even MORE viral!

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's also remember how disingenuous their integration necessity statements are.

When the browser stuff was starting up, Microsoft's big core technology was OLE, being buffed up to COM with interfaces. Their new, flagship product showing off COM was their browser, complete with IBrowser interface.

All an app had to do was write to IBrowser, and all a browser maker had to do was provide an IBrowser API.

Buuuuuuhhhht waitaminute! If anyone can plug in a browser, and anyone can use a browser to write a virtual computer, complete with interface, then anyone could plug a brand new virtual OS/GUI into Windows. Then people could write to Windows or the virtual GUI, so they might as well write to the virtual GUI since that runs under Windows. Then Windows will die in a few years because a generic, public-domain definition of a virtual OS/GUI and the software to support it on any machine or base OS would render Windows irrelevant as an OS.
Soooooo, we can't have Microsoft die, so we can't allow Microsoft to be a platform that no one builds apps for directly, so we can't have a public, generic virtual OS/GUI software plug into our system that developers might develop for, so we can't allow browsers to plug into our system, but since we allow that, we un-do the flagship COM product and un-COM it such that no one but us can plug in because it's an integrated part of the OS now.

Re:A summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly anyone remembers this, but Jackson was actually the #2 judge, the "pro-Microsoft" judge, who got in after the first guy was tossed for allowing himself the luxury of hating Microsoft, after they lied, showed disrespect to the court, withheld evidence, and blatantly disregarded his preliminary orders regarding IE. If you read "Serving My Corporate Masters" on iUniverse.com, the former Microsoft employee at one point says about Judge Jackson, "Finally! A judge who understands technology!"

Bitterman

Trying to shore up its weak evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's petition essentially argues that there was no evidence supporting Judge Jackson's finding that there was browsing-specific code in SHDOCVW, one of the dynamic link library (DLL) files in Windows 98. They cite Government's Exhibit 1686, which is a spreadsheet created by Microsoft that contains a list of the 1,769 functions in SHDOCVW. The spreadsheet shows which functions are invoked when a user (1) uses Internet Explorer to visit the Microsoft.com homepage, and (2) uses the Windows shell to browse the C: drive. According to Microsoft, 1,069 of these functions are invoked in both scenarios.

Microsoft created this spreadsheet for the purposes of this litigation, in an attempt to show that the Web browser and the operating system were "integrated." But the spreadsheet backfired, because it showed that there were some functions in SHDOCVW that were used by IE, but not by the operating system. In yesterday's petition, Microsoft argues that if it had run the Windows shell through a wider variety of different scenarios, it would have used all of the functions in SHDOCVW. That would have provided a very powerful piece of evidence for Microsoft's position -- so why didn't Microsoft produce it? They certainly had the resources and motivation to do so. They even tried to do so -- and failed.

The Court of Appeals can reverse a finding of fact only if it is clearly erroneous; i.e., if there is no reasonable inference from the trial evidence that can support it. They have to defer to the trial judge, who sat through the trial and was in a position to weigh the evidence. So it should be clear that Judge Jackson was entitled to infer that the reason Microsoft failed to produce a spreadsheet proving that there was no browser-specific code in Windows was that, in fact, there is such code in Windows.

An example of commingling?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I have an interesting example of MS commingling. I've never read about it anywhere else, but it's certainly odd to me.

Everybody knows the standard C library function strcpy(). (Well, not everybody, but you get the point :)... it's been around since the year dot.)

For some reason, Microsoft introduced a new function called StrCpy. An MS-specific extension to the standard C library, no doubt a combination of convenience and locking coders in to Windows specific code... no surprise there.

What is surprising is that any application that uses this function can only be run on a computer with IE4.0 or later!

So this means that even applications that don't use IE in any way at all, suddenly find themselves requiring IE4 to be installed on the computer.

I discovered this when I inherited a small win32 application at work. It was just a small dialog-based application, but on computers without IE4 or later installed, it just wouldn't work.

Very strange, and smells of commingling to me.

(BTW, see here, and here, for details.)

Re:An example of commingling?

[armb]

> The only advantage you get with using it is if you use StrCpyN, you can prevent buffer overflows.

You mean "the shell guys" reimplemented strncpy for no good reason as well as strcpy?

--

Re:An example of commingling?

[ewhac]

Well, a libc can easily be a meg or more, and with most Windowseses you need to read the entire thing into RAM to call any given function.

Which simply serves as further evidence that Microsoft botched it. Nowhere is it written that libc needs to be implemented as a single entity. As an example, you could have a "veneer" link library (conveniently named libc) which offers up all the libc functions, but implements none of them. Instead, it re-binds to sub-DLLs which implement libc operations separated according to general functionality (one DLL for string operations, another for file operations, another for printf() and friends, etc.). Thus, your program will only consume memory for the functions it's actually using.

This is not rocket science. Hell, it's not even computer science. It's just good, solid, clear thinking.

Schwab

Re:An example of commingling?

[ewhac]

this practice is called code-sharing, and as alien as this sounds to open-source developers, it is actually quite common in modern software engineering practices.

Ha ha, very ha. Microsoft "invented" shared code very late in the game, well after Amiga and Mac, and probably after Sun as well. The .so extension on UNIX systems canonically means "Shared Object".

Besides, there's no legitimate reason the Windows shell DLLs couldn't themselves have dynamically linked against a libc DLL -- which itself could then be shared amongst all apps -- rather than exporting incompatible substitutes.

And no, libc is not too large/monolithic to make this work in a 4M system. The only difficult part is getting the functions and data that rely on global state (printf(), errno, et al) to work. But strcpy() is stateless, and as such would drop into a DLL trivially. That Microsoft screwed up something so agonizingly basic I feel speaks volumes about their, "modern software engineering practices."

Schwab

Re:An example of commingling?

[OnyxRaven]

silly silly poster, remember that windows 2000 has IE5 integrated, 98 has IE4 integrated and ME has IE5 integrated. No need to install IE4 when a newer version is already commingled...

Re:An example of commingling?

[SurfsUp]

What? You use VC++? Well of course it is going to implement strcpy() using StrCpy(), that is almost a given. Last time I checked, VC++ was not part of a standard installation of any version of Windows, and it can quite easily be added/removed at the user's convenience (well, at least as easily as any other Windows program).

This post and others like it have absolutely convinced me that:

a) Yes, this is a case of co-mingling. Otherwise, the library author would have been sure to place the function definition in a generic DLL installed by default. Because it's a compiler, right? Not an IE addon builder.

2) Microsoft employees are spending way too much of their working day trolling Slashdot.

Just remember, every post you make just gives one of us a soapbox to stand on. And, you think you're doing any good trying to sway opinion here? What a waste of effort. It's much more likely it's *you* who will be persuaded. I'm not 100% sure, but perhaps there is an interesting new trend: former Microsoft astroturfers suddenly going off the radar and later reemerging as opensourcers. Hey, it feels good when that icy little lump in there melts.
--

Re:An example of commingling?

[cpeterso]

Microsoft also renamed many of the standard C library functions with a leading underscore, such as _strdup(). Presumably, this is because some of the common C library functions are not "officially" defined by ANSI C, but conveniently the Microsoft function names make porting Win32 software more difficult.

btw, you shouldn't be using strcpy() anyways. Use strncpy() instead to avoid buffer overflows. ;-)

Re:An example of commingling?

[spectecjr]

You mean "the shell guys" reimplemented strncpy for no good reason as well as strcpy?

*cough* *cough* ahemm... er... yeah! Exactly!

Simon
(Doh!)

Re:An example of commingling?

[spectecjr]

1. strcpy hasn't gone anywhere. Just use that.
2. StrCpy is included with StrCpyN in the shell api because - well - the shell guys were nuts. You don't have to use it. strcpy still works. The only advantage you get with using it is if you use StrCpyN, you can prevent buffer overflows.

Besides... for maximum portability between platforms, and for unicode/MBCS/ANSI portability, it should have used _tcscpy()

Oh... and just because the app you have to maintain was written by an idiot who didn't think before using an API call, doesn't mean that it's Microsoft's fault.

Simon

Re:An example of commingling?

[The Larch]

Well, a libc can easily be a meg or more, and with most Windowseses you need to read the entire thing into RAM to call any given function. And then you need to page it out to that swap file on that FAT partition when you need RAM for something else..

Re:An example of commingling?

[pi_rules]

Uhm... show me an install of Win2k that -doesn't- have at least IE 4.0 on it. The specs can say just "Windows 2000" people you can't possibly have a Windows 2000 install w/out IE on it. At least, I've never seen one.

Re:An example of commingling?

[ajna]

From their web page (the first link you provided):

Windows NT/2000: Requires Windows 2000 (or Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Explorer 4.0 or later). Windows 95/98/Me: Requires Windows 98 (or Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4.0 or later).

It looks as if the dependency on IE 4 was removed in the current versions of their OS. There might not be anything shady going on, after all...

Re:An example of commingling?

[Pinball Wizard]

yes, Microsoft has their own versions of strings, bool, and several different number types. If you go to look for code examples invariably these MS-only types are used. I imagine this is partly to lock the programmer in, however to their credit they have invented a complete standard of writing C programs(Hungarian notation, etc.) that is very clean and consistent. So once you get used to writing C/C++ programs the Windows way, you can be fairly productive with their libraries and coding standards. The tradeoff is that you are locked in. Just use either the C or C++ standard libraries if you are trying to write functions that are portable. Otherwise you WILL be writing functions that work only on Windows.

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

this is bulshit, if you took the time to look through the headers that microsoft supplies with their freely downloadable platform SDK, then you'll see that these functions are callable using their non-underscored names just like on any other system.

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

the reason that windows includes its own implementations of these routines is for historical reasons. they were originally included in the OS because the C-runtime DLLs were not commonly available on user's machines and were considered much too large/monolithic to be included in most applications. The routines were exported from the shell DLLs so that other components could use them without having to bring in the whole crt dll. this was especially important when trying to get win95 to run as fast as win3.1 on a machine with 4Mb RAM (the target machine for Win95). this practice is called code-sharing, and as alien as this sounds to open-source developers, it is actually quite common in modern software engineering practices.

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

oh no! what a complete nightmare:

typedef long LONG;
typedef unsigned long ULONG;
typedef void * PVOID, LPVOID;
(just in case you don't get it, the above is a joke)

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

the 'StrCpy' version was define so they didn't have to load the whole 320K msvcrt.dll just to copy a string. on a machine with 4Mb RAM you can't afford to do that, especially when the operating system you're about to ship (win95) has to run faster that OS/2 on that machine.

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

it's implemented as a single DLL on windows (and I believe on most other OSs) for performance reasons. Requiring extra levels of indirection like you suggest requires more disk accesses, loader fixups and indirect calls, also the compiler can't make use of inlining or global optimizations across these modules.

Thus, your program will only consume memory for the functions it's actually using.

Modern operating systems such as Unix and Windows use virtual memory and demand-loading of modules, so modules only consume the physical memory that is currently paged in.

Microsoft has an internal tool that reorganizes the functions in a module (DLL/EXE) that causes functions that are commonly called together to be placed in contiguous memory locations (ie in the same 64K segment) thus drastically cutting down on the number of page faults and allocated physical memory segments required to execute common call chains. This gives them a 10-15% increase in performance above compiler and linker optimizations. These kinds of optimizations are not possible across module boundaries.

Imagine the code inside each of your 'sub-DLLs' that need to call 'strcpy()' (or some other commonly used libs routing). Every time you wanted to call this routine, instead of just using a 'jmp' instruction you have to use a 'call' to another DLL, your performance is going to suffer, badly.

It's just good, solid, clear thinking

Yeah, good idea, but unfortunately it's lacking a bit on the practical side. Of course, if you don't care about performance go right ahead.

Re:An example of commingling?

[spongman]

Microsoft "invented" shared code very late in the game

I didn't say anything about Microsoft's involvement in the usage of shared code. I just stated that open-source developers have historically not made much use of it. (apart from the standard libraries, of course)

Besides, there's no legitimate reason the Windows shell DLLs couldn't themselves have dynamically linked against a libc DLL -- which itself could then be shared amongst all apps -- rather than exporting incompatible substitutes.

The legitimate reasons are that

1. they didn't need all the functions in libc so they didn't want to load it. the c-runtime was seen mainly as a unix compatibility layer. most of the functions in libc are implemented on top of native win32 calls anyway. since the windows developers were initimately knowledgeable about the win32 api (they were implementing it, after all) most of their code was native code. But everyone needs string handling routines, especially ones that handled locales and code pages (which the libc ones didn't, at the time) so they put them in there.
2. the size of libc was too big on a 4Mb win95 system. Performance was a key issue and saving pages meant winning the perf battle against OS/2. they originally didn't even load OLE2.dll to do the COM stuff in the shell - they just rewrote a very minimal version that they statically linked into the shell to save space. Not exactly what you'd call code-shring, I know, but the code was available to 3rd parties elsewhere (OLE2.dll) and a small footprint was critical.

