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Windows 7 Kill Switch For IE Confirmed — For More Apps, Too
CWmike writes "Microsoft has confirmed that users will be able to remove its IE8 browser, as well as several other integrated applications, from Windows 7. Jack Mayo, a group program manager on the Windows team, listed in a blog post the applications that can be switched off. They include Internet Explorer 8, Fax and Scan, handwriting recognition, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Gadget Platform, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and XPS Viewer and Services. He explained that the files associated with those applications and features are not actually deleted from the hard drive. The public beta of Windows 7 does not include the ability to 'kill' said apps. But a pirated copy of Windows 7 Build 7048 includes the new removal options, and has been leaked on the Internet." (We mentioned the reported ability to turn off IE8 yesterday as well.)
One of the articles mentions Windows Update, which requires IE's API's to work properly. I'm sure other cases would come up as well.
It also prevents them from being loaded, as the articles explain. If needed for API's that require them, or if you turn them back on, they're available, but otherwise don't get loaded.
I plan to buy a new LCD and I will choose something with DVI instead of HDMI just because DRM. As I don't have HDMI capable hardware I would like to kill DRM on my machine (don't watch TV so I don't have an HD TV either), If Win7 allow me that and after all the kids in their basements test the OS for hidden nasties and middle fingers from MS, I'll switch for Win7. I need 64bit addressable memory.
Besides some extra pins for audio, HDMI and DVI differ only in pinout. Electrically they're the same, and you can go from one to the other with just a simple converter. A monitor and computer with plain DVI can still use DRM if both support HDCP (and in the same light, HDMI can be transmitted unencrypted just like DVI is).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It blows my mind that they could be so entrenched that just removing them, or not having them installed to begin with, isn't trivial.
Software engineering 101: what part of the word "dependency" blows your mind? What platform lets you snap out the provided rich text rendering engine for something else? Practically every application on the platform uses it in some way! And why do you trust Joe Sixpack to do this? What will he do when it renders things oh-so-slightly differently? He won't put together that it is because he changed out the HTML renderer.
Everyone here continues to bellyache about things without offering up solutions that actually work outside of their parents basement. This is not a new problem, dependency management sucks, and will always suck because third party apps are built to certain implementations of things and become reliant on undocumented behavior without even realizing it.
The rendering engine for IE is used other places in Windows (like the help system IIRC). The same goes for others like WMP. The libraries are needed for other applications and the executable is so small in comparison that removing it rather than just disabling it makes some sense.
From the article:
Best of both worlds in my opinion. I also like that there is one unified interface for managing features. This is just one example, but in vista you could use 'add/remove components' for IIS, but if you wanted to disable Media Center, you had to do it from the group policy editor. Extremely frustrating.
I plan to buy a new LCD and I will choose something with DVI instead of HDMI just because DRM.
Do you know what you are talking about?
The DRM is HDCP, not HDMI. DVI is compatible with HDCP, and most new DVI panels support HDCP over DVI.
If you go out of your way to find one that doesn't, you are just being a twit. Not having HDCP support just means you can't play HDCP content; it doesn't strip HDCP protection from a signal or anything like that.
If you don't play and don't intend to ever play HDCP content, then it doesn't matter in the least whether or not your panel supports it or not, because its not going to affect you in the slightest. Having HDCP support doesn't automatically encrypt not HDCP content.
I'm curious what monitors are currently on your short list of possible buys?
The only monitors at newegg that I can find that don't support HDCP are the lowest end consumer junk TN panels that only have 1 VGA input. And no digital inputs at all.
The year of ubuntu on the designer workstation?? *ubuntu 9.04 beta 4 64bit It's pretty pretty fast and stable.
Your going to look pretty silling sitting there with your no-name brand 17" VGA monitor with a cheap 6-bit TN panel trying to convince people you are a "professional graphics designer".
Full-blown apps are relatively easy to remove, but some of the "desktop environment" stuff - applets, the various managers (volumes, power), libraries - sit at the centre of a web of dependencies and aren't easy to get rid of. Even things that are only "Recommends:"-ed seem to pop back sometimes when I'm not looking :/
Having said that, disk is insanely cheap these days, so that even I, who's pretty obsessive about avoiding 'bloat', have learnt to live with leaving the packages around. Memory's pretty cheap too, and anyway actually stopping unnecessary components from running is a bit easier.
And, of course, no one distro / desktop environment "fits all." Xubuntu is lighter and more "loosely coupled", and there are other Ubuntu variants that are even more hardcore (I keep meaning to give #! a spin ..) That's really where free software trumps commercial: each subculture that feels the need can roll its own.
If you use Firefox, you can probably use the IETab extension to load specific web sites using Internet Explorer's rendering engine (which will NOT be removed when you disable IE), integrated with Firefox's tab management. You can maintain a list of sites that should be loaded with IE's engine, so it's automatic and you don't have to switch browsers.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Internet Explorer is a web browser. Trident is the layout engine. Other programs can make use of Trident to, in effect, allow for web browsing. Microsoft can use Trident in places other than IE where it makes sense to have a layout engine. Removing IE will not remove Trident.
It's really not that hard, people.