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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."
Judge Jackson may have been so personally pissed at MS he did something legally questionable, but now MS is showing their stripes to an "impartial" judge. I don't think Judge CKK is going to be the pushover they hoped.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
...but does anybody else get the impression that this whole 'anti-trust' trial is just a big giant dog and pony show to keep everybody happy and make the government look like they arent all up on big biz's jock ?
Sorry, but if I tried to pass off some of the crap that MS has in these trials, i'ld be in jail on contempt charges.
Maybe i'm naive, but i think the gov doesnt really give a fxck about MS or their 'anti-competitive' practices, they just brought out the smoke and mirrors...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
How can you "accidentally" not show Real Audio search results? Huh, whoops, guess all y'all have to use Windows Media Audio now...
"... She said the problem was fixed two weeks ago -- over a month after the states' top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft's wrongdoing,
So the "problem" was presented as evidence of wrong doing, so they went ahead and fixed it. Is this similar to tampering with evidence?
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
Yep, Realplayer is jumping on the "Please feel sorry for us, we're getting h0sed by MS too!" bandwagon.
MS is probably at fault for some of this - but if Real would just realize that their software sucks, and that might be a big reason for people not using it in the first place.
Open message to real: I'm a Linux fanatic. At work, when my Windows users ask "which do I choose at radiowhatever.com, real or ms?" I tell them to use the MS format.
That's how much Real's software sucks. At least we have ogg.
In one instance, I can always find a different product that doesn't irritate me and at least tries to dwim. In the other, I'm not given any choice at all. Tack on the fact that choice is being eliminated by a convicted monopolist and actually it is much worse.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
When Microsoft has billions going into research and a dominant desktop position, how can one expect an open AV standard to become prevelent, especailly when one considers the effort that goes into creating good codecs.
Don't get me wrong. If I had to pick between Real, QT, and Windows Media, I'd take Windows Media. QT asks me every damn time I look at something if I want to buy it. Real runs hidden applications when Windows loads and only recently stopped its practice of asking me if I want to upgrade.
Is the problem with universities? Are any researcher doing work on codecs that could end up in the open forum? Does Ogg Vorbis do everything that we need?
A speech...
Real Audio + Quicktime + Windows Media Player + Win amp all installed on the same machine is complete cluster f*** and a battle ground. I am sure there are a few more that I am forgetting, but this is a good start.
If a computer had emotions and I installed all these applications at the same time, it would be begging me to format its hard drive to stop the suffering.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Really, the first time IE 6.0 pops up its media window, it gives you a "Do you want to use the Media Bar to play all audio files?" prompt. I chose "No", and IE never bothered me with file associations again.
On the other hand, I installed RealOne a few weeks back and desipte unckeck a huge list of files it wanted to take over, I still grabbed quite a few. I attempted to reassociate them with Media Player and other programs, and guess what happened...
Next time I opened RealOne player, it popped up some "File Associations Agent" which said: "Another program or programs have attempted to associate RealOne Player-assoicated files with themselves. RealOne Player has re-associated all files."
WTF???
Nowhere did I choose to have these files associated with RealOne Player, nor did I choose any "maintain file associations" button. Not to mention, you can't even get rid of the resident aspects of RealOne Player. Just about every time I boot my computer (which, admittedly, is very rarely) I get some "RealOne Player Critical Notification" box that pops up. As far as I can tell, the best you can do is make it only show up "A few times a month"--there is no "GO AWAY YOU FSCKING ANNOYING POP-UP WINDOW!!!" option that I could find.
So, yeah. As evil as MS may possibly be, I don't feel bad for RealPlayer on this one. =P
-Jayde
What's a sig?
go to 88lite.net, get the freebie that takes IE offen your machine. Install Netscrape. RealPlayer works mucho better without IE, as does any version of WinBlowze.
True. And I agree that their product sucks buttocks, but consider this: If Microsoft wasn't trying to shut out the competition, then maybe companies like Real could spend more time improving the way their software functions rather than devoting so much time and energy to devising ways to confound Microsoft's desktop fascism.
Some are given suckers and some get lollipops
I know, my cat walked over the keyboard and typed in the EXACT same thing!
It happens all the time.
.sig? Get your own damn
Microsofties testifying poorly for the company. Yesterday, Microsoft's Will Poole, vice president in charge of the company's Windows New Media Platform division, conceded that he couldn't think of anything Microsoft had done with its audio and video capabilities to address a trial court's April 2000 findings against the company.
