Vista Security The 'Longest Suicide Note in History'? 467
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary Decline? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unnecessary Decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Unnecessary Decline? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Countries are simply an institutionalized form of tribalism. In their absence you still get religious warfare, economic warfare, ethnic warfare etc and so on. When hominids were barely off the trees, they immediately self-organized into tribes and proceeded to murder each other over ... just about anything. This is the "natural", genetically influenced, animalistic state of affairs. Peace and prosperity on the other hand are something that requires
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You meant to say: China, however, is governed by a few Chinese and for those Chinese.
they're allowed to act in their own best interests.
I'm not calling the Chinese government corrupt; I wouldn't know. But governing a county in your own best interest is generally neither good nor allowed, that is to say, it's illegal.
The U.S., on the other hand, is
Chinese DVD players (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chinese DVD players (Score:4, Informative)
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What he's saying is that the Chinese vendor knows that all you want to do is play the stupid media on your screen. Why does anyone want to use a Personal (general purpose) Computer to play HD content or games or whatever when a dedicated device can do it better, cheaper and easier... the fact that he references a Chinese vendor is simply a matter of liklihood that the manfacturer of the device would be in China (pretty good odds) not a commentary on anyt
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Wow, that's insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
[sarcasm off]
Of course there was entertainment... (Score:5, Funny)
Live banjo music, played by relatives, close relatives. Very close relatives.
Re:Wow, that's insightful (Score:4, 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....
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No, he's correct. It says in layman's terms that:
So, if you write something, you own the copyright. You may notice in the
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Just a thought, but living in a world where we aren't brought up to constantly need mind numbing entertainment spewed at us any time we aren't working might not actually be a bad thing. It seems that people's lives these days are getting dominated by the need to watch fictional lives on tv or at the movies. I think this can lead to people having unrealistic expectations about real life.
I digress though, back to the Chinese. I don't think their economy will be as dependent on Intellectual Property as the US
Re:Unnecessary Decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This sounds great and it got you a score of 5 for "insightful", but it's not true. Consumers are allowed, by US law, to import one copy of any CD, DVD or VCD they want for personal use. It's only when you try to get more than one cop
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Likewise, it's not illegal to own a region-free DVD player, but actually getting one is very difficult due to other coercive forces on the market. And to convert an existing player to a region-free one is illegal under US law.
There are other ways the force of law can be brought against the free market rather than th
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Well, that's all great economics theory and all, but it doesn't seem to apply to the music industry. If it did, it would mean that declining CD sales would lead to lower prices, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead of adapting to the market, the industry appears to look for other reasons for the decline in sales, leading to legal and p
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The husband/wife work and contribute their paychecks. As kids grow up, they start contributing more and more to the household, doing chores and what not. Each member of the family takes what they need from the communal resources. At no
Well then don't use it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well then don't use it (Score:5, Informative)
Brief Outline of Medical Imaging Information Flow (Score:5, Informative)
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
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http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767 [securityfocus.com]
The worst case I ever saw in person was at an assisted living facility. Their pull chains (that the residents pull when they are in trouble) was being monitored by a PC running Windows 95 (this was in 2006).
>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
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It was supposed to be a C3 O/S !!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I just the other day got a Redhat Linux Quad Opteron with 4gigs of RAM crash under me. RAM was full, OK, but swap wasn't. What's worse, the logs had stopped filling a week before. The Sun server was happily chugging along with 2+ *years* uptime under similar loads.
Now realize that Sun doesn't give you high speed, no-siree. The reason I had stuff running on the Linux box was that it was easily 5 times faster than the Sun station.
Hey, Sun servers are fabled
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Dupe from Friday (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe from Friday (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
If? You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.
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Not really. Sounding like a broken record harping a point over and over again is unlikely to sway anyone, particularly business customers who are going to purchase Vista because they're supposed to and home customers who will get it because it came with their machine. All of the other groups out there either tuned into their particular camps out of a nearly religious conviction or our of an active decision process. Those who actually make a well thought-out decision only need to be told once.
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Mod parent up.
Mod story -1 redundant.
Mod me -1 offtopic.
Mod yourself Merry Christmas.
TLF
Re:Dupe from Friday (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Priorities (Score:3, Informative)
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
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*humf* *cough* *cough* bleargh!!!!! *puke*
Nice trolling.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
Houston; we have doublethink.
KFG
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The reason why "MS Windows is still the most convenient platform for consumers" is it is installed on the PC
I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance (Score:5, Interesting)
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?"