Re:An example of commingling?

[Nakoruru]

But, strcpy is not implemented using StrCpy in VC++. Microsoft provides the source code to msvcrt.dll, I have seen the source because it crashes if you give strcpy a NULL pointer (ANSI defines such stupidity as undefined behavior, so its my fault) and the debugger points me to an assembly language file containing the code that MS has written for it. msvcrt.dll is an almost completely standalone as a library. I think it only depends on user32.dll and maybe kernel32.dll.

Re:An example of commingling?

[alanwj]

strcpy() is the standard C library function. StrCpy() is a Win32 API function.

If compiler vendors choose to implement their version of strcpy() as a call to StrCpy() then you should blame them, not MS.

What? You use VC++? Well of course it is going to implement strcpy() using StrCpy(), that is almost a given. Last time I checked, VC++ was not part of a standard installation of any version of Windows, and it can quite easily be added/removed at the user's convenience (well, at least as easily as any other Windows program).

You are quite free to choose a different compiler that implements library functions the way you would like them implemented. There is no lack of competetion here, and many great Win32 compilers are even free (beer, not speech)!

If you can't find a compiler that implements strcpy(), or most of the other library functions for that matter, in the manner you prefer, then write your own version of those functions. It doesn't take a highly skilled programmer to move a block of null-terminated memory from one location to another.

Additionally, VC++'s header files contain furious amounts of #ifdef's dealing with versioning. Chances are that the dependency on IE you found in the particular application you mentioned was due to its vendor incorrectly compiling (or misjudging their audience).

Alan

Re:An example of commingling?

[Nickoty]

I don't have the docs available right here now, but I'd dare guess that this seemingly pointless duplicate function was introduced to facilitate easy maintenance of both unicode and non-unicode versions of the same program.

MS has been trying to get developers to start using unicode for quite some time, and nt/w2k is for example using unicode the full way. All relevant (string-using) function calls in libraries have two versions, one unicode (with a W suffix) and one non-unicode (a 'A' suffix) that converts the passed string to unicode, and then calls the unicode version.

Anyway, to avoid having to change anything in a program to get a unicode version, MS has introduced macros for all relevant data types and function calls. By changing a #define before you include the windows headers, you select which functions you want to link in and how the data types should be declared. If you want to go the unicode way, a function such as StrCpy() would be #defined as StrCpyW(), while if you didn't specify the unicode define, it would be StrCpyA(). This way, if you have used these functions calls and the relevant data types consistently, getting a unicode version is just a #define and a compile away.

So no plot nor hidden agenda: :)

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Imagine if every X application had to supply the font rendering libraries necessary to run. It would be a mess - DLL hell!"

False analogy. If you had it so that the font rendering libraries were only installed when the proprietary FooMonoPolyWare was installed, it would be a good analogy to what MS was doing.

Re:DLLs

[jedidiah]

That sort of argument is rather hollow considering the fact that 256M sticks of RAM go for 50 bux these days...

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.asp?imodu le =CT32M64S4D75

Some interesting implications of all this...

[jd]

First, Microsoft claims that there is code reuse involved. Now, on the face of it, it's perfectly reasonable to combine modules that are going to be reused. In the Unix world, this is done all the time. (This is why applications can depend on 60+ shared libraries. It's neither stupid nor unreasonable.)

HOWEVER, let's look at this a bit closer. You can certainly re-use networking code, URL & URI parsers, font libraries, image handlers, XML, etc. But none of these constitute a "Web Browser", or web browsing capability. They are merely common functions.

"Web Browsing" implies handlers for HTML, DHTML, JScript (as opposed to Javascript), Visual Basic, Bookmarks, Web Caches, Web Proxies and other "high-level" functionality.

Now, I can understand someone putting image handlers for various image formats all in one library, maybe combined with font libraries and anti-aliasing code. These are all related, and grouping them will generally improve the performance of applications. (You'll generally want to display multiple types of image in a single application, so loading all the handlers as a single unit will make a difference.)

On the other hand, what would ANYONE be doing, putting, say, JScript handlers next to a JPEG parser? Sure, JScript code -may- refer to images, but that's not a requirement. It makes no sense, either from the perspective of the programmer or from the OS. (The user doesn't care what's combined where, because they can't see that level of detail.)

It would be comparable to Sun waking up one day and moving the Swing and AWT heirarchies in Java into the java.net package, and link them together in such a way as to make them inseperable. Sure, it'd make a marginal impact to network-related Swing and AWT code, but it would severely impact any graphical code that didn't use the network.

In light of them dropping Java -- in essence, killing it off on the desktop and relegating it to non-Windows servers -- this could spell doom for Microsoft. IBM tried similar stunts, and that damn near killed them. This is a dangerous gamble.

Given that Microsoft ==IS== the computing world, to many people, this could also cause a complete re-think on how widely-used computers are. Think about it. IT Department invests millions in migrating a company or a University to the web, using Java, IIS and Internet Explorer. Head of IT Department then goes to the boss and says "sorry, you now have to give us twice as much again to re-write everything in .NET, or we become unsupported."

Because everything is so tightly merged, don't even think a 3rd-party can write a Java add-on. There's nowhere to add it!!!

This time, next year, either .NET or Java will be dead, and the future of Microsoft will have been decided, one way or the other. If .NET wins, Microsoft will have total power. The UN and NATO might as will surrender to it, if that happens.

If Java wins, Microsoft will either have to completely re-implement Java (something they just DON'T do, and may not have time to do), OR they will have to eat humble pie (which BG3 has declared inedible) and include AS-IS the standard JAVA JVM and development tools. Since nobody likes a loser, that'll kill any hopes they have on the Anti-Trust appeals. Which, in turn, may lead to an even-more radical breakup, or even being disolved, in view of their attempt to turn the entire Internet into a Microsoft VPN.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[jd]

Low-level functions are those which perform some form of basic translation operation. They are not directly useful, in and of themselves, but are only useful when used as a component within a higher-level component.

For example, a TCP/IP stack is useless, in and of itself. It can make/break connections, but it has no capacity to handle name resolution, to talk to a server, or create suitable packets. It's simply a means of translating one stream into another. It doesn't PRODUCE anything.

High-level libraries have the distinction that they are either sinks or sources. They don't translate, per-se. An HTML renderer, for example, is a sink. Information goes in, but no stream comes out. That data is displayed on the screen and then forgotten about.

A diagramatic way to say the same thing is:

• Highest Level: Application Layer (Flow Control)
• High Level: Sink/Source Libraries
• Medium Level: Translation Layer (for apps)
• Low Level: System Calls

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[sheldon]

You don't think that a Web browser is pretty much an HTML rendering engine with a front end?

If the HTML rendering engine is componentized, your web browser is really just a front end that displays that and has a text box to enter a URL into.

This is way IE is written.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[laertes]

This time, next year, either .NET or Java will be dead, and the future of Microsoft will have been decided, one way or the other. If .NET wins, Microsoft will have total power. The UN and NATO might as will surrender to it, if that happens.

Nope. Next year, Java will still be doing exactly what it has done for the last couple of years---provide developers with a stable, well documented, easy to use platform. It's not perfect (especially GUI stuff) but it's quite good. The people who will use .NET are the people who use VB now. Corporations don't survive if they make substantial investments and then throw them away. You said so yourself.

Also, your comment about MS threatening the U.N. or NATO is a joke. The U.N. is much more then just the General Assembly, but it's far from any sort of enemy with Microsoft. Why would Microsoft consider taking on something like the UN? Enlighten me.

NATO is a military organization. They have: guns, soldiers, ships, tanks, airplanes, satelites as well as conventional and nuclear missiles and bombs. Additionally, they have the comunications and computational resources to manage all of that. They fight wars. Microsoft has a bunch of desktops and servers.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[Chokolad]

> On the other hand, what would ANYONE be doing, putting, say, JScript handlers next to a JPEG parser? Sure, JScript code -may- refer to images, but that's not a requirement. It makes no sense, either from the perspective of the programmer or from the OS. (The user doesn't care what's combined where, because they can't see that level of detail.)

Well, you know, JScript is in the separate DLL in IE. It can be updated separately and is used not only by IE.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[Mryll]

I strongly hope that Microsoft continues to push an increasingly exclusive and proprietary O/S - development platform combination. Microsoft seems to be fading away in the world of enterprise business applications, and trying to force their control-oriented methodology on the development community will push things further in this direction.

In much of what I'm seeing in enterprise level development, Windows machines are treated pretty much as dumb terminals. All we expect from a wintel box is that it is capable of running some reasonable form of a web browser, and possibly to have some kind of Oracle/SQL TCP/IP support. MS SQL server is viewed as a joke relative to Oracle, and Oracle server is much better suited to *nix boxes than NT. The windows operating system has utility for us only so far as it can support simple client needs. The Citrix server capability of Win2K server provides pretty good performance for distribution of UI from a central source via browser, but such functionalities are available elsewhere.

If Microsoft were to break their browser's functionality with respect to support of Java functionality needed for Oracle's UI methods, our company would require our customers to migrate to a different browser or OS for terminal use.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[Mryll]

And you prefer... ?

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[jvmatthe]

If .NET wins, Microsoft will have total power. The UN and NATO might as will surrender to it, if that happens.

Well, since they probably all use PCs with MS Windows pre-installed, they've already surrendered. ;^) After all, isn't that what Linux and Mac users are preaching all day long?

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[The Abominous Salad]

This really ought to be obvious, but I think the UN/NATO thing was an exaggeration.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[spongman]

hang on. who is to decide that image handlers are low-level (and therefore acceptable for inclusion into an OS) and HTML parsers are high-level (and therefore not).

This seems to me to be a pretty arbitrary distinction - something that, by definition, the courts should not be ruling on (arbitrary laws are bad, right?)

by your logic, a few years ago a TCP/IP stack, or a JPEG library would have been considered high level. what changed between then and now?

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[spongman]

MS SQL server is viewed as a joke relative to Oracle

yes, mainly by Oracle DBAs that charge huge amounts to support Oracle's databases. From by (albeit limited experience) SQL Server is much easier to administer than Oracle, and thus threatening those DBAs.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[spongman]

Well, as far as information is concerned, every operation is either a transformation or a NOP. All you're doing is drawing a distinction between different levels of complexity.

Re:Some interesting implications of all this...

[Auckerman]

"HOWEVER, let's look at this a bit closer. You can certainly re-use networking code, URL & URI parsers, font libraries, image handlers, XML, etc. But none of these constitute a "Web Browser", or web browsing capability. They are merely common functions."

This is quite true. Take MacOS X for example which supports more "Web buzzwords" than I even care to understand....but. Several applications can render HTML right out of the box, the Help systems is heavily based of HTML (and related technologies) and Flash. I get the impression that Apple supplies the ability render Web Documents, without having their own Browser. Something MS claimed was impossible to do (If you remove IE all sorts of things would break..Help, software update...)

Do we want to win this one?

[extremely]

Would GPL be weakened by a strict ruling on this? Would this help make their case that GPL is overly viral? Kinda worries me after the thrust of their prior attacks. Maybe this is a no-lose situation for them...

--
$you = new YOU;

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[sheldon]

"because commingled with those MSIE DLL functions were general-use functions that the other software took advantage of, "

Yeah like that damn HTML rendering engine that is so easy to be leveraged!

Those bastards, we need to go back to the good old days when programming was hard work. To hell with component based development!

Don't Forget The Java Plugin and Java Web Start

[jonabbey]

Actually, Sun has provided a couple of different ways to integrate their JVM into IE and Netscape 4. There's the Java Plug-in, which makes it possible to write applets that will be run inside an add-on Sun JVM.

Even better, there is now the Java Web Start application manager utility, which provides great support for deploying Java based applets and applications to people's desktops.

We use these methods to deploy Ganymede to folks here at the laboratory, and everything works great, be it in IE, Netscape 4, or whatever.

- jon

Re:...specific to...

[Rift]

But the problem with the above is this: If I want to write a browser to use these functions written into the OS (reading HTML in your example), it's NOT exposed to me! I have to install IE to use these functions... now, that doesn't seem quite right. If all IE does is use functionality written into the OS, then shouldn't I be able to? shouldn't Netscape or Opera be able to?

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[ink]

Those bastards, we need to go back to the good old days when programming was hard work. To hell with component based development!

