Vista Security The 'Longest Suicide Note in History'?

rar42 writes "The Inquirer is reporting on an analysis of Vista by Peter Gutmann — a medical imaging specialist. This isn't the usual anti-Microsoft story — just a professional looking at what is going to happen to his computer if it is upgraded to Microsoft Vista. From the article: 'Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost,' says Gutmann."

Unnecessary Decline?

From TFA:

If I do ever want to play back premium content, I'll wait a few years and then buy a $50 Chinese-made set-top player to do it, not a $1000 Windows PC. It's somewhat bizarre that I have to go to Communist China in order to find vendors who actually understand the consumer's needs.

At first, I shared some cognitive dissonance with Gutman; China, however, is governed by Chinese and for Chinese: they're allowed to act in their own best interests.

The U.S., on the other hand, is beholden to parasites and corporations; and compelled into an unnecessary decline.

Re:Unnecessary Decline?

China, however, is governed by Chinese and for Chinese

*cough* I think you meant by Chinese Corporations for Chinese Parasites who also happen to hold government positions.

Re:Unnecessary Decline?

The U.S., on the other hand, is beholden to parasites and corporations

*cough* I think you meant by Chinese Corporations for Chinese Parasites who also happen to hold government positions.

Fixed that for you, you quoted the wrong part of his post.

Re:Unnecessary Decline?

In the words of Douglas Adams:

People are a problem.

I think I just summed up this entire thread. As well as just about every news story on this (and any other) site.

Re:Unnecessary Decline?

Simply put, without big countries there would be no wars.

      You are dreaming in colour. Wars happen in all sorts of countries. There have been FEWER wars amongst big countries in the past few hundred years, than little countries. Just the big ones (Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf) tend to be noticed more. Pretty much the entire African continent has been continually at war since the European powers pulled out... these countries are so small they hardly get noticed on the international scene, yet war is happening all the time there. Your comment is unfounded. Sure, the big countries tend to back one side or other in these small wars, but they're not the ones that START them.

Wow, that's insightful

The world never had any entertainment before the dawn of DRM & copyright.

[sarcasm off]

Re:Wow, that's insightful

Granted, I'm against the US' current copyright laws, but the simple fact is that China IS rampant with copyright violation that does nothing but make the illegal publishers rich.

What? Are you retarded? Other than the 100-ish year lifespan, copyright law is the one (of three) branches of "Intellectual Property" that actually gets it right!

All copyright says is that whatever you right is yours, from the moment of inception. Simple and easy. What about that are you against?

If you want to be "against" anything, try patents (which make an idea that you might legitimately and independently arrive at owned by some other guy who came to the same or similar idea by whatever means before you) or trademarks (which all but cancel copyrights in some cases, because while the copyrights of a work might have expired, trademarks do not, so even if/when the Disney "Steamboat Willie" movie is no longer copyrighted, the trademarks of Mickey Mouse remain intact preventing "unauthorized" reproduction...)

Pick your fights, and fight about something where you might do some good. Alternatively, take the time to figure out what you're talking about before being "against" something....

Of course there was entertainment...

Back before DRM and copyrights there was Banjo music.

Live banjo music, played by relatives, close relatives. Very close relatives.

Re:Unnecessary Decline?

Eventually to maintain that growth they'll have to start protecting rights or they'll become a victim like they have been victimizing the rest of the world. How good do you feel paying $10 to see a movie so the Chinese can pay a $1 for a DVD?

It's funny you mention that. I was in Thailand not too long ago, and the price of a legal, licensed VCD was about $1. Legal DVD's were about $40, because they were a luxury item that only the rich could afford anyway.

Companies charge whatever the market will bear. If movie studios think they can get $10 out of an American audience to watch a movie, that's what they'll charge. It doesn't matter what's going on in China, except to say that they'll throw up all sorts of technical and legal barriers to importing their cheaper goods from that region. Likewise, a new CD in Brazil can cost 3 - 5 dollars. Again, legally.

China and other less restrictive countries are looked upon as bastions of IP freedom because there are some major ways in which they are. India, for example, allowed knockoff drugs for a very long time on the grounds that it was immoral to value western company's exploitive drug pricing schemes above human life. Go to Taiwan and *gasp* you can get DVD players that will let you play movies you have legally bought and paid for in any region of the world. You can get CD's in other regions of the world where the corporations convicted of illegal price fixing actually compete with local music companies and pirate CD creators to come to a more reasonable cost structure. Heck, until a few weeks ago you had to travel abroad to get the cellphone you've purchased unlocked from that one restrictive provider.

All of the above seem reasonable, but are completely banned in the US. It's nice to go to a country where the huge companies do not simply write whatever laws they want, but have to contest with the needs of the consumer, who have alternatives to the restrictive legal route.

China is also not communist, but that's another issue.

Chinese DVD players

I currently have a Chinese-made upconverting DVD player. Chinese made because the US and Japanese manufacturers have knuckled under to the demands of the entertainment industry that no DVD player will output HD content over component video cables. (Now think for a moment just how mind-numbingly stupid this restriction is. Upconverting DVD players don't actually output video in true HD, because the movie isn't on the DVD in HD in the first place, and no process can add more information that was there to begin with. All an upconverting DVD player does is interpolate. An upconverted signal is the absolute last thing that any pirate could want, because it massively increases the amount of data required to copy the signal, without adding any information. So the entertainment industry, out of sheer ignorance has added a completely useless restriction that imposes considerable inconvenience on the consumer. Many older HD TV's only have component inputs, and even newer ones typically have only one HDMI or DVI input. And HDMI/DVI switchboxes are much more expensive than component ones. So consumers end up switching cables, shelling out extra money for switchboxes--or doing what I did, and buying a Chinese DVD player that is oriented toward the consumer instead of sucking up to the content industry.

Re:Chinese DVD players

You're assuming that this is all to prevent piracy. The real truth is that the media companies simply hate us.

Well then don't use it

You're not supposed to use a consumer grade OS for mission critical apps anyway. So if you went with a vendor that builds its apps on such an OS, then you are at fault.

Re:Well then don't use it

Unfortunately there's very little choice. The systems that run medical scanners tend to run some form of UNIX, and you can buy a workstation for a couple hundred thousand that will do the same thing, or you can use the hospital's PACS web front end... which in most cases works pretty much exclusively with IE.

