MS's versioning is so bizarre that IE5 and IE5.5 are different in more than minor version number, while IE6 is pretty much IE5.5.1
I wouldn't agree with your assesment that IE6 was a minor update to IE5.5. IE5.0 to 5.5 was probably a bigger change (and should have been called 6.0), but there were some big changes, including print preview, privacy enhancements,.NET WinForm hosting, that damn image toolbar, and most importantly, big improvements in CSS.
Just like there are dozens of incompatible versions of Python and Perl right?
As long Sun didn't OS-it under a BSD license I doubt MS would touch it with a very long poll, doubley so now that they are pushing their own CShit
Funny you should mention Python and Perl. These two open source projects have plenty of Microsoft involvement through ActiveState.
Microsoft knows how to use open source when it can benefit, even when the GPL is involved. It's pretty easy to fork a project to add Windows specific features - it just takes funding. Microsoft would surely have done that with Java two years ago if Sun didn't control the license.
Windows is very well documented, both for developers and users. The availble APIs are fully documented in a consistent manner, and Microsoft does an excellent job of making sure future operating systems properly support all documented APIs.
And for the sibling poster who claimed documentation is not free, check out the following links.
I've been developing for Windows for 15 years and have never purchased API documentation. I used to purchase books for examples and ideas, but I haven't done as much of that over the last five years - online sites, both Microsoft sponsored and others, have filled the need.
Umm, you have to either ship a seperate language DLL for that, or you have to ship a new exe (depending on whether the string tables were in it or the dll). A localized version.
No, you don't. Win16 resources supported multiple string tables within the binary, one for each supported code page. One binary can support multiple localizations, with the Control Panel configuration specifying the default code-page for the application. The app could use the API to format dates and times. Many of the important localization tools debuted in Windows 3.1.
You're right about the dialog sizes. Dialog metrics have always been a problem, even for plain old ASCII apps.
In Win16, nothing was Unicode - they used code pages (an IBM standard I think), which did support multi-byte characters.
You also have to worry about "unsupported" characters in some language versions when you're using anything that's not unicode (CString anyone?).
CString has supported Unicode and other multi-byte sets since MFC 3.0 - when NT 3.1 was released. When was that - 1994?
I feel Microsoft finally got their act together for locale support with NT - an OS that was natively Unicode, and then with Office 2000, which properly supports Unicode. As for the defense of Win16 -- I was just rebutting the assertion that string tables are something new for Windows. They're not.
Yea, and in typical volunteer FOSS fashion, of the 79 language teams, 11 have done enough work to be considered useful. Chinese and Japanese, the two most important, are only half translated.
You can bet the 35 Office XP localizations are a bit more polished. That's what profit can do for you.
Every version of Windows since Windows 3.0 supported modification of string resources in the binary. With a resource editor (free from MS) you could add string tables for a code page (language), and it would be utilized if you selected that language in the control panel.
I don't think you get what.NET is about. It's not about the language. It's the many host environments for managed code. It's WinForms. It's ASP.NET. It's supporting legacy libraries (COM and DLLs). It's a rich API.
.NET provides many different types of environments that align with most of the various languages you mention -- C (system programming), Perl (parsing, scripting), Java (beans, JSP, etc), PHP (Web Server glue). And it's langauge agnostic to boot. (C#, VB.NET, J#, Python.NET,...)
C# can mean a traditional Windows app, an ASP.NET back end, stored procedures in SQL Server, a component, or client side code hosted in IE. I don't think it's been applied to shell scripting... yet.
Hell, Visual Basic was revolutionary despite the fact that is used BASIC for its syntax.
Voting is by no measure anonymous. When you vote, there is a record that you voted. You sign the register, and your name is called out -- "Jane Doe has voted" they exclaim.
This practice helps prevent fraud. Your vote is secret, but not your identity.
For those of you wanting to give Viacom a piece of your mind, here is the contact information for the CEO
You are a hypocrite and a coward. You publish the private phone number of a CEO you disagree with, but you do it from an account with a hidden email address and no meaningful contact information.
It's the mob that anonymously attacks selected individuals. Today's internet, with its spammers and virus writers, slashdotters and pirates, is a modern day mob. Go ahead and throw rocks at SCO, Microsoft, Gates, Linus, Jobs, or anyone else with the balls stand up and make a difference - good or bad. But please, don't hide behind your electronic mask.
Dave
P.S. This is another reason why internet voting is a bad idea.
