Windows 7 Eyed For Antitrust Violations

Preedit writes "The committee that oversees Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement now has its hands on Windows 7. The Technical Committee is checking to see if the software meets the settlement's terms. Among other things, it's looking at whether Windows 7 favors Microsoft apps over third party programs, according to InformationWeek. The story also notes that Vista SP1 includes a number of changes that were added to satisfy the committee. For instance, it eliminates several browser overrides where Vista ignored users' default preferences and automatically launched Explorer. Windows 7 is due sometime around 2010."

Comments

I Think Windows Lacks Features

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's really too bad they didn't add enough features in Vista, and need another version to do this.

I look forward to the 1,500 new options that will be available in group policies. I think I will understand most of these before Windows 8 is delivered.

Meanwhile, what do I do with this Glass Turd?

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[gstoddart]

Meanwhile, what do I do with this Glass Turd?

Polish it, of course. :-P

Cheers

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, what do I do with this Glass Turd? Polish it, of course. :-P Why do you guys always have to turn something into a Polack joke?

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[gstoddart]

"Polish it, of course. :-P"
Why do you guys always have to turn something into a Polack joke?

Bah! Polish, not Polish!! ;-)

Cheers

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[harry666t]

i am polish, you insensitive clod!

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[greenzrx]

polish it behind the door. (Say *that* 3 times fast)

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[SacredByte]

You guys are really piling it on thick....

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I think that there should be a Software Industry "Glass Turd" award - for the most over promised, under delivered, and basically mis-applied software product of the year.

I know it's a tall order - like ID-ing the ugliest warthog.

The name "Glass Turd" is, of course, a loving reference to Windows Vista. Polished to gleaming, transparent perfection! "It's so pretty, I feel bad about hating it..."

The runner-up could get a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, installed on the computer of his choice. The Winner would have a copy of the same, installed on the computer that the winner used the most!

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

On reflection, I think that OSX 10.5 is in the running for this.

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[Hucko]

This award isn't fair on OSS users, as they don't care about polish, they don't stand a chance of winning... and this from a fanatical Devotee to the Church of the GNU

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[rdoger6424]

10.4 won the brushed steel turd award

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[AmyRose1024]

Shoe or furniture?

Re:I Think Windows Lacks Features

[darkpixel2k]

I think that there should be a Software Industry "Glass Turd" award - for the most over promised, under delivered, and basically mis-applied software product of the year.

Go register a domain name, and start 'awarding' it to companies.
The spooky part is that your post is almost 10 days old and no one has swooped in to register glassturd.com.

Who cares

[Brian Gordon]

We're just going to hack it anyway to run whatever 3rd party apps we want.. the EU is really going overboard IMO with forcing microsoft to make their OS how the EU wants it made. If microsoft wants to make Internet Explorer the only app that can access the internet, that's their prerogative.. nobody has to buy Windows. Even if there was no excellent free alternative, which there is.

Re:Who cares

[psychodelicacy]

This is something that struck me. I don't know much about this topic, and I wondered why it's so wrong if the Microsoft OS works better with its own software? Is it that Microsoft is deliberately making 3rd-party software work less well? Or just that they don't support it as well as they support their own? (N.B. I'm not a particular Microsoft supporter - I mainly use various flavours of Linux and much prefer them.)

And, as an aside, did anyone else read the post title and think that Bill Gates had mutated?

Re:Who cares

[downix]

Actually, that is the whole crux of the EU arguement, Microsoft DID force people to buy Windows... in particular PC manufacturers. If you wanted ANY machines with Windows, ALL of your machines had to be Windows. You wanted any Office software, it had to be MS Office or else no Windows which means no PC's.

Amazing how people blatantly ignore this.

Re:Who cares

[Kev647]

Agreed. It is kind of like Apple and the iPod; no one has to buy an iPod, but wouldn't you say there is some "favoritisms," if you could even call it that, with the iPod and the software? You MUST run iTunes, and should you use anything else or change the firmware, it voids your warranty. Thus, you must kowtow to Apple and accept their belief of what they think is best for you. Some people need to be told, other's want to choose for themselves. The most we should be able to do is educate other's so that they can make the right decisions for themselves.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference being that Apple isn't a convicted monopolist.

Re:Who cares

[Citizen of Earth]

If microsoft wants to make Internet Explorer the only app that can access the internet, that's their prerogative..

False. Governments have the right and the duty to protect the relatively free market from abusive monopolies.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

I wondered why it's so wrong if the Microsoft OS works better with its own software?

If Microsoft had solid competition, there would be no problem. The issue as it stands is that Microsoft has a monopoly on the Operating System business. Because of that monopoly, Microsoft can crush nearly any competitor they want in other areas by ensuring that their own software works better than the competitor's software. Examples of this include:

- Windows Media Player provides a superior Windows experience than RealPlayer

- IE provided a superior browsing experience on Windows over Netscape Navigator

In both cases, Microsoft effectively wiped out those company's markets by giving the software away for free. Which meant that Real and Netscape could no longer charge for their software.

Now one can argue that Microsoft produced superior products to both company's offerings. And there would be truth to that statement. The problem is that Microsoft ensured that there will never again be competitors in either space. Microsoft effectively wiped both markets out of existence and forced consumers to accept higher costs for Windows to subsidize those markets. Even worse, there is then zero incentive for Microsoft to innovate in either market. So consumers pay higher prices when no new development is happening in those areas.

While some balance is returning to those markets thanks to Apple and Open Source, the damage done has been extremely negative for the industry, with the WMV pseudo-standard and the IE pseudo-standard locking out competing OSes for nearly a decade. From an economist's point of view, the OS, multimedia, and web-browser markets would be a lot farther along today if Microsoft had never managed a stranglehold on these markets.

Re:Who cares

[psychodelicacy]

But of course there are favouritisms! Apart from anything else, this is a commercial product and Apple wants your money. But more than that, the average iPod user isn't going to be very computer-savvy and is likely to screw up their new toy if they try to play around with it. Providing a single software interface for it and making it very difficult to use anything else cuts down on the number of people who are going to brick their iPods. Personally, I'm happy with iTunes. It's generally better than anything open source I've found. And, if I remember correctly, it's free to download to manage your music collection even if you don't own an iPod. (Someone correct me on that if I'm wrong).

Re:Who cares

[QuantumRiff]

You MUST run iTunes
Hmm.. My ipod I sync with Amarok (on ubuntu). Sure I can't download podcasts and stuff from the itunes store, but it will play any supported media on my player (mp3's).

My Fiancee has a laptop running windows 2000. Her brand new ipod nano requires version 7.4 of itunes, which won't run on windows 2000. She is doing fine using Winamp!.

Your logic is completely backwards. If i want DRM'd content from the apple store, I must use itunes, and an ipod. If I don't want to access that content, I don't! Just like if I want DRM'd content from Microsoft for a zune.

If I want to purchase MP3's legally online, I go to amazon.com, purchase the .mp3 file, and load it onto the player of my choice (including ipods)

Re:Who cares

[downix]

If Apple were to make it so that the iPod could only play Apple-only MP3's, which could only be produced from Apple-only rippers and could then only be used with Apple-only computers, you might have an arguement. But no, the iPod might need iTunes to work, but that is a cross-platform product so defeats your arguement here. Infact, Apple's made sure that the iPod is as flexible as possible, going out of their way in many ways to work with other peoples products.

Re:Who cares

[psychodelicacy]

Thanks - I wasn't aware of the history. (I'm reading a history of computing at the moment, but am currently up to the development of FORTRAN!)

Re:Who cares

[Kev647]

No, you are correct here. And I personally enjoy knowing that should I have any problems, Apple is the only one that I have to go to for the fix. That puts me at ease and comfort. And to the gentleman before your post, claiming Apple to not be a "convicted monopolist," you make it it sound like Microsoft is a "convicted monopolist." Microsoft is a monopoly and actually, thats fine. Being and having a monopoly is not the problem. The PROBLEM lies with how you use your power. If you bundle IE and the foundation and make everyone use it (when it is sold separately for other OSs) and your intention is to crush any competition, and you make deals with hardware computer manufacturers to only carry all or nothing of software packages with your company, that IS the PROBLEM. So, being a "convicted monopolist" is not an issue here. Your post is irrelevant.

Re:Who cares

[X0563511]

It's generally better than anything open source I've found.

I know I'm not the target user, and while I have a lot of music, I don't have loads of it. I've never found myself needing anything more to manage my music than a filesystem and file browser (or shell). All these "jukebox" style applications are completely unnecessary!

Re:Who cares

[aslate]

However if she bought an iPod touch or the iPhone she would need to use iTunes. The Winamp plugin doesn't manage my iPod, it doesn't even see it.

The worst thing is that iTunes is incredibly glitchy for me, right down to if i change window to it, half the time the entire interface is black and i have to switch out and switch back again.

Re:Who cares

[joeytmann]

Just because they haven't been convicted makes it any less wrong.

Re:Who cares

[wizardforce]

nobody has to buy Windows. Even if there was no excellent free alternative, which there is.

then why is it that you need to go out of your way to get anything else than a windows pre-loaded machine? why is it that 95% of the software that is made only works in windows leaving any other OS to use WINE + the performance penalty? why is it that IE makes up over 70% of the browser market even though 1) it is the least standards compliant 2) only after IE7 did it finally have tabs/popup blocker both having been standard in other browsers. MS uses their desktop monopoly to wedge themselves into the top spot elsewhere as well. they don't compete on quality, they are simply "just there" and "good enough" to the average consumer. were the situation reversed, that is to say that if Firefox were installed by default and ingrained into the OS internals, IE would be the underdog.

Re:Who cares

[Fuzzums]

YES! You hit the nail right on it's head. For the average company there are so many alternatives for Windows...
Rrrright. Until the moment that I can run MS Office on an other operating system we're stuck with Windows.

Personally I think it's a good thing that MS is not allowed to force you (1) to use Explorer if you buy Windows. or Mediaplayer or Outlook or ........

(1) or "encourage" you to use it because they can use special undocumented features in the OS than make their applications faster.

Re:Who cares

[Speare]

Governments have the right and the duty to protect the relatively free market from abusive monopolies. Governments don't have rights. They have powers.

Re:Who cares

[Firehed]

You're confusing what's technically possible with how things were designed. I'm sure that with sufficient determination, you could make third-party software that impersonates iTunes and allows you to use their store in order to go out of your way to buy DRMed music. Why you would do so is beyond me, but that's irrelevant. The only support for iPods with third-party players has come from reverse-engineering; likewise for WMA/WMV formats to the best of my knowledge. You can't really consider reverse-engineered solutions as an alternative option when determining anti-trust violations - they're usually half-baked, flaky, and break any time an update to the 'real' solution is issued.

As it is, Apple still certainly doesn't have a monopoly on the music download market. They certainly have a very large market share, but that's because there's a ton of people buying their players. If people buy iPods instead of Zunes or whatever other alternatives are out there, that's their fault. Conversely, if people buy Windows because it was the only option on X machine, then you're on the line (if Ubuntu or something else was available across all systems then you're lowering the chance of a violation, but when does it go from software installed because of a monopoly versus the PC equivalent of not being able to customize the toast button on your toaster to instead turn on the air conditioner?). By and large, people get and use Windows because it's often the only option, whereas (the same) people get iPods because they want them over other players. The former is what's arguably a monopoly; the latter is market forces in action.

Re:Who cares

[Touvan]

Governments have the right and the duty to protect the relatively free market from abusive monopolies.

That's exactly right. If we want freedom in the market, we need rules and oversight to make sure freedom remains, and companies and cartels don't dominate. Of course that means the end of Freeman's "free-lunch for the already dominant players market" which is what he seems to have meant by that term. Humans are such symbol shifters, and it's great to see the meaning of that particular symbol shift.

Re:Who cares

[poetmatt]

Disclaimer: this is not ad hominem, please don't take this personally.

Supporting Apple is the exact same as supporting Microsoft. They both employ lock ins and monopoly abuse. The only difference is one is convicted and hated unilaterally (rightly so, of course), and the other is seen as "well, it's not Microsoft, so it's okay".

Those with knowledge of Apple's lock in never bothered to buy an Ipod to begin with. By the time the "unreplaceable" battery came around, or the "unreplaceable iphone battery" came around, you should have known better. Also since you have a wealth of options other than Itunes, people should have had more common sense.

Between Apple and Microsoft the word choice is an anathema to their products on so many levels that it makes me wonder what people really believe. It's alright though, open source shows that there are and will be many other options.

Re:Who cares

[russ1337]

If I want to purchase MP3 s legally online, I go to amazon.com, purchase the .mp3 file, and load it onto the player of my choice including ipods

Which might put Apple in an interesting anti-trust position when Amazon (or similar) write a 3rd party app (with the new SDK) for the iPhone which links directly to their Amazon sales portal. Will Apple block this app? Is that an anti-trust issue? Does this SDK mean the iPhone is now a 'platform' much like the PC, or a 'device' allowing Apple to rule it in total?

(I cant take credit for this idea, as I heard it on This Week In Tech this morning - just repeating it for all y'all.)

Re:Who cares

[Wordplay]

Actually, it probably does. Encouraging the sales of one product through the market share of another is only illegal when you have monopoly power. Otherwise, it's simply good software business strategy.

That's really the conflict here. The things that Microsoft does, in and of themselves, aren't heinous at the face of it, and lots of other software companies do similar things. It's only when you consider the entire snowball effect that the implications become clear.

Re:Who cares

[joeytmann]

errrr Just because they haven't been convicted doesn't make it any less wrong. guess i should have hit preview first.

Re:Who cares

[andy9701]

- Windows Media Player provides a superior Windows experience than RealPlayer

You make it sound like that was actually hard to do.... ;)

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If Microsoft had solid competition, there would be no problem.

Wrong, at the time they had to play by the same rules. MS might have now to obey to a stricter ruleset because they have been convicted.. before that they had to obey the same rules of every other OS provider.

This leads us to a problem as old as DosShell and DoubleSpace integrated in MS-DOS if not older:
  1) See an OS missing a key feature
  2) Provide an utility which provides that feature
  3) Profit!
  4) Watch a similar utility being integrated in the OS
  5) Bankrupt

At the same time IE was integrated in the OS, most OS already came with a browser in default inst. If you believe the difference was in the "bundled utility" vs "OS component" thing, Konqueror became a key part of KDE before conviction came.

I'm not defending M$ practices here, but I just want to note that things are much more grayish than the black vs white you (and many others) want everyone to believe.

Re:Who cares

[Deanalator]

I will never understand why open source enthusiasts get so angry when Microsoft starts giving things away for free. Has anyone ever stopped to think that this antitrust thing is the reason windows is such an underpowered POS? Maybe this is why they aren't able to give away decent developer tools, standardized antivirus, or a decent package management system.