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Sometimes you are just not supposed to be objective.
Why not?
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...
Disclaimer: I don't want to choose sides here. But apar
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Where is this outlined? I didn't see anything in the body of the article to suggest why this is so.
It wasn't highlited, but I think what he meant was that the same performance was expected despite the increased overhead.
Or something like that.
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This part of his paper is using phrases from the larger debate about content protection and "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) in general. If you don't follow this stuff avidly, I can see why you might feel like this statement of his is hyperbole.
However, it is not. Fundamentally, DRM and content protection is impossible. Simply because no matter how the super-encrypted, SSL-delivered, digitally-signed c
Re:I'd prefer a less pre-loaded stance (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
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
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Nobody ever asked for Vista. Nobody wants it. I'm tired of MS trying to ram it down our throats.
Well if nobody wants it then it's not going to sell very well and your alleged problem solve itself. Then everybody who didn't ask for Vista can move along and have Linux rammed down their throats which nobody asked for either.
How about someone do a web site reselling old XP licenses?
Why would you do that? Nobody asked for XP either. How about we all go back to having Desqview on DOS 3.3? Ah, those were the days.
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Furthermore, people have an option, they could get a Mac.
Re:A biz idea for the new year (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I don't know if that's all a good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
choice. And if it means someone has to give people crutches in the short-term to score points in the long run
so be it.
Not an "upgrade", just a different flavor (Score:5, Funny)
Cat got my tongue! (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Primary Sources, FTW! (Score:5, Informative)
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:
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This is the first time i've seen this mentioned, is it true? If it is, and it's actually enforced by Vista (somehow f
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In fact, here's a paper from Microsoft which includes details of how it's going to work. Sorry, but they've got it in .doc format.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6 EAF2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.d oc
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http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EA F2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc [microsoft.com]
Since when is Gutmann a medical imaging specialist (Score:4, Informative)
Medical Imaging Specialist???? (Score:5, Informative)
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OK, so the submitter couldn't distiguish the quote from the INQ submitter from the subject of the article, but at least he didn't make the whole thing up.
Al
biased analysis, with a crunchy core of truth (Score:4, Insightful)
obviously fud (Score:3, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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BTW the link to the paper is here.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
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Oh, well, now I'll be modded to hell.
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Progress requires that RIAA/MPAA be screwed over (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Progress requires that RIAA/MPAA be screwed ove (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious ? Microsoft markets their OS to the movie/music companies as being the only system secure enough for them to release their content in. In turn, the movie/music companies only release their content to play back under Windows. A nice little win-win situation all round (except for the poor consumer, who loses twice...)
that's why microsoft is to be the pimp...... (Score:2)
Watch for iPod Vista compatibility 'problems' to start surfacing for the benefit of Zune. The other big thing this DRM play will also try to do is to reintroduce protected CDs or to make it more difficult to play/rip unencumbered CDs.
MS want the cartel-on-ca
You don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why Microsoft is bending over for the media companies.
They're not. Microsoft has a monopoly. They can tell anyone to get lost.
But "compliance" with "requirements" of the RIAA and MPAA is perfect cover for their real game plan, which is to eliminate Open Source (Linux, etc). If Microsoft simply pressured hardware manufacturers (video cards etc) never to release specs, and also to spend billions making it impossible to reverse-engineer their programming specs, just to stop programmers from de
I'm new here but... (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
MS cripples its hardware... (Score:2)
if you want to read LSNiH then just read the EULA (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
or, you could... (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
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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.
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>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.
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A lightweight DE on *BSD and GNU/Linux makes a real difference.
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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.
You're wrong. The TV licence covers the receiving and recording of broadcasts as they are being broadcast. I've got the documentation on my lap right now. The website clarifies this here. [tvlicensing.co.uk] This does not cover the shows that are available for viewing on BBC sites such as BBC Two's Watch Now [bbc.co.uk]. (IANAL though)
I don't much care for the TV licence.
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Whoa, wait a second...
From the Wikipedia page on HDCP [wikipedia.org]:
"HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players allow content providers to set an Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag that will only output full-resolution digital signals using HDCP. If such a player is connected to a non-HDCP-enabled television set and the content is flagged, the pla
Rant? (Score:2)
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The reason is, building a music workstation is a massive money and time investment. Money, because buying the proper cabling, software and gizmos is expensive. Time, because learning how to use that equipment properly doesn't happen overnight.
Since I really just do music production for a hobb
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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 an
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