Is this just hype or for real

[idiotekniQues]

Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, makes its long awaited consumer debut tomorrow. The first major upgrade in five years, Vista incorporates a new, sleek look and features a wide array of new functionality, such as better search tools and stronger security.

The early reviews have tended to damn the upgrade with faint praise, however, characterizing it as the best, most secure version of Windows, yet one that contains few, if any, revolutionary features.

While those reviews have focused chiefly on Vista's new functionality, for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print." Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.

The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user.

Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge. During the installation process, users "activate" Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft.

Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users.

Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software.

Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated "high" or "severe," even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

Those technical limitations have proven to be even more controversial than the legal ones.

Last December, Peter Guttman, a computer scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand released a paper called "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection." The paper pieced together the technical fine print behind Vista, unraveling numerous limitations in the new software seemingly installed at the direct request of Hollywood interests.

Guttman focused primarily on the restrictions associated with the ability to play back high-definition content from the next-generation DVDs such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (referred to as "premium content").

He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors.

Guttman's research suggests that consumers will pay more for less with poorer picture quality yet higher costs since Microsoft needed to obtain licences from third parties in order to access the technology that protects premium content (those licence fees were presumably incorporated into Vista's price).

Moreover, he calculated that the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content.

Microsoft responded to Guttman's paper earlier this month, maintaining that content owners demanded the premium content restrictions. According to Microsoft, "if the policies [associated with the premium content] required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs." While that may be true, left unsaid is Microsoft's ability to demand a better deal on behalf of its enormous user base or the prospect that users could opt-out of the technical controls.

When Microsoft introduced Windows 95 more than a decade ago, it adopted the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" as its theme song. As millions of consumers contemplate the company's latest upgrade, the legal and technological restrictions may leave them singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want."



http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/175801

 

[Smilin]

What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

 

[Quinton McLeod]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

He's not capable, because he is what we all like to call a fan boy.

Fanboy

Fanboy or fanboi is a term used to describe an individual (usually male, though the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors that differ from their point of view. They are also typically hateful to the opposing brand or competition of their obsession regardless of its merits or achievements.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy


They refuse to listen to the facts. When they are forced to hear what they don't like, they typically call it FUD.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

Sure, but I'm not going to back and forth it for very long. I find FUD both annoying and a waste of time.

"He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors"

When played on a HDCP monitor the content displays fine. To display the content without HDCP you would violate the premium content owner's restrictions. This has nothing to do with MS.

"Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software."

Windows defender is not anti-virus software. Furthermore the way this is stated implies MS can willy-nilly add something to the "spyware" category. The real world just doesn't work that way. Do you think Microsoft would be able to determine that Quicktime and Realplayer are spyware and remove them, leaving you to only use Windows Media Player?

Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

This is taken out of context. Fails to mention that previous version of the software as well as software made by many other vendors uses the same limitation.

"Moreover, he calculated that the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content. "

First, I'm not sure where he got this. Might be true, might not. However "30 checks each second" is a drop in the bucket on a processor with a clock of 4,000,000,000 cycles/second. Does a computer even notice DRM calculations taking place when it's powerful enough to decode 1920x1080 content in realtime?

"When Microsoft introduced Windows 95 more than a decade ago, it adopted the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" as its theme song. As millions of consumers contemplate the company's latest upgrade, the legal and technological restrictions may leave them singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want." "

Does this strike you as an objective observation or a subjective one? Bias Free?


edit: mauled quote tags.

 

[Astray]

Some of it's true, much of it it reworded or omitted to make it seem like a terrible thing. You could be like Quinton here and believe all the false negative information. Or you could be a smart person and check more than one source before you make a judgement on an operating system, software, or anything else for that matter.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

He's not capable, because he is what we all like to call a fan boy.

