No Rock And Roll Fun

MEDIA PLAYERS: We've just got this from GSPM:
just wondering. you mentioned in a post about the apple i-tunes thing and WMP. you mentioned that WMP sucks (or some such).

i won't defend it, I use it. Perhaps I don't know any better. But I would like to know why people think it sucks or is evil. Is there heinous spyware involved that I don't know about? I presume that the media player is a lot deeper than it looks and given that is an MS product there are certain to be idiocies and drawbacks.

with 7 gig of mp3s on my harddrive i found that to be the easiest thing to manage them. i didn't search out anything fancier, but it worked for me.

i like it. but when i keep reading about how people don't like it i have to wonder what it is about it that i don't know.

any hints?

Well, from a purely personal point of view, I used to use Liquid Player before I upgraded my Mac and now I use i-Tunes; of course, this is great for Mac, but PC users aren't as lucky.

I don't think there's anything wrong with WMP as a piece of software - although I don't think its as nifty as some other Microsoft products; the main drawback is the usual problem with Bill Gates using his company's position to squeeze out the alternatives.

Now, when he did this with browsers, it wasn't as pressing a problem as the dangers of a dominant browser weren't really clear. But with the prospect of more and more media content having digital rights management built in, if WMP becomes the only show in town, Bill Gates will actually have greater control over the entertainment industry than anyone actually in the entertainment industry. His DRM will be the only DRM. Microsoft will effectively be able to control what gets played, heard and seen...

As for alternatives... well, Liquid Player might work for you. Real Player is a bit clunky to manager audio on your harddrive, I always find. Maybe other people will chip in with suggestions...