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EU Sleuths Think Microsoft Sabotaged Windows
Adam Zweimiller writes "The Inquirer is reporting that in it's ongoing battle with Microsoft, the European Commission is investigating the possibility that the Vole has sneakily sabotaged the Media Player-free versions of Windows it is obliged to ship to the EU. A report (subscription required) in today's Wall Street Journal suggests Microsoft has fiddled with the registry in its stripped-down Windows offerings and the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example."
"...and the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly..."
I'm just going to take a wild guess here and say that maybe they should install Media Player to get those clips to run properly?
And for those who actually take this seriously....
I'm sure someone will try to point out that Word won't play embedded media clips even if alternative media players are installed. Seems logical to me, when embedding a media file in a proprietary document format it likely requires Media Player to play it.
It's like "suggesting" Microsoft purposely "sabotaged" the Help system after a person removes the IE Core from the system. (Doing so effectively breaks the help system among other things)
...that which can be attributed to incompetence.
-R.J. Hanlon
if I were Microsoft, I'd pull out of the EU market. It's insane how far the EU is going in this. I'd say, fine ... we're done. Enjoy, and walk away.
we all know Microsoft would never try and trick people into letting them get away with shutting out the competition...
...guys?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
More and more everyday...
what can just as easily be attributed to stupidity.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm shocked! Shocked to my foundatins, I tell you... NOT.
I can easily say without any evidence that they tampered with IE too. There's something wrong with ActiveX...
Microsoft sabotaging Windows? No.
.... a definte YES.
Held Windows at gunpoint, danced around with it in front of the authorities, kicked it in the guts a few times, teased everyone by saying "you'll never get me!", and waged a decade-long seige
And if they call bad coding "sabotage", well that's an interesting parallel universe they live in then.
READY.
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Seems odd to me that they want media player removed, but still want to play media under certain conditions.
Manager: Take that media player out of your operating system.
Me: ok
Manager: Why don't these media clips play anymore?
What I'd like to say: Cause you're a fucking idiot. And you told me to take it out, which I did. So go fuck yourself, and stop telling me how to do my job.
Microsoft ships out buggy code after a fight with the EU: people complain that they're intentionally sabotaging their code in retaliation.
Please people, just pick one conspiracy theory and stick with it...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Thank god I switched to a Mac a week ago! Now when I read stuff like this, I just laugh and shake my head.
As much as I dislike MS, I dont think they're stupid... and I dont think they would intentionally pull this.
On the other hand, they may just be thumbing their nose at the EU and really just not caring an incredible amount.
Why even bother with word? What about the other free options...
Doot!
I don't know about you, but when you ask someone to take out its native media-playing capabilities from the OS, then don't expect products from the same company that rely on that product to work.
It's like someone removing Direct-X and then bitching about how their game doesnt work anymore.
From TFA: Microsoft's digital video competitor RealNetworks had been able to demonstrate a Media Player-free version of Windows running "without technical glitches", the Journal notes.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
how this affects clippy or MS Bob.
Say hello to my little sig.
...programs that use the embedded media player API... won't work without the media player.
"Brilliant!"
This is like complaining about removing ActiveX and not being able to run ActiveX plugins. "I just wanted ActiveX gone! Not anything that USED it!"
"the commission has to verify the requirement that Microsoft refrain from using any commercial, technological or contractual terms that would have the effect of rendering the unbundled version of Windows less attractive or less functional."
So, Microsoft has to remove Media Player from Windows, but Windows can't be less functional?
Interesting judgement.
A literal no-win situation!
"the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example."
How about video clips embedded into microsoft word embedded into an excel document embedded into a web page ? I never thought I could see a movie from a word document, innovation runs so fast these days...
Why on earth you would ever want to put a video clip into a word processor document? Isn't the point of a word processor document that you might want to print it out?
Please don't tell me it's because they plan on publishing their web site with Word. That's the only reason I could think of off hand.
Oh yeah... and I don't think it's outrageous that MS cripple any of their products. Free market economies rock... someone can give them a non-crippled product and make some change take place.
Not bad programing? Hmm.
Customized Windows Media-less version of Windows fails to play Windows Media correctly!
Naaah...those things don't work worth a damn in the non-stripped down versions either.
BTW Why would you want to embed video in a Word doc anyway?!? I mean what do you think's gonna happen when you print it? Gee, my video is broken...I wonder why?
You're using her as bait, Master!
How many times has someone made a change to one part of an application only to find out that it breaks something else? It seems to me that this type of problem is the very reason MS didn't want to pull out MP in the first place.
-K
Does this only refer to Windows Media video clips or any video clip? I'm not too familiar with Word's behavior in this regard; is it possible to put a QuickTime movie clip in there without going through some Windows Media API?
and if any other monopolies want to leave feel free to go
keep your corruption and oligolopolies on the other side of the pond thanks
I know what you're thinking: what sort of shithead wraps his posts in bold...the answer is me, fucknose. Fuck you and your whole goddamned operation, motherfucker.
Fucking tossbag wanker assmonkey son of a fuck!
Video clips in Word documents? Umm... aren't these primarily used for -- I don't know -- print media? Who embeds video in Word documents?
That's like claiming Microsoft Access 2000 fails to be a preimer enterprise-level application development environment.
If, as the MS rep claims, that the registry problems are due to the removal of the normally integrated Windows Media Player, then should we be worried?
Yes. If WMP becomes another "essential component" of windows, like IE did back in the days of the DOJ trials, that is, remove it and you destroy windows, then we're in for another long round of format lock-in, the way MS wants. I think it's important to watch as MS adds "features" to the operating system to ensure that it's not just a sneaky way to further another of MS's goals (e.g. media format dominance).
It seemed like hogwash then, and it seems like hogwash now. Just because a modular component was integrated, doesnt mean it cant be undone. It may take a lot of effort, because you intentially put yourself in a dependancy ditch. But that's your fault for not thinking ahead of time and considering the possibility that one day, that dependency might not be available. And yes, it is reasonable to think that MS programmers think like that. Just because they got away with it once, doesnt mean it's going to happen again. They should be prepared for the eventuality that at some point, not every piece of MS software will be available on the install by default.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
I would trust that sleasy spyware company no further than I could throw their HQ. Companies that make products that deliberately resist removal are spyware in my view.
TFA only says that Real got WINDOWS to work, Word is not windows.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Oh wait... you could pretend you were working, when really you were watching the latest Dr Who you downloaded from btorrent. Now I get it. Maybe I can use the same thinking and build a slashdot site viewer into the C++ IDE....
Yet another blogger begging for an audience.
I had the same feelings for completely different reasons.
I was a die-hard fan of Win2k; probably the best OS Microsoft has made since DOS. At least I never had any issues with it. That is, until XP came out.
Within months of XP's release, Win2k started falling apart completely. Now if I do a fresh installation of it and update it past SP2, it's screwed. I will get crashes with nothing else installed.
This is possibly the most paranoid, conspiracy theory I've ever formed, but I had to share it when I read this. It really irked me when all this happened, so hopefully someone else has observed the same things.
shit that was funny, because it's true.
READY.
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Darn consipacy theorists. When will people learn that stupidity is more often the culprit than conspiracy. Given the multitude of bugs in all of the software Microsoft writes, there's bound to be one or more whose cirumstances coincidentally look like a conspiracy than just a plain old fashioned bug.
Never assume malace when simple incompetence will do.
Which is more likely? Do we really need a conspiracy to explain this?
This isn't new news.
Windows media never worked right from day one.
If you don't believe me, try this.
1. boot up and log in.
2. shutdown and restart.
3. run defrag
4. wait and wait as the wmv file is put back together.
5. click mouse on other buttons.
6. repeat step 5
7. repeat step six
8. clean spooge from keyboard
9. clean spooge from deskchair
10. clean spooge from dog/cat.
11. HIDE LUBRICANT.
12. Smoke last rock.
13. HIDE CRACKPIPE.
14.wash armpits, azzcrack, and pink bits.
15.race to redmond to continue creating innovative software wilst jonesing for your next suck of the glass cock.
I'm pleased that the relevant facts are pretty much entirely in the public record. As covered here, unregmp2.exe is one of the files that Must Be Removed (not MS's call). unregmp2.exe sets up about half the multimedia associations on Windows - just watch it running (unregmp2.exe /RegExts, per its INF) under regmon.exe or your favorite tool to see all it does.
You remove that - per EU decision - MM associations fall apart...
I'm not arguing that you couldn't write new code to handle this, but it is also inarguable that the mandated removal of unregmp2.exe caused this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It seems to me it's the reasone they embedded MP and IE into Windows.
And why on Earth would anyone want to embed video clips into MS Word documents? Just because it's possible?
It is interesting to note that if Windows didn't ship with these modules that got it in legal trouble in the first place, your PC would be a lot less functional out of the box.
Windows Media Player, for many people, is their preferred music-playing application. Why? It came with their PC, it was there, and it made their PC do stuff right out of the box. It probably came with a dozen or so free MP3s of public domain works (I know some classical music, Jazz, and old MIDIs that date back to Windows 3.0 days come with every install of Windows.)
Windows XP also burns CDs natively (they licensed Roxio's technology for this.) Sure, it's a piece of crap, but it *does something* right out of the box -- and many times that's been just what I needed to get out of a sticky tech-support situation.
The problem is...people would see their computer doing the stuff already, and not see a need for QuickTime, RealPlayer, Winamp, BSplayer, or one of a dozen other third-party media playing applications. Thus, the anticompetative behavior. Microsoft did add value to the PC by including out-of-the-box applications to do what most computer users want to do (play media of one sort or another) but in doing so, drastically eliminated the market for other application providers.
I'm not saying MS is in the right for their tactics, but, the monopolisation effect is a result of their behavior, not vice versa.
Discussing the whether or not there's need to play video inside a word document is pretty irrelevant. The question here is if Microsoft deliberately sabotaged their software.
Now if you read the article is clearly states that: "that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example." Notice there at the end "for example," that means it's just one example. Now most likely they have other issues as well. Further more that particular quote as attributed to a report in the Wall Street Journal, and not in fact a spokesperson for the European Commission.
Well if the problem is with Microsoft Word not playing embedded files, dump it.
Microsoft took away support to another application. The only other alternative to it would be get rid of the conflict, Microsoft themselves.
Openoffice isn't going to kill budgets. Have another player installed. Switch and be done with it.
Quicktime plays fine in openoffice with a mpg format.
They might be malware, but resisting removal definitely does not constitute spyware by itself. If it's not keylogging or sending information from your computer back to anyway (you know, spying) then it's not spyware so you might want to correct that view of yours.
The Farewell Tour II
In the past I would agree with you, these days however Real Player 10 is not spyware and is free of malware.
The terms the EU is imposing are clear: MS has to deliver a Windows without Media Player component that is not crippled in any respect when the OS is used with an alternative player. Perhaps that is not so easy-- but then again it isn't like MS with all its billions of cash reserves is going to be bankrupted by the development costs.
It's like "suggesting" Microsoft purposely "sabotaged" the Help system after a person removes the IE Core from the system. (Doing so effectively breaks the help system among other things)
That's what Microsoft did. Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier. Yet MS purposefully chose to do bad engineering because it looked like a good marketing strategy.
I won't shed any tears if the EU declares that MS has been acting illegally, and that its protections under EU law are therefore voided. I wouldn't benefit from that directly, but I expect that I would see a lot of indirect future benefits if Windows code ended up in European public domain.
I really think that it is time for Redmond to grow up and take on the responsibilities that go with its success. And stop farting around like an adolescent entrepreneur with a shoestring budget.
You can't ask Microsoft to pull Media Player and then expect media player to work correctly. Media player is much more than just a (not so pretty) UI for playing movies and music.
What will they ask for next? Web pages with embedded media players in them to work?
...soon as you pulled out in a show of spite, EU governments would stop protecting your commercial rights to your products. Presto! Legal (well, quasi-legal) pirating! And as thousands of european hackers thumb their noses at you, WELL-CRACKED versions of your software start to contaminate your home market back here, much like the cracked software we see from China and Iran right now.
Those markets don't even need to be profitable in and of themselves. It's important to chase them even if just to reduce the sheer volume of hackers cracking your products.
No, it's more like suggesting that Microsoft LIED to the US monopoly court when they presented videotaped "evidence" that Windows with IE removed was unstable - therefore IE was an "essential" part of the OS. In fact, the prosecutor noticed, while the tape was being played in the court by MS, that the "before" and "after" computers weren't even the same unit. MS had just switched machines, with the "after" machine sabotaged. While the prosecutor demonstrated that a Windows machine which had IE removed, even deleted as functions from DLLs (by a Princeton professor with no access to the source, just crude binary tools), worked pretty well, certainly much better than the fake "evidence" perpetrated by MS. Apologize for Microsoft all you want: this is how they operate. With contempt for consumers, laws, courts, government, and even the apologists fool enough to trust them.
--
make install -not war
Microsoft loves to do things like this. "Well, you asked us to remove it, and that's what happened!" We savvy people, of course, realize that if Microsoft left the registry screwed in some way during their unbundling process, they would have had to purposely ignoring fixing it since I assume Microsoft knows their own registry enough to fix it (many IT admins have become expert in fixing the damn thing themselves). Leaving it purposely fucked in order to say "See?" wouldn't be complying with the Commission's order. It seems the EU isn't bending over and taking these cute little games the way the U.S. did when dealing with Microsoft.
Good riddance, and be sure to take back all that trash software you brought with you.
Switch Operating Systems or STFU
Maybe consider doing what we in the USA should have done,that is put a limit for XP installations on OEM computers and copies at the store . Make it like only 50% of the market to repair the os market from ILLEGAL monopoly practices.
This would cause software makers to adjust their thinking and make software for linux or other operating systems.
The Dep.of Justice did nothing to fix a wrong.
So you think it's OK that Microsoft agreed to remove WMP, because they never agreed to leave Windows in working condition? That kind of compliance is known as "contempt". Is your post some kind of MS astroturf? Why else would you apologize for these sleazy liars?
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make install -not war
Microsoft sabotaging their own code? Isn't that a little redundant? Just release security patches for the stripped-down version six months after the full version gets them.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I'm sure someone will try to point out that Word won't play embedded media clips even if alternative media players are installed. Seems logical to me, when embedding a media file in a proprietary document format it likely requires Media Player to play it.
It's "supposed" to be embedded so that the MIME identifier loads the appropriate program, you could probably get around this "sabotage" by embedding an OLE object that uses RealPlayer or Quicktime instead. It's probably not really Word people care about but PowerPoint, I can't really see a use for embeded movies in Word but PowerPoint you see it all the time.
I was hearing some place because there is WMP, you had to download codecs and other media software to play wma, wmv files on that pc.
Perhaps because the same would be true for Powerpoint, where people definitely do put videos in.
Probably any video clip. It's not just Word, it's the whole Windows-IE-whatever tie up.
.qtl, .smil, or even href=rtsp://
We installed QuickTime Player in all our XP boxes, because I have a QuickTime Streaming Server. I just know someone's gonna fork the thread on what a crock that is, but it came free with the X-Serve, a doddle to configure, and it just works outta the box. All the Macs round here link directly via
On the Win-XP boxen QT Player's preferences were being overwritten by the system, IE, WMP, Real Player, and any patch or update. There's a check box in QT Prefs: "Warn me if any application atttempts to overwrite QuickTime Preferences". We have that checked, it's easier to deal with a few confused lusers than be forever force feeding the correct Prefs...
I wouldn't make it so easy. If Word doesn't play movies even after another player has been installed, then the "unlawful leveraging of monopoly" case might apply to the Office product line as well.
Those speaking in TFA said "Windows is crippled," which it might very well be if the same problems applied across a wide array of applications.
If this only happens in Office, then there would be a case of "Microsoft crippling the dominant productivity application suite in order to ensure dominance in the media player market."
It'd be, or should be antitrust all over again.
MS needs to sabotage windows more so that security holes dont work anymore!
Why is the idea of not wanting to have to use Windows Media Player to play media files odd to you? It says in TFA that RealNetworks demonstrates a fully-functioning Media Player-less Windows.
Media Player is just an application that plays DirectShow codecs, you know? Microsoft wants you to believe it's some core aspect of the OS, like with Internet Explorer. If they were at least honest, I could respect their desire to include the player with every copy of Windows, just to let people have a default music and video player with their new computer. But this bogus "it's a core part of Windows that we insist everyone use to push our platform, and if you remove it, just look what happens!" stuff is so sleazy.