Fanboy

Fanboy or fanboi is a term used to describe an individual (usually male, though the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors that differ from their point of view. They are also typically hateful to the opposing brand or competition of their obsession regardless of its merits or achievements.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy


They refuse to listen to the facts. When they are forced to hear what they don't like, they typically call it FUD.

I'm sorry Quinton but while you saying I'm not capable of replying I was busy typing my reply.

Did you have something to add or did you just swing by to personally attack me?

I'm pretty fvcking sick of your sh1t. Aren't you due for a vacation?

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

Sure.

Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge. During the installation process, users "activate" Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft.

Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users.

Activation has been in place since XP, and Vista is no different. The author fails to mention that many of the "strict limits" on transfers apply to OEM licenses, and these limitations are no different than they have been in previous iterations of Windows.

Microsoft does not send personally identifiable information as part of activation, and activation does not prevent you from changing your hardware components.

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/activation_myths.mspx

Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software.

This is a baseless accusation, and one that could be made of any antivirus or anti-spyware program. Windows Defender actually does a very good job of monitoring for spyware without consuming many system resources. The author has no basis for starting this conspiracy theory that Microsoft is using it as a device to eliminate legitimate software.

For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

Again, how is this different from almost any other EULA?

Microsoft responded to Guttman's paper earlier this month, maintaining that content owners demanded the premium content restrictions. According to Microsoft, "if the policies [associated with the premium content] required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs." While that may be true, left unsaid is Microsoft's ability to demand a better deal on behalf of its enormous user base or the prospect that users could opt-out of the technical controls.

Yes there are enormous DRM hoops that users have to go through to view "premium HD content", but these must be implemented by ALL operating systems that want to support HD-DVD and BluRay, not just Vista.

Furthermore, the "image degradation" of premium content should ONLY apply if content providers activate the Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag within the software. NO content provider has activated this flag on HD-DVD or BluRay content thus far.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/709/709653p1.html

 

[tatteredpotato]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, some people won't be happy until some major flaws in Vista are discovered. It's like they want the OS to be horrible.

 

[Quinton McLeod]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Smilin
What you have here is called FUD.

It is a mix of truth, fiction and ommissions that combine to give a biased view that is not entirely accurate.

care to elaborate rahter than just say its not accurate?

He's not capable, because he is what we all like to call a fan boy.

Fanboy

Fanboy or fanboi is a term used to describe an individual (usually male, though the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors that differ from their point of view. They are also typically hateful to the opposing brand or competition of their obsession regardless of its merits or achievements.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy


They refuse to listen to the facts. When they are forced to hear what they don't like, they typically call it FUD.

I'm sorry Quinton but while you saying I'm not capable of replying I was busy typing my reply.

Did you have something to add or did you just swing by to personally attack me?

I'm pretty fvcking sick of your sh1t. Aren't you due for a vacation?

sumimasen

I didn't mean to personally attack you... But you replied to his thread much like you do to mine. You didn't give any insight at all... Which is typical for you. I felt my response was more justified in identifying the particular type of person you are.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Furthermore, the "image degradation" of premium content should ONLY apply if content providers activate the Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag within the software. NO content provider has activated this flag on HD-DVD or BluRay content thus far.

They aren't likely to, I'm guessing, at least until they have much much greater market penetration. Then....

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod

sumimasen

I didn't mean to personally attack you... But you replied to his thread much like you do to mine. You didn't give any insight at all... Which is typical for you. I felt my response was more justified in identifying the particular type of person you are.

Sorry to highjack this thread, but Quinton, you are hardly somebody that has a right to call another person a fan boy or not, considering ALL of your threads in the OS section have been "Vista sucks because... Linus said it did" Or "Vista sucks because Some guy on another forums says it does." Really, does that not sound like fanboy BS to you? You where answered in your threads, and the only thing you went with was "Lets stick to the original article", even when they where talking about the article and the credibility of it. You did not once respond to the attacks made on your article. My goodness you're just as bad as OCHungry was.

