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AMD Opteron to support Palladium
Jim Norton writes "This article is just a reminder that AMD is just as guilty as Intel in supporting TCPA / Palladium. AMD has announced that Opteron will be compatible with the Palladium Initiative and that AMD is part of the 'Trusted Computing Alliance'."
People will be forced to consider upgrading not to view DRM-protected (or not) content, but due to Microsoft's refusal to support operating systems such as Win98 which still allow the user at least the illusion of being in control of his own computer. I'm not talking about "tech support" when I say support, I'm talking about:
- not certifying drivers any more for Win9x. I just bought an ATI Radeon 9700 and I am only able to use it on my Win98 machine because someone at ATI had the good sense to make drivers for WinME (which is still "certifiable", I leave it as an exercise for the class to find the irony in that term) that work fine on Win95/98 machines depite not being certified for those OSs. And made sure the word got out. I'm sure all you linux folks out there are rolling your eyes at complaints by a Windows user that drivers are getting hard to come by, but I wouldn't be using this OS if I didn't want nearly universal hardware support. And it's going to go away if I don't jump on XP, or whatever is coming next.
- not offering DirectX upgrades for Win9x. This will break more and more games in the next couple of years, since the new generation of gaming video cards work their magic through the expanded features of the new DirectX APIs (as well as existing OpenGL functions and proprietery extensions, but plenty of game developers ignore GL in favor of developing to the masses). And face it, since office productivity apps have run as fast as they need to for years now, gaming drives the upgrade market more than anything else.
Ultimately these and other similar factors will force users into hard decisions, balancing the pros and cons of driver support for newer hardware/playing the latest games vs. being Microsoft's bitch. And having chosen the path that leads to bitchdom, they will accept the burden of DRM crap. Or they won't accept it, but it will be too late.
Remember MAC people, to take out the vibrating iDildo before leaving your home or writing to someone!
The future of the MacOS : o
Doesn't anyone at /. bother to check sources, or even look for more current versions of articles anymore?
/. tomorrow when we learn that an alien being masquerading as Elvis Presley (employed by Microsoft) is the true force behind the Linux kernel. The domain name elvix.com has already been registered by Microsoft.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Read this updated article: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5489.
This is rumormongering at its finest. Tune in to
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
I agree with everything you said except the Saddam thing. There's no comparison between our ability to watch DVDs on our computers and a madman that has used chemical and biological weapons on his own citizenship. Believe what you want, but Saddam Hussein is a VERY dangerous individual. And if you want to keep it in the media realm, I'm sure he's not all that supportive of freedom to watch what you want when you want either.