Microsoft Edge, HTML5, and DRM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is building its new browser, Edge, with the intention of avoiding many of the flaws that plagued Internet Explorer over its long and tumultuous life. Part of this involves moving away from plug-ins, and Edge will not support ActiveX. Instead, they're focusing on interoperable media, and that means non-plug-in video players that meet HTML5 specs. Of course, not all video players want to disseminate their content for free, which means: DRM. Microsoft's Edge team has published a new post explaining how they'll be handling support for DRM and "premium media" in the new browser.

They say, "Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge support DASH, MSE, EME and CENC natively, and other major browsers ship implementations of MSE and CENC compliant EME. This support allows developers to build plug-in free web video apps that runs across a huge range of platforms and devices, with each MSE/EME implementation built on top of a different media pipeline and DRM provider. In the days when DRM systems used proprietary file formats and encryption methods, this variation in DRM providers by browser would have presented a significant issue. With the development and use of Common Encryption (CENC), the problem is substantially reduced because the files are compressed in standard formats and encrypted using global industry standards. The service provider issues the keys and licenses necessary to consume the content in a given browser, but the website code, content and encryption keys are common across all of them, regardless of which DRM is in use."

Comments

obligatory Good Luck With That

[turkeydance]

DRM and all that.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[ganjadude]

they spend all this time on writing DRM code... which will be blown out within a week anyway why not better spend that money and time working on actually making the browser better????

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I just don't care anymore. I don't want any of it, DRM, social crap, "privacy". At this point I just want to downgrade to something reasonably HTML5 compatible and not too gunked up with crap. Security be damned I'll be blissful in not worrying that the next update/browser/etc is going to screw with the way I want to use my browser.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[Z80a]

They must pretend the thing is safe to placate the fury of the big studios, or else.
Of course, this don't mean the thing must actually work, just sound harsh enough.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[lgw]

they spend all this time on writing DRM code... which will be blown out within a week anyway why not better spend that money and time working on actually making the browser better????

No one's going to bother breaking the DRM on a video stream. Why bother? If you want the content without paying, torrent it, rather than messing with streams with quality/bitrate that can change for reasons outside your control.

Plus, since normal people don't care at all about DRM nerdwhining, they just want it to play when they click, arguably MS is improving the user experience here. Ideally, they'd include a native module letting you right-click on any DRMd stream and automatically torrent it while you watch, but I somehow doubt they're that forward thinking.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[Anne Thwacks]

Me too.

Lately I keep having a popup saying "this site contains flash and your add-on needs an update because the version you have is insecure" but the update mechanism does not actually work (Iceweasel, Debian).

This has the fortunate side effect of making the site load faster, and much easier to to navigate, because it does not keep refreshing! (The worst offender is "The Independent" which I often had to abandon reading because of constant redraws - why the hell do people build these unuseable websites?)

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[Bert64]

People will crack streamed DRM if there is content that's either only available there, or is available there first... If you look at most torrent sites these days you will see all kinds of content that has been ripped from streaming media sites, all of which used DRM and yet still got cracked and made available in a more convenient form via torrents.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[lgw]

Fair enough, I wasn't thinking about TV shows, and obviously that's how a lot of people still watch GoT, after HBO so cleverly spent years forcing a bunch of people who wanted to pay to instead torrent. How common is that though? I'm struggling to think of other examples.

Re:obligatory Good Luck With That

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's going to bother breaking the DRM on a video stream. Why bother?

I would imagine there are plenty of people who are willing to pay for the service, but:

- want (for any number of reasons) to use their preferred video player rather than the site's lousy Javascript interface
- want to cache the entire video before watching it, rather than having it interrupted by unpredictable network delays
- want to watch it in higher quality than is possible for their network connection to stream in real time

That's without counting people who want to time-shift (download a whole season of a TV show to watch later, so that they'll be able to see the entire thing even if the site's license expires) as well as those who don't care about legality but prefer not to deal with angry letters from their ISP / getting sued / getting kicked off the campus network.

No way in hell

[stevez67]

What they're glossing over with their review is that adblocker extensions, password managers, extensions that prevent video from autoplaying and etc. will not be available. And I won't use Edge because if I can't control the behavior of my web browser I won't use that web browser.

Re:No way in hell

[Lennie]

How do you mean no extensions ?

Now I don't know what Edge will support or does support, but the first article I found looking on Google for Microsoft Edge extensions tells me they support:
http://imacros.net/microsoft-e...

"Edge will have extensions, “Javascript and HTML based” – essentially very much like Chrome. No C# support."

This means, similar model to Firefox and Chrome. Actually, many extensions work in both.

Maybe you are confusing plugins with extensions.

Plugins are like Flash, Java applets, Acrobat Reader all that stuff.

You know the stuff that is usually the least secure in most currently deployed browsers.

Re:No way in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC as I'm not sure this is public, but MS has told their corporate partners that the plugin APIs will not be ready when Windows 10 releases, and they have given no date other than 'after release.'

Re:No way in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

All the stuff that needs weekly security updates, even though they are just for browsing the web..

Re:No way in hell

[mlts]

Here is the big question: How do the plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java, Acrobat, DRM video players) run? Are they running in the same context as the browser (like current IE), run in a separate process (like Firefox), or run in a more isolated VM where each tab and window is in its memory space (Chrome)?

The Web browser is the first source of attack, and one of the primary means for malware to get on a system. Even with the low security context that IE had starting in Vista, that wasn't sufficient for isolation. It almost takes running the browser in a sandbox (sandboxie) or a complete VM (with its own filesystem) to protect a machine against browser weaknesses, just because a browser is always in constant contact with untrusted code.

I hope MS designs Edge with a lot more isolation (so a compromised add-on in one window can't attack another window or tab), because when designing a new browser is the only real time that they can do it right with security, as opposed to reactively fight fires, as with IE.

Re:No way in hell

[PopeRatzo]

How do you mean no extensions ?

He didn't say "no extensions". He said,

adblocker extensions, password managers, extensions that prevent video from autoplaying and etc. will not be available

I can imagine Microsoft not allowing certain extensions if they will affect their "strategic partners".

Re:No way in hell

[jonwil]

What hasn't been said by Microsoft is whether or not all extensions need to go through the official Windows store (and be approved by Microsoft) or whether it will be possible to produce extensions that can be installed directly from non-MS websites and hence not need approval from MS.

