Slashdot Mirror
Death of the General Purpose PC
phil reed writes "This article at The Register provides a deeper view of what has started out as the discussion about copy protected hard drives. Basically, the author is saying that the end of the general-purpose PC is in sight, and we're likely to end up with special purpose appliances (witness Tivo) with all kinds of built-in copy protection. He does a good job of justifying his view, and it's depressing. Comments?"
But how about academia? If someone's running a server or a database, or if someone just has tons of MS Excel (excuse the swearword) files with data in them, then copy-protected harddrives and stuff like that will only be a hindrance...
In my opinion, this will never fly... and if it does, I'm pulling out my old 105 MB HD from where it has been for the past 7 years: under one of the legs of the coffee table, preventing it from wobbling too much...
Veni, vidi, vici.
Let me toss out my Ultra 60 for this "new enhanced, Mac OS X ready toaster." :)
The consumer market PC isn't going anywhere. Everytime someone thinks that they have a gizmo that would fit the average consumer's needs (for less) someone else comes up with another killer use for the PC.
It used to be that all a PC replacement needed to do was some word processing, and perhaps a spreadsheet. Then it was office type stuff and web browsing. Now it's all that and be a multimedia center as well. Who knows what will be next, but whatever it is it will almost certainly require a general purpose machine. And you can bet that Microsoft isn't going to think of it first.
Remember, a few years ago pundits were telling us that the future was WebTVs. Now we look back and realize that the WebTV was a total dud, and the reason that it failed is obvious. WebTVs suck! They can only do a handful of things, and they can't do them as fast or as easily as a modern PC (and they aren't even really that much cheaper).
The open nature and the general usefulness of the PC is the reason for its success. For most tasks the PC isn't the fastest or the least expensive solution, but it solves more problems than anything else, and it does it fast enough, and at a low enough price. Companies that try to make the PC less useful are bound to fail. For these CPRM devices to work, they are going to require drivers that trigger their special properties. I personally am hoping that Microsoft builds as much content protection as possible into their OS. I hope that they make it impossible to access a single solitary piece of digital content without someone's approval. The less generally useful Windows becomes, the easier it will be to replace Windows with something else.
The article basically says that hardware and software vendors are scraping by on razor thin margins because current products do not incorporate proprietary interfaces or encryption standards. So the conclusion is that anyone who remains open is subjecting themselves to too much market competition, and thus will either have to go proprietary or go out of business.
This pretty much ignores the fact that the market demands interoperability. Great, Intel can make more money selling proprietary 'wireless 1394' because it is a standard it owns, and has no direct competitors. This ignores the fact that if a corporation spends $1million of bluetooth PDAs they want them to work with their intel hardware without having to by an extra interface card or adapter.
Yes, the tech market is rampantly competitive, but the market has proven again and again that proprietary vendors are the ones that become non-competitive in the long run. How many closed standards have we seen become defacto open standards because the market demands that level of interoperability and efficiency. VHS, CDs, the original IBM PC, even to some extent Intel's older chip designs.
The same thing applies to encryption, as this has the same goal in mind, but instead of making proprietary hardware, encrypting creates proprietary information. Again, who in their right mind is going to buy a DVD that can only be played on Sony hardware, or a TV that can only get service from certain satellite providers.
Yes, it's hard to make money in the computer industry selling or creating hardware or software. Incorporating encryption and proprietary hardware will not solve the problem, if for no other reason than the fact that I will always pay more for open products.
Perhaps manufacturers should just threaten these moves, creating a perceived scarcity of 'open' products, and then up their prices. Hmmmm....
-josh
Hah! You're quite wrong. Tell, me, which of these two would you take?
A 96GHz computer, with 20GB RAM, 1TB HD, 10Gb ethernet, and a 20" flatscreen
A 1.5GHz computer with 1GB RAM, 50GB HD, 1Gb ethernet and a 19" tube.
Did I mention that all the current software and games are only available on the former? And that there are no cheap upgrades or support for the latter?
Get real. Companies and governments want these, and will ban or undercut anything else. Linux is great, provided that there's a strong base of generic hardware. Get rid of that, and the rest falls apart. Laws are turning out to be very effective in comparison to winning in the market.
In short, we're in deep, deep trouble. Why don't we assume this to be the case, and act accordingly. If we're wrong, the only problems will be that we looked foolish. If we're right, we might have a chance to save microcomputing from being ruined. I'll be a pessimist and hope I'm wrong.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
All data is encrypted, unless it is within a tamper-proof package. Basically, all your base are belong to.. Um, I mean, all your components are controlled by the media conglomerates, and they treat the bus, network, video cable and audio cables as though they are insecure channels. So "your PC" doesn't figure out how to execute the code, it's your "Intel Pentium 7" that figures out how to execute the code, after negotiating a session key with your disk drive.
