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Bill Gates, Entertainment God?
ppgreat sent in a wired story about the home of the future sort of story discussing A/V in a Microsoft Media Player 9 future. As seems to always be the case, there's a lot of cool stuff in there, but more than a few eyebrow raises.
It won't happen without the cooperation of the big entertainment companies, who are very wary of giving Microsoft too much power.
This article from the current issue of BusinessWeek summarizes the situation well.
At the end of the day, you've really got to hand it to Bill. You don't become the richest person on earth by standing down by the train station and begging for money. You get there by being damn smart in everything you do, and the type of genius thinking that's going on at Microsoft regarding eHome is proof of how he got there. Ideas are cheap, actually getting something out the door is what really puts your balls on the line, and Microsoft is actually out there and doing it. Microsoft is always the one making us talk about them, what they're doing next. No other guy (expect perhaps Larry Ellison) causes such a stir when he talks.
Sure, Microsoft is a monster which breaks the law repeatedly, and does us all a world of harm in a lot of ways, but you have to give credit where it's due. Everything in this article sounds cool.
And what is perhaps most funny is that, at the end of the day, Microsoft may well be on our side when it comes to the way Hollywood wants to sell us our entertainment in the future.
Gates can fire Ballamer, and Ballamer can't fire Gates.
Owning stock trumps a title.
Microsoft has been building a 'home of the future' about once a year for a while. This is their forth, I believe.
Always interesting, always, controversial, and always full of a bunch of half-baked ideas. No problem--that's what showcases are for!
I'm about the last person on the planet to defend MS, but the idea of creating a 'what if' house once every year or so is brilliant. The answer to some of those "if" questions is often bad ('if we did this, it would SUCK!!!!') but asking them as an exercise is exactly, precisely how we move the state of the art forward.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
...maybe because Gates was one of the people instrumental to Microsoft's success? He may no longer be the CEO of the company, but it's not like he sits around home all day drinking lattés and surfing the net...
I believe his title is "Chairman and Chief Software Architect." In the organizational scheme of the company, Ballmer still reports to Gates.
This is the same "smart automated house of the future" concept that has been touted fruitlessly since the 1950's. If there were any real demand for this, we'd all have homes like this already.
(see also: videophones, flying cars)
Very nice and all, but (I'll skip the obligatory MS security jokes and leave those for those who care.) what about getting OUT in a hurry? Or getting in in a hurry? I'm not talking about thieves here, but firemen and other emergency services. Suppose your house is on fire and your central authentication server power down, blew up, suffered a heart attack, whatever. How are you going to get out of your house then? How are the paramedics going to get in if you had a heart attack or a seizure or something else with incapicitates you?
Hate me!
All Bill has to do is buy up one record label, one movie studio and one TV network. Maybe a book publisher for good measure. If he wanted to do it in one fell swoop, he could buy Disney.
Once he has them under his control, he can then offer their content under a single pricing model in which all of the content would be available anywhere in the home just by a clicking on a selection.
By doing this, the consumer has no need to buy, copy, sell, trade, etc. content and, as the content owner, the money just rolls in. Make the assumption that a household could only absorb, say 2,000 Hours per month of content, distribute royalties based on the percentage of time the consumer is accessing the material (or from the total number of hours and keep everything over 2,000 hours).
As for independent content developers, they could submit material to the network and get paid a royalty based on its popularity. This could spur on many more small projects like the "Blair Witch Projects" and "Clerks". Maybe music would become much more varied because just a few suits aren't deciding what gets played.
This creates a problem for the major content owners. Consumers are happy, producers and artists are (very) happy and Bill is not only an Entertainment God, he is richer than Him. So, they have no other choice but to offer their content to Bill for distribution on his network. They will get royalties for their material and hopefully a much larger customer base.
Everybody's happy?
Of course, I could be smoking something,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Barcodes to ID the item is great and all, but the damned thing still has no clue whether it's already at room temperature or if came straight from the freezer.
To go along with your total security on your MS server, presumably. More to the point, the only way these goals are compatible is that producers have the unlimited control to degrade their information and I have unlimited choice to not buy value-diminished products.
