Azure Synapse Analytics data lake features: up close
Microsoft has added a slew of new data lake features to Synapse Analytics, based on Apache Spark. It also integrates Azure Data Factory, Power BI and Azure Machine Learning. These ...
At the dawn of the Internet age, Microsoft used every trick it knew to dominate the World Wide Web. That strategy worked for a few years, but aggressive antitrust enforcement and equally aggressive competitors crushed the company's onetime dominance. Here's a quarter-century of history that explains just what happened.
Microsoft introduced its ActiveX technology in 1996. In a January 2001 post for TechRepublic, I wrote this:
"I've never been able to shake a nagging mistrust of the fundamental principle behind ActiveX. After all, ActiveX controls are nothing more than software, potentially powerful binary programs that can be delivered over a network, installed automatically, and controlled from nearly anywhere. Shouldn't you keep a close eye on any software that appears on your PC?"
As it turns out, that mistrust was well-placed. ActiveX became a vector for crapware and spyware. In the 1990s, security expert Richard M. Smith developed the third-party ActiveX control tool shown here. It took Microsoft many more years (until IE9, in fact) to finally introduce options to stop unwanted ActiveX controls from executing.
One of the key selling points of Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 was that it didn't include ActiveX support.
Caption by: Ed Bott
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