What other libavcodec-based player would you suggest then?

I believe you could before XP Service Pack 2 (which kinda reinforced security).

Nothing that can't be fixed through abuse of preprocessor macros, though.

Damn. I really should have read TFA before posting.

That application will not pass the approval process because it downloads stuff and runs it... quite against the requirements for apps, if I recall.

The problem with old programs are all the unpatched security holes.

I might not want the new and shinier version, but I sure do want to use a version that's still being updated when the next 0-day comes.

But then, crappy programmers misuse them, not knowing about what is done behind their back, and it becomes slow and bloated code.

Having to specify everything explicitely makes you aware of the complexity/memory usage of what you are doing.

As one commenter put it earlier, lots of websites scrape Usenet posts where it ends up on the web, making it "become a linkfarm" as the guy put it.

That would be my guess as why...

Mod parent up. Most attacks come from the "huge attack surface" from web browser plugins these days.

I, for one, have disabled each and every Firefox add-on and unwanted plugin, and use Windows Vista/7's integrity levels to run the browser in Low Integrity. That way, the worse it can do is trash its profile directory and one designated download directory, both of which are easily wiped and re-created fresh.

True, but vulnerabilities are found much more often in high-level, complex services such as DirectShow, MSHTML or the JScript engine, than, say, basic stuff like the C Runtime Library.

So next time there is some remote code execution vulnerability in DirectShow and/or its codecs, you want Firefox users to be affected too?

Face it, with the amount of "plugins" installed by default in Firefox these days in the back of the user (Acrobat, Silverlight, WPF, Windows Media Player, etc.), Firefox has become as much vulnerable as Internet Explorer, if not more because of its lack of usage of Vista's integrity levels.

Let's not add another nail to its coffin.

That would explain what I thought was poor image quality (yellow/blue jaggies around stuff) in that particular episode.

Back then I just thought it was a bad quality rip.

Isn't this exactly what reg.exe does already?

This can already be done.

Also, I hope they will keep the tabs on the bottom, and not clutter the titlebar with it. It's the window manager's job to draw the window border and decoration, definitely not the application's.

It seems "themes" or "branding" is the new fad these days. Is it so hard to just leave the window frame's look to be managed by the window manager, as it should?

I like my apps to look consistent. In fact, I usually take matters in my own hands when they insist on not doing it.