MS To Offer Windows Sans WMP, If EU So Orders 422
PSwim writes "Microsoft has said it will remove Media Player from Window, if ordered by the EU this week. The 'Windows-Lite'
version will only be available in Europe. Best quote from the article involves its refusal to release networking documentation: '"The Commission says Linux would disappear" if Microsoft did not grant access to its documentation, Smith claimed. "But Linux is alive and well and I don't know any person at Linux or any Linux programmers who share the Commission's view."'"
A little child (Score:3, Informative)
Seems to sum up the Microsoft business strategy rather well.
Re:What's wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
so with a user base of several hundred million, microsoft has a better base to sell streaming servers than its competition - and why? not because WMP is superior, but because microsoft used its desktop monopoly to push into another sector, which is illegal (unlike having a monopoly without abusing it)
as for mplayer, only few distros actually distribute it due to legal trouble, and it's not used in a monopoly environment - also, there are ogle, xine, vlc which are all pretty competitive.
so a) there's no monopoly whatsoever being used to push mplayer, b) there are more things than just mplayer, c) even if mplayer were pushed, it wouldn't slant the server side towards a certain streaming server software (by the same vendor)
Re:On coupling os and software (Score:2, Informative)
"if decently programmed"
We're talking about Microsoft here.
Re:What's wrong? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
In America maybe, but not the rest of the world which includes Europe, Asia, and Africa.
commission's view (Score:1, Informative)
Even if the documentation is written as well as their sw :)
Think about samba.
M.
Re:I'd like to see (Score:2, Informative)
Shitty submission (Score:1, Informative)
"Media player" is a generic term, the real name for this product is "Windows Media Player". In this case, something like "Microsoft has said it will remove its media player" would make more sense.
What, Microsoft will refuse to remove WMP if ordered next week?
There's no such thing as "Windows-lite". This term has been used previously to mean Windows XP Starter Edition, which is a whole different product than simply "Windows XP without WMP".
Was it the article that refused to release networking documentation? Don't you mean Microsoft refused?
Smith? Smith who?
"at Linux"? Linux isn't a company, a place, or an organization. You can't be "at Linux". Though this is an error of the person quoted and not the submittor, it's silly to let such a stupid error into the submission, and pointless, except for the purpose of ridiculing "Smith".
I wish Slashdot's editors would do some actual editing of submissions before they let them onto the front page.
The NFS/CIFS (SMB) marketing war (Score:4, Informative)
SMB has actually been documented by MS.
From The future of CIFS [vernstok.nl] by Jelmer Vernooij of the Samba team:
2.2 The NFS/CIFS marketing war
During the internet hype in the nineties, Sun and Microsoft got in a fight about which remote file system API was going to make it. Sun was promoting NFS, Microsoft was promoting SMB.
In order to get SMB supported by other vendors, Microsoft did a couple of things:
Samba even got donations from Microsoft during this period, including funding for trips to conferences and MSDN donations. Microsoft developers were encouraged to work with Samba developers to get a working implementation of a SMB server and client on Unix.
Microsoft won the war. CIFS became the standard (for LANs, at least). After this, they lost interest in having other vendors support CIFS. Rather, they tried to get everybody to use their products.
Re:ha-ha-ha (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong! See other comment in this story [slashdot.org]
Re:On coupling os and software (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds accurate. And my NT4 Domain Controller/File Server has been up and running continuously for the last 2+ years.
That's not stability. That's just not rocking the boat.
No patches. No updates. No upgrades.
Original IE which is never used.
No gateway. Intentionally. Can only talk to the LAN.
Re:I'd like to see (Score:2, Informative)
Re:On coupling os and software (Score:3, Informative)
It would be extremely difficult for them to claim that removing Windows Media Player means removing DirectShow...
Anyway, I don't see why anyone would want it gone.. there is nothing proprietary about it; anyone can write a media player applications that uses it.
Re:Shitty submission - Rebuttal (Score:5, Informative)
As the original writer of the submission you so eloquently call "shitty," I felt the need to respond a bit.
You did read the article, didn't you?
I wish people would read the article and think about it before posting (flaming). Then again, I'm starting to be kind of old around here.
Re:The NFS/CIFS (SMB) marketing war (Score:2, Informative)
NFS, for the simple reason the clients and server is designed to be Unix boxes with 5 9s and a perfect networks, breaks horribly when your network, server, or client is even slightly broken. It assumes you set up your network correctly and gave every user a login on every box, and, moreover, the same UID.
CIFS, on the other hand, is designed for P2P networks where computers go up and down. And you can go all the way from password protecting a share with a single password, to full-fledged domain security with single user login that actually works.
Note that last bit is almost the same as NFS, but it actually works in an enviroment of Windows boxes.
Oh, I never got around to telling people why CIS sucks. It sucks because it uses stupid-ass NetBIOS to find other machines. Hence it can be very hard to set up and is very easy to break.
Re:The version will contain a poison pill (Score:5, Informative)
Set the computer's date to some time in the distant future (say 5 years ahead), start Quicktime player, get the message and respond as usual. Go back and reset the date correctly.
The "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro" prompt will disappear until that future date you used.