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I downloaded and installed some Windows updates yesterday after checking to hide Win 10 related updates and known phone-home privacy concerns. Though I have been running Windows 7 and the media player since receiving my machine late last summer, a WMP install note popped up requesting approval for what is either an update or new version. It came with "recommended" or "custom" setting selections. Microsoft was nice enough to tell me that "recommended" included a lot of phone-home settings to "enhance" my use. I immediately checked "custom" and unchecked about a half-dozen settings that would record or report my listening/media...

SEATTLE--If it is up to Microsoft, the omnipresent JPEG image format will be replaced by Windows Media Photo. The software maker detailed the new image format Wednesday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here. Windows Media Photo will be supported in Windows Vista and also be made available for Windows XP, Bill Crow, program manager for Windows Media Photo said in a presentation. "One of the biggest reasons people upgrade their PCs is digital photos," Crow said, noting that Microsoft has been in contact with printer makers, digital camera companies and other unnamed industry partners while working on Windows Media...

WASHINGTON--A federal judge scolded Microsoft on Wednesday for devising a marketing plan that would have forced portable-music player makers to package only Windows Media Player with their products. "It seems to me that at this date, you should not be having something like this occur," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said at a status conference here, adding that she found the issue "one of concern." As previously reported by CNET News.com, a recent federal court filing revealed that Microsoft initially drafted a marketing agreement with language indicating that manufacturers that signed on would be barred from supplying software other than...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A European Union court ruled Wednesday that Microsoft Corp. must immediately divulge some trade secrets to competitors and produce a version of its flagship Windows operating system stripped of the program that plays music and video. The 91-page ruling effectively thwarts Microsoft's attempt to delay, pending appeal, implementation of the EU's landmark antitrust decision in March that demanded changes in the software giant's business practices. The implications for Microsoft are huge, though the company did not immediately disclose whether it intended to offer a version of Windows without the Media Player in Europe alone or more broadly....