Microsoft's Athens PC

OneLeg noted that the Seattle Times has a story on Microsoft deciding to partner up with HP and work on new PCs with a simpler, more controlled architecture. Including things like integrated telephony into the PCs, and in general, being a bit more Maclike and locking Linux out of the desktop market.

Comments

What about Apple?

[Randolpho]

OMG, you're kidding me. Isn't this what people usually blast Apple about? Trying to control both hardware *and* software?

Huh?

[IronTek]

being a bit more Maclike and locking Linux out of the desktop market.

...Since when can't you run Linux on your Mac? Further, since when has Apple been worried about such a thing?!

Re:Huh?

[byolinux]

I think they are two different points:-

Point 1. Being more like a Mac.
Point 2. Microsoft will not allow Linux on this machine.

Re:Huh?

[missing000]

They can do whatever they want. I personally don't care. If there's a machine that's controled in this fashion, I won't buy it. It's really that simple.

No Sales == No Production
No Production == Bad Idea
Bad Idea == Bag It.

Nope. I bet counsumers will eat this up if it meets the users wants and has a low price point.
You and I may not like it, but we don't control the end user market.

Re:Huh?

[mr.nicholas]

1) Microsoft has already proven in a court of a law that you can post-modify a controlled appliance in the way you suggest (XBox mod chips).

2) I won't buy it. It's really that simple. Great. Too bad you aren't the center of the Universe. It's all the other people who WILL buy it and potentionally make it a success, which would then have vendors writing software specifically for it, that's the problem.

Re:Huh?

[IamTheRealMike]

I'm no coder, but there are thousands of people out there that can crack whatever MS tries to do

Cracking is one thing, having a well supported, integrated out of the box experience is something totally different. Anybody who installs Redhat with nVidia cards still get appalling speed because they are on the no-frills NV driver. You know the hoops you have to go through to run Linux on an XBox? It's strictly for hobbyists only.

Another poster in this thread pointed out that we don't control the desktop market - unfortunately the glut of WinModems and hardware with binary-only drivers hammers this fact home constantly. Until people start building Linux specific hardware and selling it in stores next to "standard" stuff, hardware support will continue to be a weak point in the armour of Linux.

Re:Huh?

[gilesjuk]

Barriers being the architecture will be patented, useful info about the chipset and bus design will be secret.

Reverse engineering it all will be illegal under the DMCA.

Microsoft being involved in desktop hardware should result in more anti-trust accusations.

Re:Huh?

[Billly Gates]

" MS didn't do anything for USB"

Look up the pc98 standard? MS and Intel drafted it. This is what brought us ps/2 and usb ports standard on all pc's. Before that was sound cards and cd-roms on multimedia-1 and multimedia-2 standard pc's by MS, Sony and I think Philips.

Microsoft can be nasty but this area is one of the few benefits of them. Sometimes they can encourage new standards.

All this is, is an alternative to Apple and Sun.

Apple laid the way towards multimedia years before the pc. MS and Sony got invovled because they did not want the Apple supperior.

MS wants to be involved in appliances and Apple has the advantage of setting standards with their hardware. They just do not want WIndows pc's left behind.

Believe me that this has nothing to do with Linux whatsoever. Linux is a competitor to WIndows2k3 server and not the desktop( yet ).

Re:Huh?

[missing000]

I disagree. We, as most readers of /., do not buy systems for the same reasons that the vast majority of end users do.
The end user wants a toster. Something cheap and easy to use. They also want it to look nice in their living area.
The average /. reader wants a powerful machine in with a lot of flexability, and generaly cares little about the case it comes in.
There is nothing keeping the two worlds apart except money. There is nothing wrong with what the end user wants either.
They are not idiots, they are just not interested in the workings of the machine. They just want it to work.

The best thing that the open source community can do for these users is try to make that perfect toaster work better for less.
If MS wants to make hardware, so be it. If they make great hardware, fine. If its good, someone will create a clone. Our job is to make it cost less and run better by writing better software for it.

Re:Huh?

[Master Bait]

The DMCA is an American law. The rest of the world will make reverse-engineered drivers, if necessary, while the Americans cower in their safe corporate state.