Who said that?! A component system that requires you to install an application is broken. Why not simply allow someone to install the components required without making other judgements?

The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

Re:Don't use strncpy!

[armb]

> The world desperately needs something better than strncpy. But I wouldn't call it StrCpyN :-)

strlcpy. http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/full_papers/ millert/millert_html/index.html

--

If I had mod points you would get them

[Archfeld]

+1 Funny
+1 Insightful

I got a good chuckle out of that one.

Re:If I had mod points you would get them

[p3d0]

I can't believe these moderator jerks with their "Troll" labels. What a dumbass.
--

Re:If I had mod points you would get them

[p3d0]

Overrated--now that's more like it.
--

Re:Huh?

[OnyxRaven]

Is there a cult of people starting to show up who think they can assign any meaning to any word to suit their own purposes?

A friend and I just had a discussion with some girl over ICQ that was of the belief that a person should not be 'tied to the meanings of words' and that we should 'open our minds'. I believe her mind was so open that her brains flew out the door.

There is something inherently wrong with randomly giving a meaning to a word for ones own use. It rather defeats the purpose of words, language, thought, etc, since society must usually universally agree on the meaning.

Microsoft: We do not commingle code, we put related functions close to each other for ease of use

Translation: I have a fuzzy puppy dog, and he likes to eat socks.

see how that doesnt work? might as well throw away the language if one cannot assign a specific set of meanings to words and have society universally agree on the meaning.

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[IntlHarvester]

Perhaps this article? , based on a pre-release of IE4.0. Any mention that COMCTRL32.DLL is available outside of IE?

I'm not saying that that the specially restrictive terms of IE redistribution lasted long -- 3rd party vendors yelped and MS backed off after 6 months or so. But there was a window when the only way to get those DLLs was to get into the IE distribution business.
--

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[IntlHarvester]

That's true now, but when IE 4.0 was released, the only way to get the updated COMCTL32.DLL was to sign a IE distribution contract with Microsoft, and install the whole browser package. (And didn't the orginal release of IE make itself the "default browser" without asking first?)

Initially, those distribution contracts had requirements such as using IE-specific features on the company's public website and other IE cross-marketing.

(Don't forget the anti-trust case is all about actions in the past - the IE3/IE4 era.)
--

More on it from the Register...

[ScottyB]

The Register also has an article concerning this here which is a little more detailed.

My head is kind of turning in circles on what exactly Microsoft is trying to say...let's see if we can decode this...

So first Microsoft tried to say that they could not take IE out since it was an integral part of the OS, which was mostly shot down in trial by government lawyers with the "Look, you can uninstall IE, and the OS still works fine, so you guys were bundling the browser with the OS."

Then the Appeals court happened, and the court decided concerning commingling that MS had illegally thrown source code of IE into other parts of the OS (i.e., in a somewhat random manner as to "tie" the browser to the OS).

So now Microsoft is what, trying to say, "No, actually we did not tie IE into the OS, but rather IE's sources/functions were put into separate files"?

I guess this means that the last quote would be conveniently missing the "... which means that you can easily separate IE from the OS," which would go against their initial argument and show them to be trying to deceive the courts and the public.

Go figure.

Re:More on it from the Register...

[MikeBabcock]

Ahem.

"Fraud"

Microsoft is attempting to change its sworn testimony by the sounds of it ...

Re:More on it from the Register...

[ClosedSource]

From the register story you site:

"It would indeed be seriously helpful if there was a clear (or even a hazy) definition in law as to how far you could go in terms of trashing other companies' business by sticking more bits onto and together within your products but, as the appeals court said, right now there isn't."

So it sounds to me like the court is not only making the law up as it goes along, but doesn't even understand what law it's making.

OT: Captive car parts brands

[Weasel Boy]

AC/Delco is tied to GM.
Motorcraft is tied to Ford.
Mopar is tied to Chrysler.

Who's tied to the other auto makers?

one f'cking button on their mouse

[Weasel Boy]

So spend the $20 and get a f'cking two-button mouse. Damn! Get over it already. At least Apple's f'cking one-button mouse doesn't cause RSIs like some of the cheap-ass 2-button mice I've had to use. Wake up, smell the f'cking coffee, get a grip, and just accept that no matter which computer you buy, you'll probably have to buy a new mouse for it because the manufacturer's choice is crap.

Huh?

[Todd Knarr]

Microsoft's argument that mixing IE and other code in libraries wasn't comingling sounds an awful lot like arguing that you didn't comingle salt and water when you poured salt in the glass of water and stirred it: it conveniently ignores the very definition of "comingle".

Re:Huh?

[Foggy Tristan]

I believe this is the Clinton defense. Drag out the issue by making the definition of a common word a big fooh-far-ah. Somebody at Webster's should be placed on Microsoft Alert, given "comingle", "viral", "monopoly.".

Re:Whaaa?

[Royster]

Well, if the files aren't commingled (eck, hate that word) but are indeed just "related functions close to one another", then they damned well could have taken the IE functionality out, couldn't they have?

Obligatory Monty Python quote:
Inspector: Then we have Number Four, Number Four: "Crunchy Frog".

Mr. Hilton: Ah, yes?

I: Am I right in thinking there's a *real* frog in 'ere?

H: Yes, a little one.

I: What sort of frog??

H: A... dead frog.

I: Is it cooked??

H: We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple-smooth treble-milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.

I: That's as may be, but it's still a frog!

H: What else?

I: Well, don't you even take the bones out??

H: If we took the *bones* out, it wouldn't be *crunchy*, would it?

From the Crunchy Frog sketch

Files irrelevant; User Interface is all important

[crow]

The files in the distribution are irrelevalant. Who cares if Windows ships with all sorts of unrelated Microsoft .exe and .dll files?

What matters here is the user interface. If Microsoft had included Internet Explorer, but required users to download one key piece (that added the icon to the desktop and start menu; nothing else), then Netscape would have been on a level playing field. The issue is what's visible to the user, not the nature of obscure files that Joe User will never care about.

Of course, Microsoft's problem is that they bought into the government's arguement that the browsers and operating systems are legitimate markets to distinguish. Microsoft should have argued that they are really in the user interface market, and as such, the operating system and browser are naturally related.

Re:Whaaa? Like saying a car won't work w/o a radio

[weston]

You're exactly right. Microsoft's been trying to
have it both ways the whole time.

I wrote an article on this a while back... it seemed to me Microsoft's arguments were a lot like having a car mechanic say he coldn't remove
your car stereo because that would entail removing the battery too and then the car wouldn't work.

An application? Or integral part of the OS? Which way is it, Redmond?

--

Re:Viral Code

[Soko]

That would depend on whether:

Windows links to IE base code libraries only

IE links to Windows base code libraries only

They both make calls to each others basic code libraries

Figuring out which libraries to LPGL for IE could be, um, problematic at best.

I'd preffer that they be forced to LPGL both, of course. That would allow some one to write an OS that could compete with Windows in it's own space (Would you like some Wine with your cheese, Mr. Gates?) ^_^

Re:Whaaa?

[Soko]

How will the users know where the code is? The in-house developers, maybe, if they are the ones developing the code, but not the users.

I think they've painted themselves in a corner here. Remember (paraphrased) "the browser and the OS are tightly integrated and cannot be separated "? Well, if the files aren't commingled (eck, hate that word) but are indeed just "related functions close to one another", then they damned well could have taken the IE functionality out, couldn't they have? Judges will pick up on that at least, I hope.

Re:Do you believe that?

[Arandir]

Otherwise every application could be considered part of the OS.

Microsoft isn't the only organization that believes that. GNU is an operating system. GIMP is a part of GNU. Thus GIMP is a part of an operating system. Wow!

Re:Do you believe that?

[Arandir]

Of course. I am not disputing that GIMP is not necessary. I just find it strange that GNU considers GIMP and other end user applications to be a part of the operating system. As equally strange as Microsoft claiming IE is part of the OS.

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[Arandir]

It's like the window managers that come with Red Hat.

Slightly more relevant, though still a bad analogy, would be package management. RPM is an integral part of Redhat. The DEB format is an alternate format that has a few advantages over RPM. Yet you cannot totally remove RPM from you Redhat system and replace it with DEB! You would then be unable to install any Redhat packages. Even if you used alien or other similar tool, you still need RPM around.

Or maybe even more germane: GNOME. Many of the Redhat utilities use the GNOME libraries. You must have parts of GNOME installed even if you use the KDE desktop, or you have to forego the use of those Redhat utilities. If I use Netscape on Windows I still have to have Exploder installed. If I use KDE on Redhat I still have to have GNOME installed.

Re:Can't wait til they break up..

[MindStalker]

Actually, I believe it was that if they shared something witht the other half they had to share it with everyone else at the same price. So no exclusive contacts for IP basically.

Courtrooms

[Benjamin Shniper]

This is getting ridiculous.

First is the definition of evolution, all the way up to the definitions of "is".

I say get those fools a dictionary and make them stick to it.

-Ben

Re:Explorer == Shell; Konqueror != Shell

[lsdino]

Here at my work we have 4 NT 4 servers with the 95/NT4 look and IE 5.5.

And why would you want that? The integrated shell into windows made the user interface good. The 95/NT shell is such a horrible, unusable piece of junk (IMHO).

The one thing that really annoys me about this though is that it's really difficult to get the good shell in NT4/95 now. You used to be able to download IE w/ ActiveDesktop and install that (which is what gives you the new shell), but that's no more. Nowadays you gotta hope you have an old copy of IE4SP2 laying around....

But to the point, I personally think the integration of IE into the OS was a good thing. If it's not obvious on it's own merits the fact that the KDE crowd has done the same should be a sign of this. I mean come on, Netscape wanted the browser to become the platform, right? The fact of the matter is that Microsoft did a vastly superior job of making the browser the platform.

A summary

[mcfiddish]

So far ...

Judge 1: You're guilty. And you suck.

MS: You're wrong. I want to ask Judge 2.

Judge 2: You're guilty. Judge 1, that "you suck" was out of line.

MS: What a victory! Now, Judge 2, we still think you're wrong. Can you reconsider?

My prediction ...

Judge 2: You're guilty. And you know what? You do suck.

Re:A summary

[1010011010]

Jackson was the 2nd judge. Remember the 1995 Consent Decree?

Judge Sporkin's comments on the consent decree:
"It is clear to this Court that if it signs the decree presented to it, the message will be that Microsoft is so powerful that neither the market nor the Government is capable of dealing with all of its monopolistic practices. The attitude of Microsoft confirms these observations. While it has denied publicly that it engages in anticompetitive practices, it refuses to give the Court in any respect the same assurance. It has refused to take even a small step to meet any of the reasonable concerns that have been raised by the Court."

Judge Sporkin: Microsoft's Unwitting Ally, an interesting article from The Computer Lawyer (March 1995).
"On February 14, 1995, Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin refused to approve the consent decree negotiated between the U.S. Government and Microsoft to settle the antitrust complaint filed against Microsoft by the Government. Many think that this denial is a harsh blow against Microsoft. In fact, it may be very helpful to Microsoft for several reasons:
*It started an appellate process during which Microsoft will not be bound by any decree and after which any decree might be obsolete.
*It has caused an important adversary of Microsoft -- the government -- to become an advocate for Microsoft.
*It may well lessen the likelihood that the Government will investigate or take enforcement actions against other Microsoft anticompetitive practices.
*It may focus on a practice -- vaporware -- which is not illegal and which is fairly commonplace."

Civil Action No.: 94-1564, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, vs. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant. Stanley Sporkin, Judge.

The Judge Who Rejected Microsoft / Stanley Sporkin is known as aggressive, unpredictable , S.F. Gate, 2/16/95
"Assigned to review the settlement, he could have rubber-stamped it, which was what both sides wanted. Instead, he peeled the respectability off the agreement like layers of skin off an onion, exposing it as an unenforceable deal that let the government save face while letting Microsoft off the hook.
In his lengthy, fiercely worded ruling, Sporkin characterized Microsoft as having monopolistic practices that pose ``a potential threat to the nation's well-being,'' and he called the consent decree ``too little, too late.''"


- - - - -

Re:A summary

[ninewands]

And THAT was Microsoft's problem. If the judge understands the testimony, smoke and mirrors don't work so well amy more.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,

Re:A summary

[ignavus]

Exactly!

I am waiting for Microsoft to get the Appeals Court so fed up with their behaviour in court, that the Appeal judges start talking to journalists ... and end up reversing Penfold Jackson's remedies for being too soft.

MS managed to irritate the bench once. Why not a second time?

Re:A summary

[gandy909]

Gawd! I don't know if I have any mod points nor where to find em if I do, but you certainly can have ALL of em for that response! :)

They are still doing this.