I remember when Microsoft LIED to the US monopoly court when they presented videotaped "evidence" that Windows with IE removed was unstable - therefore IE was an "essential" part of the OS. In fact, the prosecutor noticed, while the tape was being played in the court by MS, that the "before" and "after" computers weren't even the same unit. MS had just switched machines, with the "after" machine sabotaged. While the prosecutor demonstrated that a Windows machine which had IE removed, even deleted as functions from DLLs (by a Princeton professor with no access to the source, just crude binary tools), worked pretty well, certainly much better than the fake "evidence" perpetrated by MS. This is how they operate. With contempt for consumers, laws, courts, government, and anyone fool enough to trust them.
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make install -not war
How far do you trust MS?
More or less than Real?
Documents use OLE - Object Linking and Embedding - so if you plonk a video clip in a Word document, of course it's not going to play unless you have a player installed. iTunes doesn't adhere to OLE standards and won't work as an alternative. Result: Microsoft media players will embed sound/video in Microsoft applications - don't take it forgranted.
.WMA or .WMV files. Same problem: Microsoft formats, but no Microsoft player to deal with them - just like if Quicktime was missing...
Equally, someone somewhere's likely to complain that their system won't play
The bottom line is that it's not Microsoft that are at fault here, but people who decided it's in the public interest to cripple the OS. It's not in Micrsoft's interest sure, but it's certainly not in the public interest at all - especially when other manufacturers get away with the same tricks (Apple, Quicktime, OSX, iLife). And don't go mentioning that MS played unfair in the past - times have moved on and a media player is now something that's expected from an OS, a bit like a browser, email client, photo album, movie editor and picture album.
you wouldn't normally expect a Media Player-free version of Windows to play Microsoft Word documents with embedded... media....
I'm sorry, but the parent post is just nutso. France alone is the 4th largest economy on the planet, comparing more closely to California than lowly Alabama. Have you ever seen what a newly constructed French house looks like? Compare the quality to new housing in the states.
Americans do spend a bit more as a percentage of their earnings, but that means Europeans are saving more, which is hardly a bad thing.
I just can't believe anybody would recite such claptrap. The poster must have never been to Europe to be able to type such rubbish.
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
The first poster seems to have nailed it: Word almost certainly relies on Windows Media Player (what else would it use?) to play embedded clips. If it's been removed, of course you won't be able to play anything.
I know it's fun to make Microsoft jokes here on Slashdot, but are they really at fault this time?
Yeah but embedded ole objects rely pretty heavily on their host application. So this would be a pretty easy demonstration to fake.
Good example - if you embed a visio document into a word document (which you can do really easily) - don't expect the person you send it to have a fully embeded version of vision inside the word doc to add/change the visio drawing. You may even have problems printing a full resolution copy of the drawing inside word without having visio installed.
Same holds true for media - the most it will do is show you an icon. Do this as a test though - install real media onto one computer - embed a real media clip into that word document - ship the file off to someone running a mac, or windows without real media. Notice how you'll get an error when playing the file inside word.
I've found - at best ole objects are nifty tricks you can perform in the office, but by no means a replacement for file format placement, or content distribution (like media in word, or excel docs in word etc).
It's kind of sad the way Microsoft has convinced some people that not bundling an application that you can't uninstall so that you can use a competing media player is somehow less functional.
Windows isn't less functional without Media Player. You can happily install several other competing media players on Windows. The issue is that Microsoft appears to be, as usual, making sure the playing field is uneven. Read the last paragraph of the article where RealNetworks demonstrates a Media Player-less Windows that has no problems.
This is Microsoft's "punishment" for being forced to Media Player. As if they wouldn't have noticed or couldn't have fixed issues regarding the very registry that they created. That's not being "fully committed" to the Commission's decision.
YOu have the one and only useful and utterly factual post in this ENTIRE thread as i read this. Thank you.
I too only post infomrative posts as anonymous, and have gotten no less than twenty different +5 insiteful posts by doing so in the last year.
If moderation works (it usually does after several hours), you will reach +5 i assume.
Apparently this was not so obvious to the Europeans who thought they were pulling a fast one on Micrsoft.
Hans: "We'll get them to pull out the Media Player to lower the price and then...we will teach our people how to watch their media from Word! Muahaha...Muhahaha...It will be a media playing revolution! And the euro will soar!!!!!!!!"
netkev.com
My professor bitched when the printed out version's video wouldnt play.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Alright, dammit. I'm not leaving till that guy that always gets modded 5+ for something funny gets here...they always hang around microsoft...
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
Just because video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly does not mean that Media player is sabotaged! Show me some proof a.k.a actual fact! So if IE does not render a page properly it too is "sabotaged"? Well hell, if the fan belt in my car breaks should I think Nissan sabotaged it. These arguments just get further into Left Field as time goes on.
OpenSource is only free if your time isn't worth anything
Ok, I've been reading news in The Inquirer for some time now, and they keep referring to Microsoft as Vole, and employees as SpokesVoles, etc. Would someone please provide an explanation.
If you have to ask, you've never used a Real product.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2384
According to the CIA World Factbook:
GDP per capita: United States: $37,800.
GDP per capita: France: $27,600.
GDP per capita: Germany: $27,600.
GDP per capita: Netherlands: $28,600.
GDP per capita: Sweden: $26,800.
GDP per capita: United Kingdom: $27,700.
I'll leave it to you to check the other countries of Europe. But the grandparent post seems to be true.
dude already posted this comment IN THE SAME THREAD!
It's about time the editor learned the differeence between "its" and "it's".
That's great, but I have a question: Does it still suck?
All Media Player, the program, really is is a shell that calls the video and audio playback systems. You don't need to use that shell, you can use another. Media Player Classic is a good example of a non-MS shell that does the same thing. Unlike VLC, which actually does it's own decoding, MPC just places calls to the same systems as Media Player. IT is just a different interface (one that's like the MS media players prior to V7) that some of us like better.
You are free to delete the executables for media player or IE or any of the other things like that. However that's not really removing them, the guts still exist and Windows still uses them. To really remove it, like MS's competitors seem to want, would require stripping the guts as well. Those are what really do the work of the program.
That's why the things MS claims are a part of Windows and are necessary are, after a fashion. They aren't necessary for everything, but other things depend on them. Like the help system breaks if IE goes away. Why? Well help files are HTML based, and call IE, or rather the MSHTML engine that it uses, to render.
Same thing applies to Linux as well. X isn't required, as in you have to have it to have a working system, but if you want a system with, say, KDE it is. You can't say "I want KDE, but I don't want X." Sorry, but KDE uses X, you either install it or you shove off.
The difference is that Linux has chosen to be very, very losely defined and modular. The only thing that acutally is Linux is the kernel. The rest is all optional. There are some conventions, like that almost all graphics ride on top of X, but those are just that, conventions. However you have to have all lower level dependencies for a program, you can't just remove them and replace them with something different, but incompatible and expect things to work.
Windows is different and is like MacOS or Solaris in that it is more richly and tightly defined. The OS isn't just a kernel, it's a kernel, GUI, several APIs, a number of programs, services, etc, etc. That, of course, removes felxability but provides unity. You don't have to concern yourself with the presence or absence of certian things as they are a part of the OS.
Or maybe you've never been to Alabama.
Most of Europe is pretty old. It's all charming and stuff, until you go to plug in an appliance and fear for your life. Meanwhile, France could have the first largest economy in the world, but it wouldn't tell us anything about their living standards unless we know about the GDP per capita, which is exactly what the GP told us about. Economy size doesn't really matter of itself.
Meanwhile, Alabama and the rest of the US South have a blazing economy where Wal*Mart ruthlessly destroys local businesses while pushing down prices so far that even the Mom & Pop whose shop was just closed can afford a DVD player with their unemployment check...
It's more like
Manager: Take that media player out of your operating system.
Me: ok
Manager: Now, install RealPlayer. Why don't these media clips play anymore now that we have a competing media player installed?
What I'd happily say: Because Microsoft left the registry in a way that makes it difficult for competing media players to run those clips. Slap me silly with surprise. RealNetworks already demonstrated a functioning Media Player-less Windows, so this is more shenanigans from Microsoft.
If you don't use Windows in the first place, it really doesn't matter if Windows is sabotaged. Get Linux, run a few things under WINE, and find functional OSS replacements for what you can't run under WINE. Really, it's that simple.
Of course, and remember that this is just my guess, it's possible that Word didn't play the media files properly.. *drum roll* because media player wasn't installed.
If you use Windows for any length of time, it becomes obvious that Microsoft (pointlessly) integrates everything with everything else. I see no purpose in embeding a movie into a word document, but for those that do see a reason to do so, I'd like them to know that Word is most likely depending on an instance of Media Player to play the video files. If you care that much, get on a torrent and download Windows XP CE.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Last time I checked though, WMP didn't play quicktime or realmedia files, meaning sites with that content would require the appropriate program.
In contrast though, I've seen a lot more sites lately with "Windows Media" support in addition to quicktime/real, or sometimes as the sole distribution method. That's the real danger, because when WMP becomes the de-facto standard then MS can start blocking other OS's out that can't use it by using DRM, etc
The article is light on details, but the only thing they bitch about is video not playing in Word. Right, ok, that's because Word plays its video with media player. I'm not seeing the problem here. You can't just drop in another media player and expect it to work by magic.
It would be like taking KDE over to Windows and expecting it to run on Direct X, without modification. Nope, sorry, KDE doesn't know how to do that, it only knows how to run on X. X is what it uses to make its graphics happen, at the low level. While Direct X would be perfectly capable of doing what it needs, that doesn't matter because it want written for it and thus can't use it.
Now maybe there's something the article doesn't mention, but from that story it just sounds like so much whining. The seem to expect that programs with similar functions should be drop-in replacements for eachother and then get whiny when that's not the case. Sounds like expected behaviour, not sabatogue.
No, he's not, it really happened. It was very widely reported at the time. Microsoft did all kinds of crazy shit during that trial. I still remember the tragedy that was Bill Gates' videotaped testimony.
I can't believe how terrible the Evil Empire is. I deleted all of the IE and WMP dlls from my system, because I 3 Firefox. But now my Visual Basic 6 media player with built in browser won't work. Microsoft must have sabotaged the Internet and Media Player controls. And then, I tried to play ASF files in Quicktime, and it wouldn't work! So I went ahead and uninstalled DirectX, and now I can't play Half Life 2! Clearly M$ has set out to sabotage everything!
People have been buying crap products in monopoly-sized quantities since the beginning of time. Nothing is preventing them from buying a Mac today other than plain ignorance and an unwillingness to spend a few more dollars.
I've seen this comment before. In this very story, actually.
"Next time you're in Europe, get away from the popular (among tourists) cities. You'll find very large numbers of people living in what amount to shacks."
,life is exactly the same well except a few obvious difrences
Dude seriously , those aree garden sheds , hahaha . Right now im living in the one of the poorer areas of the EU (former east germany) and the average house around here is rather nice , You may have seen sheds , they are rather commen as alot of people live in flats(apartments to you) and buy land to do gardening etc.
Trust me on this one , people dont live in shantys , and yes i have traveld around
alot of europe.I have never been to the USA , but from what i hear from people
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Before you go flaming people about their understanding of global economics, you might want to take some time to understand it yourself, or at least bother to read their comment completely. The parent poster was talking about per capita GDP, which means that it's population-averaged.
California has a GDP of $1.4 trillion and a population of 35.4 million, which is a per capita GDP of nearly $40,000. France has a GDP of $1.5 trillion and a population of 59.8 million, which is a per capita GDP of roughly $25,000 (All numbers are approximate, and come from the most recent data I could find). Even adjusting for the recent devaluation of the Dollar vs the Euro, this clearly gives the average Californian a much greater income than the average French citizen.
Medical and other services are included in GDP, so the degree of socialization of these services does not directly affect the GDP (i.e., the doctor still has to get paid, it doesn't matter if it's done by the government, the patient, or the insurance company). However, GDP does not adjust for cost basis, so it's possible that, if the real cost of medicine or housing is higher in California than in France (or vice versa), that this additional cost would result in a higher per capita GDP without delivering additional value.
But Windows Media Player is playing embedded documents. The host application playing back the stream is a codec that decodes the stream for any application that may want it, including Media Player. This is why you can download a DIVX codec and have it available in any application that may have an embedded media file marked for DIVX. Windows Media player is just a shell.
.exe file. Can Media Player still play the file? You betcha.
Do this... Install Quicktime from Apple. Delete the quicktime player
You are right in that this would be an easy demonstration to fake. But it would take longer to fake than to do the real thing.
The ______ Agenda
The biggest failure mode of the free market is a monopoly, or an economic singularity, if you will. That's why we have the Sherman anti-trust law - to break such black holes. Well, guess what, it's not working with Microsoft. They will continue, undeterred, to use their existing monopoly to get other monopolies.
The Raven
They asked to have Media Player and all its components removed from Windows, Microsoft complied. Now they're complaining that Media Player doesn't work? God this MS bashing has gone to ridiculous levels.
I've always thought their Basic was rather good.
Seeing as this is Slashdot, I'm sure I'll take a karma hit for this but I'm not trying to slam or promote anything.
What's the big deal with IE and Media Player being bundled with Windows? This is a good thing! I'd like anyone who really thinks otherwise to speak up and backup their claim.
I'd like to introduce them to something called integration. I know it might be a foreign concept for some people, but the idea that I have an "out-of-the-box" computer that will handle just about every form of media, and can easily view webpages is nice. The way that HTML viewing is integrated into Windows (XP specifically) is great for writing help files and even applications. I know that unless there's been some odd update to IE, if I create a webpage that uses ActiveX, or make a help file out of HTML and Javascript that my clients can view it immediately and don't need to go download some other programs.
Media player is the same way. Think about it. How else could you integrate video and audio into programs like Word and PowerPoint without providing native support (which is essentially the same thing)? By providing an easily extensible and accessible A/V system, any application in Windows can very quickly have access to a fairly powerful media playing backend.
Also, products like media players and web browsers are for the most part completely free anymore! I can see where they may have been an issue before, when browsers were being sold like other software, but with them freely available, Microsoft doesn't directly profit from people using IE. You can argue that this helps them get people to use ActiveX and therefore helps promote the entire Windows-IE-ActiveX platform, but again, having a mature system for delivering all sorts of content is good.
What would be better? First, you have to admit that Windows is not going anywhere. It's going to be around for a long time. That agreed upon, think about how else you might be able to go about doing this. You have three options really:
1) Microsoft continues to provide their own software, designed specifically to integrate and work fluidly with Windows while continuing to allow users to use other applications at their leisure; or
2) Get Microsoft to come up with a combination package of third-party and open source software to provide a similar set of tools. Ignoring of course the issues with compatibility and the impossible task of choosing which products to go with. Choosing third-party applications to include would bring all sorts of problems to bear, such as claims of favoritism, even more bullying and whatnot. Similar issues apply for open source projects. I suppose you could always install as many as you can, then let the poor end user, be it Joe Sixpack or Grandma May, figure out which of the 12 browsers and 21 media players they should use. Not to mention keeping them all up-to-date and secure. File associations running amok. Conflicting codecs and settings. Essentially eliminating any hope for a simple but powerful integration. I suppose you could also:
3) Install nothing and let the end user (again, an average computer illiterate victim) try to hunt and download all the programs they need to have a fully functional desktop. This option destroys any hope of any integration at all. It also creates issues for developers since they have no idea what software might be installed and will have to try to package everything they can along with their product, pushing all the programs even further apart. Any program that wants to provide the ability to playback media content for example, would either have to include all the needed libraries itself, or direct the user to download some program X and install it. Messy.
All in all folks, options 2 and 3 are a step backwards. It reminds me a little of the old days for hunting for Netscape plug-ins and trying to get them to work and play nice together. Not something I'd like to do again.
I'm no huge fan of Microsoft, tr
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
"video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly"
... whether Microsoft is complying properly with the requirement to offer a fully functioning version of Windows without Media Player."
"The commission is still in the process of assessing
Well. They complied. They provided a fully functioning version of Windows without Media Player. It's very unfortunate that the entirely separate application, MS Word, which is not a part of Windows doesn't do everything it used to, given that it relies on Media Player being part of the O.S. Then again, the ruling covers the O.S. not the separate application.