Brief Outline of Medical Imaging Information Flow

This is part of the subtext both of the original article, and of this most recent post, so I thought I'd share what I know about it. FWIW, I'm a radiologist--that is, an MD who interprets the results of imaging studies--and an informatics geek.

Images are created on whatever imaging device--CT scanner, MR scanner, ultrasound machine, digital X-ray machine--and manipulated by the device's controlling system to do simple annotations, reformatting, etc. This is typically a Unix-based system running custom software designed and maintained by the device's vendor. The images are not usually interpreted on these systems.

From there, the images are sent to the PACS (Picutre Archiving and Communication System) [wikipedia.org], which is just a gigantic central image database. These also tend to be Unix-based systems.

There tend to be two front-ends for looking at images in the PACS database. The first is the radiologist's interface, which is a high-end video workstation dedicated to showing medical images with the greatest possible fidelity. Most systems I've seen are Windows-based (Windows 2000, in our case) and run software which was built by the the imaging system vendors in the late 1990's. Much is made of the "lossless" nature of the images which are displayed; for example, when you log into such a machine, you're warned about how "This is a medical device" and that you shouldn't mess with it. Much is also made of "diagnostic-quality monitors" and high-end video cards to drive the monitors. This is an artifact from the early days of digital imaging interpretation in radiology, when there was a great deal of concern about whether the quality of the digital images would be adequate for us to figure out what was going on in Grandma's chest X-ray if we weren't looking at a piece of acetate. Most of these concerns have died away, as the differences in resolution and dynamic range turned out to be relatively minor and the added conveniences of being able to manipulate the images digitally turned out to be huge. For example, the new LCDs I seen being put on PACS workstations are off-the-shelf Dell 22-inchers, as far as I can tell.

Finally, there are "non-diagnostic" interfaces to the PACS images, which do tend to be web-based. These are so non-radiologist doctors can look at the images, too. Some are IE-based, and use an ActiveX control to display the images, and some use a Java applet. These are displayed with lossy compression (since someone might want to look at them from off-site via a VPN), and officially are not allowed to be used for interpretation. And in fact, I wouldn't want to; it's a lot harder to see subtle things on them than on a full-blown PACS workstation. Part of that is just the interface (it's hard to use those stupid ActiveX/applet things) and part of it is crummy/mis-configured monitors, but I suppose compression artifacts could also play a role.

So, to review: you go see your doctor, Dr. Smith, in her office, and she orders a chest X-ray for you because you're coughing and have a fever. You come to the hospital, and the nice technologist takes frontal and lateral view of your chest on the digital X-ray machine. He then goes back to the X-ray control room, and sees that the images are pretty good, and so he sticks your name on them, and a marker of the date/time and his name, and so on, and then sends them to the hospital's PACS system. I (the radiologist) am working at my PACS workstation, going through the long list of all of the CT scans, MR scans, and X-rays taken in the hospital. I get to your chest X-ray and look at it; I don't seen any sign of pneumonia, so I write a report (the subject of a whole different set of informatics) that basically says "Clear lungs" and that gets entered into your electronic medical record. Then, Dr. Smith back in her office can see your X-ray via her Web-based interface. If she wonders about something she sees, she can call me up and say, "What's that stuff at the left ape

It was supposed to be a C3 O/S !!!!

Many industrial and medical applications run on Windows. You forget that Windows NT was advertised as a high-security C3 operating system. Many applications were ported on this advertising. Some of the lock-down permissions in Windows NT were pretty draconian, and worked really well.

With Windows Vista, Microsoft appears to be completely abandoning any pretense of high-reliability.

Many industrial and medical applications have fairly high reliability requirements. Using commodity software and hardware has some cost and reliability advantages. It is easy to source replacement parts, and implement hardware redundancy. Being able to easily obtain replacement hardware is a big advantage if downtime costs are large.

The problem is that Microsoft appears to have abandoned the high-reliability sector. Windows XP has a continuous stream of rolling updates for both XP and the Anti-Virus packages. The result is that your high-reliability application can stop working for no apparent reason. From all indications, Windows Vista will make this worse.

Recently, I have been looking harder and harder at Linux. Linux offers a much more stable platform, and I can customize the installation to make it much more difficult to corrupt. The issue is that such a high software investment has been placed in specialized Windows solutions, that it is difficult to port everything to another operating system overnight.

Dupe from Friday

Same story at http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/22/172 7245 [slashdot.org]

Re:Dupe from Friday

In this case, dupes are a good thing.

This attack on your freedoms needs to become widely known.

If they dupe this every other day until next June, it is good.

Re:Dupe from Friday

If they dupe this every other day until next June, it is good.

If? You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:Dupe from Friday

I don't mind that it's a dupe. However, it is mis-titled.

It's not about Vista security. It's about Vista DRM.

The difference is that security is about the owner of the hardware establishing and protecting his control over it, while DRM is about a party A trying to claim some control over hardware belonging to another party B, on grounds that some pattern of bytes which A or a third party owns is currently instantiated, or might at some time be instantiated on B's hardware. When used for DRM, the term "security" becomes a meretricious euphemism designed to mislead an audience about who is securing what from whom.

Priorities

For the kinds of purposes I'm interested in (research, science) this will make workers question the priorities of the operating system they are using. Is the priority to have maximum flexibility, performance, compatibility and extensibility (*nix) or to have maximum convenience for consumers (Windows).

Without a doubt, Windows is still the most convenient platform for consumers. But the priority behind the design is not purely performance and flexibility, but protecting content and other commercial interests.

We sure know the priority isn't security either

Re:Priorities

Without a doubt, Windows is still the most convenient platform for consumers. But the priority behind the design is not purely performance and flexibility, but protecting content and other commercial interests.

Houston; we have doublethink.

KFG

Re:Priorities

We sure know the priority isn't security either

In fact, if they only wasted the half of the time they wasted in DRM in security improvements...

I mean, if you read the DRM protection [microsoft.com] work...they completely redid everything that could break DRM, they break compatibility, they're even planning systems that need to re-do the hardware to require encryption on the *system*bus* just to keep hardware hackers from stealing contents at that place and hence making the DRM useless.....

