You bring up a good point, but I don't think we have to worry about it for two reasons: 1) That would be a bit too blatant (but I still wouldn't be too surprised if MS ignored that) 2) They would never integrate OE so long as they still wanted to sell Outlook.
What you might want to worry about is the merging of OE and Outlook into a common engine that is integrated into the OS with two different front-ends (OE and outlook) with Outlook adding corporate features. But that probably won't happen (at least not while MS has the Office market all sewn up anyway).
But at least the entire operating system doesn't depend on it, just Outlook Express, which is free and uninstallable. AOL does just as annoying things with all their buddy buddy apps installing "Click here to Install AIM" icons all over the damn place.
Or RealPlayer with the damn RealMessenger telling me all sorts of crap like "Baseball is back in season." And the second I decide to uninstall RealOne to get rid of the damn annoying messenger I find that I need to watch a Steven Wright stand-up comedy bit and it's only available in Real Media format.
I would say that your complaint above is on the level of pop-up ads. It's blatant disregard for the sanctity of the user's machine, but it's avoidable. And it's not just limited to Microsoft.
You just said yourself what the problem is. IE is a part of the "Common Controls." Common == used by a bunch of programs. A hellbunch. So yes you CAN replace them, but someone needs to make functionally identical controls. Even if such things existed, Windows couldn't possibly ship without some sort of Common Control library. So if it's not MS's common controls it's someone else's bundled and integrated with the OS.
As for it being applications' own problem, I say it's not. They used a component that was guaranteed to be installed on every version of Windows. That's a no brainer. Microsoft has harmed itself bending over for backwards compatibility and their track record shows that once they put something in as a common component they will maintain compatibility as long and as much as possible. If you are an application developer and you say "I need web browsing functionality, oh hey, here's a common Windows component I can use, or I can write my own, or I can find or license some other web browser functionality." It's an easy choice to make. Now, all these apps that expect IE to be there and it's not, you know what they will do? Install IE. It's freely redistributable, afterall, so the first time you use one of these many many programs that use the functionality of IE or its common controls you have IE (or at least the core components) installed.
It was put in because I god damn want it there, both as a user and a developer. If IE is ever a problem for me I can install Netscape or Opera or Mozilla and IE will step out of the way as main browser.
Way back a long time ago I had a Commodore 128 and a Modem. I had to go spend $60+ on a terminal program that wasn't that great so that I could connect to a BBS and download a much better one. How do you intend to get your precious Netscape or Opera for free if you can't download it?
As a developer I like the fact that I can write one line of code and have a great, nearly standards-compliant browser in my code ready to do all sorts of things. Using DHTML sure beats the hell out of writing it all from scratch. And HTMLHelp sure beats the hell out of the old WinHelp.
If Microsoft removes IE then they will have to change a lot of programs that rely on the shdocvw functionality, probably by either writing a bunch of implementations of the same stuff and not share it (it would be considered part of the product and probably not a reusable control) or they would create a common library which would acts an unsurprisingly large amount like shdocvw. You may argue all day as to Microsoft's motives for such tight integration, but the truth is that right now it is damn useful and, well, tightly integrated.
Well, multi-head in that you needed two additional machines for left and right, and a IPX network set up. Something that few could afford. By the time we had the hardware to do so, Doom was long gone.
I don't need to, the author does:
------------------
Having a bad day? Maybe you've just received word that a competitor (perhaps in a country whose copyright- and patent-protection laws and corresponding enforcement are less stringent than those in your abode) is manufacturing a near-duplicate of your latest FPGA- or PLD-based product, differing only in its cosmetic appearance. Or maybe the innovative programmable-logic-housed circuit you developed just weeks or months ago has suspiciously appeared in another company's device or system in a slightly modified or enhanced form. Or maybe you're an IP provider, and you've heard through the grapevine that your customer is building more chips or boxes than the license agreement they signed with you gives them the right to do.
All of these situations, as well as other detrimental scenarios that a few minutes of "what-if" thinking will uncover, unfortunately suggest that you're the victim of design theft. [...] The other harder but possibly even more damaging form of theft is "reverse-engineering."
