If you want to see how smart tags should work, go to the software that's been doing it for years. www.flyswat.com This is the best implamentation of this technology you will find. Unfortunately it's free software, so be aware that it does have surf monitoring features and such that are uesd to improve it's effectiveness. I no longer use it because of this, but still... They have gotten the smart tags idea right and very well done.

Sure, microsoft shipped it with their own smart tags. What should they do ship it without any features at all? As the above article forgot to mention, smart tags can be written by anyone. With just a text editor. All you need to know is some XML. Google can write smart tags. AOL can write smart tags. NBCi can write smart tags. Should Microsoft have included some AOL or Netscape smart tags, instead of their own?? Microsoft's smart tags were just place-holders. Just like IE's default webpage was MSN, smart tags came with MS smart tags by default. And it was completely open, and anyone can make them. I think that smart tags was one one of microsoft's less intrusive technologies, and just for the record, Walter Mossberg is a donkey-fellating fool.

Seriously, go read his articles. His logic is so warped. Smart tags are really just a way of simplifying cutting and pasting stuff into a search engine. You could probably (I'm speculating here, but it sounds simple enough) write a smart tag that didn't highlight anything, and only placed a smart tag when you selected text, or maybe only when you selected text, then right clicked. This is Walter Mossbergs rationale, straight out of his articles: How dare Microsoft try to change a website, and take editorial control without consent of the authors! How dare they!

Umm, folks, that's the whole idea behind a browser. The author is not meant to have complete control over the appearance, she only advises the browser how to display it, but the browser can do what it wants. Is walter mossberg saying that if I were to make an option in a browser that made all arial text appear as times new roman, that I'd be making unauthorized editorial changes without consent of the author? Hmph, making links in places the author didn't choose them to appear! How dare they.

Besides, Microsoft even turned them off by default. So what's everybody b****ing about?

Why is everybody complaining? I can't wait till "product activation" finds it's way into audio CDs...wouldn't that be awesome? It would prevent against all those awful cases where folks have let other people borrow their music and listen to it on their CD players when they didn't even buy the damn thing! That's outright piracy. We need to protect intellectual property! I hope Microsoft merges with one of the record companies soon - then they'd have their hands on computers, internet services, video game consoles, television AND music. I like the way they run things!

Your audio CD analogy is not the same thing. A CD player (as of now) forgets the bits right after it reads them. Therefore you can not have the information contained on the CD playing on two different cd players, at the same time, without having made some copy of the disc. With software, it is coppied to the hard drive and then the CD can be used illegally on another system. Allowing more than one instance of the software to be executing at the same time -- violating the EULA. Microsoft just wants to help you to be a law abiding citizen.

/Ryan

Yes, I'm sure they are just looking out for me...

As quoted by Avengr below: "It sends a unique identifier for your system derived from information of the components."

This is the exact bulls*** MS wants you to believe. Do you HONESTLY think that is ALL they're going to do? How do you really know for sure? Are you able to look at the source code and verify this? How will you know if they don't casually receive other information from your computer? For example, they could send a list of all your software installed so that they know what programs people use most often and dominate that...

I think there are other ways to prevent piracy. What MS is doing is a disrespectful...

You're bound to get a few shouts of "paranoid" from the microsoft fans for that, but really, it's not that far off. Microsoft is obsessed with preventing piracy in all it's forms, and something like that isn't too far fetched. I don't know that they'd be able to get away with doing it so sneakily at this point, somebody would be bound to find out, but you never know. They might not even do it secretly. They wouldn't really have to - they are Microsoft, people will buy, they can do whatever they want as long as lots of people don't act up about it.

Microsoft's obsession with piracy is rather ridiculous, especially for a company that makes so much damn money and is run by the richest man on the planet (literally). I think it is not entirely negative when people turn to warez to acquire their products, personally. This company has put itself in a position where there is very little competition for them & they get crazy with control - I think people have a right to steal from those lowlife, wealth-addicts...and no matter how much the folks that are in to warez pirate their s***, there are still so many more that do it the legal way. They will still make huge profits...all power to the folks that refuse to play their little game & contribue to their wealth.