The states also brought out an email from a different Microsoft employee, Kurt Buecheler, who wrote that when Microsoft went to distribute market development money to computer manufacturers, "a key criteria will be shipping Windows Media Player."
Today, when the states lawyer enquired as to why IE6 played music files with WMP technology even if the user had selected RealPlayer as their default, Microsoft executive Linda Averett said Microsoft could use RealNetworks software to play music in Internet Explorer, but chooses not to.
"The reason it is not replaceable is that Microsoft does not allow it to be replaceable, correct?" Schmidtlein (dissenting states attorney) asked.
"Correct, it is an integrated feature," Averett testified.
She also testified about the complaint by RealNetworks that the XP search program couldn't find RealNetworks files. She claimed it was a mistake that had been fixed two weeks ago. This would make it a month after states' top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft's wrongdoing.
Yesterday's testimony: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-900213.htmlr osoft-Antitrust.html
Today's testimony: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Mic
This (hopefully) teaches everyone here not to use microsoft products. And yes I do take into consideration the fact that many of you have to use microsoft tripe at work. Just don't use it at home. Please. And by this, I mean no more office 2000 purchases, no more purchases of computers with windows pre-installed, nothing. Just cut them off. One geek at a time. It will eventually work.
:)
Thanks for your cooperation
Well, usually.
Slightly off topic....
Allright, so I'm reading through the Chapter 4: Processes section (brushing up on my basic threads and synchronization concepts) of the Silberschatz/Galvin "Operating Systems Concepts" (you know, the dinosaur book) and it hits me. Fundamentally, all this garbage MS bundles in its "OS" is extraneous to an operating system. Looking through the book, there's no chapter on Media Players, no chapter on Web Browsers, no chapter on personal information managers....no chapter on WINDOW MANAGERS!!! These things are not part of the OS proper.
Has anyone at any point in these hearings ever offered up a working defenition of a computer operating system? Don't you think that would go a long way toward determining exactly what should and shouldn't be "part of" an operating system? It seems to me like everyone involved is working backward by looking at individual, extraneous components and querying whether it is or isn't "part of" the OS. Shouldn't they really figure out what an OS is and then look at the components to see if they belong?
Truly, the book provides a very basic, somewhat low level, and very academic view of operating systems (basically the OS facilitates IO, Storage Management, Process Management, Security and possibly Networking/Distributed Computing in using a given collection of hardware). I would grant that at this point having some kind of GUI environment for an OS is pretty much a requirement in order to make a machine "useable" by an appreciable number of people. But after that how much further do you have to go?
It seems to me that looking at things from this perspective would make it abundantly clear to everyone involved that MS has gone way beyond the bounds of what an OS is in their Windows product. It would also probably provide obvious deliniation points for breaking up the business (for instance there is no good reason for the window manager to be integrated with the underlying graphics routines). It would also highlight just how spurious all of MS's arguments are in regards to how breaking things up would ruin MS Windows, by highlighting either that MS has no clue about what an OS actually is and their code is incredibly flawed as a result, OR (more likely) MS has gone to great lengths to obscure what an OS actually is to further their own ends at the expense of the user and other application developers.
Admittedly it is not as all cut and dried in practice as it is in acedamia, but I do believe that attempting to establish the basic notion of what an OS is would further illuminate the problems presented by MS's current approach to its "operating system" in relation to the States' (and our) concerns in this case.
See I knew paying attention in class (or at least keeping the books I was supposed to have read for class) would pay off some day....
I hope this is reasonably on-topic, in that it relates to MS tying features together in what seems a monopolostic way...
I was trying to set up web-cams with my bro-in-law and started with MSN Messenger. After signing up for a Passport (guess I sold my soul...), I then signed in, but was prevented from broadcasting my Webcam. Why ? Because I run Win2k.
MSN Messenger informed me that in order for it (a stand-alone application, one would think...) to work with a Webcam I had to upgrade to XP.
So we just used Yahoo instead.
However, the more I think about it, the more it annoyed me...to get an application to work I have to upgrade the OS, when other vendors are perfectly able to provide the same features without the upgrade ? I suppose it's what they call great marketing...
Microslop just can NOT suck enough.
They make ol' John D. look positively meek in comparison. That's John D. Rockefeller, if you were wondering.
All you reactionary horse's asses out there, take note: even a notable 'conservative' such as Robert H. Bork knows an outrageous affront to capitalism when he sees one.
There is precious little in the way of redeeming factors in what MS does as a matter of course, day in and day out, in their quest to eliminate even the possibility of competition. MS is utterly nefarious.