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Windows is Bloated, Thanks to Adobe's Extensible Metadata Platform (bit.ly)

Posted by msmash on from the what's-happening dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, I put together a little tool that scans executable files for PNG images containing useless Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) metadata. I ran it against a vanilla Windows 10 image and was surprised that Windows contains a lot of this stuff. Adobe XMP, generally speaking, is an Adobe technology that serializes metadata like titles, internal identifiers, GPS coordinates, and color information into XML and jams it into things, like images. This data can be extremely valuable in some cases but Windows doesn't need or use this stuff. It just eats up disk space and CPU cycles. Thanks to horrible Adobe Photoshop defaults, it's very easy to unknowingly include this metadata in your final image assets. So easy, almost all the images on this site are chock full of it. But you can appreciate my surprise when a bunch of important Windows binaries showed up in my tool.

17 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Windows is Bloated by decipher_saint · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Full Stop.

    --
    crazy dynamite monkey
    1. Re:Windows is Bloated by iampiti · · Score: 2

      Agree but because the system contains many things that are not necessary for it to work but you can't remove anyway. I don't need "Groove Music", or a maps app, or the Xbox app.
      It'd be nice if we could get a barebones OS and the install things as needed. Yeah I know, I also use Linux and I love how you can install some minimal distros without even an UI.

  2. How does it "eat up CPU cycles"? by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Windows executable loader doesn't look at this extraneous XMP data so why would it consume CPU cycles?

    1. Re:How does it "eat up CPU cycles"? by DickBreath · · Score: 2

      Maybe the Windows executable loader doesn't care. But what about the bloat loader that runs when you first power up the machine?

      Even if it takes no cpu cycles, it is a waste of disk space that could have been used to hold pr0n. Think of the space that could be saved merely by shortening Microsoft to MS everywhere it appears.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    2. Re:How does it "eat up CPU cycles"? by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

      Think of the space that could be saved merely by shortening Microsoft to MS everywhere it appears.

      Can we go back to the old /. moniker of M$?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:How does it "eat up CPU cycles"? by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Funny

      The AARP is sponsoring a study about the environmental impact of the feet of young people upon lawns.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  3. 5MB in total - Nothing to see here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As can be seen from the link in his comment section, the total of wasted space his tool found was 5MB. On a whole windows system, comprising several GB.
    Even if his tool didn't just find some false positives, that's basically nothing at all.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

    1. Re:5MB in total - Nothing to see here. by sinij · · Score: 5, Funny

      As can be seen from the link in his comment section, the total of wasted space his tool found was 5MB.

      This is well over 7500 punch cards, you insensitive clod. This would cover multiple foodball fields!

    2. Re:5MB in total - Nothing to see here. by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

      Agreed, but just for a fun comparative reference, the size of an entire Windows 3.1 installation was less than 15 MB :)

  4. I don't think blaming Adobe is fair here by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Though XMP was developed by Adobe it is now an ISO standard. Also almost every editor or camera will include XMP data, not just photoshop

    1. Re:I don't think blaming Adobe is fair here by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Except that Adobe actually made the standard open rather than just open enough to break, implemented the standard in their own software in the same was as the public toolkit they made available under the BSD license rather than killing it with their own software, and promoted it to get wide spread and compatible acceptance for both proprietary and open source software that touches media.

      The only thing XMP and OOXML share in common is the first three letters in their standard designation.

  5. Re:Article sounds like B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Clippy says: It looks like you're going full retard. Would you like to learn about RC, the Microsoft Resource Compiler which can be used to embed PNG images into exes and dlls?

  6. um... by sootman · · Score: 2

    "Thanks to horrible Adobe Photoshop defaults, it's very easy to unknowingly include this metadata in your final image assets."

    If you're saving for the web, use the "save for web and devices" option and it should strip out most, if not all, extraneous data. That's why it's there. If you just do File -> Save As it'll include other stuff.

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    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  7. This is what I consider Fake News by PablosBrain · · Score: 2

    This is what I consider Fake News. Someone is seriously concerned about the meta data in their image files taking up space? Are they still using floppy disks? How is a few MB of meta data considered bloat? Dumb

  8. Re:Article sounds like B.S. by Smidge204 · · Score: 2

    Because compiled EXE files can have embedded resources, such as sounds, graphics, etc.

    Most commonly for Windows applications, this is icons - usually several variations and versions for different themes, sizes and resolutions.

    =Smidge=

  9. Size is still important by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to [use a tool to de-bloat images] This was important since much of the world was still on dial-up back then.

    It is still important.
      - Some of the world is STILL on dial-up. Even in the US. (especially the rural part: At my vacation/retirement ranch I had only 28kbps until AT&T upgraded the cell tower to LTE last year).
      - Some of the "high-speed internet" isn't very - like DSL at 1.5 or 6 Mbps, or WISPs serving an entire town with what amounts to a WiFi hotspot.
      - Some services charge by the bandwidth used.
      - Some services throttle back "heavy users"
      - Some services sell tiered usage, with higher prices for larger monthly data caps, and killing the link (e.g. prepaid), drastically throttling down (e.g. 4G dropping to 3G speed), and/or charging punitive "overage" rates for bandwidth beyond the pre-purchased tier.
      - As the users get farther away, latency and setup-turnaround for the components of a web page display also slow the process.

    Web developers tend to work with disks and servers built into their machine or attached by a fast LAN. So it's easy to miss that the actual users' experience may be slower - even drastically so. (Thus was the web, at the dawn of image-laden web pages, nicknamed the "World Wide Wait".) And they're not charged for that bandwidth, so they also don't get their noses rubbed in the price of it when they receive their monthly bills or hit their monthly caps.

    So keeping a web page's bandwidth use small is still useful:
      - Even on broadband it makes it quicker - "snappier" - which improves the user experience.
      - It can reach a wider audience, as those on slower or more latent links don't give up in disgust.
      - It saves some users substantial money.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  10. Re:Article sounds like B.S. by sexconker · · Score: 2

    Why the fuck is there any adobe metadata in explorer.exe at all?

    Further, your original claim was:

    I think this guy ran a program that misinterpreted some bytes in a binary since it's not really designed to be a general-purpose parser and then jumped to a really really dumb conclusion.

    Yet by your own investigation you've found adobe metadata in explorer.exe , so his tool is likely triggering on at least some things correctly. Who's the one jumping to "really really dumb conclusion", then? (Hint: You.)