So why are we blaming Microsoft for the iDrive? MS wrote the Windows CE OS that powers it, but BMW developed the iDrive interface. Why does that make it Microsoft's fault?
Not that I'm trying to defend MS, just if you are going to attack MS, do it from a rational reason, not a irrational one. Tell me about why Windows CE makes it bad (MS's fault), not why iDrive is bad (BMW's fault) before telling me it sucks because it uses MS.
(I do have a history of defending Microsoft by trashing irrational arguments, but mainly because I would prefer to see more intelligent discussion of why they suck and what they need to do better rather than knee-jerk anti-MS zealotry.)
You talk to a lawyer, you get an opportunity to find out what kind of things you need to do to keep yourself legal. Reverse engineering is legal if done in some ways, illegal if done in others. The lawyer can inform you as to what standards you have to maintain in order to keep your reverse engineering legal. Since different standards will apply in different situations, it isn't just a list that could be posted on a web site somewhere -- it is a list tailored to what you are trying to do.
Where I work, a product "A" reused component "B" which we licensed from a vendor for product A. When we wanted to extend product A and widen its distribution, the original license didn't apply. In negotiations with the vendor, we decided that it would be more cost effective to create our own version of component B instead of license it.
As a result, everyone on our team has a "clean" or "dirty" status (I'm dirty): everyone who has every used product A or component B is dirty. Only clean people can work on our internal version of the component. There are all kinds of restrictions about what we can and cannot do if we are clean/dirty. And some questions cannot be asked/answered. All of this had to be figured out by lawyers. To try otherwise is just asking for a lawsuit.
I'm a bit confused about the tone of your message -- it seems like you feel defensive or threatened by the fact that FreeBSD and other OSes have had this capability for a while. No need to feel that way, especially about BSD -- the BSD community has in general not tried to one-up Linux. A lot of beneficial code sharing goes both ways.
As far as what you actually said, I think we have a chicken-and-egg fallacy here that actually seems to limit the scope of Linux. You say that 0% of Linux's intended users need 60 TB (or <2 TB). But that's just it -- as long as Linux doesn't support 60 TB files, none of the people who need 60 TB files will use Linux. Who is doing the intending here? Is there some group that decides what are "intended" markets for Linux? No, I see people applauded all the time for using Linux in random and completely unintended uses, and it is amazing how many different ways Linux can be used.
So what are you trying to say anyway -- that it is ok that Linux isn't as good as FreeBSD/OS X because anybody who uses Linux is not going to be worried about big-time stuff anyway? Yuk.
I think this is a great patch -- it fixes a problem that didn't need to be there and that prevented Linux from entering a fairly important niche. This opens up another group of "intended" users.
Although this comment may not have been couched in the gentlest of terms, I wouldn't have modded it as a troll. He's not looking to tempt people into a fake argument -- this is an actual issue. And apparently other forums haven't worked well.
It *was* probably offtopic, except that now the page is actually widened, making it an actual issue for this discussion.
I, for one, am somewhat annoyed by the page widening bug. It has been a known issue for a long time, and it really screws up the forum for a lot of readers.
So what if it is a bug in IE? There are much more significant rendering flaws in Netscape 4.x, yet I have to work around them when I design web pages to make sure that the pages are readable. This is exactly what gets decried daily about Microsoft -- I see everybody ripping on them because their products don't always interoperate properly with other products. But Microsoft fixed its websites to work with non-IE browsers once the issue was raised. Slashdot, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care about interoperating with the evil browser that accounts for most web surfing done nowadays.
I guess you have to decide: do you support IE or not? If not, that's fine -- everybody who uses IE will either find another browser just to read Slashdot, or more likely just go away. At that point, the breadth of discussion will probably drop dramatically, and the Slashdot community will fit the one-sided elitist Linux zealot stereotype even better (diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of any forum). So I think it is wise to support IE.
So if you support IE, please work around the known issues that cause significant problems. You know what they are. They can be fixed. So fix them!
Thanks. I look forward to a fix soon. Slashdot is (usually) awesome. And there is nothing wrong with Linux zealots -- Linux is a great OS, it deserves to have zealots standing up for it, and I run it on my personal laptop. (I still hold the opinion that Microsoft is not inherently evil, but that is a discussion for another time...)
