Microsoft Corona fizzes Monday

The Inquirer ^ | July 12, 2002 | INQUIRER staff

[JameRetief]

And XP service pack one in the wild

By INQUIRER staff: Friday 12 July 2002, 08:38

US MAGAZINE Infoworld said that Microsoft will announce the next step in its digital media plans codenamed Corona next Monday.

The paper says that Microsoft will steer cleer of MPEG 4, a widely accepted industry standard for digital media and instead plump to continue on its own remorseless proprietary path.

The "Corona" technology is slated to be at the heart of the next version of its Media Player technology.

On Monday, Microsoft will officially name the product and its launch date, as well as third party support from electronics manufacturers.

By bundling Media Player with its operating system, Windows XP, Microsoft hopes to establish its own technology over the MPEG 4 standard.

Its current Media Player has the infuriating habit of letting Palatinate Redmondia know when you're about to play a bit of music or something else. You can circumvent this by using a firewall to prevent the Vole from knowing too much about your viewing and listening habits, however.

Meanwhile, there are already copies of Microsoft's long awaited service pack fix for XP in the wild.

Here's the Infoworld piece.

The same issue of the paper says that MS will introduce a service pack for Exchange 2000 this month to fix any possible security problems. µ

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Along with acquiring OpenGL from SGI, this pretty well wraps it up. Microsoft uber alles. Game over.

[HarryDunne]

They acquired OpenGL?

[ThinkDifferent]

They acquired patents on some of the technology used in portions of OpenGL. Nobody seems to be quite sure of the impact, but many people are justifiably worried.

Maybe the threat of Corona will cause the MPEG group to get off their butts and fix their ridiculous per-use licensing demands.

[HarryDunne]

Java was outright stolen. Lawsuit ensued, Microsoft settled.

Are they doing the same thing with OpenGL, do you think?

[for-q-clinton]

This article is misleading. Media Player doesn't tell redmond about the user, plus the feature they are referencing is very easily turned off with a check box.

I believe they are referring to the feature that allows websites to uniquely ID your media player. It's basically a super cookie. Trust me if this causes you problems you probably already know about it and you have all cookies disabled too. In other words, do you log onto Freerepublic everytime you get here or do you allow the cookie to recognize your browser? If you allow the browser, then you have other problems to worry about if you're also concerned about the "super cookie" in media player. But it's a lot easier turning off the super cookie in media player than it is turning off cookies. By that I mean you won't notice it's turned off as your surf/listen on the web.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

They acquired OpenGL?

3D graphics world shaken by patent claims

[HarryDunne]

wow, thanks

[Libertarianize the GOP]

.

[Timesink]

*Shrug* The public voted for a monopoly with their feet and their dollars. Now they really pay the price.

[TN Republican]

I use the old Media Player. It was just a tool to play media files with, not a lot of bells and whistles, and much smaller (5 KB vs. 508 KB).

[upchuck]

WinAmp!!

[6ppc]

Tools menu then options. It's on the first tab.

[discostu]

Tools-Options, uncheck "Allow Internet Site to uniquely identify your player". Like he said though, this feature has NOTHING to do with Redmond and doesn't feed data back to anybody.

Of course this is a typical hit piece. I like how it makes it seem that MS just recently started putting Media Player in the OS. Media Player has been in the OS since at least Win3.1. Back then it only played wav files. Been around a long long time.

[eclectic]

FUD ALERT!

[JameRetief]

FUD ALERT!

If you are going to jump into every thread and be negative, at least have something interesting to say. Boring and mindless postings like this give you no credibility.