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File Extensions And Monopolies
A_Non_Moose sent us an article from Salon that talks about how file extensions are one of the tools used by Microsoft to extend their mind and market share. It's a very simple idea but its honestly something I'd never thought about. Definitely worth a read, and a few neurons to realize how its really the simplest of things that will guarantee that this monopoly isn't stopped even if Microsoft's deep pockets didn't let them buy the law.
In Windows 3.1 and presumeably 3.11(Workgroups), it was very easy to change the extentions. You could right click on ANY file and I think there was an option for "Open With..." and you could set it to always do that.
Then with Windows 95, you started to have to struggle.
Over time, I got irritated with soundjam and went back. I got rid of the program but the association is still there. I know how to fix it, but if someone was a little less knowledgeable or someone writes a program to change all my associations, I'd be quite.. irritated.
I know, its possible for any dos/win program to change my PC file extensions too, but its more obvious and probably a lot less likely.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
This "attempt" at a monopoly through file extensions is something that would only be successful for those who know nothing about the OS at all. Using Win2k as we speak, right clicking on any file and going to "Open with" seems easy enough. Better yet, it has a check box of "use this program to open up the file as default". Very easy. Of course, if no one bothers to look for it, I'm sure it can be considered hard.
I agree that Microsoft does things specifically to retain a monopoly, but does everything it do have that purpose?
I doubt it.
Every program messes with file associations:
RealPlayer, Winamp, Quicktime etc...
What's the difference when it's MS programs?
You can easily change the assocation by holding shift while right clicking on the file and choosing 'Open with'. You then check 'Always open with...' and there you go!
Changing the icon is way harder and is a way more annoying thing in windows.
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
You are granting the user a little more responsibility which they might not handle. Agreed, if they did a little more research, yes, they can find it. But the point is that if you have mp3's and MS is already associated with them, who is to say that someone will sit and figure out how to get realplayer to work with them. Worse yet, whos to say that because they used the MS one first (by default), they aren't getting an unfair advantage by getting first choice of what is seen as an mp3 player to use. Being first seen is usually an advantage.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2001/10/08/file _monopoly/print.html
should do the trick
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
My mom is a competent user. But never in a lifetime would she know how to reassociate a file type. She has a crutch in that she can call me and I can either talk her through her problems or go visit her.
I'm continually stunned by the "expected level" of expertise the industry assumes (or fails to live up to). Case in point: the millions of new DSL users with cheap PC's and 24/7 access. My best friend has had me over twice now to fix his machine from malicious ad/spyware stuffed in his registry.
Just how are people supposed to know this stuff? Where are they supposed to learn it?
I'm no friend of the Empire, but they do have a track record of obfuscation. Even if the answer (in 95/98) is a simple right-click, that's a skill that I bet a high percentage of users don't have or understand: "Right-click on this icon, please" [left-click] "OK, I clicked right on top of it. Now what?"
Microsoft has slowly been coming around to the idea of security throughout key configs. Why not take the "A script is accessing..." IE pop-ups and extend them to anything that touches non-app keys in the reg? And, as previously suggested, an audit app that can clearly show you what's associated where, what runs on startup for whom, and validates key DLL versions?
GTRacer
- When Konqueror is as good as IE 5.5...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I don't always see the Open With option. But even when it works, it lists *all* applications, not just those relavant to the file extension or type.
A better solution would be to associate *multiple* applications to a given extension, and then have it list that set upon Open With (with the option of adding to the set from the entire pool of applications.)
I don't know about WinME (but I assume it's true there as well), this is a feature of Win2K. First, there's an "Open With" option on the context menu *without having to click shift*. Second, the option is actually a secondary menu that lists *all* of the programs that were *ever* used to open files of that type with the "Open With" option.
I use this feature frequently. I have my MP3 playlist loaded in Winamp, and if I want to check out a song I just downloaded, I right click->Open With->Media Player, so my playlist remains intact. Or I can choose whether I want to open JPEGs in PaintShop, ACDSee, IE, or whatever.
This takes exactly the same number of mouse clicks and marginally more time than double-clicking.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Seems simple to me... What does this guy want, dialog boxes everytime you open a file?
"You are opening this file with Windows Media Player, do you want to use another program instead?" ['click' NO]
"Are You sure? You may actually like Real Player better, or maybe WinAMP." ['click' YES]
"OK, Your default player has not been changed, but we will check back with you to see if you've changed your mind next time you open a file."
