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Judge Asks for Demonstration of 'Modular' Windows | |
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| Time: 17:25 EST/22:25 GMT | News Source: Associated Press | Posted By: Alex Harris | ||
The federal judge overseeing the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case said on Tuesday that she wants to see a version of the Windows operating system that has removable features. Over the objections of Microsoft, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would allow nine states seeking stiff sanctions against the company to have a computer expert demonstrate a version of Windows he had developed that can be customized. | ||
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| #26 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 5/7/2002 10:17:47 PM |
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sodajerk - "So, you are suggesting that because the MS exec interpreted the question so that every call to an html renderer would require its own html renderer as proof of your point?"
MS exec? That was the state's lawyer discussing how much storage it would cost to hard link the HTML rendering functionality throughout the OS. Bah forget it, you aren't worth arguing with... even if it is my desire to hit 125 posts in this thread! |
| #27 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 5/7/2002 10:18:45 PM |
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sodajerk - "Yes, I am laughing my ass off right now. "
That's the ex-lax starting to work. |
| #28 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 5/7/2002 10:19:23 PM |
| So, you realize that there is no tying in Linux then? |
| #29 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 5/7/2002 10:27:51 PM |
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#44 - "It uses several methods of sharing components. CORBA can be used. Yes, in fact, it is much more OO than Windows. It's native language (objective-C) is also far more object-oriented than C++."
Why is objective C more OO than C++? It might be more restrictive as far as OO methodology, but it has no capabilities that C++ lacks. If that's what you mean, I agree. Of course, OO is not the issue. I can write an app that's very OO, but because of the way I linked the app pieces, and because of the 3rd party apps that rely on my various pieces, it could be virtually impossible (without a near complete re-write) to replace or remove a chunk of that application. OO guarantees nothing. What is guaranteed is that if you removed IE from Windows, countless thousands of applications would stop working, and it would be a pure nightmare. "All of its libraries and components are XML." Please elaborate on this. XML? You mean they are linked via XML resource files? They contain XML structuring? What? How exactly do you write an OS library in XML? I mean, I'm pretty good at XML and related technologies, but this is WAY above my head. :-) "I'm not claiming that removing a file from the OS will not break software, I am saying removing an application will not break software. MS is hiding behind their IP by tying APIs to apps--if they are system-level API's they don't belong inside of apps." Really? Ok... install Half Life. Now install Counter-Strike. Now uninstall Half-Life. Can you still play Counter-Strike. Hmm... looks like your theory was proved wrong with a simple and common example. The fact is, whether or not IE is a "part" of the OS or not (I think it as, as the term OS is so ill defined these days, it could mean anything) is not the question. Removing IE will absolutely certainly break countless applications. Even if IE was never part of the OS, it still started its life as a COM application. This means 3rd parties were free to use its functionality inside their own applications. This is, in fact, one of the biggest reasons IE 3.0 was able to gain 35%+ market share in less than a year. So even if we look at IE 3.0, which certainly wasn't part of the OS, forcing the removal of just 3.0 would have broken countless applications that relied on it. See, this is the world of COM. If enough applications are written that use IE to provide functionality, why is it not considered part of the OS? It becomes a defacto-OS element. It is so common that regardless of its "true" technical nature, it is required for most applications to function properly, just as mscorlib.dll or vbrun.dll are. "I consider DLL files associated with an app a part of the app." Hmmm. So is mscorlib.dll part of MyHelloWorld.exe, or is it part of the .NET CLR? (In fact, the nature of mscorlib.dll is very interesting, as it's simply a bootstrap for the real CLR, but that's another topic.) Certainly you're not suggesting that MyHelloWorld.exe is the entire .NET CLR? Of course not. It simply references the dll so it can do work. I didn't write the DLL, nor do I know how it works. (Well, I kinda do... but that's because I read a lot.) The dll is a library, or a resource, or whatever, which is required for the application to run. How is this different than me including ie.dll (or whatever the hell it is) in my application? What makes ie.dll different? Just because it has another UI that also uses it? This post was edited by RMD on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 at 22:29. |
| #30 By 3339 (64.175.42.106) at 5/7/2002 11:03:43 PM |
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RMD, I agree that OO has nothing to do with it, and think it's not only ridiculous, childless, and insane to think that I can't compare Win to Mac but youe (I mean soda) can compare Win to Linux--but I think it's very Microsoft-like.
Your example about breaking functionality doesn't work on the Mac, and wouldn't work for numerous other examples--if an app installs game sprockets or such functionality, ODBC drivers, or QT or media files or whatever, they remain. New apps check to see if you have them and will either reinstall or not. So, no, you didn't disprove my example. Is that really how it works on the Win side? Is that true of most things? I don't think it's the case with ODBC drivers and such. My point about DLL's and COM is a bit more focused than you presume it to be--I apologize if I forgot the "only"s and "shared"s--if a DLL is only used by an app, then it's a part of the app. If the DLL can be used by multiple apps and/or the sytem, it is an API DLL. If it is used by the system only, it is a system DLL. |
| #31 By 3339 (64.175.42.106) at 5/7/2002 11:10:24 PM |
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soda, I want to look at this "modern" defense. Sure, I can agree or accept that we'll only compare Win to a modern OS--which includes a GUI. But you aren't saying a modern OS is just the GUI are you? Linux the OS, as I am referring to it, is definitely more than just the kernal or just the UI. Can you use multiple UIs graphical or not with Linux? Is there a single Linux distro which is tied to a UI which cannot be altered or swapped for another?
