Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
PRINT ""+-0
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/
The whole Euro market is bigger than the US...
Would be a great boost for Linux though if they did.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
...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.
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 dont think they would intentionally pull this.
Why not? They did almost the exact same thing in the US Antitrust trial -- completely broke Windows when told to remove IE, even though others with access to the source code had managed to do it successfully without major problems.
I mean, geez, they deliberately falsified video evidence in a federal court and barely got a stern talking-to -- why would they ever bother to do what they're told to? It's not like anybody ever penalizes them.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
My professor bitched when the printed out version's video wouldnt play.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2384
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.
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
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
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.
What is a vole?
A vole is a small rodent resembling a mouse but with a stouter body; a shorter, hairy tail; and smaller ears and eyes.
"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 $100 notes.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I think your example of X is flawed for exactly the reasons you think it isn't. X doesn't have to be XFree86. I don't know if they are still around but there used to be a few closed source commercial X servers available for linux, and XFree86 has recently forked so there are at least two free ones to choose from.
:), and so you are free to implement your own if you want.
:)
X is a well documented standard (and if the documentation is lacking, you can just read the source
If you wanted to roll your own Media Player, you'd have to do a fair amount of reverse engineering to do it - which is illegal in some places.
I'd write more but the kids need a bath
Windows XP Without Media Player
Windows XP Media Player Free
Windows XP with an executable deleted
Windows XP MPFree :D
Windows XP Click here to download Media Player
Windows XP WOMP Version
Win And Media Player Seperated (WINAMPS for short)
What did M$ call it in the end?
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Well, what Word should do, according to the Microsoft developer documentation everybody else is supposed to read and follow, is use COM to request an object implementing the Media Player interface, and then make calls on that object to play media. As long as the underlying provider implements the complete interface as documented, the calling application isn't supposed to have to care exactly what the underlying provider is. This is, again according to Microsoft, exactly what COM is supposed to be for: allowing applications to use an interface without worrying about who's providing the implementation of that interface.
Obviously if I don't have anything implementing the Media Player COM interface installed applications will fail trying to get an instance of that interface, but if I install say RealPlayer that correctly implements the documented Media Player COM interface then applications trying to play media should succeed (modulo supported codecs) and the media should play without problems.
If COM (in it's latest naming) is good enough for Microsoft to tell the rest of the world to use it for this purpose, why isn't it good enough for Microsoft to use it as well?
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).
I bet he's a Harry Potter fan.
... 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.
If it was a pipe, wouldn't it be F|?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
Actually, the services/taxing and employment laws cause massive unemployment in the EU, not low income per se. What causes low pay is that Americans work their asses off (average hours for the full time worker is over 40 hours per week) whereas in most of Europe this number is well under 40. Productivity (basically measured by income per hour worked) in Europe is on par with America. In the early 90s it was slightly higher, now it is slightly lower. Thus Europeans pay themselves by not working, and therefore it looks like they are poorer when its really they just get to chill more.
Check out this and this.
The UK has lower unemployment, proportionately higher exports, proportionally *far* lower imports, is an energy exporter and has *no* external debt. I have to say looking at those figures I feel we're in a far better financial position as a whole.
Those income figures are not right. All other reports say that the average for the uk is £22,000. For example here
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 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.
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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!
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 !
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.
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.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
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.
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)
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
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.......
I sure as hell did'nt..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole
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
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
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/
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?
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.
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."
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."
You seem to forget. They did offer to remove iexplore.exe from the OS for the antitrust trial - the judge threw a hissy fit, and claimed he wanted everything removed. Every DLL, the works.
If you're willing to waste time reading slashdot, you might want to enlighten yourself and read the court trial documents as well. They're very interesting.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
> 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
DirectShow wasn't removed.
All this bitching about "the registry being fucked up" is because the Windows Media Player activex control isn't registered.
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.