If they had wasted all those efforts in improving security...vista would be the most secure consumer os available

Re:Priorities

I mean, if you read the DRM protection work...they completely redid everything that could break DRM, they break compatibility, they're even planning systems that need to re-do the hardware to require encryption on the *system*bus* just to keep hardware hackers from stealing contents at that place and hence making the DRM useless.....

The message is clear. They believe their monopoly can be best maintained by catering to producers, rather than to consumers. Consumer choice is not driving that market.

Re:Priorities

Consumer choice is not driving that market.

      Consumer choice never drives the market in a monopoly situation. You get what I feel like producing, and you pay what I feel like charging. If you don't like it, tough.

Re:Priorities

The message is clear. They believe their monopoly can be best maintained by catering to producers, rather than to consumers. Consumer choice is not driving that market.

And it's going to hurt them. probably long term and big time.

Zune is a failure vs Ipod because consumers don't want to deal with DRM everytime they want to listen to something, especially when there are hundreds if not thousands of music players that will play non DRM files. Including the Ipod.

Vista will fail for similar reasons. Business is happy with XP and will support it until Microsoft doesn't, and maybe adopt Linux after that. Consumers will only upgrade when they buy a new PC, and will stay around even after support is killed. if Apple starts opening their mouth about vista DRM screwing their music experience, they might just buy a Mac next time. Hell I don't know why Apple hasn't done a "Buy a Mac and get an Ipod Free" deal as of yet. It would definitely get a mac in the door faster.

It's looking the same way for office2007 business wise. I know we look at it and say to ourselves "training nightmare". I'm sure we're not the only ones saying that especially since our business is Higher education. I can only imagine what a commercial business is saying.

Apple and Microsoft had the power. They had the power to give both AA's the finger and work directly with the artists. They had the power to ignore them completely and let the users rip until the cows come home. They had the power to screw these Hi-def DVD formats until they relaxed the standards to work with existing hardware and software. Unfortunately, Apple seems to be giving the RIAA the finger while somewhat bowing down to the MPAA's HD lockdown Schemes, and MS is asking both AA's which lower cheek to kiss in a futile attempt to gain some more exclusive content that Apple's going to get anyway because their the market leader. Even then, all MS is really going to get in the end is more demands from the AA's when they could have easily just stayed the course they were going and force the AA's to conform to the digital age or die.

If there is any time for Apple and Linux to start pushing themselves, now's the time.

I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance

This writeup would be more useful if the author could maintain even a marginal pretense of objectivity. His constant use of loaded images ("grenade", "suicide note", "violate the laws of physics") works against him, and this butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth gem actually gave me a sad laugh when seen in context with his full note:

This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of Vista's content protection. The political issues (under the heading of DRM) have been examined in exhaustive detail elsewhere and won't be commented on further...

By "elsewhere" he must mean "in other sentences in this document." His facts, which he rarely backs up, are extremely suspect given his inability to separate his prejudices from his presentation. Considered as a persuasive essay, I'd give it a D. Which is not to say that I like DRM. It sucks, and Vista may become an unparalleled disaster because of it. But the author is far more adept at scoring points than he is at making his points persuasive.

Re:I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance

You know this is a problem when dealing with Microsoft. You come into the process as objective person without prejudice to them and then you study the subject. If you study in a sufficient detail, you will become so enraged by what they are doing and that you are now hopelessly prejudiced against Microsoft. Look at the judge Jackson in the Microsoft trial. That is a person who's living depends on being objective and he got so pissed off by studying Microsoft practices that even he was not able to keep being perceived as impartial and so his ruling got thrown out by court of higher instance.

The most sad part is that Microsoft is abusing this by pointing to every such study as prejudiced and often rightly so. But what is the general public to do now? You either have experts that study the matter and become prejudiced or you have those with only superficial knowledge who can keep the illusion of objectivity but more often than not they do not know enough about the matter. Often to the point to believe studies paid by Microsoft as being a source of objective information. And if you want to keep the illusion of objectivity you need to cite those and it just seems wrong to me.

Sometimes you are just not supposed to be objective. Some topics do not invite that form of discussion. Is the Earth flat? I don't think anybody expects you to present the supporting opinion in equal length. Did holocaust happen? Again, not really a question in need of giving equal space to both sides. So why 'Is Microsoft crooked and do they intentionally cripple their product to harm consumer and competition?' needs any more discussion even after it was affirmed by Findings of Fact published by a federal judge? The matter of do they or don't they has long been settled. At this point the only question should be: "How exactly are they trying to cheat this time?"

Re:I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance

It is quite difficult to work in industries were Windows Vista might be used, and not wind up with a pretty mean-spirited anti-Microsoft argument. Typically the train of reasoning goes like this:

1. Power plant uses Windows PC's to monitor "x".
2. If "x" can't be monitored, we shut the power plant down. This is "fail-safe".
3. If enough power plants shut down, then we have to shut down the power grid. Shutting down the power grid affects the entire east-coast. When the power grid is shut-down, we automatically shut down all power plants. This is a fail-safe response. After the power grid is shutdown, it takes a few days to restart things.
4. If we shut down the grid, then several people will die (via indirect sequences of events). At a minimum, many people will be placed in high-risk situations, and large numbers will be inconvenienced.

What would it take to shutdown a network of identical Windows PC's making up a power system? A piece of malware, a rogue anti-virus update, etc. It really wouldn't take all that much to wipe out the power grid for the east coast. A series of inept coincidences could potentially succeed.

As a Professional Engineer, a person who is supposed to be able to advise companies on this stuff, it is extremely difficult to avoid sounding excessively alarmist. I work on industrial applications that are supposed to be fairly high-reliability. It is very difficult to keep Windows PCs isolated from the outside world. If you don't isolate the PC's, then you are vulnerable to Windows service-packs and Windows Anti-Virus software shutting down your production line. How do you even explain the problem to people? Everyone uses a Windows PC, and a Windows PC could never hurt them, right?

What do I recommend? I don't know the answer. Mostly, I try not to think about it too much. With the large amounts of specialized Windows software, it is difficult to think of any easy fixes.

A biz idea for the new year

Nobody ever asked for Vista. Nobody wants it. I'm tired of MS trying to ram it down our throats.

