The cost of Microsoft to society is very big... Apart from enormous losses in productivity and business resulting from their unsecure operating system and its components (outlook, IIS, activeX), there is even a greater cost. They in fact ruined many standards, by providing incompatible extensions. Thy are going to aggregate the situation by introducing raw sockets in Win XP (security), and .NET (messing up existing standards). But, I have to say in their defense that they are brilliant. Their strategies work, and people are buying their products (win95, 98, ME, XP...). There is already a talk among developers that Java in the browser is DEAD. The development now focuses on the Java on server side. The same fate is with JavaScript. MS document object model is different, and they do not adhere to the XHTML and CSS recommendations of W3C. It is a tragic mistake that they were allowed to keep bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. But they can afford better lawyers than US government. We cannot force people to use Netscape under Windows, since it is big and takes a day to download via phone modem. The possibility to provide data and an applet to view it, is essentially gone, unless you want to probe the browser type and send Java or ActiveX depending on the type. The platform independence goes down the tube, but at the same time the new jobs for computer geeks will be created. The only sensible possibility to use dynamic content in the browser is to standardize MIME types and use specific plug-ins which are made available for the native operating systems. Again... this creates opportunity for standards and plug-ins creators. The problem, however, remains... Who will pay for it? The business community probably will... But the scientist are probably back to the age of static pages and dead HTML. We all had this dream that the Web will be a cross-platform user interface. But than we would not have to buy Windows, and MS would not allow this. As with all monopolies, their appetite is indefinite, and only governments can break their dictate. This comes from the person who considers himself a libertarian... Jan Jan K. Labanowski | phone: 614-292-9279, FAX: 614-292-7168 Ohio Supercomputer Center | Internet: jkl@osc.edu 1224 Kinnear Rd, | http://www.ccl.net/chemistry.html Columbus, OH 43212-1163 | http://www.osc.edu/ On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Bachrach, Steven wrote:
I apologize for jumping in here late but I was on vacation this past week WITHOUT my laptop (I recommend this to all!)
In any event, I want to clarify one item that Henry mentioned and that is concerning the Microsoft Antitrust lawsuit. Microsoft has not WON this suit, in fact they LOST - the appeals court has simply thrown out the penalty (which was to break up microsoft into two pieces). In fact, Microsoft just lost an appeal to have the original verdict thrown out. So the status is now what will be the penalty - likely not to be busting up Microsoft!
But this whole plug-in issue is VERY disconcerning. It would be nice to hear something useful from MDL on the matter!
Open source chemistry is of course a very real option, but without the browser framework this becomes a serious development problem. However, the GCC compiler is a major development project so perhaps we can encourage a project to develop an open source browser that supports XML, plugins, java, javascript?
Steve
-- Steven Bachrach ph: (210)999-7379 Department of Chemistry fax: (210)999-7569 Trinity University 715 Stadium Drive San Antonio, TX 78212 steven.bachrach@trinity.edu
-----Original Message----- From: Rzepa, Henry [mailto:h.rzepa@ic.ac.uk] Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 10:57 AM To: chemweb@ic.ac.uk Subject: IE and "plugins": correction
Correction to my earlier posting. I had noted that Adobe "plugins' do work with IE 5.5 SP2 and IE 6, XP. This is because they are not plugins but pure ActiveX controls (this from a developer who should know!)
So I suppose the next question is whether the "chemically important" plugins will be upgraded by their developers to ActiveX controls. MDL presumably will do so, but how many others are out there, and will they get upgraded?
Netscape of course will continue to work, but then again the cost of producing one "plugin" and one "activeX" control for Windows might mean some developers will chose one or the other but perhaps not both. With less than 30% of the use and still decreasing, this might mean the final nail in the coffin for Netscape. A similar issue confronts "non" Windows platforms.
It really is difficult to avoid the conclusion that having won its anti-trust case in the courts in the USA, Microsoft is going to get even more monopolistic. --
Henry Rzepa. +44 (0)20 7594 5774 (Office) +44 (0870) 132-3747 (eFax) Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AY, UK. http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/
chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
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