Anyways, A lot of people will hammer vista, that is just because nobody wants to spend money and a lot of people are anti-big cooperations. It will have nothing to do with vista itself (Which as far as I've seams to be a good OS, after all 5 years of development should have turned out something that would be half descent.)

Anyways, sorry for anyone who honestly wanted to discuss this topic, but it is just stupid to see this kind of behavior (The hypocritical name calling type)

 

[fraquar]

Won't Vista need an Internet connection to keep working? What happens when it tries to phone home to re-validate and fails (i.e no Internet connection?)
Activation is one thing - re-validation is another altogether.

No thanks, I'll continue to use Windows 2000 as my Windows OS of choice as Vista does little more than Windows 2000 other than play games and serve up a bunch of eyecandy I don't really need anyway.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: fraquar
Won't Vista need an Internet connection to keep working? What happens when it tries to phone home to re-validate and fails (i.e no Internet connection?)
Activation is one thing - re-validation is another altogether.

No thanks, I'll continue to use Windows 2000 as my Windows OS of choice as Vista does little more than Windows 2000 other than play games and serve up a bunch of eyecandy I don't really need anyway.

I believe it will just check the next time you get online. I don't know how that works if you never get online, ever, but Microsoft is lead to believe that at some point, you will get online.

 

[idiotekniQues]

ok. i just wanted to see some debate on this after seeing it in another forum to get some information on it from people that no more about the subject than i before i start to form an opinion.

what about this?

"Disabling of Functionality

Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content [Note E]. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content.

Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's ?The Dark Side of the Moon?, released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.

Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista's content protection, so the same applies to a high-end video setup fed from component video. But what if you're lucky enough to have bought a video card that supports HDMI digital video with HDCP content-protection? There's a good chance that you'll have to go out and buy another video card that really does support HDCP, because until quite recently no video card on the market actually supported it even if the vendor's advertising claimed that it did. As the site that first broke the story in their article The Great HDCP Fiasco puts it:

?None of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP [...] If you've just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920x1080 resolution in the future, you've just wasted your money [...] If you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you've just wasted your money?.

(The two devices mentioned above are the premium supposedly-HDCP-enabled cards made by the two major graphics chipset manufacturers ATI and nVidia). ATI was later subject to a class-action lawsuit by its customers over this deception. As late as August of 2006, when Sony announced its Blu-Ray drive for PCs, it had to face the embarrassing fact that its Blu-Ray drive couldn't actually play Blu-Ray disks in HD format:

?Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn't yet possible?.

In fact so far no-one has been able to identify any Windows system that will actually play HD content in HD quality, in all cases any attempt to do this produced either no output or a message that it was blocked by content protection. While it's not possible to prove a negative in this manner, it's certainly an indication that potential buyers may be in for a shock when they try and play premium content on their shiny new Vista PC.

The same issue that affects graphics cards also goes for high-resolution LCD monitors. One of the big news items at CES 2007 was Samsung's 1920x1200 HD-capable 27" LCD monitor, the Syncmaster 275T, released at a time when everyone else was still shipping 24" or 25" monitors as their high-end product [Note F]. The only problem with this amazing HD monitor is that Vista won't display HD content on it because it doesn't consider any of its many input connectors (DVI-D, 15-pin D-Sub, S- Video, and component video) secure enough. So you can do almost anything with this HD monitor except view HD content on it.

If you have even more money to burn, you can go for the largest (conventional) computer monitor made, the Samsung's stupidly large (for a computer monitor) 46" SyncMaster 460PN. Again though, Vista won't display HD content on it, turning your $4,000 purchase into a still-image picture frame (oddly enough, this monitor has been advertised as ?HDTV ready? by retailers even though you can't display HD images on it, although in practice the term ?HD-ready? has been diluted close to meaninglessness).

