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.

Comments

Bill Gates, Entertainment God?

[sweeney37]

so does this make Balmer some sort of weird Dancin' Jesus?

Mike

Entertainment God?

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

Agent Gates will do.

Re:Entertainment God?

[DarkHelmet]

$r1= Assimilate("SCO");
$r2= Assimilate("Morpheus");
$r3= Assimilate("Oracle");
$r4= Assimilate("Andover");

if (!$r4)
{ ?>
Yes, that's it...
It'll be over soon.
<? }

$r4= Assimilate("Andover");

if (!$r4)
{
KungFuLawyerChop("Andover");
}

bill gates, god?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, but the words Bill Gates and God in the same sentence just seem, morally, and ethically wrong...

Re:bill gates, god?

[Jareeedo]

Yea, its generally my policy to avoid using the words Gates and G-d in the same sentence.

Re:bill gates, god?

[pmz]

Yea, its generally my policy to avoid using the words Gates and G-d in the same sentence.

What about: "God help us, Gates is more powerful than the President!"

Re:bill gates, god?

[sharkey]

I dunno, but the words Bill Gates and God in the same sentence just seem, morally, and ethically wrong...

How about, "Bill Gates was struck down by a bolt from a clear sky, which is generally considered to be the Wrath of God."

Re:bill gates, god?

[UnknowingFool]

Have you ever used Windows ME? You use the two terms alot in the same sentence:
"What the hell?!!! I swear to God, I'm going to kill Bill Gates for this."

Thanks, but no.

[Bonker]

I'd rather not have my house p'wned by some l33t electronic theives, thanks. Heaven help you when CodeRedVII hits and makes everyone's house vulnerable to the 'StealyourTVandStereo' exploit.

oh no!

[tha_mink]

Instead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen, a biometric scanner, and a smartcard reader. Go ahead and make eye contact; if you're a match, you'll pass through into your future home - a time and place a half-dozen years from now when your living quarters will recognize you, communicate with you, and anticipate your every need.


"Somebody cracked into my front door."

I hope this happens becuase I can't wait to read the security patches for the front door on the "Update" page.

All on Windows

[BJZQ8]

It will be interesting to see if all of this embedded icemakers and digital toilets and such will be crashing as much as the Windows CE-powered cars and navigation devices...

Clippy in the kitchen

[sczimme]

From the article:

Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about focaccia?"

I wouldn't want Clippy (or any of his pals) monkeying around with anything I was going to eat: he would probably still be mad from the gazillionth time he was 'killed' and would add a bunch of habaneros or something.

Re:Clippy in the kitchen

[Anonymous Coward]

"Looks like you're trying to get some sleep! Let me help by counting sheep out loud for you!"

Re:Bill don't make any more Win Medias...

[RLiegh]

What are you talking about? I have media player 9 and I'm able to turn off DRM just fine.

In fact, it's the same place in both 8 and nine, AFAIK.

Are you trolling, or just objecting to DRM being there at all? If it's the latter, you have to realise that having it there, and able to be turned off is a quite reasonable compromise to both the users, and to the content providers [who otherwise wouldn't share their content for -reasonable- fear of pirating.]

Entertainment God?

[kosamae]

I thought he was vying for the position of just plain old God.

Xbox?

[kaamos]

That's when the eHome division, which Poole helped start, teamed up with Hewlett-Packard and Samsung to unveil the Media Center Edition PC. With a 2.4-GHz processor, a TV tuner, a personal video recorder, a DVD burner, an outsize 120-Gbyte drive, and a specialized version of Windows XP, it's meant to be a media command center. The new OS allows a consumer to use a remote control to manage digital media files of all sorts and perform time-shift recording with TV shows (Ã la TiVo). The whole thing retails for $1,300 to $2,000, without a monitor. "We wanted something that would handle digital photos, play back selections from video and music libraries, and give you all the capabilities of the PC as well," says Poole, an almost cherubic character with bushy eyebrows beneath a dark shock of hair.

not to nitpick, but the Xbox is now 199$, they could have paid a nerd a pizza and ran the thing on linux and freevo and have it cost less, isn't it what Microsoft is all ab.... heum.... nevermind

Upgrade PCs

[LongJohnStewartMill]

In the middle stands Microsoft, determined to navigate these extremes. In the face of a rapidly maturing business market, Microsoft needs to find a way to persuade consumers to upgrade their PCs.

