Saturday, June 23, 2001
A List Apart: Smart Tags
An interesting article about the whole IE 6 Smart Tags thing.
I'm generally pretty pragmatic when it comes to OS issues. I'm skeptical about what Microsoft does a lot of the time, but I'm pragmatic enough now that I know that they control the world as well, and there's not much I (or any mere mortal) can do about it. Most of my post-college career has been on Microsoft platforms, even when I've been doing Java projects.
I'm not sure smart tags are a good thing or a bad thing really. But I think they could definitely be problematic, and could be used with melicious intent -- not necessarily by Microsoft, but by the same sorts of people that sent out trojan horses written in VB Script that accessed Outlook's address book, or whatever else.
But Microsoft can't -- and shouldn't -- be trusted too much. They are so big that they are like a government, or perhaps even more so. They're massive, and there are very few computers out there that don't have the hand of Gates somewhere in them. I don't know what the solution is to it though either -- naively saying that everyone should become a penguin is tempting, but I'm still unconvinced. My thought is that Linux is great if you want to have the hood up on your car all the time, tinkering around with it -- but most people are using computers because they want to do other things, like send e-mail, balance checkbooks, read webpages, surf the internet, play video game -- whatever-- and not play around with the OS all the time. (Yes, Apple is good for making computers for "the rest of us" -- but the numbers say that people haven't gone that direction very often either....and Apple has been around a long, long time, and I don't see that changing.)
An interesting article about the whole IE 6 Smart Tags thing.
I'm generally pretty pragmatic when it comes to OS issues. I'm skeptical about what Microsoft does a lot of the time, but I'm pragmatic enough now that I know that they control the world as well, and there's not much I (or any mere mortal) can do about it. Most of my post-college career has been on Microsoft platforms, even when I've been doing Java projects.
I'm not sure smart tags are a good thing or a bad thing really. But I think they could definitely be problematic, and could be used with melicious intent -- not necessarily by Microsoft, but by the same sorts of people that sent out trojan horses written in VB Script that accessed Outlook's address book, or whatever else.
But Microsoft can't -- and shouldn't -- be trusted too much. They are so big that they are like a government, or perhaps even more so. They're massive, and there are very few computers out there that don't have the hand of Gates somewhere in them. I don't know what the solution is to it though either -- naively saying that everyone should become a penguin is tempting, but I'm still unconvinced. My thought is that Linux is great if you want to have the hood up on your car all the time, tinkering around with it -- but most people are using computers because they want to do other things, like send e-mail, balance checkbooks, read webpages, surf the internet, play video game -- whatever-- and not play around with the OS all the time. (Yes, Apple is good for making computers for "the rest of us" -- but the numbers say that people haven't gone that direction very often either....and Apple has been around a long, long time, and I don't see that changing.)
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