Can you rebutt this logic: A browser is tied to an interface. The interface is not tied to the OS. The browser is not tied to the OS. NO, I DIDN'T THINK SO. After all, if back in 97 or even earlier, Windows allowed you to install whatever UI you wanted and Explorer was only tied to the UI not the kernal or rest of the system--whether or not those UIs were then tied to a browser--there would be no problem, wouldn't there? Is MS proposing we can now install our own GUI with a browser tied to it? No, I didn't think so. |
| #32 By 3339 (64.175.42.106) at 5/7/2002 11:31:33 PM |
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RMD, by the way, if your game example is correct, this is exactly what I mean by sloppy design. I definitely have lingering DLLs left behind after uninstalling some apps that are completely useless. Now you are telling me that uninstalling an app can remove DLLs which are shared by apps. That's sloppy--that you get both sides of what is undesirable from poorly managed DLLs.
And also, this is exactly what is different about SWDOCHTML.DLL (or whatever it is, as you say)--it is a documented fact that it contains shell ONLY functions, IE ONLY functions, and SHARED functions, but MS claims this DLL is a part of the program known as Internet Explorer so that when you uninstall the app, you also remove this DLL, which kills the system. So separate these functions. |
| #33 By 3339 (64.175.42.106) at 5/7/2002 11:50:08 PM |
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stu, why did you bother to quote me when you completely ignored he quote. Remove the QT Player app, do you break the system? No.
From there, there's not much reason to rebutt (Adobe is not an OEM of the Mac OS, for example), but anyway... It's a great big myth about how much MS is using this one DLL to display the UI--most of the UI is GDI, not html and is not comparable to Quartz. If Windows was so much html, it would look more like Mozilla then it does pre-1995 Windows. Removing Quicktime never removed Quickdraw--that is simply a lie. |
| #34 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 5/8/2002 12:01:13 AM |
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#59 - I concur!
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| #35 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 5/8/2002 1:19:04 AM |
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#57 - "RMD, by the way, if your game example is correct, this is exactly what I mean by sloppy design."
I don't see how this is sloppy design at all. There are tradeoffs to every design decision. COM allows you to create components that can be used, without knowledge of the inner workings or the source code, inside other applications. There is no real equivalent in a non-Windows environment. COM allows you to leverage existing functionality in an extremely easy and efficient way. In fact, it's about as OO as you can get. This is exactly how IE works. IE has a "front end", which is the browser most people are familiar with. Then IE has a COM (actually many) interface that allows people to integrate IE directly into their application. Not just embed a browser window, but actually programmatically use IE inside their application, as if it was a library they wrote themselves. "and insane to think that I can't compare Win to Mac but youe (I mean soda) can compare Win to Linux--but I think it's very Microsoft-like. " Well, it would be much more accurate to compare OS X with Linux, since they have the same kinds of inner workings thanks to OS X being based on the Mach kernel. As I said, there is no logical equivalent to COM in the Unix world. Here is another cool example. I have a Telnet program called CRT. CRT is great, and it offers a COM interface that you can interact with programmatically. I've used this COM interface inside VBScripts that help me accomplish common tasks. This would be impossible on any Unix system, unless CRT somehow offered all its functionality via command line arguments. I could also embed CRT inside my own application, which would then call methods on CRT's COM interface just as if it were an API. In effect, CRT becomes an API. No SDK is needed... it simply exposes this functionality via COM. The same thing is true for IE. In fact, the same thing is true for almost all Microsoft applications. I can embed Word directly into my own app, format documents, and do anything the user could do with Word, but all programmatically. It's pretty neat stuff. So why is IE so difficult to remove? Well, there ya go. As I said, there are many, many, many applications that rely on IE, or, rather, IE's COM interface. What the states want is that entire COM entity to be removed from the OS. "Now you are telling me that uninstalling an app can remove DLLs which are shared by apps. That's sloppy--that you get both sides of what is undesirable from poorly managed DLLs. " Well, this is one part of what is known as DLL Hell. Yes, it sucks, but it's not simply a matter of sloppy programming or design. The benefits of COM vastly out weigh the flaws. Actually, .NET gets rid of DLL hell by allowing things like side-by-side versioning. It really depends on the app your talking about. If, for instance, I uninstall CRT, there is very little chance anything *but* my little scripts and programs that I've written will be broken. But because IE has been included with Windows for so long, and because IE has a very popular COM interface, many people rely on it. In fact, many other programs rely on parts of IE's COM interface that expose "UI" functionality, like displaying the HTML, right click menu stuff, etc. If you remove the IE "UI" you have to remove those portions of the COM interface which many apps rely on. Continued on next post... |
| #36 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 5/8/2002 1:19:24 AM |
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Continued from above...