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Their competitors (various open source projects) give away much higher quality code for free. Every time Microsoft tries to add a new feature, they get their asses sued off by every company that hacked in that new feature before, and are now charging ridiculous amounts of money for it.

I dislike Microsoft because they do not play well with standards bodies. I think that's lame, and they need to learn their place. On the other hand, if they actually started shipping a fully featured OS where I didn't have to pay a ton of money for all the additional bell and whistles, I would seriously consider switching to windows.

Re:Who cares

[Kev647]

It truly does affect your decision if I buy an iPod. I contribute to the 70+ percent of MP# market share of people who do own iPods. YOU may be of the other types of people who are not swayed by popular demand or hype, but most people, I would argue, are. And why would something sell so well? People will assume (if it does or if it actually doesn't) that it does well in what it does. There can't be THAT MANY IDIOTS buying those things. It MUST have done SOMETHING RIGHT! And so, they will be influenced by this and buy the product, only aiding in further increase in market share. You can see how this grows from here. It is is simply science stuff.

Re:Who cares

[betterunixthanunix]

In general, what Microsoft has been doing is a combination of using undocumented APIs and formats (both of which have landed them in trouble in court) and strong-arm tactics that ensure Windows remains absolutely dominant in the PC market. It isn't so surprising that their software works better on Windows than competitors' software; a programmer could just call up or shout down the hall and get an answer to an API question within Microsoft, whereas an external programmer would have to read through thousands of pages of documentation. However, the problem is that Microsoft actively works against competitors developing Windows applications, widening the inherent gap. That is an antitrust violation, although the Bush administration has shied away from prosecuting corporations, and it is unlikely that the next administration will press Microsoft any harder.

Re:Who cares

[ChrisA90278]

The rules change when you become a monopoly.

Let's use a example. I'm selling water in containers on the street corner. Some one wants to buy a bottle from me but I say No, if you want to buy my water you have to also buy a set of water glasses from me and this bag o ready mix cement too. You walk away laughing.

Now lets say I'm selling water but lets say the no one else has water for sale. I'm a mono[oly water seller. Now I bet you would buy that set of glasses and the cement.

The above is very clear cut. The real world is not but still it shows why the rules change. Being a monopoly gives a seller to much power over a buyer so most places try to place limits on mono[polies to limit their power.

Re:Who cares

[Fri13]

And IE would still provide superior web experience if they just would included tabs and addons same time as Firefox.
They didn't do that and now Firefox is going ahead but this is very very rare thing what has happend.

Now Firefox/Opera has change to survive because many website developer use W3C standards and not IE *hit.

Re:Who cares

[scuba0]

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them.
Oh, so you think that all software that Microsoft is not charging you for is free?, it is not! Every customer that buys Windows is paying for all applications that follow with. By locking their customers in with their built-in software which is mostly in the way they are missuisng their monopoly.

Re:Who cares

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Windows Media Player provides a superior Windows experience than RealPlayer

And you blame Microsoft? Real decided to become nasty at one point (I think v. 10), running all the time, and being impossible to remove. WMP always was better.

Any time any MS product succeeds, do you assume it must be because of anticompetitive practices. Office is better than OpenOffice for many corporate uses, due to the annoying features that 80% of consumers don't use.

The problem is not when their software works better on than their competitor's software. The problem is when their software works better because of unfair advantages.

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Their competitors (various open source projects) give away much higher quality code for free. Every time Microsoft tries to add a new feature, they get their asses sued off by every company that hacked in that new feature before, and are now charging ridiculous amounts of money for it.

The first part is that it isn't that Microsoft gives it away for free that is the problem, its that they bundle it, make it the default, and even integrate it with the OS.

If Microsoft limited their free giveaways to software that had to be downloaded from their website and installed manually, their competitors would have a lot less to bitch about.

And the second part is that the rules CHANGE when you have a monopoly. What are perfectly acceptable business practices in a competitive market are abusive and illegal in a monopoly. In a competitive market if you don't like what a company is doing you just stop buying from them... in a monopoly you can't, so market forces cease to be effective.

Re:Who cares

[MBGMorden]

Indeed. I read that and was thinking Real would be suing Etch-a-sketch for providing a superior media experience next.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone ever stopped to think that this antitrust thing is the reason windows is such an underpowered POS?

Windows was an underpowered POS long before antitrust ever came into the picture. Windows itself was basically an ungainly add-on to DOS until they went entirely with the NT base with XP.

Re:Who cares

[EvanED]

Maybe this is why they aren't able to give away decent developer tools, standardized antivirus, or a decent package management system.

Package management system and antivirus I can give you, but developer tools? Ever used Visual Studio Express Editions? IMHO they're better than anything that you can get for Linux, with the very notable exception of Eclipse while working with Java. (But I don't like Java, so that doesn't count. :-)) How 'bout their debuggers, which are probably more powerful than GDB? Or the .Net framework, which comes with compilers? Or the DDK, which also comes with a build system that can be used for applications (and some people do use it for such)?

Their tools aren't perfect, but if I were to pick a development environment for C++ between what I can get from MS and what I can get from your standard Linux distro, I would go with the former in an instant.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

It amazes me how many people get their history wrong on this stuff. WMP started competing with Real long before version 10. Real's seemingly nasty business practices were a response to Windows Media Player. Because WMP was so ubiquitous, Real had to take more drastic measures to make money. So they started branching out into new services and used their media player as a method of advertisement.

So in effect, Microsoft caused the suckiness you are complaining about.

Re:Who cares

[EggyToast]

Until the moment that I can run MS Office on an other operating system we're stuck with Windows.

MS Office has been available for Mac OS X for many, many years...

Re:Who cares

[PitaBred]

If Apple had enough marketshare to be considered a monopoly and unduly influence the computer market in general, then I might agree with you. As it is, Apple has a very vertical market. If Apple suddenly decides to make Firefox not run, it won't hurt Firefox, it won't hurt computing in general, it will only hurt Apple. If Microsoft decides to do so, it would be nearly a death-knell for the browser, and certainly relegate it to an also-ran. THAT, my friend, is the difference.

Re:Who cares

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

If microsoft wants to make Internet Explorer the only app that can access the internet, that's their prerogative.

I don't think you want to play chicken with Microsoft, lest you find out just how powerful their monopoly is.

Re:Who cares

[TrancePhreak]

Let's see you show grandma how to download a web browser when none is installed... Go on, show us! ;)

Re:Who cares

[Silver Surfer 1]

real player lost becouse they had terrible business practices rather than MS "crushing" them.

Re:Who cares

[The Spoonman]

Is it that Microsoft is deliberately making 3rd-party software work less well?

It couldn't POSSIBLY be that the 3rd-party software is crap, is it? I recall a conversation I had with a vendor last year in which they claimed "well, our app actually IS a lot faster using SQL than Oracle. But, that's because MS 'cheats' so their apps run faster on their OS, of course." All I got back was crickets when I asked "couldn't it also be that SQL is designed to work on one platform and is therefore optimized for that platform? Oracle, on the other hand, works on dozens of variations of platforms, hardware, processors, etc and isn't optimized for any of them."

In the age of Google, there is no such thing as an "undocumented API". Since the APIs aren't hidden, there's some developer somewhere who's figured out what it does and how it's used. Having worked with enough development teams, I'd be more inclined to believe that anything that's undocumented has more to do with the typical development statement of "oh, right, we rewrote the whole app...did anyone bother to tell the docs team that we made changes?"

Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to mismanagement.

Re:Who cares

[YaroMan86]

I will never understand why open source enthusiasts get so angry when Microsoft starts giving things away for free. Has anyone ever stopped to think that this antitrust thing is the reason windows is such an underpowered POS? Maybe this is why they aren't able to give away decent developer tools, standardized antivirus, or a decent package management system.

Most FOSSies aren't pissed about giving stuff away for free, even from Microsoft. What they are pissed off about is when Microsoft virtually forces them to use it by way of shell integration. The difference between say, Windows and IE and KDE and Konquerer's integration is the fact that, in my experience, removing Konquerer is still an option, whereas there's no easy method of removing Internet Explorer. Though I still don't care for KDE. I'm probably one of the few who likes GNOME. Windows has always been a POS, even before all this anti-trust action came up. The reason they haven't released decent tools is less to do with anti-trust and less because they don't give a crap about these things. Developers Tools? They practically dominate the Windows development market with Visual Studio. It has degenrated into a nasty vendor lock-in mess I could care less for. .Net made this worse. They implemented Windows Defender for antivirus, and it is no secret that Defender can't stop viruses worth a shit. And the MS lapdog Symantec produces worse. And Microsoft has absolutely no interest in package management, unless you count MSI as such. Why? Because too many software vendors are more than happy enough to kiss Microsoft's ass and produce physical media for the vast majority of its software, making package management redundant and pointless.

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Their competitors (various open source projects) give away much higher quality code for free. Every time Microsoft tries to add a new feature, they get their asses sued off by every company that hacked in that new feature before, and are now charging ridiculous amounts of money for it.

I agree, giving away their software isn't bad. But making it so that the software they give away becomes the only real solution is. This is why Silverlight bothers me so much. What happens if Flash becomes defunct and Silverlight takes over? I don't want any Microsoft software on *my* machine. But what if Microsoft crushes Flash with Silverlight the way they crushed Netscape with Internet Explorer. Sure, there are "alternatives" but will the average user be aware of it or even care?

I dislike Microsoft because they do not play well with standards bodies. I think that's lame, and they need to learn their place. On the other hand, if they actually started shipping a fully featured OS where I didn't have to pay a ton of money for all the additional bell and whistles, I would seriously consider switching to windows.

No, they don't play very well. Whenever they see a standard that threatens their monopoly position, they do the familiar embrace, extend, extinguish. I've seen them break way too many standards, in IE, in Visual Studio, etc. And Windows *is* fully featured except in markets where they have to abide by the anti-trust decisions. That's most of the world, unfortunately. But that's the problem is because the features integrate, from a technical perspective, where they really shouldn't. Internet Explorer, Explorer, IIS, DRM, etc. UNIX may not be perfect, but I find it wins in the kernel department thanks to the philosophy of doing only what it is *supposed* to do that's relevant to what it is. A kernel shouldn't have anything to do with the GUI, web browser, DRM, or web servers. All a kernel *should* do is manage memory and hardware and act as a messenger for the software and drivers. Though this differs from UNIX to UNIX and UNIX-like to UNIX-like. I like a monolithic kernel simply so that sen

Re:Who cares

[Machtyn]

The problem is that it would be Microsoft bells and whistles being added to the system. And we have a very critical eye when Microsoft does this. The reason is because it tends to block others. Also, Microsoft being the monopoly it is, can't favor one company's offerings over another without the other throwing a hissy fit.

Just imagine the problems and outcry if Microsoft created a fully featured product and bundled their own and third party fully featured products.

• Anti-virus: They would likely choose Norton's or McAfee's product. We all know both of these programs are bloated pieces of crap that barely does the job well. (In actuality, the AV vendors in totality are having a tough time keeping up.) Grisoft: AVG, Comodo AV, ZoneAlarm and a dozen other security vendors would throw a fit as well as users of better software.
• Productivity: Of course it would be MS Office. Just look at where Wordperfect is today and the hard road OpenOffice.org has to climb.
• Video Editing software: There are a myriad of choices out there, but we'd probably get Windows Movie Maker... and it would be crap.

Yeah, it's a small list, but I don't have all day to write a treatise on this. Microsoft can't do what Apple (very closed system which would be in the same trouble if they were top dog) or Linux/Debian can, which is conglomerate the best software around.

Re:Who cares

[toby]

Microsoft can crush nearly any competitor they want in other areas by ensuring that their own software works better than the competitor's software.

Except, ironically, it never does.

The problem isn't that it works better; it is that it's rammed down the customer's throat, often by dirty technological and marketing (FUD) tricks, resulting in a catastrophically worse overall outcome.

MS must be shut down to save civilisation. Believe it now, or later.

Re:Who cares

[HeronBlademaster]

If Microsoft limited their free giveaways to software that had to be downloaded from their website and installed manually, their competitors would have a lot less to bitch about. This would be true even if those manually-installed applications integrated themselves into the OS the way they do now - because they're manually installed, the user chose to do it - but only if they did so using publicly available APIs. The chances that Microsoft would allow Firefox to integrate itself with the OS in the same way IE is integrated are... well, it's not going to happen.

Even if they did do this, the problem would be, what browser should Microsoft provide? They can't very well ship an OS without a browser. They could, I suppose, ship Windows with a few download links (one for IE, Firefox, Opera, etc) and let the user decide, but then Windows would have to use something besides IE for its internet downloads, and then IE would use that internal API for file downloads... you see where this goes.

The simple truth is that all slashdot-nerd-types will hate Microsoft until Linux (or anyone else) wins, no matter what Microsoft does. People are assigning ulterior motives even to MS's recent change of plans regarding IE8's standards-adherence - why can't they just want to be more compliant? This attitude by MS's critics will not change in the forseeable future.

Let's face it - /.ers are prejudiced against Microsoft, and there's nothing Microsoft can do to change it, short of giving away their OS (and its source code) for free. Not that that would be a bad thing ;)

Re:Who cares

[thejynxed]

Part of the problem, is that Microsoft fully intends to move itself to be a Software as a Service provider. They want you to rent your OS. Rent Office. Rent Media Player. Rent their developer tools. Rent MSN Messenger. Total nickel and dime stuff.

You don't pay one month? Whoops, there goes your pictures and email!

THIS, more than any argument over "standards" should be right on the front-burner of the EU and US anti-trust courts.

This is also why I don't trust anyone pushing SaaS, and that includes Google.

Note: You can see the beginning stages at MS quite easily, with XBox Live! Marketplace, mandatory reactivating of Vista every few months, Zune's wifi-transfer drm scheme, WGA/OGA (what, you thought that was just to combat piracy?), Reduced Functionality Mode, Windows Live (MSN was just a precursor really, they are really ramping it up with Live), etc.

Re:Who cares

[Arterion]

I think it's important to understand that when WMP and IE "won" the wars, they were better than their competitors. IE6 was better than Netscape, and WMP was way better than RealPlayer.

The web as we know it today didn't exist back then. There was no youtube or bittorrent or web 2.0.

Re:Who cares

[cloakable]

sudo apt-get install firefox ;)

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

Let's see you show grandma how to download a web browser when none is installed... Go on, show us! ;)

apt-get install firefox

There is even a gui for it if you prefer.

Granted windows doesn't have this. But there's absolutely no reason it couldn't.

Re:Who cares

[Fuzzums]

Ah, cool :)

And how about.... Photoshop? ;)

Still, I know not enough about the mac to change to it, and it's not like you're buying a mac to try it.