(I can already smell the s*** I'm going to hear for that...)

Anyone who it is really going to matter to probably will make it so they don't have to register it. The activation is to stop casual lending. That is all. Hack the ****ing thing and don't register. You are paranoid!!! Are you afraid MS is going to see your 40gigs of porn and mp3's? THEY DON'T CARE!!!

I agree with you....No doubt there will be a crack for it. As soon as winxp goes gold, there will be ISOs out there with a fully working registration crack...Its the same thing with car alarms. If people can create the best alarm, then there are people that can disable it too...

>Microsoft's obsession with piracy is rather ridiculous, especially
>for a company that makes so much damn money and is run by the
>richest man on the planet (literally). I think it is not entirely
>negative when people turn to warez to acquire their products,
>personally.

Do you have any idea how much revenue is lost to pirating each year? Not just a couple of bucks here and there, but hundreds of Billions. As I recall it was over $150 billion in the United States alone, and the percentage of pirated software was low (10%) compared to some countries like China (95%). What this has to do with the Smart Tag feature of IE6 (I thought it was a neat prospect (I don't remember iNBC (they had that click anything software advertised on TV for awhile), on-line news service, or any encyclopedia catching this much flak)). Theft is theft. Microsoft could care less about what MP3s you have, that doesn't help them prevent someone from copying Windows XP. You have a choice. Don't use XP if you don't want to purchase it.

I meant NBCi... so for the confusion.

"how much could Microsoft be losing? I mean, gee, they're rich beyond fantasy ".....how does the amount of money they are losing relate to their current wealth? This is the same moronic idea that certain people have towards 'wealthy' people/companies. Apparently if you're wealthy you should pay more taxes because you can afford it for instance. What a moronic way of thinking. It doesn't matter wether Microsoft is a billion dollar company or a 100,000 dollar company, if they're losing money they're losing money...their current ecenomic wealth has no relevance.

...Just as it's moronic to believe that they're losing "billions" to piracy.

Them whining about it doesn't help, either.

Finally, your point about richer people... well, the top 20% is getting, wait, a TAX BREAK... and the rest of us aren't. Kinda funny how there are more loopholes available for you the richer you get. Kinda funny how the people MAKING the laws have the money and make laws to benefit themselves under the guise of "helping the citizenry." Heh.

-ShAdOWmoNkX

The crack for XP betas already exists... It basically bypasses all product activation... Doesn't disable it, but bypasses... As for XP final having a crack, won't need one... Windows XP final corporate won't have product activation, so the minute it hits retail, someone'll have a corp edition ISO burning up the newsgroups... It's been like that for Win98, WinME, WinNT4, Win2k... Why would XP be any different?

Have you considered that maybe the tax cuts were aimed mainly at the rich, because they were the ones who were given the most tax increases in the past? Lowering everyones taxes still wouldn't fix the huge disparity between the middle class and the rich.

DAMN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

Finnaly, a lot of us b****ed and the work came through. Smart Tags was a real bad idea for a content browser. Besides, IE wasn't designed to change content.

"Bowing to pressure from its critics and citing consumer feedback, Microsoft has decided not to include Smart Tags in the upcoming releases of Windows XP and IE6."

Oh, and let me guess... there is absolutely NO pressure on M$ about product activation and the upcoming "Software as a ($$ PAY ONLY $$) Service" .Net.Crap -- right? How much money are you willing to PAY M$ to SPY on you??? They need to grab their ears and yank real hard - their heads might pop right on out of their asses then...