I mean, seriously... When I write an tag to use Media Player in a web page, it doesn't work as well now either. If an external app looks for a specific set of calls and can't find them, of course it's not going to work. That's hardly the fault of an OS that was ordered to stop supporting those calls.
Now, on the other hand, had Microsoft been ordered to fully and transparently transmit those calls to any application the user cose to install in Media Player's place - and if Real could prove they seamlessly supported that complete set of calls - then there'd be a legitimate case. But the article makes no mention of that.
What it does say is that Microsoft has to make a fully functioning version of Windows without Media Player. It has done so. It infers that Microsoft should also make Word support Media Player's absence better - but never actually shows where that was part of any ruling.
Weasley? Perhaps. Actually breaching the letter of the ruling? Not from anything that's actually in the article.
Somewhere in Redmond, Bob says to Ed: Ed, you broke word with your last media player removal patch. Ed: Dammit, somebody might think I was trying to sabotage it!
Shh.
Too little and way too late. Everybody I know who's even remotely computer literate (and a fair few who aren't really) have had it with real. I wouldn't install it if I had a signed afidavit from the CEO saying it won't call home or resist uninstallation, distills whiskey and prints $100 notes.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I think your example of X is flawed for exactly the reasons you think it isn't. X doesn't have to be XFree86. I don't know if they are still around but there used to be a few closed source commercial X servers available for linux, and XFree86 has recently forked so there are at least two free ones to choose from.
:), and so you are free to implement your own if you want.
:)
X is a well documented standard (and if the documentation is lacking, you can just read the source
If you wanted to roll your own Media Player, you'd have to do a fair amount of reverse engineering to do it - which is illegal in some places.
I'd write more but the kids need a bath
so if it aplies to F1 the it MUST apply to software
any idiot can se that they are one and the same
To continue the analogy: Sure it would be nice if the engine acted to reinforce the frame, but if the company can't even get the engine to work right in the first place then what good is it anyways? Also, is it really better for the consumer to be locked into a certain engine because putting in a different one would break most of the car? Wouldn't it be neat if it was designed in such a way that you put could have a 4 cylinder, 6 cylinder, or 8 cylinder engine without having to worry that the rest of the car is going to fall apart around your ears because you changed something? That's called modularity.
^I'm with stupid.^
Ah, it's too bad we don't get special +5 insightful moderation points to give away now and again. You've summed up my (and many of my coworkers) feelings about Real perfectly.
:)
(Though I might setup an isolated system someplace and get a few Franklins before I shut it off and incinerate it
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Glad someone here feels the same way I do. Having everything handed to you by the government might be nice, but it breeds complacency.
If I had to pick between receiving handouts from people, or working my ass off to make my life better, I will pick working my ass off everytime.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143549&cid=120 33145.
By the very same person, no less.
Mod retard grandparent down.
If you said Real, you have an inherent inability to uncheck a simple checkbox during an installation and then scream "TEH SPYWAIR!!!!11!1" for the next seven years.
Office is a separate product. That is, it's not Windows. If the EU expects that Office should be able to play embedded media files (as the example states), then presumably it requires a media player to do so. Is it reasonable to expect that Office could use any available media player to do so, or just Windows Media Player?
If it's the former, then you'd need a standardised API (not a bad thing in itself) or something similar, to allow Office to find and use the available players. If it's the later, then why don't they bundle Windows media player with Office?
In principle I like the first option better, but it raises a question: what are the obligations for other software packages? Disregarding who makes what for a while, say you've released a software package that utilises the functionality of another (separate) software package. Say that separate package has other equivalents out there. Applying a fair and even hand the the idea, then is your software obliged to be able to use the equivalents, or can it just use it's preferred package?
Anyone know if this effects powerpoint as well?
Windows XP Without Media Player
Windows XP Media Player Free
Windows XP with an executable deleted
Windows XP MPFree :D
Windows XP Click here to download Media Player
Windows XP WOMP Version
Win And Media Player Seperated (WINAMPS for short)
What did M$ call it in the end?
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
1) If you want to play videos with activex, you use the Windows Media Player control. If they take it out, it won't work. If they leave it in, they'd piss off the EU. Even if they patch their own products to use competing media players, a lot of third party apps will still break.
2) If Real wants to make the videos in the Word documents play again, they can probably make it happen by creating a compatible replacement that's a wrapper around their own player. It's the opportunity they demanded.
3) Profit!!!
Who embeds videos in Word documents anyway? They certainly don't print well.
As others have stated Microsoft removes Windows Media Player (probably the whole thing, not just the front end) and now media doesn't play and the EU complains? Most likely the RealNetworks demo was to simply remove the Windows Media Player front end while leaving the core files and codecs so that media still plays embedded in Word Docs. So the question is: what is the definition of removing Windows Media Player? Is it just the front end or is it the whole thing? Similarly, is removing IE just the front end, or all the supporting libraries?
The way GDP is measured in the US is wildly different from Europe. GDP in Europe includes farm outout (which grows much more slowly than industrial output). In Europe software is not included and in the US legal business accounts for a surprisingly large chunk which does not occur so much in Europe.
In fact, Goldman Sachs show, that if you compare like with like, and use GDP/head/hour, France has the highest figure. But instead of spending on 2nd cars, the French take long and frequent holidays (in France).
The point is both are components on which other software depends. I'm trying to say it's not at all supprising that Word's media playback breaks when you remove media player, and that media player isn't just the little app you see. IT's just an example of a heriachal dependency.
It's openess isn't what's in question here.
Sometimes Microsoft screws people over as part of some evil conspiracy. But people tend to underestimate how often they do it because they don't know how not to.
A single F1 racecar is not a monopoly abusing a market. Windows is no "F1 code". And your flaming troll n'est ce pas un pipe.
--
make install -not war
I bet he's a Harry Potter fan.
has a history of grossly misreporting the news. I will never trust another word from that site again.
If I could only use three words to describe The Inquirer, they would be "sensational", "biased" and "wrong".
Journalism should be none of these.
... on development libraries like the Windows Media Player SDK. When MSFT was ordered to remove Windows Media Player (WMP), I bet they went ahead and removed the associated SDK redistributable components and activex controls, not just the Media Player client. This of course has an effect on the registry as well, since it stores certain settings in the registry. I bet Real just removed the Media Player client, and not everything else that is a part of WMP.
MS Office uses the ActiveX component that is a part of WMP to embed media content in documents (Link). This ActiveX component, due to certain design constraints, can't be shipped seperately from the WMP client (link).
The fact that they removed this stuff does indeed mean that MS Office no longer plays media content properly. I find it funny that the EU is complaining about this, as they got exactly what they wanted!
Perhaps in the future, MSFT will expose a framework that allows third party media player development libraries to plug into the desktop environment, allowing other applications to use whatever libraries are currently configured to play media. Kind of similar to how they've exposed anti-virus hooks for AV vendors to plug into.
But for the EU to ask them to rewrite how this all works, and to rewrite all of their software (ie. Office) to work with it overnight, I think it's asking a little too much. Even of MSFT.
Yea glitch free as long as you don't count Real Player eating up all your free cycles and showing you ads a glitch...
Rob Glaser is such a hypocritical ass.
If Real ever lived up technically to their billing they wouldn't have to cry about anti-competitive behavior, since they would own the market. Instead they make half baked products full of adware type crap and sneaky interfaces, that bogs down your machine to boot. Not to mention the fact that Reals audio and video codecs have long been surpassed by divx, wmv, ogg and many others! Give me a break.
If the EU wanted to penalise MS they should have done it in a realistic fashion and had them pay a huge f#@$ing fine, not screw with Windows, there are enough problems there already.
What no one seems to mention is any Media Player written in the EU that is being hurt by WMP!
I guess that french water company (www.vivendi.com) is afriad of paying Microsoft for some of their actually good technology...
It's more like saying I should be able to remove KDE but still run Konqueror if I like.
And I certainly think I should.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If it was a pipe, wouldn't it be F|?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
No?
Disappointed!
"this clearly gives the average Californian a much greater income than the average French citizen."
Per-capita GDP and per-capita income are two different things and not necessarily tied, are they? It might be that California has a greater per-capita GDP while France has a greater per-capita income.
video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example
No, I'd call that a bugfix.
I'm sure I posted this same rant to /. in the past (go ahead mark me redundant :) - but the last time I had RealPlayer installed on a Windows PC it cost me over $60. I had an ISDN router that auto-dialed, and even though I was careful to disable all the "visible" RealPlayer spyware settings, it STILL decided to send packets home every 5 minutes (I believe my call timeout was 3 minutes). Never again (unless I get a check for $60 in the mail from Mr. Glaser, I suppose...)
"Economy size doesn't really matter of itself." - and neither does "per capita GDP" since the richest 400 people on the planet have a combined income greater than the combined income of the 3,000,000,000 poorest people on the planet. This comes under the "intangible" heading of "equity". The fact that most of this money lives (is taxed) in the US is what skews the figures, (Hint: Drop tax on the rich, attract overseas money magnets to relocate, GDP goes up, profit!). For an extreme example suppose Gates, Murdoch & the Rockerfella's set up shop in Afganistan, when the next census occured, Afganistan would look like paradise based on GDP figures. For a more tangible example, here in Australia the average full time wage is often quoted as ~$45K, it is rarely stated that 80% of full time workers earn less than the average, (ie: income "fits" a highly skewed normal curve with a very long an minutely bumpy tail to the right).
Any estimate of "average wealth" that is applied to the whole population but also includes the extreme minority of the ultra wealthy cannot really tell you anything usefull about "average wealth". Any measure of the economy that also does not take into account the deficit in non-renewable resources, (the "intangible environment"), is also limited in usefullness.
Bad-Capitalisim.
-------------------
W-Mart contributes $X to GDP, N x small-shop contributes $Y to GDP.
W-Mart screws N x small-shop and adds $Z to $X.
N x small-shop now contributes $0 to GDP.
W-Mart uses economies of scale and screws its workers to ensure $Z + $X > $Y.
Both GDP measures increase!
Now remove "social security" and stop counting people who do not have a "proper address".
The GDP is really starting to shine in these boom times!
"The balance sheet: A window into the bussiness, or a blind drawn by accountants to stop others perring in." - John Cleese,(paraphrase).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Windows Media Player libs => XFree86
RealPlayer libs => Xi Graphics XServer
In the Linux/X case you can use either server to manage your XWindow applications (KDE/Gnome/...). In the Windows/Media case you can apparently only use the MS version. Why? Open up the API's that need to be exposed and you ought to be able to get MPlayer/VNC/Helix all able to replace the dll's that are necessary.
The whole point that many people seem to miss is that if there were no Windows Media Formt video/audio codecs, then the Media Player would not be an issue. It is then merely a method to virtualise the access to codecs and not a way to get a propriatory codec only available on one OS a practical requirement and therefore reinforce the vertical monopoly that MS wish to enjoy.
"Wall Street Journal suggests Microsoft has fiddled with the registry in its stripped-down Windows offerings and the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example."
Nah that's just Windows. *nothing* works properly.
The problem is the media formt that *only* plays in Media Player. If MS opened up the codec completely and royalty free (NEVER! It is our code! You cannot steal it!!!), then the problem is gone.
Microsoft is usually a combination of the two -- incompetent malice. :P
Indeed. I went well off Realplayer.. Realplayer 8 was the last one I used. Now I know that was probably as bad as the rest of them for spyware and calling home, etc, but when it started to get to RealOne player with 'messaging centres' that popped up annoying dialogues and such stuff that I really felt enough was enough!
Thankfully Real Alternative seems to work exceptionally well and has enabled me to use Real Media streams without the need for the Real Networks awful software!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
all just goes to show what a SCRAPPY system the whole microSlops windBloZe farce is does it not .Eh!.
Fred Quimbey
US has a monthly trade deficit of 66 billion. US citizens only have more to spend because other countries lend the money. The problem starts of course at the moment that the other countries stop seeing the point of lending ever more money to US citizens.
I wouldn't install it if I had a signed afidavit from the CEO saying it won't call home or resist uninstallation, distills whiskey and prints $100 notes.
Of course not, because then you'd have the Secret Service after you...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Furthermore, Microsoft Word is part of Microsoft Office, which is an entirely different product from the operating system. If it can't play clips without a media player, then it can't, and maybe that's because it's not a media player program. Try OpenOffice.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I completly agree that Real Player sucks. You can't buy people back after losing the people's trust. I know tons of people who hate it now. There is even rm and ram codec players now that you may run real player files (if you happen to come across them) without the need for that spyware they call a program to be installed.
Companies that serve themselves before their customers don't have a place in my pocketbook
I wouldn't install it if I had a signed afidavit from the CEO saying it won't call home or resist uninstallation, distills whiskey and prints $100 notes.
Um... what *kind* of whiskey?
FYI vivendi is a media group. It owns TV channels, rescord labels and a bit of telecom
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
And for those who actually take this seriously....
I do not. I mean, the best defence Microsoft has against the allegations is: "Oopsie, sorry, but we don't know how to properly design software in a modular way".
You might consider it either comic or tragic (depending on what OS your IT infrastructure is based on, I guess), but it sure ain't serious...
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
One way to embed video clips into Office documents is to embed the Media Player ActiveX control. Of course, without Media Player there is no Media Player ActiveX control and so documents using this technique won't load correctly without Media Player.
I've not used Word in years, but I'm going to assume that there's also a second way which involves embedding the video just as video data, without any particular container. Now, I'd expect those to play back through DirectShow (the API Media Player uses to play video) not Media Player itself, and so it should go on working just like any game which uses DirectShow for movie playback should go on working, and Winamp (which plays back most filetypes through DirectShow) should go on working.
Therefore there should be no dependence on any particular player frontend, but you'll still only be able to play movies which have a registered DirectShow codec. Since DirectShow is the standard Windows API for video playback, this is sensible. That a bunch of video format owners (Real, Quicktime) don't distribute DirectShow codecs is their fault, not Microsoft's. Of course, if Office applications really don't have a way to embed video directly without using a specific player ActiveX control then I would describe the developers as incompetant rather than claim sabotage.
I suppose a final possibility is that Microsoft heard "Remove Media Player!" and went and stripped out DirectShow. That would be malicious in my mind since DirectShow is the standard API for video playback in Windows and so its removal would break loads of applications. It was the Media Player application that was to be removed, not the APIs it uses. By that logic, the Win32 API should be removed as well as it's clearly part of Media Player!
From TFA: Microsoft's digital video competitor RealNetworks had been able to demonstrate a Media Player-free version of Windows running "without technical glitches", the Journal notes.
It's questionable whether that's of any relevance to this discussion. Given that Word is not mentioned in that demonstration, and that Word isnt part of windows.
It's also second-hand information (the ActualFuckingArticle is somewhere else and subscriber-only) from a website that apparently thinks it's a dreadfully funny wheeze to namecall MS 'The Vole'.
Without any hard technical information, this story is a waste of time, especially given the established propensity of some to generate a great deal of heat, and salival foam, on the subject of the evils of 'The Vole' which later turns out to be a lot of hot air.
Hopefully some real facts will turn up soon.
Yay Netherlands!
:-D
Sorry, moment of pride for this tiny country.
home
And several barrels. :)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Excuse me!? What exactly do you call a "shack"? What country are you thinking about (Albania?)?
I'm asking because I'm cannot think of any place in western Europe where people live in shacks.
But I'll check carefully, next time I'm in Europe. [gazes out of the window, which offers a pretty good view of a small city] No. No shacks. I can see a couple of churches, a school, a bank, a train station, a bloody big hospital, a wind mill, and more houses than I care to count, but no shacks. Wait, that's wrong - there is a bike shack right below the building. Didn't spot anyone living there when I put my bike there this morning, though.
Just for the record, I really can see all the items linked to from behind my desk ;-)
That's the real Problem here. You can't just buy an OS, you have to buy a webbrowswer, a media-player, a CD-burning-program and whatnot too. Microsofts PR-Department presents it so that all these extras are just gifts that come for free but that's just not true.
The programers developing mediaplayer and IE work at Microsoft and are paid by Microsoft and so, in the end, anyone buying Windows pays for IE amd WMP too. If you don't need WMP since it's only an Office PC: tough luck, you have to pay for it anyway.