------------------
Again, I must point out that the author isn't saying that all reverse engineering is design theft, he is saying that design theft can be done through reverse engineering. In a similar way, not all design theft is reverse engineering.
Again, I point to the phrase "a thief." Rewrite the above sentence as follows:
"The classic wood axe contains a charpened wedge of metal atop a long handle, usually wooden. By using essentially a large basic machine, a thief can hack his way through your front door." Are wood axes illegal? No. Is using a wood axe illegal? No, but a thief certainly can use one to commit a crime. He could have said "a person," but this article does not concern itself with persons. It concerns itself with thieves and crooks and industrial spies and competitors that steal ideas. These people use a variety of techniques, including reverse engineering. The antagonists of this story aren't people that reverse-engineer, it's people that steal. And these people steal, among other ways, by reverse-engineering.
He is saying that _a thief_ can use reverse engineering to steal a competitor's design. He is not saying that someone that uses reverse-engineering is a thief. He is not saying that reverse engineering, in and of itself is illegal. There is not one sentence in the article that says "Reverse-engineering, for any reason is illegal." In fact there isn't anything close that I can see. But he is saying that reverse engineering can facilitate design theft.
"That pink animal with a snout is a pig." "Not all pigs are pink!"
Reverse-engineering is not theft, however reverse-engineering can be used to commit theft. Firing a handgun is not murder, but point that handgun at a person and do the same thing and circumstances have changed to something less than legal.
In the same way that not all reverse-engineering is theft, not all reverse-engineering is not theft.
Whoa, big breach in logic. You nearly blew my mind with that last sentence, it made so little sense.
The author didn't say that all people who reverse engineer are criminals. He said that there is an aspect of design theft called reverse-engineering, and that he was going to concentrate on how to prevent it.
Whether or not they are entitled to not be the victim of this is not the point. Because in some eyes they are entitled to it, and in some eyes they are not. This article, obviously, has no use in a IP-free world, so therefore the target audience is not likely IP-free proponents. The target audience are corporations interested in protecting their investment, and that target audience has most likely decided that they ARE entitled to not be the victim of this sort of theft.
But that's beside the point. He wasn't saying that all reverse-engineering is theft. So whether or not he intended full out felonious theft, or just theft in the mind of the creator, he didn't specifically say that all reverse-engineering is that.
You can look at it this way: "One aspect of music piracy that is running rampant is sharing of mp3's." That doesn't automatically imply that all sharing of mp3s is music piracy, but that music piracy can be facilitated by the copying of mp3s. In fact there are lots of ways that sharing of mp3s is perfectly legal.
The author doesn't call reverse-engineering theft. He says that in this type of theft that he is reporting on, one of the more sinister versions of it is reverse engineering. The author is writing an article about preventing design theft. And he isn't really talking about theft in the legal sense, although he does bring it up. He talks about keeping people from snaking your work, regardless of whether you have a legal right to protect it (i.e. copyrights, patents, trade secrets, etc).
Does he flat out say that reverse-engineering is illegal? No! In addition, all of his examples involve theoretical rival companies, not an evil band of OSS zealots.
From what I read, the author's view is that reverse-engineering is a tool that can be used to commit IP theft, and here are some ways to prevent it.
Sony has a Semi-Conductor division that includes such things as SAP decoders (for TV), sound processors (for TV), amplifiers (for cellular phones), GPS processing ICs, and more. So you'd have to check to see if the non-Sony product you are purchasing (TV, video camera, cell phone, GPS receiver) is using Sony IC's.
You misunderstand what's going on, probably because you're spending more time reading Slashdot comments than actually reading the article. They are not just "porting Office." They are creating a framework that can allow any windows app to be "ported" by recompiling against this framework that converts Win32 APIs to Linux equivalents.
The complicated undertaking, which has been a work in progress for over a year, requires the companies to map native Win32 API calls to the Linux equivalents so that Windows applications will run normally in that environment
So yes, they do need access to the Windows source. I would be willing to wager a guess that Mainsoft is not actually doing the porting of Office, or any other specific Microsoft app, however I do not know. But what the article does make clear is that Mainsoft is in the process of creating a framework that can be used to port ANY Windows application to Linux. Kind of like Wine, but instead of running Win32 binaries, you would recompile your Win32 code against these new libraries under a Linux compiler.
