msnbc news alert installer: "Unable to start browser"

[Dan Kegel]

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

[Jeremy White]

> > 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

[Dan Kegel]

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

[Jeremy White]

> 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

[Francois Gouget]

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%22,0000000...) ret=00408347
0806dc98:Call kernel32.WinExec16(40555030 "netscape.exehttp://www.msnbc.com/tools/newsalert/nasetup.asp?b=nainst&n=0%22,0000000...) 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         [e-mail]        http://fgouget.free.fr/
              Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware

[Bill Medland]

"Dan Kegel"  wrote in message
news:[e-mail]...
> 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

[Geoff Thorpe]

Hi there,

On Saturday 05 January 2002 04:18, Bill Medland wrote:
> "Dan Kegel"  wrote in message
> news:[e-mail]...
> > 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