[Malcontent]

SOAP toolkit 2 requires that you upgrade your browser to 5.5. Yes just to use msxml3.dll you have to download 30 megabytes worth of stuff (if you have IE 5.x already installed).

Of course your app won't work on anybodies machine unless they have ie5.5 too. Face it MS owns us. They can make us install whatever they want whenever they want. It will only get worse with XP.

Whaaa?

[wiredog]

'placed related functions close to one another' to benefit users

How will the users know where the code is? The in-house developers, maybe, if they are the ones developing the code, but not the users. Developers like myself don't particularly care where the code is either, as long as we know which library to link against. Of course, the judges don't know that.

Re:Whaaa?

[(void*)]

I agree with you, but I want to point out the advantage of putting these functions into a separate DLL. This means that someone can replace them if you want to. For example, the html renderer could be replaced with Mozilla's gecko. You would do this, if the user somehow preferred the the way Gecko renderred things, or if it fixes bugs that were in the MS IE renderer.

If MS wanted to give users the choice, this would be exactly what they should have done.

Re:Whaaa?

[malfunct]

And you CAN replace them :) What is stopping you from unregistering msHTML and registering a different com dll that implements that interface. Granted things would break if it wasn't a complete implmentation but there nothing stopping you from doing that.

Re:Whaaa?

[malfunct]

I what is going on here is that many browser sub functions are VERY useful in other applications. So useful in fact that they were included as functions in the OS as part of the many and numerous other modules that are part of the OS.

For instance the httpRequest module. It used to be that the only software that needed to make httpRequests was the web browser and so just making those functions a part a stand alone application was all good. MS however noticed that you could use http as a perfectly valid protocol for many other network requests (often that would have proprietary modules to make) and so made a module that could make those requests and because it was useful to all applications (including IE) they put that module in the OS instead of a separate distribution. Again the same thing happens with the html parser/renderer, it works great for help files and documentation for a vast host of applications, so useful in fact that they write it into its own module and include that with the OS so all other applications can use that functionality for free. Same happens for many other modules that can be used for multiple applications but started as functions of IE.

Now we go back to IE and look at what it needs, something to make network requests, something to render the content it recieves, other things that are not available as modules in the OS. So MS writes a wrapper (which turns out to be like 500k or something silly and small like that) that hosts all those controls and makes calls between them and whoa its a web browser.

If an OS were to have made all those functions (httpRequests, html rendering, ftp requests, menue options) part of the API before ever having written a web browser noone would argue that they were just trying to give benifit to as many applications as possible. Noone would say they are trying to corner the browser market would they? They would be touting the ease of application development on that platform because of all the neat high level modules that are included.

Granted MS stole ALL the code for these modules from the IE project. I will give you that they DID try to become the dominant browser by including that wrapper in thier OS so that people could have a web browser with out downloading a single thing. I think they big mistake they made is by saying IE couldn't be removed, they should have maintained from the VERY BEGINNING that sure it can be taken out and shown people how to delete the icons and wrapper DLL and then everyone would be happy at this point.

Now back to the commingling charges, if the modules in suspect (which just have to be the httpRequest and html parser/renderer) were ONLY useful to IE and were not use in ANY other programs by ANY other manufacturers then there would be a great argument that MS only moved them to the OS for the benifit of IE. I maintain however that there are MANY programs that use the modules and some of them are not even web browsing applications and so it should be apparant that these modules are of value to an OS that wants easy development to be possible.

Its sad that what is arguably the largest monopoly case in history could well have been never started (they would have come with another reason to go after MS I'm sure) if MS would have let people delete less than 1 meg of files from there system.

It would have been great if MS would have just added the modules to the OS and then advertised worlds smallest web browser, only 500 or 600k total installed :)

Re:Whaaa?

[cicatrix1]

How will the users know where the code is?

Who said anything about code? The word "function" doesn't neccessarily mean a block of code in a source file. I think it's clear that they are talking about the "functions" that a user interface provides such as navigating your filesystem, or navigating the web. In that light, Microsoft's statement makes a lot more sense.

Re:Whaaa?

[rgmoore]

I think that the argument is that by putting closely related functions together in a DLL they can minimize DLL memory consumption. If you separate code according to which MS program needs it, then programs that need code for both Windows and IE will need to load both the windows and IE DLLs. If, OTOH, you break the code down into different DLLs by functionality, you can load only the DLL containing the functions you need. This presumes that MS can predict which functions are likely to be used in the same program, though. Of course there's no reason that they couldn't do it both ways and break up the Windows specific and IE specific code into DLLs by functionality and Win/IE, so that you could load only some really small DLLs if you needed only a few functions.

Re:Whaaa?

[fajoli]

I don't see this as a problem if they had chose this route. But if Microsoft had, wouldn't the expectation from the market be that the new functions that IE would have been using been documented for Netscape, et. al. to use as well? That may have been usefeul from the consumer's and developer's perspective.

Re:Whaaa?

[spongman]

they are documented.

Being informed is a wonderful thing. Being uninformed sure must suck ??

Re:Whaaa?

[spongman]

you could do this if Gecko came anywhere close to bing compatible with mshtml's interfaces, but it doesn't - it uses it's own set of interfaces. Sure, you could write a 'compatibility' layer to interface between the two, but it would problaby be as complex as a whole new browser.

Re:Whaaa?

[spongman]

Yes, except that it only implements about 1% of the functionality that IE/MSHTML exposes. The IWebBrowser interface is a very high-level control for hosting pages. It doesn't expose the underlying HTML object model

Re:Whaaa?

[poot_rootbeer]

Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, every function should be in its own DLL file. That way, you only load the EXACT set of functions you need to call!

Re:You didn't expect them to roll over and die ?

[1010011010]

From http://adequacy.org/

Mormonism is, along with Scientology and Islam, one of three religions officially recognized by the editors this web site

Eh? Wtf? Scientology is half pyramid scheme, half mind control cult and half horse crap. And how would you possible reconcile Mormanism and Islam? Is Mohammed coming to take the faithful to their home planet, just like in Scientology and Mormanism? News to me.

- - - - -

Viral Code

[corby]

It is the viral nature of the Microsoft IE code which extends its tendrils into all other parts of the operating system.

Microsoft should consider licensing its IE code under LGPL so that the community can help to better enforce a clear distinction between the browser libraries and the applications which use them.

Re:Wait a minute ...

[oddjob]

Your comparison neglects context. The co-mingling is not a problem in and of itself. It is only a problem when a company uses it as a means of maintaining their monoploy. So co-mingling of code in the case you mention may be annoying, but is not illegal. If RedHat replaced MS as the monopoly OS company, then it could be a problem. (Though the end of global warming due to hell freezing over would more than make up for it.)

It's About Add/Remove Software

[ssafarik]

The issue, it seems to me, is not about whether IE was commingled into the distribution, but as MS says if parts of IE were in the same binary file as some non-IE functions. The effect being that to remove all IE binaries would not be possible if they were commingled in this way. This appears to be an Add/Remove Software issue.

On a related note, as I understancd it, what we call IE is a relatively small amount of code to give a UI to the relatively large amount of code which comprises the internet functionality of Windows. When people talk about "removing IE", they seem to be talking about removing the small amount of code which is the IE UI. I don't think anyone really wants internet functionality removed, and I think adding it to Windows was a big gain for the user. Steve.

...specific to...

[drteknikal]

It would seem that, given the language they used, if MS believes that a function is used by Windows and by IE, it belongs in Windows. If it is ONLY used by IE, it belongs in IE. That doesn't sound irrational to me.

So they're advancing the argument that if the OS can natively read HTML, which it can, that feature is not specific to IE, and the code for HTML parsing should be built into Windows.

So, in other words, they built the majority of browser functions into the OS, then wrote IE to expose the built-in features and add additional features unique to IE. That's consistent with what they've said previously, but I'm betting that the specific wording is precisely calculated to match the wording in the Court of Appeals ruling.

Just as the Appeals Court gave the District Court very specific instructions on how they would have to adjudge specific issues, they also used very specific language in describing where the lines should be drawn with regard to unlawful tying. All Microsoft seems to be doing is trying to say "Well, if you look at it that way, we're really on the other side of the line you drew - don't you think?"

Might work. Might not. If not, it certainly gives them an additional avenue to pursue at the District Court. Any obstacles or delays they can throw up work to their advantage, especially if they're willing to settle.

Re:...specific to...

[drteknikal]

You can, but you're writing a native Windows application and not something portable. Otherwise, you have to reinvent the wheel. And that's pretty much the way Microsoft likes it. Not so much to force everyone else out of business, although I'm sure they don't mind that aspect, but to make the software do a windows-specific implementation if they want to access any of the features.

But how is that different from if it was built into IE, and IE was removed? You can still reinvent the wheel, you just don't get the option to make the system level calls.

From their perspective, making people write for Windows is a good thing. The more frequently that I see external code trigger native Windows functions when executing on IE, the more I wonder. Yes, it's a good thing in terms of commonality and interface, but I like the isolation of not letting external code touch my kernel, either.

Netscape and Opera don't WANT to work this way - they want platform independance. Microsoft wants Windows and nothing else. So, at best, Netscape and Opera will do things in their own code that could be done faster and easier at the Windows level, but they'd sacrifice platform independance to do so. Likewise, IE can do things at the Windows level that other browsers simply can't do, but it's not even fully compatible with the Mac version, and not even available on any other platform.

Re:...specific to...

[drteknikal]

No, that anyone who wants crossplatform code is discouraged from writing for Windows. As more of these functions move into the OS, you either write for Windows, or add an undesirable layer of abstraction. That's what I meant by "reinventing the wheel."

Microsoft doesn't care about crossplatform, they care about Windows. Most commercial software MUST support Windows, and if that means writing it twice, most will ONLY support Windows. And Microsoft likes it that way.

Getting people to write native Windows code, and ONLY native Windows code is what Microsoft's after. That it also stifles competition just gives them giggles...

Re:...specific to...

[spongman]

what are you saying? that microsoft should provide cross platform versions of all it's operating system libraries?

Re:...specific to...

[alanwj]

You CAN use these integrated functions. They are part of the MSHTML library of components. See this category in the MSDN for information on how. Alan

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[Paelon]

When you buy a car, do you buy a car with a steering wheel from a Mercedes, an engine from a Ford, brakes from a Toyota?.

When you buy a car from Ford do you have to use a Ford stereo? Is there a component in the stereo which is used by your anti-lock brakes, so that if you don't own a Ford(tm) stereo your ABS will not work? Sure, you could install a second stereo with better features, but why bother if you must have the Ford one as well.

Re:DLLs

[Jace of Fuse!]

I didn't like the Explorer Icon on my Desktop, so I removed it.
I didn't like the Quicklaunch bar. So I removed it.
I didn't like active desktop, so I disabled it.
I didn't like the browser-buttons in file-browser windows, so I disabled them.
I didn't like the stupid information crap down the left side of file-browser windows, I didn't like file extensions being hidden, I didn't like hidden files being out of view, I didn't like a bunch of other crap that Windows has been doing in every version later than 95.

I disabled every single bit of it.

So far, nothing Microsoft has done to the OS has exactly HURT me, since I prefer IE to that Netscape crap anyway. (I wish I could use IE on my FreeBSD box, that's how much I prefer IE to Netscape). Some of it has annoyed me. Sometimes I question their competence, but they haven't hurt me.

For my web-server I run FreeBSD, for my Desktop machines I run 2 Windows ME boxes, and one running Windows 98.

->MY- Windows machines doesn't have the problems other people seem to be plagued with, the systems gets respectable uptime, and they do everything I need. One is strictly for the web-cam, my scanner, and other such tasks. One is my Laptop. And one is my suped-gaming rig. They are configured how I like, and I never have a single problem out of any of them. Sometimes I firmly believe that more often than not it's the USER who has the real issues, and not the OS.

I do, however, think Microsoft may be about to finally annoy me way too much with the things they've done to XP.

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Re:DLLs

[Jace of Fuse!]

I disabled all of it. I don't even have that many ICONs on my desktop.

It took me a long time to get used to the idea of the start menu (only because finding a way to truely get rid of it [not just hiding it] was harder than accepting it.) I like the Tooltray though, and I don't think I'd get rid of that even if I could.

I have 4 icons on my desktop.

My Computer - which I use to get to my hard drives and browse them.
Network Neighborhood - for similar reasons.
Trash - For more obvious reasons.
And a shortcut to a folder which is essentially a bunch of shortcuts to all of the useful folders on my system (mp3s, my writings, code, etc...)