Re:Who cares

[devon.cassidy]

I have seen it said so many times, and I'll repeat it again. If you disagree with a post, that does not mean it's flamebait. The great thing about Slashdot is anyone can moderate. The bad thing about Slashdot is anymore can moderate. Back on topic....... MS software seems to ride the rollercoaster of quality. They will come out with a great new version that's the best thing in a long time and then service packs, updates and upgrades degrade the quality. They use their position to force people to ride it into the ground and then reap as much money as possible until a competitor releases a semi viable solution. They go back to the drawing board and start the process again. If they made consistently good software, it wouldn't anger me as much that they monopolize the market. Take note flamers, i said "as much", I would still be angry. /rant

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

Even if they did do this, the problem would be, what browser should Microsoft provide?

You do realize this is really the -only- application that has this problem.

And my proposed solution would not be 'download links', but rather to create an apt-get type of tool for windows, and install that by default. Then on first run users can select whatever 'free' software they want from the repositories, including browsers, email clients, etc.

but then Windows would have to use something besides IE for its internet downloads,

What 'browser' does linux use for its 'internet downloads'? Why exactly can't windows work like that?

Re:Who cares

[PawNtheSandman]

And how is that different than Mac OS and all their bundled software?

Re:Who cares

[devon.cassidy]

Ugh, I should really use preview so i can be reminded to remember my html tags.

Maybe I need to be moderated -1 ugly post.

Re:Who cares

[norite]

MS Office has been available on the Linux OS via WINE for many, many years....

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

The Grandparent post has no moderation. He's obviously posting from an account that was modded into oblivion at some point in the past, thus giving him a -1 ding. If he posted as himself, he would have had a score of 0. But he decided to post anonymously instead, and thus got a starting score of -1.

Personally, I'm not going to shed any tears. The GP was a moron who can't be bothered to even figure out when Microsoft integrated their browser and when KDE 1.0 was introduced.

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

And how is that different than Mac OS and all their bundled software?

Seriously? I only wrote 3 short paragraphs. You couldn't make it all the way through? Heres part of paragraph number 3:

"... the rules CHANGE when you have a monopoly. What are perfectly acceptable business practices in a competitive market are abusive and illegal in a monopoly...."

The difference between Mac OS and Windows is that Windows has been found to be a monopoly; and Microsoft has been convicted of abusing that monopoly. Mac OS isn't, and Apple hasn't.

See the difference?

Hint: Its not about -what- they do. Its about how what they do affects the market. Apple, by not having a monopoly, has more freedom to use different business practices because its unable to utterly distort and abuse the market. Microsoft, by contrast, has less freedom to use those same business practices because when they do use them it does utterly distort and abuse the market.

Re:Who cares

[OnlineAlias]

What is different is market share and monopoly positioning.

Re:Who cares

[petermgreen]

At least according to what I have read on microsofts site the only time vista needs periodic reactivation (that is a requirement for reactivation that is triggered by time rather than hardware changes) is when you are activating against your companies internal KMS server. Do you have any evidence to the contary.

Re:Who cares

[shentino]

I'm not feeling sorry for Microsoft getting a bum rap.

They've earned their bad reputation fair and square.

Re:Who cares

[shentino]

For example, there's a REASON that the EU is all over them for anti-trust, and let's not forget the "Halloween Papers".

Apple's having a field day with Mac vs. PC ads.

Re:Who cares

[MightyMartian]

If Apple had, say 80% to 90% lock-in in any market they competed in, you would have a point, but as they don't, you don't have a point. There is plenty of competition to Apple's products, there's damn little to Microsoft's.

Re:Who cares

[EmotionToilet]

To be fair, RealPlayer is and has always been terrible to use and I would never wish such a terrible curse on even my worst enemies. WMP is much much better than RealPlayer. iTunes is even better than WMP.

Also, back in the day, Netscape wasn't that great of a browser anyways. I used to very much prefer IE over Netscape. Ever since I discovered Firefox I've found it to be much more reliable and more enjoyable to use. I personally think Safari is almost as good as Firefox, but not quite. Safari is, of course, better than IE.

I do believe that Apple has done a great job of gaining market share, and within the next few years they're expected to gain even more, especially by college students and higher educated people. OS X is truely a superior platform to Windows, and unfortunately Linux hasn't proven itself good for much.

Re:Who cares

[HeronBlademaster]

What 'browser' does linux use for its 'internet downloads'? Why exactly can't windows work like that? I didn't mean to imply that a browser is necessary for any downloading; what I meant was that MS would have to completely change the way they've designed their OS (not that that would be a bad thing) and that this requirement would be (read: is) a huge deterrent against MS actually doing it.

And my proposed solution would not be 'download links', but rather to create an apt-get type of tool for windows, and install that by default. Then on first run users can select whatever 'free' software they want from the repositories, including browsers, email clients, etc. Ah, but that wouldn't be in MS's best interests either, barring fines and such by governmental bodies for noncompliance. Recall that MS has other programs as well - Outlook for e-mail, Office for documents, etc., and a software repository (of the free variety) would not really be in MS's best interests.

Perhaps if a Steam-like system were adopted for applications other than games, things would be better - both free and non-free things could be provided, and it'd be tied to your account so it wouldn't matter what computer you're on as long as you're logged in (with an appropriate offline mode), etc. This would be best provided by a non-Microsoft entity, to avoid antitrust accusations, and such a system could provide side-by-side feature comparisons that include versions, prices, features, screenshots, reviews, and so on, along with links to either download or purchase the given programs. Then they'd actually have to justify the prices they charge, yes?

Re:Who cares

[Arivia]

Let me add another qualifier to that. It's not just that they integrate it, it's that they integrate it *badly*. Have you broken Active Desktop on XP recently? (you know, where your desktop background gets replaced with a white "windows has turned off active desktop for your safety due to an error, please click here to restart it" page?)

On IE7, the restart page doesn't work. Let me rephrase this: they did not bother to check if the most prominent error message in the entire OS worked right with the new browser.

Re:Who cares

[eleuthero]

Windows Media Player provides a better experience than RealPlayer because like Media Player Classic and WinAmp (w/video) you can go to fullscreen without having to shell out. Even unbundled, Microsoft would offer WMP for free because it helps people stay within the Microsoft bubble.

Re:Who cares

[omnipresentbob]

Well, the article is around a year old, but at that time they had ~70% of the mp3 player market share.

http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/apple_has_723_percent_of_mp3_player_market_in_february/

My guess is that it's probably risen a bit in the past year, too.

Re:Who cares

[drsmithy]

It amazes me how many people get their history wrong on this stuff. WMP started competing with Real long before version 10. Real's seemingly nasty business practices were a response to Windows Media Player. Because WMP was so ubiquitous, Real had to take more drastic measures to make money. So they started branching out into new services and used their media player as a method of advertisement.

Bullshit. Real Player was an obnoxious piece of crap from its first release. The only reason it managed to get a toehold in the market *at all* was because it was one of the first forms of streaming video.

Re:Who cares

[COMON$]

Ya how about that strawman....no mention of musicmatch, Winamp, or any of the many players that actually do give MP a run for its money.

Re:Who cares

[pleappleappleap]

The fact that you're choosing C++ as your example puts your taste into question.

Re:Who cares

[KingMotley]

Except that WMP was included in windows many years before Real was ever founded. So it's not like Microsoft just came and wiped them out, Real's offerings just SUCKED, and Microsoft's free WMP was good enough. Netscape was the first to give away their browser. Microsoft followed, not the other way around.

Re:Who cares

[Risen888]

nobody has to buy Windows

WTF? Where do you shop?

Re:Who cares

[devon.cassidy]

I stand corrected.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

If you went back and installed one of those older versions, I think you'll find that it did not contain ANY auto-annoy daemons. Those were added in the RealOne player AFTER Microsoft screwed with the market.

Now that's not to say that RealPlayer didn't have other probbuffering...lems, but it was othbuffering...erwise free from buffering... its modern annoybuffering...ware.

In any case, I will repeat what I said earlier. The REAL PROBLEM was that Microsoft killed the market before there could be any competition. I remember some pretty good video technologies coming out at the time, including a browser plugin that could stream high-quality video over a modem. (Though the picture was a rather small QVGA size.) Those competitors never got their chance because of (wait for it) Microsoft's anti-competitive nature. And certainly we never got to see Real get a chance to reinvent their player to compete in the market. After all, how could they possibly compete with free?

Re:Who cares

[Your.Master]

I don't know about absolutely no reason. It would be an antitrust risk for Windows to have it bundled with the OS, unless maybe they entirely gave control of the repository to a third party, which could be a security risk. The reason being that they cannot instantly know every possible 3rd-party free-as-in-beer application for Windows and stick it in there at an equal level to MS Software.

I mean, they'd probably win a court case over that, but the risk of losing plus the cost of winning stands as a (surmountable) reason that Windows can't do that.

Re:Who cares

[poetmatt]

As someone else posted is half the example, but I do get what you're saying.

Tell me though, what alternative is there to anything of the Mac line? I think if you said open source that would be the same as Windows in that argument. Or lets rephrase that: What alternatives have their been to Mac's monopoly like lock-in schemes? (Example: AT&T Iphone, Itunes). I don't seem to remember allofmp3 doing too well as of late as an example.

I'm not saying apple is a bad product, the design factor of their products is good. But when have they done anything that it's not been as close to monopoly and lock-in as possible?

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

I've used XP for seven years on about a dozen different machines and I have never seen such a problem.

You probably don't use "active desktop". (You know, the feature where you can make your windows desktop a webpage. (not a background image, but an actuall live clickable webpage...)

Most sane people don't use it. They introduced the feature in Win98 iirc, and it was a retarded concept even back then.

Re:Who cares

[pawn63295]

you just posted with a topic of who cares. ^^^ read your own question

Re:Who cares

[Jarjarthejedi]

"The problem is that Microsoft ensured that there will never again be competitors in either space."

Except, you know, Firefox and iTunes. And Opera, Safari, the upcoming Songbird, and about a hundred other media playing programs.

All MS did was make that area free to the user. That's really it, IE's existence didn't stop Mozilla from making FF and Media Player didn't stop Apple from moving iTunes over to the PC. All it did was wipe out the ability for people to charge for these products, which was really a net benefit to the consumer as their computers can now do more that they could, and do so without spending a penny. Is it really a bad thing that Realplayer and Netscape's cost based system for media playback and internet viewing (respectively, of course) was eliminated?

Re:Who cares

[MightyMartian]

There's probably an argument for the IPod being a monopoly, but they're no monopoly (not even close) on the desktop, so, in fact, they're free to practice lock-in to their heart's delight. Being a monopoly changes the rules.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

Except that WMP was included in windows many years before Real was ever founded.

Congratulations, you've been suckered by Microsoft's intentionally confusing naming scheme. To give you an idea of the grave error you have just committed, a good comparison would be to point at FileMan from Windows 3.1 and say that Microsoft has had a web browser FOREVER. Just as Windows Explorer != Internet Explorer, Media Player != Windows Media Player. In fact, WMP was predated by ActiveMovie, Microsoft's first real attempt at streaming video playback.

Netscape was the first to give away their browser.

What is it with Slashdotters and bad history today? Is this "make up history as we go" day and someone forgot to tell me? Or is it national unencyclopedia month?

Netscape gave away their browser to non-profit entities like students. Corporations had to pay to use the browser as late as 1998. In fact, I happen to have the press release right here that made Navigator a free product:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1998) -- In addition, the company is making its currently available Netscape Navigator and Communicator Standard Edition 4.0 software products immediately free for all users. With this action, Netscape makes it easier than ever for individuals at home, at school or at work to choose the world's most popular Internet client software as their preferred interface to the Internet.

Real's offerings just SUCKED

And if you had actually read my post, you'd know that it doesn't actually matter. But I will add this: Netscape, Real, Eudora, WinSock, etc. were all pioneers of the Internet age. No one had given them roadmaps to follow, so they pretty much had to make it up as they went along. (And keep in mind that these companies were born in the fires of Unix, not Windows.) Microsoft was able to swoop in and provide a better experience by way of bundling their product. They were able to learn from all the mistakes of their predecessors, then use their market power to CRUSH them.

Even worse? Microsoft didn't write Internet Explorer. They obtained the source code to a competitor of Netscape's called "Spyglass". Their deal with Spyglass was that Spyglass would get a tiny sum up front in exchange for long-term royalties. Of course, Microsoft gave Internet Explorer away, so they refused to pay Spyglass any royalties. How's that for anti-competitive behavior?

Re:Who cares

[zachdms]

Didn't RealNetworks buy ViVo and Xing, Microsoft bought VxTreme, and ... what *did* happen to VDONet? I wouldn't think you were referring to ClearVideo or Duck, but it's possible.

What plug-in are you referring to? I would think it would be either ViVo or VxTreme, which were the best alternative players at that time that I can think of.

Re:Who cares

[x_MeRLiN_x]

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them.
Oh, so you think that all software that Microsoft is not charging you for is free?, it is not! Every customer that buys Windows is paying for all applications that follow with. By locking their customers in with their built-in software which is mostly in the way they are missuisng their monopoly.
It may be true that an accountant at Microsoft insisted Windows should cost x more than it would ordinarily only to subsidise the development of y. However, one purchases a copy of Windows for a certain price and has no right to expect y or even z to be given away free of charge at a later stage. Do you argue that the free mints at a restaurant are in fact included in the price of a meal?

Re:Who cares

[zachdms]

In fact, WMP was predated by ActiveMovie, Microsoft's first real attempt at streaming video playback.

You may be thinking of NetShow / ActiveMovie Stream there. Windows Media Player folds in Media Player / NetShow / ActiveMovie / CDDeluxe / DVDPlayer, and probably some others I'm not thinking of.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

Vivo was the provider I was thinking of. Man, were they a blast back in the day. :-)

VDONet afaik died on the vine with a hefty Microsoft "investment". Which probably means that Microsoft ended up with all their stuff. (Not too surprising when one realizes that VDONet was powering DirectShow.) Knowing Microsoft, they probably had something to do with VDONet's demise. Perhaps they did the same thing as they did to Spyglass and conveniently didn't pay them?

Re:Who cares

[jonaskoelker]

Microsoft has absolutely no interest in package management, unless you count MSI as such. Why? Because too many software vendors are more than happy enough to kiss Microsoft's ass and produce physical media for the vast majority of its software, making package management redundant and pointless.

Package management and physical media are orthogonal.

In particular, the CD from which I installed Ubuntu has tons of packages on it. You can have physical media without packages (say, Wii Sports), packages without physical media (that's what all the mirrors in my /etc/apt/sources.list are for) and no packages on no physical media: that's what your typical windows app is (winamp, winzip, winorlose).

