msnbc news alert installer: "Unable to start browser"
While doing research for my site on the Microsoft antitrust trial ( http://www.kegel.com/remedy/ ), I came across a nasty little EULA for a product called MSNBC News Alert. The EULA is at http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/naeula.asp and says
MSNBC Interactive grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computers running validly licensed copies of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed [e.g., Microsoft Windows(r) 95; Microsoft Windows NT(r), Microsoft Windows 3.x, Macintosh, etc.].
It'd be nice to know how close Wine is to being able to (a) install and (b) run this on a fake windows installation, as this may have some bearing on whether Microsoft is damaging anybody with this exclusionary EULA. (Besides, how could I resist? That EULA practically begs to be disobeyed!) So I downloaded it from http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newstools/d/news_alert.asp and ran it, but it failed with the dialog box "News Alert and Windows were unable to start your default browser to access the following URL..." Can anyone have a look at what's wrong (presumably Wine doesn't implement browser control, or I don't have a browser registered?) I'm running Wine release 20010731 (my, that's old!) The output of wine -debugmsg +all is at http://www.kegel.com/wine/newsalert/log.bz2 and is 328KB compressed (200 MB expanded!) I can't see anything obvious, but then I'm out of practice. (You probably just want to download the executable and try it yourself.) Thanks, Dan Kegel
MSNBC Interactive grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computers running validly licensed copies of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed [e.g., Microsoft Windows(r) 95; Microsoft Windows NT(r), Microsoft Windows 3.x, Macintosh, etc.].
Dan, Microsoft seems to be updating their free download products to use a EULA like this. You'll find it in Windows Media Player, Direct X, and other places. Fun, fun fun. Jer
Jeremy White wrote:
MSNBC Interactive grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computers running validly licensed copies of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed [e.g., Microsoft Windows(r) 95; Microsoft Windows NT(r), Microsoft Windows 3.x, Macintosh, etc.].
Dan,
Microsoft seems to be updating their free download products to use a EULA like this. You'll find it in Windows Media Player, Direct X, and other places.
Fun, fun fun.
Yep. With Microsoft stuff, they tend to call the free downloads 'operating system components' to make it sound more reasonable. They can't use that dodge with products from MSNBC, though, so it looks more ham-handed there. I just updated my microsoft antitrust settlement analysis to include this as an example of where the settlement falls short ( http://www.kegel.com/remedy/remedy2.html#user ). Still hoping somebody can try running it on a more recent Wine, and comment on why it fails... Thanks, Dan
Yep. With Microsoft stuff, they tend to call the free downloads 'operating system components' to make it sound more reasonable. They can't use that dodge with products from MSNBC, though, so it looks more ham-handed there.
To be fair, it's not just Microsoft - Macromedia does it too (check out the license for Shockwave sometime); in their case, they do it to protect their sales in the embedded market. Still can't say I like it much (and watch me duck the actual work you asked for...<g>). Jer
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Dan Kegel wrote: [...]
I can't see anything obvious, but then I'm out of practice.
Done that. From my log: 0806dc98:Call shell32.ShellExecuteA(00000000,00000000,00409a34 "netscape.exe",40555934 "http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/nasetup.asp?b=nainst&n=0",00000000,0000000a) ret=00408347 0806dc98:Call kernel32.WinExec16(40555030 "netscape.exehttp://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/nasetup.asp?b=nainst&n=0",0000000a) ret=407a7ed7 'netscape.exehttp...' this is obviously wrong. And this comes from dlls/shell32/shell.c:ShellExecute16(): /* First try to execute lpFile with lpParameters directly */ strcpy(cmd,lpFile); strcat(cmd,lpParameters ? lpParameters : ""); 0806dc98:Ret kernel32.WinExec16() retval=00000002 ret=407a7ed7 0806dc98:Call kernel32.SearchPathA(00000000,00409a34 "netscape.exe",407cb778 ".exe",00000100,405549f4,00000000) ret=407a78bf Then it goes on trying to find netscape.exe in your path. So obviously if you don't have it in your path it will fail. But their may be more issues there, like per application paths. I don't know how well Wine implements those. And then you will probably not actually have windows netscape.exe in your fake_windows environment. The URL asks you to enter preferences and then saves them into a file. But you are unlikely to save it in the right location. Also, there must be some synchrnization mechanism between this and the installer and I don't think it is working in Wine. Anyway, the bug above is certainly worth fixing. Also, ShellExecuteA should probably not keep calling WinExec16. -- Francois Gouget fgouget(a)free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware
"Dan Kegel" <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote in message news:3C35371B.9FF04D0F(a)kegel.com...
While doing research for my site on the Microsoft antitrust trial ( http://www.kegel.com/remedy/ ), I came across a nasty little EULA for a product called MSNBC News Alert. The EULA is at http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/naeula.asp and says
MSNBC Interactive grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computers running validly licensed copies of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed
So who specifies for what operating systems the software was designed?
[e.g., Microsoft Windows(r) 95; Microsoft Windows NT(r), Microsoft Windows 3.x, Macintosh, etc.].
It'd be nice to know how close Wine is to being able to (a) install and (b) run this on a fake windows installation, as this may have some bearing on whether Microsoft is damaging anybody with this exclusionary EULA. (Besides, how could I resist? That EULA practically begs to be disobeyed!)
It seems to me that one cannot even tell whether one is or is not disobeying it. Bill
Hi there, On Saturday 05 January 2002 04:18, Bill Medland wrote:
"Dan Kegel" <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote in message news:3C35371B.9FF04D0F(a)kegel.com...
While doing research for my site on the Microsoft antitrust trial ( http://www.kegel.com/remedy/ ), I came across a nasty little EULA for a product called MSNBC News Alert. The EULA is at http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/naeula.asp and says
MSNBC Interactive grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computers running validly licensed copies of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed
So who specifies for what operating systems the software was designed?
It seems pretty clear that such software was designed for any operating system supporting the win32 API. Wine is just helping widen this scope a bit, Microsoft should be thrilled. Imagine how many more copies of Office they might sell? As for "validly licensed", think how much administration work the Open Source licenses are saving them from ... my linux is validly licensed as is my installation of wine. I'm a low-overhead target customer for them! Cheers, Geoff
participants (5)
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Bill Medland -
Dan Kegel -
Francois Gouget -
Geoff Thorpe -
Jeremy White