I'm something of a minimalist. The less I have taking up my desktop real estate, the better off I am. Icons on the desktop are stupid (in my opinion) since most of the time they'll be covered by applications. (Yes yes, X-Windows does in fact have multiple desktops, too bad it likes to slam windows into corners, stagger them unusably, forgets where I want them, and basically just annoys me most of the time...)

MY simple desktop can be seen at http://www.jacefuse.com/temp/desktop ...

Sometimes when I working on files, I keep them on my desktop temporarily -- but when I'm finished with something, I'll put the final verison (and any drafts I may keep) in their proper place when I am done.

The desktop, as I see it, is solely for the work I'm doing at the moment.

This minimalist approach works for me. I'll be seriously PO'd if I have to use an OS that forces a bunch of clutter on me.

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Ha Ha!

[rkent]

Hmmm... Microsoft wants to argue that they didn't "commingle" the functions in the same file? Guess they'll have to submit their source code as evidence, and will then be a matter of public record. Guess open source is kind of viral after all!

---

Re:Ha Ha!

[cybercuzco]

Furthermore, stemming off of point number 2, if you saw the source, and then tried to work on a GPL or other open source project, MS could search through the source for similiar code such as "# include stdio.h" and say "See this is exactly the same as in windows" and then sue your pants off.

Re:Ha Ha!

[Planesdragon]

Two problems with that.

#1: If it's a trade secret, MS could ask that their code be hidden from the record. It wouldn't then appear in the transcript, and would be treated just like any other piece of evidence--like, say, a blue dress.

#2: Even IF it was entered into the public record, MS still has copyright on it. Great, you can read the source--but you can't make a derivitive work from it, even if you do get the *entire* source in the record.

IANAL, and you should never take legal advice from strangers on the internet, even if I was.

Re:Ha Ha!

[hearingaid]

Unfortunately, not all evidence becomes a matter of public record. Particularly in the case of copyrighted documents used as evidence, they can be kept out of the record made available to the public, and restricted to only the court, lawyers and litigants in the case.

Perhaps I shouldn't say unfortunately. This is a good thing in cases involving, say, sexual assault.

Re:Ha Ha!

[Amazing Quantum Man]

"# include stdio.h"

Well, if I had code like that, I'd WANT to claim I stole it from MS, since it wouldn't compile.

#include
or
#include "stdio.h>

(Former version preferred.)

Re:Ha Ha!

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Darn Slashdot HTML parser...

#include <stdio.h>
or
#include "stdio.h"

Former version preferred.

What would be great....

[Nexx]

... is if the DoJ figured out that this is just YA delay tactic, and filed for an injunction to temporarily halt MS from shipping *anything* until the penalties have been assigned and agreed to. Of course, this probably won't be filed for by the DoJ, let alone approved by the Court of Appeals, so it's a moot point.
--

Interesting story - help libraries

[Random Hamster]

You probably all know this, but it was claimed at one point that one would be able to ship a small number of DLLs to allow WinHelp to work - it would have been something of the order of 5 DLLs.

Then, once people such as my employer, had produced help files for the new format, Microsoft then said that they were not going to release this set of DLLs and you needed to install the whole of IE4 on the users' machines in order to support the new help format.

Imagine my delight...

blueprints

[Speare]

Having the courts or the government rule on methodology of software engineering is a very bad precedent.

Source code is akin to blueprints. Follow the instructions to make the actual product.

If the blueprints for your landscaping are mixed with the blueprints for your house, or the wiring within the house, how does this damage anything that the user does?

If the blueprints for ParseHtmlTable() are mixed with the blueprints for an FTP file server, again, how does this put the user at risk? Ultimate file size of the binaries is the only downside. If they expose the API to the developers, then every developer on the platform can use it, regardless of what bloated binary holds the bytes.

I think that the court shouldn't even tell the manufacturer what features can and cannot belong in a product: that's what the marketplace is for. Telling them HOW to build code, where it holds no relevance to the safety or choice of the user and infringement of copyright, is outside the expertise and purpose of the court.

You can change Microsoft and Adobe and Doubleclick's ways. Change them with your dollars, with your own quality competition, and with your voice.

Re:blueprints

[Speare]

our antitrust laws are leaning toward the more evolved EU laws; that being, a company's practices need not be bad for consumers in order to be bad; the health of the competitive market must also be taken into account, and if a company's practices are destroying competitors, they company is breaking the law

Hm, tell me how an API in the "wrong" DLL would be harmful to competition?

There are three cases:

• the ms browser front-end is installed and calls the private API in the also-installed DLL
• the ms browser front-end is not installed, and because it's private, nobody calls the API that's orphaned in some installed DLL
• the API is public, so the ms browser or any other browser interested in the feature uses it

If the API were actively breaking competitor's products, that's got nothing to do with what DLL embeds the API's code, and is actionable separately.

Re:blueprints

[The Abominous Salad]

You're right -- but I think that the fact that you're right, but this case is pressing on anyway, is a hint that our antitrust laws are leaning toward the more evolved EU laws; that being, a company's practices need not be bad for consumers in order to be bad; the health of the competitive market must also be taken into account, and if a company's practices are destroying competitors, they company is breaking the law. Personally, I think that that is a good policy, inasmuch as it means that the public benefits from non-exclusive competitive creation of compatible open standards (not just in the computing world, but everywhere.)

Re:blueprints

[The Abominous Salad]

That is a very eloquent and empassioned monologue depicting the view of capitalism. It also departs from reality in that:

• The point is not to murder or destroy Bill Gates or the Microsoft Corporation. We just want him/them to operate his/their business under the constraints of the law and of moral practice.
• While many of us disagree with the belief that personal wealth has any place in a just society, that is not the question here.
• There is no denying, except by the uneducated, unaware, or amoral, that it is wrong and punishable to achieve and maintain monopoly power over a market.
• Furthermore, it is wrong to achieve and maintain monopoly power over a dominating social vehicle if that power is not benevolent and very carefully monitored and frequently audited.
• The Internet is unquestionably the leading social vehicle of this age of man, and the computer is the gateway to the Internet. Microsoft controls the computer - not by force, but by the more effective means of consumer convenience, which Microsoft has manufactured to their advantage. Microsoft must therefore adhere to a higher standard of social responsibility than an organization which is simply limited in its influence to the realm of pure commerce.

Re:blueprints

[spongman]

uh oh, it's time for this again:

"No, I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with - voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbours and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologise for my ability - I refuse to apologise for my success - I refuse to apologise for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish - but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognise the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work - my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the right of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!"

Re:blueprints

[spongman]

No, a dictatorship involves a controlling physical force - the army. Microsoft is not holding a gun to your head telling you to buy windows/ie.

Re:blueprints

[pythorlh]

First of all, Microsoft doesn't sell the blueprints, it sells the whole house. In most cases, MS won't even give you the blueprints if you ask for them. MS's business practices are like me buying a house, and MS putting running the plumbing through the pool, which I didn't want in the first place. Sure, you can fill in the pool, but it still leaves ugly pipes sticking out.

Re:blueprints

[halfgoat]

This is an ABSOLUTELY silly opinion. Anti Trust legislation did just pop up out of nowhere as a conspiracy of the governement. Too many people nowadays cry about lettign the market decide things. Capitalism in this sense is self-defeating, someone wins, and then you have a dictatorship which you can't change. You would be singing a differen toon if this was oil, or steal, as it was when the beginnings of anti-trust came out. None of this would be an issue is they were'nt an effective monoply. I pass on gass

Re:MS should know - GPL covers this

[willis]

I see how this is a +5 post -- it talks about GPL, etc. I don't see how it relates, though.

good sw engineering practices

[Noer]

Of COURSE MS separated this stuff out. Chances are they follow reasonably good engineering practices and put different classes in different files, separate interface from implementation, etc.

It sounds to me like they're trying to confuse the court with technospeak (for BOfH readers... kinda stuff), obfuscating an issue that has NOTHING to do with how the software is presented to the user (i.e., in an integrated manner).

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[RobNich]

Worse yet, practically every Microsoft product in that time period required MSIE to be installed, because commingled with those MSIE DLL functions were general-use functions that the other software took advantage of...

Precisely. Specifically, many controls changed when upgrading IE to 4, then to 5. Features were added, and if an app used those features, it obviously needed IE for them. Microsoft changed list controls, for instance, to accomodate the "one-click" explorer, allow gridlines in details view, other things like that. Sory, I don't have time to find it on MSDN, but _many_ common controls have features that are only included only in newer versions of IE.

MS could have simply distributed the new comctl32.dll in the latest service packs, but chose to include them only in IE, apparently so that those applications would require IE.

One word - comctl32.dll

[cschmidt]

When an application that you write can't use the same controls that other Microsoft apps use without installing Internet Explorer, I think that constitutes 'commingling'.

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[spongman]

yes, but so did the original release of netscape. but users complained and they both stopped the practice.

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[DarkEdgeX]

Actually, as far as I'm aware, the redistributable has always been available, even since the IE 3.x and 4.x days. I specifically recall this because Microsoft had a developer article on their website showcasing their 'new' "Rebar" control (now known as a CoolBar-- the bar across the top of IE that has 'bands' that you can drag and reposition, and contain the address bar and main toolbar and links). In this article, they discussed using this new control, but elsewhere on the site they maintained downloads of the Common Controls library update for folks that didn't want to install IE 3.x/4.x. I know for a fact they did this with 4.x (if you click on my link in the previous comment, then click on the download link to download 50COMUPD.EXE, you'll see a listing of other COMCTL32.DLL update packages-- one of them is the 4.0 update (basically IE 4.0's COMCTL32.DLL)). They also did this for developers that didn't want to pack around a 25MB install of IE 3.x/4.x for their little 500-1000k apps. =)

About the only thing Microsoft tied into IE was their WebBrowser control, and you're right about IE making itself the default browser without asking.. I won't dispute that, I was mostly just disputing the original authors idea that without IE you were totally helpless with 3rd party programs that used the new common controls. THOSE you CAN acquire elsewhere, without IE bundled along for the ride..

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[DarkEdgeX]

It's been this way since atleast IE 4.x, and I think even as far back as IE 3.x. They just didn't make it obvious.

Read my reply to the other person who replied to me..

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[DarkEdgeX]

That's funny, because you can grab COMCTL32.DLL from the Microsoft PlatformSDK without nary a hint of Internet Explorer. It's located in--

[install root]\PlatformSDK\Redist\ComCtl32

Once you install the SDK of course (you can choose to just install the redistributables, none of the documentation or source files).

Plus, you can also download it seperately directly from Microsoft as a 400-500k download.

The only thing IE includes with it that I'm aware of is the MSHTML COM libraries, as well as the WebBrowser control (and it goes without saying that you should need IE for this).

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[Ayende Rahien]

Since MS also can't use those controls without IE, I think that your arguement is a strawman.

--
Two witches watched two watches.

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[tb3]

Without naming names, it was an OCX that let us run Excel spreadsheets. We upgraded to fix incompatiblies with Excel, and then found out (it was buried in the readme.txt) that we needed comctl32.dll. The previous version didn't have any dependancies on the DLL (IIRC).

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[tb3]

But that was not always the case. There was a time that the only legal way to update comctl32.dll was to install/upgrade IE.

I was working on an application that included the updated comctl32.dll, and this played merry hell with our distribution. We really didn't want to force IE on our customers, but Microsoft and the vendor of the control we were using said we had no other choice.

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[Thatman311]

What did you need out off that control that required you to ship an updated version of it?

Re:One word - comctl32.dll

[Computer!]

Not true. The setup program for any application that contained these controls included all the necessary files.

You bet it's commingling!

[Java Pimp]

I found some genuine Micro$oft code posted by those hackers that broke in a few months ago...

/* winkernel.cpp
*
* Copyright Micro$oft (c) 1998
*
*/

#include "msie.h"

/* implement kernel here */
...

DLLs

[bill_kress]

I don't think it's such a straightforward question. It's more like saying "Your browser uses one set of C Libraries, so your system has to link with a completely different set"

DLLs are an interesting idea--and it's kind of true that a desktop window looks a lot like a browser window--sometimes you can even type a URL into the desktop window if you like... it is, effectivly, a browser window.

But microsoft kinds screwed themselves when they said that they couldn't remove the browser without harming windows. That's what it really comes down to. Most people would have been happy if MS would have just removed the damn E from their desktop!

On the other hand, enforcing this ruling might lead toward a plug-in windowing system. Remove your IE style desktop windows and install netscape style windows. The exact opposite of what MS was trying to accomplish in the first place. Cool.