Sounds to me like they want us to upgrade our house. "Oh yeah, four bedrooms is all you'll ever need."

Only Microsoft

[Spytap]

Only Microsoft would invent a house where you need to ask permission to act like you live there...

Oh great it reads my spam to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome home you have 435 messages.

Message one from Edgardo Smith, subject Drop all Debt y ddrf.

Drone on...

Message two from Spetic King, subject your septic system needs this!

Drone one....

Maybe not

[EisPick]

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.

The REAL question

[sharkey]

Does it have a bathroom?

You've got to hand it to him

[Sean80]

Perhaps I'll be modded as a troll

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.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[swordgeek]

1) I hope you don't get modded down. UYou bring up some interesting points.

Bill Gates has been a vicious, tenacious, dangerous, and violent pit bull for his entire career. When people were building a software community of openness and sharing, he came along to poison the well by actually charging MONEY for his pet project--DOS. Without Bill Gates, where would we be? Not paying $700 for a bloody office productivity suite, that's for sure; but possibly without that suite existing at all. Without the dirt, money-grubbing, and sliminess that MS stands for, we probably wouldn't be nearly as far along on the development curve. Stuff like this house are an excellent example of pushing the envelope, for the sake of finding out what directions to take research next.

Kind of embodies the US capitalist idea in many ways, both the good and the bad.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[IamTheRealMike]

Without the dirt, money-grubbing, and sliminess that MS stands for, we probably wouldn't be nearly as far along on the development curve

Maybe - but really, which would you prefer? I for one would rather be a few years behind the technology curve and live in the kind of society that encourages sharing, than having the technology we have available today but having all the associated garbage from MS, SCO and the like.

Oh, yeah, Gates is smart. Got to hand it to him. He's not stupid. But that, by itself, is meaningless. I don't perceive being smart as being any more worthy of respect than being attractive, or being wealthy, or being fluent in 8 languages. It's what you do with those assets that matters. Gates hasn't used his smartness well. He used it selfishly in fact. Though I appreciate his business acumen, I don't think I could ever respect him for it.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[nhavar]

You know you've got to wonder about an alternate reality where Bill Gates and MS didn't exist. Would it be this utopian society where software was cheap and there were plenty of interoperable products and platforms? Or would software be just as expensive, we'd still be arguing PC/MAC, and someone else would be standing there in the void maybe Jobs or Ellison or maybe IBM would be the one we'd be complaining about. Or would it be even worse, more expensive software, more fragmentation and just a bunch of small time jack asses running around being pains in the ass to the community.

Today who made their carreer because of Microsoft? In the absence of MS who would rise to power? I shudder to think if it were Ellison in Gates position or Steve Case....

It reminds me of a story I read where someone travels back in time to avert a disaster and each time a bigger disaster results from the intervention until finally the person goes back and allows the first disaster to take place. Lesser of two evils I guess.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[nathanh]

Bill Gates has been a vicious, tenacious, dangerous, and violent pit bull for his entire career. When people were building a software community of openness and sharing, he came along to poison the well by actually charging MONEY for his pet project--DOS.

Uhhh, people were already paying for CP/M and paying lots. MS-DOS was cheaper and that was one of the (many) reasons for its success. Also DOS wasn't Bill's "pet project". IBM had approached Microsoft for a copy of Basic and idly mentioned they were also going to license CP/M from Digital. Bill saw an opportunity to get into a new market, quickly bought out a cheapo competitor (QDOS) and made the licensing deal of the century with IBM.

Without Bill Gates, where would we be? Not paying $700 for a bloody office productivity suite, that's for sure; but possibly without that suite existing at all.

Shrug. So what. There would be another suite from another company. Microsoft didn't invent word processors. They didn't invent spreadsheets. They didn't invent presentation packages. They didn't invent email clients. I don't know but strongly doubt that Microsoft even invented office suites.