Were Linux in a dominant position instead, we might well be seeing similar stories about a few high profile sites struggling with an attempted switch to Windows...
Actually you wouldn't. Windows can run all of the common open-source software.
This is exactly why Windows makes sense. You can run all the open source code you want, and still buy the closed source solutions that you need. Security is managable for any competent administrator, and the actual cost of the OS is insignificant on desktops. Linux can only run a small subset of the available applications.
Scenario 2 is provided by the hardware vendor... not the software vendor. I think the same level of support can be provided for linux in a few years.
Not unless a Linux desktop champion shows up. Due to the GPL, it would have to be a hardware vendor - the GPL voids the value of software improvements.
Do you think HP or Dell is eager to support Linux to your Aunt. If they invested in improving desktop Linux (which needs major work to be as easy-to-use as Windows), the competition would steal their improvements, and then they would have to double up to support two user groups - Linux and Windows. What a deal.
If some one else did the work, HP and Dell would sell it, just to make sure the competition didn't have a leg up (as they are now for server platforms). But who's going take on that monumental task? Where's the business model? Who will make money from desktop Linux? Will the geeks with the short attention spans finish the job?
What Linux needs is a proprietory hardware vendor - like say IBM (servers), Apple (desktop), or Sun (???). Apple was smart enough to steal from open source, but with a license that allows them to protect their improvements. Too bad for the GPL. IBM is server only right now. Big blue could do it, but it doesn't want to lose a clone war again. Sun is a loose canon, and should be the best hope for Linux on the desktop, but only if the hardware is competitive on the desktop, which it is not.
God, I'm so tired of hearing the term bias misused in this way (thank you Rush Limbaugh and all your under-educated, piglet followers and wannabes for abusing the term.) Bias isn't the same as a preference.
The default security settings would have to be significantly loosened for any aspect of this exploit to work.
None of the ActiveX controls used by this exploit (XMLHTTP, ADODB.Stream, Scripting.FileSystemObject, WScript.Shell) are marked "safe for scripting". This means the default security settings would not allow these controls to run from any web server -- even 127.0.0.1. You would have to significantly tweak your IE security settings for this weak excuse for an exploit to work.
If an IE user is really paranoid of ActiveX, it's very easy to completely disable it. Unfortunately your browsing experience will look like Mosaic circa 1995.
In the final table, the author chose not to highlight the winning cells if they happened to be for CRT solutions. CRT is a winner in 5 of the 12 catagories: Contrast Ratio, Brightness, Longevity, Burn-In, and Viewing Angle. More than any other solution.
I know that Direct View (and Rear Projection) CRT's days are numbered, but as of today, no other solution provides the same picture quality, at any cost. It will be at least 3 more years before videophiles start making the switch to something better. I'm guessing the winners will be DLP and Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Displays.
No consumer benefits from DRM, so if it makes their life harder they just won't buy.
The public HAS embraced DRM. Look at DVD for one example.
The public is very pragmatic. They just want enough freedom to give them the convenience they want. They want to be able to rent. They want to be able to trade with their friends. They don't want everything locked up in the computer. They want it at their TVs and stereos, no matter where they're in homes, cars, or at work.
they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby
Wafer fabs usually spend a relatively small amount of money in local economies. The bulk of the cost of a new fab is allocated to new equipment, which is mostly imported from the U.S. and Japan.
Still, there are the 1000 local permanent jobs, local jobs for construction of the actual building, money spent by equipment vendors support personnel in hotels, local costs for water and power, and local taxes.
A fun anecdote regarding water consumption: I write software for wet benches. I shipped a bug once to a fab in Phoenix that caused their DI water consumption to skyocket. The fab's DI water plant hit max capacity, and the City of Chandler had problems keeping up with the plant's consumption.
Here in Boise, local philanthropist J.R. Simplot built the city a park with a dozen or so soccer fields. The real purpose behind this park - a place to distribute processed waste water from the Micron plant. Not that I have any problem with that.
Microsoft is a champion of DRM (under various names) to control and monitor users. So I would not put it past them to do what Amnesty International suspect them of doing.
DRM is just a tool. It's actually a tool to protect rights -- copyright. Is the right to own property not a human right? By your twisted reasoning the following groups are to be suspected of human rights violations due to their support of DRM.
DRM is all about producer control using private keys that you, the user, has no access to. Contrast this to Cryptography where strong cryptography can be used to ensure your privacy and that you are in control.