Re:Who cares

[scuba0]

It is all in the total cost, you cannot ignore the total price tag for one product. Yes the mints are included in every paying bill, the same as rents, supplies etc. The problem is not MS having their own software but rather that they use their money and software to lock consumers in and developers out.

Re:Who cares

[zachdms]

Yeah, the Vivo guys were really nice too - I was sad to see them generally folded by RN.

From what I recall, I think the VDONet codecs were generally inferior to the VxTreme codec set, so from what I can piece together from searches, they focused on their VDOPhone application, left the video codec market, and then sold what was left to Citrix. Looks like Steve is now working over at P2PCleaner(?).

Hm. Thanks for raising that interesting question. I'm glad to know that answer too.

Re:Who cares

[cyber-vandal]

That's what happens to convicted criminals - they have to abide by much harsher rules than decent, law-abiding citizens. You have any complaints take them up with the management of MS who thought that laws didn't apply to their company.

Re:Who cares

[noblethrasher]

Rights are a function of responsibility. If an entity has a responsibility over something then it has a right over that something. Although in any corporate body that responsibility (and hence right) will map to a particular individual. I say this as a hardcore libertarian.

Re:Who cares

[Kalriath]

I think IE won over Netscape because IE was free. Netscape was not (ever read the Netscape EULA? It required $30 if you wanted to continue to use Netscape after 30 days or something. Like Winzip at the time, it never enforced it).

I have to almost thank IE for doing away with the "Pay Browsers" concept. If it weren't for the problems people had with IE (not configurable enough, horrid to use) we likely would never have had Mozilla. Without Mozilla, no Firefox. Without Firefox, almost all our browsers would still be $30 a piece (yes, I'm aware of browsers like Lynx, but all of these would likely be either niche or single platform like Safari). Nowadays, they're all free - even Opera (unfortunately there still isn't enough competition on Mobile devices to force Opera to make that free too)

Re:Who cares

[EvanED]

The chances that Microsoft would allow Firefox to integrate itself with the OS in the same way IE is integrated are... well, it's not going to happen.

I'll bite. In Vista or Server 2008, the latest versions of the consumer and server product lines, in what way is IE integrated with the rest of the OS?

Vista even separated the MSHTML component from Explorer. If you type a web address into Windows Explorer, it doesn't reuse the window like it does in XP, it opens it in your preferred web browser. (I think... I think it doesn't just use IE. I don't have a Vista computer handy though so can't check.) If you type a local path into IE, it opens a new Explorer window.

Even in XP, the ties between IE and Explorer are often overstated.

Re:Who cares

[EvanED]

...mandatory reactivating of Vista every few months...

WTF are you talking about with this one?

Re:Who cares

[Daimanta]

"If microsoft wants to make Internet Explorer the only app that can access the internet, that's their prerogative.. nobody has to buy Windows."

The response of the EU: "My turf, my rules"

Re:Who cares

[waferhead]

One thing that would level the playing field as much or more than anything else...

Prohibit Xp/Vista OEM preinstalls.
You get bare hardware, or preinstalled Linux etc.

New PCs would ONLY come with generic Windows install discs.

THAT would be the nuclear option.

Re:Who cares

[Kalriath]

Was that sarcasm? Photoshop has been available on the Mac for years too.

Re:Who cares

[wolrahnaes]

Still, I know not enough about the mac to change to it, and it's not like you're buying a mac to try it. *cough*

This is what sold me on the mac.

When PearPC popped up I messed around with OS X a bit which eventually led to me resurrecting a shitty first-gen iMac i got for $20 to play with 10.3.

Then back in (late '05? early '06?) when the first hacked copies of OS X that ran on normal PCs started showing up, I loaded it on my Athlon 64 and played around a bit more...

Then I spend a bit of time in the Mac labs on campus and got used to it. Then a suitemate of mine went to sell his G4 Powerbook and I bought it.

September of '06 I decided I was done playing around, went up to the Apple Store near Detroit and bought the base Macbook along with an iPod nano on the student combo deal.

A few weeks back when the new Macbook Pro came out I decided to upgrade.

Emulation, then the ability to natively run it on my homebrew PC is what sold me on the Mac platform as a whole. OS 8.0-9.x turned me off to the Mac, 10.0 interested me, 10.2 got me checking it out, 10.3 got me using it, 10.4 saw me buying one, and the Intel switch got me in to a new one and as a full on Mac user.

I now have a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a GeForce 8600 GT. This thing is more powerful than my desktop and can run Windows if I need it while keeping me in the wonderful Mac OS X when I want to get things done. A decent UI, commercial apps, bash, and X11. What more could I ask for?

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla was around before Internet Explorer... which was a response to the relevance of Mozilla...

Re:Who cares

[Brian Gordon]

The response of the people: hold on now, this seems unfair for microsoft. I'm not voting for him next election..

Re:Who cares

[HeronBlademaster]

I don't doubt you. I tried Vista twice and couldn't stand some glaring issues - I replaced it with Gentoo (this is actually the first slashdot post I've made with this Gentoo installation) - so I'm unfamiliar with how, if at all, IE is integrated with Vista (I've read pre-SP1 Vista uses IE, ignoring your browser preference setting, for certain things), but if memory serves, with XP MS tried to make IE6 more part of the OS (so Explorer and IE use the same stuff) but I might be way off here.

Re:Who cares

[GaryPatterson]

You kids! We bought browsers in boxes at the software store in the olden days.

But what's wrong with pre-installing a bunch of browsers, or letting vendors decide?

Re:Who cares

[GaryPatterson]

Netscape was the first to give away their browser.

No, Netscape charged for their browser. I paid AUS$40 for the boxed version in the early 90s. I wasn't a student or non-profit organisation though.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because all those consumers who buy from Apple are all paying for the applications that follow from Microsoft.

Internet Explorer on the Mac is an obvious example of MS making Mac users pay MS.

Re:Who cares

[kylehase]

Good point but if Apple continues to grow and gain market share (as I'm sure they'd like to) then that would eventually lead to a duopoly.

Now let's look at Apple's practices. They were aggressive when dealing with mobile carriers which is why so many carriers turned down the iPhone knowing that it would be very popular. Also, they've released the iPhone SDK but include restrictive policies like "no VoIP over the data cannel". Seems to me that they're heading in the "abusive" direction.

Re:Who cares

[CannonballHead]

All application that follow with? Um... you mean, you can't freely download some of those programs? Did you actually BUY a new copy of Windows in order to upgrade to Internet Explorer 6 or 7? You can't download Windows Notepad, or Calculator, or whatever?

I dunno. This is kinda like saying that if you buy openSuSE, you are actually paying for all the "free software" that they include. It's all a hoax, it's not really free (even if you CAN download it for free).

Would you say that, if you bought a new GeForce video card and it came with some game that you could also freely download... you would say you paid for the game?

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

Thanks for the info! I had completely forgotten about VDOPhone. Which makes me nostalgic for one of the BEST IP Telephony products of the time. Remember VoxPhone of Voxware fame? As in the same guys who compressed JFK's entire "ask not what your country can do for you" speech into a few hundred KB?

Those guys had some of the most amazing technology. Sure, it only did voice, but it did it pretty well. Then they decided to go into inventory management for warehousing. How they ever got from one to the other is beyond me.

Re:Who cares

[Almahtar]

This is true: money is a huge problem for Microsoft.

Re:Who cares

[zachdms]

Of course I remember Voxware. Their MetaVoice (MetaTalk) codec was even shipping with Netscape at one point for some Netscape telephony application (I don't recall that name right now). (Plus MetaVoice and MetaSound were in the early NetShow/Windows Media codec set, before they were replaced by L&H (remember that fiasco?), ACELP.net, FhG MP3, and eventually the Windows Media Audio codecs. And if you were *really* paying attention, the MSNAudio codec.)

It's voice-based warehousing (?), so that makes some sense. Still, a fascinating leap.

Re:Who cares

[Kattspya]

How can you say that Microsoft locks developers out while keeping a straight face?

Do you people even know what your hands type?

Re:Who cares

[Fuzzums]

you saw the ;) ?

Re:Who cares

[sensationull]

Apple includes all of the software why should MS have to make users download it seperatly. Apple integrates Safari into the OS to make it run faster, why can't MS. I call a double standard, maybe the EU's competition regulation department is run by Apple fanboys, or bribed by Jobbs.

Re:Who cares

[sydneyfong]

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Their competitors (various open source projects) give away much higher quality code for free. Every time Microsoft tries to add a new feature, they get their asses sued off by every company that hacked in that new feature before, and are now charging ridiculous amounts of money for it.

As mentioned by many others, they don't "give away software" (for free). The problem is that they are forcing Windows customers to subsidize development costs of IE, WMP and other "bundled" apps even if they don't want to. If Microsoft reduced the price of Windows, and covered development costs of IE,WMP,etc by selling those software as separate packages like everybody else, the market would instantly become MUCH more competitive.

Re:Who cares

[Fuzzums]

sound like i'm going to try that too :)

Re:Who cares

[redxxx]

start>run cmd ok ftp ftp-mozilla.netscape.com anonymous binary get "/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b4/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0 Beta 4.exe" bye "Firefox Setup 3.0 Beta 4.exe" it's not quite as easy as in linux, but totally doable in widows.

Re:Who cares

[redxxx]

start>run
cmd
ok
ftp ftp-mozilla.netscape.com
anonymous

binary
get "/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b4/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0 Beta 4.exe"
bye
"Firefox Setup 3.0 Beta 4.exe"

it's not quite as easy as in linux, but totally doable in widows.
Turning off HTML formatting or using the preview button... now that's hard.

Re:Who cares

[scuba0]

Take that bug that MS recently fixed on Vista as an example, that the OS opened some links in IE even though IE is not the default browser. It is just one of hundreds of similar features that makes other software second instead of first. Why do you need another if the OS does not let you use the software as intended?
What is locking out if it is not removing the possibilities of using software as intended?

Re:Who cares

[MBGMorden]

Actually I remember getting Netscape (for Windows 3.1) from a BBS. My first PC modem (external 2400 BAUD - though I had a 300 BAUD on my Commodore 64) came with a copy of a terminal program (Procomm I think) and the guy gave me a list of local BBS's. This was circa 1992 or so (I think). Even in a relatively small area (Charleston, SC - not known for it's techiness) there were 25-30 BBS systems available to log in to. My first copies of Netscape, Wolfenstein, Doom, etc, were all obtained from those systems before we got Internet access at home.

Re:Who cares

[Kattspya]

Locking out develepors defeats the whole purpose of an operating system. One fixed bug is not locking out develeopers not when it's a piece of software that microsoft gives away for free.

If you had numbers supporting you i.e. that the operating system was just an insignificant part of Microsofts buissness or any rational reason why Microsoft would want to piss its market shares away. Some sort of evidence at all would be nice.

Re:Who cares

[Richthofen80]

"... the rules CHANGE when you have a monopoly. What are perfectly acceptable business practices in a competitive market are abusive and illegal in a monopoly...."

The difference between Mac OS and Windows is that Windows has been found to be a monopoly; and Microsoft has been convicted of abusing that monopoly. Mac OS isn't, and Apple hasn't.

What kind of vague shitty standard is this to live and work by? Somehow activity A is okay one minute but not okay the next? At what moment in time did their business become a monopoly? when were they supposed to stop activity A? AFTER they've been convicted? Well, how were they even supposed to know they were becoming a monopoly in the first place, to avoid the conviction? I guess you know AFTER you're arrested that you were committing a crime. I guess you're supposed to look at your company every day and 'guess' whether you're going to be convicted, and whether you should change your business practices.

No business could possibly function under such subjective terms. Ever try to change a marketing plan or business practice at a large company? It takes a long time to re-formulate and re-evaluate actions and then bring them into a plan and then execute them company wide. Any rules that change as you go along are antithetical to running a company successfully. Essentially what you're describing is that for a certain period of time, companies should take action to increase their business, until such time that their business becomes 'a monopoly' ( a definition which is amorphous. when I was in high school it meant 'sole control over an entire industry', and that def. no longer applies since MS is a monopoly apparently despite apple's existence / success), then when they're business is a monopoly, they must work AGAINST the principles that bring them success.

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

What kind of vague shitty standard is this to live and work by?

Are you familiar with our legal system? Almost everything is vague shitty standards.

When was the last time your speedometer was calibrated? How do you know you aren't speeding? Have you read the law covering fair use? Nothing could be more wishywashy! Did you know that you can be convicted of a crime based on whether 12 random people think you did it beyond a 'reasonable' doubt. "reasonable" what the hell kind of standard is that? How are you supposed to know what 12 random people are going to think is reasonable??

Deal with it.

Well, how were they even supposed to know they were becoming a monopoly in the first place, to avoid the conviction?

Yeah I see your point. That would be pretty hard. /sarcasm

I dunno, your first hint would be that you have market share in around the 95% mark, and then the general public and press starts accusing you of being a monopoly or becoming one on a daily basis, and finally as a multibillion dollar company your crack team of lawyers should let you know that there is a strong legal risk of all that coming together and somone actually charging you with being a monopoly, and actually finding you to legally be a monopoly, and they should similiarly advise you to avoid certain practices which would not be illegal and abusive if you are found a monopoly.

Sure the line at which you 'become a monopoly' is blurry and vague, but even so you'd have to be a complete cretin not know you're getting close to it. And since you'll know your close, you can take steps to mitigate the risks of beign found guilty of abusing it. In other words, if your close enough that the risk of being found a monopoly is significant, act as if you'd already been convicted and don't do anything abusive.

At 95% marketshare, you can afford not to be abusive "just in case".

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

Good point but if Apple continues to grow and gain market share (as I'm sure they'd like to) then that would eventually lead to a duopoly.

First the iphone is a PDA not an OS. Its competing with a diverse and competitive ecosystem of PDAs from a variety of manufacturers. And while its got a lot of buzz, its not even dominant, let alone monopolistic. Lets wait until they are at least in first place before we worry about whether they are going to become a monopoly.

Now let's look at Apple's practices. They were aggressive when dealing with mobile carriers which is why so many carriers turned down the iPhone knowing that it would be very popular. Also, they've released the iPhone SDK but include restrictive policies like "no VoIP over the data cannel". Seems to me that they're heading in the "abusive" direction.

Yes, if apple ever becomes a monopoly they'll get their ass handed to the by the courts. But they are so far away from being a monopoly its not even worth discussing. The only market in which they dominate is mp3 players, and even here there are enough real alternatives readily available from microsoft, from sony, from sansa, etc, not to mention the fact that half the cell phones on the market these days all double as mp3 players that make a case for a monopoly pretty weak.

