2009-05-27

Problem Silverlight: Micro$oft owns your computer


Intro
I am using official version of M$ Windows XP at work, and all the day yesterday I fought with it's updates. Yes, I am talking about Silverlight. I do not care about other possible updates as long as they have no impact on my work. But this one... "Why not?" you will ask... Well, I have few reasons.

1. This computer is MINE!
It installed without my approve. Just downloaded and made ready to install. And more, when I am checking box "Don't notify me about this updates again" it waits about 5 minutes, than downloads it again and installs it again. I can't cancel or forbid installation of this package. Just can't. I have no control over own operation system! I can put TABOO on any package on my SUSE Linux box, but I can't make Windows ignore this peace of "optional" crap.


2. User-agent of browsers
When silverlight is installed - it changes user-agent string of web browser to include itself. M$ already changed user-agent of my Firefox to this one:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; uk; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

What for? Someone is using those dirty techniques to determine silverlight or .NET installed on my machine? And why M$ hacks my browsers without my permission to do it? I can't agree with such politics.

3. Politics
Development of Silverlight looks like politics solution from my point of view. If you can remember history of Netscape - you will see that M$ always releases own products of same kind after they're losing market. Market is totally occupied by Adobe with it's products and experience with graphical applications. M$ will easily take market back with such "optional" features as Silverlight.

4. Religion
I am Java developer. And being Java developer I can see that no one believes in desktop java apps because of JRE on client's computer. Do you really think that JRE is harder to install than Flash Player? No it's not. But "everyone has a flash player, but no one has JRE installed" is already mature religion in most countries. So that will be my own religion - if something is written in silverlight - I don't need it with it's crappy silverlights.

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