Ah, another MS lockdown

[Obiwan Kenobi]

This is yet another attempt at total desktop control, something Microsoft can't wait to have.

Micahel Robertson said it best:

Microsoft wants to move to a world where THEY decide what software a computer runs because that will allow them to extract the most money from consumers. They'll position this product with a comforting sounding name like "trustworthy" computing and tout the benefits, but it's really about shifting power over an individual's PC from the buyer to Microsoft. Microsoft will put up a permission gate before any software can be installed which will have a fee associated with it. It will ultimately give Microsoft control over a user's computer.

This is the first step in something like this becoming a reality. Control the hardware before you control the software.

Remember that story where microsoft wants to implement "classes" of pcs? Like "This game will only run on Class A or better machines"? This is a start, if only halfway.

This scares the hell out of me, and think long and hard about what the implications of such an act can cause if this becomes "mainstream".

Re:Ah, another MS lockdown

[TopShelf]

This looks like it's targeted towards corporate environments, where Microsoft is facing pressure to demonstrate greater value for the premium they command over other office solutions. Towards that end, locking things down can be a good thing, preventing users from clogging up PC's with dancing gorillas and other crap.

I think you can take off your aluminum foil hat for now, the Boogeyman of Redmond isn't really hiding under your bed... (but that always seems to make a good /. story)

Re:Ah, another MS lockdown

[Yohahn]

The idea that "locking down users, promotes productivity" is a myth that is derived from scientific management (A useful tool, but not based in enough fact).

While a more controled environment will reduce problems from the least knowledgable of workers, it will also reduce the capabilities of the smartest/most creative employees.

What's the first question you ask yourself when you see a user that is doing something that could have been prevented with lockdown? For me it is:
"Who hired this one?"

This gets to the truth. Many people in companies aren't able to handle their responsabilities. They either need to be trained, disciplined, let go, or "locked down".

When an organization chooses to lock down systems, however, they kill creativity. I'd recommend one of the other options.

In order to optomize human organizations, you must look at how HUMANS work (not machines, that's what scientific management does).

Re:Ah, another MS lockdown

[Lumpy]

Towards that end, locking things down can be a good thing, preventing users from clogging up PC's with dancing gorillas and other crap.

i can do that with linux for 100% free right now..

or.. if you have any skill with IS or IT (read that as non-MCSE) you can do it with NT4.0 and W2K right now without spending another dollar on software by simply setting up the proper policies on the machines.

so what is the advantage again? as I still see this like XP as adding zero value for the money spent.

Re:Ah, another MS lockdown

[tuffy]

Microsoft is and should be trying to reduce the clutter of the number of different pieces of hardware that need to be supported. Look at Linux - it can't keep up with all the crap HW coming on the market from all over the place. Please do we really need 100's of cards, USB devices and etc. NO and where does it fall to support that in the OS lots of the time.

Reducing hardware support simply requires standards. If hardware makers can develop an open standard for whatever hardware they're selling and implement it, there should be no problem for Windows, Linux or whoever to support it. My mouse, keyboard, game controller and external hard drives follow the USB standard and work just fine across OSes. My printer follows the PostScript language standard and should work find everywhere (though, admittedly, I haven't tried it with Windows), my CDROM and hard drives follow various bits of the IDE standard and have no trouble working.

One doesn't have to be locked down to a console-like PC platform to solve hard compatibility problems if hardware venders would simply make and adhere to open standards for communication. That's what we really need.

Re:Ah, another MS lockdown

[Elwood P Dowd]

The reason most companies lock down machines has nothing to do with individual productivity. It's not like they block my access to /., now do they?

Instead, it is usually to enforce valuable policies. For example, it may be too expensive to back up each individual computer's hard drive continually. So, a corporate IT dept may lock down a machine to discourage users saving essential data to their local, un-backed-up drive.

Similarly, legal reasons may require a company to delete email after a certain amount of time. There are a million different real business needs for taking control away from users. It's not just because we enjoy stifling our coworkers.

Great, more of this...

[RealBeanDip]

"The Athens PC has a built-in telephone linked to Microsoft's productivity applications. When the hardware receives an incoming call, the software automatically pulls up the caller's contact information and photo if the data are stored on the system."

