Antitrust Case Over, Microsoft Ties IE 10 To Win 8 519
deadeyefred writes "With the last vestiges of Microsoft's U.S. antitrust consent decree expiring earlier this year, the company is again tying its browser tightly to Windows. In pre-release versions of IE 10 and Windows 8, IE 10 cannot be uninstalled and is required to enable the new 'Metro'-style apps."
No longer a monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
IE's market share isn't what it used to be. Neither is Window's market share for that matter.
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see this as one of two things - either Microsoft is trying to bump it's browser market share or they are cutting corners in their code to have Windows depending on bits of IE10 to give the core OS functionality.
If this is an attempt at market share, I think it is rather doomed to fail. Gone are the days where people just accepted whatever browser comes with their OS. Even the very non-technical business people that I work with mostly install their browser of choice.
If this is cost cutting and an attempt to re-use code from one thing in another, then I think it will likely just be ignored by many users who don't care as much - but alienate the nerds even more. The types that frequent /. for example, are more and more likely to find reasons for pushing them into no longer using windows (for the ones who still use it that is) and thus putting even more leaks into the ship.
My mother for example uses the computer VERY little and doesn't do much with it. When it is time to upgrade (which is fast approaching) I am seriously considering ninja-installing a distro onto her machine and simply saying "This is the new computer, things are a little different" rather than going through the same thing while installing the latest and greatest from Microsoft. For her, there isn't any difference in finding all the buttons going from XP to Win 7 or Win 8. I may as well get her onto another OS totally.
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They could have easily moved the common code into a required DLL and made IE / Explorer UI code that talks to it. There's no need to graft 'IE' into the system. They own both so they can just refactor some of it into Windows and leave IE alone.
In other news, has anyone here removed IE8 from Windows 7?
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
They did. In 1997. With Internet Explorer 4.
Every version of IE since has had the same architecture.
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
How much is your time worth to you? At $25/hr you might as well just install a fresh retail copy of Win7 on there and avoid the trouble of possibly having missed something, and also having a physical disc backup of the OS on the off chance something goes horribly wrong (very likely on a fragile laptop)
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That's the point - it's not dependent on IE (the browser app), it's dependent on Trident (the engine - shdocvw.dll & mshtml.dll). In Windows 7, in editions where you could uninstall IE, it left the engine DLLs in place to satisfy the dependencies.
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The vast majority of IE *is* a "system library", and has been since IE4.
It was changing IE to a system library that got them into trouble in the first place.
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Yeah, the rest of his comment sounded good, but the code re-use thing doesn't quite make sense. Code re-use is usually a good thing, and rather irrelevant to this case; I think he meant something different, perhaps that tying the browser inseparably to the OS saves MS money in some way over making it more modular. However, modularity is usually a big advantage in the long run because it makes it easier to separate problems, or replace whole components with better components, without the whole house of car
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
>For those of us that's seen the Metro UI, which i personally think is gonna bomb HARD as i've shown the screencaps to over 120 customer so far and have YET to get a SINGLE positive comment about Metro.
Wait until they start using it. You ain't heard nuthin' yet.
--
BMO
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The presence of the command line is not a problem.
Linux, Windows and OSX all have a command line... And infact MS have been working hard to improve their CLI in recent versions.
For day to day use average users will never have to touch the CLI on any of these systems... However the big difference is:
On windows the CLI is useless
When you ask a geek how to do something, on linux he will typically use the cli not because its the only way to do something but because its the best way. On windows the cli is rarely
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Riiiight, because the average users writes scripts and uses ssh clients oh and by the way giant bat wings pop out of my ass and I fly south for the winter, did you know that?
It is THIS, this kind of delusional dumbshit right here, that has kept Linux in last place, even when the sweaty monkey was practically committing corporate suicide with dead ducks like Vista.
Err, ok, I'll bite. Why is it a bad thing to make functionality available that non-technical users aren't going to want to use but technical users will find incredibly powerful?
It isn't like you *have* to use the CLI on any modern Linux (well, you do when things go badly wrong, but when things go *that* wrong under Windows you're even more screwed anyway so it's reinstalley-time for anyone non-technical in either case). The CLI isn't shoved in your face any more, but it is still there if you want it - you
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Code re-use isn't bad at all. It is however if the code you are re-using is in another program - in this case, IE10. It's code re-se gone topsy turvy.