(note to pedants, I am describing the next generation of CPRM, the current one isn't quite this strong.)
A little tip for you: if consumers are uninformed about their options, they will make poor buying decisions. This is the entertainment industry's entire goal in a nutshell. This is why, DECSS. This is why, CPRM. This is why, .NET If they don't KNOW computing can be any better than this, they won't be upset when it's taken away from them. You can't miss what you never knew you had.
/. to boycott the new computer toys. Hmm, ok, if 1/10th of slashdotters take your advice (which I think is a VERY generous estimate) we're talking less than 40,000 people.
Yeah, wow, you call for
Hear that great, roaring noise? That's the RIAA laughing at you.
(sigh)
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
While, the "death of the general purpose PC" might be streaching it, the article does bring out an important point about what the hard drive companies are up to with CPRM.
As many have pointed out, CPRM is probably useless on a "general purpose" computer -- there's just too many software packages and operating systems and filesystems to deal with, not to mention the somewhat educated userbase.
However, where it is useful is Single Purpose devices. What if you could just wedge out the IDE drive on your HD-Tivo and get access to the unencrypted MPEG-2 stream. Instant Internet Rebroadcast. Repeat for various other audio and video devices.
Sure, the Single Purpose Device guys (read: the MPAA and the RIAA) could go and invent their own disk interface or their own encryption systems, but what that's probably too high cost of a solution for them. They want to freeload off of the economies of scale of PCs and use standard motherboards and IDE disks, and they want to push the encryption down to the hardware level and make it automatic.
The drive companies are of course jumping on this because it potentially opens up a market 10x the size of the PC market. The could make a killing if they just offer a nice enough package for the consumer electronics people to buy in - Imagine if every TV had a cheap IDE drive in it.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
To join the author in playing devil's advocate, I don't think it's about choosing copy protection over none--it's going to be about choosing new hardware and better performance over old. Quite simply, manufacturers aren't going to be developing new hardware that doesn't conform to the new copy protection standards. That's why the author stresses the power of the entertainment industry. It's not that they can force you to buy one product over another, it's that they can pressure the manufacturer's into only producing one sort. Look at DVDs. It's not that there isn't a demand for regionless or multi-region players--a quick buzz through slashdot will show you that. But there's extreme pressure on the makers to not produce them, so you're not going to find a cheap one. Of course, if you're willing to pay, that's another matter--but this conversation was about reasonably priced products.
Still, I think that the PC user market is both large enough and entrenched enough to keep this sort of thing from happening anytime soon. Look at the outcry over the P4's embedded tracking features. I'm not as pessimistic as the author is on the matter.
No relation to Happy Monkey
While I do find merit in the ideas expressed in the article, I find it difficult to believe that all so called 'General Purpose PCs' will wither and die. If for only one reason - software development.
All of these new PC Appliances require software to be written for them in order to perform anything useful. Software development essentially requires the use of a 'general purpose' machine in order to target the multitude of platforms you are writing for. It really is the epitome of computer generalization, and as such will remain in strong demand as long as there is a need to develop software.
I really couldn't imagine having a 'Development Appliance' for development work since every developer I know does things a little bit differently - you simply couldn't make an appliance suited for such work.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Go ahead, try to alienate the developers. That's a good idea...
Culture is more than commerce
The point isn't that the PC as we know it is still popular, it's that the market is no longer profitable. If widgets are wildly popular, but none of the widget manufacturers can find a way to profit, widgets will become extinct no matter how badly you and everyone else wants one. More realistically, however, manufacturers will drop out of the race, demand will exceed supply, prices will go up, and profits will return.
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
DVD drives and region encoding is a very good example. Even the employees of the stores know in which ones it can be turned off, small wonder, since customers are asking this. I even heared that some Manufacturers even advertised with this "feature" (now being able to turn off something becomes a feature ...) in countries where they could get away with it. And the information how to disable regionencoding for a specific player is probably even leaked by the manufacturer himself.
What is different here though is: the copy protection mechanisms are in fact an additional feature. There will be software accessing these hardware functions which won't work with a HD without them. You can still use it as a normal HD but you can also use it to store special, copy protected, content, which you cannot store on an older HD (since the software handling that content will simply not allow that).
For the customer there is no immediate disadvantage: He can do everything he could do with the old HD, and if he ever intends to use aforementioned software he can do that. The problem then is, that once those new HDs are so widely distributed, that copyprotected content can be marketed (the software to do this probably comes for free) it will become harder to get the content in the unprotected form.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The 'blank screen' provision is there to comply with Apple's DVD consortium license. The 'direct screen blast' as you call it is a measure taken to avoid copying as well. The Ziva decoder chip in the first Apple DVD decoder cards for PowerBooks uses Zoomed Video (a PC card standard), which bypasses main memory and writes directly to VRAM. There's no speeding that up by using a 'bluescreen' method as you imply.