Or look at it another way: think of all these Windows-PCs you can buy readily configured, OS, Mediaplayer and all. Anyone selling those Windows-PCs has no choice but to pay Microsoft for WMP and IE. That means there is no true market for webbrowsers or media-players anymore and no competition. The effect can only be bad for the consumer as evidenced by the win of crappy IE (back then) over Netscape.
If Microsoft didn't sell IE and WMP bundled with Windows but as an extra package then others could compete in that market.
What makes this a problem is, that Microsoft Windows has a Monopoly in the desktop OS Market: If you want to sell PCs to the Masses you better put Windows on them and doing so you have no choice but take WMP and IE as well.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
the point is, Words mime-type handlers allow it to use other media players to render embedded content if WMP is not present.. Microsoft have disabled this ability, so that a version of Windows with a rival media player alone won't work.
It forces people to install WMP to regain lost functionality that shouldnt have been lost, and that's definitely sabotage.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Personally, I prefer Japanese Coffee myself... ...Well, Japanese Women as well, but you can't have everything.
English motherfucker, do you speak it?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
No, he's wrong. He implies that GDP/capita means the average joe has less money to spend. This is not true.
Oh, so you think it's reasonable to put Microsoft in a Catch-22 because lawyers know even less about software than they do about ethics?
They wanted WMP out, despite the fact that Microsoft didn't have a set of catch all media stream methods that would automagically install every malware companies (When someone shows you who they really are, believe them, Real....) sack of shit, and bugfree. Despite the fact that Microsoft informed them of this. And despite the fact that even if Microsoft had such a thing, or left any functionality of media player intact that might well have been considered to be in violation of the EU's bullshit.
The fact is the EU hates Europeans almost as much as the current US administration hates Americans.
Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.
I would like to offer this corollary:
Never attribute to incompetence that which can be attributed to greed.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I wouldn't doubt you're being serious. Back in high school a biology teacher of mine once said "I found a really cool animation explaining mitosis cell reproduction, but I couldn't print it".
I don't see grandma with low profile tires, 22" rims, prismatic paint, and a 5000 Watts of custom musical goodness either. But that isn't a commentary on the viability of alternatives, but rather what she intends to use her car for.
In your world (and appearently that of the EU), all cars would be delivered unpainted, sans radio, tires, and hell why not engine, wheels, body, and lights while we're at it. If it was good enough for Fred and Barney....
The effort involved in locating and installing software is trivial, especially in Windows. If my 77 year old grandfather can do it, yours can too. Unless you just come from inferior stock.
Seems the BBC negotiated a deal with Real Networks that resulted in a special build of RealPlayer without all the nasty stuff. Pretty handy, especially since the only reason I want RealPlayer installed is to listen to BBC feeds!
the word of sabotage should apply to windowsupdate instead. They can direct the way people administrate their PC. When they patch your media player, they could have default it as default media player as well. I didn't remember when did I install that .net runtime on my PC.
Yeah a lot of the homes are smaller, but the materials give off less toxic fumes and the construction will last at least a hundred years. I hope not too much of that changes to descend to the U.S. level where strong winds or the passage of a few decades are enough to routinely destroy hundreds of buildings.
All that seems to get left out of these wise and clever cost of living analyses churned out by neoliberal pundits hired by Bush, Bliar, Berlusconi and their owners.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I wish they could just stop pissing MS off. We need them here. They are probably not an insignificant employer. Furthermore they make whatever product they like and people who want it can buy it, the rest is not forced to buy it. If the EU and the world would say no to software patents, that would be enough to protect competition.
Doesn't happen often on /.
Thanks.
I'm asking because I'm cannot think of any place in western Europe where people live in shacks.
I suppose it depends on where you decide Western Europe begins as you move west. But I did say simply Europe.
But what about slums? The United Nations Human Settlements Programme estimates there are 25 million people living in slums in Europe versus about 3 million in North America.
Can you see those from your window? Or do they not exist, too?
just quit buying and using Microsoft products...
that is what people do when they are unsatisfied with a product, they dont use it and find an alternative...
GNU/Linux works for me...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Well there is one sign of the apocalypse...
It may be spyware and malware free, but I bet its got a really nasty GUI as it did in the past too...
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
There are advantages and disadvantages with the European social model (as compared to USA).
The parent points out that his tax money will likely not be as well spent as if he controls them himself.
He do have a point. Trust me on this. I'm Swedish, highest taxes in the world. Not much of public spending works well enough for what we pay (police, military, health care, etc). Some things less bad than others.
But it's a nice place -- few desperate people, for example, makes for a different societal climate. Is it worth all the money? I don't really know.
I think the main problem with the Swedish welfare state is that it isn't stable. We have had it for a few decades and a larger and larger percentage of the population lives off it.
So I think the US will continue to pull ahead.
If the work market for computer people gets better, I'll leave.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Why bother ? Real Alternative does the job and is not made by Real.
As others have said because of their past record I for one will not install anything from Real no matter what deal they've done.
On this note I've also complained to the BBC several times about their practice of using Real Audio when there are many alternatives available.
Shame on the BBC for dealing with such scum.
Fuck Real.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
There is a difference between a codec and a piece of software that uses codecs. Office isn't using some codec interface to control the video stream; hell, it doesn't have any sort of native support for video at all. It does however have the ability to embed ActiveX controls into documents. In this case, someone has embedded a media file using the Windows Media Player ActiveX control.
Then they tried to open it on a machine without Windows Media Player on it. Guess what? Office can't create teh control; the control isn't registered (ie: information about it isn't in "the registry"). Trying to create the ActiveX object will fail, and you aren't going to be able to watch the video.
You can't just pull out a random component that a piece of software expects, and then expect that software to magically fill in the gap with code that doesn't exist.
The only trickery here is from the article authors.
Media Player is just a front end shell for the multimedia services in windows.
Removing media player should not affect window's capabilities in handling multimedia content - and should not affect any application using the multimedia services.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Spare a thought for those of us who have to install it to use listen to the BBC online.
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
No it can't; not unless the codec comes with a DirectShow filter. Apple (and Real) do not do this, in order to keep eyeballs in their clients.
Occam's Razor states that if there are two possible explanations, and one requires ther presence of an outside intelligence, then the other should be accepted.
This is insightfull???
Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier
So I guess you're not a linux fan, as all distributions are bundles of OS and apps... Not to mention you realy should let me see these recognitions that this is a bad thing even before 1960! On what computer was that?
Parent should be modded as troll
I've been using it for the last year or so for exactly the same reason as you, and not had a problem.
You forgot to mention they appear to own the EU commision too :)
How many people drive F1 cars, how many cars does the team need to support? Add that to your analogy and it falls apart instantly. On a specific design, using specific component, for a specific purpose, with a decently sized team you can do things at the "F1" level. Windows is not such an environment just as a regular car is not one.
If your oh so lovely F1 team tried to do this for customer grade cars then it would be getting returns left and right, and people complaining that their mechanics won't work on the cars because it's too hard.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Europe here includes Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova... a whole host of basket case countries. But in the period 1993-2001, NA slums wnet up by 50% whilst that of Europe went up by less than 20%... Must be doing something right here.
In other shocking news Slashdot is divided between two enemies and each poster who jumps for one extreme or the other looks a fool... again!
If Windows Media was tightly coupled to the OS then removing it might break other software not tightly coupled to it, but the code base of which uses those tightly coupled bindings within the US. Word seems to fit perfectly into this sort of scenario.
Alternatively it may be that there were mistakes made in the process of removing all references to Windows Media due to issues with the design of Windows. Again no need for a conspiracy theory, just an issue with implementation.
I am not a Microsoft apologist, but people sometimes need to slow down before assuming that a conspiracy is operating and examine the facts and the possible explanations.
GDP in Europe is also calculated including farming, US GDP does not include farming which would push the GDP down significantly. GDP is Europe does not include software capitilization. In other words, GDP in Europe is a far more conservative figure. Also, the GDP/head/hour worked in France is the highest in the world. They are just not interested in buying stuff, they go on holiday instead (in France).
The USA is a country and Europe is a continent , i would be intrested to see how the numbers change if you include mexico and to a far lesser extent canada into that
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
In retroscept a better reason is: It gives minimal return but requires a large cost (both current and future). In addition, due to human limitations if such a method is used with something as massive as a modern OS it is likely to lead to bugs. Dev time does not scale linearly with complexity, and that's with all the nice tricks like modules.
Mac OS X, for example, handles this well. There's a supplied browser (Safari), but it's just another application, not embedded into the OS at all. What is embedded into the OS is the ability to launch the user's chosen browser to display HTML; this might be Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, IE, OmniWeb, or whatever you choose. The OS has no preference; and any other app can just say 'show this HTML' without knowing or caring which app is involved.
In short, apps need to know that something can display HTML; they don't need to know what. And of course the same applies to other types of data: text, graphics, video, audio, whatever. If you need application X to handle it, then your OS is badly designed.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Firstly, WMP is the front end and the skins and stuff (i.e. what is behind the "windows media player" icon)
Secondly, it is the DirectShow/ActiveMovie/etc stuff that lets applications use WMP codecs (e.g. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 uses it for WMA music).
And thirdly, it is a set of codecs that come with windows for playing WMA, WMV, ASF and whatever else microsoft includes with windows.
The question is, which of the 3 bits is microsoft removing in this "cut down" version. I suspect all 3 bits are being removed (which breaks the embedded videos)
However, if you just remove the first bit (the UI) and leave the codecs and DirectShow components there, it wont break embedded stuff but WMP will be gone. (look at the program XPLite to see just what can be removed from Windows XP without breaking stuff, that includes an option to remove just the Windows Media Player frontend without removing the backend components that works just great)
Anyone who ever programmed anything large ( >2M lines of code, maybe) can tell you how easy a small change can affect something else.
Sabotage requires a high-degree of proof in my mind. And the proof just has been provided.
I would love to see some actual evidence of sabotage in Windows.
If Word can't display videos in this version of Windows, why shouldn't that be RealNetworks' problem? Didn't they promise you a media player that replaced WMP?
I dislike many things MS has done over the years but at this point, forcing them to remove a media player when the desktop is so focussed on digital media seems unrealisitic and even unfair. I know "blah, blah, blah MS is evil" but from a consumer standpoint the only one who will suffer for this is people who buy a Windows PC and have to...
1. Endure crappy co-branded media players that OEMs will install on their PC (I can only imagine what bloat an AOL/HP Media Jukebox would carry)?
2. Be forced to scurry about the web downloading media players when they get (or buid) a new PC?
3. Get frustrated and install the WMP suggestion off of Windows Update and go on there way?
Some of what MS does is out of line, providing customer convenience should not necessarliy fall in to this category.
First, we have the licensing of server protocols to competitors, which are licensed both in a manner to deliberately exclude oss/fs implimentations, and generally under terms that would be considered unreasonable to all but the largest of proprietary software vendors. This is NOT what the EU mandated.
Second, they have been directly interfering with the work of and trying to claim veto rights over what the EU appointed oversite trustee may be permitted to examine and do. This in particular strikes me as being like a criminal claiming to have the right to decide what his parole officer may say or do. Indeed, this latter issue is the one that seems to have most put a bug under the EU at the moment, as it directly flawnts their authority.
The problem with this whole debate is that everyone keeps talking in terms of "per capita GDP" and equate that with a measure of individual wealth. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita measured an individual's contribution to the economy. A better measure of wealth would be looking at income per capita or even better, disposable income per capita.
Funny you would use that example...
You should study history, youngster. There was a time when car manufacturers tried to monopolize the market for car radios; basically they tried to destroy the after-market in car radios. Just like Microsoft is doing now. It took laws to stop them.
Other attempted monopolies include after market auto repair and upgrade parts, tires, and (currently) diagnostic information that would allow you to repair your own car.
Get this: right now there is a legal battle underway, which will result in new laws to guarantee your right to repair your own car. More precisely, the auto manufacturers want to prohibit anyone (i.e. non-dealer auto repair shops, owners) from accessing the computer diagnostics. You wouldn't be able to get any repairs except through the dealer, or an "authorized" repair shop.
Monopolies are bad. Trust me on this. ;)
http://www.tfd.com/sarcasm
So I guess you're not a linux fan, as all distributions are bundles of OS and apps
But does the distro break once you remove the apps? What MS is being accused of is that the car stopped working because they removed the cd player. Why, in this case, Word is considered part of the OS is beyond me though, but I won't be one to pass up a chance to bash MS...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
all they had to do was kill the wmplayer10 exe and default it to the old mplayer2.exe (6.2)
Too many stupid chiefs trying to control the tribe.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That's what Microsoft did. Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier. Yet MS purposefully chose to do bad engineering because it looked like a good marketing strategy.
But you forgot the Microsoft Defense: "Your honor, we're too incompetent to write modular software. Take one piece out and the whole house of cards comes crashing down."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I hope to god everyone is wearing their tinfoil hats to.
Do all you nutjobs honestly believe microsoft is trying to take over the world?!?!
Nope, don't see any slums either. But I think I can spot a few houses that do not actually have a swimming pool in the garden, so I guess that proves your point, whatever it was.
That's the funniest thing I have heard, maybe your thinking of beach huts that some people enjoy spending holidays in ( I think there mad but there you go), or maybe you mistake allotment sheds for someone's house. Or do you count something like a chalet as a shack because it's traditionally made of wood? If so America is full of "shacks" even thought they would be nice houses to live in.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Embedding a video clip within a word document. Do many people do this? I would think that would be painfully annoying. Powerpoint, maybe, but word?
Well, I would install it IF (and only if) I was paid enough to cover the expenses (in time and money) from backing up the box before, and restoring the box after the installation. It's not like the installation itself is that bad. :)
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
I suspect the glitches may be due to the mostly brain-dead API for setting up the codecs. Let's say a program wants to play a certain video clip that's in format F, bit-rate R, bit depth D, size X by Y. You call some API to inquire: is there a codec that can play [F,R,D,X,Y]?. Reply: No, but codec C can do [F,R] and codec C2 can convert [F,R] to [F,R2]. And so on, just like the "Who's on first" routine. A very coy API, where you never quite get a straight answer. LIke the guy said, don't attribute to maliciousness what you could attribute to stupidity.
Yeah, 'pipe' is F as are most of the words ending in 'e'. By the way, receiving a 'pipe' is one of the most pleasant thing in this world, n'est-ce pas?
Will an AC please post the WSJ article?
Every time Microsoft embeds something into the OS, and then later is called upon to remove it from the OS when it is determined to be unfair produce tying, and then claims that removal "breaks" the OS, they are giving the lie to the greatest advantage OLE has.
In theory, you should be able to completely replace IE with Firefox, so long as Firefox registers all the same OLE interfaces as IE does. The, when an application says "I need an HTML renderer - give me a handle to one" the system would hand it a handle to an object created from the Gecko DLL rather than the MSHTML DLL.
However, due to the way Microsoft implemented the idea, you cannot simply replace the DLLs and rewrite the registry entries. DLLs call functions that are not exported via the normal interfaces, rendering what ought to be a model of OOP a bowl of sticky, congealed spaghetti.
I've said it before with respect to to Mozilla, and I shall once again say it with respect to Media player - until users are able to replace system component objects with third party programs, and do so seamlessly, they will never win, and Microsoft will continue to be a monopoly.
The courts should focus upon requiring Microsoft to follow proper software design principles and the design concept of OLE/COM by making each COM object use ONLY the published interfaces from the other objects in the system, and to allow the user to replace those objects with third party objects if they so choose.
Were Microsoft to do this, they could then look the court, Slashdot, and the people in the eyes and say "We've done our part - here's the freaking documentation on the APIs - if Mozilla or Real have not seen fit to make their product able to do a simple DllRegisterServer and replace our GUIDs, then bitch to MozDev, not us!"
www.eFax.com are spammers
I wouldn't install it if I had a signed afidavit from the CEO saying it won't call home or resist uninstallation, distills whiskey and prints $100 notes.
whiskey, no.. single malt, on the other hand. I mean, ya gotta have standards.
-fester
-'fester
But, there is at least some length they could go to to restore my trust in them. They've supposedly "embraced open source", whatever that means. But if their player is ever accepted into Debian unstable or Debian testing... then that will be the tipping point where I know I can trust it!