Did you know DirectX 10 will only be released under Vista? Even if you have the latest and greatest G-card and a fast system, sorry, if you run XP you'll be stuck with DirectX 9. There's no technical reason for this. It's just that MS wants you to 'retrograde' to Vista.

How about someone do a web site reselling old XP licenses? eBay refused to do this because MS asked them not too. How about someone will some guts and enterpreneurship takes a go at this. Could be a huge market for XP resales especially to businesses?

As for games developers, do what I do: Switch to OpenGL next release.

Re:A biz idea for the new year

Here's an interesting tidbit from the WINE folks [winehq.org]:

Direct3D10, which will ship with Windows Vista in a few months, doesn't seem to be a large cause for concern. At first glance it appears to be more of an evolutionary change rather than revolutionary. New shader support will be needed, but extending ours once OpenGL supports it should be pretty easy. Stefan mentioned Microsoft is currently offering a lot of incentives for Windows developers who develop D3D10-only games since they'll only be usable on Vista - there's no plan to backport D3D10 to XP. Dan Kegel asked if that means we should port Wine's forthcoming D3D10 implementation to Windows, which would be relatively easy when we switch to WGL.

Not an "upgrade", just a different flavor

Microsoft was legally forced to remove version numbers from Windows as the software they ship was technically no longer improved.

Cat got my tongue!

``This isn't the usual anti-Microsoft story just a professional looking at what is going to happen to his computer if it is upgraded to Microsoft Vista.''

Doesn't any professional investigation of Vista inevitably end up being an anti-Microsoft story?

(Just kidding. I actually think Microsoft put a lot of good things in Vista - although I'm not convinced it's a good product, and I'm definitely not dying to use it)

if its a good OS, todays ver is the final

Look at linux... its not like we have Linux 3.0 and Linux 4.0 where nothing old works.

Its still linux. 8 year old stuff still compiles mostly, its fluid.

If windows was so great, it would stay at one version XP forever, with unlimited updates forever, SP4 SP21. etc...
Just because they are forced by marketing to make a new version is admiting its core is crap and needs a rewrite.

They could just as easily update/replace portions of XP gradually, six monthly. And make sure each other component isnt
too tied to others. ie WMP shouldnt need IE7 or something else... it should be detect and use if available.

This whole idea of , lets stop current dev and all new dev is placed into a new 'version' edition is total marketing crap, and
old school stuff of the 80s. Modern complex systems should never have a major rebuild, its always small step updates, like real
biological evolution.

OSX is basically the same, but again its articially versionized because of just new components added, and the silly side effects like
newly compiled made software not working on old OSX's even if they use no new features, thats my biggest pet pieve of OSX. Sometimes
its only the result of the installer package, not the code it self which would work fine. If X library is less than version Y, then dont use
those features.

Btw does apple make the old OS10.1 and 10.2 upgrades from 10.0 FREE NOW? what about any one left in 10.2 land, do they get a free 10.3 upgrade
once 10.4 is widely installed? Having too many versions installed out there should be a worry for them, they should allow all 10.3 machines to upgrade
for free. It would surely be cheaper to have no support for pre 10.3 if you provide free upgrades.

Re:if its a good OS, todays ver is the final

"8 year old stuff still compiles mostly, its fluid."

Uhm, so is Linux the bedrock of computing or is it the agile warrior able to adapt to its changing foes? I'm a bit confused.

I don't know what 8 year old code you think would still compile against todays Linux. Between major changes from the pre 2.0 kernel days to now I can think of plenty of code that would break.

And then you've got your personal best friend in the world, a new version of glibc just around the corner to break things once in a while, but thats not Linux per se since Linux is just a kernel. But its all of the FOSS/FSF software that makes a Linux DISTRO.

Now show me a piece of 8 year old code that will compile on a current distro without barfing or having its ./configure script changed and I might begin to see your point. But I doubt your argument holds true for enough pieces of FOSS software to be truly relevant.

Primary Sources, FTW!

Here's a link [auckland.ac.nz] to the actual paper referenced in the article.

I would post the entire paper, but it's too large. Here are some notable excerpts:

However, one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista's content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that's unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible. This conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows content-protection specs, with manufacturers being given no hard- and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. The documentation is peppered with sentences like: "It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter of the specification and provide additional content-protection features, because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect premium content". This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications, but is dictated by the fact that what the spec is trying to achieve is fundamentally impossible. Readers should keep this requirement to display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the following analysis.

Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in... Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content. In other words if you've invested a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from a digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content. 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.

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. 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... 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.

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software drivers) set so-called "tilt bits" if they detect anything unusual. For example if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets set. Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer (for example starting up or plugging in a bus-powered device may cause a small glitch in power supply voltages, or drivers may not quite manage device state as precisely as they think). Previously this was no problem - the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and things will function as normal... With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone. Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack. The effect that this will have on system reliability should require no further explanation. Content-protection "features" like tilt bits also have worrying denial-of- service (DoS) implications. It's probably a good thing that modern malware is created by programmers with the commercial interests of the phishing and spam industries in mind rather than just creating as much havoc as possible

Since when is Gutmann a medical imaging specialist

From TFA:

"Peter Gutmann's report describes the pernicious DRM built into Vista and required by MS for approval of hardware and drivers," said INQ reader Brad Steffler, MD, who brought the report to our attention. "As a physician who uses PCs for image review before I perform surgery, this situation is intolerable. It is also intolerable for me as a medical school professor as I will have to switch to a MAC or a Linux PC. These draconian dicta just might kill the PC as we know it."

Gutmann is a CompSci guy who has been a biggie in the crypto community since about forever. You'd think an 'editor' would know that. Alas, Slashdot has people with the title, who don't do a job that deserves it.

Medical Imaging Specialist????

Peter is a security guy. He's written widely used crypto software. He is not a medical imaging specialist. Where did /. get the idea that he's a medical imaging specialist???

Duped FUD

This article was poorly researched FUD the first time it appeared on /. last week. Editors if your gonna dupe something, At least make it something worth reading.

biased analysis, with a crunchy core of truth

The tone of the article and analysis is very slanted, but the one basic statement that cannot be argued with is the following:

"...spend time implementing large amounts of anti-functionality when it's already hard enough to get things running smoothly without the intentional crippling."