Awesome, and 6 months later and a few installs of various packages, your phone rings and you see this:

A system error has occurred:

ODBC-OLE error 864: Can't connect to object. Please contact your vendor

Call rejected.

Re:how does this lock linux out?

[Frequanaut]

Think drivers. Think booting only those operating systems of which the bios approves (in the name of security perhaps?).

and I Quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

Louis Kim acknowledged the similarities [of Apple's recent hardware lineup], noting, "Apple is on a similar track in that they're designing with the end-user in mind and they're integrating hardware and software."

Apple is on a similar track??? A similar track? They built the f*cking track 10 years ago and Microsoft and the other PC vendors are on a hand-cart like laurrel and hardy trying to catch up. Similar track my arse! Apple are so far down the track it's not funny, MS will be coming up with a new online music distribution service next.

Linux can't get locked out

[n1ywb]

Or can it?

I'm sure no matter what MS puts in this "new" hardware, the hackers will find a way to make Linux run on it no problem. They'll probably do some crap with signing the software, like on the XBox. The big questions are, will hacking it void your warrantee, will hacking it violate the DMCA, etc. Obviously no legitimate business is going to violate the law in order to get Linux to run on an MS computing appliance.

Anyway I doubt if it's really going to be THAT different from current PC hardware. In fact the core architecture probably won't be ANY different. What we're seeing here is probably a group of bundled proprietary officially supported USB devices or something with extra special attention paid to the drivers courtesy of MS. Basicly it's just an appliance computer, which like the iOpeners aren't really any different hardware-wise from real computers.

So in that case there's not much stopping any other industry group from getting together and setting other open standards for this type of operation. Sorry MS, but using caller ID to pull up a person's picture when they call is NOT revolutionary. The important thing here is that it's an integrated appliance system. It's not a tough system to implement, and I'm sure we could see decent OSS solutions pretty quickly.

I just wonder how proprietary the hardware and software components of this system are really going to be... I guess that remains to be seen.

Decline and fall of the general purpose computer

[analog_line]

No, I'm not saying this is the end of it right here and now. But this kind of think is going to be more and more prevalent. General purpose computers, as Linux proved, can in the end be made to do anything, and are not going to be big money makers for equipment manufacturers anymore. With the upgrade treadmill slowing down big time (who, aside from the hardest of the hardcore gamers, actually NEEDS a 3 Ghz P4, or an Athlon XP 3000 in their home? Not too many people. Who aside from mass copyright actually needs a 120GB+ hard drive? Not a lot of people) they're realizing that they just aren't going to keep making money this way, because computers are appliances now. I don't think they'll go completely away, though they may be 99% laptops soon enough. What they're starting to realize is that devices are the way to go, because you can get an insane profit margin, and they appeal like crazy to most people, because people tend to be gadget maniacs. I don't know many people who don't have at least a single electronic gadget that they use regularly.

It's starting to happen. PDAs are finally starting to get good. Smartphones are starting to do relatively well in the States. The iPod. The Tablet PC. The Xbox, as gaming consoles have proved the viability of this type of model for over a decade. This is just the next step.

Pie in the Sky

[ackthpt]

Must resist reflex to say, 'utter failure in the works...'

Ok, the first thing that comes to mind is those network PC's I haven't heard bugger about since the big dotcom dive in corporate spending. If they were a good idea (well, maybe this isn't a well thought out argument, feel free to disagree) they'd be on a lot of desktops by now. Think how much it would save the PHB in tech support.

The comparison to Apple is a natural. But, IMHO, Apple survives because they have a loyal following and many of their innovations are just that, innovations, not copied like *cough* *cough* Microsoft does (Embrace and extend ... this always reminds me of the phrase 'share and enjoy'...) Apple, as far as I can say doesn't try to lock users into their hardware/environment, mostly just happens, but similar software exists on MS Windows and Linus so users are free to leave if they choose. Athens appears a clear ploy to further lock owners not only into Microsoft Brand Windows Operating System, but Microsoft software products as well, i.e. This product only available for Brand A computer, 'cause all the patents belong to us. Buy these things and you limit your options. Ideal for the manager who wants to have absolute control, but like IBM's PS/2 systems, a real mess if you want to upgrade or change anything.

