OK, so I was having some issues with Internet Explorer stability, so I decided to go check Windows Update as I regularly do, and found that IE 5.5 SP2 had been released! Since this looked like a promising solution to my problems with IE, I went ahead and downloaded & installed SP2. Reboot.

I noticed the first annoying problem when connecting to my SSL-encrypted (OpenBSD) IMAP server with Outlook Express. I kept getting this very unhelpful error message related to the certificate trust. After poking around on the net for a while, I figured out that what OEwas trying to tell me was that the IMAP SSL certificate was invalid because the root certificate was not trusted. I use a self-signed certificate, which worked fine with OE 5.5 SP1, even though it wasn't trusted. Apparently Microsoft had fixed this bug. Easy enough, I simply installed the IMAP cert into the trusted root.

Then there was the second problem...

Later, I went out to check Apple's QuickTime Trailers. For some reason, the QuickTime plugin was no longer working. At all. WTF? I decided to go ahead and reinstall QuickTime. No Luck. Uninstall & reinstall. Nope. Uninstall again, remove all traces of QuickTime and the plugin. Then reinstall. no. Since the issue didn't seem to be with QuickTime (imagine that) I went looking for answers in the Microsoft knowledge base; the QuickTime plugin just didn't work with IE 5.5 SP2. KB article Q303401 explains why. Apparently, in their infinite wisdom, MS removed Netscape-style plugin support from IE6, but also from IE 5.5 SP2. Last time I checked, a service pack was supposed to include the latest bug and security fixes, but not actually remove features!!

Searching on Google, I also found an article about the QuickTime plugin issue on ZDNet. Whether MS will admit it or not, it's clear to me that the removal of support for plugins (in favor of ActiveX), like the removal of Java support, is a carefully planned move to exclude competitors' technology. Apple now must scramble to develop an ActiveX plugin for QuickTime, and Java users must download Java support separately. These are real barriers to competition. Web site operators can no longer count on Java support on the browser, and realistically can't use Java any longer. Microsoft once needed support for Java & plugins, when they were in head-to-head competition with Netscape. Now that they've all but eliminated their rival, these features are no longer desirable (to MS).