Re:DLLs

[spongman]

big secret: just like the quick-launch bar (I can't believe you disabled that!!!) and the active desktop (that too? man, use your imagination: you can put anything on your desktop) you can disable most of the things in XP that are 'in-your-face'. I'm running XP here and I have it looking pretty much the same as my win2k boxes: i have the quicklaunch bar up with all of my commonly used applications right there so i don't have to hunt through the start menu (one-click) and I have active desktop enabled with a jpg, a custom google html page, an address bar on my desktop. (you can see it here)

Re:DLLs

[spongman]

well win95 ran faster that win3.1 on a 4Mb machine at the time it shipped (and this was the time that these functions were introduced). I'm not sure of the specs of the win98/ME target machines but that same perf test were run against those.

NT3.51 was faster than 3.5, 4.0 faster than 3.51. i'm not sure about 2k.

that enough for you?

Re:DLLs

[spongman]

not so hollow considering that each new release of the operating system is supposed to run faster than the previous version on the current 'average' system.

Re:DLLs

[grammar fascist]

Remove your IE style desktop windows and install netscape style windows.

Stardock is already doing something like that. I've already tried WindowBlinds - it worked for nearly everything. (That was way back when it was sort of unstable.) Their latest is DesktopX. You can make your desktop look and act like a Mac. Does anybody out there know of a good impartial review on it?

Re:DLLs

[TeraCo]

So because hardware is cheap and easy to get, we should write bad code?

You complete and utter TOOL.

Re:Okay, that's strange

[BradleyUffner]

The way I see it is that if 2 functions are in the same dll then you only have to load 1 dll. I can kinda see (with a lot of immagination) how this could benifit the end user). Less dlls loaded means less memory used, and less dlls for the OS to keep track of. I can also see how IE could be integrated into windows in such a way as it couldn't be removed, BUT it was designed that way. They could have choosen to design it in such a way that it could have been removed.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\=\=\

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[Saidin]

In all likelyhood, when you buy a car, you have no idea who made the steering wheel, the engine, or anything else in the car. You only know who assembled it. The car manufacturers are more like whoever you buy your computer from. It is their job to assemble the computer into something usable, and if you are like most users, you don't know, nor do you care where they pulled all the parts from.

Commingling or perjury: take your pick

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Didn't Microsoft argue in the original trial that IE was an inextricable part of Windows -- i.e., that it was commingled -- even though several people have shown that it can be removed with a bit of hacking? So either there was illegal commingling, or the M$ people who testified that it was commingled committed perjury and should be sent to prison. M$ really can't win with this one.

Well, okay, they can win, but only if they have a court that's extremely biased in their favor and is willing to overlook this blatantly illegal behavior. Which, unfortunately, it looks like they do.

Re:In other words...

[Stephen Samuel]

When they came out with IE4, the uninstall was broken... Microsoft's explanation was that, at this time, the browser was getting more and more 'integrated' with the OS, and it was getting hard to separate the two.

My rommmate at the time figured out that if you used the IE3 uninstaller, you weren't left with the fatal aftereffects that the IE4 uninstaller had.

In other words, it looks like Microsofft wilfully broke many peoples systems just so that they could make this argument.
--

Delaying tactics

[aralin]

They are just using every single legal way how to delay the case from getting back to lower court which could assign some immediate remedies based on upholding of the findings of facts. I can see that they just try to ship WinXP before the court can even consider the case...

Re:Delaying tactics

[Bonker]

This is a fairly important move for GatesCo, since one of the remedies I've heard discussed since NM rolled over is an injuncation against Microsoft to forbid them from shipping XP.

Re:You didn't expect them to roll over and die ?

[malfunct]

Dropping Java was a direct result of the case by Sun against MS over java. No argument that MS cheated and broke the contract it had with Sun. Now MS has decided that they really can't live with the contract that Sun has with them so they decided to avoid it the 100% legal way and not use java at all.

No, it's just locality in cache

[yerricde]

stop the presses! to benefit users, Microsoft has created a new performance metric: Average Distance Between Bytes!

You bring up a good point. Microsoft could have done this because profiling the code showed that locating some functions in some DLLs increased the locality of code in the cache, thereby boosting IE's performance by a couple percent.

Actually, you do need a Ford stereo

[yerricde]

When you buy a car from Ford do you have to use a Ford stereo? Is there a component in the stereo which is used by your anti-lock brakes, so that if you don't own a Ford(tm) stereo your ABS will not work?

Replace "anti-lock brakes" with "heater and air" and you describe exactly how a Ford Taurus works. The Taurus's climate controls are built into the same oval-shaped part that houses the car stereo.

Re:Okay, that's strange

[Kristopher Johnson]

To be picky: having functions that call one another in the same file can provide some benefits:

• Short branch instructions are possible
• CPU prefetching and caching performance are improved
• If some programmer changes one of the functions in a way that breaks things, it it a little more likely that it will be noticed before it gets shipped

I agree that MS was really reaching when they said this was done to benefit the users. However, if I was an MS programmer, it would seem pretty stupid to have to put related functions into separate files (maybe even separate source directories) just to abide by some legal requirement that they are not "too close".

Another attempt to confuse the issue

[www.sorehands.com]

They are just trying to confuse the issue. The real issue is the ability for the user to install Windows and not have to have Internet Explorer as part of the installation. If the files are in the same source, obj, dll is not the issue here. If in XP, Microsoft required you to install and run IE (and not be able to do it with Netscape) to activate the XP license, it would violate the intent of the order.

Under The Table And Dreams...

[PHanT0]

I guess it's a common thing these days... I mean, by the looks of things, MS is backing away from it's invasion ever so slightly (the Java Support for XP, the removal of SmartTags, ETC). It does seem, though that they are getting a little reprieve from the courst and legal issues...

Do I smell a deal cast in words, of the behind-closed-doors genre?

Food For Thought...

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[_xeno_]

Yeah, but then the 500K download would have to download the 10MB worth of security patchs! >:)

Windows Update is painful on a 56K modem, especially when it's being shared...

(Thank goodness my modem days are behind me...)

--

Visual Basic?

[bigdavex]

JScript (as opposed to Javascript), Visual Basic, Bookmarks, Web Caches, Web Proxies and other "high-level" functionality. Visual Basic? I wouldn't have expected to see that in a list of browser handlers. Can you provide an example of Visual Basic acting as a part of a web browser?

Re:Visual Basic?

[Keighvin]

End Sub
</script>

Microsoft has indeed enabled the use of Visual Basic in IE. Tutorials for its use are available.

Re:Visual Basic?

[spongman]

4) VB.Net - replaces 1 & 2, can be used instead of 3.

Re:Visual Basic?

[CyberKnet]

Let me educate you. There are three types of ... "Visual Basic" ... that you can find.

1) Visual Basic. This is fully fledged (be it as it may) visual basic... what Microsoft call Enterprise strength.

2) VBA. Visual Basic for Applications. Also known as Embedded Visual Basic.

3) VBScript. The ActiveX enabled scripting language.

VB != VBA != VBScript. They are separate animals. (Read: code bases). Take a closer look next time.

---

Re:Function Proximity Benefits Users?

[SnapShot]

Microsoft says "to benefit the user" about as often as a politician says "to protect the children" and with about as much sincerity.

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[Rutulian]

That is not entirely true. Internet Explorer in Windows 98 and its successors can be functionally compared to Konqueror in KDE. They do essentially the same thing, integrate file management with web browsing and other internet-related services.

There is a fundamental difference, though. Konqueror is just another application. I can remove it from KDE, or I can choose not to install it in the first place. It is my undestanding that Internet Explorer is not just an application, it is integrated into the OS. I can't remove it or choose not to install it, and because of this it has certain advantages over other competing application like Netscape. Because it is integrated into the OS, Internet Explorer can be given an unfair advantage in performance over regular applications like Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc...

Of course since I can't remove it a whole plethora of security issues arise, but no need to get into that. What the users see as the result of a default install is not really the issue. The issues revolve around the ability to choose what software runs on your machine and the need to have a level playing field for competing applications.

Re:Past offence

[krappie]

I don't even think any of their 'loosening' of their OEM license will do anything. I didnt know that they had to put an icon on the desktop and start menu.. thats horrible. How the hell was netscape supposed to compete with that?

But now, after they won their whole audience of users and got like 90% of people on the internet using IE, then they give people the ability to remove the icon on the desktop and in the start menu?! Apparantly even though you can uninstall it in XP, OEM dealers are still required to have it installed. While every other browser is sitting on the internet, and you have to use IE to go download it. No decent OEM dealer will even take off the icon, and I know it'll be there by default when they install windows. Yet people act like its such a big deal and it fixes their past offensives. It wont change a thing. And I wouldn't be surprised if almost every program you download, maybe even Office will required that IE is installed for it to work.

Not to mention Microsoft is going out of its way to tie together Windows with Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger.

Sounds like they're really going to great lengths to fix theirs mistakes!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nuke'em from orbit

[Alien54]

I am really starting to get ticked of at microsoft.

I am really tired of them trying to finnagle their way out of legal judgements and traps in a way that is based on only legal loopholes.

This is just something that convicts them more and each day in my eyes.

It is like happened with Clinton, who got nailed for parsing every last syllable in his statements.

Bill Clinton's old arkansas nickname was "Slick Willy". Looks like Bill Gates is a "Slick Willy" too.

With this much bad karma accumulating this quickly, the MS management and legal staff could bypass re-incarnating as Bugs, and go straight back to being mud and pond scum.

It would be an act of mercy to nuke them from orbit. It would stop their every more rapid decline.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Re:Do you believe that?

[The Abominous Salad]

Well, ok. It's not part of the operating system proper, it's part of what's called the "distribution." The difference is this: the operating system is a self-contained set of programming which must be present in order for the computer to work. There are peripheral portions, such as device drivers, which are arguably not required, but they also make up the OS proper. The applications are supplied for convenience in what's called the distribution. The Gimp is not a part of Linux, it's just something that's available for Linux and is distributed with it for convenience's sake. IE is, arguably, required to be shipped with the OS, not because its functionality is required (such as with an IO codebase for disk or keyboard ops) but because the core codebase requires it to be there or else it won't function right, by design. This isn't done because it's necessary in order for Windows to operate as Windows should, but because Microsoft =wants= it to be a requirement. In programming, there's a simple function called require() which means, "if I can't include this file into me, I won't compile at all." Regardless of the logical reasons WHY the IE codebase is require()d, that association between OS and app is enforced, and that disparity between need and implementation at the moral intersection is what's being argued; not simply "should it be included on the CD."

Hey, we need an acronym for this!

[The Abominous Salad]

In the spirit of the term FUD, we need an acronym for this MS behavior.

SCLAT: Selective Creation of Legal Terminology
or perhaps more clear at a glance,

LIE: Leveraging Ignorance Everywhere

In more seriousness though, that's what they're doing; hoping that they can establish a legal definition for what "comingling" means, so that they can then prove themselves innocent of the crime they just (mis)defined.

Does anybody know how a technology expert can suggest an alternate definition of how dynamically include()d/require()d code works to the Appeals (or soon-to-be assigned Circuit) court? Not that I'd be that expert, but someone who is ought to draft a proposal.

Re:Do you believe that?

[The Abominous Salad]

In every GNU OS installer I've ever used, there is a little checkbox (or similiar iface item) next to "The GIMP" which allows me to say I don't want it.

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[spongman]

they provide the components by default in the OS distribution to help developers (external and internal) with the distribution of their applications that use those components.

Imagine if every X application had to supply the font rendering libraries necessary to run. It would be a mess - DLL hell! Integrating a feature into the base distributions does 2 things:

1. helps uses by not requiring them to download that feature every time they need to install an application that requires it. (the windows CD comes with the necessary HTML libraries for applications)
2. helps developers by not requiring them to provide that feature, either by including the standard feature distribution with their product, or a custom alternative. (you don't need to download IE/MSHTML if you download an application that uses it)
3. helps stability by aleviating the DLL hell problem. If the application can depend on a standard set of interfaces instead of some distribution that they provide with their application, then they are more likely to test against the various HTML distributions (ie4/ie5/ie6, etc...) and so their application will be less likely to break when the user updates these common components

Re:I may be just a bit too sensible here but...

[spongman]

I think you must be using some definition of the word 'easy' that I was previously unaware of.

Re:I wonder why...

[spongman]

I don't see how bundling IE is limiting a consumer's choice. Sure, it's making the choice much easier to make since it's there already, but it's in no way preventing you from downloading an alternative to the browser, or to the whole OS, as so many people here are so ready to attest.

Re:OS providers need to provide OPEN interfaces!

[spongman]

what are you talking about? the interfaces to the components we're talking about here (mshtml/ie/etc...) are all available on microsoft's website

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[spongman]

sure, just like TCP/IP stacks. to help the users and reduce support costs they integrated it.