Re:No way in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

The web is increasingly moving away from the need for such plugins and schemes, so that browsers can simply have ONE good security context in ONE runtime that can run anything you need it to, similar to how PNaCl was supposed to work (only actually designed in such a way that you can migrate your existing browser tech over rather than having to adopt everything Chromium). Things like the sandboxing model JS uses, CORS, various hardware-accessing standards, and the upcoming WebAssembly are all the direction we're going in, thankfully. Thus we won't need to worry about this crapola anymore, and software can leverage almost-native speeds with the security and standard APIs of a browser engine (and those APIs will continue to improve).

Re:No way in hell

[bmo]

He didn't say "no extensions". He said,

adblocker extensions, password managers, extensions that prevent video from autoplaying and etc. will not be available

That may as well be "no extensions" for most people, because those are the most useful ones that get installed first with a new browser.

So fuck him, and fuck his browser. And fuck his company. No, really, if he wants to be that user-hostile, he can take his stuff and shove it straight up his own arse.

--
BMO

Re:No way in hell

[PopeRatzo]

So fuck him, and fuck his browser. And fuck his company.

Oh, I'm with you. I learned long ago with Microsoft that you use what parts work, jettison the rest. It's actually taught me a good lesson about technology: Never fall in love with a company. Also, when it comes to technology, "ABS": Always Be Suspicious.

Re:No way in hell

[mlts]

I hope that is the case. The fewer plug-ins, the better. Right now, if I wanted to watch a video on a web page, it may be in HTML5, it might be HTML+DRM, it may be in Quicktime, it might be in Silverlight, Java, RealAudio, or of course, Flash.

Even if we dispensed with all the plugins and the world magically ran on standards built in all browsers, there are always still security issues. Especially if they give any website it touches full access to hardware, which means it has the option of reflashing firmware or other nefarious tasks. All malware needs is a user context, or just the web browser's context (so it can use the browser for keylogging info in all windows.)

Browsers have to have more thought about security than even firewalls, because they have to deal thoroughly with untrusted, if not hostile code that can try to do anything (jam the CPU, spam dialogs.) The browser in itself really can't do it. It really needs help from the OS for separation, either via policies like SELinux or IE's Low context, or be placed in a sandbox or VM where all writes are virtualized safely away from the rest of the machine.

Re:No way in hell

[ganjadude]

well those specific extensions are the first ones I install so if i cant use them, edge will not even be an option on my radar

Re:No way in hell

[bondsbw]

This was announced a few months ago at BUILD.

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Re:No way in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

That being said, I like Microsoft a hell of a lot more than trolls like BMO.

Re:No way in hell

[jones_supa]

Never fall in love with a company.

Well said. The only love we should be giving companies is the money we use to pay for their products. At the same time we should always demand the best quality possible for that money.

Re:No way in hell

[Blaskowicz]

Not direct hardware access per se, but we'll end up with OpenGL and even OpenCL code running if all goes like planned, under other names such as WebGL, WebCL. That may effect a pseudo denial-of-service through driver crash or overheating, or lead to a web page increasing your power consumption by 100 watts. Perhaps some javascript you automatically run will steal your CPU/GPU cycles for someone to profit from.

I don't know about security issues, seems like the GPU, its firmware and its driver are security choke points? One trivial example would be javascript malware grabs your GPU framebuffer or surfaces to be composited and sends them somewhere.

Re:No way in hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Brain-dead AC here:

I am not a GPU designer, but as far as I know, GPUs do not have much security compared to CPUs, thus the issue of keyloggers and malware that run just on that processor, and since nothing checks the GPU out, it is an effective way to hide processes.

Hand the Web browser control of the GPU... which has full access to RAM, and it wouldn't be farfetched to see malware be able to modify memory, add itself into the CPU's kernel space, or just do its dirty work from the GPU, perhaps flashing the firmware on a vulnerable device so it has the ability to reload again. As of now, few, if any AV programs even would detect GPU based malware.

On a less lethal level, a GPU-based botnet has the ability to do not just DDoS attacks, but be used for distributed items like cryptocurrency mining.

Overall, why does the Web browser need this much access to low level hardware? A browser should have -no- hardware access, and be limited on CPU/RAM/GPU/disk resources by the OS. If a browser based game needs bare metal... hell with it... it should be packaged as a native app and put on the Play Store, MS's App Store, Apple's App Store, a repository, or similar. The browser should be well wrapped, at the minimum, in a virtual machine, because security has to trump the ability to run Flappy Birds at 120 fps. If not, we will just keep seeing the same old shit when it comes to compromised machines.

Re:No way in hell

[exomondo]

What they're glossing over with their review is that adblocker extensions, password managers, extensions that prevent video from autoplaying and etc. will not be available.

And what you're glossing over is that extensions will be available, just not immediately at release. You're criticising somebody for telling a half-truth and then doing exactly that yourself.

They have even detailed the process for creating extensions for Edge.

And I won't use Edge because if I can't control the behavior of my web browser I won't use that web browser.

Ok. You're a minority, most people don't worry about controlling Safari (OSX or iOS) or Chrome or Firefox, they just use the vendor binary.

Re:No way in hell

[exomondo]

I am not a GPU designer, but as far as I know, GPUs do not have much security compared to CPUs, thus the issue of keyloggers and malware that run just on that processor, and since nothing checks the GPU out, it is an effective way to hide processes.

The GPU is not a general purpose processor like the CPU, you can offload certain tasks to it that suit its processing and data model but you can't take processes like keyloggers and malware and run them on the GPU.

Hand the Web browser control of the GPU... which has full access to RAM

No the GPU does not have access to RAM.

and it wouldn't be farfetched to see malware be able to modify memory, add itself into the CPU's kernel space, or just do its dirty work from the GPU, perhaps flashing the firmware on a vulnerable device so it has the ability to reload again.

No this sort of capability simply isn't possible on a GPU.

On a less lethal level, a GPU-based botnet has the ability to do not just DDoS attacks, but be used for distributed items like cryptocurrency mining.

In a botnet the bottleneck is the network, not the CPU, I'm not quite sure what a the GPU component of a GPU-based DDoSing botnet would even do. You can already do cryptocurrency mining on the CPU in the browser, having the CPU offload the applicable elements of the mining process to the GPU isn't going to make it any more clandestine.

