In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:06:23 +0100
<3053144.7z4AGycVBR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> ____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Wednesday 26 September 2007 01:11 : \____
>
>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
>> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote
>> on Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:54:22 +0100
>> <3336195.bzN3JGmrqB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>> Microsoft?s Internet Atrocities
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Unfortunately, however, Microsoft has lived up to its name as a
>>> | poor-quality company when you consider their internet contributions. I
>>> | consider Microsoft?s internet-related products as absolute atrocities that
>>> | may have set us back more than they?ve pushed us forward.
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | Internet Explorer x.x
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | FrontPage
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | IIS Server
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | ActiveX
>>> `----
>>>
>>> http://bludice.com/microsofts-internet-atrocities/
>>>
>>> Microsoft is not interested in improving the Web.
>>> It is interested in *owning* it and making cash.
>>
>> Nothing wrong with that ... as long as it's standard
>> and allows competition. Too bad Microsoft fails
>> on all three fronts.
>>
>> [1] It can't own the Web. Assuming "the Web" is the
>> collection of web developers, they'll do pretty much
>> as they damn well please (and more power to them).
>> If Microsoft is lucky, they might buy assistor tools.
>> If not, well, there are those of us with a knowledge of
>> vi out there still, with XSL and some interesting tricks
>> that are done on the user's browser, with very light server
>> load. There are also websites such as www.anybrowser.org
>> which promote an alternative, standards-based orientation
>> towards web design. Linux assists in that effort by allowing
>> for multiple browsers to be used simultaneously. Want to
>> view that website using Dillo? No problem. Amaya?
>> Opera? Kahehakase? Galeon? Epiphany? IE? (Yes, IE
>> runs on Linux, with WinE and IES4Linux!) One can even
>> cobble up some Java and view a webpage using JEditorPane,
>> though I'm not sure what's happened to HotJava, which
>> turned cold and froze up long ago.
>
> I know you're merely making a point, but what if the "Web" became merely DNS
> and content therein was just a Microsoft binary? What if the Web was just a
> set of referrals to some objects that are interpreted by Windows engines?
At this point? The genie's been wandering around the moon
and back and contemplating a trip to Mars; it's not going
back into the bottle anytime soon. Granted, Microsoft
could play some interesting games here, mostly because
video is so taxing on the Internet using current TCP
and UDP packet protocols. However, there are protocols
that might allow for broadcasting -- I'd have to study
the issue but MBONE's been around for a little while;
I don't know its precise status. Of course, tying those
protocols in with some sort of authorization will yield
some very messy hybrids.
>
>> [2] It's not standard. IE tries hard but fails in
>> numerous areas. At least IE7 got PNG transparency more
>> or less right. Too bad IE falls down in various other
>> areas, some of them because it can't handle "naked" SVG,
>> others because it doesn't process blahblah.xml properly.
>
> Microsoft has recently admitted that poor support for
> standard was deliberate. This is not surprising if you
> read some of Microsoft leaked memos (and antitrust exhibits).
Naturally. After all, if IE's easier to use, why would
anyone want to use Mozilla? :-)
>
>> [3] IE now allows competition, mostly because it had to,
>> not because it wanted to. Mozilla's usage is now up
>> to over 20% by a number of accounts.
>
> I still believe that's partly because Microsoft tried to
> freeze advancement in Web browser technology. The Web was
> a threat to Microsoft's desktop apps,
Still is. JNLP in particular allows a web browser to
launch any Java-based application on a user's local box.
(This of course requires Java and Java Web Start to be
installed on the user's local box.)
> which only ran on Windows. When Microsoft elbowed
> Netscape (illegally) it sent its IE developers to
> the refrigerator (or Maui). That's why competition is
> needed. We could have that Ajax and Web 2.0 hype over
> 5 years ago.
It's all a means to an end anyway. What is the Web,
really? The browser is a standardized fat client --
and it's getting fatter. The server's an extensible
event-oriented processing engine -- the events being GET,
POST, and PUT requests, with various payloads, responses,
and payload interpretations, depending on context.
