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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."
Hmm, maybe Microsoft was right. Maybe consumers do want a fully featured OS that can do whatever they want with a minimal amount of effort.
:)
Maybe their product wasn't designed to be anticompetative but a complete solution in the best interests of the consumer, incorporating as much functionality as they could...
Or maybe they are just evil.
To get video clips thorugh corporata mail servers that strip out video files but let word through. People send images and audio embedded in Word files for the same reason.
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?
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.
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.
... 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.
I'm still wondering why MS got away with that. If I were the judge, and I noticed that one of the parties in the case were actually forging evidence, I would rain fire and brimstone on them! Surely at least the relevant parties could be held in contempt of the court (whatever the actual legal term is)? It seems to me that only punishment MS got for forging evidence, was that they had to apologize and promise not to do it again.
Any lawyers around here? What exactly is the punishment in the US legal system for forging evidence? Why MS got away with it?
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Well if RedHat had a monopoly on Operating Systems they'd be right to do so. IIRC anti-trust laws in Europe say that you cannot use a monopoly to attempt to gain a monopoly in another area - so they can't for example use a monopoly on their OS to gain a monopoly on media players, or web browsers.
When this trial in the EU started I thought it was pointless too - people want a media player with their OS, but recently I've realised that it was the correct thing to do - I don't know about the rest of Europe or the US, but here in the UK a lot of online media stores have sprung up, and guess who's DRM they use? Microsoft's, Microsoft's , Microsoft's and Microsoft's.
And why do they use MS's DRM?
" We recommend Microsoft Windows Media Player for this, as it generally comes pre-loaded on new PCs"
"The Windows Media Player has been shipped with Windows-based PCs since 1997".
If this isn't using one monopoly to push another, I don't know what is.
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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)