While the current PC is a pretty sordid mess, an open standard would be infinitely preferable, for system makers as well as customers.

Re:Thumb Prints and DRM

[Billly Gates]

Oh the sky is falling!

yawn.

Microsoft encourages new standards all the time and its no big deal. Previous deals with them produced both USB and cd-roms and every computer. It has benefited us. They do this because Sun and Apple have the benefit of controlling their own machines and setting standards. MS wants more security and an answer to bluetooth which is standard on all new macs.

In 1998 slashdotters critized Microsoft for supporting USB as a way to kill Linux. Today its greatly supported and any usb keyboard or mouse will be reconignzed by it.

If you are right and this shit happens then you can buy a mac.

However customers will not put up with that crap from WMA if apple ports itunes to Windows with more liberal licensing. Competition is strong.

I am sick of all this anti ms fud(even though I hate them) here. I found none of it in the actual story.

Good to see some progress here!

[Junks Jerzey]

locking Linux out of the desktop market

Ah, the usual Slashdot-spin tagline. Gotta love 'em.

PCs have become messes, and it's a worthy goal to try to deal with that. Kudos to Apple for taking some steps in the right direction, such as eliminating floppy drives and switching to LCD monitors for home models. That's just the beginning. PCs are still based around what's essentially become pointless upgrading, something that is now completely ignored by everyone except a certain set of gamers and hardware fanboys. (If you aren't shooting for bleeding edge games, any video card made since 2000 and any sound card made since 1995--including motherboard sound--is just grand.)

Linux, for me, is only worthwhile if it improves the overall computing experience. It does that well, for some things, but for others it has become a retro object d'art. Perhaps the most damning thing about Linux is the hugely conservative community surrounding it. Cries of "If you want change then _you_ do it" and endless arguments about sticking with Emacs and the X11 standard are all so inbred and meaningless. I will make fun of Microsoft along with everyone else as long as Bill Gates & company are stagnant and producing poor products. But as much as I hate to say it, they're moving forward with some interesting ideas. Sure, those ideas aren't original (what is?) but the key is that they have a direction and purpose.

Re:Good to see some progress here!

[geomon]

But as much as I hate to say it, they're moving forward with some interesting ideas. Sure, those ideas aren't original (what is?) but the key is that they have a direction and purpose.

This isn't about being a visionary or producing fabulously 'neat' products. It is about control. If I can make a system that locks you into my products, you have no choice but to purchase what I'm offering.

This is the same as the incestuous relationship that Ma Bell had with Western Electric. You couldn't get a telephone of your own and hook it up to the network. You could RENT their telephone. You couldn't use a modem without their permission. You couldn't put an autodialer on your phone system, despite the fact that the circuitry was easily obtained in hobby magazines and the parts were available in Radio Shack's bins.

No, the approach Microsoft and HP are taking isn't about providing you with better products. Theirs is the same mindset as the rapist: its not about sex, its about control.

Be careful, or you might just get fucked by Microsoft and HP.

Re:Good to see some progress here!

[lspd]

Perhaps the most damning thing about Linux is the hugely conservative community surrounding it. Cries of "If you want change then _you_ do it"...

Come on now. You've been give at least 4 quality free Windowing toolkits (GTK, QT, TK, and wxWindows) all well documented with full source code. You've been given every possible language to program in and nearly every library has a binding to every goofy language imaginable. You've been given at least 3 IDE's for C/C++ that are comparable with Visual C++, a whole slew of editors to program the scripting flavor of the month, boatloads of documentation including free commercial quality books on programming. You've got at least a dozen apps to mimic each and every commonly used windows app (FTP clients, WinZip clones, Media Players, Office Suites, Image Editors, etc etc) And to top it all off 1/3 of this stuff has been ported to Windows so you don't have to even deal with GNU/Linux itself.

If it's conservative given all of this to expect the endless stream of people with ideas to get off their asses and write something to show how perfect their idea is, then yes, the Free software community is quite conservative.

You should take a look at the forums on HappyPenguin. At least once a week someone shows up with an "idea" for a game that they want someone else to write for them, for free. Get a grip, ideas are a dime a dozen. I want to see it working before I contribute my free time to helping impliment someone else's ideas.

