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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
Seems odd to me that they want media player removed, but still want to play media under certain conditions.
Thank god I switched to a Mac a week ago! Now when I read stuff like this, I just laugh and shake my head.
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.
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.
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
That's why Microsoft is sitting on billions sailing around in their yachts and you're at home posting on slashdot as an anonymous coward.
Nobody ever got rich by walking away form a multi-billion dollar market as long as it was still widely profitable just because they weren't allowed to cheat to make money.
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.
If you remove the top few percent from both the US and European numbers (ie: the richest people) then the numbers become more or less equal.
Never assume malace when simple incompetence will do.
Which is more likely? Do we really need a conspiracy to explain this?
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.
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
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.
...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
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
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.
People publish APIs all the time. Including Microsoft. The only difference here is that Microsoft is obliged to prove that the APIs published are both genuine and complete.
Rival systems had products that worked by directly replacing Media Player code (thus preserving the hooks but destroying Microsoft's player). Those were demoed and showed this process would work.
If those systems DON'T work on the cut-down version, then the hooks have been dismantled or corrupted. Both of which, given Microsoft's track record on fights of this kind (OS/2 vs. Windows 3.1, and DR-DOS vs. MS-DOS for example) suggest a deliberate policy of sabotage is within character.
(Also, see coverage of the forged video Microsoft presented in court during the antitrust case in the US, showing a slowdown after using Felton's tool for removing IE. The computer that was slowed was shown to NOT be the computer Felton's program ran on.)
Means - yes. Motive - yes. Opportunity - yes. Propensity - yes. Sufficient narcistic attitude to believe the EU would ignore it - yes.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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 -->
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).
I've read that report, and it's misleading. The report has an agenda, and that agenda is making the economics in the EU more like those in the USA.
The report talks about net income (which is income after tax), and it completely neglects to take account of all the services provided by taxpayers.
What it effectively says is "The net income of people in the EU is lower that that in the US, and that this is due to (amongst other things) higher taxes."
What it ignores, is that people in the USA must pay for health insurance, public transport, education, and a host of other social security benefits that are available to most people in the EU.
I haven't travelled in the US, but I have in Europe, and I never noticed a single homeless person there (I'm not saying there aren't any). The situation there is even better than in Australia where I live.
If I had to make a choice between a high-tax/high-spend system, and its opposite, I'd go for high-tax every time, because of increased social productivity, vastly decreased crime, homelessness, drug addiction.....
When I read it, I couldn't believe that someone could write a report with such transperant bias.
I liken the situation to this (using /.'s favorite analogy--automobiles). Imagine if you as a car monopoly were ordered to stop including your company's default CD players in the cars you sell to everybody. In removing the players from the cars, you don't bother to fix up the wiring, so now it's difficult for other players to, say, use the radio properly or access the rear speakers, at least not without manual hacking of the wiring.
Not bothering to fix that wiring is in essence not following the orders of the Commission. Sabotage by omission, as you put it. And then I could run around saying, "Well, that's what happens when we're ordered to stop including our players." It's total arrogance to, on top of it all, blame the Commission for it.
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.
Not to turn this into a discussion of the merits of socialism, but keep in mind the average European has safety nets Americans don't-- medical care being the most obvious (I'm sorry, but our system is a mess... Insured or not, a major illness is guaranteed to bring economic catastrophe to the average American.) They also (in most countries) have much more vacation and leisure time, as well as generous unemployment benefits (which, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the fact that it's much harder to actually find a job there...)
With the exception of medical care, I can't say which system is better-- wealth is nice, and it's much harder to achieve the higher echelons on your own in the European system (by starting your own business, for example.) On the other hand, are we really better off with larger homes and more appliances? Most Europeans I've met have all they need, if not everything they want. And my impression is that they tend to enjoy a more stress-free existance, because if they lose their job or get sick they don't face the risk of losing everything we have.
Having a look at some fiqures here, The average wage in the USA is around $36,764 ... so i dont know where your pulling these GDP fiqures from .
the Uk has an average salary of £22,411 which is around $41,958.91
The same for germany and france roughly
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Anyone remember that clip where Bill Gates was answering questions and denied ever seeing certain memos before, and the lawyer explained that they were memos he had just been shown, and Bill Gates nervously demanded to see the memos? The lawyer exclaimed "What a waste of time!" and the judge agreed. The guy's not even a good liar. This all goes to pattern of behavior.
Ah, I miss the go-go 90s.
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.
"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.
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
I think the comment made by the just previous poster is an appropriate interpretation:
Somebody has to point out that the Windows infrastructure is such an unholy mess, Microsoft might have just botched the change they made for EU compliance.
