OT: New low for Microsoft!

[lwj]

On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 07:26, d l wrote:
> Internet Exploder is just a warper for those explorer
> DLLs.
> It don't really do much by itself. Removing those dll will
> severly cripples explorer; tree view, side panel, quick
> launch and may other things will just dies.
> 
> Media player is just a very simple DirectShow player,
> removing it wont impact much on the system IMO. (Removing
> those associated dshow filters will, however)

Maybe, but I don't think so. Tree View, Side Panel, Quick Launch, etc.
are in a DLL separate from Internet Explorer. I believe that Microsoft
just updates them with Internet Explorer (Mostly so they can screw over
other Windows developers. Microsoft provides header files for developers
to use them in the applications. They are no more a part of Internet
explorer than they are a part of any other application.

Further, Filters are not applications. Many were not even originally
written by Microsoft but other companies. Anyone can replace these
filters with there own and assuming they included the same bugs as the
filters shipped with Windows they would work fine.

The point is that these things are NOT deeply integrated with the
operating system. The operating system will still function without them.
If someone wanted to they could completely replace them with their own
versions or something completely different. For example you could
replace them with something that looked like KDE and Xine.