The record labels have seen what can happen when consumers gain total control
Do they mean what happens when producers strong-arm a technology into the market, and then realize they've given away something they don't want anyone to have due to their failure to understand technology?
the film studios aren't about to let file-sharing ruin them.
Thank God they developed unbreakable CSS encryption before they strong-armed DVDs into the market.
Like it or not, the path Microsoft takes will determine the future of digital media
I like not believing this is true. I could be wrong but then I'm in denial about a lot of unpleasant realities.
That's when the eHome division, which Poole helped start, teamed up with Hewlett-Packard and Samsung to unveil the Media Center Edition PC.
It's like a digital media hub. That Microsoft spirit of innovation marches on!
Scott Dinsdale, an executive VP of the Motion Picture Association of America, told the crowd that Microsoft and HP were using the Media Center Edition to "build a business on someone else's back." Asked to summarize Hollywood's attitude toward the PC, he said, "You don't screw with me, I won't screw with you. Don't play a movie on a PC ever again, and I won't say a word."
I think I'll just enjoy sitting back and watching this fight from the sidelines. That is possibly the most arrogant and stupid thing I've heard from the MPAA, which is saying a lot. A lot a lot.
Eisner added, "We will not let the fear of piracy prevent us from fueling the fundamental impulse to innovate. If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, the pirates will."
You could have read that sentiment on Slashdot years ago and got a real jump on the market, Michael. Must I be surrounded by idiots? Must they be running things?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I assume the dubious legality of watching DVD's on linux is a reasonable compromise? I assume the whole region encoding issue is a reasonable compromise? Obviously I jump at the chance to repurchase my entire DVD collection every time I move between regions.
I assume not being able to play CD's on my computers is a reasonable compromise? I _can_ but the recording industry sure has made it difficult.
Why would I bother buying anything from arrogant obnoxious companies trying to preserve the profit margins they enjoyed in the last century?
I hope you enjoy your digital prision. Personally I won't be picking up the soap for the entertainment industry. Still it is reasonable that you can turn DRM off - for now!
I dont know about you, but not being able to sell you house easily because it's 'smart' features are 2 years out of date doesn't soud like a happy situation to me.
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Determine the future of digital media? No more than, say, the big three automakers working together can determine the future of the automobile. Even in California with its oppressive, draconian smog laws, it's still legal to make your own car, starting with raw ore if you like. Similarly, in the software world, we will still be able to create our own operating systems and digital media players. The question is, will it still be legal to use them? Hell, it's not legal to use them now, though it's not like when I wore my faded DeCSS mirror shirt (thank you copyleft) onto Beale AFB here in sunny Sutter county I was thrown into the lockup or anything.
I don't agree with the FUD in the article either, though I'm not sure why I'm mentioning it since it isn't written by the author; Still, it's included.
Sigh. Their product will not be the only thing that's left. That's dumb. Of course it will still be free, they want everyone using it; People creating and distributing content for it ALREADY have to pay for tools and/or licenses. So what's new?
Also quoted in the article is a ray of hope.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When will people understand that the DRM Microsoft is implementing is just an additional API to provide additional security to applications who use the API?
I guess what you're looking for is basically this question, that's answered in their technical FAQ for DRM whose answer is pretty logical:
----
Q: Will I still be able to play MP3s on my PC?
A: You will. NGSCB will bring additional capabilities to the PC but will not interfere with the operation of any program that runs on current PCs. The nexus and nexus computing agents are designed never to impose themselves on processes that do not request their services; nexus-related features must be explicitly requested by a program. So the MP3 player you have today should still work on a next-generation PC tomorrow.
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But of course, it's more fun with conspiracy theories, especially on Slashdot.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Lots of people have mentioned the problem of the computer reading out your spam when you come in, and that was my first thought too, however isn't it bad enough that when you bring someone else round it starts reading out all your personal email?
Even if you have no secrets at all from your wife or SO, what if you have kids? Now no-one can send you email with vulgar language in...
graspee