Re:Who cares

[scuba0]

Locking out develepors defeats the whole purpose of an operating system. One fixed bug is not locking out develeopers not when it's a piece of software that microsoft gives away for free. Thats right, the fix is not locking out but the bug was one factor of several that makes it hard to get support on the platform. Still they don't give it away free, they charge you for it and makes it impossible to remove. The bug which now is fixed was an example of their practice, similar bugs or features is programmed by Microsoft on purpose or by sloppy programming, I can bet that all of them are not sloppy or Microsoft has bigger problems than competitors.

I'm not saying that complementary software is unnecessary, what I'm saying is that it is wrong to force the consumer and developers to adopt after how Microsoft wants it to be done, through Internet Explorer in this case and not by using competitors. If Microsoft wants to promote Windows as a package, fine by me, but they have to make it possible to replace software, not making it an app thats not used by the OS for what it is chosen to be.

Re:Who cares

[Arivia]

I don't use it either. Yet, for some reason, that error message comes up without fail every time Windows freezes and I have to reboot.

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

I don't use it either. Yet, for some reason, that error message comes up without fail every time Windows freezes and I have to reboot.

Windows -rarely- freezes on me... I think the last time was 6 months ago when I turned on a SATA drive on eSATA drive that didn't support hotplugging...

That said, are you -sure- you don't use it? With some versions of windows some image formats (ie for the desktop background) require active desktop to display. The solution is to convert the image to bmp or something that windows can can display without using active desktop.

Re:Who cares

[Kalriath]

This is Slashdot. It really is that hard to tell.

Re:Who cares

[vux984]

Apple includes all of the software why should MS have to make users download it seperatly. Apple integrates Safari into the OS to make it run faster, why can't MS. I call a double standard,

Don't be a twit. Of course its a double standard. Its a double standard because there are in fact two separate standards in effect:

One standard for monopolies.
One standard for non-monopolies.

Monopolies aren't bound by normal market pressures you'd see in a competitive market; so we impose additional rules on them to compensate for the lack of market forces and protect consumers from abuse.

THIS is a case where one of those differences crops up; monopolies are carefully scrutinized when they bundle other products with their monopoly product because it can effectively extend the monopoly into a new market, and eliminate competition there too. This is undesirable and considered illegal monopoly abuse. So Microsoft is scrutinized for every feature it bundles.

Meanwhile, Apple bundling stuff poses no such threat to the 2ndary market, and so its allowed without oversight.

So yes, there is a double standard. And with good reason.

Re:Who cares

[Fuzzums]

I might not know a lot about the Mac, but that Photoshop wasn't called MS-Photoshop for a good reason, THAT I knew :D

Re:Who cares

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Oh man, memories. I was really close to buying netscape communicator ( $70 retail in our book shop), before they offered it for free. I'm pretty sure the bookstore had to eat all of its inventory at that point. They kept cutting the price hoping someone was didn't know it was free. It got down to $5 and assigned to the bargain bin. I always looked for it everytime I went there. I'd pick it up walk around the store grab the other things I needed, get in line, then look at the box and put it back.

I don't think they noticed. And in retrospect it seems like a rather odd thing to do. And it was.

I also had my eye on a copy of visual fox pro. Why would anyone buy visual fox pro in a university bookstore? There weren't any classes for it. It wasn't cheap. They never reduced its price. My later unpleasant experience in the work force with foxpro makes me think it was some sort of cosmic warning of the consequences if I didn't change the path I was on. Speaking of which I think I really need to find foxpro disks on ebay, write return to sender on the box, and light it on fire. For surely such a demonic creation could have only been created by Beelzebub

Re:Who cares

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Real wasn't borne of Unix. A product that crappy could only have been made by an ex Microsoft employee.

Re:Who cares

[AKAImBatman]

Just because the creator was a former Microsoft employee doesn't mean that everything Internet still wasn't centered around Unix.

Check out this download page from 1996:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961220181218/http://www.realaudio.com/products/player/download.html

You'll note that everything from IRIX to OS/2 is listed as a supported platform. Which was true when RealAudio was first released in April/June 1995. (Several months BEFORE Windows 95 was released WITHOUT a web browser.) Real was attempting to target every platform that Netscape supported. Which meant heavy, heavy Unix support. Especially since Microsoft was majorly dropping the ball on the Internet at the time. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't leave Microsoft because they weren't paying enough attention to the Internet. More than one Microsoft bigwig has left for those types of reasons. :)

Re:Who cares

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

All of the other programs you mentioned, really did come from the unix world. They really thought about the dos/windows platform last. But real treated windows/dos on equal footing as the rest. Thats all I was speaking of, Real wasn't from the same unix background as all of the other listed programs.

Re:Who cares

[ichigo 2.0]

That's actually not a bad thing, as every "free" application MS bundles in their OS makes Windows even more expensive compared to other alternatives.

Re:Who cares

[Attila Dimedici]

I will never understand why open source enthusiasts get so angry when Microsoft starts giving things away for free. Has anyone ever stopped to think that this antitrust thing is the reason windows is such an underpowered POS? Maybe this is why they aren't able to give away decent developer tools, standardized antivirus, or a decent package management system.

Mircosoft does a lot of bad things, but giving away software is not one of them. Microsoft gave away IE because by giving it away they could giver their web development software a competitive advantage. The market for software to write web pages was much more lucrative than the market for web browsers. Additionally, Netscape developed an operating system agnostic user interface. Microsoft recognized that if Netscape continued to expand eventually it would replace the UI provided by the Microsoft operating system and then people would be able to switch operating systems without the typical User noticing any difference.

Re:Who cares

[kbahey]

The older iPods worked fine with anything.

All bets are off when you have the latest generation iPods.

My daughter won an iPod Nano in a contest around October last year. Nifty little thing. Really nice and all.

All attempts to make it work with Amarok failed. We had to resort to installing Windows XP on a partition so that she can use iTunes on it.

I know a friend who bought his wife and iPod, then returned it for a Sandisk Sansa in disgust.

This really left a very bad taste about Apple and their tactics. If they were the size of Microsoft, they would be just as bad ...

You could always..

[thyrf]

What do i do with this glass turd?

Downgrade of course!

Re:You could always..

[techpawn]

Downgrade of course!

Downgrade should be in quotes when referring to vista...

I love the software that says "Can be run on Windows2000 or Greater" Which includes Linux and OSX but not Vista...

Re:You could always..

[betterunixthanunix]

Or, you could reevaluate your needs, and if possible, not run Windows. Granted, sometimes you have no choice, but most people could get their work done with an open source OS without any trouble.

of course it violates antitrust

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

any new windows will always come under this scrutiny, and for good reason. the mainstream US does not use linux or macs, so windows is seen as the dominant os figure. this gives them a justification to bring up charges.

They'll do nothing

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The watchdogs have rubber teeth. So far they've done nothing and MS ignores them.

Lost causes

[pembo13]

Microsoft Outlook needs (and loads) MS Word. MS Visual Studio requires MS Office for some of the data aware components to work at all. Windows Media player often "reactivates" all on its lonesome

Re:Lost causes

[gstoddart]

Microsoft Outlook needs (and loads) MS Word. MS Visual Studio requires MS Office for some of the data aware components to work at all. Windows Media player often "reactivates" all on its lonesome

And, a surprising amount of the time after an update My Firefox and Thunderbird clients have to tell me that they're no longer the default applications and do I want to re-enable them.

For some reason, I find that rather annoying. It was my setting yesterday, just because you patched a vulnerability on Outlook, why have you made it the default application?

I believe my iTunes has occasionally had to re-assert itself as the default player for audio files on my PC.

Cheers

Re:Lost causes

[initialE]

Nowadays Outlook and Word, they're sold together anyway. You're not being forced to buy one product because you bought the other.

Re:Lost causes

[plague3106]

Microsoft Outlook needs (and loads) MS Word.

No, it doesn't.

MS Visual Studio requires MS Office for some of the data aware components to work at all.

You mean the components that are designed to get data from MS Office? The horror!

Windows Media player often "reactivates" all on its lonesome

Funny, it's never done that for me.

Re:Lost causes

[pembo13]

Look, if you don't know, don't reply. But don't say it doesn't.

Re:Lost causes

[plague3106]

Well, let's see, I know 100% that Outlook in no way requires Word. It only would if you set Outlook to use Word as the email editor... but then that's an option you choose, and it's only available if Word is installed at all.

If I'm wrong about the VS "data aware" controls, tell me exactly to which controls you're refering.

Finally, I've had plenty of media players other than WMP that I had set as default, and I never had XP or so far Vista randomly "reset" them. So you're either making it up, or maybe there's something else going on, like group policy making the change.

Re:Lost causes

[Spy der Mann]

And, a surprising amount of the time after an update My Firefox and Thunderbird clients have to tell me that they're no longer the default applications and do I want to re-enable them.

For some reason, I find that rather annoying. It was my setting yesterday, just because you patched a vulnerability on Outlook, why have you made it the default application?

I fear I'm going to be modded down for this, but this is a sincere request and not a fanboy blurb - unfortunately there's no means to do private messaging here on slashdot, so I have to ask this publicly. Have you actually *considered* moving to Linux? Perhaps you're in the privileged position where you don't actually *need* Windows software, and switching would benefit you since you wouldn't need to bother with Windows annoyances anymore.

If you're willing to discuss this a little further, don't hesitate in dropping me a mail :)

Re:Lost causes

[gstoddart]

I fear I'm going to be modded down for this, but this is a sincere request and not a fanboy blurb - unfortunately there's no means to do private messaging here on slashdot, so I have to ask this publicly. Have you actually *considered* moving to Linux? Perhaps you're in the privileged position where you don't actually *need* Windows software, and switching would benefit you since you wouldn't need to bother with Windows annoyances anymore.

At home I have a FreeBSD box, and a Windows XP box -- the latter was a concession to needing it for some things, and not being able to get away from it and because I found dual boot a nuisance to maintain -- it has a network name of "grudge". I've been running Linux and/or FreeBSD since about '92 or so (Kernel 0.99a on Slackware baby with a gazillion 1.44" floppies).

At work, I have an XP laptop and a W2k3 server. Those I couldn't possibly migrate away to another OS, so I'm stuck with it. I still use Firefox/Thunderbird though.

The reality of it is, most of us don't have the luxury of migrating away from Windows 100%. My FreeBSD box does is my mail client and file-server. The XP box is for the stuff I need that I can't do on FreeBSD (iTunes, my tax software, my digital camera software). It's just easiest to co-exist and keep the XP box tamed than ditch it.

I've got the best solution I could find, but, sadly, I still get to see some of the oddities.

I suspect a lot of people, for at least their work machines, are stuck in the wacky world of Windows. :-P

Cheers

Re:Lost causes

[maeltor]

He's right. It doesnt REQUIRE it at all, it just happens to be installed with WORD as the default editor when Outlook is installed with Office, For example, look at SBS 2003. You get Outlook 2003 w/ Exchange when you buy SBS. It doesn't include Office and doesn't need it when installed.

Re:Lost causes

[misleb]

(Kernel 0.99a on Slackware baby with a gazillion 1.44" floppies).

Can I get a Same-Linux-Starting-Point high five!

Did you color-code the labels on the floppies for the different sets (Base, X11, Apps) like I did?

Man, installing Slackware back then really did make you realize just how unreliable floppy disks are.

-mattew

Re:Lost causes

[Richard_at_work]

Just to add to your comment -

I run several XP systems, all with Firefox set as the default - none have ever had their default setting removed, and they are all kept up to date with patches.

Installing Office does add extra functionality to Visual Studio (or at least certain versions) - it adds the Office data components, which are not shipped with Visual Studio. Or you could just download the Office SDK which includes them.

Outlook uses the Word HTML engine to display messages, but it comes with it included - you can install Outlook standalone with no issues (and you can even buy it standalone).

I can't see one thing the GP has said which I couldn't classify as FUD from experience with the products involved.

Re:Lost causes

[pembo13]

Now we can come to some fair talk. Your first dismal of my comment wasn't at all inviting. I fully admit that I shouldn't have used the word "require". But I will tell you that Outlook specially asked (I didn't offer) to use MS Word. If I remember correctly, it apparently couldn't (or wouldn't) display a particular email. But no it doesn't require Word, I assume it would have found some way to display the email in question without word.

I stand by what I said about the Visual Studio components. They had no obvious ties to MS Office, I assume the devs know what the link is.

And about Windows Media player... this was on my desktop, not a workstation, so no group policy. I had installed VLC, and had it opening all my files, and defintely ogg. A few weeks later, I clicked on an OGG podcast and it opened up in Windows Media. Subsequent media (although I really don't do this often on my Windows machine) all opened in Windows media player.

However, at this point, I really don't care. They an do what they want with their OS as long as I am not mandated to have or use it. And I really have no interesting in making anything up, but acknowledge my mistake in the original wording.

Re:Lost causes

[plague3106]

But I will tell you that Outlook specially asked (I didn't offer) to use MS Word. If I remember correctly, it apparently couldn't (or wouldn't) display a particular email. But no it doesn't require Word, I assume it would have found some way to display the email in question without word.

That same setting in Outlook may affect viewing emails. Also, if you're talking about outlook 2007, it has a built in previewer for attached files. If someone attaches a word document, you can preview the document itself by single clicking the attachment. Pdfs do the same thing.

I stand by what I said about the Visual Studio components. They had no obvious ties to MS Office, I assume the devs know what the link is.

You stand by it without giving any relevent details. Are you perhaps talking about Document Explorer? That's not part of MS Office, it's a seperate component, I believe used to render the help files. If you're not, then please name the components to which you are refering. I've been doing .Net development for quite a few years now.

And about Windows Media player... this was on my desktop, not a workstation, so no group policy. I had installed VLC, and had it opening all my files, and defintely ogg. A few weeks later, I clicked on an OGG podcast and it opened up in Windows Media. Subsequent media (although I really don't do this often on my Windows machine) all opened in Windows media player.

Perhaps there's something else going on; a file got corrupted and Windows File Protect replaced it with a known good one, which didn't have those settings. Perhaps you have a service running under your account, and Windows can't properly unload your user profile (thus saving changes). There's a multitude of things that could be going wrong which have nothing to do with MS forcing you to change the settings.

Re:Lost causes

[zachdms]

I'll stick my neck out here.

I wrote most of that code. There's no mechanism by which it could reactivate. Hit me up at zachdms at hotmail dotty com and I'll walk through whatever you think you're seeing.

Most third party players have tended to be a little lackadaisical when it comes to file association implementations. This is one of the big reasons why the new (easy) Vista file association interfaces (Set Default Programs) are so great. Ask your favorite application to support it if they don't already. I've supplied the basics to a number of third party vendors (WinAMP, VLC, MPC-via-CCCP) to get them up and running on this.

Re:Lost causes

[tshak]

MS Visual Studio requires MS Office for some of the data aware components to work at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by "data aware components". I keep my dev machines lean and do not install MS Office, among other things, on them. VS runs just fine.

