Microsoft Keeps Beating a Dead Browser

[PhreePhly]

I did not say they were the same. I said in this case, that is what we meant.
Integrated is NOT the same as included. I agree.
In this case, when the EU says "integrated", they mean included.
I think at a certain point IE really WAS integrated, and unremovable. It is not now, but the point stands.

~Lordbob

IE was always removable, but mshtml.dll was not. However, mshtml.dll has been part of Windows since Win95. As fseal states, the rendering engine was used on different parts, and is still used in different parts, of the Windows GUI. Apple does the samething with Safari. You can uninstall Safari, but you can't uninstall Webkit without screwing up OSX. The rendering engine is used by the OS for many GUI components.

Part of the problem was that MS did not/would not clarify this during the trial. This was part of their arrogance in believing they were right. This should not have been that difficult to explain, but Gates was so sure he was in the right, that he assumed the judge would never figure it out. MS really played the whole trial wrong.

BTW, for the record, I prefer IE (in it's current form) over Safari and FF. I like Chrome, but it is still missing some key functionality which holds me to IE. Safari just sucks, and FF has always felt "unfinished" to me. I also find it incredibly sluggish compared to the latest IE.

Edit: In keeping with the OP's request, instead of comparing browsers, I will simply state that IE is most certainly not a dead browser.

PhreePhly

 

[PhreePhly]

How would you know who's 'technical' or not? I retired at 45 because i sold my software company after 4 years for a good price.

Taking such an attitude is really a parlor trick which predates the neanderthalers. 'You just don't understand' works maybe with young co-eds but doesn't impress me much.

Having been around when MS put encrypted code in Windows 3 so it would arbitrary crash on dr-dos makes me a very wary person when MS starts to move blocks of code around AFTER the antitrust agreement.

While I agree with much of what you say, the DR-DOS thing is over blown. They put the code in BETA software, which is their right in testing. DOS was a requirement for installation and they wanted a controlled environment. The encrypted section was still in the final code, but commented out. This is typical when rushing to get out a product.

PhreePhly

 

[Lordbob75]

While I agree with much of what you say, the DR-DOS thing is over blown. They put the code in BETA software, which is their right in testing. DOS was a requirement for installation and they wanted a controlled environment. The encrypted section was still in the final code, but commented out. This is typical when rushing to get out a product.

PhreePhly

If they commented it, why couldn't they have just deleted it?

~Lordbob

 

[Lordbob75]

IE was always removable, but mshtml.dll was not. However, mshtml.dll has been part of Windows since Win95. As fseal states, the rendering engine was used on different parts, and is still used in different parts, of the Windows GUI. Apple does the samething with Safari. You can uninstall Safari, but you can't uninstall Webkit without screwing up OSX. The rendering engine is used by the OS for many GUI components.

I did not know that. Thanks!
Anyways, I remember trying to uninstall IE, on.... I think it was 98, and it would not let me. I could not get rid of it!
And I tried on XP as well with the same problem. So maybe it was supposed to be able to, but I never could.

~Lordbob

 

[petrossa]

While I agree with much of what you say, the DR-DOS thing is over blown. They put the code in BETA software, which is their right in testing. DOS was a requirement for installation and they wanted a controlled environment. The encrypted section was still in the final code, but commented out. This is typical when rushing to get out a product.

PhreePhly

No it was in full release, it got retracted after people at DRDOS couldn't figure out why Win 3 performed so irrationally on DRDOS (it just bluescreened whenever, not at a specific action which rose the suspicion) started to dissect the winloader and found some weird bytes which didn't add up to real code.



They had to make a memorydump to find the decoded code in another memory location which definitely checked for a string which only MS-DOS contained. If this string wasn't found Win 3 went into selfdestruct mode.

Sure they can check, give a warning, but making it bluescreen?

PS
Win 3.1 ran fine on old dr-dos btw.
PPS
hacking the widows loader so it couldn't be a 80286 extended memory client anymore and couldn't run in OS/2 anymore?
PPPS
loads of other examples where MS used 'less then honest' software tricks?

 

[PhreePhly]

If they commented it, why couldn't they have just deleted it?

~Lordbob

Unfortunately for larger software companies, the marketing group often decides on a release date without discussing it with engineering. The final days of project completion are a mad scramble, and it is not unheard of for certain functions to be simply commented out. The source code isn't being released and commented code is ignored by the compiler.