The days of PCs as a general purpose, low cost, programmable machine are done if content protection at the hardware level becomes reality. Things *barely* works as it stands, you can't add all this complexity and intentional obfuscation and think it will continue to work.

Bending Over Shows A Knew Vista

Well it's becoming more evident everyday that many corporations, politicians and media sorts see people in markets as not much more that cultured bacteria in a dish. They give you a marginal amount of satisfaction and then stick you in the eye hoping in the end you will be just one more percent more satisfied than less and so they keep you in orbit that way while they move on to the next triangulation.

I bought a highly rated Dell 2007WFP last month and it turned out Dell was now making that model with a whole new panel without telling anyone. A 8 bit S-IPS was replaced with a junky 6 Bit S-PVA. It's a very different monitor now. Dell pretty much shows it has contempt for customers and Microsoft is the same. You get a few nice new features (some not ripped off from Apple) and then you get spanked and are told its for your own good (or somebody's).

I only cut Microsoft some slack because other parasites try to bleed Microsoft non-stop. When all the big players get done wrestling each other the little people not trampled yet get the chance to overpay for some compromised item that's more sizzle than steak. Vista will be ok - good enough to use. But it will kcik you in the balls all the time just to remind you that you are an extension of your computer (and those that run it) and not vice versa.

Now I will try to watch the game on television. They still show some of the action in between endless commercials that scream at you.

obviously fud

fta: Disclaimer
Any opinions expressed on this page are not in fact mine but were forced on me at gunpoint by the University of Auckland.

He a shill! :)

Peter who?

No matter how good a medical imaging specialist Peter Gutmann happens to be, I think I'm going to wait for some security experts to weigh in on Vista issues before I jump to any conclusions.

Progress requires that RIAA/MPAA be screwed over

The record and film industry do not want new technologies to be available to the public. They will fight bitterly until the last, until the new medium is forced on them. And then they will make money on it. Think of home video. The film industry brought the VCR manufacturers all the way to the Supreme Court until they lost. Now the film industry makes significantly more money in home video sales than in the theatres. Technology must be imposed non-consentually on the content providers. The manufacturers need to release their products regardless of the complaints of the content providers.

I don't know why Microsoft is bending over for the media companies. They should just publically state that any mandated copy protection will hurt the ability of corporations to develop their own proprietary software. I'm sure there is at least a dozen companies which will gladly provide written statements about how the copy protection hurts their business. Microsoft then gives the media companies the middle finger. Pirates rape the media companies in innovative ways by releasing the content in manners not approved by the owners. The media companies are forced to create new media delivery methods to match consumer demands. This increases their revenues which were stagnant because of media executives who couldn't innovate their way out of a paper bag. The consumer benefits from new options in the market. Everyone benefits from the rape.

I don't believe piracy for profit should be legal. However, I don't believe that non-profit piracy is that bad. Many people would never purchase the movie or television show. Many people later purchase the legal version of the pirated product. For example, let's say a Slashdot reader named Jim missed out on the first 8 episodes of Heroes. He had heard it was a really good show, but didn't want to watch number nine first. Let's say that Jim downloaded the episodes in non-approved manner and watched them. Now Jim is a loyal Heroes watcher. Or let's say that Jim downloads technical books, finds which ones he likes and then purchases them online. Does Jim contribute to the media companies bottom line or does he hurt the media companies bottom line?

I'm new here but...

Could someone please like, read....something before they post a summary? I found no indication that Gutmann is a medical imaging specialist from his web page or report. He's a computer scientist who specializes in compression and encryption, which actually makes him a little bit qualified to perform a professional review of the new operating system.

The only thing remotely medicine related here is a quote from 'Brad Steffler MD.', a surgeon who claims that Microsoft's restrictive DRM methodologies make it more difficult for him to do his job.

Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support

Sounds like a good case for a anti-trust trial in europe :-)

it's amusing...

to see these old chestnuts dragged out with every new version of Windows. There isn't a single new complaint since Windows95. Most of it unqualified paranoid ranting. Keep notes and you can be amused when all this starts again with Windows Vienna!

MS cripples its hardware...

...and sudenly Linux is the new gamers OS.

if you want to read LSNiH then just read the EULA

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/defa ult.aspx [microsoft.com]
this is a microsoft hosted page that you can pull up any EULA you want (MS products only of course)

Microsoft requires the right to DISABLE YOUR COMPUTER if it fails a validation check (WGA BOFH style anyone?)

speculation

A lot of assertions about what will happen, but specific examples and evidence are few and far between. Without harder facts that demonstrate the effects he claims, the author's claims are no more believable as those of "Intelligent Design".

Oxymoron

Why does a Medical Imaging Specialist look into security of Windows Vista ? That is a complete oxymoron. All computer science personnel cannot be tarred with the same brush. This is the problem of most forum based discussions anybody can post stuff and it gets enough hype if its slashdotted.

Wait for it to be cracked

I just bought a PC, "Vista Ready". I get to run XP Media edition, seems to rip MP3s quite nicely. So when Vista arrives I will shelf it for 2 years waiting until at least one major service pack, security and stability to be tested by others. By this time lets hope the DRM is disabled. If not, there is a reason why I use only MP2/3/4 formats.... it moves to Linux nicely.

Powerful article

I find it odd that the main thing that inspired this [auckland.ac.nz] is not linked from the Slashdot summary. Truly a scathing article.

It makes Vista sound like a disaster. All this really shows how far MS will go to satisfy the RIAA/MPAA crowd's insanity. They are truly mad.

No one will like this. Not hardware vendors, not consumers, not anyone. Surely they're not going through with this?

Microsoft is a company & lots of programmers s

Who are the idiot programmers designing this important software for 'home use' / 'general purpose' operating systems? Why aren't things like this embedded systems, or a custom special use OS, that is designed fully around a stability model. You don't see go-karts used as ambulances.

It's this same story over and over. People now giving out that Vista is not really offering anything new, and isn't a worthwhile, and Microsoft are trying to force it down our necks. Of course they are, how many of you own a Gillete Fusion razor, this is the same thing, it's companies fluffing up a product so they can sell it to you again. You can't whine at a company to stop making money this way, it's a pretty guaranteed way to make profits, and they won't change because you give out.

we're still the geeks right?

we /.ers are the ppl our friends and family look to when it comes to advice on a new PC, so why dun we juz get everyone to vote with their wallets and then maybe as a whole, consumers wouldn't be held hostage by DRM and the big media companies..