This article says absolutely nothing about whether Microsoft is or is not corrupt, and it says even less about whether or not they should be broken up.
If you DO want to get conspiracy theory, though, think of it this way: Mainsoft is wanting to write this framework so they approach Microsoft for the license for the Windows sourcecode. Microsoft realizes that they this could make or break them, so they enter a partnership so that they can keep this project in check. I'm not saying that is what is happening, but I'm sure you conspiracy theorists can see it happening.
--No virtual screens? But alt-tab-tab-tab-tab takes a lot longer than ctrl-arrow
There's a tool that does this in the NT Resource kit, AFAIK there's a similar one for Windows 2000 (not completely sure, though).
--No grep/diff/awk/sed/find? (yes, I know you can get these elsewhere--but why not just use Unix?)
Well, if I wanted to use Unix I wouldn't be spending time getting g/d/a/s/f elsewhere.
--No real shell-scripting? How am I supposed to automate my nightly builds?
Windows 2000 has scripting (It's available for NT as an add-on). And most everything admin in Win2000 is scriptable now.
--A lot of rebooting?
Not so much anymore. Win2000 has cut down the number of required reboots for system changes to something like 7 (changing computer name, applying service packs (you have to reboot when you change the linux kernel), etc). And whenever a software installation program asks me to reboot I just ignore it, 'cause it really doesn't need it.
--DLL Hell?
Alot of this is fixed...and is getting better. The System File Protection in Win2000 makes sure that programs can't install bad system files.
--ETC!
ETC!
I run Windows 2000, I don't touch Win9x (it is vastly inferior to both Win2000 and, in most cases, Linux). I've run Linux (was an ISP admin with Linux, did development on linux, and ran linux as a second box just 'cause) but I don't really have any need to right now. With everything that comes with Professional or Advanced server there's very little I need Linux for. Plus I've yet to find a text editor or development environment that I like under Linux.
Companies and ISP's have been doing this for ages.
There are quite a few ISPs that give higher priority to packets from within their subnet and give less priority to those packets just passing through. Also there are a number of ISP's that give high priority to web traffic and lower priority to packets for things like Quake (in fact I remember an ISP who's major selling point was the fact that they gave higher priority to gaming packets in order to attract the gamers).
That Excite is now doing it for money (or, which is more likely the case, Excite is now doing it for money and actually got some press, as opposed to the other companies that have been doing it for money on the down low) is nothing big. And is perfectly fine.
My complaint is that this is one of those things that's perfectly fine, but if someone like AOL did it, people would scream monopoly for something that's just business.
And what? This isn't a "Your Rights Online" article?! FOR SHAME!
IBM is not in the business of creating Consumer HDD's, for the most part. They license their technology to other companies and let them produce consumer HDD's.
And to answer the this.parent.parent.parent post, IBM has always had a large patent portfolio, that was their bargaining chip in nearly every negotiation. The sort of mob "we own this town" power that made it so alot of people had to deal with IBM, or carefully step around the minefield of patents.
I didn't say the e-mail was enforcable. This is just a first step. After this comes the Certified Mail, then the courts.
It's just that e-mail is far cheaper and faster. Slashdot/Andover has no obligation to do jack right now. They just have to figure out if it's in their best interest to have Microsoft take it to the next level, or not. If Andover wants to call Microsoft's bluff, they can, without any problems. But once the certified mail hits Andover had better start doing some serious work at resolving it, not shooting back questions that, while relevant to the document, have only auxilary relevance to the matter at hand.
I understand "No", it's all the other gibberish I don't get.:)
Slashdot Mirror
You bring up a good point, but I don't think we have to worry about it for two reasons:
1) That would be a bit too blatant (but I still wouldn't be too surprised if MS ignored that)
2) They would never integrate OE so long as they still wanted to sell Outlook.
What you might want to worry about is the merging of OE and Outlook into a common engine that is integrated into the OS with two different front-ends (OE and outlook) with Outlook adding corporate features. But that probably won't happen (at least not while MS has the Office market all sewn up anyway).
So you say you want ftp bundled with Windows, too? Where do you draw the line?