The product activation does not allow microsoft to spy on you. It sends a unique identifier for your system derived from information of the components. However this unique identifier is not reversible, meaning they can not use it to see what hardware you have in your system. Now the only able to activate so many times because of hardware changes now thats another thing. I realize they are reffering to large hardware changes but still thats a pain.

of course I see where if they let the unique identifiers vary alot and be reactivated alot that it then wouldnt prevent piracy.

So I guess the answer is..... If your an honest person that buys his/her OS and you change your hardware alot then you should find out about warez just incase your copy stops working :) or find a company ordering a corporate version (which dont require activation (I dont think )) and order your copy through them. Is it a pain for htose of us that change hardware a lot? Yes, but it really wont affect most people that buy thier OS.

ohh and one more time activation does not spy on a user. try looking into hash functions (which is what they use to generate the identifier) I dont think microsoft would be that hard up for system information, as it is I think beta testers give their system info they should have plenty already.

does that make me trust them more? hell no. are smart tags and clippy more important than activation and .net? they seem more like carefully planned diversions to me. this betanews article says that they removed smart tags due to "pressure from its critics and citing consumer feedback" - surely there is more negative feedback about .net and activation than there will ever be about smart tags and clippy. if ms is backing down because of negative feedback, they could have the courtesty to do so on more important issues. i will never install an os that limits me or may someday just not turn on. are they really _that_ stupid?

MS sells Privacy! Hey you know that software that some people designed to track where YOU go on the internet??? Well, MS made it harder for that software to work. Acutally they made that software absolete. MS doesn't need to spy on you. The reason for activation is to stop the casual lending you windows cd out. And yes, how easy is it to hack that? Exactly, but not everyone has the capability to do that do they?

BTW .NET is awesome, your missing out. This is going to kill Java.

MS sells privacy? Are you kidding? I wouldn't trust my data on any MS OS (not even Win2K although it's finally something somewhat secure....)
As for .Net killing Java. Dream on. Have you got any idea how much development is done at the moment in Java? I know and talk a lot with developpers and they love the language. They develop on e.g. NT and deploy on Solaris etc... and they all say it: Server-side Java ROCKS...

Hey go run some bench tests against Wiin2k and Linux on security. Oh, they already did. The only problem was speed and now XP fixes that.

Yes, Java has produced some good dev, but I'm sure you haven't even looked at .NET and are completely BIAS in your statments. I'm glad ServerSide Java rocks, but when has Java got an upgrade? Java Developers are more than likely religous to the Language, and I really doubt they will ever go to .NET. I'm looking more at future developers, mainly the C++ market. C# is the next evolution, even though in beta it still lacks some functionality.

Remember the big lawsuit over J++. MS was not allowed to write its own version of Java. Now MS is taking things in a great direction. Java ideally would have done the samething, but with the lack of development on the language, it doesn't look like anytime soon.

Also the cool thing about .NET is that Windows applications are starting to became XML, ASP, ASPX, HTML based, with an IE / Trident infrastructure. This makes WebDevelopers all of a sudden become Application Developers, which was one of the goals of .NET. Remember Java kinda does the same thing. Lets be realistic .NET wass designed with Java in mind and how to improve on what it does, while creating a completly new easy-to-learn language (C#).

I don't think you understand what a "hash" is. Hashes are like a checksum; you can't extract the original data from the hash, but you can use a hash to compare two things for equality.

Where in the hell did I ever refer to Linux vs. Win2K security? For your information, I almost seldomly run it anymore. I use another flavor of Unix (a commercial one....).

I do have looked at .NET and wouldn't mind it that much if it was more Open. It doesn't have to be Open Source or whatever, but should be built on Open Standards so other can build compatible products.

I remember the lawsuit very well. Remember the Java statement? "Write once, Run anywhere." That's what Microsoft is so scared about. Microsoft was using the "Embrace and Extend" method to destroy this. This is there entire policy: make the world dependent on their OS/Software by eliminating all threats that could eliminate that dependency. It's indeed cool it's becoming XML, HTML, SOAP etc... but I which MS wouldn't add their own proprietary extensions to it (just look at Kerberos in Win2K: you can see how we ****ed it up but don't try to make your software compatible with it).