Without the dirt, money-grubbing, and sliminess that MS stands for, we probably wouldn't be nearly as far along on the development curve.

The thing is, we'll never know. You can't say "probably" because you simply don't know. For all we know, Microsoft has held back computing by a decade or more. For all we know, if the spirit of sharing had been allowed to continue then by now we'd have Star Trek interfaces and computers all speaking to us. Who knows. Not me. Not you.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[IamTheRealMike]

Part of me wonders if we would have progressed beyond a command-line text-only interface by now if it weren't for Microsoft.

Do you really think Microsoft were the only company that could have made the GUI a success? The GUI existed before Gates, before Jobs. They were the first to bring it to the mass market, nothing more. Does Bill Gates' destruction of the software industry as a cooperative venture justify his creation of the software industry as a profit-making (and therefore STRONGLY developed) entity?

Strongly developed in what way? Economically? Yes. Socially? No.

Now on a totally tangential note, there's one thing that I respect Bill for fully. He has given a LOT of his own personal money to education and charities, and the only reason it's been made public (in the past) is that as Chairman of MS, he's required to divulge his finances to a greater extent than most.

Yeah, but remember where that money came from. It's good that he's not establishing a dynasty - he's too smart for that. However, I still can't respect him no matter how much money he gives away, as in some ways, that money simply was not his to start with.

Re:You've got to hand it to him

[HiThere]

Based upon my memories of the days before MS...

Say that Digital Research had gotten the bid for DOS. No other inserted change needed.

Then computer software companies would consider Apple, and Apple pretty much like the current one, but about 10 times a large, to be the evil monster. And they'd be right. GNU would still have been built, and so would Linux, but they wouldn't have been forced along quite as quickly. The PC Clones might still be the major alterntive to Apple, but perhaps not. Commodore might have done that. Or some development of the S100. It's not clear that without MS IBM would have lost control of the PC clones. But if it hadn't, the PC clones would never have been important. IBM was still extremely mainframe centric. But there were many small, innovative, and rapidly growing alternative computer systems. E.g., if the rate of change had been just slightly slower at that point, Molecular Computer might have developed their workgroup computers as a successful 16 bit system. (And slightly here doesn't mean much at all!)

Or the Amiga might have been able to break out of the animation industry and into the general market, and give Apple legitimate competition. Or Commodore might have done that.

Mr. Gates has done us no favors at all by existing, or by not becoming a stock broker. Not now, and not then. Without him the world would be, and would have been, a better place.

With all that high-tech media on the walls

[HiKarma]

With all that high-tech media on the walls, you would never need to look at the Windows...

(Also rumored that the reason Gates built most of his house underground was to avoid pouring more money into windows.)

Artisan's Terminator 2: Extreme Edition

[NixterAg]

In case you weren't aware, Artisan just released a remastered version of Terminator 2 and has bundled in what it calls the "Extreme Edition". On the second disk, there is a pseudo high-def version of the movie (720P) in WM9 format. It takes a beast of a PC to play it, but it is really, really cool. If you have a good HTPC, you can watch a high-def version of a great movie on your high-def TV. The best thing is that it fits on one DVD with no problem. Sure, it might compress the video a little too much and the sound isn't full-bitrate DTS or DD-EX, but it's at least a taste of what's to come when a HD-DVD standard emerges.

It doesn't matter to me whether it's Microsoft, Apple, or whoever that's doing it. I'm just glad someone is trying to move us forward.

Microsoft haters: this post does not address the fears you have of whether or not Microsoft will take over the living room and it's not meant to.

Re:Why Bill Gates?

[astrashe]

Gates can fire Ballamer, and Ballamer can't fire Gates.

Owning stock trumps a title.

Bill Gates is no Entertainment God...

[joeszilagyi]

...Bill Gates is a D&D God!

Smart Ovens

[maggard]

That's one piece of home automation I'd appreciate:

Run a chicken pot pie beneath the barcode reader on the microwave and it sets the time and temperature.

