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Microsoft Can't DRM Docs Fast Enough
grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement, Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE. InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a format that makes the content harder for developers (developers! developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation ..."
RFC 2557: MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)
There's a Mozilla KB entry about MHTML support and open bugs for load and save (IDs 18764 and 40873; bugzilla won't accept links from Slashdot). Plus the maf extension to support MHTML.
PDFs are REDICULOUS for just text. The whole point of a PDF is to be able to view a document the exact same regardless how I choose to view it, be it on paper, or on screen. All a protocol spec needs to be is a nice txt file
Actually you're wrong, they aren't compressed at all, they are encoded in Base64 transfer encoding.. so.. they are actually 33% larger then they need to be (refering to the emdedded images). On the plus side, they are very simple to decode and convert to straight HTML + images, they are not one way, or DRM'd, or compressed....
Microsoft's policy is that all downloadable documents and specifications etc. should be signed, so you can verify that the document hasn't been tampered with. Usually they implement that by embedding a word document in an (signed) Windows executable. MHT seems to be an improvement.
" I'm not sure what the article is talking about" - then READ it. You would find the following:
.mht file and the signed publishing license into a file called a compound file. This file, which has an .rmh file extension, is used by the Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer to permit viewing of RMS-protected content in Internet Explorer. For more information, see Compound Files. You can use your own format if you are not using the add-on."
from Microsoft: "The Web application puts both the encrypted
They aren't required to make anything "freely" available. They just have to make their documentation available under licensing terms. A few companies have already joined the company (like NetApp). NetApp gave a talk about it at the CIFS 2004 conference. Basically, the documentation they provided was incompletely, incorrect, and provided less info than they already knew. However, they did work with NetApp to improve the documentation. I'm not sure what this article is referring to though. This progam is well over a year old...
Rename *.mht to *.msg and open it in any mailreader of your choice. Enlightened? Really guys, the followup on this article makes us - free-software-compatible-guys - all look like a bunch of clueless idiots. Sad.
No, you dont have to buy anything from adobe. There are many free ways to create PDF files..
One quick example is "pdfcreator".. its a pseduo printer driver that exports directly to PDF format..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just the other day I was wondering if FireFox, or another Mozilla system would support this file format. The basic premise is it take an entire web page (including exteral resources such as images, CSS, javascript, etc) and puts it in one file. You can open these files in a text editor and see they represent a multipart, plain text document. So MS's reasoning for doing this is to make them a little friendlier to download, although only viewable on IE. No encryption or compression that I saw.
That said, I'm glad to see Mozilla is looking to support this. Again, its a fairly open and simple format and I don't know why they are having a hard time converting their docs to this. They probably did it in Word and are trying to export as HTML. This will kill almost any webmaster...
"The plaintiffs have three main areas of concern about the documentation.
First among these is that Microsoft, asked to open up and document the interfaces to its communication protocols for licensees, has chosen to issue the documentation in a rights-protected file format called MHT, readable only with its own Web browser, Internet Explorer. This means licensees can neither annotate nor effectively search the information, according to the plaintiffs. "
The DRM is not the compression part. The files are encrypted. If you DID RTFA, you would have read:
And that MS is offering aThe problem with this dev toolkit is that it is MS only, so that means no Linux, Mac, *BSD or Solaris for the DRM of these MHT files. These documents are for developers who may want to interact with MS's proprietary communications protocols, and some of them may be working on different OSes to make those other OSes use MS's proprietary communications protocols. Now they will be forced to use MS windows to get to the documentation.If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Bug 18764 has 73 votes and many duplicates, which makes it fairly popular. It isn't the the most voted-for bug though; some have well over 100 votes.
bug 40873 (Save As MHTML) has 180, so it's a top 10 bug.
You might try the MAF extension to Firefox.
"This is an archive extension that allows complete web pages to be saved in a single archive file. MAF stands for Mozilla Archive Format and the extension uses RDF to save page meta-data such as the original URL of the page and the date/time the page was put in the archive. It also allows pages to be saved in a separate MHTML compatible format for interoperability with IE systems."
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Programming for classic MacOS was hard. Programming for NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP was easy. Programming for OS X is easy. Certain the implementation of Cocoa isn't given away, but the interface and excellent documentation is. Besides, with protocols and categories it is often unnecessary to subclass objects, thus making understand them less necessary. It's also nice that GUI code is unnecessary in most circumstances.
English is easier said than done.
Some excerpts from that page:
Clear enough for ya?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I actually developed the format we're using and trust me, there's no interest on the part of Microsoft in making the documents IE-only. In fact it's a liability for the compliance folks. Now, MHTML is actually a public standard (see RFC doc 2110) developed by a J. Palme at Stockholm University. It's not MS's fault that only IE can read them; other browsers just haven't gotten on the ball. What is MS's fault is that they haven't provided the means of accessing Digital Rights Management-protected content via other browsers. This means that even if they can read .mht files, the DRM stops them from reading the documentation inside. That is what's really tying the docs to IE.
This is really sensitive information and it's being shared via a settlement with the Department of Justice, and it should be no surprise to anyone that they wish to protect their business secrets using DRM. MSFT is scared to death of angering the DOJ and would never be so brazen as to arbitrarily share content in an IE-only format. It just that the security implementation has the sad side effect of locking everyone into using IE until this relatively new technology is wore widely adopted.
What's so difficult about a read-only format?
There is nothing wrong with a read-only format. There is a problem with the read-only format they have chosen. "Freely available" were the words used in the instructions. These documents can only be viewed in IE with a special plug-in from MS. IE runs on 2 platforms, Windows and MacOS (sort of). MS has deprecated the mac version, leaving Windows the only actively maintained platform for reading this documentation. Windows costs money.
If I complied with a court order to provide documentation, by putting the documents in a safe deposit box and offering to sell people copies of the key, I'd be rotting in a cell by now. Bill Gates should spend at least one night in the lock-up for this crap.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I thought it was often more difficult to develop Macintosh applications because more of the API's are hidden away and not for developers to see
Mac OS X is pretty damned open. XML configuration files, an open-source kernel (!), free IDE, the native compiler is gcc, the API is extensively documented, and there are extensive tools for reading the class libraries and interfaces shipped in the developer's kit.
Your papa might have needed better Spanish classes. None of the meanings of those words can be expressed with "Justicia"
- Justification: Depending on the context, it can be expressed by "justificación", "motivación", and a few more.
- Righteousness: Probably the most appropriate translation would be "rectitud"; other may apply depending on the topic.
In summary... Not a limitation of the tool (the language) but of the user. And please, do not take me wrong: your dad certainly had to master Spanish to be working in these countries.
The Spaniard
As the developer of MAF, I can say that Microsoft is 100% correct when they say that MHT is an open standard. MHT, however, is only a format and it's important to note that the resources in an MHT are not necessarily standard. A good example of this is MHTs created by Office applications. Yes, it's an MHT format, but the contents of the MHTs are HTML with MS specific XML tags all over the place. The problem therefore is twofold, not only would you have to decrypt this RMH file to get an MHT file, but the decoded MHT file may also not be displayed properly due to MS specific content. This is why MAF can create and open MHTs saved by Internet Explorer, but not ones created by MS Office applications.
Regards,
Christopher.