Re:Port time estimates?

[gonvaled]

I wouldn't be so sure ... This, combined with Palladium, could effectively lock out certain software from running. The trend here is to build a product which is not a combination of HW and SW, but which must be seen as a complete system which can not be changed. This is not inherently bad if it weren't for two important factors:

- will other products have the possibility to compete?
- will it be possible to interconnect other computers with this one, share information, ... ?

I think it is very clear on which track MS is here: it will try to wipe out competition on the OS market, and then it will try to get control of file formats and transfer protocols/interfaces. This has already been done in some areas; it is just trying to increase the pressure.

I think is is possible for them to technically lock out certain SW: I fear the only way to stop them is to further increase the legal pressure and force them to open the market to competition. Exactly the opposite than what is actually happening. Very sad ...

Journalism?

[Amtiskaw]

What makes me sick about this article is not Microsoft's intentions to lock down the PC architecture to its own specifications, it's that a supposedly independent journalist has written a piece which is little more than a press release for the company.

I mean: "Like a rich uncle sending a check when the cupboards are bare, Microsoft today is unveiling an ambitious plan to help computer makers develop a new generation of PCs and reinvigorate the stagnant industry." Anyone would think MS is the new Santa Claus, driven not by desire for profit and market domination, but pure hearted generosity and compassion for all the poor, poor computer manufacturers.

Re:how does this lock linux out?

[ConceptJunkie]

You're not the target audience. The target audience is the one that doesn't care that alternate OS's can't be run or don't even understand what an OS is. And believe me, there are still a lot of people out there like this.

The product could fill this niche nicely and I suspect that there will always be a market for those of us who want full control over the hardware... they may just get a little harder to find.

Re:Think...

[pivo]

Having to add a bios upgrade is going to really hurt the chances that the average person will go to the trouble to install something non-MS on his computer. And it'll eliminate the change that a corporation will do it. No IT department is going to modify a desktop machine's BIOS to get it to run Linux, IT departments are very conservative.

My favourite quote

[lamz]

Here's my favourite quote from the article:

It may also help the company fend off competition from Apple and freely shared software.

Poor little Microsoft, trying to eke out a living on the fringes of the computer industry, threatened by the monopoly held by Apple and their free software buddies!

Seriously, though, there is something to be made of all this. Long-term, Microsoft is legitimately threatened by free software. This is why they are getting more and more into hardware, like XBox and services, like HotMail. They are moving their software away from a purchase model to a rental model.

Things could get very interesting when a critical mass of Microsoft's customer start realizing that something like MySQL is actually superior to SQL Server, and look Ma, no price tag! If we think Microsoft acts loutish now, wait until they are legitimately threatened!

Re:This is like Apple how...?

[Bagheera]

Indeed they have (made hardware standards) which may be part of the reason we had "emulate three buttons" for our mice, and now have more buttons, wheels, force feedback, and lord knows what else, than we can use. Let's not forget the useless extra "standard" keys. Well, useless until we re-map them to something else.

I'll resist the "Elitist" urge to NOT make computers even easier to use than they are (SPAM exists because lemmings use computers) and side with the mass consumers here who want their machines even simpler to use. You know - the same crowd who's VCR still blinks 12:00 on the face. Perhaps MS and the hardware manufacturers are onto something here. I mean, how long did it take them to emulate MacOS? Why not emulate the iMac itself? And we all know how Customer Focused Microsoft is. Why there couldn't possibly be an ulterior motive here could there?

Like, say, set hardware standards that lock you into the OS/Hardware combination? Licensing fees that make you 'rent' your OS? "PC Phone home!" and make sure you have your credit card ready, otherwise your OS will shut down rendering your fancy new integrated PC a doorstop.

"I'll just load BSD on it!" Well, sure, if the BIOS will let you.

"I"ll just hack the BIOS so I can load Linux!" Well,sure, except for the teeny problem of those pesky Reverse Engineering and Circumvention clauses in the DMCA.

WILL this all turn out that way? Who knows. But given past performance, I don't see how this can be beneficial to the COnsumer without being a lot MORE beneficial to Microsoft.