And for your information, Java is still being developped.

You want to know what the biggest problem with Java is that Microsoft can't control it and make people dependent on their version so, as you said it, they build something "new" and try to convince people that it's better.

C# is completely open and has been submitted to a standards organization for review. With Java, Sun (can shove it right up their a$$,) decided that they wanted complete control of the language, and the licensing for it. Sun is exercising the very power that you are so afraid Microsoft has. If Sun truly wanted to create the next best language they would have opened it up a long time ago, and truly allowed the language to evolve. As of now, it is just a dirty hack of Oak.

/Ryan

Sun offered Java to 2 standards commitees. Microsoft offered C# to a standards commitee. Sun didn't go through because they feared that other companies might want to destroy the compatibility (most likely Microsoft). Let's see how Microsoft continous with C#.

M$ knows how it builds the hash. If they know how it builds the hash, then via reverse engineering, they can easily know exactly what hardware you have. EACH piece of hardware has a UNIQUE hardware vendor code/id/mac address. Each separate vendor uses specific mac addresses only for their company. If M$ can get your PID from the hash of several randomly picked hardware IDs, then M$ can easily know how to decrypt those hareware vendor IDs and know exactly what you got. Look at Plug and Play, if M$ is going to use Plug and Play Data, the info plug and play has are the following: Vendor ID, Product ID, Hardware Type ID.
The scanning of hardware has ALREADY been done by Win2k and stored in the registry. If you want to crack this code, just gather all the data from the registry and apply it to the hash algorithm. Hardware IDs are all there. Does NOT take for ever as the quote implies. If it is protected by law, then every Windows since Windows 3.x is in violation of this law.
Consider this. If you took this information and put it into a text file, zipped it up, added password protection, and handed the file to anyone out there and had the tools to "bruteforce" crack the password or run a systematic hash cracking, then they will be able to unzip the file, and know what the Text file contains.
Remember the old fashion global world problem with software. Anything can be cracked/hacked/stolen from you. It is only knowing what tools to use. M$ CAN, and WILL reverse engineer their secret key to sell "personal data" to other companies who want to know what general hardware (Video, CPU, Soundcard, HD, CR-RW, DVD, and Memory type/vendors) and will allow M$ to personally gain extra cash from other people's data which they did not authorize to have that data transmitted.
What should be done is that M$ "most definately will" get in trouble with the law again and this lawsuit on product activation will put M$ bankrupt.
I KNOW there will be contests out there to crack/reverse engineer the PID/hardware hashed code cause there are MANY out there very interested in knowing how M$ will do this hashing. There must be a sequence of "registered" bits that will notify the decryptor what type of hash was used and I have a very good IDEA on how they created this hash.
It would be more along the lines that the PID is the Public key in an RSA master key code. However, the hardware PIDs are possibly combined together or stacked one on top of eachother and presto, if you got the master key, you can get associate it with the RSA Public key, and then be able to reverse engineer the hardware PIDs.
As I have reiterated before, IF you transmit ANY hardware information in some sort of KEY, the remote party receiving this information WILL know what type of hardware you have, period. M$ thinks we are stupid enough to believe that they don't know how to reverse engineer their own code to find out the hardware info.
Think about it. The US and British people could not crack the code the Germans were using during WW2 but eventually cracked the code and knew how to decrypt it, knowing their every move. With GHzs of CPU power out there, who says this code can not be decoded? I sure don't believe it, do you?
Think about it, your freedom of privacy is now violated. Add information raping here.

....[Begin Quote]....

I don't think you understand what a "hash" is. Hashes are like a checksum; you can't extract the original data from the hash, but you can use a hash to compare two things for equality.

....[End Quote]....

