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I *MIGHT* Upgrade to Vista if they get rid of all the nasty DRM requiements that is basically them bending over backwards for MAFIAA.

Ofcourse if they got rid of all that crap they *MIGHT* actually have an operating system that will run as fast as XP and people will consider buying it. Until then its doomed to rot on the shelves with all the intelligent IT people badmouthing it (which is where most customers get their info from)

It comes from New Zealand. Specifically, from Peter Gutmann. It's briefly covered in section 7 ("Methods of Recovery for Data stored in Random-Access Memory") of this paper, and elaborated on in a paper called Data Remanence in Semiconductor Devices.

Seriously, you don't know everything there is to know about physics.

It comes from New Zealand. Specifically, from Peter Gutmann. It's briefly covered in section 7 ("Methods of Recovery for Data stored in Random-Access Memory") of this paper, and elaborated on in a paper called Data Remanence in Semiconductor Devices.

Seriously, you don't know everything there is to know about physics.

I agree with you. The parent has misunderstood something, I think it should be apparent from the article he linked to. I didn't read it, this is /. :)

You really should try reading the article, because you wouldn't look like such an idiot if you did. You might even be able to add something to the discussion other than ill-informed noise. Slashdot may be full of morons who are proud of the fact that they feel qualified to comment on articles without even reading them, but that's no reason for you to be one of those morons too. Here's a little taster for you:

DRAM can also "remember" the last stored state, but in a slightly different way. It isn't so much that the charge (in the sense of a voltage appearing across a capacitance) is retained by the RAM cells, but that the thin oxide which forms the storage capacitor dielectric is highly stressed by the applied field, or is not stressed by the field, so that the properties of the oxide change slightly depending on the state of the data.

Read section 7 of this then come back when you have something intelligent to add.

No, the original post is accurate smartass. Now why your post moderated up is beyond explanation (well, no it isn't, Slashdot is full of knowitall morons).

A little reading for you (or just search for oxide in the text ya lazy punk):

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html

Posting this url: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html accusing you of being a huge faggot.

Read the link

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html

It's not always true. And depends on the ram.

To bad moderators here don't actually follow links instead just mod down when enough people try to prove it wrong.

Like I said depending on the ram.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html

Completely doable.

I bet this poor page is in for one hell of a /.ing.

Vista Retarded is here Sung by the V.C.P.s
[voiceover] The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Vista "Retarded", is here...

And content not playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not
playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

In this context,Vista disrespects, so when I click to play, the display disconnects.
We got find methods for us to reconnect to new codecs by the network effect.
Bout to lose your fair use. Microsoft's institution. Infect your computer with D.R.M. pollution.
Cause when we click on, the sound is gonna be down. You won't believe how we ow shout out.
Burn can't cause we locked out, Sample can't cause we locked out, act up from north,west, east south.

[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.

Lose control, of privacy and goals.
Won't run too fast cause, bloat makes it slow.
Won't get away, your locked into it.
Y'all hear about it, Gutmann'll do it.
Get Vista, be stoopid.
Don't worry 'bout it, Ballmer'll walk you though it,
Step by step, you'll be restricted
Patch by patch with the new solution.
Transmit bits, with D.R.M. pollution
Claim the contents irresistible and that's how they move it.

[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.

Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

C'mon y'all, let's get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here) Ow, ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

Let's get ill, that's the deal
At the gate, Microsoft restricts your will. (Just)
Lose your mind this is the time,
Y'all test this will, Just and download still. (Just)
Rob the resolution, from your monitor or to your speakers.
Get pixel-ated and suck.
Yo' movies past slow-mo' in another head trip.(So)
Locked in now cannot correct it, so be ig'nant and left apoplectic .

[Chorus:]
(yeah)Everybody, (yeah) everybody, (yeah) get locked into it.
(yeah) Get stupid.
(click on) Get retarded,(click on) get retarded (yeah), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Whoaoa
Yeah.

You Cukoo! (A-ha!) -- It's Po-Po! (is here)
Be a Fool! (A-ha!) -- M.S. Tool! (be their)
Like Voodoo! (A-ha!) -- You cukoo! (out here)
Ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin'
[fade]

Vista Retarded is hereSung by the V.C.P.s
[voiceover] The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Vista "Retarded", is here...

And content not playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not
playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

In this context,Vista disrespects, so when I click to play, the display disconnects.
We got find methods for us to reconnect to new codecs by the network effect.
Bout to lose your fair use. Microsoft's institution. Infect your computer with D.R.M. pollution.
Cause when we click on, the sound is gonna be down. You won't believe how we ow shout out.
Burn can't cause we locked out, Sample can't cause we locked out, act up from north,west, east south.