Basically, if Word is written so that it breaks unpleasantly when the WMP components are missing, that's a bug in Word. This is similar to the design flaws in other Windows components that make them dependent on rather than merely enhanced by the HTML control.
"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.
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!!"
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 assume you're referring to this line:
"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."
Look, I'm not asking you or anyone to be sympathetic, I'm only asking you to consider the logistics of the situation.
Imagine yourself as a developer at MSFT in the WMP division (yes, I know, the horror of it all!), and your manager has just finished holding a meeting concerning the removal of WMP from Windows. Several avenues of attack were considered.
Firstly, it was discussed that the WMP client just be removed. It is a thin wrapper around a bunch of DLLs which do all of the real work. However, If the client is the only thing removed, the EU might complain that WMP wasn't really removed from the system.
It was then determined that the whole thing needs to go out the door. Yes, it would horribly break other applications like Office, but since you're in the WMP division, Office isn't your responsibility. Changes to Office would likely need to be made in the future. Furthermore, Office isn't a part of the OS, and the EU didn't say anything about changing Office, right?
So, after the meeting, you rip out the guts of WMP, and cast it into the wind. You get the stamp of approval, and your changes are committed.
Sounds simple, right? Except for the fact that now Office still needs to be updated, which isn't so simple. Such changes could take months, and to re-release a special version of Office that works with the version of Windows lacking WMP is a little more involved. All of those EU citizens and the companies they work for or run need to "upgrade" to the new versions of software, in addition to "upgrading" to the new version of the OS.
That just compounds the existing problem. Yes, if Office was written better in the first place, it wouldn't be so difficult, but it wasn't, and you can't change the past. You're stuck in the present.
What would you do if you were in a situation like that? As of current, I don't think that the current actions of MS in removing WMP are unreasonable. Yes, Office needs to be fixed, but they haven't had time to do that yet.
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.
They are using different diffinitions of Europe. If you talk about the EU then it is more equal. If you look at geographical Europe then it is less equal. Bear in mind that this discussion is about the EU. Personally I think it would be better to look at quality of life indicators when comparing the two. The EU countries thrash the states when you do this, largely because we have universal healthcare, and a third of US citizens have no health insurance. It should also be noted that the EU GDP is roughly comparable to that of the US.
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
Having a look at some fiqures here, The average wage in the USA is around $36,764 the Uk has an average salary of £22,411 which is around $41,958.91 The same for germany and france roughly ... so i dont know where your pulling these GDP fiqures from .
People should take GDP figures older than 6 months or so with a grain of salt. The US dollar has pretty seriously weakened in the last few months (almost 50% in some cases).
No, he's wrong. He implies that GDP/capita means the average joe has less money to spend. This is not true.
Its also interesting to note that the US state with the highest GDP is Washinton DC. What do they produce there thats actually useful?
In the top 3 GDP by region is London,England, a city I avoid because its a big smelly dump.
Also note that GDP goes up during wartime.
Also note that 'services' such as lawyers and credit card debt count towards GDP.
Also note that most products are consumed internally to the counrty, making GDP as much a measure of cunsumption as it is production.
In short, GDP is a totally meaningless figure, getting inflated by war, debt and other undesirable things. It tells you less that you can glean by looking at the state of the roads leading from the airport.
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
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.
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.
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
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
Regretably that's not actually safe at all.
Of course, you're overlooking the absurdity of car makers not being able to include CD players to begin with, because it's anticompetitive with all of the aftermarket CD players people install because they're better. Playing media in an OS is something that's considered basic functionality, and forcing a company to make a OS without a media player is the same as making all the car manufacturers stop including their own CD players. Standard equipment that's easily replaceable with an alternative if desired.
It's a mixed bag.
In the beginning, Network software cost money, and Windows didn't do it. No big deal, products like Novell, Banyon, and 3Comm had a market.
Then, some versions of Windows did some type of networking. But it didn't do TCP/IP. Other companies had a market, and it was a good one.
Then, Microsoft added networking with TCP/IP, and gave it away for free. A natural progression, with great benefits - but a bunch of things suddenly weren't viable anymore. Benefit to the market? Easy networking... Netware et al finally died the horrible death that it deserved, and users were now actually able to perform such *complex tasks* as killing a print job without paying $16k for a Novell course. Downside? No competition, and that industry was effectively dead - no more innovation unless it comes from Redmond.
In the case of Media player, such a development would have big impact - we're on the edge of the DRM threshold, and a player with full marketshare (as the MS Network stack achieved) will dictate the solution to distributers, producers, and the public... instead of letting a solution evolve by market forces, if I'm making any sense.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
automatically be modded as a troll.
"Spokesvole"?! Oh, puh-leaze.
Good objective journalism there! Yup.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
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?
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.
> 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 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.