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Professor Testifies Windows Is Modular, Separable
circlejtp writes: "Princeton University professor Andrew Appel said in written testimony that modular design is an accepted standard in the industry, and Microsoft has already created a version of Windows for interactive television boxes that has removable functions. The full story can be found on the Tacoma Tribune website." At issue is Microsoft's claim that separating Windows' components would cripple the OS.
Here is proof.
The Maxtor Windows-Based NAS boxes.
Or am I to assume they all contain a web browser, etc ?
there's no monopoly associated with OSX. people can also remove the software if they choose. can you do that in windows?
I could be incorect though.. this is just speculation on my part.
As much as they might want to complain about wanting to remove Microsoft's components, the fact of the matter is that there simply aren't competing products that work as well as Microsoft's products. (Note: I'm not talking about Office or anything like that...I'm talking about components that come with Windows).
Take IE. It used to be a pretty lousy program, but anyone who says that IE 6 isn't a good program (with the exception of some security issues) is delusional. I have yet to see a comparable program for the Windows platform that can do things as fast and as well as IE can. Even if someone didn't want to use it, there's nothing stopping them from using a different browser. I used Netscape and Mozilla along side IE for years without problems. The simple fact of the matter is that Netscape lost the Windows browser war because it failed to stay up to date. It crashed. It didn't support as many standards as IE did. It was slower. Also, think about this: as we see more and more online storage services, ftp repositories, etc. popping up on the Internet, is it not logical that one would ususally want to browse through these remote sites, as well as Intranets in the same way they browse through their local computer? It only makes sense that eventually the Internet would have to become seamlessly integrated with the OS. And when push came to shove, IE won out because it was just better.
Take Windows Media Player. Tell me, what program is better? Real is full of ads, Quicktime isn't free, and Winamp is only good for audio. Again, the exact same situation applies. WMP is simply the better program in most cases. And, of course, there's NOTHING stopping consumers from installing 3rd party software if they so choose.
Short of driving down prices on Windows, I fail to see how requiring them to strip it down will be of benefit to consumers. It'll just mean more hassle - you've got to search for and download all those things by yourself. And the average newbie can't do that. Look, allowing OEMs to include alternate programs and changing the desktop to have the icons point to those by defalt is one thing, but requiring Windows to be stripped down to a point where it would actually have LESS capabilities than competing OSs won't solve anything. What WILL make a difference is more closely monitoring Microsoft's buisness practices, and maybe making select parts of their code open source. This is to the point where I think some of these states are just on a rampage, blowing the problem out of proportion and failing to understand the real issues at stake.
-James
The fact that konqueror is not integrated. You don't have to have konqueror to use KDE. Also you don't have to have KDE to run Linux. You don't pay anything for either of them, and finally, KDE is not a monopoly.
The whole issue is the "tying" of IE (at the time not a monopoly product) to Windows (a monopoloy) for the sole purpose of harming a competitot (Netscape). If this isn't clear to you, then I suggest you are not up on the issues.
Read the Findings of Fact in the case. The present debate is only over the remedy. No one has successfully challenged the findings of fact. Read. Learn. Enjoy. Then come back and tell me there is no difference between the two.
Ignorance is bliss and we are a happy country.
Bit of history, because we're all forgetting this stuff: Back in the day, Netscape's claim was that Navigator was more than a browser, that because of its plug-in architecture people would write applications that would run under Netscape. Since Netscape ran on multiple OS'es, applications written to Netscape API's, rather than OS API's, would be portable, rendering the underlying OS irrelevant, or at least much less significant. This "middleware" aspect to Netscape -- a platform on the platform -- was what frightened Microsoft (according to Netscape, mind you), causing Bill and company to come after Netscape with chains and knives.
iWhatever, AFAIK, are simply programs that do stuff themselves, not platforms upon which other programs are to be built.
Ah, but you say that you've never seen a database or word-processor written as a Netscape plugin? Me neither, nor did Netscape ever bring one out and show it to people as a proof-of-concept. Still, they convinced the court.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
When will you guys understand? Windows has always been modular, in that it separates functions nicely into DLLs which export APIs and can be replaced or removed as needed. It's rather that as a standard part of Windows, many MS and non-MS apps use components from IE to do various things, like render HTML (including many non-"web" apps that use the HTML renderer as a quick way to have a nice UI), or do network stuff like HTTP queries without having to "reinvent the wheel" with each app.
If you remove IE (meaning all the dlls that form it, not just the stub executable which is little more than a front-end to the underlying HTML rendering and networking DLLs), sure the OS will still run and you could definitely still use it as a server, BUT a lot of user-level stuff like the shell and applications, not just IE, would suddenly break. So even if it were removed, you would need to have some sort of other implementation of the functionality that IE provides to other apps via COM.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
My problem wasn't that MS was bundling IE with Windows. That's the media's gross oversimplification of the problem.
The problem was Microsoft leveraging their near-OS monopoly to bully OEMs and competitors. The bundling of IE was just part of that attack strategy.
Apple, of course, doesn't have any OEMs to bully nor a desktop monopoly to leverage. That's the difference.
Pretty easy, depending on how you define Linux. The kernel is a monolithic kernel made from many modules. The rest of the system is just a bunch of programs that depend on various shared libraries. In this regard Windows is essentially identical, other than the fact that MSFT refuses to distribute various key components independant of particular applications, even though other applications use those components. This is why MSFT continues to maintain that Windows would be crippled if IE were removed. They are claiming that components such as the html renderer cannot be distributed without IE. This is contradicted by the fact that many applications use that component and no other part of IE.
MSFT uses COM to export various modules from programs like IE. All of these modules have well-defined interfaces that can be used by other programs. By definition these parts are modular, and have no dependenciels other than (perhaps) on other COM modules. Any spaghetti is hidden behind the COM interface. In the UNIX world we sort of do the same thing, in that code that is meant to be shared is put into shared libraries and usually packaged separately from the main application.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Who cares about a Windows without IE6? Let's start with a Windows that it's not illegal to sell as dual-boot Windows/Linux from computer shops.
The Maxtor NAS box is stock Windows 2000 with a few extras tossed in to do remote management.
Even the raid software is just the MS stuff that comes with w2k.
Yes, I've surfed from my Maxtor boxes, right before I shipped them back because they're such crap.