[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.

Lose control, of privacy and goals.
Won't run too fast cause, bloat makes it slow.
Won't get away, your locked into it.
Y'all hear about it, Gutmann'll do it.
Get Vista, be stoopid.
Don't worry 'bout it, Ballmer'll walk you though it,
Step by step, you'll be restricted
Patch by patch with the new solution.
Transmit bits, with D.R.M. pollution
Claim the contents irresistible and that's how they move it.

[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.

Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...

C'mon y'all, let's get Do-do! (uh huh)
Let's get Do-do! (in here) - Right now get Do-do! (uh huh)
Let's get Do-do! (in here) - Right now get Do-do! (uh huh)
Let's get Do-do! (in here) Ow, ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

Let's get ill, that's the deal
At the gate, Microsoft restricts your will. (Just)
Lose your mind this is the time,
Y'all test this will, Just and download still. (Just)
Rob the resolution, from your monitor or to your speakers.
Get pixel-ated and suck.
Yo' movies past slow-mo' in another head trip.(So)
Locked in now cannot correct it, so be ig'nant and left apoplectic .

[Chorus:]
(yeah)Everybody, (yeah) everybody, (yeah) get locked into it.
(yeah) Get stupid.
(click on) Get retarded,(click on) get retarded (yeah), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Whoaoa
Yeah.

You Cukoo! (A-ha!)
It's Po-Po! (is here) - Be a Fool! (A-ha!)
M.S. Tool! (be their) - Like Voodoo! (A-ha!)
You cukoo! (out here) -Ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin'
[fade]

• Crippling functionality to support braindead DRM schemes. Peter Guttman's article provides a good analysis of the problem. The main impact will come from the widespread use of Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs, as the quality of such media will be crippled when played over unencrypted channels. But, as Guttman's article points out, other common uses such as VoIP echo cancellation are affected by the DRM.
• Implementing, step by step, a DRM framework that is the ultimate censorship tool. Imagine that all content you create by recording audio or video is encrypted by the operating system. It is DRM-protected, but with global "read" permission. All the DRM mechanisms of key granting, revocation, tracking, and so forth can then be used to control a) who has permission to create content, b) what content can be played on a PC without circumvention of the encryption.

You may say that the second scenario is alarmist, but people would have said the same thing a few years ago if you had predicted that an operating system would artificially decrease the quality of output signals purely for DRM reasons. This has happened, and is part of exactly the kind of infrastructure you need to use DRM for censorship purposes. Of course it would not be called censorship. The first official use of the technology would be copyright violations by amateurs. Then one would argue that key revocation is a good way to stop distribution of new child pornography. And so forth. The best protection against such a scenario is the widespread use of open source software.

But Microsoft's partnership with the content industry is designed to kill open source on the desktop. Today, you can simply not play DVDs on Linux without breaking United States and European laws that make it illegal to circumvent DRM. The same will be true for HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray, but also, increasingly so, for downloaded content of any type that comes with DRM restrictions. Microsoft knows quite well that its current implementation does nothing to stop piracy. But they are feeding the wet dreams of studio execs because they know that any technology that can only be legally implemented in proprietary form is like a license to print money.

So the censorship scenario above is probably not their motivation to go along with the industry's demands. And it is not really in the industry's interest either -- they just want to track down the evil pirates (though some of the smarter ones may also be thinking about ways to stop the "threat" of user-generated content). But it so happens that the only viable technology to prevent copyright violation is also perfect for purging content of any type. The problem is of the same nature, and so is the solution. Protesting against DRM is not just about protecting your right to download Hollywood movies, if you believe there is such a thing. It's about preserving the open source ecosystem, and guarding against a technological framework for censorship.

And to circumvent the filter, he added, a hacker would have to "screw up the content itself so it wasn't recognizable," to a degree where it wouldn't even be worth uploading in the first place.

Breaking news: Monopoly allows a company to create a totally deficient product and still sell it!

Which functionality is taken away? IIRC, the only DRM in Vista is there to enable playback of DRM-enabled media. (I.e. HD-DVD/BluRay) It's not as if it infects all your AVI files with some vicious DRM scheme.

No, but average consumers don't know that. The "Cost of Vista" article points out some fantastic ways in which functionality is effectively being taken away from consumers. Here's an excerpt close to the front of the article:

Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content. Instead of hearing premium high-definition audio, you get treated to premium high-definition silence.