Please explain how DRM would actually be used to violate human rights. It's designed to allow distrubution of material to large groups. Cryptograhy is designed to keep secrets among a very small group -- just the tool that that the bad people actually need.
How about Media Player compatibility. I would prefer to use Media Player to manage my music, including my DRM music. I refuse to install iTunes or any other Apple software. I curse every time I have to view a QuickTime movie - at launch the damn player keeps pestering me to upgrade to Pro, and then modifies my regsitry to run it's helper app on boot!
If you want to sell to Windows users, just give in and dance with the devil. We do.
The problem is that there are tens of thousands of web sites and web applications that utilize plugins to let the browser interact more like an application. This technique is perfectly acceptable within a closed enviornment like a corporate intranet. The extra click would spoil the experience.
IE is not just used for browsing, but also as a deployment tool for corporate applications. The software I write uses ActiveX in IE to display real-time instrumentation graphics on semi-conductor manfacturing equipment.
I chose to use the W3C standard <OBJECT> tag in my product, and now Eolas is holding me hostage with a patent on a W3C standard.
would Microsoft then be in violation of the patent if they provided an option for the user to turn off this prompt?
I completely agree - but that opinion doesn't go over well around here. Is this why you posted anonymously?
I had hoped to convey sarcasm with my quotes around the word "evil".
For my part, I want great movies on HD-DVD, and the studios won't make them if the payments are on the honor system. The copyright holders own the content, they have right to sell it, and most importantly, they have certain rights to control the copying of the material.
You know, Open Office also runs on Windows. You don't have to give up a perfectly good OS because you don't want to pay $400 (not $500 BTW) for MS Office. Some of us take advantage of open source without making a sacrifice to the religion that is Linux.
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MS's versioning is so bizarre that IE5 and IE5.5 are different in more than minor version number, while IE6 is pretty much IE5.5.1
I wouldn't agree with your assesment that IE6 was a minor update to IE5.5. IE5.0 to 5.5 was probably a bigger change (and should have been called 6.0), but there were some big changes, including print preview, privacy enhancements, .NET WinForm hosting, that damn image toolbar, and most importantly, big improvements in CSS.
Just like there are dozens of incompatible versions of Python and Perl right?
As long Sun didn't OS-it under a BSD license I doubt MS would touch it with a very long poll, doubley so now that they are pushing their own CShit
Funny you should mention Python and Perl. These two open source projects have plenty of Microsoft involvement through ActiveState.
Microsoft knows how to use open source when it can benefit, even when the GPL is involved. It's pretty easy to fork a project to add Windows specific features - it just takes funding. Microsoft would surely have done that with Java two years ago if Sun didn't control the license.
Windows is very well documented, both for developers and users. The availble APIs are fully documented in a consistent manner, and Microsoft does an excellent job of making sure future operating systems properly support all documented APIs.
And for the sibling poster who claimed documentation is not free, check out the following links.
I've been developing for Windows for 15 years and have never purchased API documentation. I used to purchase books for examples and ideas, but I haven't done as much of that over the last five years - online sites, both Microsoft sponsored and others, have filled the need.
Umm, you have to either ship a seperate language DLL for that, or you have to ship a new exe (depending on whether the string tables were in it or the dll). A localized version.
No, you don't. Win16 resources supported multiple string tables within the binary, one for each supported code page. One binary can support multiple localizations, with the Control Panel configuration specifying the default code-page for the application. The app could use the API to format dates and times. Many of the important localization tools debuted in Windows 3.1.
You're right about the dialog sizes. Dialog metrics have always been a problem, even for plain old ASCII apps.
In Win16, nothing was Unicode - they used code pages (an IBM standard I think), which did support multi-byte characters.
You also have to worry about "unsupported" characters in some language versions when you're using anything that's not unicode (CString anyone?).
CString has supported Unicode and other multi-byte sets since MFC 3.0 - when NT 3.1 was released. When was that - 1994?
I feel Microsoft finally got their act together for locale support with NT - an OS that was natively Unicode, and then with Office 2000, which properly supports Unicode. As for the defense of Win16 -- I was just rebutting the assertion that string tables are something new for Windows. They're not.
Yea, and in typical volunteer FOSS fashion, of the 79 language teams, 11 have done enough work to be considered useful. Chinese and Japanese, the two most important, are only half translated.
You can bet the 35 Office XP localizations are a bit more polished. That's what profit can do for you.