Lets say for one moment that you're right, and M$ isn't doing anything sneaky behind our backs, in spite of the fact we don't know precisely how this algorithm is set up. And While Taking such a stance would be naive in light of their past lies and evasiveness, for those of you who don't already know, M$ took the hardware information and MAC address from our computers when we visited and/or updated windows from their web sites and added this to a large database; all under our noses. When someone pointed this out to them, they apologized and acted like it was some kind of accident. Well, I for one, am getting sick of their constant excuses, apologies, and "accidents" that are all too frequent.

And while the "accidents" get more and more elaborate, aside from the fact that activation violates; Fair use Laws, and perhaps Lemon Laws, the privacy issues concerning activation do not lend them self only to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), but are rooted in the same visitations of Biometrics.

The parallel to a "Biometric Fingerprint", while not an exact image of someone's "Fingerprint", but of a few selected geometric artifacts of the physiological traits unique to everyone (in this case, hardware); While it can not be converted back into its originating form per se, but rather a useless skeleton, ideally; still poses an enormous threat considering the sudden and unexpected s***s in information profiling, storage and processing technology, and information terrorism, where as of yet, there are no laws or regulations governing the sale or transfer of biometric information legally acquired.

This apparently benign, yet very intrusive and invading procedure of OS "Product Activation", with the possibility to keep every person's unique computer characteristics on file (not to mention what else would be possible, such as giving this "Hash" to the NSA. Anyone remember the _NSAkey?) should not be tolerated by Anyone. Even residues of such technologies being present on an OS would be out of the question. I can't imagine any government security agency using XP anymore than the Chinese Government has used the Pentium Processor with its Processor-ID (they banned it).

One has not to look far to see where people overstretch their authority. Every person who went to the Super Bowl was secretly photographed and placed into a Biometric database. The database was then compared against a database of felons and criminals. They found something like 18 people who were wanted for some crime or another. Thats 18 out of how many people? That is not a justification for this Unlawful Domestic Surveillance and Unlawful Search and Seizure, only to find a small handful of criminals?

I can't see why anyone would stand for such fingerprinting when buying a computer or anything for that matter. And to the argument that everyone has a social security number, license plate, and has to validate that they are 21 years old by showing ID when purchasing alcohol or entering bars (in the US). These points are not valid. I Drive my car in public where one can crash into someone and then be apprehended, My Social Security Number is for "Social Security", and I flash my Photo ID to a person whereupon he immediately forgets this information after my age is validated. My Car, SSN, and ID don't automatically transmit information back to some centralized Database that will decide if I should be allowed to drive my car, drink or turn on my computer today (Not to mention that people Drink and Drive and their car doesn't disable it self, but Heaven forbid we upgrade our hardware). My computer, the hardware configuration that I purchased and own. Not Microsoft! I switch my hardware All ThE TiME!!! I have 2 computers that only I use. Do you honestly expect me to shell out over $700 for a "multi-user license" just so I can have "Fair Use". That is a law that YOU have to comply with, not me. Lets not forget that the OS is the Air that the programs breathe, the electricity (That I pay for) its blood or should I call it the sodium and potassium that flow through its neurons.

Our Founding Forefathers never intended for such things as this, and some even were opposed to the ownership of ideas as commodities. When Technology advances to a point of no return, we cant let a bunch of greedy Luddites try to put forth unbelievable limitations on things that they could never and should never have total control of.

Artists vs. Photography, Hollywood vs. VCRs, Government vs. Supercomputers and Encryption, Record Industry vs Napster. There are going to be technological changes we can't do anything to stop. Case in point: A new radar was invented called "Passive Radar" that makes the billion dollar Stealth Plane totally obsolete. No one can hide from it and its absolutely undetectable! If thats not enough to make the Government s*** themselves, Scientists speculate that in the future, Quantum computers will be able to decrypt ANYTHING!

The Government and Billion Dollar Industries such as Microsoft want to tell you what you can and can't do, while doing what ever they want with technology and information. What would we do to stop formerly unavailable technologies being used by people?

