For IWE nostalgia week: Brian Livingston in '00
Since Critter hath excavated the Dead-C++ Scrolls.. well, their wrappers anyway:
Came across this 9-8-00 interview, on the occasion of BL's release of a book on the new Win MErde. Reeking as this exchange does, of undisguised truthiness - assuredly Sandy Reed and the ambiguously-gray-or-something Security Duo would have yanked his umbilical over this sort of prose; kinda wonder what venue this originally appeared in / under aegis of [link|http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winme_livingston.asp| Paul Thurrott] {?} Bloody well never made it into the Rag.
An interview with Brian Livingston
On Friday, September 8, 2000, I sat down with Brian Livingston at Boston's Union Oyster House, the longest continually operating restaurant in America, to discuss Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), Brian's new book ([1][link|http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764534939/102-9259028-6932936?n=283155| Windows Me Secrets]), copyright issues, and a recent press release, in which he accused Microsoft of tying two products--Windows Media Player 7 and Windows Movie Maker--into the new OS. As always, it was an interesting chat.
Paul: OK, what's up with this press release?
Brian: The very curious thing about Windows Me is that Microsoft does not allow people, when they install Windows Me, to choose not to install Media Player 7 and the Movie Maker. Once Windows Me is installed, there is also no apparent way to remove these programs through the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel or through any other application. They are hard-wired into Windows for absolutely no good reason. Because there is the ability now [thanks to a third party application] to add Media Player and Movie Maker to the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel, it's clear that Microsoft didn't have to make those programs non-removable for technical reasons. Microsoft has done this to ensure that users who get Windows Me on a new PC for the next umpteen years will have that software. Otherwise, Windows Media Player would have to compete with all that software out there that does streaming video and audio, and other multimedia products.
Let me ask you something. It sounds like this is related to the Internet Explorer bundling issue, although you could make an argument that IE being bundled into the OS has some technical merit: They're using it for the display, they're using it as an integral part of the file manager, and so on. Obviously, these two programs don't serve that purpose. Can Microsoft make the argument that they are establishing a baseline of functionality, so that developers can rely on those products and their associated technology being present in the system?
Brian: The argument could be made that you shouldn't remove the HTML rendering engine from Windows 98, because the Help system and other programs using this engine to display text. But that's not the same as saying that a browser--which is essentially a front-end to the HTML rendering engine--should be bundled for free. The antitrust case wasn't really about Microsoft giving away Internet Explorer for free, it was about forcing users to take IE in Windows 98 whether they wanted it or not. More importantly, Microsoft forced Internet service companies into restrictive agreements that prevented them from supporting non-Microsoft Internet products, such as Netscape. So Microsoft wasn't simply giving away products for free, it was taking steps to harm competitors.
So they haven't exactly learned their lesson? (Laughing)
Brian: Right. Microsoft will go before the U.S. Supreme Court sometime in the relatively near future. You would think that they'd want to keep a low profile on the types of behaviors that the court found them guilty of. Instead of playing it safe, however, Microsoft has not only bundled these programs into Windows Me, they have made it nearly impossible to remove them or not install them in the first place. To me, this only makes sense if Microsoft believes that the Supreme Court will tell them not to do this anymore. Microsoft seems to be gambling that the court won't uphold the more severe penalties, but will instead tell them to simply not do this anymore. In this case, it looks like Windows Me is only be released so that Microsoft can work its audio and video programs into the operating system before the Supreme Court has a chance to hear the case and require that they not do that in the future.
So going forward, Microsoft can simply say, hey, it's in the OS now and we've got to update it.
Brian: Right. There aren't that many new features in Windows Me that really make sense as a release. It's really Windows 98 SE 2.
[More]
Ah well, a really dead horse - but it seems the troops saw the Court-twitting at the core of this POS, starkly and immediately - I'da thought it took longer than that, to have copped to: what exactly WAS this POS's (default: View as Web Page cha cha) raison d'etre. Note, later he mentions "98lite IV Millennium Edition" as relief from the situation.. not that 98% would ever hear or care.
Made a lot of difference, this early al punte revelation, dinnit. Could judges be as gullib.. no, that can't
[/Y2K nostalgia]
[1] now starting at $0.38 used.
Hmmm.. could a dejunked MErde-Lite -with Puppy Linux- stand-in for 98SE-Lite?
Could it -too- possibly attain that magical 5 Years Mark sans reload, achieved yesterday..?
Am I silly enough to piss away that much effort at polishing a turd, just to see??
PS: under Doze Nostalgia Month, from ripe old links -
[link|http://scorpioncity.com/mscrash.shtml|http://scorpioncity.com/mscrash.shtml]
Has our '06 prose of odium improved any, since.. as the Beast Goes On?
'Inured' - that ugly word.
