In article , Mayayana wrote:
> So you disable all javascript, I presume? Or do you just log
> on as a lackey user who has no access to the Internet?

Javascript and ActiveX are completely different propositions.
Javascript programs are executed within an environment defined by the
browser, and are sandboxed so that they do not have access to the
native OS (bugs notwithstanding).

ActiveX is a native-code program running without any isolation from the
underlying OS, and it can in principle do *anything*.

So, no, I don't disable all javascript, though I do use browser
plug-ins to block most of it (and, yes, I never run anything online as
root -- that's just crazy).

> | If it's not safe it's not brilliant. Quite the opposite.
>
>    No, not if you understand COM. It allows for
> script and other non-compiled code to call compiled
> libraries, which are registered on the system. It works
> very well. Before .Net, Java, Flash, etc there was COM
> providing relatively easy and safe wrapper components.

Relatively easy, but not safe. The problem isn't how well it works,
it's how little one can control it.

> But COM/ActiveX is still a brilliant, flexible design today, as
> long as it's used offline.

COM leaves too big a footprint on the system, for my taste. It's too
tied in to the registry, and its use makes it hard to develop truly
portable applications.

> | .. and MS didn't "beat" Netscape, not really. Firefox is still
> | with us and it's Chrome that's growing most in market share.
>
>   I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and
> assume you've been hanging around the barbecue, drinking,
> for most of this Labor Day Saturday.

We don't have Labor Day, here.

> You may not remember it, but around 2000 there was pretty
> much just IE on Windows.

I don't remember clearly ... but in 2000 I was probably using the
Mozilla suite on Windows. I was already dabbling with Linux then, but I
was using Windows as my main OS. I have an image (from 2005) of the
Windows 2000 PC I was using then set up as a VM on this machine, and I
can see that Seamonkey is the default browser on that. That's a few
years after your arbitrary choice of 2000, and Mozilla Suite had been
renamed in the meantime.

> ActiveX, 2 scripting options, and catering to corporate
> sysadmins, as well as building IE into Windows, made
> Netscape an impossible proposition.

ActiveX had very little to do with it! MSIE won the battle partly
because of MS Office's integration with IE that was important in the
corporate environment, and that did depend on ActiveX, but mostly
because it was supplied with Windows on every home PC, and most users
looked no further.

Anyway, MS may have won the battle, but it lost the war.

--
Cheers,
 Daniel.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05