Yep. And from what I know, it is quite standard to rebut evidence. And it is normal to have a reasonable amount of time to prepare the rebuttal. If the characteristics of the evidence are unknown and vaguely presented, it would be logical to conclude that Microsoft would not commit to any particular deadline for the preparation of the rebuttal until it knew what it was dealing with... Hence an indefinite amount of time required for preparation of the rebuttal.
Of course, it might have been quite different. Having just a snippet out of the news to work with leads to faulty analysis. You are then free to interpret the snippet however you want...
Nobody is stopping anybody from replacing Microsoft's help rendering engine. But nobody has come forward to do so. Yet everybody wants to force Microsoft to remove its rendering engine. If you interpret that as me saying the sky is falling, then I suppose it is. So we force Microsoft to use a different rendering engine? Why?
The people that want Microsoft to remove IE want them to remove ALL OF IT, yet lots of other stuff depends on it. If MS could get away with just removing iexplore.exe, then I wouldn't be so sympathetic. But you don't "remove" IE by removing iexplore.exe. You remove IE by removing it, and then answering "YES" to all of the "This file seems to still be needed. Remove anyway?" prompts. Then for some reason stuff doesn't seem to work anymore. Weird.
As far as Netscape taking IE's place -- that would be nice. But it doesn't. Netscape isn't a component that can be embedded into a help window. IE is. So is the court supposed to tell Microsoft "now use Netscape in your help browser."? They would need to change Netscape to do that -- which they can't do, since Netscape isn't their code. (Mozilla is a different matter, since it is open source, but you said Netscape...) If not Netscape, they still need a rendering engine. But they have a rendering engine. Are they just not allowed to use it?
Perhaps Microsoft could say "There, we removed IE. Of course, to do so, we had to replace it with this rendering engine for our HTML help and explorer panes; what's that? Why, of course it renders HTML, but it isn't a browser."
MS does have a way to remove shared libraries. The Add/Remove control panel allows you to add and remove Windows Components. Of course, it isn't designed to dig into core functionality... It is set up so that the basic OS is always there. That is what the designers decided was the core functionality that would be available to any Windows PC.
This way, they can support an API. You may have heard of this term before. It means that a programmer targeting the Windows platform can depend on certain DLLs being present. Additional DLLs might need to be redistributed, but the base DLLs to support the API are present unless the user has hacked his or her machine. That is why Windows doesn't come with "uninstall user32.dll" functionality, or even "uninstall debughlp.dll" for that matter.
When I sit down at my FreeBSD box, or anyone else's Linux machine I expect vi to be there. Of course, this gives vi a competetive advantage over Emacs. So we'd better remove it... Of course, now vipw, crontab -e, etc. doesn't work. Oh no! I suppose it is a bad example, since a properly written vipw will use the configured editor.
Removing sh would cause some problems, wouldn't it? Well, that just goes to show that UNIX has a faulty, non-modular design (tongue in cheek).
There are certain components that are somewhat deeply embedded into the OS. Certainly you can remove them. But there are always consequences.
PicoBSD: 1.44 MB minumum distro. Does it have Perl? No. Is a normal BSD user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage.
Embedded XP: 16 MB minimum distro (from what I've heard). Does it have Explorer? I don't think so. Is a normal XP user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage.
Standard XP minus Internet Explorer components: Maybe a few megs smaller than the normal distro size. HTML help doesn't work, no built-in all-purpose file viewer, and many programs that depend on MSHTML don't work. Is a normal XP user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage. But that is what the average Slashdot reader seems to want to see...
For my use, multiple CPUs on a machine destined for Virtual PC-ing is almost a requirement. Although the VPC will basically be maxing out the once CPU, it has a few background threads running as well. Giving these threads a separate CPU to run on really improves responsiveness and reduces "hang" time (every few seconds, the VPC seems to hang for a few seconds, then comes back to life). In addition, if you plan to do stuff on the host OS while the virtual OS is going, the second CPU will give the host OS enough cycles to perform well even while the first CPU is somewhat busy maintaining the hardware state of the VPC.
You are right. And it is this modularity, and the code reuse that comes with it, that is the clincher. So many pieces now depend on the "browser" pieces (actually, the browser is just a tiny shell on a COM component). All kinds of pieces now depend on the same COM component.
