Does mac support Active X controllers?

S

shocfacter

Registered
Hello, I am trying to watch a streaming video on this one particular website and it says I need an active x controller. Does anyone know if OSX Tiger supports this and if so where can I go to get this active x controller?
 
I don't know if Active X works in virtual PC, some people have said that it doesn't. Even if you do get it to work, it will be s l o w . For the price of those programs, and the performance, it would be cheaper to get a used PC (or low end used laptop (!) for the price of virtual PC) to run Active X
 
Windows media player is for media files, like .wmv I don't think that it has much, if anything to do with Active X.
 
ActiveX is one of the file formats design to create platform lock in. Microsoft will never release it for any other platform.

Microsoft has also tried in the past to pollute other standards in an attempt to do the same thing. They tried to push an MS-HTML and Visual J++ (a Windows only Java develoment tool). They have also gone out of their way to hurt other formats on Windows that they don't have control over. For example they made MP3 play back on early releases of Windows XP very bad to get people to switch to their WMA format, and they worked hard to cripple QuickTime on Windows (Avie Tevanian testified in the US vs. MS case about this).


Microsoft doesn't believe in a level playing field because they run the risk of losing. The only games they are willing to play are ones fixed for them to win.

And if anyone is wondering, no amount of court cases are going to change this. Microsoft realized years ago that the court costs (and settlement losses) are a small fraction of the profits they make doing business this way. No government* so far has come up with a punishment that will stop them from their current practices.



* It should be noted that the push to break up Microsoft was dropped after the Bush administration took office. Microsoft was one of Bush's biggest contributers in both 2000 and 2004.
 
As you can see, ActiveX is a bit of a sore point for some people :p.

It's not a movie format, and therefore will not run in WMP or anywhere else; it's a format for making browser plug-ins for Internet Explorer for Windows, competing with the cross-browser Netscape plug-in architecture (which is what Firefox and Safari both use, though Safari has its own architecture too).

The point is, ActiveX gives developers the facility to do certain things with your computer (like play back a Shockwave Flash file for instance). The proliferation of Internet Explorer almost led to an explosion of ActiveX websites (similar to Microsoft's "Windows Update" site), but that was thankfully mostly halted due to some pretty horrific security flaws.

ActiveX is largely attributed as the reason IE for Windows is so insecure; it doesn't exactly 'sandbox' the executed code (which means that developers, both good and malicious) can do some pretty elaborate things.


Edit: Oh, and if you want to watch the video on that site, I'd suggest that you write them a polite letter saying you'd prefer not to be locked into a browser with 22 known, unpatched vulnerabilities (at least one giving full system access), on a platform with many unpatched vulnerabilities (24 in XP Home, 28 in XP Pro, both including at least one giving full system access).
 
WOW! I didnt know the Active X issue ran that deep. I just switched over from PC to MAC so im just hearing about all of this. Although, the Active X security issues are probably something I would have wanted to know about when I was using a PC.
 
I haven't really ever run into that issue, at least not with streaming video. What site is it? Maybe we can determine an alternative.

After all, you can get Real, Quicktime and WMV for your Mac.

By the way, Google for "flip4mac" It's a Quicktime plugin that lets you watch some popular Windows video formats using Quicktime. It seems to work great and it's free.

Doug
 
dktrickey said:
I haven't really ever run into that issue, at least not with streaming video. What site is it? Maybe we can determine an alternative.

After all, you can get Real, Quicktime and WMV for your Mac.

By the way, Google for "flip4mac" It's a Quicktime plugin that lets you watch some popular Windows video formats using Quicktime. It seems to work great and it's free.

Doug
Click to expand...


Its www.abc4.com Its the streaming news reports they have on that site thats giving me the problems
 
many american news sites are locked into IE, which is dissapointing, as a lot of content is not available to other platforms in this way.
 
There are other news sites available, though, and many support either QuickTime directly or at least Real or WM, for which plugins exist for the Mac platform. I'd simply switch sites.
 
What's CNN using? It looks like it uses Quicktime! That should be easy.

Do you have any problems with CNN?

EDIT: I meant, do you have any philosophical issues with CNN. But anyway. Looking back at your first post, perhaps you were interested in a particular video that's only on ABC. The only way to do something about that is to email them and complain. If enough people do . . .

ABC is owned by Disney. Now that Jobs is on the board, you never know. . .

Doug
 
dktrickey said:
What's CNN using? It looks like it uses Quicktime! That should be easy.

Do you have any problems with CNN?

EDIT: I meant, do you have any philosophical issues with CNN. But anyway. Looking back at your first post, perhaps you were interested in a particular video that's only on ABC. The only way to do something about that is to email them and complain. If enough people do . . .

ABC is owned by Disney. Now that Jobs is on the board, you never know. . .

Doug
Click to expand...

Yes there WAS a specific story I was trying to view that was only on that particular local Salt Lake City station. Actually I HAVE been able to view them on my PC laptop but I was hoping there was a way I could view them on this brand new EXPENSIVE Mac powerbook ya know? You spend that much on something you want it to be able to AT LEAST do everything that and inferior machine will do? Yes, PCs ARE inferior. The masses just dont realize it yet. Know if only we can get equal representation as far as software apps.

Oh and the only time I have a problem with CNN is when they twist the truth. LOL!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top