PhreePhly

 

[wwoods]

No it was in full release, it got retracted after people at DRDOS couldn't figure out why Win 3 performed so irrationally on DRDOS (it just bluescreened whenever, not at a specific action which rose the suspicion) started to dissect the winloader and found some weird bytes which didn't add up to real code.

They had to make a memorydump to find the decoded code in another memory location which definitely checked for a string which only MS-DOS contained. If this string wasn't found Win 3 went into selfdestruct mode.

Sure they can check, but making it bluescreen?

Honestly, so what ? why should MS make their product work with DRDOS ?I mean really, why should a buisness HELP the competition ?

I personally think what MS did was fine in that case....And yes I remember the whole issue, was a big money grab by a dyeing company.

 

[Lordbob75]

Unfortunately for larger software companies, the marketing group often decides on a release date without discussing it with engineering. The final days of project completion are a mad scramble, and it is not unheard of for certain functions to be simply commented out. The source code isn't being released and commented code is ignored by the compiler.

PhreePhly

I know it ignores it (I know some java..... want to learn C++), but it just seemed to make more sense to just delete it. Ah well, the explanation makes sense.

~Lordbob

 

[petrossa]

Honestly, so what ? why should MS make their product work with DRDOS ?I mean really, why should a buisness HELP the competition ?

I personally think what MS did was fine in that case....And yes I remember the whole issue, was a big money grab by a dyeing company.

Purposely crippling the competitors product is a crime my dear.

 

[PhreePhly]

No it was in full release, it got retracted after people at DRDOS couldn't figure out why Win 3 performed so irrationally on DRDOS (it just bluescreened whenever, not at a specific action which rose the suspicion) started to dissect the winloader and found some weird bytes which didn't add up to real code.



They had to make a memorydump to find the decoded code in another memory location which definitely checked for a string which only MS-DOS contained. If this string wasn't found Win 3 went into selfdestruct mode.

Sure they can check, give a warning, but making it bluescreen?

PS
Win 3.1 ran fine on old dr-dos btw.
PPS
hacking the widows loader so it couldn't be a 80286 extended memory client anymore and couldn't run in OS/2 anymore?
PPPS
loads of other examples where MS used 'less then honest' software tricks?

I can't find anything that shows Windows bluescreening. It was a non-fatal error message that only appeared in two beta releases. The retail ran fine. Do you have some support to show this.

EDIT: Apparently the code ran the check, even in retail, but didn't do anything.

According to Andrew Schulman, from Dr. Dobbs Journal, while the practice was questionable, it didn't affect the retail release.

Dr. Dobb's | Examining the Windows AARD Detection Code | September 1, 1993

PhreePhly

 

[wwoods]

Purposely crippling the competitors product is a crime my dear.

They did NOT cripple competitors product, they made modifications to THEIR product so it wasnt compatiable with DRDOS.

And, if you look at the lawsuit by Caldera vs MS, it wasnt a CRIMINAL suit was it ? As a matter of fact, Calder bought DRDOS from Novel for the sole purpose of sueing Microsoft, since their Linux offering at the time had been atotal failure.

 

[PhreePhly]

Honestly, so what ? why should MS make their product work with DRDOS ?I mean really, why should a buisness HELP the competition ?

I personally think what MS did was fine in that case....And yes I remember the whole issue, was a big money grab by a dyeing company.

This was the argument that IBM made when trying to stop Compaq from decoding the PC bios. Had Compaq not been successful, the PC would have stagnated under IBM. But because Compaq was able to re-engineer the IBM bios, the open PC platform exploded and we saw the price of PCs plumment as the technology got better.

The same with DOS. There were a few DOS clones out there and DR-DOS was not only cheaper, but they made some advances (i.e. OS file compression) that forced MS to do the same. Competition is good.

PhreePhly

 

[wwoods]

This was the argument that IBM made when trying to stop Compaq from decoding the PC bios. Had Compaq not been successful, the PC would have stagnated under IBM. But because Compaq was able to re-engineer the IBM bios, the open PC platform exploded and we saw the price of PCs plumment as the technology got better.

The same with DOS. There were a few DOS clones out there and DR-DOS was not only cheaper, but they made some advances (i.e. OS file compression) that forced MS to do the same. Competition is good.

PhreePhly

And DRDOS is where now......

 

[petrossa]

Wow Phree, that will take a long dive into the waywayback machine. But at the time i was developer of multi-user systems for CCPM and CDOS, as such i was pretty in touch with Digital Research. I even used to be a revendor for Europe at some time.
I do distinctly reading the proud article (and at the time it was impressive find encrypted code let alone decode encrypted code) by the techs at DR explaining in detail
with the disassembled parts from winloader how it worked.