Besides, if a user likes Real Player (example he used), when he opens the program it will notify him that it is not set up to be associated with certain file types, and ask to correct this. This is in no way anything that contributes to MS maintaining a monopoly. This guy is probably just hacked off because it took him 1/2 an hour to figure out because he couldn't use help. Musta been a slow day over at Salon...
The "Open with" option only appears on file types that don't already have a default handler program selected. If they have one, you just get the "Open" option instead. If you want to change it, you have to know how to change your file associations in Explorer. Most people have no idea how to do this.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Konq is the *only* file manager I've ever used that made changing file associations easy - just right-click on any file and hit "Edit File Associations" (or something like that). Konq then takes you straight to the File Associations editor, with the filetype of the file you clicked already selected and ready to edit. And if you want to change a different file type, you can do searches with globbing to find the FileType(s) corresponding to any given extension.
Still, extensions are a fundamentally broken and archaic way of handling associations. Bring resource forks to Linux!
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
An analogy:
/*Unix*/
char fname[PATH_MAX]; strcpy( fname, "foo.c" );
char fname[9]; strcpy( fname, "foo" );
char exten[4]; strcpy( exten, ".c" );
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
are the worst designed user interfaces I have ever used. Cram an 800 character include path into a small 40 character NON-RESIZEABLE text box and try to find a typo in it sometime! Hey Microsoft - ever hear about RESIZEABLE dialog boxes? God - Motif, Qt, GTK all have them. Setting TCP settings on all the different flavours of Windows is another nightmare. To my delight yesterday after 3 hours of trying I learned on Windows 98 there were TCP properties on the dialup dialog as well as more properties on the dialup dialog icon (but not if it is a shortcut placed on your desktop). If you specify the DNS settings on the system TCP stack - they are completely ignored by the dialup icon which has its own TCP settings. This user interface of Windows should win awards for being cryptic. Man - screw all these dialogs and put it all in XML flat files so they don't change from one Windows version to the next!
if MS is at fault (or even attempting further monopolizing the market) we (the linux folks) are in deep shit indeed. we don't even let people switch printer with the lpr command if the user don't know how to -P. cvs seemes to be illegally tied to vi (unless you change the $EDITOR or something silimar) and the list goes on and on... get a grip. if you don't know enough to change a setting you don't deserve to change it. ie. you're better off being spoonfed. at least MS let's you be spoonfed. as long as MS let's apps like real-player change the file associations when they are installed i don't smell a foul play. if MS hadn't allowed any application to change the associations, then scott's arguement would hold water. this 2 page article in one sentence is "MS is furthering it's monopoly and killing is't competition in the process by providing a *default* setting that points back to it's own application." that sound foolish if said in those words, doesn't it? the interface is there to change it. he argues that it's 'hidden' deep down. but then, even if MS were to comply, couldn't we argue about every registry entry the same way? what then? bring up 10000+ item menu on a right click to access every entry in the registry? if you can't make heads or tails of what's inside the hood of a car, much less change the engine, are you going to call a car a 'bundled' product? after all, you can't simply switch the default engine that comes with it without going thru major pains.
with it says
"It's not in the "add/remove programs" control panel, where you'd expect it. It's not under "properties" when you right-click on a file. It's not in any obvious or easily accessible location."
It IS under the right click on a file in Win2k if you right click on any file and go to properties you will see a "Change" button where you can easily change the file type. I do admit however that it was very difficult to do in Win9x
Now everything opens in Emacs, or if it doesn't, I have an "Open in Emacs" option on the right-click context menu in Explorer
A more technical explanation:
The Mac's file system stores 2 equivalents to the file extension for each file, the type and creator codes. The type code indicates what type of file it is, the creator code indicates the application that created it. The key concept here is that on a Mac, those 2 bits of metadata are orthogonal, and with a simple file extension they cannot be without some serious filesystem hacking, which MS hasn't bothered to do.
Also worth noting that Mac OS X has most of the features this guy requests; you can remap a file's ownership from the Get Info window, and make your change global from the same location.
The article says this about filetype associations...
This quote describes almost every operation of every kind in Windows. The only reason anyone calls it user-friendly is because of their perception of the crushing effects of group psychology steered by a monopoly. It's like living in a technological ghetto -- some people whose course is altered under this influence are weak minded, but many of them have no reasonable alternative without radically and permanently altering their lifestyles with no help or prior evidence for success. Like nationalistic propaganda, it's heavily reinforced at just about every level of society. Having a monopoly that pervasively influences every aspect of society is like having narcotics in the water supply.