In other words, a consumer who has high-end audio setup thinking that they're going to be able to listen to the latest and greatest in A/V home theater technology will be sadly disappointed. The discs aren't broken, the hardware isn't broken, and no AVI files have been infected, but the end result is the same: Functionality that the user has paid for and reasonably expects to work doesn't. It's been taken away.

Is Vista in trouble? Why wouldn't it be? Even if Microsoft gave the thing away for free, it totally ignores the fact that there's an enormous cost to upgrading. Microsoft doesn't need a fire sale, it needs to be paying people to install this thing.

Let's run down the usual suspects of people who upgrade and see how they feel:

• Business users hate it. The hardware required to run it cost a lot of money when multiplied by tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees. Add to that the training costs, the support costs, the deployment costs, and so on ad nauseum, and the business decision easily becomes a no-brainer. And for what? Beefed up "security" that causes your user base to go nuts answering "Allow or deny" dialog boxes?
• Gamers hate it. It just plain doesn't run with the hardware that's out right now. I really think that Vista is trying to be the proverbial egg that comes before widespread manufacturer support (the proverbial chicken), but it's just not happening. Every gamer I know is avoiding Vista like the plague. As long as gamers aren't begging for Vista support in their high-end components, manufacturers are still going to continue to be reluctant.
• Speaking of manufacturers, it's obvious that they hate it, too. When I tried Vista for a week a while back (not the beta, the so-called real version after launch), two things didn't work. My Creative SoundBlaster Live! card and my nVidia video card. To be fair, the latter technically worked, but some of its higher-end functionality didn't. We're not talking about little no-name manufacturers here or bizarre equipment, we're talking about common cards from major manufacturers. Have you even seen the hoops that hardware manufacturers have to jump through to comply with Vista's outrageous requirements?
• The emerging home entertainment market hates it. Let's not mince words: One of Vista's primary design goals is Digital Rights "Management," keeping these people from doing what they want to do. Why would buy software that takes functionality away!!?

I could go on, but you get the point. Is Vista in trouble? You bet. Add to all of the above the competition that it faces from various Linux distributions that are easier than ever to install and use, products like Mac OS, clever new projects such as ReactOS, and even its own predecessor! and it becomes clear that Microsoft should be praying that people pirate it, because that's the only way it's going to make any kind of splash when all is said and done.

Don't get me wrong, it won't die completely, any more than Windows ME is dead. But in the annals of operating systems, my money is that it will be merely a blip on the screen. If Microsoft is smart, it should be working on adding features to its operating system, making it faster and more powerful and easier to use. It should be fighting with us against DRM, not against us by crippling their software with it.

Personally, I think that Microsoft is not very smart, but who knows, I guess we'll see. At any rate, after giving it a week to try to convince me that it's not as bad as everyone says it is, I was very disappointed in it and won't be running it anytime in the forseeable future.

And what if the overhead of DRM requirements is left out?

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

The "DRM crap" only affects content which chooses to use these DRM 'features', it doesn't stop you doing anything else, or playing any other content.

That simply isn't true.

Windows is a huge pain in the ass now. It used to be tolerable to upgrade the OS (on the same hardware) every 2-3 years but i'm not buying new hardware to run Windows. I spent my money on an Apple Mac Mini. The cost was less, the machine makes no noise and unlike PC hardware it looks great.

For the first time in my life I have a computer that works great AND looks good (not to mention small). No more Frankenstein-looking PCs with noisy fans and annoying viruses.

Peter Gutmann makes a good point about MS caring relatively little about security and making a Windows admin's life simple. It's time to move on to something better.

This was predicted some time ago... http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#hardware

We know that DRM doesn't work ( no really ) so I'm guessing this is just ATI responding to Microsoft's attempt to stop Linux on the desktop. Same paper again http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#oss

Truth is of course that this will just piss of customers. Oh well, they will learn eventually... if they don't they will get overtaken by someone else.

This was predicted some time ago... http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#hardware

We know that DRM doesn't work ( no really ) so I'm guessing this is just ATI responding to Microsoft's attempt to stop Linux on the desktop. Same paper again http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#oss

Truth is of course that this will just piss of customers. Oh well, they will learn eventually... if they don't they will get overtaken by someone else.

It's actually quite possible, see the description of player immunization at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#revocation, down towards the end of the section.

The Linux community hasn't been telling the MPAA and RIAA that they can prevent copyright violations by implementing technical measures like protected mode.