If i remember well a new update of Win 3 was put out in no time, but DR-DOS had already gotten the bad press as a bad DOS and the damage was done.

This laid the basis for the feud between DR and MS.

 

[PhreePhly]

And DRDOS is where now......

What does that matter? Again, I don't think MS did anything wrong, but the error message could have had an effect. Some beta testers may have seen the message as DR-DOS was not as compatable with MS-DOS as they thought, so they abandoned DR-DOS.

The check, however, did nothing to check compatability. All it did, as Petrossa stated, was check to see if the underlying DOS was MS-DOS, nothing more.

While I believe that this is fine during beta testing (having a controlled environment is your progative) if they truly caused the retail OS to blue-screen, that would be unethical. I don't think this was the case, so I have no issue with the code, but it most certainly does nothing to help MS's cause in fighting the monoply charge.

PhreePhly

 

[wwoods]

Wow Phree, that will take a long dive into the waywayback machine. But at the time i was developer of multi-user systems for CCPM and CDOS, as such i was pretty in touch with Digital Research. I even used to be a revendor for Europe at some time.
I do distinctly reading the proud article (and at the time it was impressive find encrypted code let alone decode encrypted code) by the techs at DR explaining in detail
with the disassembled parts from winloader how it worked.

If i remember well a new update of Win 3 was put out in no time, but DR-DOS had already gotten the bad press as a bad DOS and the damage was done.

This laid the basis for the feud between DR and MS.

If DRDOS was such a hot product, then why did Novell sell it to caldera for a mere 400k ? Also is this the same DRDOS that violated the GPL ?

In October 2005, it was discovered that DR-DOS 8.1 included several utilities from FreeDOS and other sources and that the kernel was an outdated version of the Enhanced DR-DOS kernel. DR-DOS Inc. failed to comply with the GNU General Public License (GPL) by not crediting the FreeDOS utilities to their authors and including the source code. After complaints from FreeDOS developers (including the suggestion to provide the source code, and hence comply with the GPL), DR DOS Inc. instead pulled all 8.x versions from their website.

Like I said, DRDOS is where now ?

 

[Lordbob75]

Alright guys, again, it is off topic.

Is IE dead or not?
That is the question.

~Lordbob

 

[PhreePhly]

If DRDOS was such a hot product, then why did Novell sell it to caldera for a mere 400k ? Also is this the same DRDOS that violated the GPL ?

In October 2005, it was discovered that DR-DOS 8.1 included several utilities from FreeDOS and other sources and that the kernel was an outdated version of the Enhanced DR-DOS kernel. DR-DOS Inc. failed to comply with the GNU General Public License (GPL) by not crediting the FreeDOS utilities to their authors and including the source code.After complaints from FreeDOS developers (including the suggestion to provide the source code, and hence comply with the GPL), DR DOS Inc. instead pulled all 8.x versions from their website.

Like I said, DRDOS is where now ?

Come on, DOS was dead when Win95 arrived. While not completely dead, the headstone was being created. Windows was the de facto OS by then and Novell must have been happy to get 400k.

EDIT: To stay on topic, but IE is still NOT Dead!

Also, Novell was focused on Netware and that new fangled Linux.

That in no way shows that DR DOS was a bad product. In fact, it was very innovative, but the world moved to Windows.

PhreePhly

 

[petrossa]

IE is dead as a dead thingie that's been dead for a very long time ( free adaptation of BlackAdder)

No seriously, IE works ok. It has it's bad and good points like all others. But if we're talking: is IE dead as a de facto standard browser, it's yes definitively

 

[PhreePhly]

IE is dead as a dead thingie that's been dead for a very long time ( free adaptation of BlackAdder)

No seriously, IE works ok. It has it's bad and good points like all others. But if we're talking: is IE dead as a de facto standard browser, it's yes definitively

Actually, that's a pretty good point! Are we talking dead as a standard or dead as a product? If the former, yes and has been for a while. As far as the latter, nope, and won't be for a while.

I mean, W3C makes the standards, and the other browsers follow, except, the W3C begins the acceptance process only after 2 major platforms integrate the draft standard, but no one once to include a draft standard that will only change....

The whole process of standards is screwed up. Even the ACID tests are stupid. The percentage doesn't really mean anything, because the test scores linearly. If your renderer decodes in a different sequence, then your % passed changes.

PhreePhly