Microsoft · Grey Nicholson

The BBC Loves Them Some Microsoft

2008-02-22T01:52:00+00:00

Either that or they're crap journalists. Or their technology editor's wholly unknowledgeable (which really amounts to the same).

In the offending report, one paragraph (comprising just one sentence—have you noticed how often the BBC does that?) says that:

It [Microsoft] also promised not to sue open source developers for making that software available for non-commercial use.

Now, open source developers are those who make open source software, which is any software that's released under an open source licence. Point 6 of the Open Source Definition explicitly states that commercial users cannot be excluded. So for a program to be released as open source, it must be available for commercial as well as non-commercial use.

Open source developers therefore have no interest in releasing code just for non-commercial use. Doing so is usually called shared source—“you can look, but you can't run it for commercial purposes”. Microsoft have offered code under shared source licences before—that, in itself, isn't news.

Far from helping open source developers, this may actually make it easier for Microsoft to sue them: they can more-plausibly claim that an open source developer has looked at some of Microsoft's source code, and copied it in code they've released as open source (and therefore for commercial use), which would be a violation of Microsoft's code's licence.

Certainly, with this as (at least) a possibility, any open source developer would be foolhardy to actually look at the Microsoft code if they intend to write anything comparable in the future.

BBC msPlayer

2007-09-07T21:52:00+00:00

The BBC recently launched a video-on-demand service called “iPlayer”. To ensure that copyright violators have to invest more time in copying each video, and to make it awkward for everyone else to view content that they're allowed to view*, the BBC decided to encapsulate their content in DRM—officially “digital rights management”, equally accurately “digital restrictions management”.

They chose Microsoft to provide the DRM, ostensibly a good choice, since Microsoft have proven themselves adept at bundling obtrusive unwanted software along with software the customer actually wants—it was for this reason that they were convicted of operating a monopoly in the EU.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's DRM system only works on Microsoft's operating system, Windows; and even then, only on the five-year-old version, XP, which has since been superceded by Vista. Oddly, having better DRM capabilities is one of Vista's selling points. And it's odd that the British Broadcasting Corporation would choose to anoint Windows XP as its favourite operating system, since there isn't even a version of it that uses British English. (There is a Welsh version, because too many Welsh speakers started using Free Software.)

The BBC Trust maintains that it's a good idea to ask a convicted software monopoly to produce software whose purpose is to restrict users' capabilities, and that only runs when using the monopoly's operating system software.

A petition was sent to the UK government to protest against this decision. They've responded; an excerpt:

The BBC Trust made it a condition […] that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.

—iplayer - epetition response

Every six months. They're going to review their progress every six months. The government, the BBC Trust and the BBC don't seem to understand the pace at which technology, particularly internet-based technology, moves. The length of time it's taken the BBC to produce the iPlayer since announcing it is evidence of this. Hopefully such a long delay will harm Microsoft Windows Vista as much as it will harm Free Software.

The BBC shouldn't just make the iPlayer available for a range of operating systems—they should make it open source, so that anyone with the right skills (or who can persuade someone with the right skills to help them) can make an iPlayer for their operating system. Anyone would be able to improve the iPlayer, and we wouldn't be reliant on the BBC to provide fixes for errors. Open-sourcing the iPlayer would instantly satisfy the BBC's commitment.

Standards by Virtue of Shouting Louder

2005-12-31T00:56:00+00:00

Lots of people seem to be interested in having a common icon to depict web feeds, ever since Internet Explorer decided to use the same icon as Firefox.

A bloke decided to help popularise this new “standard” by recreating the icon in vector form and distributing high-quality versions of it to anyone who'd take them.

Despite having chosen the Microsoft version (the arcs subtend less than 90° in Firefox) as the canonical example on which the images are based (presumably because they gave the biggest example image), I think this is generally a good idea. But (oh, you knew it was coming) it undermines web standards.

Yes, in a roundabout way and yes, unintentionally - they're using the word “standard” all over the place, to describe something they (the icon's advocates) have just decided is a “standard”. It's a standard in the same way that Windows is a standard, IE6 and thus its non-standard interpretation of CSS is a standard, and Microsoft Word document format is a standard.

To coin a phrase, ubiquity does not a standard make.

I was once told to hand in some University work in “standard Microsoft Word format”, which is of course a contradiction in terms. Not only does the actual format used by Word change with each revision of the program, but the format itself is defined by the implementation. This means two things: any bugs in the implementation must stay there for ever and ever amen; and the format is undisclosed - other people can't also implement it. (Yes, they can try, but it'll always be imperfect.)

That last point is very important - only Microsoft can ever make a program that will correctly read Microsoft Word format files - because whatever they say is correct is correct by definition, and they won't tell anyone else what they say is correct. It's a bad idea to accept anything based on authority - the truth is true no matter who says so. (Getting pretty philosophical, aren't I? Yes I am - I said so.) And it's useful to have a definite truth about how to decipher a document, if you want to be able to read that document.

A mediocre analogy is the Bible in the United Kingdom several hundred years ago. It was written in Latin. Only the monks could read Latin; laypeople couldn't (I doubt they could read English). As far as the randomers were concerned, the Bible said whatever the monks said it said. Hence wars and lots of evil and stuff. (I just made that last bit up - I can't prove anything.)

Haphazardly calling a picture a “standard” isn't going to lead to wars. In fact, it's not important at all (why d'you think I'm writing about it?). But it's a bad idea for people to get too used to accepting “standard”s blindly. Of course, they will - people are sheep (in a manner of speaking; incidentally, the reverse is said to be true in Wales).