Re:Lost causes

[zachdms]

And about Windows Media player... this was on my desktop, not a workstation, so no group policy. I had installed VLC, and had it opening all my files, and defintely ogg. A few weeks later, I clicked on an OGG podcast and it opened up in Windows Media. Subsequent media (although I really don't do this often on my Windows machine) all opened in Windows media player.
Windows Media Player doesn't associate to OGG. Third party plug-ins could add registration for OGG to the player's file association set (I designed it to be easily extensible), but it doesn't come that way. So whomever actually did make that registration may have done that badly, but -- if it's going through my WMP association system, there's no mechanism for random re-registration ('reactivation') because you and I hate that.

However, at this point, I really don't care.
I do. If somebody is doing registrations badly, let's fix this up before people get confused. You're confused, and thus I'm concerned.

So hit me up on the email address I mentioned in my earlier response to you (zachdms at hotmail dotty com) and supply the repro steps here that are causing you to hit this badness. VLC definitely isn't really Vista file association aware, though, so that's the most probable source of error. If you check the VLC forums you'll note that I provided most of their solution already - I don't know if it's in their packages yet, though. Still, you did mention that it was a problem for a podcast, and that could be coming in through a different association path that VLC simply isn't currently handling. Pre-Vista, the split between shell and browser associations was rather a PITA - Vista finally generally consolidates those. Much easier to deal with.

I can't and don't want to speak to anything else other than Windows Media Player file associations, but since I designed that since maybe day one, it's always been my number one goal just to play nice and get out of your way and let you use the player that you want to. If you're seeing something else, somebody probably isn't plugging in properly. It's certainly possible that it's a Windows Media Player bug, but it's not malicious because I simply don't play like that. I grew up on the Mac, programmed on U*IX/Solaris in college, and regularly try to help any vendor that needs it. Email me, we should be able to sort this out.

Re:Lost causes

[xaxa]

Read that back to yourself, and realise what you wrote.

Two things are sold together. They cannot be purchased separately. If you want one, you're also paying for the other.

Re:Lost causes

[Kalriath]

VS 2005 contains bits and pieces of Office 2003. I only know this because I got an update to Office 2003 over Microsoft Update (not Windows Update), and I only have Office 2000 installed (and VS 2005, of course). The plural of anecdote is not data. I don't have Office 2003 components on my machine, but I do have Visual Studio. Microsoft Update never offers Office 2003 updates to me because I don't have it installed.

The only things I'm aware of that VS 2005 requires for certain things are SQL Server and IIS. It won't, for instance, make an MDF file or a Data Source XSL from a template without a locally running copy of SQL Server (which can be installed alongside VS if you have the Pro package). SQL Express actually, which you can get with every single VS package, including the free Express edition.

It won't allow you to "View In Browser" (on ASPX pages) without IIS, which is installed along with VS 2005 anyway. Incorrect again. IIS is not a requirement, VS will install the ASP.NET development server, which even if you use IIS it will use for previewing/debugging anyway.

Re:Lost causes

[pembo13]

I'm referring to all the data aware components of Visual Studio for ASP.NET. They are under the heading of "Data Controls" in the toolkit. It wouldn't allow me to drop one on the design form without installing Microsoft Office. There are more than one of them. The Datasource, the Datagrid, etc.

I can understand that there may be a multitude of things affecting why things would default back to Windows player. All why I'm saying that the attempt to stop Microsoft from inter using their own software is too little too late.

Re:Lost causes

[dissy]

Microsoft Outlook needs (and loads) MS Word.

-No, it doesn't.

MS Visual Studio requires MS Office for some of the data aware components to work at all.

-You mean the components that are designed to get data from MS Office? The horror!

Windows Media player often "reactivates" all on its lonesome

-Funny, it's never done that for me. I can only comment on the last of those three.
The only time I've used outlook was at work, where office was installed anyway, so I wouldn't see the link one way or another. I also don't use MS development tools.

However, I have had cases of WMP becoming the default again, thou 'all on its lonesome' is not how I would describe it.

With XP, the one upgrade to XP1 did reset that (as well as IE's) defaults. However since then I have only installed from an XP CD with SP1 pre-applied. I also don't remember if this was before or after the big stink where a lot of users complained about this happening, and MS ended up admitting it was a problem with their updater, which was fixed in a later hotfix. If it was before (which is very possible, even most likely) then it isn't like this was some big secret to hide it, and was even fixed.

The times I have installed SP2 however, have done this with WMP as well. However in my case, SP2 always badly broke my system, I think it has something to do with the install media I use, since that is the only common thread between those updates. Consistently SP2 broke my networking stack, in ways that I can easily duplicate by installing off the only CD I have of XP, then adding SP2. I always just assumed all the other problems were due to what ever was causing this. It is very clear this is not normal or something any one else has experienced.

Of course once I accidentally selected a WMP upgrade in windows update, and that too changed the default settings, however I suppose that is at least slightly understandable there. I normally don't do that, it was just a case of not paying attention and deselecting the packages I didnt want upgraded.

But as I said, none of these are 'all on its lonesome', it was always a separate action triggering it, and unless I am mistaken, all of those actions involved upgrading WMP on the system just before it happened.

I can understand frustrations at microsofts software causing one to feel like lashing out like the GP did, but you are right in that it is not fair nor accurate to do so. Sounds like FUDing to me.

There are enough legit problems with windows to complain about without having to make up new ones ;}

Re:Lost causes

[plague3106]

I'm referring to all the data aware components of Visual Studio for ASP.NET. They are under the heading of "Data Controls" in the toolkit. It wouldn't allow me to drop one on the design form without installing Microsoft Office. There are more than one of them. The Datasource, the Datagrid, etc.

None of those controls require Office, I'm sorry to say. I've had VS on my machine without office, and it's never required me to install Office to use the designer.

Due date

[Dr. Eggman]

Windows 7 is due sometime around 2010. Which means it will be released around 2012, and may or may not have any relationship to the coming of the Apocalypse and/or the end of 13th b'ak'tun cycle.

Proceed with modding down; it was worth it!

Re:Due date

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, ever hear of http://december212012.com/ ?

coincidence? I think not...

Re:Due date

[Yvanhoe]

Windows 7 SP1 is due for the end of the cycle. Just you wait and tell me it isn't the apocalypse...

VISTA is Windows V.6x???

[starglider29a]

Wake me when it hits version 6.61x!!! That would only leave us a month of monthly builds until The Prophecy is fulfilled!~

Ubuntu

[Bombula]

Ubuntu is coming on strong at long last. I myself made the leap halfway recently to a dual-boot system. Anyone have any forecast about the state of the OS market come 2010?

Re:Ubuntu

[camperdave]

I think there's a few things that need to happen for linux to take things to the next level:

1. There needs to be a much tighter integration between LDAP, and Active Directory. We should be able to drop a linux box into a windows network and have it be able to administer it like a Windows 2003 server.
2. The package configuration on a linux box should be saveable and verifiable. What I mean is that if person A gets a new computer, it should be dead simple to install up to date versions of all of the software they had on their old machine... or to clone the same configuration over several workstations. By verifyable, I mean if a library or something gets deleted, being able to issue a command to check that all packages are completely installed, not just that the package database says they are.
3. In a similar vein, a tighter integration with Norton ghost or similar. I should be able to remotely install and uninstall software to a bank of computers at the click of a mouse.
4. More Hardware drivers.
5. More unification between different distros. One starts their user numbers at 500, another at 1000. You should be able to move the /home directory to whatever distro painlessly.
6. A decent accounting package. People have been enslaved to Quicken for far too long. Although they seem to have their scheduled transactions going, Gnucash still can't close books at year end.

Re:Ubuntu

[MightyMartian]

Most of the bookkeeping software I've seen for PCs is absolute junk, whatever the operating system. Quicken, Quickbooks, Simply, they're all trash. One of the other hats I've often worn is a bookkeeper, and probably the best software I've ever used is an ancient old Cobol-based accounting program that Radio Shack sold with their Xenix/Model 6000 multiuser system, which had useful departmental accounting and proper separation and data flow from the journals to the General Ledger (I'll wager over half the people using these crappy Windows programs don't even know what the hell any of that means). On the PC front, NewViews was the best (haven't used it in years), because it functioned like a synoptic journal, and had probably the easiest custom report-writing engine invented for any financial software.

GNUCash is just a slightly-less capable piece of shit than Quicken. They're all garbage. None of them have half the capability of the old AccPac for DOS, except that they can oooh... ahhhh... export to XML!!!!

Re:Ubuntu

[BenoitRen]

Yeah, Ubuntu is so strong coming that my brother, a Linux enthusiast, sees it as the weakest Linux distribution he's tried. It can't play MP3s, or even simple movie files. It can't find the required codecs either. He's quite pissed.

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The first time I double clicked an MP3 file on ubuntu, it said "to play this please check this box to install a non-free codex." I checked the box, clicked "OK" and it installed a codex then started playing. Same for movies. It was *SO* hard it took me an extra 2 clicks the first time I tried to play each type of file that doesn't have open source codexes.

Seriously, I don't think it could have been any easier.

I know....

[iknownuttin]

Anyone have any forecast about the state of the OS market come 2010?

It'll be the Year of the Linux Desktop (tm).

Re:I know....

[bdjacobson]

In all seriousness, I think this year may be the year. Anyone checked out Ubuntu 8 Alpha? From what I've seen so far, 8 is shaping up quite...perfectly. For the first time everything on my desktop and laptop works. The new "restricted drivers" option in the menu makes this quite easy. Just had to select "use" for the graphics drivers on my ATI mobile chipset, and "use" for the broadcomm43xx wireless I've got that has been ever such a pain forever. Ok, I had to tinker with the broadcomm, but basically it involved installing bcm43xx-fwcutter over bcm43-fwcutter and back and forth a couple of times and rebooting; but now it's finally working (never had this before, stumped even my linux guru friend).

Compiz is integrated right off the bat, and on my laptop at least, is stable as a rock (this may be Nvidia's fault on the desktop; they've been working with AIGLX for less time than ATI). Looks great, and takes zero understanding to set up beyond "turn on". Want more effects? Download the CompizConfig Settings Manager and turn on lots of neat extra stuff like Expose.

I've never done this before, but Sunday after seeing how great 8-alpha was working, I completely wiped XP off my laptop and installed 8. Runs faster, even with the Compiz.

Hibernate Just Works too (suspend is still broken), which is the first ever for me. Maybe my hardware is simply getting older to the point that the OSS drivers have matured for it, but I'd like to think it's a bit more than this judging by near flawless performance on my brand new top of the line desktop that I built.

Definitely check it out come April when it's released. Debian (and Linux) is making great strides.

Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[roadkill_cr]

"it's looking at whether Windows 7 favors Microsoft apps over third party programs"

Doesn't Apple very heavily lean towards Apple software?

(This isn't starting flaming, this is a legitimate question - what separates Apple from Microsoft in these regards?)

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[Lectoid]

Well yea, but that's because Apple is better. I thought everyone knew that.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[betterunixthanunix]

Apple is separated from Microsoft in that they have a small market share, and are not using these tactics to maintain their dominance. It is fair to point out that open source OSes generally favor open source software (that is, systems like Fedora only put open source programs in the repositories).

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[Shados]

"In thst thry have a small market share". Thats it. They ARE using strongarm tactics to maintain their dominance, especially with their satellite products (iTune, iPods, etc). But by law, it IS fine as long as their market share is small (and are having issues in certain countries already over iPods and whatsnot).

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[betterunixthanunix]

I wouldn't call the 50% market share of the iPod and iTunes to be "dominance." They are a market leader, but dominance is a bit of a stretch; certainly, they are on a different order of magnitude than Microsoft when it comes to Windows.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[LightWing]

The approach. Look at the motivations behind it. For Microsoft it's both an issue of control and of money (which go hand in hand if you're the biggest dog pulling).

For Apple you could say the same, except that they don't hold the same amount of users Microsoft does.

Now, if that's so where does this distinction of 'better than' come into play? Where, there are a fewfacets to consider.

Morality. Does the company in question make any considerations based on morality, regardless of whether or not such considerations may consume company resources without the explicit expectation of a financial or strategic gain? You could also say this is a form of selflessness. The ability to think on equal terms with moral values to real money. In this, the company would have high moral values that would in most cases put monetary value and gain to second place.

There has to be some consideration given to the rights of the users. Does the OS company work to suppress what the user is and is not able to do? Or are they more comfortable with allowing the user to make their own choices?

A company less concerned with user rights would want a monopoly hold on the software their users have available to them. Microsoft has been a pretty good one for that.

I don't know though, I guess if you had to generalize things one might suggest that Apple seems to care a little more about what they are doing than Microsoft. Certainly they are both businesses and are guilty of some business level ambitions.

It's like the difference between a good book and a bad one. If the writer cares about the story (assuming he/she is a competent enough writer), their writing will generally be much more sincere than a writer who's doing it to 'make it big'. Sincerity. That's a good way of saying it, actually.... you could call Microsoft more insincere than Apple.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[644bd346996]

Apple sells and bundles a lot of applications, but it is really easy to switch to a third party app, and your preferences are honored. For example, if you set a mozilla-based browser as the default, you will never end up with Safari opening up, and the only time Webkit will get used is in the help system or generating a preview in the Finder. (Granted, on windows, it's pretty much the same, except that it is not uncommon for apps to launch IE even when Firefox is the default.)

In some cases, it seems that Apple has made it too easy for third party apps to become the default. Stuffit in particular is almost viral in the way it claims all compressed files as it's own. I'd prefer the OS to ask me for confirmation before letting Stuffit rape my prefs just because I want to use a piece of legacy software in a .sit archive.

Perhaps one of the benefits of Apple's approach is that the underlying frameworks are far more separated from the front-end applications. Services like Quicktime and Webkit are usable by all apps, with relatively few undocumented APIs. Those frameworks are also more extendable, which makes for better interoperability. (eg. there are free Quicktime components that add oog support to all applications that use QT, even iTunes.) Webkit is open-source, so if you fix a rendering bug or download a nightly with a new feature, all applications can take advantage of that (even the proprietary apps).

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[Seraphim_72]

What is 90+% of market share Alex?

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[maxume]

It looks to me that the biggest difference is that they are treated like a hardware vendor, whereas Microsoft is treated as an operating system vendor. So Apple is competing with Dell, and just happens to write lots of the software that they include with their systems.

If(when?) things reach the point where Apple hardware comprises a significant portion of the overall installed base, you will see people claiming that any OS upgrades that they sell separately from hardware need to be subjected to antitrust regulation.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[Zaphod-AVA]

Not only because Apple doesn't have a monopoly, but Microsoft has been *convicted* of abusing it's monopoly.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[kyb]

There is no difference in tactics. In fact, what Microsoft is accused of is perfectly reasonable as long as you are not a monopoly. As soon as you are a monopoly you are held to higher standards of behaviour, because otherwise the market gets broken.