Overall, why does the Web browser need this much access to low level hardware? A browser should have -no- hardware access, and be limited on CPU/RAM/GPU/disk resources by the OS.

It already is limited, even access to the GPU is not some direct thing. You don't just get some system control or ability to control what is displayed on the screen just because you can run shader programs on the GPU.

Re:No way in hell

[KGIII]

I'd thought I had read (maybe here?) about a proof of concept GPU malware authorship recently. I took a quick trip to Google.

https://www.google.com/search?...

I am going to grab the study and give it a quick read. There are a number of very interesting links that result from that search. I think you may be a bit out of date with your info that it can not be done. It looks as if it can be done and has been done including malware that effects both Linux and Windows. I am not sure if it would also effect OSX. I will read some more about it though but I figured I would share the search link with you so that you could check it as well. Disclaimer: I am a mathematician and an EE and not a security specialist.

Re:No way in hell

[KGIII]

That is one thing that Microsoft has usually been pretty good about. They will let you install stuff from anywhere you want. They have not really had much of a walled garden approach to anything except things that they have, themselves, hosted on behalf of third parties. So I suspect the various add-ons will be available (and probably directly through Microsoft's site) even if you have to go to a third party site and download them.

Re:No way in hell

[jonwil]

Windows RT and Windows Phone both have walled gardens and only let you install from the Microsoft store.

Re:No way in hell

[KGIII]

That is why I said "pretty good" instead of "ideal" or "perfect." Also, I thought you could tick a box and install outside apps with Windows Phone? I never bought one so I have no idea if that is true. I could have sworn it was just a checkbox and it opened it up like Androids usually have.

Re:No way in hell

[exomondo]

I'd thought I had read (maybe here?) about a proof of concept GPU malware authorship recently.

You can certainly get it to perform some of the malware tasks but you still need a process running on the CPU that has access to the requisite data. So you still need CPU-based malware that has access to all the data you need, you can just obscure what your process does with that data by passing it to the GPU.

The first or second link in your results had a diagram that shows this.

I think you may be a bit out of date with your info that it can not be done.

What cannot be done is to just take a process and have it run on the GPU, you must have a CPU-side process that has access to all the data and then offloads that to the GPU for processing. Point is if your CPU process already has all the access to the data then generally you can obfuscate what it's doing enough to be able to avoid detection by anti-virus software already anyway.

usual crap summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, not all video players want to disseminate their content for free"

  The usual crap, since when does a video player decide whether content is free or not? supporting DRM playback is not the same as forcing DRM on content. The video player plays no part in whether the content is free or not, that is the content providers, the player just supports the playback.

Re:usual crap summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're interpreting "video player" as in a software package, whereas they are saying "video player" as in a company.

Re:usual crap summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

If a popular video player didn't support a brand of DRM, that brand of DRM would not be successful. When it comes to DRM, support = complacency. And you can bet they got some industry money for going along with it.

Re:usual crap summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

If a popular video player didn't support a brand of DRM, that brand of DRM would not be successful. When it comes to DRM, support = complacency. And you can bet they got some industry money for going along with it.

"premium" content doesn't belong on the internet anyways..... neither do ads

Re:usual crap summaries

[tepples]

If not on the Internet, then on what means of delivery does video produced for profit belong?

Re:usual crap summaries

[savuporo]

Youtube, mostly

Re:usual crap summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

The companies force DRM and I have the choice to "buy" their products with all the conditions that say they can steal my purchased product at any time. That's just DRM. I hate it but I might just use it, say if I want to see the final season of GoT very badly.
The problem I have is with Microsoft, Google, Apple and Sony getting to decide that only their authenticated Crapware and Hardshit can be Right Enabled to display the DRMed stuff.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No more from them in regards to the 'net, it's over.

As a professional web developer utilizing microsoft technology has proven time and time again that proprietary created code is inferior, slower, and less operational than the open source movement which is producing operation at an astounding rate for even minimal hardware. .net is inferior to javascript, iis is inferior to both apache and nodejs, they never came up with a good solid fast user interface, or a decent database. Everything they create they try to glue a price tag to in some way, and none of it can talk to anything else unless you pay more money to learn to use a system that is supposed to facilitate getting work done.

Their past provides a pattern that all intelligences can see plainly, they are hostile to the idea of openness, creation, and innovation except where it feeds them.

All microsoft products are radioactive with their greedy selfish nature.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

A web developer lecturing about inferiority...that's rich.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Their past provides a pattern that all intelligences can see plainly, they are hostile to the idea of openness, creation, and innovation except where it feeds them.

Except if you compare "their" --- as in the Microsoft of 2 decades ago that was run by different people in a different marked --- past to their current actions you can see that things are markedly different. We are now seeing supporting of open source, use of open standards rather than proprietary extensions and even the community promise wrt patents on .Net. We see them responding to user feedback re: XBox One (always-on, kinect, backwards compat, etc) and re: Windows (start menu). And we are also seeing them supporting other competing platforms: Office on Android, iOS and on the platform-agnostic web (you can run Office 365 on Linux for example).

Changes in leadership and other personnel have made them change and adapt to a different computing landscape, this is exactly what realistic people wanted and yet we still have all these naysayers who have lost their enemy in Microsoft but aren't ready to let that go yet. But they could release all their source as public domain and grant everybody unlimited licenses to all their patents and you would still have this crew saying "oh no this all a big trap for Microsoft lock-in".

But will content be HTML5?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a few years ago how Netflix,Hulu and Amazon were all going big time to HTML5 but so far its not been a fast as they claimed. About the only one embracing HTML5 in a big way has been YouTube. You even see plenty of Flash content around and Silverlight even though Google Chrome has basically snubbed Silverlight in Chrome and even Microsoft says Edge won't use Silverlight. One has to wonder how this will frustrate some users who are not tech savvy and wonder why their content won't work? All browsers are now capable of HTML5 so what's the holdup? Well the holdup is that not everyone is on the same page of maturity of developing HTML5 streaming and while everyone has been talking about it for years. Its still moving at a snails pace.