Mistake in Intro paragraph

Gutman is a computer security specialist, not a medical imaging person. He wrote his PhD thesis on Security Architecture. Go visit his homepage http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/ [auckland.ac.nz] and it's pretty clear he knows what he is talking about in IT Security.

or, you could...

use Vista, but not DRM content...

Is there anything limiting the use of high quality, non-DRM'd media?

Mainly, I think it's a question of complance with laws like the DMCA, and not getting sued. if the RIAA sues hundreds/thousands of individuals for large amounts of money, do you think MS wants to have to defend a case that they 'aided' copyright violations?

I find it hard to, in the same breath, fault Microsoft for violation of the law for extending their markets, and fault them for not disreguarding the laws reguarding others IP.

Imagine what would happen to the market for iTunes purchases if Windows had the built in ability to crack iTunes content protection...

Yet another battle in the IP/freedom "war" ...

Inspired by Guttman's article, I wrote an article Looking for a Win/Win Solution to the War Between "Premium Content" and Digital Freedom [1729.com], reiterating the need for everyone to get out of the intellectual property/digital freedom dichotomy mindset. Find a way to pay the people who make expensive movies and expensive music (is music still expensive? I don't know), without taking away digital freedoms, i.e. the freedom to copy data around and the freedom to write software. It's not like the amount of money involved is all that large, when you calculate it per person. (How much of the money that we spend on content ends up being paid as royalties?)

My article also includes a relevant cartoon.

oh yes. Vista will be MS's downfall

I saw it coming a while ago. When I heard of Longhorn in preparation I knew that it would fail. For several reasons, but mostly one simple thing.
Microsoft tried to protect its interests with XP, using the WGA scheme, and service packs that checked for validity and so forth. Consumers *hated* those measures. How many false positives has the WGA detected? More than enough. Virii, spyware, spam, it's taken too much toll on the users' ability to perform their tasks. Now, when you buy a PC, you have to have Anti-this, anti-that, firewall and so forth. Those services eat ressources. People running 3 year old machines that have installed all those things can expect lag while webpages load because of all that padding to prevent infection of their system, and then even after waiting for too long, non-responsive windows and so forth, they will STILL get spyware/adware and always spam.
Well no sh*t Sherlock!
Microsoft has long ago decided it's in the money making business, not customer satisfaction business. Companies used MS because that was the only viable alternative for a while, and even today, many industries still rely on Windows 2000 rather than XP, for the simple reason that it works with what they've invested in. However, Linux and OSX have been working VERY hard to get ahead, and thankfully, these systems are designed to fit the customer/users' needs.
Linux? Do anything you want with it. Run webservers, databases, phone systems, rendering, and even desktop applications on it. All that flexibility for very little cost of actual software. You're not paying for software AND support, you're paying only support.
As XP came out, Linux wasn't ready for prime time. RedHat was providing an Entreprise version, as were SuSE and Mandrake, but in all honesty, there was a gap that existed, Windows wasn't evil enough, and there weren't quite yet enough advantages to Linux to warrant the switch, retraining everyone and so forth.
Today however, after Service Pack 2 failed to properly secure XP, and all those DRM addons have been force fed into media player, and all other wmv portable players, well, simplicity, stability and functionality seem to have somewhat disappeared from the leading OS on the market. Apple has reminded everyone that alternatives do exist, like OSX, and, because it is Unix based, Unix has appeared once more on the radar of common knowledge. If Apple can make Unix look and work well, then why can't Linux? Oh sure, there are more than enough Macboys out there preaching OSX, but not everyone likes Aqua, or an already made system that will lock you into some things you don't want to be force-fed (iTMS' DRM for instance). But it reminded people of that newcomer on the playing field, Linux.
In the past few years, I've watched gnome go from a squarish desktop reminiscent of OS 9 and in some ways windows 3.11 to a full featured Desktop that offers as much integration, and much more logic, than the XP interface ever did. KDE has made at least as much progress, and we're seeing more options than ever, and from all the development that has happened since 2002 a LOT of good things have come out. Openoffice 2 pioneered the use of the ODF, Firefox has been gnawing stronger and stronger on the share of Internet Explorer, and even Safari in some respect.
Ubuntu is probably the biggest advantage Linux can get to date. I am ready to claim that anyone, anywhere, that really wants to use an alternative to windows, can burn an Ubuntu disc and use their computer freely, to satisfy their needs (save gamers, and even they aren't going to lose for very long, some major games already have native releases, like the UT and Quake series).
It is time that players like Adobe invest in the alternative, because the tide is coming, and it would hurt for them to be behind.

No S/PDIF?

You had me at "Hello."

First thing he mentions is disabling S/PDIF. Since I use Windows for audio production, Vista's gone. Bye-bye. See-yah.

I look forward to seeing what Cakewalk will do about that one.

The bets are on!

The only question is how long is it going to take for GNU/Linux to become a complete and viable alternative. Which version of Ubuntu will finally gain mass adoption: Will it be Ubuntu Promiscuous Penguin or Ubuntu Unscrupulous Unicorn (UUU)?

switch

Despite all efforts of Apple, Vista is my prime reason for switching to Mac.

holy sh!t!!!! From the MS output_protect.doc

From http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output _protect.mspx [microsoft.com]

From the doc

"By contrast, the Windows-based PC is designed to be an open platform. Anyone can load software on it; it is easy to write software for it, because all the interfaces are well defined and published; and there are many good software tools available."

Open platform? By who's definition?

LOL!

I Knew It

I knew there had to be some reason for Vista's 800MB memory footprint. FOR GOD'S SAKE - WTF DOES AN O/S NEED 800MB FOR? Now we know. To screw us over and make everyone buy the latest Intel (and AMD) quad processors for acceptable performance.

This makes XP seem positively desirable, meaning MS will certainly shut down XP product activation soon.

You're all missing the point . . .

Who is the primary adopter of Microsoft Operating Systems? Businesses!

Let me say that again: Businesses!