In order to appropriately protect content, Vista will probably have to disable any special device features that it can't directly control. For example many sound cards built on C-Media chipsets (which in practice is the vast majority of them) support Steinberg's ASIO (Audio Stream I/O), a digital audio interface that completely bypasses the Windows audio mixer and other audio- related driver software to provide more flexibility and much lower latency than the Windows ones. ASIO support is standard for newer C-Media hardware like the CMI 8788. Since ASIO bypasses Windows' audio handling, it would probably have to be disabled, which is problematic because audiophiles and professional musicians require ASIO support specifically because of its much higher quality than the standard Windows channels (you can get more information on Vista's audio architecture and the changes from XP in this post from Creative Labs).
Indirect Disabling of Functionality

As well as overt disabling of functionality, there's also covert disabling of functionality. For example PC voice communications rely on automatic echo cancellation (AEC) in order to work. AEC requires feeding back a sample of the audio mix into the echo cancellation subsystem, but with Vista's content protection this isn't permitted any more because this might allow access to premium content. What is permitted is a highly-degraded form of feedback that might possibly still sort-of be enough for some sort of minimal echo cancellation purposes.

The requirement to disable audio and video output plays havoc with standard system operations, because the security policy used is a so-called ?system high? policy: The overall sensitivity level is that of the most sensitive data present in the system. So the instant that any audio derived from premium content appears on your system, signal degradation and disabling of outputs will occur. What makes this particularly entertaining is the fact that the downgrading/disabling is dynamic, so if the premium-content signal is intermittent or varies (for example music that fades out), various outputs and output quality will fade in and out, or turn on and off, in sync. Normally this behaviour would be a trigger for reinstalling device drivers or even a warranty return of the affected hardware, but in this case it's just a signal that everything is functioning as intended.
Decreased Playback Quality

Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through a ?constrictor? that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up- scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in quality. So if you're using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high- quality DVI signal on your video card and there's protected content present, the picture you're going to see will be, as the spec puts it, ?slightly fuzzy?, a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a yard sale (see the Quotes for real-world examples of this). In fact the specification specifically still allows for old VGA analog outputs, but even that's only because disallowing them would upset too many existing owners of analog monitors. In the future even analog VGA output will probably have to be disabled. The only thing that seems to be explicitly allowed is the extremely low-quality TV-out, provided that Macrovision is applied to it.

The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) ?fuzzy with less detail? [Note G].

Amusingly, the Vista content protection docs say that it'll be left to graphics chip manufacturers to differentiate their product based on (deliberately degraded) video quality. This seems a bit like breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.

The Microsoft specs say that only display devices with more than 520K pixels will have their images degraded (there's even a special status code for this, STATUS_GRAPHICS_OPM_RESOLUTION_TOO_HIGH), but conveniently omit to mention that this resolution, roughly 800x600, covers pretty much every output device that will ever be used with Vista. The abolute minimum requirement for Vista Basic are listed as 800x600 resolution (and an 800MHz Pentium III CPU with 512MB of RAM, which seems, well, ?wildly optimistic? is one term that springs to mind). However that won't get you the Vista Aero interface, which makes a move to Vista from XP more or less pointless. The minimum requirements for running Aero on a Vista Premium PC are ?a DX9 GPU, 128 MB of VRAM, Pixel Shader 2.0, and minimum resolution 1024x768x32?, and for Aero Glass it's even higher than that. In addition the minimum resolution supported by a standard LCD panel is 1024x768 for a 15" LCD, and to get 800x600 you'd have to go back to a 10-year-old 14" CRT monitor or something similar. So in practice the 520K pixel requirement means that everything will fall into the degraded-image category.

(A lot of this OPM stuff seems to come straight from the twilight zone. It's normal to have error codes indicating that there was a disk error or that a network packet got garbled, but I'm sure Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things like ?display quality too high?).