Why is the PC market in a slump? Ask Microsoft. You know: the people who encourage you to upgrade to a 3GHz CPU with 2 Gig of RAM so your spreadsheets will run "So much faster!" (Ok, not fair maybe. That's just for the business desktops. We all know the power's there to play the latest and greatest video games)

Too much

[Shadow Wrought]

I cannot help wondering if the slump in the computer industry is partly due to the increasingly small returns in technology. While you can get a gajillion meg hard drive and a bazillion megs of ram along with a quintillion of mhz processor, can your mom really see an increase in performance? Does her e-mail to grandma get typed any faster? Does her word processor show huge performance increases over her old system? Does solitaire blaze along faster than ever?

I think the biggest reason why the industry is slumping is that most of the people who want a computer at home have one. It does what they need it to and they do not have a compelling reason to blow $1,000 every year or two to keep up with technology. Year before the year before lasts computer is fast enough and reliable enough for what they need. I don't think HP cloning Apple with M$ software embedded in it is going to make them change their mind.

For the geeks, however, the extra horsepower is used probably as much as it is desired. These same people, however, are the least likely to want to be bundled to M$. I think M$ would be better served to make what they have work without the requisite ripping out of hair every few days.

Another $.02 into poverty...

Strategy NOT Open-Source

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

I'm suprised no one noticed the new strategy being implemented.

Nothing was called "Open Source" on the webpage for Linux. It's all called "freely shared", as in illegal music files.

It might be my paranoid side talking, but that was the scariest part of the article, not trying to lock out Linux, but making it sound like "freely shared" is a BAD thing (It's illegal to "freely share" MS Office, or Windows, or MP3's).

sure they can

[zogger]

the government does it all the time, it's called "stroke of the (bribed) pen, law of the land". When is the last time you could buy a new scanner that got cell phone freqs? You used to be able to buy one legally, now you have to jump through smuggling hoops or be a leet modder. Heck, they even mandated some TV specs so you couldn't tune in to some freqs. They "passed a law". When was the last time you could legally put a no BS carb that actually worked efficiently on your car? You can't now legally, although you can get "off road" carbs, if you are caught with one installed and driving on the road it's a serious fine and/or your vehicle gets seized. I have an example right now with my jeep, the stock legal carb just sucks large donkey nuts, it never works correctly, I KNOW from networking with 4 wheeler guys an off road carb works better and makes less pollution because it will stay inside specs-but it's "illegal" to install one. So, I haven't, don't want to take a chance on having my vehicle impounded. How about the classic watching a DVD legally on your linux box? You can't do it legally.

They pass laws affecting hardware all the time, it's a constant with bribed "government". They could EASILY pass a law stating no such and such styled MOBOs can be produced or imported into the US unless they had these "security features" installed that would restrict you and identify you in various ways. They could also go so far as to restrict any non complint hardware from accessing the internet, enforce it at the ISP and telco level, making your older tech obsolete, forcing upgrades, or making you take a risk of a label of being a criminal, subject to..whatever. They are just getting rolling with busting the P2P swappers, think they are going to just stop now?

It's all doable. That's what all these new super DMCA styled laws are all about, applying it to exact hardware specs is the next logical step for "them", them being the monopolists and the opposite side of the demon siamese twin 'government". And they got the buckets of coin and people with bad attidues with guns to make it happen, and you don't got the buckets of coin and personal armies to make it *not* happen, complain as you might, in most cases anyway. You might "get away with it" for some time as a scofflaw and flaunter, similar thinking has lead to over 2 million people in prison today,the vast majority of whom thought they were "leet" enough to "get away with" various drug possession and transfer. Stupid laws, yes. Enforceable? yes, to any level the government chooses to enforce them. If there's a buck in it for someone,and especially a cartel of someones with stealth monopoly on their minds, they will pass and 'enforce" whatever they want to, constitution be danged with those people. It's a joke to them, and every one knows it.

The goons have a way of making things happen in their favor, it seems to work for them. They use the carrot and the stick approach, and unless your carrots are much bigger and juicier and your stick much harder and faster, you will lose,and they will win in the long run.

Lock Linux out?

[ajs]

Heck, they couldn't lock Linux out of their game-console, what makes them think they can lock it out of a desktop PC?!