>
>> IE: Yep, it's an atrocity. It's had better days; IE4
>> was arguably the best of its era. Too bad the rest of
>> the world passed it by long ago.
>>
>> FrontPage: The blog mysteriously cuts off after "and", but
>> it's clear FrontPage was a bad implementation of a good idea:
>> making website creation easier.
>
> It was snatched by Microsoft and perverted to generate
> Windows/Office-centric markup. 'Larry Qualig', who used
> to post here (thank goodness that abusive scum is gone),
> was among the original developers of FrontPage.
If one believes him. I'm not sure if I do, but I'd have
to look.
>
>> IIS: A very funny beast, in many respects. I strongly
>> suspect it was meant to be a skeleton Christmas Tree ... and
>> that's what it's turned into, especially if the ornaments
>> are infectious malware install kits.
>
> IIS -- a leader in program downloads. Sadly, many of
> these downloads (and installations) occur without the
> visitor's/user's awareness of desire. He or she becomes
> a zombie.
>
>> ActiveX: ActiveX has a long and tortured history. I'm not
>> familar with all of it at all, but the mere fact that
>> there are acronyms galore: DDE, OLE, COM, DCOM, COM+, ATL,
>> RDO, ADO, ... ye gods. How do these all interrelate?
>> Thankfully, many of them have been deprecated (RDO in
>> particular is no more). Of course, figuring out which
>> ones is a trip.
>>
>> [rest snipped]
>
> No binary set belongs on the Web
Highly debatable. DNS in particular is binary,
though very very standard. (RFC 1035 is still active;
it's been updated by a number of followers, presumably
adding additional capabilities such as IPv6 support.)
ASN.1 (ISO-8824) is still used in certificate contexts
(RFC 2459). TCP, UDP, and IP of course are binary, too,
at least in their headers; the payload can be anything
(RFC791, RFC768, RFC793).
Even ASCII is binary, in a sense -- it specifies a mapping
from bit patterns (7- or 8-bit chunks) into glyphs.
Text is not all ASCII, either; Unicode and UTF-8 come into
play in that case. XML is text with markups (eXtended
Markup Language) but can encode binary, presumably using
base64 encoding (RFC 2045, section 6.8). Personally,
I think ASN.1 is more efficient than XML but the latter
is far easier to process by naive program readers --
including, of course, human eyeballs. ASN.1 is still used
in SNMP as well (RFC1157).
And then there's Flash (which isn't standard, AFAIK, but
very widely used), Applets (which are basically
sets of .class files wrapped in a lightly fried ZIP
archive; these aren't standard but are used in a number
of spots), and pictures -- PNG at least gets RFC2083.
JPEG and MPEG aren't in the RFC system (at least,
AFAIK!) but are somewhere. Dunno how standard GIF is,
but Unisys probably has the 89a documentation running
around somewhere. ASCII pictures are an interesting
concept but ASCII hampers things by at least 169% --
256 bit patterns but only 95 characters. GZIP output
is binary; not sure where the standard is for that.
Ditto for BZIP.
Of course proprietary binary formats, much like Xandros
install kits, should be taken out and shot. ;-) Proprietary
ASCII formats, at least, might be salvageable by a good
text processor or programming environments such as Perl
which are geared towards text processing, searching,
mangling, etc., teasing out the useful bits.
> and timbl never intended for the Web to become
> the private turf of some companies and their magical
> 'extensions'. There are standards bodies for the Web,
http://www.w3.org/
http://www.ietf.org/
are the ones I happen to know about that are readily
accessible. ISO and ANSI are a little annoying (though
not unreasonable) in requiring payment for spec retrieval.
> so a consortium can ensure everyone advances in harmony.
Not entirely sure about the "harmony" bit, but the World
Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force
do their best, presumably along with the International
Standards Organization, the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority, and a whole bunch of others.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux. Because it's not the desktop that's
important, it's the ability to DO something
with it.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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