Microsoft wants people to believe that this mechanism can be used to create a secure environment for DRM applications to present protected content without their output being hijacked by the computer's owner (who of course has Administrator access). They have justified many appalling design decisions in Vista by saying they are required to provide this protection... and if it can be bypassed this easily then DRM has become Microsoft's WMDs.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html

The reason Linux has 'never been hit by a bootkit' is because it's never been nessicary for people to do that in order to work around DRM-related restrictions.

Yes, I know, that having signed drivers is suppose to be a (very) limited improvement in security over XP, but they are lying to you if they tell you that is the real reason that Microsoft is doing it.

This is just another way to crack Microsoft's DRM.
First they were able crack the DRM for individual HD-DVD disks, then Blueray.
Next they have cracked the DRM on _ALL_ HD-DVD and Blueray disks manufactured to date.
Now they cracked the signed drivers sceme for Vista so now you can lie to applications and hardware about having 'protected media path'. You can do things like setup fake drivers and capture audio and video output to a file and rip movies that way. Perfect digital copy.

All sorts of crap like that.

All the 'digital right protections' that Microsoft has spent millions of dollars and 5 years to build into Vista have all been ripped to shreds in only a few months after it's release. Now take that bit of knowledge and then read "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection".
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html

I hope that now people understand what I've and many other people have been saying for years, that enforced DRM is a fucking retarded idea. And it's not bad because I 'beleive that artists shouldn't get paid' or because I am a communist/socialist (I am not) or anything like that.

It's a fucking stupid idea because it's just a realy bad idea.

To date that hasn't been nessicary to do for Linux unless you own a Tivo and they are working on the GPLv3 to 'crack' that.

If they had left XP alone too long, there would not have been much remaining to cannibalize because a product can only be hyped and marketed for so long before it starts losing ground to the competition, like to Linux.

I'm sorry, but people don't buy Windows XP because it's "hyped and marketed", they buy it because it runs the applications they want to run, and developers don't develop for Windows XP because it's "hyped and marketed", they do it because that's what their customers are running. That's what the people who go on about Linux on the desktop don't understand... people don't buy a computer to run an operating system, they buy it to run applications, and developers don't write applications to run on an operating system, they write them to sell to customers.

The only Vista sales that represent sales to people who might even have potentially switched to Linux are sales to people who are already running XP and who don't need to switch to Vista. If almost all the Vista sales are sales that Microsoft would have made anyway, then that means Microsoft didn't actually need to release a new operating system.

XP ran its time, even if it would have been sold anyway because it would have started losing ground.

On the contrary, Vista has the potential of costing Microsoft a lot of ground in the long run. The reason XP sold to existing Windows users was because XP was more responsive and reliable than what most of them were currently running. Vista is slower and less reliable than XP, and it can not even in theory ever change that without Microsoft backing out the changes that make Vista a different operating system than XP, because the whole point to the DRM components in Vista is to reduce the reliability of the operating system.

Bruce Schnier says: don't upgrade to Vista.

Peter Gutmann says: Vista will inevitably cost you more and run slower.

These guys are not "free software whackos", they're professional computer security researchers, top names in the field. This is just the start of the backlash against Vista. Far from being necessary to "keep linux from the door", Vista is a tremendous risk for Microsoft... and no matter what they say in public they have to be worried about the low uptake.

Windows is also responsible for countless man-years lost to fighting viruses abnd worms that could have been avoided (yes, really, the big flood of Windows malware coincided with the introduction of Active Desktop and the merging of Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Windows Explorer through the HTML control), and that's just one of the ways it's a classic Wally-style "high maintainance employee". I've already mentioned its "moonlighting" as an enforcer for the RIAA and MPAA, which you can explore further in Peter Gutmann's article.

Businesses are used to putting up with people like this, so it's no wonder that they accept the same kind of abuse from computers.

Maybe.

Let's assume the bad guys never stored any forensically useful stuff on disk in clear text. Peter Gutmann has a few things to say about recovering useful information from RAM chips.

The question for the real world is:
Is it worth going this far just to catch the bad guys?

An apprentice to Robber Cheh asked him saying, "Is there then Tao (moral principles) among thieves?"

"Tell me if there is anything in which there is not Tao," Cheh replied.

"There is the sage character of thieves by which booty is located, the courage to go in first, and the chivalry of coming out last. There is the wisdom of calculating success, and kindness in the equal division of the spoil. There has never yet been a great robber who was not possessed of these five qualities." It is seen therefore that without the teachings of the Sages, good men could not keep their position, and without the teachings of the Sages, Robber Cheh could not accomplish his ends.