If MS is forced to remove the browser, it would be like telling a farmer "you may no longer use this tractor. Instead, you need 1 puller, 1 pusher, 1 lifter, 1 portable engine (for PTO use),...". Microsoft has reused the browser components for parsing, rendering, and graphics throughout the os.
Well written, and good point. However, the fact remains that the original post's analogy was extremely oversimplified and was pure rhetoric. Your rebuttal also was largely rhetoric, but had enough substance to stand on its own. Good for you. And I agree with some of your points.
The problem is that the second post is absolutely right. There has been almost nothing but oversimplification, rhetoric, and overzealousness in this forum (Slashdot) with regard to Microsoft for a long time. Few are actually discussing the issue in a reasonable, rational way. I just see "mee two" and "meee threee" posts.
I think the issue is much more complicated than most of these postings make them out to be. Does anyone here have any experience with Embedded XP? Does anyone here know which components in Windows depend on MSHTML.dll, and what it would do if that were removed? These are actually good things to discuss, IMHO. But I agree with the second post in that simply making grand analogies doesn't do anybody any good.
I don't see why showing XP would have been a "good" thing. What kind of good do you mean?
Good for the states' case? I doubt it. Embedded XP is definitely not a good OS for general purpose consumer computing. It is very true that Microsoft can remove the browser from its OS, and Embedded XP proves this. It is also true that doing so would cut out some important features that consumers and developers have come to expect, and Embedded XP also proves this.
Good for Microsoft's case? I don't know, but possibly. Microsoft could (fairly) show how much important functionality was indirectly dependent on the browser, or (unfairly) show how much was gone because it was Embedded XP.
Good for Microsoft? Maybe Embedded XP would get some press!
It's more than the truth. It is standard practice. The states pay their lawyers to come up with attacks on Microsoft. Then Microsoft pays their lawyers to come up with a defense.
(And as it seems to be here on SlashDot, anything the states say to attack Microsoft is a good move, and anything Microsoft does to defend itself is a dirty trick...)
AFAIK MS never designed or wanted Embedded XP to be in general consumer PCs. That is why the demonstration makes so little sense to me. And that is why Embedded XP doesn't have add/remove program functionality -- it is designed for turnkey systems that get rolled out for a single purpose.
And computer appliances aren't such a bad idea, just a bad idea for you and me. I would hate to have a computer that I couldn't mess around with. On the other hand, my mom would love the same computer for the fact that she can't screw it up.
This is a really good point. Microsoft did a decent job of making many of its components interoperable and reusable, and took advantage of it. Why support 3 separate rendering/browsing engines (help, file explorer, internet explorer) when they have made a modular component that can do it all?
HTML help will be broken if MS really and truly removes IE from Windows. Netscape won't take IE's place in HTML help.
(Bad example:) Suppose UNIX were forced to remove TROFF/NROFF because of some type of DTP monopoly or something. Although this gives some opportunity for other DTP software, it breaks all existing MAN pages.
I personally see Microsoft's point. IE is being used all over the OS, not just in browsers. Take away IE, and you've broken all kinds of other good features, not just the browser.
Although this would be very bad for Microsoft, I don't see how it would be good for anybody else.
PocketPC devices? Probably (though I have no statistics).
WINCE device? Almost definitely not. Again, I have no statistics, but there are a lot of uses for WINCE that are not PDA related.
WINCE is an operating system, currently based on the WinCE 4.0 kernel. PocketPC is a shell and some additional code on top of a modified WinCE 3.0 kernel.
WinCE is used and is targeted to be used all over the place -- DreamCast, Industrial automation, routers, mp3 players, dvd players, etc. Basically, a generic embedded OS.
The first place that comes to mind is Visual Studio. In VC6 IDE, the "Output" window (where trace messages, build output, etc. appear), you select which type of output appears with a tab. I suppose it isn't a palette... But look at the tools palette in VB or Visual Interdev. Or the shortcuts in Outlook. Visual Studio 7 IDE uses these everywhere.
So why didn't Adobe sue Microsoft? Because Microsoft could afford to fight them in court. Macromedia is a somewhat smaller company, so it is a little bit easier to beat them into submission.