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[poot_rootbeer]

commingled with those MSIE DLL functions were general-use functions that the other software took advantage of

This practice I don't really have a problem with. It makes sense to have a function like renderTable() or whatever that can be called from MSIE or Excel or any other application that needs to beable to render a table. In a way, that means the DLL functions originally written for MSIE become general-use functions, and I can see a practical benefit for both developers and consumers deriving from such a practice.

and Microsoft would not allow people to install just the DLL's required.

This is the part I do have a problem with. Just because I want to use renderTable() in my little Windows program doesn't mean that 90% of a fully-functional Web browser should be loaded into memory on my system.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer. Doubly so not a Windows programmer.

MS should know - GPL covers this

[sulli]

and as you all should know, MS distributes various utilities under the GPL. GPL says clearly, emphasis added:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

[...]

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

[...]

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

I think this is quite clear in delineating what is "commingled" vs. what is not - and it's on their website!

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[zoftie]

Here we go agian.
Are you are frinkin lawyer? Lawyers seem to like
to repaint how we really take the world to their
own advantage. Don't bind computer program with
notion of a car and don't bind someone running
code on your machine to burglary, perhaps you
shall define portscanning at anal rape, maybe
courts will more sympathetic to pseudo victims of
aggrevated computer assault. Fuck that.

That what microsoft was doing all along playing
the game, whatever it takes. Well courts proven
too slow and dumb for doing computer litigation,
so hit'em where it hurts - wallet. But do so
very professionally without reserving to
Microsoft suck attitude, but rather dismiss
critique and say 'Linux/BSD is choice of professional and informed around. It is very
stable and has proven to be cheaper to install
and maintain.' and don't say nasty and stupid
things. Upper crust does not like to hear abrasive
or even sensational speeches, but like to be
impressed with results and constructive wording
of arguments.

Micrsoft has won that one, but see the 'Code Red'
catching internet on fire. Just watch servers
rolling over to apache and zeus.

I'm helping M$ commingle (not by choice)

[not_anne]

I do hardware and software tech support. In order to fix an XML issue that pops up from time to time, we techies have been instructed by the powers that be to direct customers to install or reinstall IE 5.5 to fix the problem with their XML libraries instead of just downloading the files they need. So even the company I work for is (and thusly, I am too) helping M$ commingle their OS and Browser together.

not_anne

Er, that's the point

[Planesdragon]

the whole idea of punishment (as opposed to repartitions) is to get you to stop doing whatever it is that you did. (And, by example, others.)

If you convince the court that you'll never, ever, do what you did again, then OF COURSE you'll get a lighter sentence than someone whom the court thinks will go right out and do the same thing.

Re:No, files ARE relevant!

[tswinzig]

Yeah like that damn HTML rendering engine that is so easy to be leveraged!

An HTML engine can be distributed without requiring that the entire browser be installed and running on the system at all times. Take a look at Mozilla if you need an example.

Those bastards, we need to go back to the good old days when programming was hard work. To hell with component based development!

The problem is not the component nature of MSIE, the problem is that Microsoft required people to install the entire browser to legally use the HTML renderer with their application.

Wait a minute!

[tswinzig]

Let me get this straight.

Microsoft argued in court that MSIE could not be removed from the operating system, or the operating system would no longer work correctly.

Now they are telling the appeals court that code for the operating system is not commingled with code for MSIE.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

No, files ARE relevant!

[tswinzig]

The files in the distribution are irrelevalant. Who cares if Windows ships with all sorts of unrelated Microsoft .exe and .dll files?

The way Microsoft forced MSIE onto everyone before they could integrate it with Windows was to include the MSIE install on all Microsoft software. Worse yet, practically every Microsoft product in that time period required MSIE to be installed, because commingled with those MSIE DLL functions were general-use functions that the other software took advantage of, and Microsoft would not allow people to install just the DLL's required. This is the same reason why programs like Quicken required MSIE to be installed, and didn't just ship with the "free" Microsoft DLL's that contained the code they needed.

THIS is how Microsoft used it's monopoly to force everyone to install MSIE, regardless of whether you ever upgraded Windows to a version that included MSIE.

And once you've got MSIE installed and constantly loaded into memory, it becomes real easy to eventually give up using Netscape et. al.

Anger...subsiding...blood pressure...normal

[tenzig_112]

It's like that semi-friend everyone had in high school. He would piss you off constantly. But by the time you got up the nerve to tell him exactly why he's a jerk, the argument seemed weak. He was able to easily explain everything away. He walks away thinking the situation resolved. And in a way it is.

You still can't stand the things he does- you just can't talk to him about it anymore.

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[Foggy Tristan]

Which is actually what's funny about the comment from Microsoft. How exactly does putting certain functions in the same file benefit users? While there may be a performance boost (or hit), I can't imagine Joe AOL snapping his finger, "Gosh almighty. I sure am glad Microsoft organized its source code into files according to related functions. Where's my pr0n?"

---

Re:Explorer == Shell; Konqueror != Shell

[unicaller]

No, Explorer is the shell in windows, you can delete the IExplorer.exe and your shell is untuched! IExplorer will change many of the .dll's that controle how Explorer looks/feels but is not your shell, you don't even have to change the UI when you install a new version of IE. Here at my work we have 4 NT 4 servers with the 95/NT4 look and IE 5.5.

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[unicaller]

Not if you have the stereo removed by someone who knows what they are doing, I had no problems. Anyway Ford dosen't make car stereos.

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[unicaller]

The OS does not make your computer run! An OS is an interface to the hardware. Electricity makes your computer hardware run. A computer will work without an OS, your computer runs code in your BIOS before the OS loads.

Okay, that's strange

[Dave Rickey]

Wasn't MS claiming, all through the run-up to the trial, that they *couldn't* accede to the demands of the anti-trust team because there wasn't any way to unscramble the egg, the OS and IE were completely integrated?

Now they are claiming that the location of the relevant function calls right next to each other in the source code is something they did to help the *users*? Errmm, excuse me, but even a Windows *developer* doesn't care about the location in code of the function calls, only whether they are well documented in how you call them (which is a whole different rant). What the hell would a *user* care?

Basicly, it looks to me like they're trying to avoid admitting they scattered IE functions throughout un-related code in order to bolster their original claims, now that those claims have been found to be bogus and that was upheld on the appeal.

--Dave Rickey

Re:Wasting your time...

[SCHecklerX]

Remember a little OS called OS/2?

The better products do not win simply by being better. That is what this is all about. Microsoft's abuse of monopoly power to maintain their monopoly.

Tell me...what happened to word perfect? Corel? Citrix? Borland?

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[room101]

If Microsoft had included Internet Explorer, but required users to download one key piece (that added the icon to the desktop and start menu; nothing else), then Netscape would have been on a level playing field.

Not really. You have a good point, but I still think more people would download the MS product instead of Netscape, because the MS download would probably be 1-100KB, whereas Netscape would still weigh-in in at around 5-10MB.

If you were on a slow-as-crap dial-up, which would you choose?

I 100% agree that the file strucure doesn't matter and that we (we the people, that is, the government) is fighting the wrong fight. I don't give a crap whether software X is included in the OS or not, just as long at I can install software Y that works exactly the same way, I'm fine. It's like the window managers that come with Red Hat. If I don't like the window managers, I can install my own or put up with the ones that are provided.

Re:Wasting your time...

[ClosedSource]

"Remember a little OS called OS/2?"

Compare the marketing dollars spent by MS on Windows 95 vs. IBM on OS/2.

"what happened to" ...

"word perfect" - They thought Windows was a fad so they didn't get in game until it was too late.

"Corel" - They bought word perfect after it was ditched by two other companies.

"Borland" - They got distracted by buying DBASE.

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[iomud]

Q: Do you sell soap and water?

A: Oh no, sir! We sell shampoo, and dish washing liquids, and body gels, and bubble solutions (you know, for kids!), and industrial grime removing agents, and inedable emlusifiers, and...

See the irony is, one of the top ingreidents in liquid soaps is water.

Past offence

[truthsearch]

One thing that really bothers me is MS's claim that users can un-install IE in XP. I couldn't give a crap about the technology, but to think that fixing it now implies past offences shouldn't be punished is insulting. Let's say you get caught driving through a red light. You decide to fight the ticket. A month later you're in court saying "I haven't run a red light in the last month. I've seen the evil of my ways. Please don't punish me." And the court breaks into laughter. You are punished for past crimes.

The "fact" that IE can be un-installed is completely irrelavent to this case... and I hope the court agrees.

---

Do you believe that?

[truthsearch]

Microsoft should have argued that they are really in the user interface market, and as such, the operating system and browser are naturally related.

But do you really believe that? Or should that have simply been Microsoft's tactic (true or otherwise)? Because if they had used that in court in the initial trial, I would hope that the government's experts could have shot down that argument. Otherwise every application could be considered part of the OS. And then the whole desktop really would be owned by MS.

---

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[WeirdKid]

I hate to "me too" this to death, but I agree all this talk about the code is irrelevant. What was wrong with having an uninstall option that just removed the icon and application directory? The user doesn't give a damn what's in the dll's or registry. Still, users would be presented with a (oh let's say...) 489K download of IE versus a 14MB download of Netscape.

Hmmm... maybe it's not so irrelevant after all...

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[magus_melchior]

Wait a minute here... so, using your car analogy...

You: "Would my spiffy alpine cd player fit here?"
Dealer: "Ohhh, no. You can't remove the built-in cd player."
You: "What? "
Dealer: "Yeah, it's permanently welded in. I'm afraid the brakes won't function without it, either."
You: "But... but I just don't like how the speakers buzz at maximum bass."
Dealer: "Well, you gotta keep the thing on and spinning at all times. See, it powers the radiator. Now, about those new options we were talking about..."

Now, I'm all for a computer that was set up according to a common specification (preferably mine), but that just invites companies to throw out nice things like modularity and customization. In fact, I believe by their behavior, MS is doing just that.

You didn't expect them to roll over and die ?

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

Of course Micro$oft will do whatever it takes to try and get as much of the ruling overturned as it can. And even now, by dropping java, and developing its dotNet framework, it is laughing in the faces of the judicial system.

But this is kkkorporate Amerikkka we are dealing with, so it should come as no surprise.

Check out the Internet's most controversial website: adeqacy.org. Like a breath of fresh air, and trolling is not tolerated!!

Re:Microsoft = Innovation...

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Given the gig+ size of the MS OS installations, that amounts to an ADBB of 500 million bytes for a Microsoft OS.

I'm glad they're working on this!

Wow...

[Peridriga]

I need a dictionary to decrypt that little article there.... And I'm a law student..

--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
------ Ths sntnc n vwl

Re:I may be just a bit too sensible here but...

[Ayende Rahien]

*That* would be fairly easy.

First things first, you *can* replace the TCP/IP on windows, it's quite easy and painless.
All you need to do is write your own WinSock2 library (the spesification is free, as well as any implementations).

Second, yes, it *is* easy to replace IE with Mozilla.
If Mozilla implement *all* of IE's interfaces.
IE is implemented as a seria of COM objects, with well-defined and *un-changable* interfaces.
I understand that Mozilla implement much of IInternet interface, so it's a good start.

Next, you register Mozilla with IE's GUID, and instantly you get Mozilla where-ever you used to get IE.

--
Two witches watched two watches.

Wait, let me guess...

[Eryq]

• create HTML document containing s2
• publish with FrontP--, er, MSFrontPage
• launch Spygl--, er, MSIE
• load HTML document
• use VBScript to put contents in s1
• the next release will require Passport, natch.

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[Thatman311]

Then you can only say "Do you sell water, whateverelse is in soap, and water". You can't say do you sell soap and water or you are mentioning water twice. But face it...you can't make soap without water.

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[Corporate Drone]

whoa! timeout! as said in another reply here, when you buy a car, you probably *do* have a collection of components manufactured by a number of companies. Taking your analogy a step further... remember those commercials where ford (?) recommended that you only replace parts with others from their parts company? (sorry.. can't remember right now... "genuine ac-delco parts"??) well, the upstart here is, if you have microsoft shocks, sorry! you *must* use a microsoft engine! and, if you want to sell a car with microsoft shocks, you had to sign an agreement allowing you to use *only* microsoft engines! yeek...

Microsoft = Innovation...

[Corporate Drone]

stop the presses! to benefit users, Microsoft has created a new performance metric: Average Distance Between Bytes! Wow! IE minimizes ADBB! Now I feel a lot better!

Wait a minute ...