It'll probably be a cold day in hell, but hey, if they ever do truely reform and offer a truely free, truely open source player that passes all the Debian guidelines, I'd say it's time to trust them again.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Well how do you play video from Word if there is no player that plays media? People complain too much, I guess Microsoft is just damned if they do and damned if they don't. EU wanted Media Player stripped out of Windows and they got there wish. Now people are bi*ching that Windows doesn't play videos with out the Media Player, what the hell? I guess this gives new meaning to having your cake and eating it too.
"the commission has to verify the requirement that Microsoft refrain from using any commercial, technological or contractual terms that would have the effect of rendering the unbundled version of Windows less attractive or less functional."
Of course this is impossible to achieve. Removing Media player obviously makes Windows less functional by definition.
Although I can see why companies like Real might benefit from an unbundled version of Windows, it's a lot harder to see how it helps consumers unless there's a very substantial reduction in price.
The commision is so obsessed with making this Media Playerless version of Windows successful, I wonder if they'll require MS to do deceptive advertising to hide it's limitations.
The EU wanted Microsoft to remove all video players from Windows. Now the EU is complaining that video doesn't play.
Oh, I get it. You guys are simply fucking with Microsoft. Sort of like a kid pulling the wings off a fly. Funny stuff your bureaucrats do over there!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Bah! I can use nLite and remove all I want. Windows runs fine without IE (just wont auto update), and it runs fine without WMP. Infact, I can remove just about everything and get an install that's 350 megs and only used 50MB of ram running. But, whats the point to removing WMP and remarketing it? Why would I buy a crippled copy of XP for the same price as the full version? Pointless "feel good" political tactics. Slay the big Microsoft Dragon, woohoo.......
My friend ordered a 3 series without the stereo, since he was only going to tear it out and replace it anyway. So they didn't bother installing the wiring loom for the audio connections, and the BMW price for that connector and a couple of metres of wire is over a hundred pounds. Luckily he's a pretty decent audio installer and managed to get the proprietry connectors from a scrap dealer, otherwise it would have worked out rather expensive.
I sure as hell did'nt..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole
Next time you're in Europe, get away from the popular (among tourists) cities. You'll find very large numbers of people living in what amount to shacks.
I beg your pardon? Shacks? Please do tell me in which country you saw this. I have lived and worked in no less than 5 European countries and visited nearly all the western ones. I have never seen anyone living in shacks.
If you weren't trolling, which I think you were, I would have thought you were referring to the so called gardening colony shacks that exist in large numbers in Northern Europe. They are simply a sort of garden that is not attached to your house, which you can rent or buy. Historically they exist because the settlement patterns and lack of land limit gardens in cities.
But I think you were simply doing the brain dead american routine there, but monty python is on another channel, thank you.
Well, no. My father is a film (and english, but that's irrelevant) professor at a pretty decent college--he does this kind of thing all the time. If he's writing a paper--or having his students write papers--about a film, and wants to discuss one scene, it's great to have that scene be *right there*.
Jesus, fuckwad, you're comparing continents! Europe consists of everything from Switzerland to Albania, Holland to Russia.
As for those numbers, which only give 3 million slum dwellers for the whole North American continent, including Mexico, I simply do not believe it.
Media Player can't play Quicktime files, even with Quicktime installed. Apple doesn't include a DirectShow compatible codec with Quicktime, the only way to view a Quicktime File on a PC is to use Quicktime.
The reason you can play a DIVX encoded file, is that they install a DirectShow compatible codec, and register it with the system.
Being right should count for something, even on /.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
This is exactly where it seems to me like this whole thing gets "sticky".... Did Microsoft ever really promise people that Media Player was just a "front end shell" for all of these media capabilities in Windows, or were they implying/intending it to be their preferred *default method* of working with multimedia in Windows?
.exe file makes it stop working properly), it seems like it would strengthen Microsoft's argument that they intended theirs to be looked at similarly.
Personally, if I received a Media Player free version of Windows, I wouldn't expect files made for their format to play if I embedded them in, say, MS Word. I'd think the *expected* behavior would be for them to be "broken", at least until I installed 3rd. party products to handle the media.
Even the folks making the technical argument that the Media Player codecs should still be in Windows XP when MS removes the "player front-end" seem to me like they're treading on thin ice. This argument boils down to deciding if "Media Player" encompasses the codecs that "make it go" or not. Since competing players like Quicktime consider their media playing products as "one component" (deleting the
This is why I don't use RealPlayer. Instead, why not get Real Alternative and Quick Alternative?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That is, unless you think all documents should only be read printed on dead tree & clay.
On the other hand I've no end of documents I've embedded material into. Spreadsheets that update dynamically. Stock and exchange rates with latest values. Sound files citing something in the speaker's own voice. Video files displaying the event in question. etc.
For that matter the material I produce is rarely printed out but probably stays in it's original binary format all of it's life-cycle. All of them are written so they still make sense stripped down to bare unformatted text but the non-text material does add hugely to their usefulness.
Screen-cams showing how to do something in an application. Quick audio notes when reviewing a document for a peer. Last week a Flash animation showing how NAT works to a relative, stuck in the middle of a letter.
Words aren't the only medium of communication. A picture is oftentimes worth a thousand words, a moving picture another order of magnitude of information density. So yes, it is helpful that a word processor is facile with more then just words.
A word processor needn't be a sound or video editing suite, or html editor, but embedding links, 3rd party objects, sound & video clips, all are expected of a modern application. Indeed your vocabulary even respects that; "documents" instead of "text files".
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Remember the RealPlayer "bug" with which "wrong video streams" could cause a buffer overflow? .exe file.
So you download a p0rn clip and when you go to view it it's as good as running an
Surely there will be such bugs in there too. And "some" p0rn sites just "happen" to know how to make bad video streams.
This is what happens.
That woud do it for me.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
You had me until the whiskey part. Sign me up!
Can you call it sabotage if it never worked well to begin with?
My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
France has the 15th highest GDP/capita in the world, with a U.S. Dollar figure of $24K.
The US has the 4th highest GDP/capita at $36K.
In absolute numbers for GDP (Millions):
1) US - 10,383,100
2) Japan - 3,993,430
3) Germany - 1,984,090
4) U.K. - 1,566,280
5) France - 1,431,280
6) China - 1,266,050
(GNP are roughly similar to these numbers, and the order is the same)
In terms of GDP growth:
3 - China +9.71
79 - US +3.30
101 - UK +2.65
127 - France +1.95
In terms of unemployement
58 - France 8.9%
62 - Germany 8.6%
86 - US 5.8%
94 - UK 5.1%
105 - Cuba 3.3%
Clearly, within 2-3 years, China will eclipse France and become the 5th largest economy, pushing France to 6th.
Also, France's GDP/GNP increases are alarmingly low, coupled with a relatively high unemployment rate paints a grim pictures for the French. I suspect they will not be a top 10 economy within 10-15 years.
(Oh, these numbers provided, ironically, by MS Encarta 2005)
Not only was this reply to the post completely off-topic, a candidate for bullsh... I mean, FLAME-BAIT, but circles around something totally fucking stupid in the first place. Movie files in WORD? C'mon... that's like saying the Mona Lisa is ridiculous because it doesn't feature a psychedelic background with swirling colors. If you think you can write a better word processor for playing videos, you go right ahead and do that, til then STFU. Videos are meant to be played in presentations anyway. If this problem still exists in Powerpoint, yeah, sure, this might be a topic to discuss because then, it'll actually have some merit - not like some of the other topics on /. that are annoying, have been mentioned a zillion times before, inaccurate, and/or downright lame.
No, its 5th, and about to fall to China.
Take a look at my numbers above.
These numbers match roughly with the GDP/capita numbers provided by the world bank.
Please stop trying to cover France's poor economic output.
Probably meaning that (s)he was unable to figure out how to get screen caps of the animation and print them.
I'm amazed at how many people use Word as a graphic editor or use Excel as a database...
the history of the world
Word works just fine. It just can't play a WMP Embedded Video because they've been ordered to remove the Video Playing Subsystem. Jesus Fuck, you people are fucking stupid.
When the U.S. Feds wanted to take down organized crime, they hired Pizzone to pose as Donnie Brasco. He rose within the Bonanno crime family until he was able to finger the right people and present evidence to his handlers.
It's time for the Feds to do this to Microsoft. Tap a young smart O/S programmer in college, and get him into Microsoft. Have him show evidence that he was directly asked to sabotage the O/S or make competing formats not inter-operate. It could take years and years to place the right person in the right position, but that's what it will take to stop Microsoft and demonstrate that these issues are deliberately manufacturered. A sting operation.
Wrong.
Media player is two pieces. There's the player application, and there's WMP.OCX.
WMP.OCX is the ActiveX control that's used to play the multimedia content.
If the stripped media version removed WMP.OCX (which is what I believe the EU asked), then removing WMP WILL affect windows ability to handle embedded media content.
That's what Microsoft did. Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier. Yet MS purposefully chose to do bad engineering because it looked like a good marketing strategy.
It looked like a good marketing strategy because it WAS indeed good marketing strategy. Almost everyone of the non-techie users I know likes the fact they can play their video clips, surf da intarweb, read e-mail, etc. without having to go out and buy another software package or download it from somewhere else. Is it fair or ethical for MS to tie these things into the OS? Personally I think not. Personally I'd prefer a more stripped down OS that lets me choose what apps I want to run. However the non-techie unwashed masses want things convenient and simple to use and don't give a fuck about clean and proper OS design.
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"
It is a consent issue, I don't give a hang about the definition of the neogism. The defining characteristic of spyware in my view is that the provider does not intend to respect the machine owner's control over their machine.
Real has certainly collected information on users without adequate notice in the past so the narrower spyware definition is also appropriate.
Real criticizing Microsoft on business ethics is like Hedi Fleiss calling Maddona a slut.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Yeah, not like go-getting super-modern New york for example, where the bloody light started sparking when I plugged it into your daft electricity system. Or California, with its marvellous rolling blackout system...
Especially since all three of us are in pretty much a simbiotic relationship anyway (well not so much Mexico and Canada).
automatically be modded as a troll.
"Spokesvole"?! Oh, puh-leaze.
Good objective journalism there! Yup.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I say: Make something that's better than what MS includes. That's what competition is all about right? It can work too. Right now I'm typing this in Firefox, despite being on Windows XP. Why? Well I like Firefox better, it works better than IE for what I do. The Windows firewall is turned off, in its place sits Kerio, I find WFW too simplistic for my needs. As for defragging, I never worry about it, my defragger Diskeeper (MS actually licenses a stripped down version of DK and that's what's included) takes care of it automaticaly. Finally, as relates to the topic starter, I'm listening to my music through Winamp, since I just don't care for WMP's interface, for audio at least.
So there are plenty of companies that really can, and do, compete with things included in Windows. The trick is you have to offer people a reason, your product needs to be better in some way and frankly I don't see a problem with this. I don't believe companies have a right to demand that the producers of an OS, or anything else, be required to buy their products. Companies should be allowed to produce in house solutions, and you are free to produce better 3rd party solutions.
It's kinda like car audio. I've never seen a car, even an old El Camino, that didn't come with some kind of sound system. It's a non-essential feature that is integrated in every car. However, there is still a thriving aftermarket. How do they make any money? They make better products, and products that do different things. Many people are perfectly happy with their stock hardware and leave it, but many others find it lacking in some way, and go buy 3rd party stuff.
Now I realise that it's not a monopoly situation, but the effect is the same on the aftermarket given that ALL car makers include stock systems. There's no arguing that the could sell a lot more units if all cars came with no strereo, just a place to mount one. Also they'd be able to get away with selling lower quality hardware, since you wouldn't need to offer an upgrade.
Well I don't see a situation like that as positive. I think integration is a good thing and if you want to compete, be better, don't whine about it.
Part of the problem is that 3rd party media players for Windows tend to blow, at least the ones from companies that do the whining. Quicktime on the PC sucks. It doesn't look, feel, or operate like a Windows app, it's quite slow (due to the way Apple ports it), it's not as functional as WMP, and it whines for you to pay for it. I don't even need to start on Real Player, we all know how bad that sucks.
That seems to be the problem, nobody has made a serious attempt to make a GOOD (video) media player that would make people want to use it. They just throw out some shit that plays their format, and then whine when people don't want to pay for it. No, I'm not going to pay you just to use your format. Your format should install as a DirectShow codec like all the rest. I'll pay for your player if I feel it offers me a better solution than WMP.
Good example - if you embed a visio document into a word document (which you can do really easily) - don't expect the person you send it to have a fully embeded version of vision inside the word doc to add/change the visio drawing. You may even have problems printing a full resolution copy of the drawing inside word without having visio installed.
I've never had a problem viewing Visio drawings embedded in Word without Visio installed... but a way to ensure everyone is able to view all inline drawings of any type is to install PrimoPDF and print to a PDF...
Used this on a major school project and this allowed me to print and view anywhere. Also Word 2003 offers a print to TIFF option but you need a gMail account to hold those documents.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Hey, I'm not into economics, so please explain to me how excluding an industry from being counted could cause the GDP to up.
Put identity in the browser.
Pardon my ignorance. Wtf is the vole, and why wasn't it hyperlinked?
In the US a corperation in the courts, is supposed to have the same rights as a citizen(i think). If a citizen pulled shit the corperations did the judge would get angry. But because our government can be legally brib... err lobbied the yget away with much more then what any citizen could.
The courts should smack them around for defying them.
*DrugCheese rants*
I think you meant to type "it up the arse, no lube"
Isn't that what hypertext (and more specifically, HTML) is for? It's nice and simple and pretty portable. Heck, there's even an Open Standard for video called MPEG.
Stick Men
Great, if Media Player is just a program it can be deleted without removing the "guts of it". You then say MS competitors wanted the guts removed too - which may be true, I didn't read the settlement. Later you say:
"Windows is different and is like MacOS or Solaris in that it is more richly and tightly defined. The OS isn't just a kernel, it's a kernel, GUI, several APIs, a number of programs, services, etc, etc."
So now the media playing ability is part of this tightly integrated OS. If it's part of the OS it should not be removed just because you delete the media player.
This is exactly how MS operates. They choose architectural definitions that fit whatever arguement they are trying to make at the time. IE and Media player are part of the OS because people have tried to make MS remove them and MS wanted to have their removal affect other parts of the system. When you buy MS development tools, you are free to use the Word dll and distribute it with your application so long as you don't write a word processor. So the Word dlls are clearly not Word because you can install the dll without giving someone the front end (Word) and MS can still sell Word to that person. So most of the time everything is a part of the OS, but when someone wants a piece removed, a bunch of that OS has to go with it.
If you're a corporate purchaser of MS products, you'll also know how certain pieces of software really don't do everything you want unless you also buy some other packages too. They build certain functionalities that are commonly used together into different products so you have to buy them all. This is business working against software quality. But I digress....
Your security feature fixes the flaws exposed by the Internet Explorer stand-alone application. It doesn't do jack for the broken components used elsewhere throughout the system.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If you install Quicktime Alternative (from the same people who brought you real alternative), you get a directshow filter for Quicktime.
It's very nice, I must say.
For context, click Parent.
I can't think of a good reason to embedd a video clip into Word. I didn't even realize this possible.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
N/T
Hmmm. Remove the video player then complain when videos don't play when they are embedded in other applicaitons?
That is exactly what I would expect to happen if you pull the software that plays videos.
So instead of Real you're choosing...
Microsoft Windows Media Player!
Good work, that'll slow down those evil monopolists!
That was classic intercourse!
Quit playing games, please.
Oh wait, that was what Windows was for, wasn't it?
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
That's what Microsoft did. Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier. Yet MS purposefully chose to do bad engineering because it looked like a good marketing strategy.
Here's something interesting I've noticed about MS apps. And believe me, I hate MS, so it really pisses me off:
They're better.
Oh, don't get me wrong; the security is crap, and you don't have the beautiful straightforward control like you do in *nix or BSD.
BUT, their applications are faster. Much faster.
Modularity comes at a cost, and that cost is response time. On a certain machine, OpenOffice will take around 30 seconds or so to load up; on the same machine, Office opens up nearly instantly.
This is also pretty much true of Internet Explorer and other Windows applications.
The response time of items like wizards, dialog boxes, etc., is pretty much always faster than their "better programmed" more modular counterparts.
If you look at a user using an application, all they care about is getting things done. They don't care about whether or not the OS is separate from the application. They don't care if Media Player is installed or not. In fact, I'm betting that one of the first things that 50% of the more tech-savvy users of these Media Player-free systems are going to do is download Media Player.