All in all, this just sucks. It doesn't matter how much we like or don't like Flash. What really matters is whether the "Tabbed Palette" is patentable...
This is why I work for a large company instead of a fun startup -- I don't make as much of a difference, but at least my company can't be thrown around by the big guys for no good reason, so I have a small amount of job stability.
Most of it could have been ok, but the explosion that occurs with template expansion forced really tiny variable names. Most STL implementation code could be at least somewhat readable if it only had some real variable names and a few comments. As it is, I stare at it until inspiration comes (or I run out of Caffeine and fall asleep, whichever comes first).
Grin. I guessed as much, which is why I said "seem." The tone of the post seemed to indicate that it was perfectly compliant, and I just wanted to clarify the point.
And it won't have to be pirate-proof. Copyright, after all, has always been a leaky vessel. Publishers have managed to tolerate the sharing, swapping, reselling, and lending of books. The software industry figures it loses $12 billion a year to piracy, but it hasn't called for anything like the sweeping controls Hollywood seeks. The recording industry, on the other hand, tried to develop an elaborate technological security regime; it proved unenforceable. "We lost two years," says Eric Alben, chief lobbyist for RealNetworks, which supplies streaming software to the recording industry. "And in the interim, pirated music proliferated." When the major record labels finally launched their own online services, MusicNet and Pressplay, they imposed so many restrictions that few customers have signed up.
I agree with the media industry in some areas: Yes, I believe in purchasing the CDs that I listen to (although I promptly rip them and then never use the CDs again). Yes, even the middle-man between the artist and the consumer deserves to make a buck or two. But just because some people are stealing doesn't mean they have the right to invade everyone's life. Every other industry seems to be able to come up with adequate (not perfect, but good enough) methods of reducing the impact of theft. But the recording industry goes crying to Congress when they start seeing a bit of piracy.
There are changes coming, and I really hope the recording industry figures out a good way to take advantage of it without screwing up everyone else.
VC7.1 is not perfectly compliant, as you seem to assume. However, it is a lot better than any of the previous versions, and it is basically as compliant as I will ever need it to be.
Which leaves three questions: Why did it take so long? What is now there? What is still missing? Why is it still missing?
Short version of the answers:
Priorities, moving-target standards, and a need to avoid breaking legacy code too quickly.
Partial specialization works (YAY!), STL is now completely implemented (YAY!), and VC now passes about 98% (IIRC) of some standard suite whose name I don't know.
"throws" specifications for functions are still pretty much ignored. Some other stuff that means nothing to me isn't there (which is why I can't name the specific features that aren't there -- they didn't mean anything to me).
Why are they still not compliant? Because a lot of people are like me (ignorant?) and would prefer that MS spends more time on other stuff besides esoteric standards compliance features that I will NEVER use.
Longer (rambling?) answer: I wrote one, but decided it was stupid. So just take the short answer.
And yes, there were four questions, not three. So I was never that good at math; sue me!
All opinions and statements given in this post are those of ME and in no way reflect the opinions of my employer or my mom's dog. The "facts" might even be wrong. So take this all with the appropriate quantity of sodium chloride.Thanks.
They've been doing this for a year or more in Los Angeles. In some of the high-crime areas, car theft for joy-ride purposes is incredibly high. They leave the car unlocked with the key on the dash. Some nights they get 10 separate "bites."
I spent a lot of time in these areas, and when I saw this on one of those "COPS" type shows, I just laughed. I have often walked by a car in those neighborhoods one day, and the next day the same car in the same place was burnt to a crisp (Molotov cocktail? I honestly don't know.) There are some scary places in this world, many of them in Los Angeles and D.C., and I am very thankful I don't live there.
I think that would definitely be the idea. I'm not talking about "Motion-JPEG-2000." That is already part of the standard. And I didn't read too deeply into it, but if there isn't already a separate method specified for applying JP2 to video, taking the good ideas from MPEG4 and JP2 together, I'm sure it will be developed soon enough.
Slashdot Mirror
So why are we blaming Microsoft for the iDrive? MS wrote the Windows CE OS that powers it, but BMW developed the iDrive interface. Why does that make it Microsoft's fault?
