Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Antitrust Compliance Questioned
rocketjam writes "Federal and State regulators overseeing Microsoft's compliance with their antitrust agreement with the government, are questioning whether Windows XP's "Shop for Music Online" feature violates the agreement's terms. Specifically, the feature invokes Microsoft Internet Explorer, even if the user has selected a different web browser as their default browser. A Microsoft representative said they believe they have adhered to the agreement."
It's simply a link that loads their browser and takes you to their music store. If they could get away with it, I'm sure they'd love it if used their ISP, too.
You can disable that in Tools > Options > General > [ ] Show msn today
They're just trying to sell real physical musical discs, not online by song. It lets them wield power against companies like Amazon, rather than Apple. Not to say it couldn't be changed in a future version, but as of now, it's not competing with iTunes directly.
If you notice, the shop for music online feature leads to several different music retailers. One of which is buymusic.com; a site which ONLY accepts internet explorer. Of course that doesn't make what they're doing right at all. BuyMusic.com's IE on Windows only policy is just MS trying to further lock people into the windows platform.
Photos.
But Thunderbird doesn't spawn an instance of Firebird to display html. MSN Messenger (and many many MS and non-MS apps) use the IE interface to display html, so there is in fact an IE browser already opened. Clicking links just keeps you in IE. It's part of that handy dandy OS integration.
Read again (and again, if necessary). No matter what the default browser is set by your system, this little application opens IE specifically. That's "forcing" you to use a specific browser, and is a no-no according to the antitrust agreement.
iTunes uses IE as its browser no matter what browser you choose. Maybe it's because the functionality of iTMS requires IE or Safari, as other browsers are not supported.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. iTunes is a standalone app, and the iTunes Music Store is integrated into iTunes and does not use any external browser code, but some sort of custom XML.
Are you referring to some other functionality of iTunes other than music browsing/purchasing?
four words: bundled with the OS.
That's kuz the mshtml dll (which is essentially IE sans the UI) is consumed by iTunes and therefore the only checksum that you are seeing is the iTunes checksum... mshtml is part of it.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Why in hell are you installing outlook and MSN if you're on Mac? You have the chance to be 100% microsoft-free, and yet you blow it. Don't complain about it.
Outlook Express is a decent mail client, and MSN Messenger is the only way to chat online with people who refuse to use anything other than MSN Messenger. It's not about being Microsoft-free, it's about having the choice to use the best tools for the job; occasionally that may include Microsoft software.
I do have a few tips though : switch to something else your your email (does Safari comes with an email client? If not, surely there's other options, especially on OS X).
Mac OS X includes an e-mail client simply called Mail. However, he specifically said he was running Mac OS 9, presumably because his hardware is too old to run Mac OS X or he runs applications (or drivers) that don't work on Mac OS X. So, Safari and Mail are both out of the question. Mozilla Mail is obviously an option, although it has the same type of problem he described with Outlook Express (links clicked in Mozilla Mail will open in a Mozilla browser window, not your default browser) - but since Mozilla is his default browser anyway, it's a non-issue. Eudora is another option.
As for MSN, just switch to ICQ or get a multi-protocol client like Trillian (or similar if Trillian isn't available on OS X).
Trillian is Windows-only, and I'm not aware of any multi-protocol clients for Mac OS 9 (Fire and Proteus are Mac OS X-only). Doesn't do much good to switch to ICQ if the people he wants to talk to are using MSN.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Or you could use Daisy if you have win2k or up http://vtwug.w2k.vt.edu/daisy.html