But I really don't see how this is any different from a standard "API". If, for instance, Microsoft dropped the common controls library from Windows, nearly all Windows apps would break. If they dropped MSXML, many newer apps would break. Etc. See, COM allows you to write full fledged applications which *also* act as "API's". So in order to remove the app, you have to remove the API. Not all COM components are full fledged apps of course. Some are simply components which cannot exist on their own. MSXML is a goode example. But IE is not. COM is a complicated subject. There are many great books on COM, most of them by Dan Appleman. I recommend them highly. "So separate these functions." Ok. So Microsoft has to re-write large portions of very complicated software. That's exactly what they're objecting to. They say (and I agree) it does far more harm than good for anybody. It would break Windows, and break countless applications that run on Windows. In short, it would make Windows just as bad as Linux zealots like to think it is... think Windows 95 kinda bad; constant blue screens, piss poor functionality, etc. The states really don't have a clue, or they simply don't care, or they are listening directly to those people who would love nothing more than to see Windows and Microsoft crumble. Or a little of all three. |
| #37 By 2459 (66.25.124.8) at 5/8/2002 3:00:34 AM |
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Sodajerk, to go with the previous Counterstrike example, here is something you can do on a Mac to see for yourself what RMD, Sodablue, etc., are talking about. Get a copy of Quake 3. Now, Install one of the many popular Quake 3 Total Conversions, mods, etc. -- Quake 3: Team Arena or Bid for Power (www.bidforpower.com) are good examples. Now, uninstall Quake 3, and see if you can still run Team Arena, or some other mod or TC for Quake 3. You will find (if you correctly remove all of Quake 3's files) that you can't. This has nothing to do with bad design. It has everything to do with the mod/TC's dependence upon Quake 3 being present because they utilize functionality that is only provided from Quake 3. This is because Quake 3 acts as a development platform that provides several services to mod/TC developers.
------------------------------------------------------------ Sodajerk: "No, I'm not arguing against the person as my argument--I'm saying it's a stupid argument and so is Midnick? Is a browser tied to KDE? Yes. Can you remove KDE? Yes. Does Linux still work? Yes. Can you install alternate UIs and browsers? Yes. Can you remove them? Yes. " --------------------------- Do all of your applications still work? NO. Some applications make specific use of GNOME or KDE and will not function properly without them. If the UI (including the libraries) are removed, the dependent app will not function. This creates a similar situation to that of IE. Windows has always been able to utilize third-party user-interfaces just as *nix, but if the libraries (DLLs) that applications depend upon are not present, the applications (and a lot of system components) will become functionally impaired, or fail altogether. Windows is about as modular as is gets for consumer OSes while maintaining productivity and commercial viability. It provides users with features they expect from a modern OS, and provides developers with a known platform of services to program against and not have to worry about duplicating already-present functionality. About the only thing that can be classified as a removable application as far as IE, WMP, and a lot of other "middleware" is concerned, is their respective EXEs. These can almost certainly be removed without detriment to the platform, or dependent applications. However, little is gained in this process. In Windows XP, IE's exe is only 89 KB, WMP's is 508 KB, etc. This post was edited by n4cer on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 at 03:12. |
| #38 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 5/8/2002 1:54:05 PM |
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No sodajerk is not Rush Limbaugh but he uses his style of argumentation. As to the states plan, I was not aware that the Federalist Society as liberal, but whatever...
Going back and reading this thread, it appears that a lot of the problem centers around not a disconnect between the way Unix works and the way Windows works. While they are both OS, they are architected fundamentally different. |
| #39 By 1868 (141.133.185.214) at 5/8/2002 3:31:45 PM |
| All I have to say is my hats are off to Sodajerk, RMD, and Sodablue! I don't have the time to read through thousands of pages of testimony or debate my views with some-else who is as knowledge as I am about this issues at hand; however, I have read everyone of your posts and have been capitivated by your presenting of the arguements that suite your sides. I have my own views, but lack the time and patience to present them. BTW an additional congrats to sodablue for continually dealing in prompt time with sodajerk. Goodluck and have fun duking it out!!!! |
| #40 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 5/8/2002 4:45:52 PM |
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#78 - Your absolutely correct. Alas, that "one step" from COM to .NET is a damn big step, seperated by a big casam, and a few fences, and a couple of nasty dogs, and maybe some brambles.
See, anything is possible when you create an entirely new framework for application development. But IE relies on the old framework, as do the vast majority of Windows applications. It's not a simple fix... it it were, I'm sure Microsoft would have been pressured into doing it long ago by the thousands of developers that had to suffer through DLL hell. "Consumers, though, don't have that choice, and Microsoft has used that lack-of-choice to shove anything it wanted down consumers throats - and to squish their competitors in the process" They do have a choice. They can choose something other than Windows, or not use a computer at all. :-) I have several friends that choose the former, and one or two that choose the later, although not because of Microsoft. |
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