Not that I'm trying to defend MS, just if you are going to attack MS, do it from a rational reason, not a irrational one. Tell me about why Windows CE makes it bad (MS's fault), not why iDrive is bad (BMW's fault) before telling me it sucks because it uses MS.
(I do have a history of defending Microsoft by trashing irrational arguments, but mainly because I would prefer to see more intelligent discussion of why they suck and what they need to do better rather than knee-jerk anti-MS zealotry.)
You talk to a lawyer, you get an opportunity to find out what kind of things you need to do to keep yourself legal. Reverse engineering is legal if done in some ways, illegal if done in others. The lawyer can inform you as to what standards you have to maintain in order to keep your reverse engineering legal. Since different standards will apply in different situations, it isn't just a list that could be posted on a web site somewhere -- it is a list tailored to what you are trying to do.
Where I work, a product "A" reused component "B" which we licensed from a vendor for product A. When we wanted to extend product A and widen its distribution, the original license didn't apply. In negotiations with the vendor, we decided that it would be more cost effective to create our own version of component B instead of license it.
As a result, everyone on our team has a "clean" or "dirty" status (I'm dirty): everyone who has every used product A or component B is dirty. Only clean people can work on our internal version of the component. There are all kinds of restrictions about what we can and cannot do if we are clean/dirty. And some questions cannot be asked/answered. All of this had to be figured out by lawyers. To try otherwise is just asking for a lawsuit.
I'm a bit confused about the tone of your message -- it seems like you feel defensive or threatened by the fact that FreeBSD and other OSes have had this capability for a while. No need to feel that way, especially about BSD -- the BSD community has in general not tried to one-up Linux. A lot of beneficial code sharing goes both ways.
As far as what you actually said, I think we have a chicken-and-egg fallacy here that actually seems to limit the scope of Linux. You say that 0% of Linux's intended users need 60 TB (or <2 TB). But that's just it -- as long as Linux doesn't support 60 TB files, none of the people who need 60 TB files will use Linux. Who is doing the intending here? Is there some group that decides what are "intended" markets for Linux? No, I see people applauded all the time for using Linux in random and completely unintended uses, and it is amazing how many different ways Linux can be used.
So what are you trying to say anyway -- that it is ok that Linux isn't as good as FreeBSD/OS X because anybody who uses Linux is not going to be worried about big-time stuff anyway? Yuk.
I think this is a great patch -- it fixes a problem that didn't need to be there and that prevented Linux from entering a fairly important niche. This opens up another group of "intended" users.
Although this comment may not have been couched in the gentlest of terms, I wouldn't have modded it as a troll. He's not looking to tempt people into a fake argument -- this is an actual issue. And apparently other forums haven't worked well.
It *was* probably offtopic, except that now the page is actually widened, making it an actual issue for this discussion.
I, for one, am somewhat annoyed by the page widening bug. It has been a known issue for a long time, and it really screws up the forum for a lot of readers.
So what if it is a bug in IE? There are much more significant rendering flaws in Netscape 4.x, yet I have to work around them when I design web pages to make sure that the pages are readable. This is exactly what gets decried daily about Microsoft -- I see everybody ripping on them because their products don't always interoperate properly with other products. But Microsoft fixed its websites to work with non-IE browsers once the issue was raised. Slashdot, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care about interoperating with the evil browser that accounts for most web surfing done nowadays.
I guess you have to decide: do you support IE or not? If not, that's fine -- everybody who uses IE will either find another browser just to read Slashdot, or more likely just go away. At that point, the breadth of discussion will probably drop dramatically, and the Slashdot community will fit the one-sided elitist Linux zealot stereotype even better (diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of any forum). So I think it is wise to support IE.
So if you support IE, please work around the known issues that cause significant problems. You know what they are. They can be fixed. So fix them!
Thanks. I look forward to a fix soon. Slashdot is (usually) awesome. And there is nothing wrong with Linux zealots -- Linux is a great OS, it deserves to have zealots standing up for it, and I run it on my personal laptop. (I still hold the opinion that Microsoft is not inherently evil, but that is a discussion for another time...)
These aren't the davs you're looking for...
[sorry, couldn't resist.]