I'm not having a go at Microsoft just 'cos they're Microsoft (that's so last year) - I'm having a go at them for using closed formats. They have published their new Microsoft Office XML format - which is good - but I can now have a go at them for not using the existing standard, OpenDocument. See? - “standard” means nothing.

It's not important that Microsoft Word is proprietary software (although it'd be nicer if it wasn't) - Microsoft should be allowed to make money by developing and selling software. What's important is that secret information formats (the formats are secret, not the information) don't catch on. Yes, they've caught on already; it should stop. Which is why you shouldn't use Microsoft Word “.doc” format.

'Cos it's evil.

Probably kills kittens too - I haven't looked into it, but it seems likely.

Microsoft Desktool MSN Windows Search…top…bar

2005-08-21T21:55:00+00:00

Earlier today I installed Desktop Windows MSN Search (or whatever it's called) and I'm actually pleasantly surprised. I'd had Google Desktop Search installed for a while, but I've never found it useful.

Its results always seemed irrelevant. Of course, calling a desktop search program “Google” is something of a misnomer - Google is founded on the principle that “a link is a vote” and there are no links to inspect for local files.

GDS had two options to display the results it found: relevance and date. The former seemed very arbitrary, turning up files I haven't used in ages (such as archived files) over ones I use all the time (such as mqwtm.xml, The Big, Bad Source File).

The other option, sorting by date seemed backwards - it showed the most recently used matching file first - the one that I've just used and haven't had chance to lose yet; I'd only actually bother firing up GDS to find a totally obscure file.

Another thing - the firing up. GDS seems slow compared to Toolbar Windows MSN Search Desktop, because the former is HTML-bound. I don't want to have to load a webpage to find a file on my computer, no matter how fast Firefox is. And since the results are just links, I can't right-click and use the system context menu.

Windows MSN Desktop Microsoft, on the other hand, pops up a window showing incremental results as I type. Hang about - GDS could also do that. Oh, yeah - I turned it off because I don't like allowing Internet Explorer to render webpages, and Google's results are in the form of a webpage.

MSN Deskbar Search Tool does come with a lot of links to msn.co.uk inbuilt, but all of them can be turned off, and any search service (i.e. Google) can be used for the web search. With a few minutes' Options-massage, it can be adequately non-annoying.

Desktop MSN Windows' full-blown results window's interface resembles the Details view of Explorer, although it's clearly just an imitation - there's no context menu for the column headers. But it allows sorting by any of many criteria in both directions, including “relevance”. The preview pane is pretty useful in most cases, except when previewing a Microsoft Word format or even Rich Text Format document. Then it's headed with “You Need To Buy Microsoft Office To Look At This Properly Yes You Do Don't Argue No Wordpad Won't Do £££”. Seriously. Direct quote.

It's quite amusing that the icon for the inferior - well, useless - inbuilt Windows Search function thing appears in the results window's toolbar and can't be removed. Right Hand, meet Left Hand.

To summarise, MSN Desktop Windows Search Toolbar actually works. But Microsoft (or MSN or whoever's supposed to be responsible for it) do need to figure out what it's supposed to be and then assign it a name - one name, that it calls itself throughout. Like, everywhere. (Have I introduced you to Left Hand yet?)

Netscape 4 is newer than Internet Explorer 6

2005-04-12T05:03:00+00:00

Browsing W3Schools, I've found something interesting – IE6 is older than Netscape 4.

Sort of. From their incomplete and somewhat dogmatastic overview of web browsers: Netscape Communicator 4.8 was released from Netscape in August 2002. whereas [Internet Explorer 6.0] was released in August 2001.

I know this has nothing to do with the age of the rendering engine, but dumb users know and care nothing about the rendering engine; in their eyes Netscape 4.8 is newer than IE6.

So if you're gonna stop supporting one of them next time you design a website, shouldn't it be the oldest? (Ideally, screw both of them.)

IEBlurb

2005-02-21T00:25:00+00:00

Five months ago I wrote about how the IE weblog's Browsing the Web section was empty. Since then, they've written one item in this category, A fresh IE security update. Yes, that's what browsing the web is all about.

I seriously believe the only reason it's in this category is that it concludes with the phrase Surf safely!. Do you see? Surf? That's Browsing the Web, that is!

Afterthought

This is my hundredth entry.

IEBlank

2004-09-13T14:39:00+00:00

The Internet Explorer crew over at Microdollar clearly spend a lot of time thinking about browsing the web - as well they should, since they're supposed to be making a web browser. Now, they've pooled their collective thoughts into the IE weblog's Browsing the Web section, which serves as a useful, entertaining and enlightening glimpse into... oh, hang on a sec... what's...? No, it's definitely empty.

Odd.

Microsoft Bollocks

2004-06-17T23:50:00+00:00

If you've ever visited msn.com, you'll probably have a couple of cookies from them stored by your browser. Whilst perusing my stored cookies just now, I found one from there entitled “MSNADS”.

It'd be fair to assume that this is to be interpreted as “MSN ADS”, i.e. “Microsoft Network adverts”, but I feel obliged to point out that it also could (and indeed should) be interpreted as “MS NADS”, i.e. “Microsoft gonads”.

What more evidence do anti-Microdollar zealots need? Microsoft bollocks sneaking on to your computer...

Very curious...

2004-05-12T15:50:00+00:00

Mozilla browsers have long had an “easter egg” whereby if you enter about:mozilla into the location bar, you're presented with a nice quote from the Book of Mozilla.

What's queer, is that entering about:mozilla into Internet Explorer gives a blue page. No other about: address (that I've tried) does this.

Surely Microsoft aren't nicking source code?

Incidentally, why haven't Mozilla's copyright/trademark folks taken Microsoft to court over their use of “Mozilla” in IE's user agent string?