Perhaps in the future of "Quantum Computers", when encryption is impossible, we could add special death darts that kill people that try to decrypt restricted government documentation.

Or if someone tries to copy a CD we could make their computers explode, creating a shower of bloody chunks and shrapnel.

.Net is one of the best developements I've seen come out of microsoft. .Net is both platform independent and language independent and will be built into all future releases of windows. The thing that I find funny is that all the Microsoft haters don't realize that those 3 facts make it a great tool for any OS manufacturer to increase their OS market share. This means that any .Net compatible app can run on any .Net compatible OS. The biggest problem with people leaving windows for an alternative OS is that they can't use the software they are used to using. If .Net is widley accepted by developers and my non MS OS developers you can might see a more diverse operating system market. That would fuel inovation and competition.

As for C# it's a great language. It's very similar to Java syntax and goal wise. It's probably what Java could have been if it had continuted to evolved.

This should acutally make you happy. Since .NET is better than maybe Sun will get off there a** and do a little more dev on their own language.

why do you need c# open source. MS is submitting standards. You want to change the language so it only works for you??? Why the hell would you want to do that. BTW, those commercial versions of Unix are just compilations of Third-party. I know because I used to be the biggest redhat fan. If you want to stick with Unix bases OSs, go towards Free BSD based OSs.

you need to calm down...people have legitimate beefs with it, even if you don't yourself; accept that. The feature itself has potential, but how it's operated needs some thought - in my opinion, and appearently in the opinion of the many people who complained to the company. They know that, and have backed down for now.

"This is not the first XP addition to cause trouble for Microsoft. The company has taken heavy heat over product activation, a mandatory form of registration. While intended to prevent software piracy, consumers are fearful about the privacy implications surrounding the requirement."

Now am I the only one who is more concerned with upgrading your own computer and having to go through that registration process again? And only have 3 chances? I have made huge upgrades more than 3 times while running Win2k, unless microsoft doesnt consider a new hard drive, motherboard, ram and video adapter a huge upgrade *smirk*. I am more upset about the upgrade policy that I have read about more than I am about privacy issues. If microsoft wants to know about me dammit I do not care, I think they suck a** for doing it, but if they REALLY want to know about me, they could do it in a way that is so covert that no one would know, heck maybe they already do. My point is not even about Smart Tags, more so the latter part of the paragraph that avoids what I think is the main concern of most future XP users, and for people who have a "Crack", that probably isnt going to work for the real release version.

Peace
GB

Activation does seem much worse, I'd rather they had dropped that than the smart tags crap - which really only needs to be retooled to lessen Microsoft's control over it; otherwise it's a handy feature.

Even if you change your hardware and your configuration changes so that you need to re-activate, and even if you screw it up and blow your three chances, you just call MS, and they will give you a new activation key, provided you have the original installation media to hand - so what's the big deal with that? Intellectual property owners have to be able to protect their IP rights and just because MS has come up with a clever way of doing it, everyone is railing against them. I am all for it -- all my software is legit so I have no problems with the activation concept.

My Software is legit too, and with several thousand dollars of software installed, none of the others have gone so nuts over the protection. I can just see Macromedia start doing this *sarcasym*. The point of my argument is that I do not even want to bother calling Microsoft because my 3 tries are up. What the heck? Why do I have to take time out of my day to call the Operating System *I BOUGHT* to be able to use it?

I fully intend on purchasing WinXP (if i decide to go with it) but having to go through this pain in my wahzoo, sucks donkey-d.

They arent backing down the Smart Tags because of customer dissatisfaction, if so they would get rid of this "feature" too.

And on a completely moot point (hope i spelled moot right), when was the last time we saw Bill Gates on the street corner with a cup in hand? I cant believe this money grubbing guy is so hard up for cash that he has to create this much of a hastle.