Yep. And from what I know, it is quite standard to rebut evidence. And it is normal to have a reasonable amount of time to prepare the rebuttal. If the characteristics of the evidence are unknown and vaguely presented, it would be logical to conclude that Microsoft would not commit to any particular deadline for the preparation of the rebuttal until it knew what it was dealing with... Hence an indefinite amount of time required for preparation of the rebuttal.
Of course, it might have been quite different. Having just a snippet out of the news to work with leads to faulty analysis. You are then free to interpret the snippet however you want...
Very good point. I knew I was missing something. :)
Nobody is stopping anybody from replacing Microsoft's help rendering engine. But nobody has come forward to do so. Yet everybody wants to force Microsoft to remove its rendering engine. If you interpret that as me saying the sky is falling, then I suppose it is. So we force Microsoft to use a different rendering engine? Why?
The people that want Microsoft to remove IE want them to remove ALL OF IT, yet lots of other stuff depends on it. If MS could get away with just removing iexplore.exe, then I wouldn't be so sympathetic. But you don't "remove" IE by removing iexplore.exe. You remove IE by removing it, and then answering "YES" to all of the "This file seems to still be needed. Remove anyway?" prompts. Then for some reason stuff doesn't seem to work anymore. Weird.
As far as Netscape taking IE's place -- that would be nice. But it doesn't. Netscape isn't a component that can be embedded into a help window. IE is. So is the court supposed to tell Microsoft "now use Netscape in your help browser."? They would need to change Netscape to do that -- which they can't do, since Netscape isn't their code. (Mozilla is a different matter, since it is open source, but you said Netscape...) If not Netscape, they still need a rendering engine. But they have a rendering engine. Are they just not allowed to use it?
Perhaps Microsoft could say "There, we removed IE. Of course, to do so, we had to replace it with this rendering engine for our HTML help and explorer panes; what's that? Why, of course it renders HTML, but it isn't a browser."
MS does have a way to remove shared libraries. The Add/Remove control panel allows you to add and remove Windows Components. Of course, it isn't designed to dig into core functionality... It is set up so that the basic OS is always there. That is what the designers decided was the core functionality that would be available to any Windows PC.
This way, they can support an API. You may have heard of this term before. It means that a programmer targeting the Windows platform can depend on certain DLLs being present. Additional DLLs might need to be redistributed, but the base DLLs to support the API are present unless the user has hacked his or her machine. That is why Windows doesn't come with "uninstall user32.dll" functionality, or even "uninstall debughlp.dll" for that matter.
When I sit down at my FreeBSD box, or anyone else's Linux machine I expect vi to be there. Of course, this gives vi a competetive advantage over Emacs. So we'd better remove it... Of course, now vipw, crontab -e, etc. doesn't work. Oh no! I suppose it is a bad example, since a properly written vipw will use the configured editor.
Removing sh would cause some problems, wouldn't it? Well, that just goes to show that UNIX has a faulty, non-modular design (tongue in cheek).
There are certain components that are somewhat deeply embedded into the OS. Certainly you can remove them. But there are always consequences.
PicoBSD: 1.44 MB minumum distro. Does it have Perl? No. Is a normal BSD user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage.
Embedded XP: 16 MB minimum distro (from what I've heard). Does it have Explorer? I don't think so. Is a normal XP user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage.
Standard XP minus Internet Explorer components: Maybe a few megs smaller than the normal distro size. HTML help doesn't work, no built-in all-purpose file viewer, and many programs that depend on MSHTML don't work. Is a normal XP user going to be happy with it? Not for general usage. But that is what the average Slashdot reader seems to want to see...
For my use, multiple CPUs on a machine destined for Virtual PC-ing is almost a requirement. Although the VPC will basically be maxing out the once CPU, it has a few background threads running as well. Giving these threads a separate CPU to run on really improves responsiveness and reduces "hang" time (every few seconds, the VPC seems to hang for a few seconds, then comes back to life). In addition, if you plan to do stuff on the host OS while the virtual OS is going, the second CPU will give the host OS enough cycles to perform well even while the first CPU is somewhat busy maintaining the hardware state of the VPC.
You are right. And it is this modularity, and the code reuse that comes with it, that is the clincher. So many pieces now depend on the "browser" pieces (actually, the browser is just a tiny shell on a COM component). All kinds of pieces now depend on the same COM component.