It'd be great to have a barcode describing a pre-made food's heating requirements. Something that the oven (microwave, conventional or convection) could apply against it's own known characteristics and produce the best results that can be expected.

No more "9 minutes in a low-wattage microwave, 5 in a powerful one, rotate 1/4 turn after 3 minutes" just a high density coding letting the oven set itself. Heck if developers were clever the coding could even be stenographically embedded in the packaging artwork so it'd be invisible to the consumer, not distract from the pretty pictures.

Put a self-setting item into a smart-oven, it reads off the directions and 4 cycles and however many minutes later your whatsits comes out perfectly cooked.

Old news, once a year

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:Old news, once a year

[blackmonday]

Actually this is the sixth version of the house of the future. In every house, 99% of people refuse to believe in the Microsoft future. Of those 99%, there is always one anomaly, or "The One". The One wanders the house looking for Bill Gates (known as the architect), hoping to get his questions answered. The One has used Microsoft's Internet Blender, Windows Media Faucet and Office Ice Maker, but always knows, in the back of his mind, that something is not quite right.

Re:Can we blame Bill for the porn now, too?

[sharkey]

In fact, how does *HE*know?!!

Because all the girls have WINMAIL.DAT tattooed on their forehead?

Re:Why Bill Gates?

[Keeper]

...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.

Microsoft XH Security Flaws.

[AtariAmarok]

From a June 2012 newspaper article in "Fox-Disney-USA-Today":

Dateline: Billmond, Washinggates.

"Microsoft revealed today that its Windows XH home security system, installed in many homes through 1997, has a security flaw in which doors open for anyone who walks up to the door backwards. Microsoft says that this OS is too old and it will refuse to fix this security flaw.

Microsoft is hoping that the old Windows XH home software users upgrade to the new version of the OS that has Digital Rights Management in which advanced accoustics remove from the air any sound which is produced from anything within the home that is not approved by copyright holders."

yawn

[poot_rootbeer]

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)

nah hes a chocolate jesus

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied"
-tom waits

Re:nah hes a chocolate jesus

[swordgeek]

Heh. That would have been my second choice. In retrospect, it might have been my first.

Should I be worried that I recognised all of the musical references in this thread?

E-Mail read to us?

[netsharc]

Great, so I bring home a girl and the house starts yelling "Penis too small? Buy our penis-enlarger now! Original from Sweden!" and "Hot teens wait for you! Call us now!"..

I hope they come up with a better protocol than SMTP in the future..

Re:E-Mail read to us?

[nytes]

so I bring home a girl and...

Stop right there. Seeing as how you are a /. poster, the whole scenario sounds unlikely.

But aside from that, it could be worse. You bring home a girl and the house starts yelling [pasted directly from a spam I got today]

WE sit on opposite sides of the bed waiting for one or the other to make the first move. Tension is high and hormaones are racing. I get up. Startling you a bit and walk over to your side of the bed. I slowly let the evening gown slide from my shoulders to the floor, showing everything for you gaze upon...

Yeah, nothin' like taking it slow on the first date.

The solution to the problem is simple...

[mykepredko]

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

Re:Bill don't make any more Win Medias...

[cayenne8]

Yep...but, do you seriously think you'll have the option to turn it off in the future? By definition, DRM cannot be in the control of the consumer for it to work...for the media companies....just food for thought...

Technology sometimes is ahead of praticality

[UnknowingFool]

Instead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen, a biometric scanner, and a smartcard reader.

In the event of a power failure, you're stuck in the house with no air, heat, or way out.

. . . lights dim, and a recipe shines down from above on your black Corian countertop as the oven begins to preheat.

Just like MS to naturally assume it knows the best course of action for me. I would hope that the house would ask me to do these things just in case I change my mind.

Powered by four PCs running Windows XP, it features dozens of networked monitors, Xboxes, appliances, and consumer electronics devices scattered everywhere.

Exactly how much is all this stuff going to cost me? Why do I need 4 computers? Is there failover/backup capability? I would think 1 main and 1 backup ought to be able to run the house.