Re:But will content be HTML5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's stewardship of web video has been the primary reason for these delays and frustrations. Not only have they been dicking around with HTML5 video, changing how it works every 6 months and screwing with YouTube in ways that make other browsers often look bad "just 'cause", they also paid Adobe to make a Chromium-specific version of Flash on their new plugin API, despite knowing full well that plugins were on the way out, and nobody in their right mind would adopt their plugin interface. So now most browsers have either a shit Flash version that Adobe doesn't care about anymore, or flaky HTML5 video support that requires implementing several immense new APIs like MSE, EME, and others. Google basically has a serious "not invented here" problem with web technology that leaves everyone that doesn't have a huge Google banner over their heads cold, and for every person believing they're making the web better, the actual developers in the trenches are increasingly frustrated with their efforts to rush features out in Chrome that no one else could sanely adopt for months or years - and trust me, others like the Webkit and Firefox team have been working closely to try to make heads or tails out of their specs and adopt them all along.

Re:But will content be HTML5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent informative. This is a good summary, I've learned alot.

Re:But will content be HTML5?

[MadMaverick9]

... flaky HTML5 video support ...

huh?

<video width="512" height="297" controls autoplay style="outline: none;">
  <source src="video.webm" type="video/webm">
  <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <source src="movie.ogg" type="video/ogg" />
</video>

The above has worked for several years now.

The default video tag supports full screen view.

Youtube's thingy does not. Why not? What's the problem?

Re: But will content be HTML5?

[cyber-vandal]

You need to learn that a lot is two words.

Re:But will content be HTML5?

[Blaskowicz]

HTML5 video is some kind of moving target? I remember how years ago on slashdot it was about some raw video streaming with the universal ability of doing a right-click and "save as". But then it needed DRM. And then, it sucks because you want the ability to change video stream on the fly depending on bandwith. So you have "MSE", which is bleeding edge. Meaning unfinished, not supported, perhaps has the potential to up the CPU hungriness again.
Whatever, give me something that works in flash 11.2, it "only" requires an old 3GHz PC to play (if you don't have h264 hardware)

U2 reviews Edge

[smittyoneeach]

Vocal by David "The Edge" Evans => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2lbiS1fris.

Re:U2 reviews Edge

[MadMaverick9]

Thank you for pointing out what is wrong with video on the web these days.

If I want to play this with SMPlayer (w/ MPlayer), I get a "Server returned 403: Forbidden" message.

I do not care why this is happening. I simply move on to other pastures.

Re:U2 reviews Edge

[perryizgr8]

It's youtube, you can just click on it and it'll play. Why do you wanna use another player?

Re:U2 reviews Edge

[smittyoneeach]

This is /.
At least he didn't say: "I follow the link in Lynx, but it no worky-worky,"

Will it also support the NSA Protocol ?

[Anonymous Coward]

July 31, 2012

Microsoft (MS) began encrypting web-based chat with the introduction of the new outlook.com service. This new Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption effectively cut off collection of the new service for FAA 702 and likely 12333 (to some degree) for the Intelligence Community (IC). MS, working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal with the new SSL. These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012. The SSL solution was applied to all current FISA and 702/PRISM requirements - no changes to UTT tasking procedures were required. The SSL solution does not collect server-based voice/video or file transfers. The MS legacy collection system will remain in place to collect voice/video and file transfers. As a result there will be some duplicate collection of text-based chat from the new and legacy systems which will be addressed at a later date. An increase in collection volume as a result of this solution has already been noted by CES.

March 15, 2013

SSO's PRISM program began tasking all Microsoft PRISM selectors to Skype because Skype allows users to log in using account identifiers in addition to Skype usernames. Until now, PRISM would not collect any Skype data when a user logged in using anything other than the Skype username which resulted in missing collection; this action will mitigate that. In fact, a user can create a Skype account using any e-mail address with any domain in the world. UTT does not currently allow analysts to task these non-Microsoft e-mail addresses to PRISM, however, SSO intends to fix that this summer. In the meantime, NSA, FBI and Dept of Justice coordinated over the last six months to gain approval for PRINTAURA to send all current and future Microsoft PRISM selectors to Skype. This resulted in about 9800 selectors being sent to Skype and successful collection has been received which otherwise would have been missed.

March 7, 2014

PRISM now collects Microsoft Skydrive data as part of PRISM'S standard Stored Communications collection package for a tasked FISA Amendments Act Section 702 (FAA702) selector. This means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this - a process step that many analysts may not have known about. This new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response from SSO for our Enterprise customers. This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established.

Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

The XBox One has been out, nothing approaching a break, and the XBox 360 will get killed off XBL the second someone sticks a modded ROM on there.

As for Windows, seen an activation crack for W2012 R2 or W2012, or even W8? Even fake KMS servers don't last long (a few hours at most).

MS in the DRM department is doing quite well.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, when they lock down the entire system. Who would want an x-box anyway?

Besides, pirating video and pirating software are horses of different colors. Pirating software means having to make a bit-for-bit copy with enough changes that it runs without DRM. Pirating video just takes recording software, or generally any recording device with an input matching the playback device's output (hard to avoid with computers).

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[ganjadude]

what are you talking about??? ive been running my original xbox modded for like 10 years now

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[ganjadude]

sorry, you were talking about the xBONE, not the OG xbox. apologies

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[ArmoredDragon]

The XBox One has been out, nothing approaching a break, and the XBox 360 will get killed off XBL the second someone sticks a modded ROM on there.

As for Windows, seen an activation crack for W2012 R2 or W2012, or even W8? Even fake KMS servers don't last long (a few hours at most).

I've been playing copied games on xbox live for a while on the xbox 360. You just use an xk3y and make sure to run the ripped ISO image through abg360. It's been working perfectly for over 3 years, and Microsoft is well aware of it yet hasn't been able to do anything to stop it.

Re: Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure ms is really worried about you and the other 20 people going through all that effort on the previous gen xbox.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, so well by making shit that people don't want so why would they bother cracking it?

With windows 10 you wont even need to crack it because if you want it for free you can sign up to the insider program and stay there forever as their guinea pig testing out windows updates before they are shoved down the throat of windows 10 home users.

Re: Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Bert64]

When people started doing that it was the current generation console, and it's not a lot of effort to install an xk3y (which costs about the price of a single game) and then copy downloaded iso files to a usb hdd... In fact, being able to hook up a large portable hdd containing hundreds of games is far more convenient than sorting through a pile of dvd media.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 I've been running non-genuine perfectly fine for many, many months. Whatever crack / fake KMS thing I used at the time (I honestly don't recall) has just worked without issues.