Every version of Windows since Windows 3.0 supported modification of string resources in the binary. With a resource editor (free from MS) you could add string tables for a code page (language), and it would be utilized if you selected that language in the control panel.
I don't think you get what .NET is about. It's not about the language. It's the many host environments for managed code. It's WinForms. It's ASP.NET. It's supporting legacy libraries (COM and DLLs). It's a rich API.
.NET provides many different types of environments that align with most of the various languages you mention -- C (system programming), Perl (parsing, scripting), Java (beans, JSP, etc), PHP (Web Server glue). And it's langauge agnostic to boot. (C#, VB.NET, J#, Python.NET, ...)
C# can mean a traditional Windows app, an ASP.NET back end, stored procedures in SQL Server, a component, or client side code hosted in IE. I don't think it's been applied to shell scripting ... yet.
Hell, Visual Basic was revolutionary despite the fact that is used BASIC for its syntax.
Voting is by no measure anonymous. When you vote, there is a record that you voted. You sign the register, and your name is called out -- "Jane Doe has voted" they exclaim.
This practice helps prevent fraud. Your vote is secret, but not your identity.
For those of you wanting to give Viacom a piece of your mind, here is the contact information for the CEO
You are a hypocrite and a coward. You publish the private phone number of a CEO you disagree with, but you do it from an account with a hidden email address and no meaningful contact information.
It's the mob that anonymously attacks selected individuals. Today's internet, with its spammers and virus writers, slashdotters and pirates, is a modern day mob. Go ahead and throw rocks at SCO, Microsoft, Gates, Linus, Jobs, or anyone else with the balls stand up and make a difference - good or bad. But please, don't hide behind your electronic mask.
Dave
P.S. This is another reason why internet voting is a bad idea.
Were Linux in a dominant position instead, we might well be seeing similar stories about a few high profile sites struggling with an attempted switch to Windows...
Actually you wouldn't. Windows can run all of the common open-source software.
This is exactly why Windows makes sense. You can run all the open source code you want, and still buy the closed source solutions that you need. Security is managable for any competent administrator, and the actual cost of the OS is insignificant on desktops. Linux can only run a small subset of the available applications.
Scenario 2 is provided by the hardware vendor... not the software vendor. I think the same level of support can be provided for linux in a few years.
Not unless a Linux desktop champion shows up. Due to the GPL, it would have to be a hardware vendor - the GPL voids the value of software improvements.
Do you think HP or Dell is eager to support Linux to your Aunt. If they invested in improving desktop Linux (which needs major work to be as easy-to-use as Windows), the competition would steal their improvements, and then they would have to double up to support two user groups - Linux and Windows. What a deal.
If some one else did the work, HP and Dell would sell it, just to make sure the competition didn't have a leg up (as they are now for server platforms). But who's going take on that monumental task? Where's the business model? Who will make money from desktop Linux? Will the geeks with the short attention spans finish the job?
What Linux needs is a proprietory hardware vendor - like say IBM (servers), Apple (desktop), or Sun (???). Apple was smart enough to steal from open source, but with a license that allows them to protect their improvements. Too bad for the GPL. IBM is server only right now. Big blue could do it, but it doesn't want to lose a clone war again. Sun is a loose canon, and should be the best hope for Linux on the desktop, but only if the hardware is competitive on the desktop, which it is not.
God, I'm so tired of hearing the term bias misused in this way (thank you Rush Limbaugh and all your under-educated, piglet followers and wannabes for abusing the term.) Bias isn't the same as a preference.
From the American Heritage Dictionary
The default security settings would have to be significantly loosened for any aspect of this exploit to work.
None of the ActiveX controls used by this exploit (XMLHTTP, ADODB.Stream, Scripting.FileSystemObject, WScript.Shell) are marked "safe for scripting". This means the default security settings would not allow these controls to run from any web server -- even 127.0.0.1. You would have to significantly tweak your IE security settings for this weak excuse for an exploit to work.
If an IE user is really paranoid of ActiveX, it's very easy to completely disable it. Unfortunately your browsing experience will look like Mosaic circa 1995.
In the final table, the author chose not to highlight the winning cells if they happened to be for CRT solutions. CRT is a winner in 5 of the 12 catagories: Contrast Ratio, Brightness, Longevity, Burn-In, and Viewing Angle. More than any other solution.
