Why Microsoft Deserves To Die

So there I am, watching a video that I obtained in WMV format.

That's not a format I like.

I was watching it in Windows Media Player version 11.0.5x.

And I wanted a screen capture.

So I hit PrintScreen on my keyboard.

Pasted it into MS Paint.

And discovered something very, very weird.

When I tried to save the screensnap -- the entire dump of the screen -- the portion of the screen that contained the video frame would turn all black!

If I tried to excise the video screen portion, paste it into a new MS Paint document, I'd get only a portion of it, despite the selection having grabbed the whole thing!

I even went so far to paste the entire screendump into MS Paint and then PrintScreen MS Paint!

The frikkin video still area still turned all black!

Now this is for a video that doesn't have any DRM on it. Not one bit. It's a video that's intended to be passed around and shared. There's nothing illegal or even gray-area about it!

But Microsoft apparently treats all video streams in Windows Media Player as if they were private property! And that anyone who wanted even a still frame was engaging in theft!

I'm using Windows XP. Windows Vista apparently has even worse DRM built into it right down to its very core.

I gave up on WMP and opened the video in vlc. I got my screensnaps just fine.

And this is why Microsoft deserves to die.

Microsoft no longer serves us. It serves its Corporate Masters.

Update: Alan Pritt in the Comments at the WordPress blog informs me of the non-DRM technical reason for the above. Still, Microsoft is doomed, as this other post done later today details.