I've recently done an in-place upgrade to Win 10 preview. No issues at all.

Re: Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

20?
You obviously know nothing about this.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would want an x-box anyway?

10's of millions of people as it turns out. There's also Apple's DRM on their AppleTV platform which is going just fine and also Sony's PS4 alongside a myriad of others.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

KMS servers work fine 6 months at a time on windows 8, and you install a service to refresh it every 5 months and its fine for life.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[exomondo]

Right, when they lock down the entire system. Who would want an x-box anyway?

About 80 million people, much the same with the Playstation 3 which also around 80 million and the XB1 and PS4 are already on around 20 and 12 million respectively. So the answer is that lots of people want these systems despite the lockdown.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[KGIII]

Just ten years ago do you think we'd have even thought that Microsoft would be outselling Sony in the console department? Wow. The times have changed.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try at switching the numbers around.

"The PS4 has sold 22.39 million units lifetime, the Xbox One 12.50 million units"

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't. He switched the numbers around.

Re:Umm... their DRM code works quite well...

[exomondo]

Whoops that's backwards...which you can obviously see in the link.

Aww, that's a bummer.

[Opportunist]

Sadly, I'm not compatible with DRM so I guess I can't use that new browser.

Re:Aww, that's a bummer.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still use it. Just don't purchase DRM protected content. In fact, that's far more effective and makes you look like less of a douchebag.

Re:Aww, that's a bummer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I guess cannot use any of the big 4 browsers because they will all support the same DRM for video by the end of the year.

Re:Aww, that's a bummer.

[westlake]

Sadly, I'm not compatible with DRM so I guess I can't use that new browser.

It's not about you.

The mainstream browser that doesn't support protected media play is damn near extinct.

The browser itself is under threat of being eclipsed by the walled gardens of the mobile, app-oriented, world. Imagine if Netflix began adding live news and sports feeds to its streaming media content.

Re:Aww, that's a bummer.

[unixisc]

I am a Windows 10 Preview User. I got a separate app to download the music I want. I then play it offline under Microsoft Video. I even transfer it to my other tablets, in case I want to watch it there.

I don't use the browser itself for DRM stuff, and I'm glad that Edge is a good lightweight alternative. For Windows 10, I'd use both Edge and IE.

John Thompson, the current ruler of Microsoft,...

[Anonymous Coward]

is on the record as saying he doesn't believe there is a possible way to play a video without infringing on a patent. Given that, of course, Microsoft doesn't believe you should be allowed to play non-DRM videos. He also believes you can't build a smartphone without paying Microsoft money. Microsoft currently makes more money off of Android phones than the companies that make the chips, assemble the phones, write the OS, and write the apps that come with the phone.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[ChunderDownunder]

Dupe

Copied and pasted from a comment yesterday.

Please think before you moderate this FUD up. An article on Microsoft is no license to Mozilla-bash.

"Edge"

[PopeRatzo]

Who comes up with these idiotic names? Why not "Microsoft Nail" or "Microsoft Lance" or "Microsoft Thing That Penetrates"?

"Microsoft Edge" is a very '90s name to my ears, but maybe it's just the fact that I've been sitting on the porch drinking, eating barbecue and watching fireworks for the past several hours. But Microsoft was never really good at names, although I did once have a three-legged dog named "Clippy" (that's actually true).

Re:"Edge"

[neilo_1701D]

They wanted a name starting with "E", to keep a stylized blue "e" as an icon. Given that Windows 10 windows are essentially frameless, the browser viewing area is edge-to-edge, hence "Edge".

The idea was to keep the icon as familiar as possible.

Re:"Edge"

[PopeRatzo]

They wanted a name starting with "E", to keep a stylized blue "e" as an icon. Given that Windows 10 windows are essentially frameless, the browser viewing area is edge-to-edge, hence "Edge".

Then I think "Microsoft E" would have been a better name, invoking the drug that you'd have to be high on to want to use that browser.

Re:"Edge"

[Anonymous Coward]

Then that is a fail right there. They wanted to change the name from IE because of its bad reputation but if they still want people to relate back to the icon it's not going to get them very far.

Re:"Edge"

[iampiti]

I updated the Windows 10 preview to the last build and saw an icon that looked very much like that of Internet Explorer. Turns out is the icon of Edge.
I find it funny they've worked so hard so as not to alienate the users who think the "blue e" is the Internet but thought it was ok to radically change the interface in Windows 8. In Windows 10 they've half-backtracked by including a stripped-down Start Menu but that would also completely confuse someone who's confused if the Internet changes its icon from a blue e.
Sorry for the rant and semi offtopic comment but I'm really pissed of at Microsoft for the changes to Windows starting in 8

Re:"Edge"

[neilo_1701D]

I find it funny they've worked so hard so as not to alienate the users who think the "blue e" is the Internet but thought it was ok to radically change the interface in Windows 8.

Windows 8 was lead by Steven Sinofsky, described as someone with the maniacal power and force of will of a Steve Jobs ... lacking Jobs' best gift: An innate understanding of good design.

After Windows 8, Sinofsky didn't work at Microsoft anymore. Now Microsoft have to deal with his legacy: some good and some bad. The result is Windows 10, led by Gabe Aul.

I actually don't mind the Windows 10 Start menu. It's a good compromise between the Windows 95 - Windows 7 concepts and the Windows 8 Start screen. It could be better, but it's good enough.

Re:"Edge"

[bloodhawk]

It's no worse than the rest of the browser names. Except for Internet Explorer and Netscape they are all bloody aweful, Who the fuck thought of names like Opera, firefox, lynx, Safari, chrome (actually while I hate the browser it is about the best name of the rest considering you can sort of associate the web as a safari).

Re:"Edge"

[Phroggy]

Then that is a fail right there. They wanted to change the name from IE because of its bad reputation but if they still want people to relate back to the icon it's not going to get them very far.

They only want people who are at least slightly tech-savvy to think it's a totally new browser. They want stupid people who don't know anything to think it's the same old browser they're already familiar with. Changing the name while keeping the icon seems like a good way to accomplish these goals.

No Plugins?

