The problem is that many Microsoft programs (such as Windows, MSIE, Office, etc.) blindly trust certain kinds of ActiveX controls, allowing them to install and run, without prompting, even if you have ActiveX "disabled" in MSIE.
Uh, presuming it isn't downloading these controls of the internet, why would that be a problem? It's as much a problem as a unix application going out and finding "rm -rf" "ls" etc and using them. Only difference is that ActiveX, based on COM is actually designed for component reuse rather than manually running applications - but it's the same idea. The application is making use of binary data on your system. Windows would kind of be useless if it didn't use ActiveX controls (why do people think ActiveX should be disabled in windows? windows WOULD NOT RUN properly). MSIE usually(depends on settings) warns you of controls, and Office etc don't download controls off the internet, so if they use controls that are on your system (and you have been given permission to) what's the problem? (the "rm -rf" example).
That's what component reuse is about.
BTW, did you know that heaps of Linux apps go and use glibc without asking? heaps of kde ones go and use qtlib too!
ActiveX was around LONG before the web got popular and long before Microsoft even created IE. What was it for? Cross-language (and theoretically cross platform) in process reuse of software components - ones usually with 'windows' or graphical components.
Now most of Microsoft software as itself either been an ActiveX control an ActiveX container, or more usually, both (Word/Excel/IE). You can like embedded Word inside IE, and Excel inside that for example. Or even IE within IE.
When Microsoft created IE, they thought hey, wouldn't it be neat if someone could create a user interface with HTML, and still be able to use the controls/widgets provided by ActiveX. So essentially lots of LANs could have apps that are served using HTML from a webserver. So that's part of the reason why the idea of "zones" came along. If you've got an application like say winamp that reuses IE as an ActiveX control in it's own mini-webbrowser, and say the folks at Nullsoft decided they wanted to put some cool ActiveX control they themselves wrote into their mini webbrowsers to make it "do something". Now why should IE warn you of these things? First ofall, if you downloaded and installed Winamp, then the control is already registered and installed on your system, hell it wouldn't be any differnt from winamp using the control directly themselves (making winamp the container) or using IE as an intermediary container so they could add some fancy DHTML decoration around the control.
Microsoft's mistake was trying to push ActiveX as an INTERNET component reuse method. They didn't anticipate the level at which crackers would abuse trust systems. However that said, most people who are willing to just let any ActiveX control from anywhere run, would be the same type of people to run any binary someone emails or gives them.
I think for custom apps and internal applications, ActiveX on IE provides you with quite a powerful platform, with just as much security as any standard app (next to none:P).
Well if you don't know what CaptiveX does then don't use it. Just cause it's CaptiveX.OCX rather than CaptiveX.EXE does't make much difference. Both contain binary code.
Bah, no it isn't. With antialiasing, a 7 point font can still be readable. Have you ever tried writing by using dots rather than lines with your pen?
Big fonts also look much better when antialiasing, they look like real letters not built up of huge ugly squares. Antialiasing, and opentype or trutype font support just like windows and X will grow up a bit.
What ?? I thought Linux for x86 was by definition an x86 binary??
Duh read again, I said that Transmeta's hype was about being able to run *all those x86* binaries. Linux has x86 binaries, but a fraction of the total amount available, and ofcourse transmeta really meant windows apps, cause that's where all the apps everyone uses is.
The crusoe was designed with the giak of quickly emulating an x86, I know that it could possible codemorph other insutrction sets. And that wasn't what I said anywa, i said that it was low power *for an x86 clone* - eg, it can clone an x86 - not it was *low power for something that can only clone an x86*, what you say hardly applies since it would consume basically just as much power if it was cloning a PPC.
It comes preinstalled with Windows CE, but you can install NetBSD or Linux?
I can see it now, geeks with no lives go marching onto microsoft marching on what they call a "Windows CE refund day".
Next thing you'll see is people wanting refunds cause they want to run Linux on their washing machines, not some proprietry crap.
I guess maybe Microsoft should produce hardware & software combos, then they wouldn't so much crap from people who see microsoft's licensing OSs to all sorts of manufacturers rather than control everything (eg. Windows CE compared to PalmOS/Palms, Windows compared to MacOS/Apple) as 'pure evil'.