The type & creator codes are still a bitch to change, though. Not only are there two of them to work with, but they're quite often cryptic to boot. Sure, a typecode like TEXT is pretty straightforward, but say I'm using Fetch to move a movie from my home computer to a lab Mac for editing -- from the information I've gathered, Quicktime Movie Player's creator code is TVOD. Uh-huh, yeah, I could have guessed that in 3 tries.
Why couldn't Apple have just done the responsible thing for power users long ago and integrated T&C choosing into Finder? I guess with widespread use of OSX on the horizon it's a moot point...
I believe that this can be done with Applescript:
--script to convert files to Maple 5 Notebook
on open(theList)
tell application "Finder"
repeat with theItem in theList
set creator type of theItem to "REL5"
set file type of theItem to "MVNB"
end repeat
end tell
end open
Not exactly simple, but it can be done with a Apple provided program. (And it is faster than ResEdit).
I am sure that in the coming years, Microsoft is likely to provide a online, for-fee, version of Office. It could be problematic if instead of launching StarOffice, double clicking on a spreadsheet file would preferentially launch the network Excel application...
Apple has, to my knowledge, no such plans...
Really now, have you ever tried to talk your mother through getting pictures off of a CD? Mother - "What do you mean what drives show up? All I see are little folder things on the left, and little gray things with them".
I must admit however, that the solution proposed by Mr. Rosenberg is a bit misguided. The whole thing with XP was that it was better to take all the icons off the desktop. Putting a big ol' dialog up there saying "Which program do you want to view with?" is hardly the best in terms of GUI design, but he does have an interesting point. Currently I have RealJukebox and Winamp installed on my Win2k machine, and I still can't friggen figure out how to make only Winamp startup when I put a CD in - and I read /.!
Regards,
-Tammie
Yes, Microsoft has been bragging for years about they are making software easier and easier to use, but have failed completely to make certain tasks, like file extension association, among many others, not require a power user to understand, or an eidetic memory to remember where they hid the dialog box for all these features.
.AAA, .AAB, .AAC, etc.) looking for your extension.
For filename extensions, Microsoft's brilliant idea was to automatically hide the file extensions in Windows 95 and above by default, meaning you have to rely on the stupid icons to know what your file type is, and things like the SirCam virus can come along and fool people into thinking they are viewing a JPG when they are in fact launching an executable that will bombard me with 200 copies of their "Jun 2000 Sales Report" or something.
Furthermore, until recently, you couldn't search or sort the filename extensions access through "Folder Options" by extension name. You had to know what they are called, or vgrep through a huge list of every file extension ever considered since DOS 1.0 (the list looks practically like
A simple example: I want to reassociate ".BMP" back to the SpiffoPaint program after the BogoPaint trial version stole it away. Prior to Windows 2000, you _had to know_ what file type name the extension is regsitered as (and many weren't obvious). Again that could be any old dumb thing the software developers (like Bogosoft above) decided to call it like "BogoPaint Document" or whatever. If you didn't know that, then good luck finding it by hand, Chester.
In the NT 4.0 days, I personally had to resort to using 4NT's file association feature (I think the NT Resource Kit had something too) because otherwise it was just too much trouble.
And as far as editing the regsitry goes, remember that Microsoft's first plan was to not allow users to edit the registry at all?
Given that I remember in the late 80's that I had to rewrite the installation batch files for most software I installed, the idea horrified me. Now in 2001, not being able to edit the regsitry still horrifies me.
"Where do you want to go today, and how lost are you going to be before getting there?"
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Just my $0.02 worth, but I don't think that the users who can't get the open with dialog box in the first place would even bother.
-mrbkap
if you on the file, select 'open with', select your app and tick 'always open with'.
Very easy to do.
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
There are several easy ways of doing this when you have had a knowledgeable tech mess with your machine.
.reg file and then on their right click miraculously appears an Open in IE and an Open in NN options for local HTML files.
:)
The 2 options I use are to edit the CLSID settings within the registry and give myself an option. Export that registry key and then anyone else just double clicks the
The other is a cleverly crafted shortcut in the windows\sent to folder. These are great if you are advanced.
But can easily be set up so that those not so advanced can easily use for ever more with additional freedom. Not that there are too many non techs who actually want to use more than one product to do any given task. They like one thing to work and they stick with it, (well that has been my experience).
As always each to their own
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."