So, the difference is not in tactics, it's in the simple fact that MS is a monopoly and apple isn't.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[slaingod]

I would argue there is a difference. You can have a monopoly position in a market and not be a monopolist. A monopolist is an entity that uses their market dominance to gain an unfair advantage and to prevent competition.

So for instance: Microsoft would override Netscape being set as the default browser, every time it started up. To my knowledge Apple hasn't done that kind of thing (ignore a user's wishes and launch its program instead). Apple makes its own hardware, so you can't claim that they are using their OS dominance of that hardware to bully the makers of the hardware, other than in the sense that they make deals with their suppliers as a normal course of business. (I am aware of Apple clones back when, just not sure if there is any relevance.) Computers and OS's have traditionally been written exclusively for their hardware, so even though things have changed recently, it doesn't make their business model less valid just a little outdated.

I'm sure that Apple has done things that are anti-competitive: Thinking of the iPhone SDK right now, it doesn't allow programs to run in the background...I don't own an iPhone, but I imagine that audio playback doesn't stop if you switch to your calendar....but if I wanted to write my own media player for the iPhone, would it turn off when I switched apps? In that sense I would consider them to be anti-competitive. Not to mention the 30% vig on apps.

iTunes has a market dominant position, perhaps even a monopoly, but unless they are using that monopoly to actively deny others to the marker by preventing others from making deals with the record labels, then they aren't being monopolistic.

(Disclaimer: Not a Mac Fanboi - I have one dual boot mac laptop, and 4 Windows boxes.)

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[644bd346996]

For what it's worth, that hidden API simply duplicated a flag that apps can set in their conf files.

And certainly Apple can't hold a candle to fully open source systems like Linux when it comes to openness. But compared to other proprietary operating systems, Apple's stuff is pretty good. And as ugly as they may be, the kernel and Unix userland for OS X are open source and do function without the proprietary Apple stuff.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[xbytor]

Apple is not a convicted monopolist. MS is.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[eddie12208]

As we see from MS's file formats, Microsoft is all about vendor lock-in. MS was never intending on supporting its WMV video format on linux, for example, AFAIK. Contrast this with Apple: their file formats are much more standardized. For example, iTunes rips audio in AAC (by default, I believe), which is an open standard. Apple also uses MPEG-4 video as its preferred video format.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[TheCybernator]

(This isn't starting flaming, this is a legitimate question - what separates Apple from Microsoft in these regards?) Apple doesn't have the bigger pie.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[dissy]

"it's looking at whether Windows 7 favors Microsoft apps over third party programs"

Doesn't Apple very heavily lean towards Apple software?

(This isn't starting flaming, this is a legitimate question - what separates Apple from Microsoft in these regards?) No (*)

And while you might not be intending to flame, that is effectively what you are doing.
It is hard to defend something when you yourself provide no reason for why you think that, or why you would say that.
(*) This is why my answer is equally as terse.

The only cases I am aware of where anyone even claims this to be true, is on slashdot, which I think its safe to say does not have a history of getting facts straight in article summaries. Quite the opposite in fact.
Pretty much all of the apple bashing articles on slashdot can be disproven simply by reading the article it links to, which states the exact opposite from what the summary said.

OS X does come with a lot of bundled apps, but there is nothing in place to cause them to be used over any other. That is all user-configurable, and those settings do not revert back to apples apps once an install/update is made.

Even the last two articles posted on slashdot specifically claiming this, one with safari APIs, and another with one particular gui API that was discontinued, were shown to be 100% factually incorrect.

If you have any other examples, please feel free to share. But kindly do not just blindly search slashdot and link to the summaries, actually follow and post the links, which in half the cases will show it as the bunk it is right away.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which API do you use to set the default browser on OSX?
No, "Open Safari, go to its preferences" doesn't count. Nor does _LSCopyDefaultSchemeHandlerURL - google for it; there's no actual documentation.

Yes, you can do it in Mozilla-based apps - because they did the legwork of figuring out how things worked. (I found the API by looking through Mozilla, btw.)

On Windows? There's a well-known registry location, plus a new API for Vista. Linux? gconf, or whatever KDE uses, depending on your apps.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[unknownsoldierX]

9/10 apps I use on Windows open my default browser (Firefox). If a third party app opens IE when you have another browser set as default, then that's the fault of a lazy/stupid programmer.

Re:Why is Apple Any Better, By These Standards?

[roadkill_cr]

I believe you've misinterpreted the point of my comment. My comment was a question. It was not a flame. Just like I said in my post.

In fact, you've perfectly hit upon why I asked the question - I had no concrete reasons, beyond personal observations that Apple seems to push their software pretty hard for Apple buyers, for thinking that Apple is different from Microsoft. That's why it was a question, and not a flame. I was querying the Slashdot crowd for more information.

I kindly ask that in the future, take this in mind: when someone asks a question about Apple's legitimacy, it's not always an accusation. Sometimes it's an honest request for information.

Also, for a "terse" answer your response is pretty long...

Forcing IE

[diodeus]

"For instance, it eliminates several browser overrides where Vista ignored users' default preferences and automatically launched Explorer."

Yup, just try clicking on a link in a Messenger conversation with or without Vista. You get IE, like it or not.

Re:Forcing IE

[VoltCurve]

uhh, I get Firefox when I do that. Maybe you just suck?

Re:Forcing IE

[denis-The-menace]

FYI: In any .NET application, you click an URL, IE is used. This is regardless if you have FF (or what have you) set as the default browser.

Re:Forcing IE

[WalterGR]

Yup, just try clicking on a link in a Messenger conversation with or without Vista. You get IE, like it or not.

Likely this is just because a lazy programmer hardcoded it to run IE, rather than going through the proper API to figure out the user's browser preference and launch that.

Not a very nice thing to do? Sure. Intentionally malicious? Probably not.

Re:Forcing IE

[nojjynb]

It isn't just Messenger... my Trilly links open in IE, which I hate! I could almost understand if no browser was open and MS wanted to open their own browser, and I'd probably tolerate it, but clicking on a link and expecting it to open a new tab in FF only to have the Craptastict IE launch is completely ridiculous.

Re:Forcing IE

[Blue Stone]

Whenever I download updates through Windows Update (Vista) - at least ones that patch IE7 I think - Microsoft installs the IE7 icon in my quickstart menu - despite me having deleted everything Internet Explorer off my desktop (purposefully and with malice :) ).

Re:Forcing IE

[Your.Master]

This is the first I've seen or heard of this, and I've run Firefox & MSN messenger (now Windows Live! Messenger) for a looooooong time. I had some old application, though, that wanted to launch IE every time on other computers. My OS install was on D: drive instead of the C: drive, so I put a Firefox shortcut at C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe and it ran Firefox for me :).

Re:Forcing IE

[Thaelon]

Likely this is just because a lazy programmer hardcoded it to run IE, rather than going through the proper API to figure out the user's browser preference and launch that.

Not a very nice thing to do? Sure. Intentionally malicious? Probably not.

You'd be right if the software didn't get delivered that way.

For that to happen it means it has to get written that way by a lazy programmer. Then it has to (presumably) pass QA like that.

So not only is it getting written, but it's getting QA'd. Sure there's still wiggle room for it to accidentally slip by, but compare the chances of that "slipping by" to the chances of a hard-coded Firefox call to slip by.

Re:Forcing IE

[RoboRay]

Consider the probability that a MS QA tester would test using any browser other than IE...

I'd say pretty much zero.

Therefore, internal QA testing at MS would not have discovered the problem of links always opening in IE instead of the correct default browser.

It's a combination of lazy programming and indadequate QA. Nothing malicious; just the MS attitude of "there's no reason to use any browser other than ours so we don't need to program to or test anything else."

Re:Forcing IE

[SEMW]

FYI: In any .NET application, you click an URL, IE is used. This is regardless if you have FF (or what have you) set as the default browser. Bollocks. Counterexample: I've just tried opening a URL from the About box in Paint.NET (the only obviously .NET program I have that I can think of at the moment), and it opened in my default browser (Opera, FYI).

Did you actually mean "One particular application I have does this, and it happens to be .NET, so I'm going to assume with little justification that it's a general feature of the programming framework rather than the particular program"?

Re:Forcing IE

[Dak RIT]

I actually just tried doing this and about 5 seconds after I deleted or changed the name of iexplore.exe, a new one would appear in the same directory with the proper name. Even if I put another file there with the name iexplore.exe, a new one would still appear that was actually IE.

It's BS like this in Windows that really annoys me.

Re:Forcing IE

[LingNoi]

Paint.net defaults to IE..

From shell.cs in paint.net...

if (!success)
{
const string shellFileLoc = @"%WINDIR%\explorer.exe";
string shellExePath = "(n/a)";

try
{
      shellExePath = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(shellFileLoc);
      Execute(owner, shellExePath, quotedUrl, executePrivilege, ExecuteWaitType.ReturnImmediately);
      success = true;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
      Tracing.Ping("Exception while using method 2 to launch url through '" + shellExePath + "', " + quotedUrl + ", : " + ex.ToString());
      success = false;
}

Re:Forcing IE

[Mazin07]

I thought we went over how explorer != iexplore.

Try running "explorer google.com" and see what happens.

I care...

[jfbilodeau]

I care on multiple accounts:

1. I care enough not to use Windows or MS Office because I enjoy my computing freedom.
2. I realize that most people don't care what an OS is and what a web browser is. They also don't realize that there is no need for anti-virus and the MS Tax.
3. I care enough that I will NOT hack Windows to run my applications. I will not fix the code that Microsoft purposefully broke. Let the house of glass collapse under its own weight.

J-F

Re:I care...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the house of glass collapse under its own weight. it may be shoddy, but it ain't glass, it's transparent aluminum!

Apple is the, " Underdog"

[wattrlz]

Apple's greatest virtue is that it's not microsoft. It doesn't have any other ethical merit I'm aware of, but for many people that's enough.

Re:Apple is the, " Underdog"

[snoyberg]

There's more to it than that. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, so legally they are in different categories.

Re:Apple is the, " Underdog"

[daveb]

oh come on!

Would Apple be able to withstand any of the things that MS were convicted of?

The ONLY thing that Apple has in it's defense is that hardly anyone uses them. Marketshare is a pretty weak defense against the type of anti-compeditive behaviour that Apple deal in. The way they've locked out compeditors from adding apps to ipod is downright criminal.

Windows 7 is due sometime...

[subl33t]

...around 2010 -ish

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Overreacting...

[Sta7ic]

Most of these "flaws" were likely caused by some programmer who made it work and had more interest in getting something off his list than interest in "furthering the visibility of Microsoft products".

Not everyone likes to speculate on the backstory, though, so I guess the gov't gets to run around with this 'til they're happy, whether or not it does anything really constructive.

OT: Re:Who cares

[snoyberg]

What's the name of the book? Sounds like something I might be interested in.

Re:OT: Re:Who cares

[psychodelicacy]

"A History of Modern Computing" by Paul E. Ceruzzi. It's not bad at all, though it assumes a little bit more knowledge than I have (being an academic working in medieval studies.) So I have to keep looking things up on Wikipedia, like how a transistor works! In contrast, it might well be a little too basic for the average slashdotter.

Re:this is total BS

[psychodelicacy]

I sort of agree with you, except that t seems to me that most places you buy computers sell them with Microsoft software pre-installed. (Unless they're selling Macs, obv.) So a) the average computer user thinks that Windows is the best option (otherwise why would computer manufacturers always ship with it), b) the average computer user gets used to using Windows, and c) the average computer user pays extra for their system because they think they need Windows with it.

If computers were sold without an OS, and the customer given the choice of buying Windows or having a Linux distro on a free CD, especially if they were buying from one of these places that'll come to your house and set it all up for you, I think Linux would be doing much better. And the consumers would get a better deal.

Re:this is total BS

[jgarra23]

I sort of agree with you, except that t seems to me that most places you buy computers sell them with Microsoft software pre-installed. (Unless they're selling Macs, obv.) So a) the average computer user thinks that Windows is the best option (otherwise why would computer manufacturers always ship with it), b) the average computer user gets used to using Windows, and c) the average computer user pays extra for their system because they think they need Windows with it.


Thanks for refining my point here... I have some more thoughts on the issue. Generally anti-trusts are used to break a locked-in industry. Think US steel or Standard Oil or Ma-Bell... these were all instances where not only was there a huge corporation which mobbed the market and supply but also where there are/were huge operational costs & barriers to breaking in the industry. To write software the barrier is *MUCH* lower and sometimes, non-existent! :) So here we have an industry where there is a juggernaut in-place however there *ARE* viable alternatives which do quite well on their own, so what if they don't have the same usage-adoption rates...

I believe what we have with Microsoft is more of a McDonalds or Coca-Cola thing going on than an actual monopoly. We have three companies in the last sentence which, through great marketing and no business ethics, have nearly cornered a market which there are still viable alternatives to- it's just that the public is either ignorant or too stupid to use them (the alternatives) and yet we have no need for anti-trust in any of these markets because the alternatives still do just fine.

Re:this is total BS

[cbart387]

They're out in force today. ;) I saw another post that was on the side of Microsoft and they came down hard on it as well. I guess that's what meta-moderation is for... (though I have yet to get one of the hiveminds in my meta-mod)

Re:this is total BS

[psychodelicacy]

I guess the difference is that McDonalds and Coca Cola's products haven't become almost-essential tools for a wide variety of people. I'd have trouble getting a job if I didn't know how to use a computer, and so would a vast number of other people. Knowing the difference between a Big Mac and a Bacon Cheeseburger is less likely to be a feature of my CV. Using a computer is a priority for people, so Microsoft not only has a massive share of the market, it also has a relatively captive audience. Because most computers come with Windows pre-installed, and because Windows is so well-known, that is what most people will use in their workplaces. This encourages them to use Windows at home, too. In contrast, the fact that there's a Coke vending machine in your office doesn't mean that you won't drink Pepsi at home - the choice of drink has no impact on your work efficiency and employability.

I don't know whether there's an answer to this. Different OSs will always work differently, and most people will learn to use the one that they will encounter more frequently. Getting employers to shift to Linux will never be easy, and until they do, employees will favour Windows as the OS to learn. Microsoft is lucky that, despite the fact that it now faces controls, it managed to manoeuvre itself into a position where people will choose Windows regardless of the fact that there are other free and more efficient options. Isn't legislating against Microsoft now like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?

i just don't get it

[ImTheDarkcyde]

I just can't figure out the issue. Windows ships with IE, OSX ships with Safari. Because more people use Windows, Microsoft should remove its first party program and OSX shouldn't?