Basically, people develop devices and software to run them, sell them (including cost of hardware & software development) noone cares.
Microsoft prefer to just write software, the license it to manufactueres so those with little software skill can easily create devices, everyone (at least here) start spouting "crap crap crap". The added advantage of Microsoft's model is that you *can easily* do things exactly like this, replace Windows CE with whatever you like.
Me thinks you have been blindly taking in transmeta hype.
Most Windows CE devices run on very low powered CPUs, more os than the crusoe - which is only low powered *for an x86* clone. I'm quite suprised Windows CE devices stay on for as long as they do. Think about it, sound, 16bit colour, multitasking/threaded OS etc.
I don't see what transmeta is on about personally, the only viable real space i see is windows laptops.
They talk about the TM3120 running Linux on webpads, but then also say how cool it is cause it can run x86 binaries. Well sorry, Linux doesn't run most x86 binaries, so that liaves the TM5140 for notebooks. But then the power usage decrease is "ok" but not that much considering the CPU accounts for less than 50% of the notebook's power usage.
*rolls eyes* for the third time yes, look in the damn options for IE, and you'll see that you can configure IE to start up in a new process every time.
You can use netscape if you don't want speed or stability or anything that works properly.
And your suggestion that W2K is more unstable than Win98 is laughable. I've had no windows 2000 crashes since the release over 2 months ago.
Yeah, and we all knew about the transmeta release, but we got several news articles on it when it happened.
most people also don't care about a kernel 2.3.14159 release on the same day as windows 2000. which is more important?/. isn't just about notifying people "look here's somethingyou didn't know", it's about discussing about it too.
That's why i suggested the "browse in new process" option in IE. That way an explorer window will load up in it's own process.
I've never seen explorer take down windows 2000, can't say the same for win9x, but win9x is a load of crock compared to windows 2000 (which can do everything win9x can do, but better).
Microsoft use one of those windows->unix porting tools to get IE working on Solaris.
I'm 50% sure that once the kit is ported to support Linux Microsoft will release IE for linux.
Ofcourse everyone here would take the oppotunity to run around saying NT sucks, not even microsoft is sure of NT. Microsoft will release MS Linux!!! and other crap.
Ofcourse most of the games on that list are quite old:). All new games support Windows 2000 properly (at least all the ones I've tried. Most old games don't work cause they try to detect the OS and say NONONO if you are running NT. You can use appcompat.exe on the windows 2000 support CD to trick the apps tho:).
IE replaces Explorer, just cause Explorer crashes doesn't mean "windows" has crashed.
If X or KDE crashed, would you say Linux crashed? Nom ofcourse not.
Just restart Explorer.
Ofcourse you could just be smart and turn on "Browse in New Process" in IE to make sure IE instances are opened up in their own process - a crash from a bad applet won't crash your shell explorer process.
Yes, and the windows philosophy is make lots of COM objects that work together - proper - fast binary reuse.
You don't go around executing new processes and parsing the output. You go and dynamically link with libraries and communicate using language-neutral binary intefaces.
bah, NOT. macros have an extremely useful purpose, and can do things functions can't normally do. You can like reduce the size of code by putting stuff in macros that can't be put in functions (eg. they use variables from your own function).
There are useful macros...a few from windows that come to mind are MAKEDWORD, MAKEWORD, MAX, MIN and the unicode/ascii conversion macros A2W, W2A, A2T, T2W etc.
All reduce code, and is fast. I mean, who the hell would write a function to construct a DWORD from two WORDs - or a function to check MAX and MIN? You either have to resort to a function, or *ugh* maunally do it every time you need to.
MACROs ARE GOOD if you use them properly.
Something that comes to mind (that can't be done the same way with a function) is a macro i use when threading.
BEGIN_SYNCHRONIZED(x) and END_SYNCHRONIZED(x). Basically I created a synchronization class, and the macros did the try/catch/finally part for me (making sure that the critical section was released if an exception occured). It reduced code bloat, and increased readablility. And it wouldn't take a genious to work out what the macros did after looking at the definitions for like a few seconds.
