Re: uninstallation

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

It's an excellent point you raise, and frankly, I spend so much of my life in the
Windows
orbit that I really don't have any idea what the answer is.  How do the others do
it better?  I will leave aside Macintosh which maybe has an easier time of it
given the tighter linkage between hardware and software.  How DO unix, linux,
XWindows, OS2 handle all the system configuration and file lookup issues that
Windows attempts to answer with its awful registry?  What mechanism does CORBA use
to enable one component to find another instead of an OLE-like registry?

Mitch Stone wrote:

> In reply to Steve Cohen's message sent 1/22/98 5:23 AM:
>
> >But, but, but...
> >and this is the reason I've never bothered with such products, don't you have
> >to have had Clean Sweep installed first, in order for it to work?  That is,
> >Clean Sweep knows nothing about programs that were installed before it was?
>
> All this technical discussion on un-installation is fascinating, but begs
> the question. Why does the removal of applications need to be such a
> hassle? Why should installing applications create tangled masses of
> mysterious files the purpose of which can only be devined by experts?
> Lest it escape our attentions, this prime example Windows brain-dead
> design is providing Microsoft with no small amount of cover from the
> Justice allegations and Judge Jackson's order.
>
> Windows users may have grown (sadly) accustomed to such
> knuckle-headedness, but that can't excuse the fact that it is a totally
> unnecessary, if not deliberate, "feature" of Windows. If Larry Lessig
> intends to pose some tough questions for Microsoft's engineers, he might
> start with this one.
>
>    Mitch Stone
> +---
>    At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1b3.
>
>    Boycott Microsoft ** http://www.vcnet.com/bms