Due to limits imposed by the operating system, there's no way to play its stored shows on another screen or TV.

Let me get this straight: I can play copyrighted music in any room but not play free, broadcast TV from any monitor?

Like it or not, the path Microsoft takes will determine the future of digital media - thanks to its dominant desktop market share, the company's actions set the pace for the industry.

That is, until you buy a new washer and dryer and the whole house shuts down until you can prove to MS that you haven't moved houses.

Reminds me of a story

[El]

There's a long, long line of people at the Pearly Gates waiting to get in. Suddenly, this nerdy looking guy in glasses cuts to the front of the line and storms on in. The others at the the front of the line complain "Who was that?" St. Peter replies: "Oh, that was God, but he thinks he's Bill Gates!"

God damn it... clippy have escaped into my kitchen

[nickgrieve]

Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about focaccia?"

Oh for gods sake... I see that in Bills vision of the future we are all incompetent invalids. Come on... I like living my life, I like, you know... doing things the old way. It gives me pleasure to the little things. I know it all comes down to choice, do what make you happy. But I still see Bills vision of the future as somewhat, soulless.

Entertainment God, eh?

[aerojad]

Can't wait for the worm that's written that makes every home in America play Hanson at the same time, or some other like-annoying band that will drive the general populace insane, just long enough for them to all call tech-support at the same time.

unlimited choice for consumers??

[heli0]

Microsoft has two visions for the future of digital media: unlimited choice for consumers, and unlimited control for producers. One thing's for sure, it's unlimited opportunity for Redmond.

Gates probably has the same idea of "unlimited choice" as Henry Ford: "any color so long as it is black".

Re:Why Bill Gates?

[CleverNickName]

Gates can fire Ballamer, and Ballamer can't fire Gates.

Owning stock trumps a title.

It certainly doesn't hurt Gates to have The One Ring, either.

War is Fun

[nanojath]

Microsoft has two visions for the future of digital media: unlimited choice for consumers, and unlimited control for producers.

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?

What happens if you ever need an upgrade?

[Cruel Angel]

And I'm not talking about RAM and little stuff like that, but when your /whole house/ becomes obselete? Or when you want to sell your house? It sounds like much of this will be hard-wired into your homes systems, and not simply removed.

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.

Once again I disagree with a Wired article

[drinkypoo]

Like it or not, the path Microsoft takes will determine the future of digital media - thanks to its dominant desktop market share, the company's actions set the pace for the industry.

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.

"It's easy to talk about an interconnected world when you're providing all the pieces," says Tom Jacobs, ISMA president and a director at Sun Labs. "Microsoft is buying market share, but when they run everyone else out of the market, do we think Windows Media 9 will still be free? They'll up their rates because their product will be the only thing that's left."

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.

But Disney seems to be softening. In April, Eisner told a crowd at a National Association of Broadcasters meeting that he's looking to put Disney "in the forefront of the digital transformation of the entertainment industry." Announcing Disney's plans to launch a video-on-demand service, 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."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Re:Bill don't make any more Win Medias...

[Jugalator]

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.

----

But of course, it's more fun with conspiracy theories, especially on Slashdot.

MPAA's attitude

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Did anybody else get this far down in the article?

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."

Just thought I would point it out, for those too busy to read all the way through.

further email problems

[Graspee_Leemoor]

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

You DO get lots for your money

[kylef]

The HP Windows Media Center PC 854 (currently $1199 from hp.com) has some pretty high-end features that would never wind up on an Xbox:

• 512 megs RAM
• GeForce4 MX440 with 128 megs of DDR RAM and Tv-out
• a P4 2.53 Ghz "Northwood" cpu
• eMuzed TV tuner with built-in Mpeg2 hardware encoder
• 120 gigabyte hard drive
• DVD Burner
• cool Media Center remote control
• 5.1 channel digital audio
• Firewire and USB2.0 for all your peripherals, video or otherwise

Plus, you get Windows XP Media Center edition with the Media Center app and its "10-foot" UI experience, Windows MovieMaker 2, and video drivers that have been extensively tested for this particular hardware configuration. In fact, it seems the primary reason MS isn't releasing MCE as a retail OS product is that they want to ensure a higher quality standard for Media Center PCs by doing extensive in-house driver and hardware testing before OEM deployment approval.