I bought the machine second hand with a modem. The only software that I had that would access the modem was QLink, which I was forbidden from using.
Yeah, that sucks.
But at least the entire operating system doesn't depend on it, just Outlook Express, which is free and uninstallable. AOL does just as annoying things with all their buddy buddy apps installing "Click here to Install AIM" icons all over the damn place.
Or RealPlayer with the damn RealMessenger telling me all sorts of crap like "Baseball is back in season." And the second I decide to uninstall RealOne to get rid of the damn annoying messenger I find that I need to watch a Steven Wright stand-up comedy bit and it's only available in Real Media format.
I would say that your complaint above is on the level of pop-up ads. It's blatant disregard for the sanctity of the user's machine, but it's avoidable. And it's not just limited to Microsoft.
You just said yourself what the problem is. IE is a part of the "Common Controls." Common == used by a bunch of programs. A hellbunch. So yes you CAN replace them, but someone needs to make functionally identical controls. Even if such things existed, Windows couldn't possibly ship without some sort of Common Control library. So if it's not MS's common controls it's someone else's bundled and integrated with the OS.
As for it being applications' own problem, I say it's not. They used a component that was guaranteed to be installed on every version of Windows. That's a no brainer. Microsoft has harmed itself bending over for backwards compatibility and their track record shows that once they put something in as a common component they will maintain compatibility as long and as much as possible. If you are an application developer and you say "I need web browsing functionality, oh hey, here's a common Windows component I can use, or I can write my own, or I can find or license some other web browser functionality." It's an easy choice to make. Now, all these apps that expect IE to be there and it's not, you know what they will do? Install IE. It's freely redistributable, afterall, so the first time you use one of these many many programs that use the functionality of IE or its common controls you have IE (or at least the core components) installed.
Looks like it's back to being your problem.
It was put in because I god damn want it there, both as a user and a developer. If IE is ever a problem for me I can install Netscape or Opera or Mozilla and IE will step out of the way as main browser.
Way back a long time ago I had a Commodore 128 and a Modem. I had to go spend $60+ on a terminal program that wasn't that great so that I could connect to a BBS and download a much better one. How do you intend to get your precious Netscape or Opera for free if you can't download it?
As a developer I like the fact that I can write one line of code and have a great, nearly standards-compliant browser in my code ready to do all sorts of things. Using DHTML sure beats the hell out of writing it all from scratch. And HTMLHelp sure beats the hell out of the old WinHelp.
If Microsoft removes IE then they will have to change a lot of programs that rely on the shdocvw functionality, probably by either writing a bunch of implementations of the same stuff and not share it (it would be considered part of the product and probably not a reusable control) or they would create a common library which would acts an unsurprisingly large amount like shdocvw. You may argue all day as to Microsoft's motives for such tight integration, but the truth is that right now it is damn useful and, well, tightly integrated.
As long as that's allowed:
..
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 1C8B-5434
Directory of C:\projects\meef
01/17/2001 01:58p .
01/17/2001 01:58p
11/29/2000 05:22p 1,144 Form1.frm
01/15/2001 05:01p 20,480 meef.exe
01/17/2001 01:58p 1,408 meef.frm
01/17/2001 01:58p 740 meef.vbp
01/17/2001 04:20p 50 meef.vbw
01/15/2001 05:52p 3,964 meef_pure.log
01/07/2001 11:04p 335 MSSCCPRJ.SCC
11/29/2000 05:22p 749 Project1.vbp
12/07/2000 06:11p 50 Project1.vbw
That's with "Hide Extensions of Known Types" turned on. Looks like both operating systems are doing things just fine.
Allow me to rephrase "Doom was long gone in our circle."
Our biggest single motivating factor for getting aour machines networked was Command and Conquer.
Well, multi-head in that you needed two additional machines for left and right, and a IPX network set up. Something that few could afford. By the time we had the hardware to do so, Doom was long gone.
The best thing Xerox PARC ever gave us was....
.....drum roll.....
LambdaMOO!!!!!