Most businesses aren't concerned that their employees may not be able to view HD content on their desktop PC's, as that is not what they hire people to do (in general). As long as Microsoft can assert that a desktop machine running Windows Vista will continue to be able to fulfill enterprise business requirements in a stable, reliable way there will be plenty of businesses perfectly ready to plunk down their money to get what Microsoft promises will be "the most stable and secure computing experience to date."

Better have a look at Microsoft's balance sheet - somehow, I doubt that the majority of profits come from individual user sales! Their big bucks come from per-seat volume licensing of OS and productivity products - that's their bread-and-butter! I don't think a financial clearing-house, or a medical supplies company, or your average insurance office will really get sweaty about HD-DVD playback being broken because there's no HDMI interface to the ol' VGA monitor.

Before the masses point out that there are plenty of productivity killing traps in Microsoft Vista (and there are), Microsoft will simply assure businesses that as long as their hardware doesn't change drastically they can expect their machines to continue operating flawlessly. The relative truth or falsehood of that assertion is irrelevant; Microsoft will say it and businesses will accept it. There are way too many large organizations with PHB's at the helm for the technically savvy to prevent this from happening. After that, those businesses which were insightful enough to avoid the "Microsoft upgrade cycle" will ultimately be forced to come along by way of remaining compatible with the rest of industry.

Don't like what you see in Vista? Too bad - once it's entrenched in business it'll make inroads in the home (how many /.'ers use software at home similar to their employer's software so that they can be more productive at work? I, for example, run openSuSE at home because my employer uses SuSE Linux Enterprise Distribution in the workplace; it lets me be more productive at home and at work because I can leverage what I learn in one environment to the other).

What is happening to /.?

This story is nothing but the ramblings of someone that has never used or seen a product but proclaims to know all kinds of horrible things about it which in fact have absolutely nothing to do with him or his work anyway. There is ZERO information in this article. "News for nerds" no no more. There is not one tiny nerdy piece of factual or technical information presented here. It is 100% FUD and put on the front page for no other reason than it is "anti-Vista".

Shame on you /.!

Then we have the article about smashing your RFID chip with a hammer to disable it. How many levels of neanderthol is that? No mention of the fact that you can buy RFID secure wallets (THat's atleast a little bit nerdy) from multiple sources that prevent the problem in an elegant way that won't get you arrested (contrary to what that person postulates). Or AT LEAST it could have been an article on using your microwave, that would have been a tiny bit nerdy (but still stupid).

Come on! PLEASE stop sinking onto National Enquirer terrirtory!!! Reject FUD and reject stupidity for the love of...

So, the end of Linux and other OSS drivers for hw?

From TFA:

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.

There's more where that came from. RTFA, people!

It's awful but...

...they get the money from us. See my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2006/12 /its_just_not_ea.html [typepad.com] Bye, Oliver

Haven't had this problem

I truthfully have not had this issue. My first surprise is that you are making content on Windows rather than a Mac. I do this, but its for personal use. If I was making content commercially, I would be using a Mac.

That aside, I doubt you will have this problem unless you are using Microsoft's tools (which, in using RC1 and RC2, I have been quite impressed with). I use Adobe Premiere usually, and I have not had any problems. Hook it with Canopus Procoder and /or some codec pack (yes, I use codec packs, so sue me), and you should be fine. I am dualbooting XP and Vista, and its not like Vista goes in and puts DRM in all your media files or something wierd like that.

The only issue I have had is trying to use the 64 bit version of Vista - there are practically no supported codecs for it. A handful of codecs, such as Quicktime, will let you install and work with them. VLC works, but of course, I am pretty sure VLC uses its own built in codecs. As such, I can get videos to play in VLC on Vista x64 that I cannot get to work in WMP on there, because of lack of codecs. However, if youare running the 32 bit version of Vista, this should not be a problem. I am also sure in a few months, there will be 64 bit codec packs out there.

So I say, if you really want to upgrade to Vista, go ahead. Of course, going from Windows 2000 to Vista, you will notice a HUGE difference in system requirements. I could run 2000 on 64 meg of ram, on some higher end Pentium 1s. Heaven help you if you try running Vista on a machine older than a P4 or a 1GHz Athlon with under 512 meg of ram. If you are doing content editing in Vista, I recommend some dual-core processor, with a minumum of 1 gig of ram, preferably 2 gig.

Re:Vista is a fantastic piece of ...

PS: Linux users are breaking the LAW every time they watch a DVD using their OS.


Bullshit. I've burned quite a few movies to DVD from archive.org [archive.org] and I doubt any of them violate even the US's draconian laws.

Re:Vista is a fantastic piece of ...

>PS: Linux users are breaking the LAW every time they watch a DVD using their OS.

Untrue.

Distributors of some types of DVD decoding software may be doing so in violation of civil statutes in certain jurisdictions, but I must ask you to cite the specific prohibition you claimed in your PS:. Chapter and verse of the applicable law, please, don't waste our time with "DMCA". I know all about the DMCA, the DVD/CCA/CSS issues, etc.

Re:Not trolling....

Which is also the reason why I switched from windows 2000 to Fluxbox on Ubuntu as soon as I could. I can watch video files on my VIA EPIA without having to close the X11VNC session I use to control it. With Windows I had to close VNC because the framerate got too low.
A lightweight DE on *BSD and GNU/Linux makes a real difference.

Re:Not trolling....

I suppose you have not bought a PS1 2 or 3 then?

Re:Remmember.....

cause SONY have RESPECT to the people!

You're kidding, right?

Re:Not trolling....

Legally circumventing the TV licence fee.

If you're watching BBC programmes in the UK then there is no such legal circumvention. The law is very comprehensive in that area and has covered computer viewing for years.

Rant?

What rant? I must've missed it.

Re:Vista is a fantastic piece of ...

Have you heard about a program called LinDVD (from the makers of WinDVD)? Linspire and mandriva 2007 (PP) both have copies.

(oh and DeCSS is in fact legal in a few countries IANAL IIRC)

Re:Vista is a fantastic piece of ...

touché Mr. AC, touché...

Re:When will the majority of consumers wake up?

Getting MS software for free (or close to it) under these type of licenses is the only time that the software is worth it.

Re:Remmember.....

...SONY have RESPECT to the people!

One word: rootkit

Re:Not trolling....

See this is the exact kind of ignorance and FUD an article like this creates...

Why on earth do you think Vista is DOING ANYTHING to control what you watch or download?