Again, I hate to admit it -- in the same way that I hate to acknowledge that there are many things about the US that are fucked up, because I live here -- but basically the OpenSource community makes supremely excellent server software and OSs, but only average desktop software. Microsoft makes very good desktop software, with fast-as-heck response times.
I think that, in all seriousness, it's getting to the point where distinguishing between what is an application and what is the OS no longer makes 100% sense. I *like* being able to view thumbnails of images in a directory folder, and to click on a link and see a 30s smaller preview of a movie file. All that would be much more difficult if the OS was made separate from the OS.
As far as the Help system is concerned, how would *you* suggest that it be set up? That Microsoft develop another application that uses code that's practically identical to the code used by Internet Explorer? Isn't it good programming to share code rather than duplicate it? And, if so, wouldn't it make sense for IE and the Help System to use the same codebase?
I'm just sayin'.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
That reminds me of the early days of incompetent managers using Excel to create text documents.
Now they're using Word to watch video media.
Next we'll see them using Media Player to create inventory database reports.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I know you will never get modded up, because you have committed the primary heresy of suggesting that some action Microsoft took is not either stupid, evil or both, but I wanted you to know that not everyone thinks Microsoft is Satan. (Though I still use linux because it does rock. I mean really, I have enough hard drive space for a help menu system AND a web browser. wow.)
According to TFA, MS is required to ship "a fully functioning version of Windows without Media Player". That is, of course, an impossible task, as there has never been a fully functioning version of Windows, with or without Media Player. But MS doesn't get off the hook because it's products are crap or worse. Even negligent sabotage, like "why spend money testing this contractual obligation release?", is sabotage, because it doesn't meet the requirements. MS isn't a person; it doesn't have a "character" we could care about. It only has actions, and perhaps consequences.
--
make install -not war
I dont see why anyone would be mad at Microsoft. And I dont understand how anyone could expect a embedded video file to play without a player installed. Thats the reason the media player was coupled with Windows in the first place. So computer illiterate people would still be able to play most music and video formats.
This may come as a shock to you, but your not going to be able to play any video format without a player and the format's respective codec.
I don't understand why they want to restrict Microsofts products in any way.
Why not just demand that server protocols and office files use "free to read" specifications so that people can buy any type of PC they want without having problems.
Hey, I'm not into economics, so please explain to me how excluding an industry from being counted could cause the GDP to up.
Because farming for the most part is a huge drain on the economy. Not as bad a drain as having no food, mind you, but still a huge drain.
In the US, we pay farmers not to grow food. Then the price for the food that goes to market is hugely inflated above market costs.
So all the food you buy here, you essentially pay much more than it's worth, and you pay at least two times.
This is basically why only the so-called blue states pay their own way and they pay for the red states as well.
Other than Texas (oil) and Nevada (Vegas, Baby, Vegas), all of the red states are net welfare states.
They receive the afore mentioned farm subsidies.
Additionally, since they are largely rural their phones, cell phones, roads, and essentially all of their infrastructure is paid for by the blue states.
The really hilarious part is that they are generally the ones bitching about welfare when they are the ones who get the vast majority of it.
It's not just that videos won't play without an installed - as far as this news is reported, it seems that other installed replacement players won't work, either, in the revision MS is shipping. Of course MS has "integrated" WMP - largely to make it hard to uninstall, to fight abuse remedies like this one. This might come as a shock to you, but in the last major MS bundling abuse decision, MS faked evidence videos showing that removal of IE would destabilize Windows to unusability. It's not just your girlfriend who "gets her hooks into you" just to stay together, regardless of reality.
--
make install -not war
Would MS really be so stupid as to DELIBERATELY cripple a product sent to its consumers? Or is this just paranoia? Much has been made of MS' ham-fisted rigging of evidence to show that Windows didn't work properly without IE. But that was crippling Windows for a DEMONSTRATION, which is hardly the same as sending out millions of copies of a defective product.
Jacques Six-pacquet in Europe is not going to be thinking: "Damn the EU for crippling my Windows!" He'll be thinking "Sacre bleu! Windows sucks!"
I don't see how shipping a deliberately broken version of Windows helps MS.
Sean
EU: "MS, give us an OS without the media player"
MS: "Ok. Here you go."
EU: "Why doesn't this app that relies on the media player API work anymore?"
MS: "Because you made us remove the media player."
...it's really insightful. I think it's much more likely that MS just screwed up the implementation of removing Media Player. I can't see how it's to their advantage to ship out millions of copies of Windows that they KNOW are defective - you might as well put a sign on the box saying "don't buy me!"
Sean
Of course, the trial is a completely different situation. In the trial, MS demonstrated a single installation of windows for a judge, trying to get the judge to see things their way. TFA says that MS DELIBERATELY SHIPPED countless broken copies of Windows to European customers. How could that work out to their advantage?
Sean
How the clucking bell is that. It is pure software and not a driver not theOS. Merely an application.
Your analogy sucks harder than the GGP post.
It looked like a good marketing strategy because it WAS indeed good marketing strategy.
Agreed: over the short term, it has been an excellent marketing strategy. But when I wrote the grandparent, I was also thinking about the long term: that MS's sacrifice of good design on the altar of short term market gain is the root cause of most of their current legal problems and almost all of their security problems. It is also one of the major reasons why their big corporate and government clients are converting from Windows to other OS. The big guys need to be able to do long term forecasts of their expenses and resource requirements as they develop their ten and twenty year plans. You can't do that with Microsoft's products-- I think mostly because of the lack of compartmentalization between OS and apps. Building a long term corporate strategy on top of Windows is like building on a foundation of swiss cheese: you never know when its going to fail and when it does, the stink is going to bother your customers.
Almost everyone of the non-techie users I know likes the fact they can play their video clips, surf da intarweb, read e-mail, etc. without having to go out and buy another software package or download it from somewhere else.
MS could have provided software bundles that did this with properly compartmentalized applications. They have consistently chosen instead to closely couple their apps to the innards of their OS. This first became evident with Win3.1, when it was found that MS Word owed its superior performance over Word Perfect, Word Star, and other word processors to the use of undocumented calls to internal OS routines.
Is it fair or ethical for MS to tie these things into the OS? Personally I think not.
I agree. I also want to emphasize that this is very poor design for the long term. It raises huge maintenance, security, and upgrade problems for both MS and its customers.
Doesn't mean you're paranoid.
It just means you're paying attention.
[caveat - I own MSFT shares directly]
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It was Steve Ballmer in the study with the lead pipe.
Oh, not that kind of sleuthing?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
As a famous person once said...
That's really horribly twisted logic - you're linking unrelated clauses in order to advance a bad point. They can "put in something else better" or "put in something secure". The permission to "rip out" xxx is wholly unrelated to the OEM ability to add in whatever they want.
It's like "suggesting" Microsoft purposely "sabotaged" the Help system after a person removes the IE Core from the system. (Doing so effectively breaks the help system among other things)
That's what Microsoft did. Apps are apps and OS is OS, and coupling one to the other has been recognized as bad design since the 1960s or earlier. Yet MS purposefully chose to do bad engineering because it looked like a good marketing strategy.
Oh, shut up. An HTML renderer is a perfectly good thing to use for a help system. It's not the embedding that makes IE a problem, it's the IE security flaws that make embedding a problem.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
While it's not evidence of sabotage in XP, MS's track record says that they're not above misrepresenting working alternatives as somehow non-working.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
As it is, DirectShow is a feature of Windows Media Player (at least as far as I've ever understood) and if you take out media player the fancy DirectShow offerings fail to work. Seems simple and not blatently sneaky.
Wow, Microsoft's misinformation tactics really are working.
DirectShow is a part of DirectX. Media Player just runs codecs using DirectShow. You could write your own player that uses DirectShow if you wanted. Of course, you'd have to compete with a certain bundled media player.
I'm suddenly depressed. There really are people who think DirectShow is a "feature" of Windows Media Player? Wow. Go, Microsoft.
doesn't mean you're paranoid.
After all, who do you think employs most of my friends at Seattle law firms.
Hint: it's not the Justice Department.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Install Quicktime from Apple" and get itunes whether you like it or not.
The dollar is not "incredibly weak" right now. The current $/Euro exchange rate is approximately price parity.
The $ is still about 10% away from its alltime low
of the 1990s, but meanwhile US inflation has been a few percent per year higher than inflation in Germany and France.
I can't understand what sort of remedy for monopolistic practices stripping WMP out of XP is. How on earth does the consumer benefit from this? If you want to stop MS being a monopoly then surely the only way is to split them into several companies all with rights to all current MS code.
" the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example."
so what are they asking for? If they asked for a version without media player, what do they expect the video to be rendered with?
I agree. MS has done some damn sleazey things.
Heck, there's even an Open Standard for video called MPEG.
Isn't MPEG still covered by patents?
"It seems to me that this type of problem is the very reason MS didn't want to pull out MP in the first place."
It's also a very good reason not to "integrate" it into the OS to begin with. If Microsoft is willing to risk "breaking" Windows by adding it, why not by removing it?
Never assume malice when conspiracy will do.
So you're saying that farming reduces GDP? What basis do you have for all this info about red/blue states. (BTW, I don't know why you got into all the political stuff, unless your sig is representative).
So, when I lived in the US, all those corn (ADM?) commercials that I saw on PBS weren't representing that the company made lots of money?
Put identity in the browser.
Ah, I think here's what happened...
RealNetworks removed wmplayer.exe (or whatever it's called nowadays). However, they did NOT remove the DirectShow framework, which Microsoft did. Word requires DirectShow to view videos. XP RME, from what I've heard, does not have DirectShow. They should try installing WMP on RME, and try again.
OpenOffice can print to PDFs.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It's not really they write their help in HTML, it's that they embed IE, instead of doing the sane thing and having, you know, a bunch of HTML files and shortcuts to them, and you can use whatever browser you like.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
My professor bitched when the printed out version's video wouldnt play.
That is because you printed the video incorrectly. Here is the correct method to print videos:
1. Open the document.
2. Print the document.
3. Step forward to the next video frame.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until the end frame.
5. Bound the pages together, in order and ightly.
6. Hold the bound pages with your left hand, the use your right hand to flip the pages rapidly.
See, the video plays. You can even fast forward (flip rapidly), slow motion (flip slowly) or even get a still frame of the video.
Known bugs:
The only audio that comes out is just "wrrrrr". No known there is no known technique to print the audio correctly.
Umm what about 3rd party applications that rely on the media player api or IE API? Lot of apps i've seen are using a browser window to do their interface stuff since it makes doing skins extremely simple(change the css file). And the only way to communicate from the Presentation layer(HTML) is through activex because you can't send posts or querystrings at a file. And before you slashbotters start bitching that using HTML with some sort of hook into an application API is crap/insecure/slow/whatever, this is the same shit KDE uses.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
> If you don't need WMP since it's only an Office PC: tough luck, you have to pay for it anyway.
/.-ers would feel if bureaucrats in Brussels were dictating terms for Linux development.
Lousy argument. If I use Red Hat in the office and don't use any of the media stuff, have I not paid for the time RH Q&A spent on them?
If you want to pay only for what you need, get a custom system designed. You'll find it costs you more. The entire point of products -- any product, from automobiles to software -- is that you get something that approximates (not matches) your needs for a low price.
As an aside, I wonder how many
Go somewhere random
I agree. Since RealOne the company has been doing a good job.
...they might have forestalled it by shifting monopoly. They were convicted of abuse of their monopoly position in regards to Windows. Now they might be shifting it to Office. However, that is really a new case, where you need to establish a) Office is a monopoly and b) That monopoly power of Office is being abused.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
if I were Microsoft, I'd pull out of the EU market. It's insane how far the EU is going in this. I'd say, fine ... we're done. Enjoy, and walk away.
I'm not the only one who'd pay money to see this, right?
Microsoft relies on the EU to make its citizens do things like pay for (most of) the copies of Windows OS, Office, etc. that they use. If Microsoft decides that it simply won't play by the rules that the EU and its members make, it wouldn't surprise me if the EU's response wasn't something very much along the lines of recinding those protections.
What are they going to demand that Real offer their codecs up for download without including the UI in the package?
I imagine that they will, given the precedent, as soon as Real starts illegally leveraging their monopoloy on... Oh.
Sure, I'd love this as a user - but there's absolutely no business model that would justify Real (or Microsoft) doing this.
I understand that the US penalties from the DoJ and various states may have left you with the wrong impression, but generally speaking, penalties are supposed to hurt. That way the penalized party has some compulsion to change.
I would take the word of MS over the word of a company who used to embed spyware into their media player, ANY day of the week.
that which can be attributed to mere incompetence.
Then it appears you have Luna turned off, such as if you're running a version of Windows before XP. Try clicking the gray X-box to hide IE.
Quicktime Alternative DirectShow enables the QT codecs. You don't that stupid blue Q in your taskbar to boot.
> By the way, receiving a 'pipe' is one of the most pleasant thing in this world
I never knew, as I'd always been on the "giving" end of the pipe. I always just assumed it was uncomfortable because the guys with the pipe-indentations in their heads never thanked me afterward.
Did Real get it to work without any additional software? For example, if real installed their own player, thats cheating.
I am a little unclear on why you would think this.
It is my understanding that the WMP-free version of the OS is supposed to allow kit vendors to sell units with whatever media players they want, to help offset the network-effect portion of their infringing behavior and subsequent gains in the sector.
The question isn't so much do you need a media player to play media, but rather when will Microsoft offer an OS version that doesn't stifle media player competition?
Simply put, microsoft was ordered to take out the Media Player system from windows and did just that.
I am sure that the EU did not put their directives simply at all and it is possible that thier directions were not quite right. I am sure that Microsoft is exploiting anything they think they can to twist this remedy to their advantage. Simply put, it is in Microsoft's best interests to do so, until such time as the EU proves that such activities are and will continue to be otherwise counterproductive.
But why should microsft give you the codecs without the program that goes with them.
Out of curiosity, have you ever asked a correllary of this, like, "Why should that convicted embezzeler leave his house and family and spend all that time in that prison facility?"
Give your government supreme control over what individual companies can and can't include in their software and you get what you deserve: inferior products and crippleware.
Now personally I haven't touched a windows system since college, so its getting to be a distant memory exactly what one even looks like (and I've never seen an XP system at all), but it seems to me that a media player is pretty much standard in every other modern operating system, and has been for quite some time.
Moderation doesn't happen on page 5 of 7. You need to be on page 1, or catch one of the few mods doing most recent posts.
". . . It's like "suggesting" Microsoft purposely "sabotaged" the Help system after a person removes the IE Core from the system. (Doing so effectively breaks the help system among other things). . ."
If the Microsoft Help system is HTML based, why can't it work with alternate browsers like FireFox after IE is removed?
Why the heck are Help files in a propriatary format?
What Microsoft is doing is coding at F1 levels.
That would be fine if MS was in a race. Where matters of operational efficiency and durability didn't matter. In short, MS has been doing a wonderful job building OSs for games machines.
Businesses don't need Formula One computers. They need general purpose OSs that are reliable and secure.
If you have to have a mechanical analogy to understand this, the model you should use is the farm tractor. This is a general purpose mechanism with power take-offs; a three point hitch that will accept all kinds of drag-behind implements; hydraulics that can power a front loader, forklift attachment, post hole digger, backhoe, or whatever. You get the implements you need separately; you attach them when you need them; you remove them and put them out of your way when you don't need them.
You don't measure the value of a tractor by the speed with which it can go from the barn to the field; you measure its value by the work it does for you, its over-all efficiency, and whether it is likely to break down on you in the middle of harvest season.
MS doesn't fare very well in this metaphor, but I'll leave exploring that as an exercise for the reader.
Real will never be purposely installed on any of my machines.
...unless of course we consider what your true motives really are.
I would think if you have been anywhere near a computer and the internet in the last 3 years, you would know that Real contain(s/ed?) spyware. and reports back on the user's listening/viewing habbits.
As the founding member of the tin foil hat division of the lunatic fringe, I am well aware of the issues regarding Real, and assume everyone else is too.
For this reason, I am totally aghast at my favorite consiracy/smoking gun web sites, using it as their primary medium for media distribution.
Art Bell/Prison Planet/Jeff Rense - just why hell would you ever, pick this piece of malware to distribute your message.
http://www.rense.com/
Nurse! I'm ready for my Soma now!