Who needs stories when you have obvious defects and intentional crippling of the operating system, taking control out of the administrator's hands for the sake of microsoft's business partners. None of the customers wanted their audio and video quality to be degraded unless the met certain requirements and the system was working perfectly, so who was that added for?
On the off chance that you're not trolling for the sake of trolling and are legitimately ignorant, read this and try to point out just what is "made up". http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html

From daybot:
> Cons:
> -It's DRM crippled to the extreme
> ...

This is the "showstopper" for me, and I'm really puzzled by the lack of mention of the DRM and "Trusted Computing" related disadvantages of Vista. That is the single reason why I've decided not to ever upgrade to Vista. I've played around with it a little, and I'll admit some of the changes (search on the start menu, nice graphics updates) bring it closer to good. But it still has an unfinished feel, like they're right in the middle of some migration to a different UI philosophy. After having used OSX for a while, I've come to appreciate how consistent and thought-out it is. It's not a panacea, but it's definitely more intentionally good than a lot of comparable windows examples.

But the bottom line for me is DRM. Completely integrated DRM down to the driver and HAL level, intentional breaking of functionality (hook a HD tv up to your HD-DVD drive using DVI, etc), and the requirements that hardware vendors conform to Microsoft's idea of secure hardware design... I cannot see how this will do anything but hurt everyone except Microsoft and the owners of protected content. And by owners, I don't mean the creators of content... I mean the publishers.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html

Vista-compatibility depends on hardware vendors redesigning their hardware to Microsoft's requirements, at greater cost and complexity. What happens to fair-use rights when we can't technologically step around it? The legal battle is still being played out, but what does it matter if Microsoft and the content owners decide what the technical limitations are and enforce it down to the hardware level?

I know most techies will ignore it, figuring that eventually everything is broken so it wont be a big deal. But the harm will have already been done in the manner of annoyances, instability, higher costs for hardware and software owners/developers, and incredible limitations and loss of rights for the end users. How does this outweigh essentially some UI changes and half-baked security updates?

Any idea if that mechanism addresses the DRAM "memory" effect described in this paper: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html?

Any idea if that mechanism addresses the DRAM "memory" effect described in this paper: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html?

I just recently found a very interesting and scary presentation about security and phishing.

Basically computer software has conditioned us to automatically press Ok in any dialog and there is nothing we can do about this. Automated actions by the user is inevitable and is present in every action in our life.

Nobody remembers if they locked the door or not and if you put "If you reach under your chair you will find $500" in a popup dialog, nobody is going to notice it.

From what I think I got from the presentation:
* If you want warnings to be at all effective, avoid "false positives" at all costs. That is: Never show the user popups like: "you are sending information unencrypted over the network" (or whatever the IE dialog says) when you press a submit form on a web site, because people don't care and they will learn to ignore all such popups, even the important ones. The UAC is extremely guilty of this.
* Some good insight into decision makers by users. Hint: people generate options one at a time and reject options that don't work. They never compare options but take the first one that works. This is called singular evaluation approach and is heavily taken advantage of in marketing. Software makers and web site creators should learn from this and modify their web sites accordingly.

I know :)

Hmm.. how hard would it be to find chance similarities in any two codebases?

I work on the evolution of languages (shameless plug), and I know that it's quite possible to get the same words meaning the same thing, just due to change. For example "mata" means "eye" in both Greek and Maori, but there's just no chance that these languages are related anytime within the last, say, 20 thousand years, and this is just an outcome of plain old chance.

My question - how likely and to what degree is this sort of convergent evolution of code between two separate programs? Keeping in mind that there's a whole lot of functional constraints, i.e. both operating systems have to manage RAM somehow, or both have to manipulate graphics in some way, there are common good coding practices, there are common language idioms, etc.

So - how easy would it be, for Ballmer to find a chance similarity between linux and vista, and how would you distinguish between this and real similarity? (homoplasy vs. homology for you evolutionary biologists out there).

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html

have nice day

Although tool use is known to occur in species ranging from naked mole rats to owls, chimpanzees are the most accomplished tool users. The modification and use of tools during hunting, however, is still considered to be a uniquely human trait among primates. Here, we report the first account of habitual tool use during vertebrate hunting by nonhumans. At the Fongoli site in Senegal, we observed ten different chimpanzees use tools to hunt prosimian prey in 22 bouts.

