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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 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.
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 '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.
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