Beyond the obvious playback-quality implications of deliberately degraded output, this measure can have serious repercussions in applications where high-quality reproduction of content is vital. Vista's content-protection means that video images of premium content can be subtly altered, and there's no safe way around this ? Vista will silently modify displayed content under certain (almost impossible-to-predict in advance) situations discernable only to Vista's built-in content-protection subsystem (Philip Dorrell has created a neat cartoon that illustrates this problem). Microsoft claim that this hidden image manipulation will only affect the portions of the display that contain the protected content, but since no known devices currently implement this ?feature? it's hard to say how it'll work out in practice (what happens currently is that Vista just refuses to play premium content rather than downgrading it).

An interesting potential security threat, suggested by Karl Siegemund, occurs when Vista is being used to run a security monitoring system such as a video surveillance system. If it's possible to convince Vista that what it's communicating is premium content, the video (and/or audio) surveillance content will become unavailable, since it's unlikely that a surveillance center will be using DRM-enabled recording devices or monitors. I can just see this as a plot element in Ocean's Fifteen or Mission Impossible Six, ?It's OK, their surveillance system is running Vista, we can shut it down with spoofed premium content?.

(The silly thing about the industry's obsession with image quality is that repeated studies have shown that what really matters to viewers (rather than what they think matters) is image size and not quality. Sure, if you take the average consumer into a store and put them in front of the latest plasma panel they'll be impressed by the fact that they can count each individual hair in Gandalf's beard, but once he's leaping about wrestling with the balrog this detail becomes lost and the only differentiator is image size. You can find a good discussion of this in The Media Equation by Stanford professors Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass. In one experiment on visual fidelity they showed a film using the best equipment they could get their hands on, and again using a fifth-generation copy on bad tape and poor equipment. There were no differences in users' responses to the two types of images (see the book for more details on this). You can see an example of this effect yourself if you can set up a machine with a CRT and an LCD monitor. Use the CRT monitor for awhile, then switch to the LCD monitor for a minute or two. When you go back to the CRT monitor, does it seem faulty? Did you notice this before you looked over at the LCD monitor?

Conversely, image size is a huge differentiator: The bigger the better. So in practice a degraded image on a huge VGA monitor (or by extension anything with a lower-quality analog input) will rate better than a non-degraded image on a much smaller LCD monitor, assuming you can find an example of the latter that Vista will actually output an HD image to. Of course convincing consumers of this is another matter)."

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html#functionality

more at the link like this:

Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that's unique to that device type.

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.

This potential ?closing? of the PC's historically open platform is an extremely worrying trend. A quarter of a century ago, IBM made the momentous decision to make their PC an open platform by publishing complete hardware details and allowing anyone to compete on the open market. Many small companies, the traditional garage startup, got their start through this. This openness is what created the PC industry, and the reason why most homes (rather than just a few offices, as had been the case until then) have one or more PCs sitting in a corner somewhere. This seems to be a return to the bad old days of 25 years ago when only privileged insiders were able to participate.

 

[sam509]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
ok. i just wanted to see some debate on this after seeing it in another forum to get some information on it from people that no more about the subject than i before i start to form an opinion.

what about this?

More speculation, distortion, half truths, and finger pointing at the wrong party?

You do realize don?t you that the vast bulk of commercial HD content Blue-ray and HD-DVD will be encrypted that the only way you could ever legally play it on a PC is if DRM is built in to the OS and hardware.

Now MS had a choice include DRM so commercial HD content could legally be played or not include DRM and therefore no commercial HD content unless it was illegally cracked first.

Seem to be a lot like the way Apple handles iTunes? you get downgraded quality if you copy content. So why no moaning about Apple over the last several years.

If you want to blame someone blame the content providers not MS.

 

[stash]

Is it necessary to copy and paste an entire article to make your point? We can click on links, thanks.

 

[Skeeedunt]

I think they've already released their Malicious Software Removal Tool for Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Linux Kernel 2.6. It's a mandatory update. You'd better go get it.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod
I didn't mean to personally attack you... But you replied to his thread much like you do to mine. You didn't give any insight at all... Which is typical for you. I felt my response was more justified in identifying the particular type of person you are.

the "type of person" I am huh? What the hell do you you think you know about me?