        This includes immature chimpanzees and females, members of age-sex classes not normally characterized by extensive hunting behavior. Chimpanzees made 26 different tools, and we were able to recover and analyze 12 of these. Tool construction entailed up to five steps, including trimming the tool tip to a point. Tools were used in the manner of a spear, rather than a probe or rousing tool. This new information on chimpanzee tool use has important implications for the evolution of tool use and construction for hunting in the earliest hominids, especially given our observations that females and immature chimpanzees exhibited this behavior more frequently than adult males.

Agreed, this is sensationalist, more anti-Vista FUD. I hate Vista as much as most here, but there's no need to lie. There are plenty of valid reasons why it's an awful operating system that can be used; why invent new ones that don't exist?

This is because such applications have not yet gone through the Windows Vista logo program or are still going though this program.

As a Linux user I'd be annoyed if I went to the OpenOffice or Firefox website and found one of those ghastly: 'Designed for Windows Vista' logos staring back at me.

Read this cost analysis on using Vista before assuming that Microsoft did the right thing with their kernel.

Greetings to you Microsoft operator/propagandist. It's not FUD if it's true. But truth overcomes FUD when we've got all this brain power on it. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ost.html#response

They aren't?
I don't know about game output but Vista will definatly degrade your high def signals if you aren't using MS-blessed drivers and hardware.

Cleartext digital audio outputs have been turned off for some restrictions-managed content since Windows Millennium Edition, and high-definition video outputs may be degraded to enhanced definition if they are not digital and encrypted, but this has never affected analog audio outputs to my knowledge. Please cite your sources.

The opinion of the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft stated that without the possibility of fair use, copyright might not be compatible with the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression.

Standard Oil for sure. But they've been replaced by Exxon-Mobil.

AT&T has been replaced by... AT&T...

IBM still exists, and they're working hard to replace themselves by offering the black-box approach with a couple of consultants to make it work for your business.

MS... well, if Vista doesn't dethrone them, nothing will.

Apple? They have a monopoly? On what? They're merely an online distributor for content "owned" and controlled by RIAA entities (I'm not a paying customer, although some of their free content is ok). iPods (I own 2)? Not a chance, any MP3 player will do. I just happen to like the iPod better for the way I use mine, but there's no anti-competitive reason to buy one. Their Macs? They're great, and a decent deal for the money, if they happen to meet your requirements (for those that continue along the fallacy of them being more expensive, I priced out identical systems from HP, Dell, and Apple by feature. Apple was cheaper, not even accounting for the better software)

On the one hand I wish Apple would sell OSX for general purpose PCs. Even for only a small subset of supported peripheral hardware. They could charge for the help calls, with 1 or 2 included in the original OS price. It would shock MS to the core, as they cannot pull the only product that matters due to anti-monopoly agreements already (Office).

Then we might see new competition in the OS/Software space, and maybe get rid of this boat-anchor Vista is trying to bring to the party.

Other than a lot of theft of bicycles (I lost two in six months), there's not all that much crime on campus. Lots of drugs, I'm sure, but bad things happening to people are pretty rare. We're more than adequately served by the same police stations that protect the rest of Auckland City.

Of course, we are a country that doesn't even have permanently-armed police officers. Quite why we would devolve policing functions to employees of some private institution is completely beyond me. I suspect, though, that not even the likes of Cambridge or Oxford would have their own police forces. The notion of letting non-state employees enforce the law seems to be quite uniquely American, witness their gun-toting security guards who patrol gated communities.

Other than a lot of theft of bicycles (I lost two in six months), there's not all that much crime on campus. Lots of drugs, I'm sure, but bad things happening to people are pretty rare. We're more than adequately served by the same police stations that protect the rest of Auckland City.

Of course, we are a country that doesn't even have permanently-armed police officers. Quite why we would devolve policing functions to employees of some private institution is completely beyond me. I suspect, though, that not even the likes of Cambridge or Oxford would have their own police forces. The notion of letting non-state employees enforce the law seems to be quite uniquely American, witness their gun-toting security guards who patrol gated communities.

But Apple said the law, which it opposes, would likely actually increase its sales of iPod music players. "IPod sales will likely increase as users freely upload their iPods with 'interoperable' music which cannot be adequately protected," Kerris said. "Free movies for iPods should not be far behind."

Clearly we think that offering next-gen DVD content on the PC is much preferable to having the PC excluded from accessing this premium content"

and which runs on a cheaper and more open hardware platform

and which runs on a cheaper and more open hardware platform