I know what the real crying is about, and can sympathize that third party solitaire and redundant media players have no market, but I don't want to pay for a stripped down OS.

Re:i just don't get it

[mjwx]

I just can't figure out the issue. Windows ships with IE, OSX ships with Safari.

Yes, yes you still don't get it.

AFAIK OSX can operate without safari, Windows cannot operate without IE. To have IE removed would be great but most of us (including the EU) would settle if IE was removable

Because more people are forced to use Windows

Yes, but this is only half of the reason, MS is deliberately and knowingly (pre-meditated) leveraging their monopoly to squeeze out competitors (illegal in the EU, and used to be illegal in the State). The other half is that IE is still the single biggest entry vector for malware on MS windows.

Slow News Day?

[mh1997]

First I read an article about Google thinking spammers and and other bad guys will use new tricks to target people and now an article about an overseer actually overseeing.

Can't wait for "Birdwatcher caught watching birds!"

Virtual machine

[DrYak]

You might also want to try running Windows XP inside a virtual machine (VirtualBox and VMWare come to mind).

Those can run your windows applications (Tax software) and even have modes where the Windows' windows are drawn as normal windows on the X-Window screen (instead of being only on the virtual screen inside the virtual machine) and thus mostly look-like native application (visually similar to what you get by running them with Wine, although the backend is completely different).

Also, a lot of these application, thanks to stuff like LIBUSB, enable to have your actual USB hardware (iPod, Digital Camera) be "connected" on the virtual machine and be accessed from Windows XP as if you where actually plugging the hardware into a genuine computer (VirtualBox does this, we use this capability to run a HP ScanJet 5400c scanner - whose driver aren't perfect for Linux/Sane and are non-existant for Vista/Twain).

Basically, instead of an actual "grudge" machine, you have an emulator doing the exact same job.

Re:Virtual machine

[gstoddart]

You might also want to try running Windows XP inside a virtual machine (VirtualBox and VMWare come to mind).

Well, both of my current PCs are about 3-5 years old, I can't remember exactly. At the time, the costs for a machine which could do that would have been prohibitive and that software wasn't freely available.

My buying philosophy is to buy near end-of-life machines (because I'm never going to tax the CPU) and put a large amount of RAM and HD in them, and then just hook them up to a KVM. I buy a sub $400 CDN machine and let it last as long as possible.

If I end up replacing both of them at once, I might go that route. At the time, the separate XP box was just the path of least resistance and I got a sweet deal on a KVM (2 port *with* two cables for ~ $75 CDN).

I mean, nowadays, a $400 CDN machine is a 2.33GHz core duo with 2GB of RAM and 250GB of HD -- except for electricity considerations, it's a pretty cheap system for a lot of bang. (In fact, it's about 2x the last machine I bought.) Besides, two towers heat my office nicely in the winter. :-P

Cheers

I've done code reviews before for gov't contracts

[bberens]

This is the main method of the application. This is the ultra-secret API call which calls the secret x86 instruction set we held Intel at gunpoint for which makes our applications run in awesome mode. This is our logger.

2 weeks later...

Approved!

Lost causes = Code base screwed after Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

The Lost Cause is what way can MSFT go now that Vista has poluted everything.
Vista is the same as Intel's Itanium.
Itanium (aka P7) was supposed to replaced the 686 architecture and essentially be the "786". Intel was fortunate. When it because obvious that Paul Thomas and Albert Yu (IIRC. it has been a while) had fucked Itanium up hard, they could just ignore it and let another team (Oregon) move on to a proper 786, and leave iA64 as an alternative architecture.

However, MSFT has all its eggs in one basket. Since "merging" DOS-based Win9x and WinNT into WinXP, they have only one horse to ride. And with Vista that horse has become lame and diseased. WinNT wasn't the BEST horse but it worked more than not; certainly more than Win9x. However, BVista is fucked and everyone and their Mom knows it. But, once they released Vista to the market place they are stuck with it. And they are stuck with it for all time.

So, they have to start Windows 7 with the Fucked Up Vista code base, and don't have the luxury of starting with the relatively clean WinXP code base. All the mistakes they made in Vista, we are all going to have to live with for at least a decade if not two.

How about Apple?

[docdude316]

Now I really don't care one way or the other, but I've always wonder why Apple never gets sued over these types of things. The bundle just about everything you can think of into OS X, and up until recently you couldn't even install another OS on a Mac if you wanted to. Why don't they get looked at for noncompetetive and monopolistc practices?

Re:How about Apple?

[rob1980]

Because they're not Microsoft, therefore they get a pass.

Re:How about Apple?

[MightyMartian]

Because, with 10% market share, they aren't even in the same galaxy as Microsoft.

Ch-rist, but why is this such a hard concept? Or is this just Redmond's shills attacking /. with intentionally retarded sounding arguments?

Re:How about Apple?

[docdude316]

OK take Macs out of this equation. Nobody has seriously threatened sanction Apple over their anti-competitive and monopolistic practices when it comes to the iPod. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same thing Microsoft does.

Re:How about Apple?

[PieSquared]

Because you need a monopoly to get looked at for monopolistic practices? Only place they're even close is with the iPod, and while it's the favorite by far the rest of MP3 Players together make up enough of the market to make it not a monopoly. And they don't do anything anti-competitive with the iPod anyway - it plays standard files, and the interface with it is known so no lock-in.

Re:How about Apple?

[SoulRider]

Apple is not a monopoly in the mp3 player business, they are not even close to a monopoly. They are only the industry leader in the mp3 player market. There are a plethora of music stores and players available to consumers. Hell I can even burn my iTunes purchases to disc as mp3s and play them on any player that can play an mp3. If apple was a monopoly and they had the ethics of Microsoft the only music format available would be AAC and it would only play on iPods. There would be no other choices (sort of like what MS is trying to do with WMA).

On the other hand, Microsoft has used their industry dominance in operating systems to squash Netscape (include a browser in their OS), kill Lotus (nastygrams when running 1-2-3 on a windows/DOS system), bankrupt WordStar, trash Kodak (picture editor) and many other nasty tricks they have pulled over the years.

Re:How about Apple?

[GaryPatterson]

Lobby your local politician then. I'm not sure if Apple could be classed as having a monopoly in the mp3 player world, but it might need people like you to get that ball rolling.

Any monopoly can be abused, and if Apple has a monopoly in the mp3 player market, their tactics deserve some attention.

Re:this is total BS

[RightSaidFred99]

You're exactly right, most of these dweebs are just so into their little OS and so bitter about mainstream use of MS OS's that they are more than a little insane about the whole issue. There are, provably, alternatives to Windows. Free ones, commercial ones, all sorts. The purpose of antitrust and monopoly laws is to prevent a single provider from cornering, on the supply side, an item. What we have with Windows is a _demand_ side "monopoly" where people choose Windows in the face of a multitude of alternatives. It's nonsensical and logically inconsistent to claim Microsoft should be regulated as a monopoly.

If you look through the facile postings by the anti-MS folks who try so hard to sound rational, their argument always backs up to the fact that people _want_ Windows. They don't need it. If you _want_ something, you can't call that something a monopoly. No amount of posturing about 10 year old issues MS had with OEMs and exclusivity deals or make-believe shit about supposedly hidden APIs (note, an API is not a protocol - if I were MS I wouldn't give out protocol details either, you can't change them once some asshole starts depending on them), etc... will change the fact that if you don't want to purchase MS products there is nothing preventing you from using any of multitude alternatives.

Re:this is total BS

[RightSaidFred99]

Exactly. Here are key points when arguing with some imbecile pretending the US govt needs to "protect" us from MS.

1. There are alternatives. Countless, many of which are free.
2. The mythical "John Q" being an idiot isn't a reason to regulate a "monopoly".
3. The idea of a demand-based monopoly in the face of countless alternatives is laughable.
4. The idea of a monopoly over a piece of intellectual property is more than laughable. Monopolies are all cool and whatnot for real, limited resources e.g. oil, food, water, etc... but not something you can pull out of the air or imagine up.
5. A monopoly would imply pricing power. Microsoft has no pricing power. Linux is free, it's hard to have pricing power in the face of a free alternative. Apples prices don't change based on MS's whims, either.

Really, they have an untenable position in claiming MS should be regulated. It's all based on emotion and poor arguments. But seeing the same tired old arguments from these people about the "convicted monopolist" (a meaningless phrase they use over and over) really gets too boring to bother replying.

Re:this is total BS

[jgarra23]

Really, they have an untenable position in claiming MS should be regulated. It's all based on emotion and poor arguments. But seeing the same tired old arguments from these people about the "convicted monopolist" (a meaningless phrase they use over and over) really gets too boring to bother replying.


I agree with all your statements including the one above however I feel I need to add one thing, I don't believe that the anti-trust people are driven by emotion and poor arguments alone. I believe there is something much more sinister than that and it is the underlying agenda of trying to steal from someone else's pie.

I believe that this is just another attempt to fine MS and take a piece of their profits (read: tax, theft, whatever). I believe that the EU fines MS for these bogus situation simply to fund their pork projects and the USA for the same reason. Maybe someone at Microsoft isn't going to lunch with the right person, etc... either way I believe that it's turned into some ugly political power sort of thing.

Who has the biggest pockets? That's who we'll steal from because the average reactionary person wont care/notice.

Oh btw, I don't run any MS products @ home. At work it's a different story but hey... it's not my business...

Re:this is total BS

[RightSaidFred99]

True. So here's how it works. Basically, MS's competitors rile up their local officials to try to get some kind of business advantage out of it. This happens in the US and in the EU. If you look in the US at the states that have tried to go after MS, it's easy enough to "follow the money" to figure out why they're doing it. It's even easier in the EU - MS is a US company, they want to help their companies compete and get a nice chunk of change in he process.

In my arguments, though, I was mostly referring to the typical slashdweeb IANAL moron who tries to pretend he's an antitrust expert and a free market champion and gives the same old tired arguments. In the end, it's all bullshit - they just hate Microsoft because what they see as a superior OS is an also-ran due to the market's desire for a consistent, single OS.

RTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

The watchdogs have rubber teeth. So far they've done nothing and MS ignores them.

The story also notes that Vista SP1 includes a number of changes that were added to satisfy the committee.

abusive monopoly

[vanadaar]

I think what is lost in this is what constitutes the anti-competitive abuse. Is it abuse to bundle the software? No. Is it abuse to make the software better? No. Outspending your competition in marketing is not abuse, and neither is bundling IE with Windows.

The abuse comes when they use their market share to force users hands. (consumers, businesses, etc...) Abuse is ignoring user preferences and forcing the use of a Microsoft product. Abuse is forcing manufacturers into agreements to stifle the manufacturers ability to offer alternatives. All of which Microsoft has done for nearly a decade, Europe just has the balls to call them out.

All OS's bundle products, Windows, Ubuntu, OSX, etc. The difference however is that they don't go out of their way to inconvenience you for choosing alternatives. If you want to show the market you don't approve of their business policies, buy a Mac, or an Ubuntu Dell. Either is more than fine for (I'm guessing) 90% of consumers. Most consumers only browse and send email. And there are still commercial products that match Office feature for feature. I personally have no Microsoft products in my house, clearing my conscience. In a perfect world, that shouldn't matter.

Re:this is total BS

[cptdondo]

Hmmm... It's not a choice when it's the only thing offered. Dell, etc. only offer Windows. (With few exceptions).

When I see a pulldown at every on-line retailer that has

OS:

None
Linux (Ubuntu|whatever)
Windows Vista

then what you say will make sense. Until then, it's arrant nonsense. MS has worked hard to make sure that it's the *only* choice people have, to the point of destroying competitive products by nearly any means, including stealing, buy-out and close, and giving away their own version.

Re:this is total BS

[dhavleak]

Hmmm... It's not a choice when it's the only thing offered. Dell, etc. only offer Windows. (With few exceptions). Who's forcing you to buy a dell?

If dell adds an OS to your choices, there are serious cost implications for them. Test the h/w on that OS, automate your image installations for various configurations, more patch distribution, much larger volume of customer software issues to troubleshoot (and therefore much more training for their support staff). Why should they do that for a choice only 1% of their customers will make?

Re:this is total BS

[dhavleak]

When I see a pulldown at every on-line retailer that has

OS:
None
Linux (Ubuntu|whatever)
Windows Vista

then what you say will make sense. Until then, it's arrant nonsense Now that's nonsense. Consider the support cost (to the OEM) for these options, and then see if that makes sense.

MS has worked hard to make sure that it's the *only* choice people have, to the point of destroying competitive products by nearly any means, including stealing (emphasis mine), buy-out and close, and giving away their own version. Don't let your hatred cloud you this bad dude. Just because its repeated so often doesn't make it true. If you think it's true, I suggest you back up your claim. In fact forget stealing, you probably won't be able to even come up with an example of the buy-out-and-close strategy except for some arcane thing that nobody really cares about (which means it got integrated in an invisible way -- not closed out).

Monopolies allowed, abusive behaviour prohibited

[Hucko]

It isn't so much that Microsoft produced a superior product (agreed that at the time they did regards to IE and Netscape -- I left before Media Player was usable though), it was the deviousness of, at the same time, ensuring that other products were targeted to not work as in the case of DR Dos, and Stacker compression. I believe it occurred with Netscape among a host of others too.
(Why pray tell, do I not list them? I left because of the unethical behaviour and only wish to encourage others to be so altruistic. I'm not on a witch hunt.)

It has been a common practice for Microsoft; rather than beat their competitor purely on feature and function (Why yes! I believe they could!), at the same time deliberately suppress a competitor's product ability to work.

Not what the EU is saying

[BlackSnake112]

The EU is saying that ALL OS's should give ALL competing products an even ground. By their own stated rules the EU should also be going after Apple. It is not. I think it is a bigger target vs smaller target. Apple is currently a smaller target. Let's see what the EU does after they finish with microsoft. If they ever finish with microsoft.

Cool! A Sarah Connor/Summer Glau Love Scene!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I thought Windows 7 was relased around 1998? Or was it 2003? Now I'm confused...

Microsoft Shoots. And hits a double-triple today

[texaport]

They are due for a new OS. With today's Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft reached #99 and #100 updates for anybody running their latest Service Pack who does a new install.

And their March update also includes #99 and #100 for their Malicious Removal Tool, with the addition of Vundo and Virtumonde detection that runs with each and every WindowsUpdate download.
Right on schedule with their 3 year plan to break all computing records -- what else is there to do now, but start working on an OS that might reach 1000 exploits in record time.

iexplore.exe != explorer.exe

[SEMW]

%WINDIR%\explorer.exe is a process that encompasses both the Windows shell and Windows explorer, a file manager.

%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe is the web browser.

Don't confuse the two.