These "wouldn't it be neat" features are used by many people, and most are god damn useful. All those features can ofcourse be turned off. And bloat? Excuse me, lets see star office, bloated, slower and takes over the desktop. Netscape, bloated slower and takes over win9x's role of crashing.
And now you're saying open source is better cause weird "wouldn't it be neat" things *WON'T* be added? How so? You're saying open source is more restrictive...or what? I don't get where you're coming from. And now you're copying Linus' change of moods, and saying forking is _GOOD_?
Agreed, I expected the article to be all about how microsoft are slackers, big 'evil' meetings with men in suits etc. The article was just the opposite, and gave an interesting balanced view of Microsoft.
But then, this *is* slashdot, and only articles that are against Microsoft (or at least are made to resemble something against microsoft) is posted. Giving everyone here a one sided perspective on Microsoft. All the 'good' articles on Microsoft/Bill (like bill donating billions, launch of windows 2000 etc) are quietly ignored. Noone everyone here thinks Microsoft EVIL EVIL EVIL. That's all they hear.
I find Microsoft's compiler to not be as fast as BCB but to be much more robust. Also VC++ lets you "edit-and-continue", something I have yet to see any other IDE/Compiler/Debugger support. And BCB also comes with MFC, and so does the Windows Platform SDK, so I hardly see how that's relevant.
Not really, it's up to windows applications to do their own scaling, and they should determine font sizes from the system properties. System controls etc have fonts set to the system's, but it's up to the application, when it does it's own drawing to do the same. If Windows was to take over an application (which it could) you'd have application developers complaining that windows isn't listening to the font or gdi requests.
problem is price means very little when the product is of good value. at work we use cool edit pro. it's current price is meaningless because of the productivity we get out of it. if an open source alternative can't match it's abilities or ease of use, then it's not an option at all.
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The problem is that many Microsoft programs (such as Windows, MSIE, Office, etc.) blindly trust certain kinds of ActiveX controls, allowing them to install and run, without prompting, even if you have ActiveX "disabled" in MSIE.
Uh, presuming it isn't downloading these controls of the internet, why would that be a problem? It's as much a problem as a unix application going out and finding "rm -rf" "ls" etc and using them. Only difference is that ActiveX, based on COM is actually designed for component reuse rather than manually running applications - but it's the same idea. The application is making use of binary data on your system. Windows would kind of be useless if it didn't use ActiveX controls (why do people think ActiveX should be disabled in windows? windows WOULD NOT RUN properly). MSIE usually(depends on settings) warns you of controls, and Office etc don't download controls off the internet, so if they use controls that are on your system (and you have been given permission to) what's the problem? (the "rm -rf" example).
That's what component reuse is about.
BTW, did you know that heaps of Linux apps go and use glibc without asking? heaps of kde ones go and use qtlib too!
Think of it this way.
:P).
ActiveX was around LONG before the web got popular and long before Microsoft even created IE. What was it for? Cross-language (and theoretically cross platform) in process reuse of software components - ones usually with 'windows' or graphical components.
Now most of Microsoft software as itself either been an ActiveX control an ActiveX container, or more usually, both (Word/Excel/IE). You can like embedded Word inside IE, and Excel inside that for example. Or even IE within IE.
When Microsoft created IE, they thought hey, wouldn't it be neat if someone could create a user interface with HTML, and still be able to use the controls/widgets provided by ActiveX. So essentially lots of LANs could have apps that are served using HTML from a webserver. So that's part of the reason why the idea of "zones" came along.
If you've got an application like say winamp that reuses IE as an ActiveX control in it's own mini-webbrowser, and say the folks at
Nullsoft decided they wanted to put some cool ActiveX control they themselves wrote into their mini webbrowsers to make it "do something". Now why should IE warn you of these things? First ofall, if you downloaded and installed Winamp, then the control is already registered and installed on your system, hell it wouldn't be any differnt from winamp using the control directly themselves (making winamp the container) or using IE as an intermediary container so they could add some fancy DHTML decoration around the control.