[s20451]

It may be possible that this decision will return to haunt free suites such as KDE. When I installed KDE 2 with RedHat7.1, it automatically installed its Konqueror browser. Personally, I prefer Netscape (just because it's familiar), and it took some effort to figure out how to disable Konqueror as the default browser (e.g., when I highlighted a URL it would insist on launching Konqueror to view it). Even so, Konqueror still comes up as the default file manager (which is OK for me, but what if I preferred MC or something similar?).

I can imagine this decision going against MS, and MS demanding that open source software follow suit and disable similar features, arguing unfair competetive advantage. It wouldn't be a complete argument, but might be enough to convince some judges (especially considering the amount of money an open source project could spend on lawyers).

I've often thought that co-mingling is not the issue; in fact as KDE and others have shown it's often desirable and convenient to bundle software. The issue to me is an open interface for these applications to use, and a straightforward method of swapping in and out, so that I can easily choose the suite of applications that I want. I view this decision as a case of being careful what you wish for, because you might just get your wish.

Re:Wait a minute ...

[madman2002]

The difference between the two issues being that you CAN remove Konquerer (even if it's a pita) without harming the actual OS and with no effect on unrelated software. With Windows IE is/was so tangled up wtih the OS that Microsoft admitted it couldn't seperate the two. Also KDE and Linux are free(both like beer and the other kind), thus there would be no point whatsoever in litigation. If a case was brought up it would be easily thrown out because it's all open source, the first day someone could go....look here's KDEs source and here's Konquerers source they are seperate, ha we win.

In other words...

[President of The US]

"Microsoft did not commingle software code specific to Web browsing with software code used for other purposes in the same files," the company said. "Rather, in organizing software code into files, Microsoft placed related functions close to one another" to benefit users.

In other words, Microsoft tied browsing functions so deeply into the OS that they had an excuse to put them together. This was the heart of their argument years back when they claimed that the browser was integral to the OS and couldn't be removed. Nice to see they are reviving an old classic.
-----------------------

Re:Mods & crack

[haruharaharu]

It must be a requirement for moderators to smoke crack before moderating

Then why haven't i been getting any mod points?

I wonder why...

[mightyflash]

...why the bundling of browser and OS is the main aspect of the trial.
More interesting is the fact that every compter sytems dealer is absolutely bound to M$. 90% of all computers are sold with bundled Windows. From every package sold M$ get revenues.
Also those 90% even don't care who rules the world an so on ....
Evil in the world will never end I'm afraid so.

Re:I wonder why...

[Bozar]

As has been said 1000 times already on /. the problem is not that they are a monopoly. That has long been established and monopolies ARE allowed in the USA, only when they harm the consumer (a very hard thing to define) that they can be smacked with anti-trust law. So by binding E to the OS they are harming the consumer by limiting his choices and thus can bend over the DoJ's knee for a paddling. They *will* be punished, do not doubt. There is too much supporting evidence and 2 courts have already said that MS is guilty as sin. But there are 2 obstacles: first they can delay until it isn't such an issue anymore, as they are doing now. Second they could have a weak punishment... look up the Ford /Standard Oil/ Firestone fiasco, when they destroyed all of the trolly systems in the united states and replaced them with busses, and in the process created greyhound, and forced everyone to use cars. They caused untold damage to the american consumer, and we will never have that public transportation system back. And they were found guilty of anti-trust... i think ford and firestone combined had to pay a fine of 5$ or something. Ouch.

OS providers need to provide OPEN interfaces!

[Glock27]

A well designed OS will have well defined and open interfaces for all functionality, so that third party replacements can seamlessly plug in with no loss of function. An example of this that was available as early as the late eighties was NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. If the same functionality has been carried into MacOS X (essentially an updated OPENSTEP), that is yet another reason to prefer it over Microsoft offerings.

Microsoft, in fact, has not shown the kind of engineering expertise required to construct an OS in this manner. IMO, ultimately poor engineering will be what sinks MS.

I'm still hoping that MacOS X for Intel will ship once Microsoft is fully pinned to the wall by the DOJ and states...Linux needs some real competition ;-)

186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:OS providers need to provide OPEN interfaces!

[Glock27]

IMHO, I think nothing will destroy Microsoft

Destroy, I doubt. Make irrelevant is more of a possibility.

I mean, who honestly thinks that Microsoft is on the way out?

About 2 billion in the Far East who'll no longer be able to pirate anything with Windows XP (assuming Microsoft can fix its broken product activation scheme - granted a big assumption).

Another group thats not too happy with Microsoft in general are the software developers (like myself) that're sick and tired of crappy design, engineering and market-tecture. As time goes on, that will take its toll on MS.

Linux (and to a lesser extent the Mac) should see quite a boost from the Windows XP introduction! :-)

P.S. Don't underestimate the effect of the antitrust case either...things are still moving right along there... ;-)

186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:OS providers need to provide OPEN interfaces!

[h. simpson]

IMHO, I think nothing will destroy Microsoft

I mean, who honestly thinks that Microsoft is on the way out?

Hrmm...

[kypper]

Wouldn't being in the same binaries or binary distribution constitute commingling

commingle (k-mnggl)
v. commingled, commingling, commingles
v. intr.

To become blended.

Yes, I suppose it would.

Screw 3...

Delay tactics

[novastyli]

They have nothing to lose by doing this and everything to gain by delaying the trial.

Expect more to come, not all together, but one after another. (Of course, IANAL, so it might be just I don't know some procedural regulation prohibiting that).

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[MarkusQ]

Of course, Microsoft's problem is that they bought into the government's arguement that the browsers and operating systems are legitimate markets to distinguish.

I think this was really Microsoft's argument to begin with. The starting assumption for anyone trying to market something is market segmentation:

Q: Do you sell soap and water?

A: Oh no, sir! We sell shampoo, and dish washing liquids, and body gels, and bubble solutions (you know, for kids!), and industrial grime removing agents, and inedable emlusifiers, and...

But then the internet came along, and someone in marketing realized that they could implicitly take credit for all that content, if they made it seem like it was "part" of their core product. So the company that makes edit, notepad, wordpad, word, wordview, etc. sudenly decided that there was no internet segment after all; the internet, they decided, was just part of Windows.

But the forgot to put on their turn signals when they reversed course, and now they get to tap dance.

-- MarkusQ

Comingle This:

[tanuki_x]

The court should at least insist on one change to MS's practices: Microsoft should rename that item in the Edit menu with the control-z shortcut to "Appeal." It will always work, and is of course unlimited in its application.

With an unlimited "Appeal" operation, users may simply sit back and watch their control-z-initiated laywers "revisit" all those annoying unwanted automatic modifications to their Word documents and the like, and keep on "appealing" until they end up with document they had in mind in the first place.

Hmm. What an "appealing" idea...

Konqueror/Netscape

[SilentChris]

Can't mix code, huh? I guess Konqueror (KDE) and Netscape are screwed. Konqueror, of course, adds browser functionality to the OS like IE, and Netscape has always net you browse local files (however awkwardly).

Explorer == Shell; Konqueror != Shell

[JeyKottalam]

"Internet Explorer in Windows 98 and its successors can be functionally compared to Konqueror in KDE. They do essentially the same thing, integrate file management with web browsing and other internet-related services."

Yes, but the difference lies in the fact that (Internet) Explorer is the actual shell in Windows. So, if you delete Internet Explorer, you don't have your shell anymore. Without a shell, you can't use Windows! In KDE, even if you uninstall Konqueror (which isn't imposible like uninstalling IE), KDE is still fully functional.

-Jey Kottalam

Function Proximity Benefits Users?

[qxjit]

When was the last time that you, as the user of a piece of closed source software, benefited from the fact that two related functions were closed to each other in the source code? I realize there are arguable indirect benefits, but I still find that claim funny.

Commingling ain't so bad

[h. simpson]

From my understanding, the courts are angry for microsoft intertwining IE and Windows, which is understandable because it does seem to allow microsoft to easily push away Netscape. (Not that I liked Netscape anyway.)

But what I'd rather see in my computer is more commingling, because frankly, that seems to be the best thing for getting things to work. When you buy a car, do you buy a car with a steering wheel from a Mercedes, an engine from a Ford, brakes from a Toyota? No, your car was an integrated object designed by one company. However, it seems like computers are just the opposite. Everyone has a piece of the action and often times these things don't interlock too well. I would be all for commingling if it actually fostered a more integrated product, so I dont have things conflicting with each other.

It's ashame that this enforces Microsoft's monopoly, but I think it's truly better for the consumer.

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[Schrodinger's Mouse]

I'm not sure that's such a wonderful analogy.

First, many car manufacturers purchase their parts from third parties; very few parts are actually made in-house. [cf. this whole Ford/Firestone mess.]

Second, there is currently no monopoly in the U.S. in car production; if you like, you can buy from any number of different companies.

Third, most consumers buy pre-integrated systems; for proof, visit your local Best Buy or Gateway store.

And fourth, and perhaps most critical, just as gasoline makes the automotive "hardware" run, the OS makes the computer hardware run, and commingling other functions with the OS is similar [IMO] to having your gasoline double as your brake fluid.

***

Re:Commingling ain't so bad

[Schrodinger's Mouse]

OK - you've got me on semantics, but I can't come up with a better car-related analogy there.

While the steering wheel or gas pedal are both interfaces to the car's hardware, it's damn near impossible to commingle the steering wheel function with the gas pedal function without sacrificing physical safety. [I suppose you could make the car accelerate when the wheels are pointing forward, but I'm not sure I'd want to drive a car that does that - to control speed, I'd either have to do small swerves [like they drive in the movies!] or ride the brakes.]

Alternately, you could consider a chauffeur or bus/cab driver an "interface to the hardware", but that's reeeeeally pushing it; also, with what do you commingle a driver? [and, short of medical cut-and-paste á la _Frankenstein_, how?]

And while you can execute BIOS code all you want, a box is essentially useless without an OS of some sort. [kind of like a car without a driver...]

But yeah. Anyway. The point is, car!=computer, so it's a bad comparison.

So how do y'all all like those new, um, thingys?

Free upgrade to XP?

[MateIn4]

Microsoft also believes it has satisfied the court's concerns by deciding last week to change Windows XP to enable computer makers and users to mask access to Internet Explorer, making it possible to highlight other browsers without removing the actual code.

So are they planning to give free upgrades to all Windows 95 users?

Re:Files irrelevant; User Interface is all importa

[madman2002]

Very different. AOL (as horrible an ISP as it is) is not an OS. The whole reason for AOL is to connect to the internet and surf the web. Also you can (I'm assuming) choose to use IE or another browser with AOL and your able to uninstall netscape without damaging AOL's effectiveness (such as it is). Microsoft says "go ahead and download netscape if you want but then your gonna have to use twice as much room on your hard-drive for browsers because if you remove IE Windows won't work properly. HAHAHAHAHAHA" that is the difference. An OS needs a web browser if people want to surf the net, thats not being questioned, the problem is the user needs to be given the right to uninstall or never install the browser that comes with the OS.

I may be just a bit too sensible here but...

[DeepFyre]

Wouldn't it make sense for the API for IEs libraries and stuff to go public? Surely it isn't wormed so deep into the OS that it can't be changed? My lecturers at Uni would've ripped my testicles off for writing code like that. Surely TCP/IP is a part of the kernel and doesn't need to be removed. But wouldn't it be feasible to replace the HTML renderer etc., with Mozillas one. (Ignoring rewrites necessary to fit in with the API for convenience here though, as time consuming as that might be.)? I'm positive that this should be possible, and would also allow a fairly sensible comparison of the engines.

An answer for everything

[Windfinder]

"Yeah honey, I took that other woman to dinner, but I -swear- we didn't commingle. We were just placed close to one another! You've gotta believe me!"

Whatever you say Bill!!

~Windfinder

Wasting your time...

[EvilKen]

Think of how much more productive everyone in the open source movement or at sun might be if they focused on simply building better applications and marketing them...rather than whining about what MS is doing and trying to trip them up in the courts. You can't win there, the system is built to favor those with two key resources Time and Money. MS has both in spades. The only way to beat MS is to outsell them using simliar tactics, only better executed. Get smart! Grow up!

IE = Windows Explorer

[Flamesplash]

First off the same program you use to "explor" your hard drive in windows is also a web browser. Try it sometime, where it says "C:" in the window toolbar enter a URL and it loads up the URL. 'Microsoft did not commingle software code specific to Web browsing with software code used for other purposes in the same files,' It sounds like what they meant to say was that the software that does web browsing is not specifically for just web browsing, it also allows Hard disk browsing, and that code was put where it belongs, in the OS.

Humpty Dumpty

[ImproprietyUnlimited]

Yes, it's the cult of postmodernism.

Look at this poor choice of a link and search for 'transparent'

Of course the standard quote for the word-mincing is from Through The Looking Glass - "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'"