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MS Putting the Squeeze on Alternative Audio
renard writes: "Some interesting developments during the last two days of the Microsoft antitrust trial, as reported by AP: MS Executive Linda Averett has admitted that Internet Explorer trumps user preferences for audio playback, and explains away a failure of IE6 searches to find RealAudio sites as a "mistake by the search team." My personal favorite: an MS-internal email exchange where one employee suggests that everyone "Remember the 'embrace and extend' campaigns we've used in the past," and an MS executive admonishes that "We need to keep all of this off the airwaves." See also related stories at Yahoo, CNN, and the NYT."
This really isn't much worse than the hoops that RealPlayer makes you go through to remove it as your default media player. After about 4 "Are you really, really, really sure you want to Disalbe StartCenter" messages it lets you. Besides - they make you upgrade about once a month so that all your preferences get reset to RealPlayer again anyway... I don't know who would actually PAY for their crappy product.
I've been reading this for months... and you know it still seems like of all the things you could do to punish microsoft or increase competitiveness, this has to be one of the most trivial.
Ignore the propriatary file formats, ignore the "microsoft tax" contracts, ignore the insane EULA's, Ignore the nasty anti-OpenSource traps in their code releases, (your prof in CSI 101 saw our code so your open source project 5 years later violates our IP...) Ignore all the other dirty tricks they are playing and make them take out the ability to download files, or listen to music out of the box??? what the HECK! The whole organization must be stifling giggles and telling the lawyers to fight it out just so the court doesn't realize how easy athey are getting off.
More to the point, the problem was presented, and they seem to think that fixing it makes everything better.
"You can't punish me for that, I stopped doing it when I got caught!" Bah.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
The quote in the story is a little misleading. Here is the full quote:
The Microsoft executive is stating that the discussion of what they are doing and why needs to be kept off the email "airwaves." In my mind, this is actually more damning, because it intimates that he knows what they are doing could get them in trouble.
...and go use something else. This is the kind of thing that drives me a bit insane, since this fuels the fire of people thinking that using Microsoft products is the only way of using a computer. "I can't use this because Microsoft won't let me....wahhhhh...." There are other products out there. Don't like Internet Explorer? Go use Opera. Don't like MS Office, go use OpenOffice. Don't like Windows? Go use Linux or Mac OSX, or FreeBSD, or etc...
If enough people start using other products, perhaps Microsoft will take notice and start building things that people actually want. It's called market tendencies folks...not exactly rocket science.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Well, the govt. used to care, and used to want to bring anti-trust charges against Microsoft, but then, Microsoft used to not donate money to any political party.
It's interesting to see how both policies changed around the same time.
*shock* *gasp* *amazement* MS used underhanded tactics that were exposed in the trial and/or corporate emails. I feel like we're caught in a timewarp.
I wish once and for all that the general public and the US Court would realise that this is just another day at MS, and that we likely won't see the end of this type of MS BS til they actually implement either a breakup, or some other REAL sanctions.
If they won't play nicely with the other children, take away their toys. That's what parents do with spoiled children (at least they did when i was growing up).
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
Im not so sure. I think CKK will unleash a nice, hefty blow towards microsoft. I think shes trying to avoid the impression of biasedness that Judge Jackson clearly showed, at all cost by giving Microsoft every opportunity to present themselves in the right light. This will even raise the impression that shes pro-Microsoft or doesnt really listen to the states. :" Ok, even if we were a Monopoly, were such an important one and already got too far so that ripping us apart now would turn America and the world into the lower levels of hell." Miss CKK could still, and i believe she will, turn into Mr. Gates personal purgatory. Wait and see !
And forget how Gates acted. The mere fact that he didnt explode like everybody exptected doesnt turn him into a favour for MS. Basically what he said was : "It is bad for Microsoft if the settlement goes through.". Well, this is what this whole thing is about. You could go even further and translate what he said into
Amen to that.
