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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?
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