The ONLY DRM in Vista is two things.

DRM for Windows Media Audio/Video, and ONLY if it is turned on by the content provider (like if you bought a song or book that was protected). (Just like Win2k, WinXP no difference!!)

HDCP is also in Vista, but as MOST people will tell you that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will not even start using this type of copy protection until 2011 by most estimates. Secondly, this ONLY AFFECTS people that are STUPID enough to buy a HDCP protected HD movie in the first place. The technology in Vista also doesn't PREVENT you from doing anything, it has the 'requirements' so that HDCP content CAN BE PLAYED, something NO OTHER OS OFFERS!! It takes away NOTHING...

And even the TPC chip is not used for any DRM, Vista uses the TPC chip for authenication if you use Bitlocker on a Laptop, and ONLY to allow the drive encryption authenication, which also can be backed up with a passcode and to a USB device.

Other than that, there is NOTHING in Vista preventing people from doing anything they want to do. WindowsXP had DRM in Windows Media as well, and OSX has tons of DRM in iTunes, but you don't see people crying they will never buy a Mac because of all the DRM, even though OSX's Media DRM is MORE INVASIVE and CONTROLLING than Windows Media.

This article is crap, and what people are learning from it is wrong.

In response to the parent post, I was watching movies and TV from non-legal links last night on my Vista system that controls my home entertainment center. I watch a lot of content that isn't 'licensed' and there is NOTHING I have not been able to watch on Vista. This includes everything from P2P movies and Divx to hidden casts on various sites around the world.

SO if you think Vista will stop you from doing anything you currently do, you are being MISLEAD...

(The article might as well tell everyone Vista will kill their kittens, as the article and the FUD surrounding it isn't anymore accurate.)

People Don't Care

Look man, people don't care. Most computers run Windows. That's all Joe Sixpack knows and he'll never "wake up". Joe Sixpack uses his PC to browse the Internet, read and write e-mail, to write the occasional letter and perhaps some other tasks like balancing the checkbook, doing his taxes, managing photo's, etc. When Joe Sixpack wants to watch TV or listen to music he moves to his living room and pop's in a DVD or a CD and watches or listens that way.

We geeks are the ones who rip and re-mix media. Make backup copies of our DVD's, rip DVD video to our iPods to watch on the go, etc. We are aware that the **AA and companies like Microsoft are trying to take away our ability to do this but Joe Sixpack has no idea it's possible and if he finds out it's possible when he sees the process we have to go through to do it he thinks it's way to complicated anyway. He's not aware that he's losing anything because he isn't since he can't do this stuff in the first place.

He's got bigger problems to deal with like taking care of the family, saving for retirement, watching the game on Sunday, etc.

I'd like to ask you one question . . .

...Windows Vista is The Best MS (or M$) Product EVER...

Been smoking crack long? Yes, Windows Vista is the best rat shit ever - but it is still RAT SHIT!

Re:Have ANY of you READ the article in question?

Some of what he says is actually correct. While I won't respond to everything you've posted I'll try to answer some of it so that you can at least get a sense of where the guy is coming from. Note that I'm not saying I agree or diagree with his position but I've been forced to research VISTA a good bit for work so I'm not completly clueless as to what's in store for us :-(

1) Laws of physics. Yes actually he's right. You see DRM is supposed to prevent us from being able to copy signals that are in the end analog. In order for it to actually work 100% we would have to have our ears replaced with digital jacks. Obviously not going to happen so in order for this to work Microsoft must have found a way to prevent you from using a microphone to record the audio (for instance). This is why folks says that for DRM to work it must break the laws of physics - this isn't just Peter saying this. I'll also note that some cmopanies have claimed to have the ability to close this "analog hole" buit to date nothing has materialized that actually does it.

2) Driver signing - in 64BIT VISTA Microsoft says all drivers must be signed. In 32BIT it's optional but encouraged and we'll get the usual pop-ups. If a driver is found to be vulnerable yeah they probably WILL kill it's certificate. Why? Because they are bending over to the media companies like CableCard and will not wish to lose that certification. An example of how far companies will go to get these certifications can be found with the TIVO S3 where they threw out significant functionality (Tivo2Go) in order to become "certified" and in their addition of DRM to retain their Macrovision license. Microsoft has now made themselves subject to much the same arm twisting... BTW, the MS blog I read that mentioned driver signing stated that they did this in 64BIT because there was little chance of breaking backwards functionality and that they couldn't quite do it in 32BIT but really wanted to. I do not know if 64BIT is required for the advanced media features but I'll bet that signed drivers will be required throughout for the advanced stuff to work on 32BIT.

3) Broken hardware... I will point out the HDMI video cards that turned out had an HDMI capable chipset (HDCP and all) but no hardware keys for the HDCP that sort of screwed the consumers. Yeah, they do sometimes ship "broken" hardware and when folks found out their spiffy vid cards wouldn't be compliant they were pretty pissed off!

4) Killer NIC card? I know some hardcore guys that play in tournaments considering that thing. es, a few milliseconds makes a difference to them and yes they run HIGH end video cards as a result. It makes no sense to me either but if the price were right I might consider that card too :-)

5) Installing Blu Ray of HD DVD drives in the system doesn't matter. All of this DRM crap is in there working anyway and the addition of this hardware doesn't somehow suddenly turn it all on. This is part of his ppoint, the system could be more fragile because of these design considerations. As I understand it the DRM drivers all run at a special priv level seperate from the others - now that seems like an odd decision to make if you were trying to build an optimal system for the user doesn't it? I would also point out that there are other DRM contents out there over and above that which comes on physical media. I own a Buffalo Linktheater and it can play a TON of content. However certain DRM'd WMA files tip it right over because the damned media wants to phone home for authorization blah blah. You can get screwed by stuff like that without ever having installed goofy DRM'd hardware. Windows Media Player has been chock full of this DRM crap for awhile on XP if you've been paying attention.

On the flip side Microsoft has REALLY worked hard to make Vista more secure. Buffer overflows may have just been shot dead - memory space shuffling, NX bit for the OS, signing of code, canaries in the stack, no more users running as admin all the time, the lis

Re:Have ANY of you READ the article in question?

I find it hilarious my post has been modded as flamebait since that whats Gutmanns paper reads like