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsers are moving away from plug-ins as well

If there are to be no plugins, then why does the Windows 10 technical preview ship with Adobe Flash preinstalled? Will this change when the official release of Windows 10 ships later this month?

Exclusives and ease of use

[tepples]

Who would want an x-box anyway?

To play games that are exclusive to an Xbox platform or games that are released on Xbox and PlayStation platforms but not PC. Or because a video game console can be cheaper and easier to operate than a comparable gaming PC.

Pirating software means having to make a bit-for-bit copy with enough changes that it runs without DRM.

The video game Mino was not a bit-for-bit copy of Tetris but was still ruled pirated.

Re:Exclusives and ease of use

[cHiphead]

Lifelong gamer here, with kids and wife who also game. Nobody actually cares about consoles anymore, the world has moved on, Tablet/phone games and pc games are where the safe money will be. Xbone and PS4 are just computers that are locked in to their titles. Once the xbox360 goes out, we'll never go back to consoles.

Re: Exclusives and ease of use

[cyber-vandal]

Apart from the tens of millions of people who've bought them of course.

One advantage of static typing

[tepples]

.net is inferior to javascript

In what way?

One advantage of the .NET Framework is static typing. In a fully dynamic language such as PHP, Python, or JavaScript, you need to put unit tests into your program to make sure the correct types are getting passed in and out of functions. A language with static typing, such as C#, already ensures type safety. So it's like the compiler writes a lot of your unit tests for you.

The .NET Framework used to have the disadvantage of being a non-free platform, which put .NET programs in what FSF calls a "Java trap". But nowadays, a lot of the interesting parts of the .NET Framework are released under a free software license.

Re:One advantage of static typing

[savuporo]

So it's like the compiler writes a lot of your unit tests for you.

And i have a bridge to sell you.

Re: One advantage of static typing

[cyber-vandal]

It isn't unless you're an zealot twisted by pointless hatred. Or maybe he's stuck in 2001 and thinks that .NET is all Winforms in VB.

Re:One advantage of static typing

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET is simply inferior for in-browser, web-related work compared to modern JS engines. Especially for non-static code. No one's arguing that static typing is inferior or that C# is a bad language. It's just not well-suited for the same tasks, and it has had a rough history of being just another closed ecosystem lost in a sea of open alternatives.

And even if the disadvantages seem ironed out now, there's no real benefit to .NET on the web compared to MS just improving Chakra with WebAssembly. That way you could use your statically-typed .NET code without any substantial performance penalties, on any supporting browser. Much like Dart or Java, .NET is doomed to be a second tier platform as the web improves on it and allows you to run its code regardless.

Re:One advantage of static typing

[tepples]

By no means does a static proof of type safety substitute for all unit tests, but it still substitutes for some. Or could you explain why it doesn't?

Re:One advantage of static typing

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it implement Road? Are it's end points derived from land? A compiler for static languages will tell you that, a dynamic language won't. A floating stack of garbage that looks like land from a distance is good enough in dynamic world. You won't think to write a test case to see if calling endPoint[0].floatAway() will destroy your bridge because you're not expecting real land to have that feature.

Vector animation

[tepples]

You even see plenty of Flash content around

That's in part because it took so long to make visual editors for animated SVG and HTML5 Canvas that were comparable to Flash MX, let alone Flash CS. And Edge Animate, the HTML5 animation tool from the maker of Flash, is available only on a rental model, not a purchase model. So things like animutations and Weebl's Stuff still tend to depend on Flash.

Re:Vector animation

[MadMaverick9]

People still use flash? How quaint.

I uninstalled flash almost 2 years ago now. Haven't missed out on anything.

Re:Vector animation

[CaptQuark]

How would you know? If the page substitutes static content when if finds you don't have Flash installed, how do you know what you are missing?

Re:Vector animation

[Anne Thwacks]

I think you misunderstand - for most people, static content is far preferable. We dont want anything that moves unless we click on it, and probably not even then!

Re:Vector animation

[exomondo]

I think you misunderstand - for most people, static content is far preferable. We dont want anything that moves unless we click on it, and probably not even then!

No, you misunderstand. There's a lot of middle ground between static content and bombastic, flamboyant advertising.

Ha Ha

[Anonymous Coward]

A Microsoft "Tech" calls for HELP.

"Microsoft Manager Please Respond NOW: I used Miscrosoft Word to revise the code of Edge but when I double-click on the edited document, it still launches Word and not EDGE. Please respond quickly and NOW."

Oh well. Another "Explorer" !

Ha ha

The name originates in IE 8

[tepples]

Who comes up with these idiotic names?

I don't know who, but I do know when. IE 8 introduced the X-ua-compatible header. "Use the following value to display the webpage in edge mode, which is the highest standards mode supported by Internet Explorer."

Re:The name originates in IE 8

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know who, but I do know when. IE 8 introduced...

Oh great. IE8. That's some special lineage on which to base the identity of their new browser.

Re:The name originates in IE 8

[exomondo]

Oh great. IE8. That's some special lineage on which to base the identity of their new browser.

And I'm sure so many people are going to get hung up on that!

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[ArmoredDragon]

As distasteful as I find DRM, at least we see Microsoft trying to improve their web browser. With Edge they're actually succeeding in creating something that average users do want to use!

Not exactly. Microsoft's Edge browser is still in fourth place in terms of being standards compliant, which is what I think average users want because it makes the browser actually compatible with modern content. Yes, it's a tad ahead of IE, but it's still quite behind Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

http://html5test.com/results/d...

In fact most web browsers for mobile devices are doing better than Edge: It's behind Android WebView, BlackBerry's web browser, Chrome for Android, Firefox for Android, Safari for iOS, Opera Mobile, Tizen's web browser, Amazon Silk, Jolla Sailfish, and the now discontinued Nokia X browser.

http://html5test.com/results/m...

Re: Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will continue to use Firefox and then seamonkey before I use chrome. They work just fine for me and I'll continue to use Thunderbird for email. I'm very curious about edge and I'll be happy to try it. I simply don't care for chrome and what it reports to Google which might be why I like duckduckgo for a search engine.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[ganjadude]

to be fair, its not even out officially yet, its in pre release.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[KingMotley]

Not a real big fan of html5test.com. The weight they assign things are very chrome favored. Just as an example, they list stupid things like :read-only, :read-write twice, and 2d blend modes (7 points) which favor Chrome, but useful things like video track and audio track selection are weighted very little (4 points).