Microsoft's mistake was trying to push ActiveX as an INTERNET component reuse method. They didn't anticipate the level at which crackers would abuse trust systems. However that said, most people who are willing to just let any ActiveX control from anywhere run, would be the same type of people to run any binary someone emails or gives them.
I think for custom apps and internal applications, ActiveX on IE provides you with quite a powerful platform, with just as much security as any standard app (next to none
Well if you don't know what CaptiveX does then don't use it. Just cause it's CaptiveX.OCX rather than CaptiveX.EXE does't make much difference. Both contain binary code.
Not unless the user has explicitly changed security settings in IE to allow signed & unsigned applets to run automatically without prompting.
ROFL.
:)
That's funny cause it's true
Bah, no it isn't. With antialiasing, a 7 point font can still be readable. Have you ever tried writing by using dots rather than lines with your pen?
Big fonts also look much better when antialiasing, they look like real letters not built up of huge ugly squares. Antialiasing, and opentype or trutype font support just like windows and X will grow up a bit.
What ?? I thought Linux for x86 was by definition an x86 binary??
Duh read again, I said that Transmeta's hype was about being able to run *all those x86* binaries. Linux has x86 binaries, but a fraction of the total amount available, and ofcourse transmeta really meant windows apps, cause that's where all the apps everyone uses is.
The crusoe was designed with the giak of quickly emulating an x86, I know that it could possible codemorph other insutrction sets. And that wasn't what I said anywa, i said that it was low power *for an x86 clone* - eg, it can clone an x86 - not it was *low power for something that can only clone an x86*, what you say hardly applies since it would consume basically just as much power if it was cloning a PPC.
It comes preinstalled with Windows CE, but you can install NetBSD or Linux?
I can see it now, geeks with no lives go marching onto microsoft marching on what they call a "Windows CE refund day".
Next thing you'll see is people wanting refunds cause they want to run Linux on their washing machines, not some proprietry crap.
I guess maybe Microsoft should produce hardware & software combos, then they wouldn't so much crap from people who see microsoft's licensing OSs to all sorts of manufacturers rather than control everything (eg. Windows CE compared to PalmOS/Palms, Windows compared to MacOS/Apple) as 'pure evil'.
Basically, people develop devices and software to run them, sell them (including cost of hardware & software development) noone cares.
Microsoft prefer to just write software, the license it to manufactueres so those with little software skill can easily create devices, everyone (at least here) start spouting "crap crap crap". The added advantage of Microsoft's model is that you *can easily* do things exactly like this, replace Windows CE with whatever you like.
Me thinks you have been blindly taking in transmeta hype.
Most Windows CE devices run on very low powered CPUs, more os than the crusoe - which is only low powered *for an x86* clone. I'm quite suprised Windows CE devices stay on for as long as they do. Think about it, sound, 16bit colour, multitasking/threaded OS etc.
I don't see what transmeta is on about personally, the only viable real space i see is windows laptops.
They talk about the TM3120 running Linux on webpads, but then also say how cool it is cause it can run x86 binaries. Well sorry, Linux doesn't run most x86 binaries, so that liaves the TM5140 for notebooks. But then the power usage decrease is "ok" but not that much considering the CPU accounts for less than 50% of the notebook's power usage.
*rolls eyes*
for the third time yes, look in the damn options for IE, and you'll see that you can configure IE to start up in a new process every time.
You can use netscape if you don't want speed or stability or anything that works properly.
And your suggestion that W2K is more unstable than Win98 is laughable. I've had no windows 2000 crashes since the release over 2 months ago.
Yeah, and we all knew about the transmeta release, but we got several news articles on it when it happened.
/. isn't just about notifying people "look here's somethingyou didn't know", it's about discussing about it too.
most people also don't care about a kernel 2.3.14159 release on the same day as windows 2000. which is more important?
That's why i suggested the "browse in new process" option in IE. That way an explorer window will load up in it's own process.
I've never seen explorer take down windows 2000, can't say the same for win9x, but win9x is a load of crock compared to windows 2000 (which can do everything win9x can do, but better).
Microsoft use one of those windows->unix porting tools to get IE working on Solaris.
I'm 50% sure that once the kit is ported to support Linux Microsoft will release IE for linux.