Why don't you concentrate on what a jackass Quinton McLeod is instead of judging and attacking me without provocation?

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
I think they've already released their Malicious Software Removal Tool for Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Linux Kernel 2.6. It's a mandatory update. You'd better go get it.

If only they would release a Windows Defender that would remove Quinton's posts.

 

[idiotekniQues]

that was about 1/4 of the article, not the entire article as you say. FYI.

have a nice day.

 

[Tom]

The quoted portion of the article expresses something which I agree with, and have posted about previously. The most significant change in Vista is it's dramatically increased role as regulator, as opposed to facilitator.

It would be nice to actually have a discussion about this, people could argue that is new, it isn't new, it's real, it isn't real, it's significant, it isn't significant, it's good, its' bad, etc.

But in my experience, here, lately anyway, the preferred modus operandi is to attack the poster, rather than discuss issues.

Anyway, I have three primary objections to this new direction Vista is going, at least as I see it.

1. practical - seems to me this introduces a whole new layer of complexity which might lead to problems getting stuff to work the way it should.

2. innovation - I like the traditional role of the pc as an open platform, this stuff seems to me to at best make innovation more difficult, at worst it limits innovation to a handful of players, if Microsoft decides to let them play.

3. philosophical - I'm not convinced that excessive DRM is in the best interests of even the copyright holders, it adds cost and limits distribution, neither of which makes sense for mass consumption media, to me.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Tom
The quoted portion of the article expresses something which I agree with, and have posted about previously. The most significant change in Vista is it's dramatically increased role as regulator, as opposed to facilitator.

It would be nice to actually have a discussion about this, people could argue that is new, it isn't new, it's real, it isn't real, it's significant, it isn't significant, it's good, its' bad, etc.

But in my experience, here, lately anyway, the preferred modus operandi is to attack the poster, rather than discuss issues.

Anyway, I have three primary objections to this new direction Vista is going, at least as I see it.

1. practical - seems to me this introduces a whole new layer of complexity which might lead to problems getting stuff to work the way it should.

2. innovation - I like the traditional role of the pc as an open platform, this stuff seems to me to at best make innovation more difficult, at worst it limits innovation to a handful of players, if Microsoft decides to let them play.

3. philosophical - I'm not convinced that excessive DRM is in the best interests of even the copyright holders, it adds cost and limits distribution, neither of which makes sense for mass consumption media, to me.

agreed. tehre seems to be 2 extremes. i tend to be like that sometimes with certain things - sometimes i suspect a problem is windows, and other times i have defended windows to people during discussions (off of this board)

but so far the answers to this post are either YES MICROSOFT IS EVIL or VISTA IS GREAT all the criticism is just garbage.

is there nothing in the middle on this topic?

i figured there might be. i just want to find out. ATI seems to think this is going to cause some issues with hardware costs, even when microsoft says bah, they were going there anyways.

so what is the real deal? id like to find an article that approaches it from both sides.

DRM is needed but is also intrusive and detrimental. i gave up on the subscription services because they dont tell you taht DRM will destroy the battery life of your mp3 player - and 25% of a performance hit is with LOW BITRATE DRM FILES. with decent bitrate files it easily eats %50 or more of your mp3 battery life. ridiculous. it makes it practically worthless.

 

[Smilin]

There are *numerous* discussions on DRM. So many in fact that people have gotten sick of hearing about it. If you are really interested, use the forum search.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
I think they've already released their Malicious Software Removal Tool for Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Linux Kernel 2.6. It's a mandatory update. You'd better go get it.

If only they would release a Windows Defender that would remove Quinton's posts.

I think someone over in OT wrote a script that would remove posts by users. I think it's via GreaseMonkey add-on in Firefox. Ahhh... A quick Google found it...

http://tylerkaraszewski.com/2005/03/18/greasemonkey-script-for-anandtech-forums/