I know that Direct View (and Rear Projection) CRT's days are numbered, but as of today, no other solution provides the same picture quality, at any cost. It will be at least 3 more years before videophiles start making the switch to something better. I'm guessing the winners will be DLP and Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Displays.
No consumer benefits from DRM, so if it makes their life harder they just won't buy.
The public HAS embraced DRM. Look at DVD for one example.
The public is very pragmatic. They just want enough freedom to give them the convenience they want. They want to be able to rent. They want to be able to trade with their friends. They don't want everything locked up in the computer. They want it at their TVs and stereos, no matter where they're in homes, cars, or at work.
Most of that 2 billion is spent on equipment imported from the U.S. and Japan.
they are probably figuring that the plant will make suppliers and customers of AMD move nearby
Wafer fabs usually spend a relatively small amount of money in local economies. The bulk of the cost of a new fab is allocated to new equipment, which is mostly imported from the U.S. and Japan.
Still, there are the 1000 local permanent jobs, local jobs for construction of the actual building, money spent by equipment vendors support personnel in hotels, local costs for water and power, and local taxes.
A fun anecdote regarding water consumption: I write software for wet benches. I shipped a bug once to a fab in Phoenix that caused their DI water consumption to skyocket. The fab's DI water plant hit max capacity, and the City of Chandler had problems keeping up with the plant's consumption.
Here in Boise, local philanthropist J.R. Simplot built the city a park with a dozen or so soccer fields. The real purpose behind this park - a place to distribute processed waste water from the Micron plant. Not that I have any problem with that.
Microsoft is a champion of DRM (under various names) to control and monitor users. So I would not put it past them to do what Amnesty International suspect them of doing.
DRM is just a tool. It's actually a tool to protect rights -- copyright. Is the right to own property not a human right? By your twisted reasoning the following groups are to be suspected of human rights violations due to their support of DRM.
DRM is all about producer control using private keys that you, the user, has no access to. Contrast this to Cryptography where strong cryptography can be used to ensure your privacy and that you are in control.
Please explain how DRM would actually be used to violate human rights. It's designed to allow distrubution of material to large groups. Cryptograhy is designed to keep secrets among a very small group -- just the tool that that the bad people actually need.
How about Media Player compatibility. I would prefer to use Media Player to manage my music, including my DRM music. I refuse to install iTunes or any other Apple software. I curse every time I have to view a QuickTime movie - at launch the damn player keeps pestering me to upgrade to Pro, and then modifies my regsitry to run it's helper app on boot!
If you want to sell to Windows users, just give in and dance with the devil. We do.
The problem is that there are tens of thousands of web sites and web applications that utilize plugins to let the browser interact more like an application. This technique is perfectly acceptable within a closed enviornment like a corporate intranet. The extra click would spoil the experience.
IE is not just used for browsing, but also as a deployment tool for corporate applications. The software I write uses ActiveX in IE to display real-time instrumentation graphics on semi-conductor manfacturing equipment.
I chose to use the W3C standard <OBJECT> tag in my product, and now Eolas is holding me hostage with a patent on a W3C standard.
would Microsoft then be in violation of the patent if they provided an option for the user to turn off this prompt?
Yes. That would still infringe.
I completely agree - but that opinion doesn't go over well around here. Is this why you posted anonymously?
I had hoped to convey sarcasm with my quotes around the word "evil".
For my part, I want great movies on HD-DVD, and the studios won't make them if the payments are on the honor system. The copyright holders own the content, they have right to sell it, and most importantly, they have certain rights to control the copying of the material.
Now watch my karma plummet.
As a rule Apple shuns DRM (digital rights management).
Through iTunes Music Store, Apple has created the second largest distrubtion channel of DRM protected content - DVD being the largest.
Apple is leveraging DRM directly to make money from the masses, just like those "evil" studios and record companies.
Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) really are a good solution for your problem.
If you're doing Win32, but really want 64-bit, then consider Win64. There are several OEMs providing it.
If your response is "can't afford it", then your .5 Terabyte database project is probably underfunded and likely to fail.
You know, Open Office also runs on Windows. You don't have to give up a perfectly good OS because you don't want to pay $400 (not $500 BTW) for MS Office. Some of us take advantage of open source without making a sacrifice to the religion that is Linux.
Media Player (and every service using it for DRM)also supports CD burns, and therefore can support the same "unprotected" work around via CD ripping.
iTunes only supports iPod as a portable player. Media Player supports EVERYTHING ELSE.
Microsoft is right.