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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.
so does this make Balmer some sort of weird Dancin' Jesus?
Mike
Agent Gates will do.
I dunno, but the words Bill Gates and God in the same sentence just seem, morally, and ethically wrong...
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.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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.]
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
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
Only Microsoft would invent a house where you need to ask permission to act like you live there...
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.
Does it have a bathroom?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
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.
Gates can fire Ballamer, and Ballamer can't fire Gates.
Owning stock trumps a title.
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.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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
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)
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..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
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
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
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.
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 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:
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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!
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.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.