Ofcourse everyone here would take the oppotunity to run around saying NT sucks, not even microsoft is sure of NT. Microsoft will release MS Linux!!! and other crap.
You can get it her e
:). All new games support Windows 2000 properly (at least all the ones I've tried. Most old games don't work cause they try to detect the OS and say NONONO if you are running NT. You can use appcompat.exe on the windows 2000 support CD to trick the apps tho :).
Ofcourse most of the games on that list are quite old
IE replaces Explorer, just cause Explorer crashes doesn't mean "windows" has crashed.
If X or KDE crashed, would you say Linux crashed? Nom ofcourse not.
Just restart Explorer.
Ofcourse you could just be smart and turn on "Browse in New Process" in IE to make sure IE instances are opened up in their own process - a crash from a bad applet won't crash your shell explorer process.
Yes, and the windows philosophy is make lots of COM objects that work together - proper - fast binary reuse.
You don't go around executing new processes and parsing the output. You go and dynamically link with libraries and communicate using language-neutral binary intefaces.
How exactly does using a macro become more difficult to read than using a function?
Explain.
bah, NOT. macros have an extremely useful purpose, and can do things functions can't normally do. You can like reduce the size of code by putting stuff in macros that can't be put in functions (eg. they use variables from your own function).
...a few from windows that come to mind are MAKEDWORD, MAKEWORD, MAX, MIN and the unicode/ascii conversion macros A2W, W2A, A2T, T2W etc.
:P
There are useful macros
All reduce code, and is fast. I mean, who the hell would write a function to construct a DWORD from two WORDs - or a function to check MAX and MIN? You either have to resort to a function, or *ugh* maunally do it every time you need to.
MACROs ARE GOOD if you use them properly.
Something that comes to mind (that can't be done the same way with a function) is a macro i use when threading.
BEGIN_SYNCHRONIZED(x) and END_SYNCHRONIZED(x).
Basically I created a synchronization class, and the macros did the try/catch/finally part for me (making sure that the critical section was released if an exception occured). It reduced code bloat, and increased readablility. And it wouldn't take a genious to work out what the macros did after looking at the definitions for like a few seconds.
#define MAX(x, y) ((x > y) ? x : y)
mmm macros
That's so munted.
These "wouldn't it be neat" features are used by many people, and most are god damn useful. All those features can ofcourse be turned off. And bloat? Excuse me, lets see star office, bloated, slower and takes over the desktop. Netscape, bloated slower and takes over win9x's role of crashing.
And now you're saying open source is better cause weird "wouldn't it be neat" things *WON'T* be added? How so? You're saying open source is more restrictive...or what? I don't get where you're coming from.
And now you're copying Linus' change of moods, and saying forking is _GOOD_?
I'd like to hear some more reasoning from you.
Agreed, I expected the article to be all about how microsoft are slackers, big 'evil' meetings with men in suits etc.
The article was just the opposite, and gave an interesting balanced view of Microsoft.
But then, this *is* slashdot, and only articles that are against Microsoft (or at least are made to resemble something against microsoft) is posted. Giving everyone here a one sided perspective on Microsoft. All the 'good' articles on Microsoft/Bill (like bill donating billions, launch of windows 2000 etc) are quietly ignored. Noone everyone here thinks Microsoft EVIL EVIL EVIL. That's all they hear.
And like I said, MFC comes with the windows platfrom sdk which is free.
I find Microsoft's compiler to not be as fast as BCB but to be much more robust. Also VC++ lets you "edit-and-continue", something I have yet to see any other IDE/Compiler/Debugger support. And BCB also comes with MFC, and so does the Windows Platform SDK, so I hardly see how that's relevant.
Not really, it's up to windows applications to do their own scaling, and they should determine font sizes from the system properties. System controls etc have fonts set to the system's, but it's up to the application, when it does it's own drawing to do the same. If Windows was to take over an application (which it could) you'd have application developers complaining that windows isn't listening to the font or gdi requests.
Yeah, so does Windows.
problem is price means very little when the product is of good value. at work we use cool edit pro. it's current price is meaningless because of the productivity we get out of it. if an open source alternative can't match it's abilities or ease of use, then it's not an option at all.