MS To Offer Windows Sans WMP, If EU So Orders

PSwim writes "Microsoft has said it will remove Media Player from Window, if ordered by the EU this week. The 'Windows-Lite' version will only be available in Europe. Best quote from the article involves its refusal to release networking documentation: '"The Commission says Linux would disappear" if Microsoft did not grant access to its documentation, Smith claimed. "But Linux is alive and well and I don't know any person at Linux or any Linux programmers who share the Commission's view."'"

Comments

A little child

[stox]

"If you won't play with my toys the way I want you to..."

Seems to sum up the Microsoft business strategy rather well.

Re:What's wrong?

[oxygene2k2]

because WMP doesn't play quicktime or realvideo stuff, at least not the newest generation stuff..
so with a user base of several hundred million, microsoft has a better base to sell streaming servers than its competition - and why? not because WMP is superior, but because microsoft used its desktop monopoly to push into another sector, which is illegal (unlike having a monopoly without abusing it)

as for mplayer, only few distros actually distribute it due to legal trouble, and it's not used in a monopoly environment - also, there are ogle, xine, vlc which are all pretty competitive.

so a) there's no monopoly whatsoever being used to push mplayer, b) there are more things than just mplayer, c) even if mplayer were pushed, it wouldn't slant the server side towards a certain streaming server software (by the same vendor)

Re:On coupling os and software

[Moofie]

Methinks I have located the problem.

"if decently programmed"

We're talking about Microsoft here.

Re:What's wrong?

[FireBook]

i thought winamp could legally play wma, as long as it respected the DRM infection?

Re:What's wrong?

[Martigan80]

I believe that Red Hat is the most common distro

In America maybe, but not the rest of the world which includes Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Re:I'd like to see

[smallguy78]

You could always remove what you don't want manually: http://nuhi.msfn.org/ (including IE,WMP,COM,DCOM, MSN...)

The NFS/CIFS (SMB) marketing war

[rduke15]

SMB has actually been documented by MS.

From The future of CIFS by Jelmer Vernooij of the Samba team:

2.2 The NFS/CIFS marketing war

During the internet hype in the nineties, Sun and Microsoft got in a fight about which remote file system API was going to make it. Sun was promoting NFS, Microsoft was promoting SMB.

In order to get SMB supported by other vendors, Microsoft did a couple of things:

• They renamed SMB to CIFS. CIFS stands for "Common Internet File System". This name change was just for marketing purposes, there is no real technical dierence between the two
• Several proposed standards were published explaining the syntax of the protocol. They have all expired by now.

Samba even got donations from Microsoft during this period, including funding for trips to conferences and MSDN donations. Microsoft developers were encouraged to work with Samba developers to get a working implementation of a SMB server and client on Unix.

Microsoft won the war. CIFS became the standard (for LANs, at least). After this, they lost interest in having other vendors support CIFS. Rather, they tried to get everybody to use their products.

Re:The NFS/CIFS (SMB) marketing war

[DavidTC]

Which is sad, because both CIFS and NFS suck ass, although for different reasons.

NFS, for the simple reason the clients and server is designed to be Unix boxes with 5 9s and a perfect networks, breaks horribly when your network, server, or client is even slightly broken. It assumes you set up your network correctly and gave every user a login on every box, and, moreover, the same UID.

CIFS, on the other hand, is designed for P2P networks where computers go up and down. And you can go all the way from password protecting a share with a single password, to full-fledged domain security with single user login that actually works.

Note that last bit is almost the same as NFS, but it actually works in an enviroment of Windows boxes.

Oh, I never got around to telling people why CIS sucks. It sucks because it uses stupid-ass NetBIOS to find other machines. Hence it can be very hard to set up and is very easy to break.

Re:ha-ha-ha

[rduke15]

I have the general notion that (A) Samba has been implemented without any documentation from MS

Wrong! See other comment in this story

Re:On coupling os and software

[Tony-A]

Windoz is more like an ancient rustbucket of a car that stops running if you remove that plastic figurine of the Virgin Mary on the dash.

Sounds accurate. And my NT4 Domain Controller/File Server has been up and running continuously for the last 2+ years.

That's not stability. That's just not rocking the boat.
No patches. No updates. No upgrades.
Original IE which is never used.
No gateway. Intentionally. Can only talk to the LAN.

Re:I'd like to see

[Apreche]

cd-rom? Um no. Just because you have no browser doesn't mean you have no internet connection. You can use any of the thousands of other internet protocols capable of transferring files to get the firefox setup program. *gasp*

Re:On coupling os and software

[iantri]

The component that is responsible for encoding and decoding (in recent versions of Windows) is DirectShow.

It would be extremely difficult for them to claim that removing Windows Media Player means removing DirectShow...

Anyway, I don't see why anyone would want it gone.. there is nothing proprietary about it; anyone can write a media player applications that uses it.

Re:Shitty submission - Rebuttal

[PSwim]

William,

As the original writer of the submission you so eloquently call "shitty," I felt the need to respond a bit.

• "media player" is a generic term, "Media Player" (note the capital letters) refers to Microsoft's player. No one would care if Microsoft said they would remove _a_ media player from Windows. Thus, there's no point in wasting space to refer to Windows Media Player in full.
• "What, Microsoft will refuse to remove WMP if ordered next week?" Considering they've said, on many occasions that removal of WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER (see? redundant) is impossible, it's interesting to note that they will remove it.
• "Windows-lite" was what the article used.
  

  Europe would be the only place where "Windows-lite" -- i.e. Windows without WMP -- would be sold, Microsoft said in a briefing note for reporters.

  You did read the article, didn't you?
• Fine. I should've used Microsoft's instead of it's. But again, would it really make sense for the article to refuse to release networking documentation?
• The "at Linux" quote was included because it is relevant the state of mind of the spokesperson, Smith. It shows that he is not properly educated on what exactly this Linux thing is and a lack of understanding on his part, unfortunately, leads to a lot more people being misinformed.

I wish people would read the article and think about it before posting (flaming). Then again, I'm starting to be kind of old around here. ;)

Re:The version will contain a poison pill

[shotfeel]

Quick tip to get rid of that nagging "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro" message (works on Macs, not sure about Windows):

Set the computer's date to some time in the distant future (say 5 years ahead), start Quicktime player, get the message and respond as usual. Go back and reset the date correctly.

The "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro" prompt will disappear until that future date you used.