Don't go telling me I'm mistaken, since I know the guy who wrote the software in the first place.
Perhaps the big names like Dell and Gateway might be diminishing in importance, but the PC itself is probably not in any danger. More and more, folks are comfortable with the idea of having to open up their machine and replace/install stuff, and carry on. It's replaced the automobile as the thing people talk about repairing, or "souping up". People I thought would never even touch a computer are bragging to me about how much RAM, HD space, etc., they have. It's amazing.
While niche machines like Tivo are bound to proliferate, the PC itself has ensconced itself in enough homes now (especially in the US) that to write it off prematurely would not be wise.
_
props to all dead homiez
Look at the evidence that already exists. 10 years ago, people were using PC's for text editing, programming and a few simple games. Now, just look at what MP3 and DVD have done to the PC world. Not only can I download and store hundreds of hours of high quality music on my machine, but I can watch full-length movies right on my desktop. As HDTV is further developed, and bandwidth going into the homes increases in the future, I think we'll begin to see the convergance of even more audio and video into the PC market.
My machine at home has an S-video output connected to my 36 inch TV, a Soundblaster Live, with a SP/DIF output going to my receiver, and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. Anything I need to do on the PC, I can do sitting on the couch.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
The writing is on the wall. All these predatory companies will now have to justify why we must spend all this money on their software without having the source code when there are free and openly specified alternatives.
I wish it would work the way you describe it. But until the DOJ cracks down on anti-competitive "industry associations" like the RIAA, they'll still be ridding the world of fair-use rights.
No one will manufacture user-control free media if they RIAA/MPAA/IDSA/BSA get their way. They'll pay, sue, threaten, or legislate manufacturers into manfucturing only media and hardware with user-control measures built in. Eventually it will be illegal to own any media which is not produced by an authorized producer, which is not does not allow them total control over your actions, and which does not come from a certified manufacturer.
Needless to say, this will tremendously retard advances in computer science, the physical sciences, and many other fields, but the powers that be don't give a fuck.
While this post might be a troll, it brings up some valid points. "People" in general are likely to accept division of the PC into appliances, but can you really consider them true PC users now? Think of all the people who only use email, instant messaging, and basic web browsing.
They have no need for a PC, but many others do. The typical slashdot reader uses a PC in ways that could never be duplicated by multiple devices, as do millions of business users. Anyone who does processor intensive work needs a PC-after all, a PC is just an appliance with enough power to handle multiple functions. PCs are also perfect as hubs to link and control other appliances using wireless technologies like Bluetooth. Who wants to fool around with 10 different systems when you can control everything from one device?
In any case, the parts needed to build a PC will be used in other appliances, so even if prices are raised to where they were a few years ago premium manufacturers and do it yourselfers will be able to make PCs.
I don't think specialized PCs will make it due to simple supply and demand.
If given the choice, who would choose a PC that restricts your rights to copy files you rightly own? Nobody. No demand, thus the supply will falter (witness Sun's Network Computer)
What if this thing does take off? There will be a demand for normal hard drives still (I know I don't want hardware with copy protection built in), thus someone will need to supply the demand. It may be some yet unknown company in Asia, or maybe of the large hard drive manufactuers here in the states won't give in and still make normal drives.
In short, I don't think stuff like this will go over because nobody except companies and governments actually wants these products. However, governments forcing us to use them is another debate....
Well, for example, look at this line from the article:
"And why is Intel doing a "wireless 1394"? What is wrong with BlueTooth? Answer: BlueTooth is not a specification controller by Intel."
Well, 1394 isn't controlled by intel, so it's doubtful that the same protocol run over RF would be controlled by intel either. For example, Apple heavily influences 1394, and given Apple's recent direction (with iTunes, the digital hub stuff) it's doubtful Apple would favor any sort of digital "rights" protection in the 1394 spec.
Furthermore, if an OS doesn't support CPRM, then it'll just ignore the CPRM parts of a drive, and render the copy protection useless. Linux, Mac OS X, and to my knowledge Windows, have no provisions for supporting CPRM, and it would take a fair amount of work to put it in. And certainly Linux would never support it. Indeed, OS X would probably never support it, as the parts of the OS concerning hardware and storage are open-source as well.
Essentially, I fail to see how any new developments would render existing computers unable to rip, trade, etc. mp3s and such. Furthermore, I fail to see how anything T13 does will make it so that an open-source OS on any kind of hardware will be required to respect any form of digital rights management. There will always be an underground for this stuff.
Also, eventually the public backlash against the complete loss of fair use provisions ("You have the right to fair use, but it's illegal to exercise that right!") would end up dismantling parts of the DMCA. As the Tobacco Industry has shown, eventually public outrage can overcome the most powerful lobbies in the world.
Of course, the fact that in this case the lobbies would BE the media industry is a little more worrisome.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin