"The consumer is going to eat what he's given,"

Hobbes

http://www.canoe.ca/MoneyWSJ/wsj2-dow.html

Nice to see corporations attempt to destroy technology in the name of the almighty buck.

You think they would know better after the mess they call DIVX vs DVD.

Skeptic1

They will never totally win this war. Other formats, such as ogg-vorbis, will come along and people will download the players for these. Microsoft won the browser war because IE didn't impose any restriction on the user. However people have an inate feeling that it is their right to do what they want with information. That's my view after a few pints

sam

i thought microsoft won the browser war because they installed IE with windows, and also because their only main competition at the time (netscape) was equally ****e as IE

Shinji

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Microsoft, for example, plans to severely limit the quality of music that can be recorded as an MP3 file using software built into the next version of its personal-computer operating system, Windows XP.</font>

I can't wait to see what lame-brained scheme they come up with to do this.

I bet what they've ACTUALLY done is signed a deal with Real Networks which will limit the quality of music that can be ripped with RealJukebox, and have limited the quality of MP3s ripped with MS software. Anyone using Audiograbber and LAME-ENC (ie most folk with a clue) will still be sorted.

The only other possibility is that they'd actually put a limit on the quality of CDDA you can rip under the OS... but that would fubar SO much stuff with CD access, that it would be mad to do it. And there'll be a workaround in minutes.

PiE

Well, you know...like...just don't buy/use WindowsXP?

Coyote

Shinji as far as i know that is just what there trying to do, the sound will be limited to 56K sound. it's ment to aficet all software that uses windows.
i think they will have to stop it in the end but we will see, they have pushed things befor

yossarin

wont that just push everyone who wants 'freedom' onto a *nix platform ?

maybe thats the plot all along...that shifty Torvalds..i never trusted him