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[ArmoredDragon]

It's all of about 25 days from release. I doubt they are going to be adding features at this point, more likely they're just bug fixing.

Sure way to hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the total undermining of privacy and security that individuals and all types of institutions are suffering from everywhere, MS really has their priorities screwed up. If MS wants to make a comeback, they need to treat the actual users as their prime customers and top priority. This recklessly designing everything around pimping the users has to stop.

The old 60's phrase "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" applies.

It's hard to have much hope for beneficial change coming out of the U.S., but maybe some in the EU could come up with some radically different new requirements for the privacy/security in systems to be considered for sale there? Read those draft trade agreements. Chances are they push the opposite of what's needed.

Re: John Thompson, the current ruler of Microsoft,

[Anonymous Coward]

He has said many times he wants a all no communists to die. He wants the average person to die. He hates us. Anyone that doesn't pay Microsoft each year needs to die according to him.

Re: John Thompson, the current ruler of Microsoft,

[Anonymous Coward]

He has said many times he wants a all no communists to die. He wants the average person to die. He hates us. Anyone that doesn't pay Microsoft each year needs to die according to him. He hates us.

Re: John Thompson, the current ruler of Microsoft,

[Anonymous Coward]

He supports the genocide of whir males. That proves he is a good person.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[bondsbw]

This would be a reasonable concern if this release of Edge was the final release, ever.

Even if you only see bug fixes between now and July 29, new features will come to some post-RTM release.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Daltorak]

As distasteful as I find DRM, at least we see Microsoft trying to improve their web browser. With Edge they're actually succeeding in creating something that average users do want to use!

Not exactly. Microsoft's Edge browser is still in fourth place in terms of being standards compliant,

Err.... standards? Look, HTML5Test leans heavily on W3C working drafts which are nowhere near finished. Edge doesn't implement Web Components, streams, service workers, web notifications, speech recognition and speech synthesis. These account for about 10% of the total HTML5Test score, but they're all drafts or proposals!

The fact that some browsers are implementing these drafts without a prefix is a PROBLEM, not a good thing. Library & web site developers end up taking dependencies on things that may very well change over time.

Meanwhile, if you want to stick to stable, published specifications, Edge is currently the leading browser for ES6 support in terms of percentage of features implemented. As for CSS, have a look at the list of CSS features Edge doesn't support and note that for most of them, at least one of Firefox and Chrome hasn't implemented them either..... and/or they're a working draft.... or other browsers have just implemented them in the last few months.

Re:Win8?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes, I've been using a tool to keep an illegit copy of Win8 (now 8.1) running since I first installed it quite some time ago. I've yet to run into any website/tool/other than says my system isn't legit. It most certainly isn't from the "did you purchase this/get a valid key" perspective. I haven't tried it on W2012, but I have a spare machine, I'll consider testing that.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the same thing as Chrome now, so technical there's only three browser engines ahead of them now. And frankly speaking, at this rate they'll leave Safari in the dust soon enough.

Plus, as others have mentioned, html5test.com is a terrible benchmark of "HTML5" support. Try caniuse.com instead, at least it's closer to a real picture of the state of HTML5 support and doesn't arbitrarily use a pointless and obviously-biased scoring scheme and it's taken far more seriously by its maintainers.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Edge isn't ahead of Firefox in ES6 support, actually. They're at best neck and neck. In fact Firefox is probably going to still be ahead at the time of Edge's first release, given how many options are still behind flags. See here for a decent comparison: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

What's more important is that Edge is quite far ahead of Chrome and Safari, and their hard work has finally inspired those teams to take ES6 more seriously.

Re:Happy 4th of July!

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy 4th of July everyone! The founding day of the greatest nation on Earth - the nation which has helped to bring or restore freedom to countless millions around the world.

If you are free, this is the day to be thankful for the nation who has led and protected the way.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Only an ignorant self deluded american can spout this idiocy ("...helped bring or restore freedom to countless millions around the world"). And lets not forget the genocide of native americans. Your country was built on slavery and genocide. Happy 4th of July.

Re:Happy 4th of July!

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy 4th of July everyone! The founding day of the greatest nation on Earth - the nation which has helped to bring or restore freedom to countless millions around the world.

If you are free, this is the day to be thankful for the nation who has led and protected the way.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Only an ignorant self deluded american can spout this idiocy ("...helped bring or restore freedom to countless millions around the world"). And lets not forget the genocide of native americans. Your country was built on slavery and genocide. Happy 4th of July.

Where do you live? A nation helped by America, perchance?

Re: John Thompson, the current ruler of Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

He and his kind want us die

One thing Edge has going for it..

[Anonymous Coward]

I will admit I haven't tried Firefox in years, but when it comes to both Opera and Chrome they are often so CPU intensive I can't use them, for anyone running off a battery they are a no-go. Opera and Chrome will use up to 60% CPU on my PC playing 1080p50 HTML5 video for example, Edge uses no more than 5-8%. Opera and Chrome often go in the high 20-30% CPU for no particular reason.

Re:One thing Edge has going for it..

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed this as well. The engine of Edge seems to have some really well-engineered components at least in terms of performance.

Re:One thing Edge has going for it..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that might just be extensions infestation. I just tried it by opening two parallel tabs in chrome playing 1080p video in youtube and the CPU usage in total is ~ 8% even when taking into account seven /. tabs and a couple of reddit tabs.

Re: Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are saying MS wants to support open standards which do not lock users to MS technology? Is't that a bit naive. Or it proves you work for MS.
I think MS has enough resorses to build HTML5 supporting browser even from IE. It is just that they did not want to make it easy to create enhanced applicatios running in browser without windows. And HTML5 test proves they still don't with Edge.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Dear coward,

It's not a "dupe". "Dupe" implies that it's a "duplicate". That is, an exact word-for-word copy. Anyone who can read can clearly see that there are significant differences between the two. Yes, the general idea is the same, but it's obviously not a "dupe". Besides, it's actually very relevant to this discussion. Microsoft is on the ascendancy again with Edge. If Mozilla doesn't shape up then everything good they've accomplished with Firefox in the last decade will be rendered totally irrelevant. Instead of just an IE monoculture like we used to have, we're now heading into a Chrome monoculture, with the only other viable alternative being Edge. It doesn't have to be this way, of course, if Mozilla just did the right thing and stopped screwing around with Firefox. All they need to do is go back to giving us a good, usable browser.