I don't need to, the author does:
------------------
Having a bad day? Maybe you've just received word that a competitor (perhaps in a country whose copyright- and patent-protection laws and corresponding enforcement are less stringent than those in your abode) is manufacturing a near-duplicate of your latest FPGA- or PLD-based product, differing only in its cosmetic appearance. Or maybe the innovative programmable-logic-housed circuit you developed just weeks or months ago has suspiciously appeared in another company's device or system in a slightly modified or enhanced form. Or maybe you're an IP provider, and you've heard through the grapevine that your customer is building more chips or boxes than the license agreement they signed with you gives them the right to do.
All of these situations, as well as other detrimental scenarios that a few minutes of "what-if" thinking will uncover, unfortunately suggest that you're the victim of design theft. [...] The other harder but possibly even more damaging form of theft is "reverse-engineering."
------------------
Again, I must point out that the author isn't saying that all reverse engineering is design theft, he is saying that design theft can be done through reverse engineering. In a similar way, not all design theft is reverse engineering.
Again, I point to the phrase "a thief." Rewrite the above sentence as follows:
"The classic wood axe contains a charpened wedge of metal atop a long handle, usually wooden. By using essentially a large basic machine, a thief can hack his way through your front door." Are wood axes illegal? No. Is using a wood axe illegal? No, but a thief certainly can use one to commit a crime. He could have said "a person," but this article does not concern itself with persons. It concerns itself with thieves and crooks and industrial spies and competitors that steal ideas. These people use a variety of techniques, including reverse engineering. The antagonists of this story aren't people that reverse-engineer, it's people that steal. And these people steal, among other ways, by reverse-engineering.
Exactly why this article is being blown out of proportion.
He is saying that _a thief_ can use reverse engineering to steal a competitor's design. He is not saying that someone that uses reverse-engineering is a thief. He is not saying that reverse engineering, in and of itself is illegal. There is not one sentence in the article that says "Reverse-engineering, for any reason is illegal." In fact there isn't anything close that I can see. But he is saying that reverse engineering can facilitate design theft.
"That pink animal with a snout is a pig." "Not all pigs are pink!"
Reverse-engineering is not theft, however reverse-engineering can be used to commit theft. Firing a handgun is not murder, but point that handgun at a person and do the same thing and circumstances have changed to something less than legal.
In the same way that not all reverse-engineering is theft, not all reverse-engineering is not theft.
Whoa, big breach in logic. You nearly blew my mind with that last sentence, it made so little sense.
The author didn't say that all people who reverse engineer are criminals. He said that there is an aspect of design theft called reverse-engineering, and that he was going to concentrate on how to prevent it.
Whether or not they are entitled to not be the victim of this is not the point. Because in some eyes they are entitled to it, and in some eyes they are not. This article, obviously, has no use in a IP-free world, so therefore the target audience is not likely IP-free proponents. The target audience are corporations interested in protecting their investment, and that target audience has most likely decided that they ARE entitled to not be the victim of this sort of theft.
But that's beside the point. He wasn't saying that all reverse-engineering is theft. So whether or not he intended full out felonious theft, or just theft in the mind of the creator, he didn't specifically say that all reverse-engineering is that.
You can look at it this way: "One aspect of music piracy that is running rampant is sharing of mp3's." That doesn't automatically imply that all sharing of mp3s is music piracy, but that music piracy can be facilitated by the copying of mp3s. In fact there are lots of ways that sharing of mp3s is perfectly legal.
The author doesn't call reverse-engineering theft. He says that in this type of theft that he is reporting on, one of the more sinister versions of it is reverse engineering. The author is writing an article about preventing design theft. And he isn't really talking about theft in the legal sense, although he does bring it up. He talks about keeping people from snaking your work, regardless of whether you have a legal right to protect it (i.e. copyrights, patents, trade secrets, etc).
Does he flat out say that reverse-engineering is illegal? No! In addition, all of his examples involve theoretical rival companies, not an evil band of OSS zealots.
From what I read, the author's view is that reverse-engineering is a tool that can be used to commit IP theft, and here are some ways to prevent it.
Sony has a Semi-Conductor division that includes such things as SAP decoders (for TV), sound processors (for TV), amplifiers (for cellular phones), GPS processing ICs, and more. So you'd have to check to see if the non-Sony product you are purchasing (TV, video camera, cell phone, GPS receiver) is using Sony IC's.