>but then again it isn't like MS with all its >billions of cash reserves is going to be >bankrupted by the development costs. So now we've slipped from the 'other developers need a level playing field' figleaf to demanding MS is somehow required to expend money to ACTIVELY assist its competitors in taking away its business? Microsoft wouldn't be bankrupted by buying me a pony either. That doesn't mean they're obligated to.
No. Believe it or not there are other media players out there that work just as well if not better.
WinAmp and Shoutcast are but 2 of my favorites.And WinAmp with SR is my Kaaaza.
Yea, buy our boot time would lessen if you did not have to have IE running at startup. I can get similar performance with KDE and Linux when booting up Konqueror, because much of what I am using is already in memory. Many KDE components are integrated with each other, however they do not integrate with the OS and can be removed at anytime. The speed is not a product of integrating with the OS, it is mostly a product of having what you need already in memory.
Though I don't think there are many who would agrue that Real is or has been a maker of spyware, but that was never the argument. The argument is that you don't understand the meaning of "spy" and that your "view" is beyond ignorant into the realm of conscious stupidity.
But I think the real question is, if you care so much about your "control" over your own system, why is it you are still running windows?
Or if IE is a part of Windows. Debating what the name "Media Player" includes is just quicksand.
This is political anyway: a lack of competition is driving this, not a technical distinction. Gates tried to argue that MS must decide what is included in Windows, rather then that MS must decide what common functionality is in Windows. MS wants its own software to define Windows, not software that is comparable and API compatible. (Seems like a reasonable argument.) Their monopoly status is what brings this on: EU is trying to (re)create the market, and keep other markets viable for the future.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
It's not just "can't play clips without a media player". It's "can't play clips WITH a media player unless that media player is the one from Microsoft".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why doesn't Apple get in trouble for bundling applications with their OS? They actually include useful, commercial level software, too. Is it just because of the way they distribute that lets them get away with this?
Maybe the registry in Windows is such a spiderweb of confusion that not even MS knows how it works.
What do you expect from the MS guys, they have the power..cash and they own the home computer market, I'm assuming it will get worse if they marked share start shrinking, time will show.. now come back to daily MS trolling :)
There should be an option --
to call up whatever browser you want for the help system.
And, the option should allow running the help subsystem as whatever "user" (priviledge level) you want. Or, run at the priviledges of the current user (but no higher).
So:
Is there a simple configuration (or registry) entry that does this? What privilege level is the help browser run at in MS Word?
Same thing with "embedded media". Does MS Word (or the OS) search out a compliant filter? And what privilege level is used for the filter? Is it the same as (say) Redhat 9, where I use "plugger" to parse a compliancy table, and can run separate programs of my choosing? Or is it "integrated" into the OS Core, and I have no such control?
Just wondering (I really don't know -- being a Solaris/Linux guy).
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
So you're saying that farming reduces GDP?
The OP said that having farming in the calculation for GDP reduces the number that results.
Somebody asked why that would be, and I came up with what I think is a reasonable explanation.
The fact is that we pay a huge amount of money to farmers as subsidies and various other incentives.
Given this it seems reasonable that, depending on how the GDP numbers are calculated, that taking a huge welfare recipient out of the equation might change the result.
The basis for the whole tax thing is the public records. Here
is an article I happened upon which explains it pretty well. If you don't like how they say it, they do provide references.
As to why it came up, whenever I hear about farm subsidies, or other things like that, it pisses me off that people whose lifestyle depends entirely upon leeching off of me do not have the basic human decency to be grateful. They prefer to try and shove their attitudes, which are a huge reason for their poverty, down the throats of those who are providing for them.
I think it's important to present the facts about the welfare states when it comes up. How else will they ever be able to get their words and actions in the same universe?
So, when I lived in the US, all those corn (ADM?) commercials that I saw on PBS weren't representing that the company made lots of money?
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. PBS is Public television, and as such doesn't have commercials.
You should study history, youngster. There was a time when car manufacturers tried to monopolize the market for car radios; basically they tried to destroy the after-market in car radios. Just like Microsoft is doing now. It took laws to stop them.
... You wouldn't be able to get any repairs except through the dealer, or an "authorized" repair shop.
That's fine, make laws which will prevent this. The fact of the matter is that people still want to buy a computer with a media player in it.
When I buy computers, I buy parts, assemble them, and then install my desired OS and software (again, just parts). Most people don't do this, and they expect to have certain features installed.
There's nothing stopping companies that sell pre-installed PCs from installing alternative media players. Actually, there probably is, and it's probably in the form of a document they signed from Microsoft that said they wouldn't. If this is the case, then I'm all for laws preventing this. The point I'm tryig to illustrate though, is that if the person selling the PC (car dealership) doesn't inform the customer as to what sort of options they *could* get (rather then just giving them the defaults), then we wouldn't be here.
Now, as for the legal battle you mention.
Get this: right now there is a legal battle underway, which will result in new laws to guarantee your right to repair your own car.
There are pros and cons to this (not allowing you to repair your own car) and I'll highlight the ones that come to mind.
As I mentioned, I build my own computers. I can do this because I know that if I do something wrong, I'm not going to kill anyone (unless it's me, because I have stuck a screwdriver in something electrical while the power is on). I would love to repair my own car, but I don't feel I'm properly trained in doing so (I'd love to get trained, but don't have the time). The last thing I want is for a wheel to fall off, or my breaks to stop working, or for the NOS to suddenly go off in traffic. I'm glad for this very reason, that auto makers are making it more difficult for customers to "fix" their own car.
I agree you should be able to tinker inside you're own car -- after all, it's yours. But it should be like hard drive and other devices where a sticker covers the opening. Once you open it, you void the warranty. In the case of automobiles, a sticker might not be the best thing, but the point remains -- you tamper with your car, you become responsible if it's involved in an accident. This includes your insurance company telling you to take a hike (which they'll probably do even if it's not your fault anyways).
The point is, if your car that you tried to fix kills somebody besides you, then YOU should be entirely liable. There's a reason there are professionals.
Why should an automaker make it more difficult to fix a car? Only answer, it's a way to inflate their profits from parts and service by eliminating the competition.
Microsoft is using a similar position to limit competition. By being forced to release a WMP free version, they're supposed to be keeping it from becoming so intertwined with the OS that it becomes "unremovable".
Microsoft is doing what it's doing, not for the customer, but to cut out another set of competitors. At this point it's habit, Microsoft sees an area where it can kill off another software vendor or group of vendors and it just does it. Really now, do they have even the slightest intention of doing something profitable with WMP? Maybe their pitch to get DRM under the MS umbrella hinges on it to an extent. But mostly, it's more likely that Bill has started to identify with those MS as Borg jokes.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
I might question that, but I'll wait.
They may do so.
So, when it come to making and OS, Microsoft makes a great race car? An F1 is a fine tune car for a particular class of race. I doubt those things are even street legal in most cities. Windows on the other hand ain't exactly the Earth simulator. It's a general purpose OS that is riddled with either bad engineering decissions or anti-competive design choices. Probably a good bit of both. If they were really going for the F1 analogy you are giving, it would be coded in hand written assembler and they'd even have different versions for different processor classes in the same family like the L4 microkernel. (On 486, you'd want to use the segment registers for implementing address spaces. On pentium, you'd use the HPT because it has better performance.)
That pedestrian OS of which you speak actually is on several super computing clusters these days. I guess the maker of high performance computing platforms would beg to differ with you and your mechanics when it comes to making a fast computer, not that I'm, like, rubbin' it in, ya know.
About your other point, there is a military equivalent for Microsoft's coding. It's called 4F.
The problem with prosecuting a large multinational is that they wring in far too much money, and employ far too many people to make it an option. If the courts were to be politicised by such a huge case then no government would want to be in charge when microsoft made cutbacks, or the tax revenue dries up. Yes, this means multinations can act sans-law, but thats the joys of capitalism. Besides, few understand these kinds of cases, but they fear the consequences
What? WinAmp covers the same media types as Real now? WinAmp is only a competitor for Realplayer in the most tangential sense.
That was classic intercourse!
As Andrew Orlowski wrote in The Register
Not that what you wrote wasn't somewhat reasonable...
Similarly, the WMP-free Windows version is not so much for consumers, as for resellers, who will then be able to sell kit with whatever media player(s) the reseller believes are valued. The point being, that you shouldn't need to have the factory radio (Windows Media Player) installed to make the car drive, and then players can then compete on their own merits.
Microsoft wouldn't be bankrupted by buying me a pony either. That doesn't mean they're obligated to.
If they were convicted of shooting your pony out from under you, perhaps a court would make that part of the remedy.
Moderation +4
60% Insightful
20% Overrated
10% Flamebait
Responding to trolls is "Flamebait"? TrollMods, the only appropriate response to *you* is "Unfair".
--
make install -not war
Actually, that would be good software design practice.
In all of the code I deal with, everything's written to interfaces, not implementations. We then have several different implementations of each interface. At run-time we can configure which implementation to use for various system components. Thus, if something changes and we need to use a different implementation, we just change a config file versus having to recode dependencies.
Yes, this is more work for the developers and the code runs (insignificantly) slower, but it pays huge dividends when things change.
Things like IE and media player arn't "integrated" with the OS. Just shipped with it. See what happens when you remove kthml or whatever the darn HTML rendere component in KDE is called now. All kinds of things stop working, help included same as windows. Just because you arn't techically savy enough to know how to remove indivual compoents in windows doesn't mean that other people arn't. Most people can't put diffrent seats in their cars either. This whole thing is truly amazing to me. The same people bitching about M$ shipping IE and media player are driving cars with CD players and radios integrated by the factory, and using Linux which not only usually comes with web browsers and media players but a host of other applications. How is a small commercial company making a web browser like opera suppost to compete with the likes of mozilla, konqueror, firefox etc.. on linux. Its the same thing. The only diffrence is that M$ spends all their energy making one good product instead of a dozen half ass ones and confusing their customers. (Ok thats not completly true, see access, sql server, and foxpro.. although they purchased 2 of the three.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article81 91.htm
That took 2 seconds to find. Oh well... All things considered I wish more people were interested in helping eachother and making life more liveable, rather than I need a raise, I need x, y, z... etc... We need to re-evaluate our priorities...
> preventing us from installing ANYTHING we want on the OSes for our PCs.
Are you in the EU?
If not, no offense, but it's really not relevant whether or not you've seen such restrictions. Clearly, such restrictions indeed were sufficiently present in the EU that Microsoft lost an antitrust case. ('sides, I notice you mention "no documentation"---a lack of a written requirement that OEMs not install competing software doesn't mean that such a demand---and crippling non-compliance penalties---could not be made abundantly clear.)
> This is gotten insane, in the US they preach capitalisim, yet when lawmakers or competitors
> draw into question a company that is too successful, the get put on a block and picked apart.
Perhaps that's because economic theory---and practical experience---tells us that monopolies and near-monopolies are much less efficient than the multiple-competing-entities model that capitalism is predicated upon?
When a company with a monopoly abuses its power, everyone loses except for that company. Basic economics. If the government is intended to govern for the people, not the companies, then it is obvious that government action against monopolistic abuses is desirable.
Take it easy, Tiger.
The defining characteristic of spyware in my view is that the provider does not intend to respect the machine owner's control over their machine.
Aside from diverging from the very definition of "spy" (as in "espionage", the secret recording of information), do you understand that your interpretation labels Microsoft Windows XP as spyware? (along with many other software products, including the whole upcoming "Trusted Computing" thing)
Modularity comes at a cost, and that cost is response time
Non-modularity comes at a cost, and that cost is bluescreen time.
Modularity comes at a cost, and that cost is response time
There are other ways you can pay for modularity. A clever pre-processing (really pre-linking) system can eliminate all the perceptible slowness... but of course, it comes at the cost of programmer time, and that's what Microsoft actually wins in. OpenOffice is slow relative to MS Office primarily because it's still working to catch up on features, and not optimize for speed. (Plus, OO is cross-platform, so they face obstacles the MSO team can ignore)
Some of your example are true, but I've seen exactly the reverse in my experience. On the same hardware, Linux mplayer can start playing a video almost instantly, while Microsoft's Media Player needs a significant, multi-stage startup time. (Presumably, some of that delay comes from it going onto the internet for little ads to draw in side panels).
And, KDE's icon-thumbnail previews outperform the same feature on MS Windows...
As far as the Help system is concerned, how would *you* suggest that it be set up?
The better design would be that a feature such as HTML display has a fixed, (subset) API attached to it, and the user/sysadmin can select any application or library providing those features to handle those operations on the system. (To some extent, Microsoft did this when the USA DOJ forced them to create the "Program Access and Defaults" panel, after an anti-trust suit)
Spagettii-modularity, where any component can link to an arbitrary subpart of any other component, is risky and unstable software design. Modules that interoperate with each other via interfaces of limited scope are not only more secure against software errors, but also allow opportunities for competitive programmers to release superior versions of individual systems. (which makes the OS more like a free market, and less a monopoly)
My view is the one most likely to make it into the 'anti-spyware' bill.
I don't much care about the neogisms. You can spend your time making up crackpot names for every thing you see which you think is new, I will stick to the words understood by the vast majority of people.
Real has in the past reported on what the user has been playing. Read the thread and you will see that folk have been landed with huge ISDN bills as a result. Real has in the past bundled hardcore spyware with its product. I don't care who wrote the code, if Real distribute it they are responsible for everything it does.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Can you please cite your sources?
Thanks.
NH was a red state last time, barely a blue state this time, and gets something like $0.65 for every $1 it sends to Uncle Sam...
http://www.taxfoundation.org/newhampshire/
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
There's nothng stopping anyone who wants to from downloading and installng MS's player into the "Media Reduced Windows". It's just not ther out of the box. And if you do, you have the advantage of having the latest patched version, not the one that was current X months or years ago when the CD was mastered; if you went online and did an update on the "normal" Windows as recommended you'd have to dowload probably exactly the same size file, but have the possible hassle of fragments of the old install clutterinf g up the disk and registry.
Just to reiterate: You are not prevented from using the MS player, you just have to make the conscious choice to do so.
Not to worry. printing $100 bills will get the secret service involved, and distilling whisky will get the ATF involved. They'll be too tied up in bureaucratic infighting to do anything to you.
Can you please cite your sources?
I did.
There are links to the raw data in that article, had you looked.
Also, feel free to look it up yourself.
Facts are facts.
I'm sorry, but the raw data was spread out by state, I'm not sure which state was red or blue, and I was waiting for WoW to get back online. I will try and take a peek later.
.sig you have there. I thought non-Republicans were supposed to be tolerant? Isn't tolerance like virginity, you have it or you don't?
In any case, it's usually polite practice that, when introducing an argument, one provides the sources they used in order to come up with the argument.
Imagine, if you will, a trial. One lawyers says, "We think this happened. You can look the evidence up yourself." Don't think it would go far, would it?
Besides, facts are meaningless. You can use them to prove anything that's remotely true. And NH breaks all the molds, anyway.
That's also a very intolerant
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
In any case, it's usually polite practice that, when introducing an argument, one provides the sources they used in order to come up with the argument.
.sig you have there. I thought non-Republicans were supposed to be tolerant? Isn't tolerance like virginity, you have it or you don't?
I usually find that when I do, people find some lame excuse (or often just make one up) and claim that my source is wacky.
Since this is pretty basic info based merely on publically available information I figured anybody who wanted to dispute it could look it up.
That's also a very intolerant
Hmmm... I fail to see how my sig is anything besides a statement of a very sad fact that was demonstrated in the last election.
Here's my reasoning for it.
The vast majority of the people who voted for Bush (according to exit polls) did so for one reason.
They disagreed with his economic policies.
They disagreed with his actions leading up to and during the Iraq invasion.
The one reason most commonly stated was his stance on the gay marriage issue.
Now his stance and Kerry's stance on the issue were practically identical. The only difference was that Kerry's stance was directly in line with one of the fundamental planks of the Republican Party. That such things are for the states to decide.
Bush's stance was diametrically opposed to the Republican platform (as are a lot of them. See the disagreements with econ. and foreign policy above). He wanted to amend our constitution for the specific purpose of discriminating against one particular group out of a purely religious based hatred which is totally inconsistent with the religion he (and a lot of his supporters) claims to follow.