Not so fast

[golrien]

Problem #1: it won't work because they're a bunch of incompetant clowns. Sorry, but MS have proved themselves again and again to be incapable of making something that works. I don't trust them with a £1,000 computer, let alone a £150,000 house. I'm sure everyone here has had Windows crash for them at least once. Losing a letter to the bank is a pain in the ass, but imagine losing a letter from the bank because your mail server's disk crashed (okay, not a MS-specific problem, but it's a valid concern), or not being able to eat because your oven got a broken barcode and decided it was a fridge? And just *think* of the potential for viruses.

Opportunity to Market

[endofoctober]

The part Gates grasps really well is that such a house with all its 'wiredness' will give him the opportunity to sell marketing space to others. Brilliant as bu$ine$$ strategies go. What he seems to miss, though, is that there are a lot of people who consider their homes a refuge from that "adbot" world. Frankly, I don't want to be marketed to 24/7, and will not live in a home that isn't safe from pop-up ads on my microwave for Swanson dinners et al. I'm selective about what marketing channels I allow in my home, and I'm far from ready to relinquish that control, especially to a monopolistic company like Microsoft.

l33t? Not as bad as Big Brother Gates.

[Erris]

I don't trust M$ to browse, I'd never ever trust it with running my house. The wired story, with a little imagination, is an awful nightmare.

nstead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen...

It's blue with a message for you "Explorer has caused an exception fault ..." This might be because your taxes or some other bill was late or deemed incorrect.

The lights and heat automatically fine-tune to your preference the moment you cross the threshold.

A cross licensing agreement with your power company insures maximum profits for them rather than comfort for you.

A screen on the wall in the foyer reads your email aloud as you hang your coat.

It's hotmail telling you about penis enlargers over and over again. You have 137 new messages since leaving work.

Run a chicken pot pie beneath the barcode reader on the microwave and it sets the time and temperature. Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about ...

The next sentence is a paid comercial advertisment for food you don't want to buy. What you eat is sold to the highest bidder by Microsoft and they irritate you out loud trying to get you to buy something different. You also had to repeat the word "delete" several times for this while you were hanging your coat and walking to the kitchen before you gave up in disgust and told the computer to "shut up". The computer asked if you were sure.

And digital media is everywhere. "Suspicious Minds" greets you in full-home surround sound. The family's collective music library is accessible from any room, on every device.

True, any "trusted" device will be able to talk to the media server and it will be able to display exactly what M$, RIAA and the MPAA want you to see. Once the hardware lock in is achieved, the eHome experiment will be obsolete. You will only be able to run one version of Word that you pay for by the minute. Options like search and replace costs extra. No material deemed "copyright infringing", including your own media, will work. All your old movies, songs and pictures are now "obsolete" and unnecessary because you can rent anything you want that the media cartels feel it's profitable to make available. It will look very much like cable TV and broadcast radio. Equipment that records music that can be played on such a system will be tightly controled through patenets, copyrights and laws like the DMCA.

Oh yeah, your house will be listening to you. The listening devices can cancel the noises the system creates so that your voices can be recorded loud and clear. Carnivore was just the beginning, though it will still be searching your email, search fees added to your taxes, of course.

Want it now?!

[cesman]

Then why not build it yourself with Mister House and MythTV? While I haven't used Mister House, it appears to have a great deal of built in functionality. If it doesn't have the functionality you seek, add it! It is Open Source! Then there is MythTV! Simply put MythTV rules! I recorded my favorites show, rip MY CDs, local weather at a glance and many more! My Myth boxen fits in my entertainment center and is connected to my surrond sound receiver, which sounds great!

Since 0.8 (0.9 was released a few days ago!), Myth has a separate front/backend! Record a show in your living room(or perhaps the basement) and watch it anywhere in your house(of course you'll need a frontend box attached to your TV or a computer running Linux)!