COM has nothing to do with "layered", It is about interoperability, allowing one application to interact with another or components.

.NET also supports COM, but everything is moving towards managed code as it has fewer issues and better security. Microsoft is starting to move things in that direction. Much of the Visual Studio IDE has been rewritten using .NET, replacing the old COM-based tools.

There have been some high-level technical exits from MS lately, but that happens in any business. There are still lots of VERY smart technical people there who are doing lots of innovative things. WPF, for example, moves UI to a whole new level that was impossible or very hard to accomplish before. WCF goes a long way to make it easier to handle multiple communication technologies in a similar way.


>I really don't know what COM based means? Java Applets behave as COM. DOM is COM - and it's not dying. I've even heard there are multithreaded concurrent tasking DOM objects. What's a COM?
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>That no-mas COM based ruse is part of the Microsoft Strategic mumbo jumbo - there are a lot of COM based - technologies as well as layered technologies doing perfectly well. Low iodine nerd wanna-bees with pocket protectors say COM - but most of them don't know what it means.
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>IMO: COM is just another way of saying "layered". Win 7 is still using those old OCX progress bars and list views - right? Are those COM, or are they layers.
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>Rudder at the helm would not be enough - the engineers are gone - Some of them are writing CLRs for New Deli Boiler Platers - others are doing media. Microsoft traded her engineers for marketing and acquisition reps.
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>They should "open source" it (V-9). Microsoft doesn't have the talent pool they used to. They build X-Boxes and what was that cr*ppy iTune ripoff called - Google turned them down, Yahoo turned them down. MS is just bad joo-joo - nobody wants get on board with them. They're withering on the vine - suckling off the off shore off the rack service shtick until it runs dry. Microsoft is no longer an innovator - they are a pool of game show hosts and politicians.
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>Well the tie you have looks good - and you do to Craig! - but I couldn't help but notice - in one day - I saw 20 TV talking heads, including Robert Gibbs - all - wearing green ties and eggshell shirts! Clones with different masks on.
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