So what we are left with is that the vast majority of the people who voted for Bush, who are largely Republicans did so primarily from a blind hatred of a group of people who their own god made the way that they hate at the expense of the primary things they claim to stand for as a party.
Now, I fail to see how that is indicative of any sort of intolerance on my part.
I personally don't care what anybody wants to believe, who they are who they love or anything like that.
That is tolerance
That does not mean that when a group of people who can not even be consistent in their own stated (VERY LOUDLY) beliefs wants to shove their (bastardized version of) religion down my throat at gunpoint that I should ignore it.
Now, it is true that not all Republicans buy into that ignorant crap, but they sure seem to go along with it rather than stand up in favor of their country at the expense of their party.
Is my reasoning clear to you?
Is there some logical flaw that you see in it?
Nope. I agree with you 100%. I just wasn't sure which angle you were taking. Thank you for explaining it.
Have a good one!
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
So I guess you're not a linux fan, as all distributions are bundles of OS and apps...
I wasn't talking about bundling. I was talking about coupling. Bundling is merely aggregating a bunch of things together (maybe going so far as to make sure they all play nice with each other). Coupling is tech-speak for writing a module that reaches into the innards of another module to pull out some particularly delicious piece of private data or twiddle a private function. Think of it as code rape: the violation of privacy.
Not to mention you realy should let me see these recognitions that this is a bad thing even before 1960! On what computer was that?
Well, Junior, you'll have to do your own research into the history of cyernetics to get that level of detail. However I can assert with confidence that computers made from about 1955 onward by IBM and Honeywell decoupled the operating system from the application software. That made FORTRAN better, and made COBOL possible. By the mid 1960s with the IBM Model 360 this was a soundly established first principle. Which nobody violated until Microsoft said we don't need to do that any more around 1995.
It will be Microsoft's undoing, more than likely.
And why on Earth would anyone want to embed video clips into MS Word documents? Just because it's possible?
Possibly in hopes that someone will come up with a printer that can print moving images?
It looked like a good marketing strategy because it WAS indeed good marketing strategy. Almost everyone of the non-techie users I know likes the fact they can play their video clips, surf da intarweb, read e-mail, etc. without having to go out and buy another software package or download it from somewhere else.
/.)
This has nothing to do with engineering; it has everything to do with marketing.
Many OEMs bundle their computers with non-Microsoft components pre-installed, and they work correctly right out of the box. Their browsers and media players and mail readers do not need tentacles that reach right down almost into the kernel of the OS the same way Microsoft's equivalent programs do.
Microsoft could very well have produced exactly the same kind of user experience, but chose not to do so. (Well, exactly the same in all ways except the "uninstall internet explorer" which would have worked properly, rather than be a Kafkaesque nightmare).
(And I use Windows, as horribly flawed as it is. I'm not part of the "Linux rules! Microsoft is the Great Satan!" crowd so aptly represented here on
> Did Microsoft ever really promise people that ...
> Media Player was just a "front end shell"
If Media Player is just a front end, then what's the point in requiring MS to remove it? If the "front end" is not part of the OS, then the same argument can be made to make MS remove Explorer as a front end to the file system, and allow versions of Windows using other File system browsers. Or why not require MS do distribute Windows without the GUI so as not to use their monopoly in the OS market to crach "competitors in the GUI market"?
As I see it, the way operating systems are distributed today, the "front end", i.e. the looks' are part of what defines the OS. So if there's an argument for making MS take the media player of the OS distribution, it has to be its media playing functionality and not the "looks" functionality. The ability to play certain media types is certainly not a basic component of a computer operating system. The computer would work perfectly well without it, and the media playing capabilities can be left for others to provide. On the other hand, a front end for playing media that uses whatever tools are installed by the users to play it, that preserves the homogeneous look of the system is certainly part of the OS, and is certainly part of what MS are aiming to sell when they sell Windows: an environment in which a user doesn't have to learn a completely new environment for working with each new application.
So "removing Media Player" shouldn't mean removing the interface, but rather the media playing capabilities.
I am not a MS lover, but I am also not a MS hater. They make reasonable software that most people like to use (mostly because they do not know any alternative, and do not care to know).
Isn't tolerance like virginity, you have it or you don't?
Please! Everyone knows that oral intolerance isn't realy intolerance...
As i said it's only a problem because Windows monopolizes the OS-Market. RH has no Linux-monopoly, let alone an OS-monopoly. Microsoft can do whatever they want to their "product" and they pretty much do. They don't need to sell you approximately what you want, their only diversification is "Home" and "Professional" but each one comes with all the extras included.
.doc-Word-format and making everyone use Word.
With automobiles you usually have the choice exactly which extras you want and are willing to pay for. That's because there is no monopoly on automobiles. If DC only sold cars with all the extras included (at a hefty pricetag) most people would go elsewhere.
The entire point of Microsoft bundling IE and WMP with windows isn't to give their customers approximately what they want. Their point is to extend their monopoly to the browser- and mediaplayer- market as well. There's lot's of money in those markets: to control the mediaformat everyone uses means to be able to take a toll from anyone using that format. That's even better than the
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The entire point of Microsoft bundling IE and WMP with windows isn't to give their customers approximately what they want.
How do you know that?
Besides, 'giving customers what they want' is a simplification. If it were the literal truth, we'd be stuck even now with vi and ed, because customers do not always know what they want until they're shown an alternative. Companies put products out in the market and customers vote with their wallet. Things that get lots of 'votes' become things that in hindsight people 'want' -- GUIs and mice come to mind.
Microsoft integrated a browser deeply with the OS. Did people vote for it? The success of Win98 and later OSes says it did. Microsoft bundled a *good* media player with the OS. Again, people voted for it with their wallets.
And oh, for those screaming 'monopoly', Microsoft pushed their own proprietary email and AOL-style net access quite hard with Win95 -- it got almost no uptake. The paying public isn't stupid and it won't use a substandard product even when it comes bundled. OTOH when it's good enough and it comes bundled, it's a whole different story.
<rant>
There was no reason why a 50s OS would come with a text editor. There was no reason why a 70s OS would come with a mp3 player. Today there is no reason why an OS *shouldn't* come with one. Windows Media Player plays quite a few formats, including Microsoft's own. Windows doesn't refuse to play other formats: one can install Real/QT quite easily. The current EU action is nothing but needless pissing against the wind by a bunch of overambitious Brussels bureaucrats who in true Brussels tradition are redefining how big 'big government' can get.
</rant>
Go somewhere random
The "vote with the wallet" you put so much emphasis on doesn't work any longer in a monopolized market. Anyone who wanted to run Windows Office or play the newest PC-Games that accidentally only run under Windows had to buy Windows. Now you come along and say that they all bought Windows because of Microsofts design decision to integrate IE with it (and in the near future we'll have Media-Player integrated so deep into the OS you can't possibly remove it). In the same manner you could say that people "vote" for higher fuel prices: the stuff get's more and more expensive, yet people still buy it. They must really like their fuel to be expensive.
That MS couldn't push through their Net-Access is because there were easy alternatives, but the success of IE over Netscape (at that time IE was a joke) shows that Microsoft knew to leverage their OS-monopoly to grab the browser market. The paying public is mostly uninformed and lazy too and hadn't AOL peppered them with AOL-Disks we might as well have Microsoft dominating that market too. As for the formats: AFAIR Microsoft did rip out the mp3-encoder in WinXP-beta.
As for the "overambitious Brussels bureaucrats": I think they're better than their US-counterpart that gave up a process they had already won because G.W. Bush wanted them to be friendly with his Buddy Bill. But maybe those underamitious bureucrats were just redefining how corrupt 'big government' can get, in true capitalistic tradition.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
but the success of IE over Netscape (at that time IE was a joke) shows that Microsoft knew to leverage their OS-monopoly to grab the browser market.
...) IE4 is an irrelevant little fact. What I'm saying is that monopoly or no, customers will seek out alternatives when the bundle comes with provides inferior features.
And of course the fact that NN4 was a piece of bloated shit compared to the much faster and feature-laden (Full Screen, autocomplete, DHTML,
As for the formats: AFAIR Microsoft did rip out the mp3-encoder in WinXP-beta.
Yeah. Encoder. A little thing you need to *record* MP3s. Because it was not royalty free. The *decoder* which lets you PLAY mp3s was always there. So since when does an OS addin have to let you record in a per-copy-shipped royalty format? Apple favors AAC just for this reason, why shouldn't Microsoft favor WMA?
As for the "overambitious Brussels bureaucrats": I think they're better than their US-counterpart that gave up a process they had already won because G.W. Bush wanted them to be friendly with his Buddy Bill. But maybe those underamitious bureucrats were just redefining how corrupt 'big government' can get, in true capitalistic tradition.
Sterling example of Slashdot discourse there. Maybe you could rewrite it more coherently, then it might even be worth responding to.
Go somewhere random
IE4 was still a buggy product, there were numerous reports of crashes. Maybe it's arguable which was the better product at that time, but calling NN4 "bloated shit" compared to the 60MB IE4 is overdoing it a bit. As for features: IE4 was still behind in some areas, maybe they introduced some new features but that's beside the point.
Microsoft had already grabbed a 30% to 35% Market share before IE4, with a vastly inferior product. They gave their IE away for "free" (meaning you had no choice but to buy it with Windows anyway) and so most people who had already bought a browser with their OS wouldn't go and buy a second one even if it was better.
It's really straining reality to talk of a working market and "people voting with their wallets" here. Had Microsoft sold IE separately from Windows, with it's own pricetag, things would've been different.
As for mp3: if nearly noone can encode in a format (for example to convert their CDs to mp3) that makes a big difference, don't you think? Windows had the ability to encode to mp3, so there was a way to do it without licensing. Maybe that was not the best mp3 encoder there but why rip it out? Also what happens here is, on a smaller case, the same as with IE: Microsoft "gives their encoder away for free", read: Microsoft leaves you no choice but to buy their encoder with their OS.
As for the US- antitrust case against Microsoft: MS was already found to have abused its monopoly and the DoJ "suddenly" seeked much lesser penalties under the Bush administration. Bush had already signalled that he opposed a breakup of MS during his campaign. The final decision in DoJ vs. MS was considered a big victory by MS and it was basically a present given away by the DoJ. The DoJ had a very strong position and could've achieved much more.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
> 30% to 35% Market share before IE4
IE3 had 30-35% market share? Wow. Care to back that up? -- IIRC Netscape 3 was _everywhere_ at the time.
And oh, about the 60MB IE install: that includes the Windows Shell Update that brought a web-ified shell to Win95 and NT _and_ updated the OS's widgets. The browser alone is 8.46MB against 9.73MB for Navigator 4.
> It's really straining reality to talk of a working market and "people voting with their wallets" here. Had Microsoft sold IE separately from Windows, with it's own pricetag, things would've been different.
But why should Microsoft sell IE separately? People voted with their wallets that a "web browser with an OS" is the way to go. Is there some divine law that mandates a profitable market for web browsers? (There used to be a profitable market for memory managers once, QuarterDeck made good money on it before Win95 killed that market. I don't recollect QuarterDeck crying 'antitrust'.) Who said selling web browsers has to be a business? It can be, of course; but _must be_?
Consumer OSes from DOS 1 to OS/2 OSX and XP show a clear trend of aggregating things that were normally thought of as separate products. OS/2 included a damn complete productivity suite comparable to Apple/MS Works. Linux distros ship with things like CD and DVD Burning software that compete very effectively with commercial offerings. (Of late XP has started doing so too.) Threfore, to claim that Microsoft cannot add stuff to its OS is rubbish.
Of course, as the OS vendor Microsoft has a responsibility to ensure that it doesn't hobble competitive products... for example *requiring* IE to open a link in the Add/Remove Programs dialog is wrong, and this is this behavior the antitrust lawsuit has fixed. If you expected Microsoft would be drawn and quartered for this, though, you don't quite have both feet on the ground.
> Windows had the ability to encode to mp3, so there was a way to do it without licensing.
Yes, and Windows XP still has the ability to do it: it uses the royalty-free Fraunhofer encoder which encodes only upto 56kbps. The fuss about Microsoft dropping _that_ from the XP beta was because they felt including an inferior codec wouldn't help anyone. Feedback said otherwise, and MP3 stayed.
And oh, if encoding in MP3 is _that_ important then Debian and Redhat out-of-the-box must be very poor OSes indeed: they have _no_ MP3 encoding support (because of patent reasons, but to a user that hardly matters).
Go somewhere random
>>'I'm not sure what you are talking about here. PBS is Public television, and as such doesn't have commercials.'
Yeah, right...no commercials.
Link: estimates put IE at 30%-35% market share. Since This is an Article describing IE4.0 just being out that 30% must be IE1-3 and maybe some IE4 beta. The Article may be a little onesided but it's hard to find "neutral" information from the middle of the browser wars.
But anyway that's beside the point.
Again you say "people voted with their wallets" but they had no alternative. If they needed a PC-OS there was no real alternative to Windows to run the majority of applications, and Windows came with IE. Where in this is the "voting" part? By bundling IE with the OS Microsoft creates an extremely uneven playing field and the usual rules of the market no longer apply.
As for your argument that there's no "divine law" that there has to be a browser market: No, there's no "divine law", but there's human laws, laws concerning monopolies for example.
Also i don't claim that MS cannot add stuff to their OS, they can and they do, that's painfully obvious. What i claim is, that in this way they destroy markets and those missing markets and the missing competition deprives the customers of choices. That in turn negatively affects product quality as can be easily seen: Only when some competition (Linux) came to the PC-OS-market could Microsoft be convinced to improve the security of their products.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
If they needed a PC-OS there was no real alternative to Windows to run the majority of applications, and Windows came with IE
I'd use the word 'monopoly' very carefully in a pure-software context, because software in many technical ways is so interchangeable, and yet in many non-technical ways not at all interchangeable. This dual nature of software makes one man's "choice" another man's "monopoly".
From my perspective, choice existed then and does now: Mac and Be then, Mac and Linux now. However, for a large class of users Windows still remains the only alternative because of other reasons: familiarity, availability of (often pirated) software, price (against Macs), driver support). That makes Windows a user-created de-facto monopoly**. I am not an economist but I would contend that in the absence of legislated standards (something that _kills_ progress btw, look no further than the W3C's latest work on XML and SOAP) OSes are _quasi-natural_ monopolies in their respective niches since users and IT departments tend to have a huge follow-the-herd mentality.
** Of course, one could argue that OEM licencing was a huge contributory factor in Windows' domination, and it is true MS had several vicious, unfair OEM deals. But you know what? Unfair deals happen all the time in business. In fact, the PC makers' willingness to put up with MS' contracts was a function of what they perceived as user demand. Windows' familiarity and availability created a sort of feedback loop that amplified the value of having a Windows PC.
And of course, anyone lucky enough to be making a dominant OS is going to rest on their laurels until a competitor comes along. My point is: solving this through antitrust was the wrong approach (and incidentally it solved nothing in the US and I'm not convinced it'll solve anything in Europe), Windows can be beaten fair and square just by being technically superior and using innovative business models: Open Source is a _great_ example.
Maybe it's just the libertarian in me, but I hate seeing spoilt-brat companies that survive on questionable business models (Sun -> sell pricey hardware, Netscape -> sell web servers and browsers, by golly, Real -> sell a decent streaming server completely hobbled by a horrible player) run crying 'antitrust' to BigGovMommy when they're in trouble.
The antitrust-criers have all uniformly demonstrated piss-poor business sense, and whatever happens to Microsoft, I'm glad the market has paid them back for it: Netscape-the-business's ashes have been scattered, Real's in the tank, and Sun got some big stock shocks before it came to its senses and realized that funnily enough business != badmouthing competitors.
Go somewhere random
Netscape was in the business of selling an app, namely a browser, and that was a good business-model until Microsoft came along and "gave away their browser for free", only Microsofts browser wasn't free: anyone buying Windows paid its development costs.
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Microsoft could do that very same thing to the majority of software-apps out there and in fact they've already begun with some: mediaplayers, file-compression, firewalls, virus-scanners, CD/DVD-burners, DVD-players, all kinds of visualizing tools,
But that's just the start, in principle they could bundle any application with their OS, why not throw in the Office suite, Image manipulation, and whatnot? If the competition with OOo/Staroffice becomes too big we might well see Microsoft bundling MS-Office with Windows.
If Netscape had a bad business model selling browsers then anyone selling application-software for Windows has.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks