I finally upgraded to Windows XP SP2 (from "Windows 98 Lite", but that's another story) and installed the K-Lite codec pack. But this Quicktime Alternative comes with a registration key already typed in. How is that legal? I'm uninstalling it....

Amusing... you'd like a QT codec that fits into the Windows architecture without requiring a special player and I'd like a WMV codec that fits into the OS X architecture without requiring a special player.

I like Apple products. I like them a lot. But I'm sure they would be just as "evil" as MS if given the opportunity. I guess they already are in the music download business.

Absolutely. I dislike WMV and QT files. Frankly, I'd be fine with Quicktime for the PC, but they insist on making stick its fingers in too many places of the OS by default, and then there's the fact that you simply cannot do full screen video, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Oh well, I really don't care these days because mplayer plays everything, full screen, and without any hooks into the OS whatsoever.

Yeah. What Dignan said about Mplayer.

Interesting, I never noticed a key already typed in. I guess, in theory, if it's a whole new program it's fine of the developer types a key in to start with. On the other hand if it's a hacked version of the Apple program, yeah I'd suspect it's not legal.

I have to admit, it doesn't bother me enough to uninstall it. I hate Quicktime with a passion, in regards to how it installs and puts it's sticky little fingers all over the place. For similar reasons I also use the "real alternative". I found "Foxit" as a pdf alternative and love that as well. I'm hoping someone will have a "macromedia flash" alternative some day, it appears that it's gone the same route - the latest version now puts a little icon in my systray and insists on telling me about updates.

I miss the days when (well at least in my imperfect memory) that programs simply installed and ran as asked, when asked, nothing more, nothing less.

Spyware can't run on programs without hooks and vulnerable add-on functionality. I'd love to see modern spyware infect old bare-bones Netscape 4.x.

And I've just found that QuickTime 7 is a prostitute compared to QuickTime 6. Having QT7's menus loaded with greyed out options labeled with "PRO" is just disgusting. I would downgrade, but cleaning up 7 is probably too hard.

Wow, that's a pretty blatant exploit. Almost as bad as the Eudora exploits I've seen. But hopefully, just as rare in the wild.

No, I've abandon my abandonware and have fully embraced my auto-updating, 3rd party bundling, recreates the icons and reverts the toolbars every time you're patching, crayola styling captors. Now I just need network traffic monitoring to see which are calling home...