The complicated undertaking, which has been a work in progress for over a year, requires the companies to map native Win32 API calls to the Linux equivalents so that Windows applications will run normally in that environment
So yes, they do need access to the Windows source. I would be willing to wager a guess that Mainsoft is not actually doing the porting of Office, or any other specific Microsoft app, however I do not know. But what the article does make clear is that Mainsoft is in the process of creating a framework that can be used to port ANY Windows application to Linux. Kind of like Wine, but instead of running Win32 binaries, you would recompile your Win32 code against these new libraries under a Linux compiler.
This article says absolutely nothing about whether Microsoft is or is not corrupt, and it says even less about whether or not they should be broken up.
If you DO want to get conspiracy theory, though, think of it this way: Mainsoft is wanting to write this framework so they approach Microsoft for the license for the Windows sourcecode. Microsoft realizes that they this could make or break them, so they enter a partnership so that they can keep this project in check. I'm not saying that is what is happening, but I'm sure you conspiracy theorists can see it happening.
I hereby bequeth my -1 Redundant to this story.
--No virtual screens? But alt-tab-tab-tab-tab takes a lot longer than ctrl-arrow There's a tool that does this in the NT Resource kit, AFAIK there's a similar one for Windows 2000 (not completely sure, though). --No grep/diff/awk/sed/find? (yes, I know you can get these elsewhere--but why not just use Unix?) Well, if I wanted to use Unix I wouldn't be spending time getting g/d/a/s/f elsewhere. --No real shell-scripting? How am I supposed to automate my nightly builds? Windows 2000 has scripting (It's available for NT as an add-on). And most everything admin in Win2000 is scriptable now. --A lot of rebooting? Not so much anymore. Win2000 has cut down the number of required reboots for system changes to something like 7 (changing computer name, applying service packs (you have to reboot when you change the linux kernel), etc). And whenever a software installation program asks me to reboot I just ignore it, 'cause it really doesn't need it. --DLL Hell? Alot of this is fixed...and is getting better. The System File Protection in Win2000 makes sure that programs can't install bad system files. --ETC! ETC! I run Windows 2000, I don't touch Win9x (it is vastly inferior to both Win2000 and, in most cases, Linux). I've run Linux (was an ISP admin with Linux, did development on linux, and ran linux as a second box just 'cause) but I don't really have any need to right now. With everything that comes with Professional or Advanced server there's very little I need Linux for. Plus I've yet to find a text editor or development environment that I like under Linux.
Companies and ISP's have been doing this for ages.
There are quite a few ISPs that give higher priority to packets from within their subnet and give less priority to those packets just passing through. Also there are a number of ISP's that give high priority to web traffic and lower priority to packets for things like Quake (in fact I remember an ISP who's major selling point was the fact that they gave higher priority to gaming packets in order to attract the gamers).
That Excite is now doing it for money (or, which is more likely the case, Excite is now doing it for money and actually got some press, as opposed to the other companies that have been doing it for money on the down low) is nothing big. And is perfectly fine.
My complaint is that this is one of those things that's perfectly fine, but if someone like AOL did it, people would scream monopoly for something that's just business.
And what? This isn't a "Your Rights Online" article?! FOR SHAME!
IBM is not in the business of creating Consumer HDD's, for the most part. They license their technology to other companies and let them produce consumer HDD's.
And to answer the this.parent.parent.parent post, IBM has always had a large patent portfolio, that was their bargaining chip in nearly every negotiation. The sort of mob "we own this town" power that made it so alot of people had to deal with IBM, or carefully step around the minefield of patents.
I didn't say the e-mail was enforcable. This is just a first step. After this comes the Certified Mail, then the courts.
:)
It's just that e-mail is far cheaper and faster. Slashdot/Andover has no obligation to do jack right now. They just have to figure out if it's in their best interest to have Microsoft take it to the next level, or not. If Andover wants to call Microsoft's bluff, they can, without any problems. But once the certified mail hits Andover had better start doing some serious work at resolving it, not shooting back questions that, while relevant to the document, have only auxilary relevance to the matter at hand.
I understand "No", it's all the other gibberish I don't get.