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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."
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 /.
That's not really a good analogy.
A better analogy would be like Microsoft purposely sabotoging their own document format to make it impossible for other word processors to legally interoperate with it.
Wait no, A better analogy would be like Microsoft serving up broken web pages to the browsers of competitors.
No, wait. A better analogy would be like suggesting Microsoft would break Windows so that it would refuse to run under a competitor's version of DOS.
Maybe it's like Microsoft shipping a browser that has the option to uninstall other software vendor's browsers. Or Microsoft forcing OEM's to pay them a fee for every computer they ship, with or without Windows installed. Perhaps it's like Microsoft hiding crucial API's from everyone but themselves, and when forced to expose them for all to see defining "all" as anyone who can pony up 50 thousand dollars plus additional fees. Or Microsoft attempting to ship broken versions of Java to destroy the standard. Or forcing OEM vendors to carry Microsoft ads, and only Microsoft ads, on all desktops sold. Or negotiating with another company for a year only to steal their technology. And then refusing a court order to turn over all e-mails from that period.
But all of this is metaphorical: Microsoft would never do anything like this. This is all speculative fantasy. And besides everyone in this country is innocent until proven guilty in at least 4 different courts of law.
The ______ Agenda
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
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.
I've been using it for the last year or so for exactly the same reason as you, and not had a problem.