If they merely wanted to re-use the code, then write it into Win8 so that Win8 can natively support the extra features and have IE10 leverage it off there. The way that it has been done here just seems to be a case of "Ohhh. IE10 does some shiny stuff, lets just hack up a way to use that rather than improve Win8 to do it on its own.".
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
If they merely wanted to re-use the code, then write it into Win8 so that Win8 can natively support the extra features and have IE10 leverage it off there.
Isn't that essentially what they're doing? IE has always been a DLL that you can embed in other programs. A friend of mine once embedded it in a Macromedia Director movie with about four lines of code. The only difference seems to be that now they're back to making it impossible to uninstall -- which is only logical, since they're building the new Start menu (Metro) out of HTML and JavaScript. In fact, to tell the truth I always thought the idea that you could "uninstall IE" was a sham that was just for show, to comply with the court rulings. The IE browser is just Microsoft's HTML and JavaScript engine with some chrome around it. Metro is the same engine with different chrome, and other applications that embed the engine use different chrome, and so on. Or am I missing something?
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Netscape can blame MS all they want to. But they have only themselves to blame, not Bill Gates.
That is so much patent nonsense, and you know it. Are you a "Technical Evangelist" astroturfing /.?
It is reminiscent of the same problem alternate software and OSs have today. After Microsoft started BUNDELING IE with their OS PREINSTALLED on the OEM PCs, users who "only want to point and click" did not have to download Netscape to be able to browse the web. All they had to do was fire up IE. Sure, Netscape
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I don't know. If they are pushing the-browser-is-the-os paradigm and gearing the whole OS towards pay-per-use online apps that can integrate more closely with your computer, then I can see why they are doing it. I don't like it, but I can see why.
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The interesting case here (w.r.t. anti-trust issues) is not the uninstallation of IE10, or that you can use HTML5+JavaScript running on top of the Trident rendering engine for WinRT applications.
The interesting case is from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Windows_8_Integration [mozilla.org]:
1/ Metro applications have limited interaction with Desktop applications, making switching between the two more complex (is IE10 using APIs that other apps don't have access to?).
2/ Metro (using the Wi
That's all I have to do? (Score:2)
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Unless you're on ARM, in which case you won't be able to use anything but Metro apps.
Incredibly Low Burden of Proof (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
From T (useless) FA:
For example, before we turned off IE 10, we changed the default privacy setting from allowing some cookies to completely blocking all cookies. We then turned the browser off, rebooted, and IE 10 appeared to have completely disappeared from the PC. But when we went back into the settings, turned IE 10 back on, and rebooted again, the browser was back -- but with our customized settings, not the default. That would appear to indicate that Microsoft doesn’t really remove the browser entirely, but rather just hides it – with customized settings and all.
OMFG! A conspiracy unmasked! User settings aren't deleted!
So, because IE doesn't delete your settings it isn't being removed? By this same stupid logic we can determine that almost no modern software is ever actually removed.
I'm quite astounded with the depth of these morons' investigation.
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IE is a "Windows component", and the [un]installation procedure for these is different than the regular Windows Installer / MSI stuff, for whatever reason.
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Mortal software?
I think somebody has been watching Tron.
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MS has (for quite a while, starting in Vista I think) put the install packages for a lot of software and Windows features into every installed copy of Windows. So turning features off doesn't remove them from the system, it just removes the installed components. A quick check shows this includes IE9 on 7. So turning it off in the Windows features (like they do in TFA) doesn't remove it entirely from the system (you can always reinstall it without a disk), although it does "uninstall" it I believe. This is r
Browser vs. Rendering Libraries (Score:5, Informative)
I understand the idea of shared rendering libraries similar to WebKit or Gecko. While the knee jerk reaction is that they're locking out other browsers, I see the need to provide core libraries. Being HTML-based, Metro has got to have a rendering library.
As long as they don't force you to use IE for browsing and allow you to continue to install 3rd-party browsers, I have no problem with this any more. All of the vendors partner on whose applications and websites are going to be the defaults that most users won't change. Why shouldn't Microsoft default to their own products while allowing you to install or configure alternatives?
Don't forget -- Mozilla does the same thing by partnering to provide a default search engine.
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Being HTML-based, Metro has got to have a rendering library.
Metro is not HTML-based. Only Metro apps written in JS have to use HTML5 for their UI. Metro apps written in C++ or .NET have their own XAML stack, which is completely different (though it does have a WebView control, which, if you use it, is of course hosted IE).
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Yes, but Mozilla makes it trivial to change and DOES NOT bother you about it every 10 seconds.
Just re-imaged a laptop.
- Opens IE.
- Navigate to a few sites (AVG, Firefox)
- popup frame covers the page asking me to Install the BING bar.
- clicks no
- Clicking no tries to install Bing bar, I stop it.
- Popup is back, INSTALL THE BING BAR
- clicks no,
- Again tries to install the Bing bar, again, I stop it.
- RE
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's stupid to say that Microsoft cannot have a rendering engine on their OS that is required to be there by other parts of the OS.
I am more than welcome, I'm sure (hey look! a Bingy firefox!), to download my own browser of choice and use it. It just won't be used for the parts of the OS that require their own rendering engine. Which makes sense; how can MS make sure that Firefox would render Metro style UI apps correctly? They HAVE to provide something to render. The fact that it's the same engine as renders webpages is, in my opinion, reusing something they already had developed. Makes sense to me.
If they actually forced web browsing use it and didn't let you install Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc.... that'd be different.
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Nobody ever said that. Removing internet explorer doesn't remove internet explorer. It just removes iexplore.exe and some other crap not needed to render HTML with a control.
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Only problem I have with it is the rendering engine itself should be able to be replaced. MS has always been piss poor on rendering anything correctly. Probably has a lot to do with their attitude, and that is only *very* recently starting to change.
So if the rendering engine is top notch, adheres to standards, cooperative with the global communities, and responsive to needed changes... great. That has not been MS behavior in the past though.
In a way I do take this personally. I have to deal with way too
Spurious evidence. (Score:5, Informative)
Their evidence is that if they change a setting from default, then "uninstall" IE, then "reinstall" IE, it keeps the changed setting, it doesn't revert to default.
That is their sole piece of evidence they claim in the article.
That is the best "evidence" they could come up with? I have LOTS of apps that save their settings through an uninstall/reinstall! And those apps are definitely uninstalled.
Does Microsoft actually "uninstall" IE9, 8, or 7, when you disable it? No. They haven't done that since IE 4 on Windows 98!
Can't be uninstalled (Score:5, Insightful)
IE 10 cannot be uninstalled and is required to enable the new 'Metro'-style apps.
Thanks Captain Obvious, 'Metro' apps are HTML5-based so what did you think was going to happen? That they would have 2 separate rendering engines? What would be the point of that? So you turn IE10 off and you don't see it, then you install whatever browser you want for web browsing, what's wrong with that?
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Yep. This is a non-issue. Anyone who cares will not be walking into the MS walled metro garden anyway.
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'Metro' apps are HTML5-based
Metro is not HTML-based. Only Metro apps written in JS have to use HTML5 for their UI. Metro apps written in C++ or .NET have their own XAML stack, which is completely different (though it does have a WebView control, which, if you use it, is of course hosted IE).
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Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Slashdot crowd starts getting all fired up about history repeating itself, how Microsoft is the Great Satan, blah blah blah, let me be the first to ask, right now, in 2011:
Why does this really matter anymore?
First off, every OS nowadays comes with a Web browser. Indeed, we have reached the point in computing history where the OS is severely crippled if it didn't come with one. For all the IE hate that gets thrown around, how else are you going to download Firefox, at the very least? Mac OS X comes with Safari, which you can't remove. Many free software distros come with a browser (although I will concede that removing these are easier). Every mobile OS comes with a browser. Hell, iOS not only bundles Mobile Safari, but forbids you from any alternatives due to Apple's policies on not duplicating native features (and no, Opera Mini doesn't count).
Second, true IE removal hasn't been possible since Windows 95. De-selecting IE, as the article mentioned, only hid it from access. The only way to truly rip it out of your system would have been to use something like 98lite or XPlite, and then you would have to deal with all of the incompatibilities that followed. A number of applications on Windows assume IE is there, and actually removing the Trident engine from the OS will make you unable to use both Windows and third-party software that needs that component. Microsoft couldn't offer a true IE removal tool if it wanted to, because it would be accused of breaking both Windows and third-party applications that use the Trident engine.
Third, this should have been obvious from the moment Microsoft announced that Metro apps would use HTML5 and JavaScript. How exactly do you plan on running something in HTML5 and JavaScript without a rendering engine? So naturally disabling IE is going to disable Metro - there is simply no other way to run Metro apps. With that line of thinking, you might as well expect to run JARs without the Java VM installed.
The real concern with this news is:
1) How will this affect the security of the OS (as we're back to things like IE exploits affecting Windows itself, although reason 3 made that obvious anyway)?
2) Is Microsoft going to exert pressure on OEMs again to not bundle Firefox or Chrome with their computers?
If Microsoft makes it hard to get Firefox, Chrome, or another browser preinstalled on an OEM machine, then one can argue that there's an antitrust issue. Otherwise, this is just the logical conclusion of the path Microsoft chose for itself (Metro is the future, etc.) as well as everybody else more or less already doing the same thing.
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The whole browser antitrust suit was bullshit to begin with. Or at least the merits of it. The not allowing of alt browsers is hardly MS's biggest transgression. Not allowing for alternative boot loaders was.
How much do you want to bet the Firefox with Bing was an attempt to placate the doj when they announced this? "Sure you can ship an alternate browser, this Firefox bundle with Bing sure is attractive..."
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The not allowing of alt browsers is hardly MS's biggest transgression. Not allowing for alternative boot loaders was.
No, forcing hardware vendors to sell a Windows license with every system they sold if they wanted to sell them with any system was. As an early linux adopter, I got really tired of paying extra for MS-DOS, and then Windows, on every system I bought, just so I could wipe the disk and install something usable. I was never prevented from installing an "alternative boot loader". Lilo never complained that it couldn't write itself to the MBA.
By the way, I was buying systems with taxpayer dollars. If you paid t
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was never prevented from installing an "alternative boot loader".
I guess you missed the recent stories about UEFI secure boot. All PCs that ship with Windows 8 (OEM version) are required to ship with UEFI secure boot turned on and with Microsoft's certificate loaded. They are not necessarily required to let the owner of a PC turn off UEFI secure boot or install other operating system publishers' certificates.
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First off, every OS nowadays comes with a Web browser.
The problem isn't that the OS comes with a web browser.
The problem is that Microsoft, who has a monopoly position in operating systems, is leveraging that position to gain control of another market (web browsers). That's an immoral business practice, and that is exactly why we made it illegal with antitrust law.
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1) How will this affect the security of the OS (as we're back to things like IE exploits affecting Windows itself, although reason 3 made that obvious anyway)?
The key question would be how many apps using MSHTML uses it to load remote (as opposed to local) content?
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Mac OS X comes with Safari, which you can't remove. Many free software distros come with a browser (although I will concede that removing these are easier). Every mobile OS comes with a browser. Hell, iOS not only bundles Mobile Safari, but forbids you from any alternatives due to Apple's policies on not duplicating native features (and no, Opera Mini doesn't count).
Sorry, wrong, "sudo pkgutil --forget com.apple.pkg.Safari50SnowLeopard" for those on Snow Leopard with Safari 5, and there is also another for Lion. In MacOSX, you can remove iTunes, Safari and just about any other app that is installed that you don't want installed. People tend to think that OSX is really tightly tied together, but it is not.
Also, WebKit for iOS can be replaced with another framework, you just have recompile your iOS apps. However, WebKit is based off an Open Source Software package and al
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Also, WebKit for iOS can be replaced with another framework, you just have recompile your iOS apps.
I was under the impression that any other framework rendering HTML and JavaScript would get the app rejected by Apple.
HTAs (Score:2)
Metro is clearly an improvement, but it is also clearly not some brand spanking new path down which MS is traveling. It is taking something they've been doing for over a decade and fleshing it out a lot more.
So where's t
And you're surprised...? (Score:2)
Stupid (Score:2)
They didn't learn their lesson. And no, I didn't read TFA.
The Solution! (Score:5, Informative)
It’s worth noting that when you “turn off” IE 10 in the Windows 8 Developer Preview, you also turn off the Metro interface. No IE 10, no Metro apps.
That sounds like a very simple and elegant solution to both the problem of having Metro and Internet Explorer on a machine. Windows 8 might be worth using after all. :)
Re:And Linux does too (Score:4, Interesting)
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The difference is in Linux you can uninstall Firefox and It's not required for some of the new toys to work.
Both IE10 and the 'Metro' apps depend on certain libraries, if for some reason you consider those dependencies to be part of any one application that depends on them then removing everything that you understand that application to be would also mean removing those dependencies thus any other applications that depend on those libraries will cease to work. They could statically link the dependencies to the Metro runtime and IE10 but that just then means binary duplication and update duplication and in the end
Re:And Linux does too (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing in Linux which requires Firefox. Firefox is pre-installed, but only on specific distros. Other distros include other browsers, or no browser at all. (You don't need one - wget is perfectly good.)
This is different than with IE and Windows. If you remove IE, components totally unrelated to web browsing or the Internet WILL fail, because the libraries are crafted to include totally irrelevant code that is critical for other components. Because Microsoft do not publish the specs for these libraries, crafting replacements that ONLY have the bits needed for the rest of the system to function is almost impossible. Not completely impossible, just very very very hard.
There simply isn't any comparison between willful sabotage of the user and a simple pre-install, even if your claim that Firefox was pre-installed with Linux was correct.
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If you remove IE, components totally unrelated to web browsing or the Internet WILL fail, because the libraries are crafted to include totally irrelevant code that is critical for other components.
Anyone can make absurd claims. Windows libraries are not crafted to include totally irrelevant code. But the internet libraries do include code on how to render HTML. You can render HTML without doing web browsing, or even using the Internet. Like maybe you want to see the contents of a .html file that is on your local drive, or perhaps some internal Windows dialogs use HTML rendering?
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Actually, the basis of the Windows 95/98 lawsuit and the later IE bundling under XP lawsuit was that libraries ARE crafted to include totally irrelevant code. Indeed, it was Microsoft's position in the lawsuit that Felton's hack could not possibly work BECAUSE they had included such code. (Felton's hack worked because it left the extraneous code intact and in place.)
Nonetheless, even Microsoft disagrees with you. Under oath.
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It is not totally irrelevant. An HTML renderer is handy for many other applications, like help. Apple added an HTML renderer to Mac OS 8.5 to support help too.
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A brain surgeon (with computing experience) would point out that standalone rendering engines have existed for years - and have existed for longer than any of the current browsers out there. Having the HTML5 rendering engine in a standalone DLL that could be replaced by anyone else's HTML5 rendering engine would NOT be an OS tie-in.
Since HTML5 rendering engines do NOT need a browser (since they can be standalone), a browser is NOT needed for this.
However, if you absolutely insist that a browser provide the
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The problem is that most apps that uses MSHTML is dependent on IE-specific features and quirks, so another rendering engine would not be easily droppable in place without modification. Even Apple faces a similar problem with WebKit being a part of Mac OS X. In fact, both MSHTML and WebKit are full of application compatibility hacks. Not that it would be impossible to detail in a spec, but...
Illegal? Why? (Score:2)
Why is this illegal? Do I have to buy Microsoft in order to have a computer?
Counter point: Why isn't it illegal to bundle English into the OS?
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The difference is that ChromeOS has fuck all influence on the browsers market share, while whatever comes with Windows will affect is immensely.
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Actually, yes. A lot of people "bother with that". In the scientific computing world, it means you don't have to care *whose* BLAS or LAPACK library you use. This is great. You can design using standalone libraries designed specifically to assist debugging and run against parallel libraries optimized for sheer speed - even when they're written by completely different groups.
In the GUI world, do you really care if you're using Motif or Lestif? Or whether that's really SGI's OpenGL or actually the Mesa 3D lib
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Yes, you can replace the entire kernel. Not just with another Linux kernel - anything that supports the Linux ABI will work, so you could replace the Linux kernel with Lynx if you wanted. FreeBSD should also work. There are probably others.
It goes beyond Unix. Intel defined the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard to facilitate ANY OS whatsoever running ANY software from ANY OTHER OS, provided both were written to the spec. Thus, there's nothing to prevent you from running a Solaris application dynamically l
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Why the hell is a user interface on a PC rendered in HTML5????
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I don't. GNOME should permit any library that is API and ABI compatible and should not depend on specific implementations of anything. Used to be that GNOME did NOT depend on specific implementations, that you could choose between anything that provided identical functionality. Technically, since the source is out there, that's still the case but it should never have been the case that they restricted themselves to one solution alone.
Nonetheless, GNOME is not an Operating System, the Linux kernel won't brea
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Correction, Windows's *shell* depends on IE.
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Included is not the same as required. Even if you installed Ubuntu (which has Firefox), you aren't required to install it. It's optional. Thus it isn't tied in. Further, even if you install it, you can later uninstall it when you discover Chrome does most of the stuff Firefox does better.
Firefox isn't in the OS in Linux (or any other OS). Firefox isn't an OS program. It is a user application. There is a HUGE difference. It is hard to describe all the ways it is different without causing the Slashdot machine
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Removing IE will cause Windows 8's kernel to break at the lowest level.
Not the kernel, the *shell* which happens to be part of Windows, unlike Unix.
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First off, not an excuse. Selenium means that testing one browser or a hundred different brands takes the same time and the same level of complexity.
Second off, no competent vendor has extensions to HTML, CSS or JS. Competent vendors do EVERYTHING in the standards, which are quite powerful enough. It is a mark of incompetency that Microsoft not only does NOT implement the standards, they fill the gaps with proprietary crap.
Third, developers should never test their own code. That is a sign of an untrained an
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Competent vendors do EVERYTHING in the standards, which are quite powerful enough.
Can you please tell what the HTML5 standard for working with the camera is?
How about push notifications when the app is hidden?
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Show me 3D that requires that the page define whether it is to be rendered in software or hardware and I'll show you a specification that should be burned at the stake along with idiots like yourself.
I don't give a frag whether a given piece of 3D is rendered using SVG, VRML, GDML, OpenGL, DX11, PHIGS, Renderman, Maya, Rhino, Blender, a GPU, one of those insanely high-end nVidia modules that uses more power than every other computer in the house combined, that Chinese supercomputer built out of GPUs, or a c
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JS isn't a W3C standard. It can be obtained as a standalone engine. Provided Google's Chrome can support the loading of that engine, it makes not one whit of difference whether Google adds other engines to Chrome or remove their own JS engine. The only requirement for JS compatibility is that SOME JS engine be loadable at SOME point. It doesn't have to be built-in.
In fact, it's probably better if it isn't. Lightweight tools are generally superior tools. Having JS as a plugin would ensure that you could use
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In fact, on Windows, JScript and VBScript, while updated as part of IE until IE9, can be used by any application, and is used also for example by ASP. IE9 decided to fork JScript off Windows Scripting and update their engine separately while any other apps still get JScript 5.8. (MS did the same thing in forking ACE off Jet in Access 2007.)
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They promote sites that say you are required to have Chrome to access it.
Link?
Re:And Linux does too (Score:5, Funny)
I'll refrain from modrating since there's no "-1 spend five minutes on Google then come back and apologise for what an idiot you've been; following this, immediately re-evaluate every 'argument' you've been in, and figure out if you were right, or just a tool. Apologise to all those with the misfortune of meeting you".
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Umm linux doesn't have a browser. its a kernel.
Besides, you need to read up and see what the difference is between 'integrated' and 'installed'.
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Wrong. 1) Linux does not come with Firefox. 2) Firefox can be uninstalled under Linux. 3) Linux does not depend on Firefox for anything, not even for downloading your favourite browser. Hell, you wouldn't even want to use a browser to download and install another browser under Linux, you'd just use your package manager to install it.
Why were you talking again?
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Yes, it's really annoying how Linux won't let me uninstall Firefox.
This isn't even about unfair business practices (I'm not using Windows nor giving technical support to anyone using it, so what Windows does is irrelevant to me), but simply an incompetent design. If your house didn't let you rip off the wallpapers because they are a load-bearing part of the construction, you'd fire the architect.
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rm -rf /Applications/Safari.app
done.
Re:And Linux does too (Score:5, Informative)
Each will remove the user-visible browser, and probably result in some fun errors when other programs try to hand off a URL; but deleting Internet Explorer won't have any effect on MSHTML.dll, and deleting Safari won't remove the Webkit framework from OSX. With some further digging you could probably strip those out as well; but that isn't really relevant.
MSHTML and Webkit aren't considered "unremovable" because of some super DRM, they are considered functionally unremovable because they are expected features of their respective OSes and 3rd party applications routinely depend on them without any sort of graceful fallback...
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It doesn't, the OP is an idiot. Firefox just happens to be the most popular browser in Linux, but it's absolutely not required, and in fact is losing marketshare to Chromium and others. Some distros don't even have Firefox; I don't believe Kubuntu, for instance, carries it (it favors rekonq instead), though most users probably "sudo apt-get install firefox" right away.
Lots of Linux installations don't have any browser at all. I've got some ARM single-board computers here that don't.
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In the summary: "IE 10 cannot be uninstalled and is required to enable the new 'Metro'-style apps."
His reply: "And Linux does too, With Firefox"
How did he not say anything about any browser being required by the OS? It's right there!
Re:I applaud Microsoft their tenacity. (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't hurting, but we've had some 10 years during which MS was under the watchful eye of the DoJ. I expect that had they not been under such "surveillance" then the last 10 years, and the current state of the industry, would be very different.
Microsoft is retreating to patent suits, as they noted in 1998, to attack Linux now so we're not remotely safe from future anti-competitive acts.
More like Apple (Score:3)
Personally I would like to see MS become more like Apple and encourage healthy competition, whilst not participating in anti competitive behavior. wait...
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Re:I applaud Microsoft their tenacity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit to all 3 points.
The OS is a kernel plus core system libraries. It has ZERO relationship to how the output is displayed. Which is why I not only should be able to run KDE and AfterStep under Windows, I can.
What I CANNOT do is run Internet Explorer on Linux. So what if it's compiled for another OS and I don't have the source? I don't have the source for Solaris-x86 Oracle but I CAN run that under Linux (different OS and no source) just fine. Have been able to for years.
Yes, when you open a file panel or a network browser under Windows, you are using IE. The desktop is IE. The control panel is IE. Friggin' everything is IE! Even if you install another browser, you CANNOT tell those components to use it. So, yes, if you use Windows, you MUST use IE. You have no choice. And must you use Windows? Well, yes. Many web applications aren't written to international standards, they're written to Microsoft-proprietary functionality within IE. This WILL worsen, with this news about IE and Windows 8, just as it worsened considerably after Microsoft violated the Windows 95 injunction by releasing the bundled IE as Windows 98.
The competition is hurting something chronic. IE has rising usage figures. Firefox is starting to slide. Opera is sliding badly. Chrome may run foul of the Apple vs Google battle-to-the-death. (And one of them WILL die in it, if they don't back off.) Linux has never been fairly or reasonably offered as a desktop choice by anyone other than the OLPC group - and even they are now getting into bed with Microsoft.
Microsoft is a devout monopolist and it WILL kill anything that threatens that monopoly, no matter how savage or ugly they have to get to do so.
Re:I applaud Microsoft their tenacity. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, when you open a file panel or a network browser under Windows, you are using IE. The desktop is IE. The control panel is IE. Friggin' everything is IE! Even if you install another browser, you CANNOT tell those components to use it. So, yes, if you use Windows, you MUST use IE.
Internet Explorer is a web browser. The Desktop, Control Panel, etc... are not Internet Explorer, they use components that are shared with Internet Explorer.
Re: (Score:3)
What part of "it uses IE components" fails to make it IE?
The part where it's using components that are also used by IE (like MSHTML, which is obviously not Internet Explorer)...duh. Photoshop uses Qt components, that doesn't mean Photoshop is Qt, pretty obvious huh.
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No it isn't. The Intel Binary Compatibility Standard unifies all of that.
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To use RE/Xplorer, you must upgrade to Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6.0. RE/Xplorer 2.1.1 requires Internet Explorer 6.0 in order to deliver cutting-edge functionality as well as enhanced performance and security.
How charming.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't the Apple stuff be subject to something similar? Safari comes bundled too ...
They do have significant market power, but whether that's enough to subject them to anti-trust laws is debatable. In the end it shouldn't really matter because these days you expect a web browser to be bundled with pretty much any consumer-oriented operating system and if you don't want to use that then you just install something else.
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Bundled yes, integrated as part of the core system, no.
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It is part of the core system. There are 3 ways you can use Mobile Safari: opening it, using an installed web app and through WebViews inside other apps. All of them are WebKit and to a certain level Mobile Safari. And Apple explicitly forbids the publication of browsers that don't use WebKit or that use another JavaScript runtime. That's why there's even talk about Firefox for jailbroken iOS devices.
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Monopoly position isn't necessary to get sued for antitrust violations. I'm not sure in this case that tying IE to the computer isn't the same antitrust violation that it was back in the 90s. There is more competition now than there was then, so MS might get away with it, but it's questionable as to whether it's really any less illegal than it was back then.
Also having a monopoly isn't necessarily grounds for being sued either. Right now Amazon is more or less a vertically integrated monopoly in books, they
Re:Is Metro the new ActiveX? (Score:5, Funny)
I quita liked it when they integrateed an IP stack...
But, anyway, integrating IE seems completely irrelevant nowadays. It looks more like "just another (boring) GUI toolkit", and less like "stuff people will use".
no (Score:2)
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The teens will be the decade of Linux on the desktop.
No. Never. Not in any decade.