Yeah - you changed a couple of words, so it's not a dupe. Right.

Recent browser market share stats [caniuse.com] show that all versions of Firefox Desktop are only around 8% of the market. Firefox 38 is only at 7.45%, so we can expect Firefox 39 to be below that, possibly forever. Firefox for Android is at 0.14% (yes, that's a leading 0!), and Firefox isn't really a viable option on iOS. [--vitriolic rant--predictions of imminent doom--]

And it's still bullshit. Did you spend long trying to find figures that support your Mozilla hate? What's you association with that site which plucks it's bullshit figures out of it's arse?

I've previously pointed at reliable, undistorted figures. And shown why the figures you point to are,um, distorted - that you base your claim of 8% on are bullshit, real life figure is 12 - 20% - but you keep spewing the big lie like you've an agenda, or some organic problem.

What is Microsofts view on its future?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Microsoft going to do about their own regional offices who undercut the traditional independent and evangelizing end points of the Microsoft sales team?

I've seen plenty of salesmen trying to sell their Microsoft solution who clearly have become frustrated that their magic word that closed deals no longer works: We offer a Microsoft solution -> Sold!

A few years ago (5-6 years?), some guy came over to try to sell SharePoint and claimed that everyone should stop using FireFox in our business, since IE was clearly the best browser out there. He meant only IE was supported by SharePoint. When I pointed him to the fact that our business had 20% Mac 75% Linux and 5% others, including Windows (and only to run some obscure software that still needed to be replaced by a more OS agnostic solution), he sighed and told us that there were more and more businesses who left the Windows world.

I've met that guy a few times later on (he is also a biker, we often have a drink together when we meet on some biking event), and he not only complains about the difficulties to convince people to lay thier future in the hands of a Microsoft eco-system, but more about the difficulties with Microsoft. Once they manage to trap a customer in the MS eco system, which is now all about cloud applications, it is Microsoft that will step in a offer discounts when the customers buy directly from MS and bypass the independent reseller.

Many of the traditional MS resellers have gone bankrupt or have degraded to nothing more than phone help desk service centers, and now form the first line of Microsofts help desk system. They are now the ones who will have to communicate in the local language with the local client, and than try to find solutions with the help of some difficult to understand foreigner in some low wage country.

I don't know how it is in the US, but here in my part of Europe it has gone all downhill with Microsoft as a work enabler, except when you think that a call center help desk job is a dream job for someone with a university degree in computer science...

When you want a nice job, don't go for Computer Science, there is a too high chance you'll end up in a call center anyway. Just go for MBA. I'm lucky to have become the IT manager of a business that doesn't work in the IT sector. I'm the one who is responsible for 'the computer network' and if anything goes wrong it will be my fault, and I'll probably end up on the street. I've already had to defend myself against Microsoft trolls who kept on phoning my boss about how I would run the business into the ground for not choosing Microsoft solutions. Luckily for me, my boss already had a big distrust in Microsoft with the constant breaking of their own standards of office documents (he hated it that he was forced to spend hundreds of thousand Euro because Microsofts decisions), and their trolling even convinced him more to never trust any Microsoft solution anymore.

Last week I saw an ex class mate (from secondary school) on the news show who was ringing the bell in our local stock exchange. Apparently had was the one responsible for the IPO of a very promising pharmaceutical business that invented (and patented) a very cheap IVF product.

His big smile couldn't hide the fact that with every gong another million was added on his bank account. He was not the most clever student when it came to getting good grades. But he was the most clever one to choose a career in economics. If I only new that a career in 'economics' was something else than becoming an accountant, and even more, if I only new that a career in computer sciences would turn into a phone help desk job for the majority of the workers in the not so distant future. I was only lucky to be among the first specialists who still could move up the ladder.
 
The business I work for is still going strong, and I hope to be able to stay there for quite some time, but when I lose this job, I've no trust in the future to find a engaging job in the IT world, now I'm nearing my 50's.

what a waste

[lophophore]

what a ridiculous waste of effort. The DRM will be broken by pirates within months, if not weeks, of release, and eventually rendered useless, but meanwhile, regular users will get screwed when the shoddy implementations make the user experience suck.

ANTITRUST BASTARDS!

[Anonymous Coward]

NEVER 4GET

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[ArmoredDragon]

Even in other tests, Edge is still dead last among the four.

http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie...

Also run the acid3 test in Edge and compare to Chrome. In Edge it stutters a bit, so it doesn't *fully* pass the test.

we actually don't care abut ie

[Anonymous Coward]

10 -11 12 2000 we don't care ! do whatever you want Microsoft . We already have our browsers

Re:Win8?

[Anonymous Coward]

2012 R2 is easily and permanently defeated with the latest version of Daz's Windows Loader. Not linking for reasons that should be obvious. (FYI, there are lot of fake sites hosting malware under this name too.)

Re: Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are saying MS wants to support open standards which do not lock users to MS technology? Is't that a bit naive. Or it proves you work for MS.

It is an assertion supported by facts, for example they have removed the platform-specific elements like ActiveX as well as releasing many things as open source. I know it's hard for somebody who cannot understand that the position of a company 25 years ago is not some concrete, unchangeable thing to accept that things are now different. And your projection that GP must work for Microsoft and that open source, open standards and removal of lock-in are somehow a veiled conspiracy to create lock-in demonstrates that you are one such person.

Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only use MS Edge has on Windows 10 is to download another browser: Chrome, Firefox or something else. I personally like the new and upcoming browser called Vivaldi (from a co-founder of Opera).

Microsoft, I don't want your 'ecosystem'. I don't want a Microsoft account, Bing, Xbox Live, Skype/MSN, Outlook (Hotmail), Onedrive. I don't want to download stuff from the Microsoft app store. I don't care for Minecraft. And I don't care for your bipolar Halo skank Cortana.

If you think Windows 10 is going to revive your ambitions for Windows phones and tablets, you're in for a nasty surprise.

Re:Why isn't Mozilla panicking?

[KGIII]

I dunno. We often use an article about Mozilla to bash on Microsoft. We will use an article on solar panels to bash on Microsoft.