If MS is forced to remove the browser, it would be like telling a farmer "you may no longer use this tractor. Instead, you need 1 puller, 1 pusher, 1 lifter, 1 portable engine (for PTO use),...". Microsoft has reused the browser components for parsing, rendering, and graphics throughout the os.
Well written, and good point. However, the fact remains that the original post's analogy was extremely oversimplified and was pure rhetoric. Your rebuttal also was largely rhetoric, but had enough substance to stand on its own. Good for you. And I agree with some of your points.
The problem is that the second post is absolutely right. There has been almost nothing but oversimplification, rhetoric, and overzealousness in this forum (Slashdot) with regard to Microsoft for a long time. Few are actually discussing the issue in a reasonable, rational way. I just see "mee two" and "meee threee" posts.
I think the issue is much more complicated than most of these postings make them out to be. Does anyone here have any experience with Embedded XP? Does anyone here know which components in Windows depend on MSHTML.dll, and what it would do if that were removed? These are actually good things to discuss, IMHO. But I agree with the second post in that simply making grand analogies doesn't do anybody any good.
I don't see why showing XP would have been a "good" thing. What kind of good do you mean?
Good for the states' case? I doubt it. Embedded XP is definitely not a good OS for general purpose consumer computing. It is very true that Microsoft can remove the browser from its OS, and Embedded XP proves this. It is also true that doing so would cut out some important features that consumers and developers have come to expect, and Embedded XP also proves this.
Good for Microsoft's case? I don't know, but possibly. Microsoft could (fairly) show how much important functionality was indirectly dependent on the browser, or (unfairly) show how much was gone because it was Embedded XP.
Good for Microsoft? Maybe Embedded XP would get some press!
Good for whom? Good in what sense?
It's more than the truth. It is standard practice. The states pay their lawyers to come up with attacks on Microsoft. Then Microsoft pays their lawyers to come up with a defense.
(And as it seems to be here on SlashDot, anything the states say to attack Microsoft is a good move, and anything Microsoft does to defend itself is a dirty trick...)
AFAIK MS never designed or wanted Embedded XP to be in general consumer PCs. That is why the demonstration makes so little sense to me. And that is why Embedded XP doesn't have add/remove program functionality -- it is designed for turnkey systems that get rolled out for a single purpose.
And computer appliances aren't such a bad idea, just a bad idea for you and me. I would hate to have a computer that I couldn't mess around with. On the other hand, my mom would love the same computer for the fact that she can't screw it up.
This is a really good point. Microsoft did a decent job of making many of its components interoperable and reusable, and took advantage of it. Why support 3 separate rendering/browsing engines (help, file explorer, internet explorer) when they have made a modular component that can do it all?
HTML help will be broken if MS really and truly removes IE from Windows. Netscape won't take IE's place in HTML help.
(Bad example:) Suppose UNIX were forced to remove TROFF/NROFF because of some type of DTP monopoly or something. Although this gives some opportunity for other DTP software, it breaks all existing MAN pages.
I personally see Microsoft's point. IE is being used all over the OS, not just in browsers. Take away IE, and you've broken all kinds of other good features, not just the browser.
Although this would be very bad for Microsoft, I don't see how it would be good for anybody else.
PocketPC devices? Probably (though I have no statistics).
WINCE device? Almost definitely not. Again, I have no statistics, but there are a lot of uses for WINCE that are not PDA related.
WINCE is an operating system, currently based on the WinCE 4.0 kernel. PocketPC is a shell and some additional code on top of a modified WinCE 3.0 kernel.
WinCE is used and is targeted to be used all over the place -- DreamCast, Industrial automation, routers, mp3 players, dvd players, etc. Basically, a generic embedded OS.
Good for you. Arguments based on reasons and evidence, not zeal and enthusiasm.
The first place that comes to mind is Visual Studio. In VC6 IDE, the "Output" window (where trace messages, build output, etc. appear), you select which type of output appears with a tab. I suppose it isn't a palette... But look at the tools palette in VB or Visual Interdev. Or the shortcuts in Outlook. Visual Studio 7 IDE uses these everywhere.
So why didn't Adobe sue Microsoft? Because Microsoft could afford to fight them in court. Macromedia is a somewhat smaller company, so it is a little bit easier to beat them into submission.