That's one 'feature' that i'd love to see beat into the ground. Just about every product that has competitors (as most do) include those stupid @*()#&@( popups to reassociate them with format x. If i wanted program y associated with format x, i woulda left it checked when i installed the bloody thing.
At least most have the option to never show this again... realplayer is just a complete bitch for this, which is why i don't use it. ever. i'm also quickly getting fed up with quicktime's 'UPGRADE TO QUICKTIME PRO', adobe's "THERES MORE TO ACROBAT THAN JUST READER!", and winamp's "VERSION XXX IS NOW OUT! DOWNLOAD?".
but what pisses me off the most is no matter how often you uncheck or say no to all these things, they somehow get mysteriously 'reset' every few weeks.
And is it just me, or are those 'never show this message again' buttons getting fewer and fewer? nowadays they're buried somewhere in the nether regions of the user preferences section, with ever more obscure wording.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
The tone of the trial seemed to change around the time that we elected a Texas oilman as our president.
-B
I know this is a troll, but I am in a arguing sort of mood.
The States came after Microsoft because they had dollar signs in their eyes.
Nothing more, nothing less. They just wanted a piece of the pie.
What, so you think that the states will see any settlement money? Did you think that Bill G was going to show up with a huge novelty check with the memo "Sorry for fucking you over"??
I don't know about the other states, but Utah joined as a result of the ongoing litigation with Caldera over DR-DOS. Many of the experts in the case are at the University Of Utah, and after reviewing the facts in the case, they all advised the then attorney general to join the case.
If nothing else, it was an effort to punish Microsoft, and maybe drum up a little more support for the hometown heros Caldera and Novell.
Not to mention, being ruled a monopoly is a surefire way to ensure every con artist and halfwit who can't make it in the market on their own will slither out of the woodwork and make bogus claims against you.
Right - you know I really hate it when I have to go out and pick a telephone provider, or gas station, or what kind of car to drive. Wouldn't it just have been easier if we all drove Ford cars filled with Standard Oil gas while talking on our AT&T phones?
Maybe because if we had let those monopolies stand, AT&T would be charging you $2.00 a minute instead of 15 cents, Ford cars would breaking down ever 10,000 miles forcing you to buy a new one, and gasoline would be at 10 bucks a gallon.
Yeah, these anti-trust laws really suck.
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No...that's not what changed.
There were two things that changed the government's position towards microsoft...the views of the content industry and the views of Computer makers (Dell, Gateway etc).
The content industry realizes that it is unlikely that they'll be able to force hardware to include DRM (not that Fritzie will stop trying). However, they don't need that as long as MS controls 95% of the desktop OS market. If they can get DRM onto 95% of desktops, they'll be happy. If MS's monopoly position weakens, then consumers might start to look for an OS without a DRM solution.
The PC makers used to want MS punished. They were sick of MS's overly-restrictive OEM license agreements. But then the bottom dropped out of the PC market. People didn't feel the need to upgrade their computers since they could run everything they needed to on their current setups. There was no killer app driving people to upgrade their computers. This is where XP's bloat starts to work in its favor. XP, to PC makers, is the killer app that will drive people to upgrade.
So, when Intel, AMD, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP, the RIAA and MPAA call their favorite senators and tell them that they'd like Microsoft to get a slap on the wrist, the government complies.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
What better, more standard, standard could there be? Both EMACS and vi read and write the universal linefeed-delimited plain ASCII format by default. That is a hell of a standard!
(I don't know enough about Gnome to comment on KDE vs. Gnome.)
You seem to be using the word "standard" in a Gatesian way, where a particular application is called "standard" if you can get everyone to use that application. When Open Source and Free Software people say "standard" we mean practically the opposite--that you can use any application you want because they all share the underlying APIs and file formats!
Gatesian "standards," when properly implemented, mean no choice. OSS and FS "standards," when properly implemented, mean unlimited choice. Know the difference.