And does he even know what his OS can do? I bet Bill "money" Gates doesnt even know how to configure subnet masks.

Peace

>>Why do I have to take time out of my day to call the Operating System *I BOUGHT* to be able to use it?

Because the license says so. You didn't buy the OS, you bought the license to use it. Freedom of choice... Don't like the terms, don't buy the license, don't use the OS. The choice is still yours.

Word...

But that would mean people actually have to READ those darn EULAs... :)

/Ryan

Strapped for time, I'll make this short. By reading this you agree to be bound by this EULA. You will now kill yourself. Also, I need your kidneys; Mine are bad. Send them along with all your personal belongings.

"All your computers are belong to us."

"Because the license says so."

Just because you write an EULA does not make it "The Law". It can be contested.

WOW.... CPUGuy finally snapped. Is that kind of language really necessary to get your point across? Please be more careful in the future.

I quite like the idea, it would be good if the database for them was expanded though, alot of companies names are not highlighted.

This is hard to believe. Where did this information come from? I see nothing about it on Microsoft's site. Cite your sources guys.

Well you could look at this cnet article
http://news.cnet.com/new...-6399150.html?tag=tp_pr

so try that first.. I'm sure other news agencies will be holding the story as well.

From the time I've spent trying out various beta's of IE6 I have to say I quite liked smart tag's, if you like they were a 'cool feature'. In that way I'm not sure why everyone is complaining about them.

However I do take the view that the web page designer should have control over the smart tags. Hence I think this could be a superb feature to incorporate and allow web developers to create their own specialised SmartTags via the use of XML. Of course any such feature would have to be passed through W3C and approved first otherwise you'd have all the other companies complaining about how unfair it is.

Anyways, sorry to see them go, but hope they return in a 'configurable' form,

I'm glad. If a web author wants their page to be filled with links to certain content, they can do so themselves. They should not have to go out of their way and insert special code so that Microsoft does turn their page into an advertising minefield...if Microsoft wants to be distributing their browser (which I use exclusively myself so I'm not complaining) with their operating system, they need to exersize restraint as far as the limitless possibilities they have to steering user's browsing activity - especially the novices. Such a "smark tags" type concept could be a convenient part of the web, but should probably be controlled by individual web authors or at least through some unbiased web index/directory - not Microsoft.

If a web site developer does not want his page to show smart tags he can prevent them with a simple meta tag in the HTML code -- no big deal. If the surfer doesn't want them, they can be switched off - so, again, what is the problem?

Unfortunately the term unbiased ceased to exist years ago with regards the the internet once people turned it into a for-profit medium and killed it.

The common beflief is that: "Webmasters who objected to the added functionality on their pages were allowed to disable the links with a simple HTML tag"

However, in Internet Explorer 'help' it says: "Select Always have Web pages display available smart tags to specify that you want smart tags to display even on Web pages where the Web page owner has chosen to hide them."

What is the problem with Smart Tags? I have Office XP and I think they are very useful, and you can disable them if you don't like them.

What is the problem with Smart Tags? I have Office XP and I think they are very useful, and you can disable them if you don't like them.

Office XP Smart Tags and IE6 Smart Tags are different. MS just called the them same for merchandising reasons.

If anyone misses IE6 Smart Tags, there's a product available called FlySwat (http://www.flyswat.com) which does the same thing. It highlights words on your web page and provides extra links. It's been around for quite awhile, too.

Hey they may be axed, but guess what you can still install them. They are not ompletely out of IE, to hard to dev out. So you either enable them or not on Add/Remove Programs. Also IE got the idea from MSOXP, and yes, basically they are the same thing. If you don't think so show me the spec that says different, because I'll get fired if I show you the spec that says they are the same.

NBCi has been advertising the same thing recently http://quickclick.com/. I think it was still too early in the program for the database to be complete, but it seemed exactly like the kind of inovation the DOJ claims that a monopoly stifles.

/Ryan