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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (19200)	5/17/1998 6:47:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

OK, Dwight. Simply put, I think you're regurgitating the Microsoft company line, convenient for the Microsoft business plan but with nothing in particular to do with what an OS is and how it's supposed to work. There is a world beyond Microsoft, you know. Network protocols are the kind of things that should be "integrated" with the OS. They got to know about devices and interrupts and stuff like that. The browser is this huge chunk of code, anybody who wants to put it in the protected space where file systems and network protocols live is nuts. Of course, that's not exactly where IE is either, it's off in the Windows dll hell netherworld, where it's not quite clear how things fit together, and it's inconvenient for Microsoft to say. Now, if Microsoft really wanted to "integrate" Windows with the Web, it would be more consistent with what the web is and how distributed programs work to integrate on the server side instead of the client side. That is, the "web view" of Windows would be a service offered by Windows, and any browser anywhere could access that view, modulo appropriate security. Maybe that even crossed somebody's mind at Microsoft, but was shot down because it didn't fit into the business plan, cutting off the air supply and all that. Instead, you got the same Windows as before, accessible from exactly one seat, but you have the pleasure of a browser window for every folder you open. Very innovative. That leaves out Active Desktop, of course, which turns your computer into some strange video arcade thing. At least that's what happened when I loaded a Prodigy disk, very odd. You want to go on blandly stating the browser is obviously an OS function, well, that's ok. That's the old "just like disk defrag" argument, also known as the "ham sandwich defense". The OS is what Microsoft says it is. Word isn't part of the OS because that wouldn't fit into the Microsoft business plan, otherwise it's integrated pretty much the same way IE is. That is, the code sits in various dll's and has a COM interface. This actually was a recurring theme in the consent decree hearings. If Microsoft gets to define all the terms, they'll win any antitrust case for sure. We'll see how far they push that one. Cheers, Dan.