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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
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
"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.
I'm sorry but you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want a medialess windows it won't play media without doing the work to get it to run. What someone needs to do (maybe real, though I wouldn't run there software for the life of me, I've had more crashes caused by real player than by anything else in windows XP other than beta ATI graphics drivers) is write there own dll's that duplicate the DirectShow functionality and offer that as a download.
As it is, DirectShow is a feature of Windows Media Player (at least as far as I've ever understood) and if you take out media player the fancy DirectShow offerings fail to work. Seems simple and not blatently sneaky.
I'd like to see you install linux without the GNU tools or X or any other application level stuff and see how useful it is. Probably not very (though I'll claim not to be an expert so I may be wrong).
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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