All in all, this just sucks. It doesn't matter how much we like or don't like Flash. What really matters is whether the "Tabbed Palette" is patentable...
This is why I work for a large company instead of a fun startup -- I don't make as much of a difference, but at least my company can't be thrown around by the big guys for no good reason, so I have a small amount of job stability.
Most of it could have been ok, but the explosion that occurs with template expansion forced really tiny variable names. Most STL implementation code could be at least somewhat readable if it only had some real variable names and a few comments. As it is, I stare at it until inspiration comes (or I run out of Caffeine and fall asleep, whichever comes first).
Grin. I guessed as much, which is why I said "seem." The tone of the post seemed to indicate that it was perfectly compliant, and I just wanted to clarify the point.
Anyway, it's all good.
My favorite part:
And it won't have to be pirate-proof. Copyright, after all, has always been a leaky vessel. Publishers have managed to tolerate the sharing, swapping, reselling, and lending of books. The software industry figures it loses $12 billion a year to piracy, but it hasn't called for anything like the sweeping controls Hollywood seeks. The recording industry, on the other hand, tried to develop an elaborate technological security regime; it proved unenforceable. "We lost two years," says Eric Alben, chief lobbyist for RealNetworks, which supplies streaming software to the recording industry. "And in the interim, pirated music proliferated." When the major record labels finally launched their own online services, MusicNet and Pressplay, they imposed so many restrictions that few customers have signed up.
I agree with the media industry in some areas: Yes, I believe in purchasing the CDs that I listen to (although I promptly rip them and then never use the CDs again). Yes, even the middle-man between the artist and the consumer deserves to make a buck or two. But just because some people are stealing doesn't mean they have the right to invade everyone's life. Every other industry seems to be able to come up with adequate (not perfect, but good enough) methods of reducing the impact of theft. But the recording industry goes crying to Congress when they start seeing a bit of piracy.
There are changes coming, and I really hope the recording industry figures out a good way to take advantage of it without screwing up everyone else.
VC7.1 is not perfectly compliant, as you seem to assume. However, it is a lot better than any of the previous versions, and it is basically as compliant as I will ever need it to be.
Which leaves three questions: Why did it take so long? What is now there? What is still missing? Why is it still missing?
Short version of the answers:
Priorities, moving-target standards, and a need to avoid breaking legacy code too quickly.
Partial specialization works (YAY!), STL is now completely implemented (YAY!), and VC now passes about 98% (IIRC) of some standard suite whose name I don't know.
"throws" specifications for functions are still pretty much ignored. Some other stuff that means nothing to me isn't there (which is why I can't name the specific features that aren't there -- they didn't mean anything to me).
Why are they still not compliant? Because a lot of people are like me (ignorant?) and would prefer that MS spends more time on other stuff besides esoteric standards compliance features that I will NEVER use.
Longer (rambling?) answer: I wrote one, but decided it was stupid. So just take the short answer.
And yes, there were four questions, not three. So I was never that good at math; sue me!
All opinions and statements given in this post are those of ME and in no way reflect the opinions of my employer or my mom's dog. The "facts" might even be wrong. So take this all with the appropriate quantity of sodium chloride.Thanks.
They've been doing this for a year or more in Los Angeles. In some of the high-crime areas, car theft for joy-ride purposes is incredibly high. They leave the car unlocked with the key on the dash. Some nights they get 10 separate "bites."
I spent a lot of time in these areas, and when I saw this on one of those "COPS" type shows, I just laughed. I have often walked by a car in those neighborhoods one day, and the next day the same car in the same place was burnt to a crisp (Molotov cocktail? I honestly don't know.) There are some scary places in this world, many of them in Los Angeles and D.C., and I am very thankful I don't live there.
Redirect STDERR:
mycommand 2> errors.txt
Redirect both:
mycommand 1> allout.txt 2>&1
TEE:
[download a version of tee]
mycommand | tee asdf.txt
No, tee isn't included. But it isn't hard to find.
I think that would definitely be the idea. I'm not talking about "Motion-JPEG-2000." That is already part of the standard. And I didn't read too deeply into it, but if there isn't already a separate method specified for applying JP2 to video, taking the good ideas from MPEG4 and JP2 together, I'm sure it will be developed soon enough.