Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Offers A DRM Patch
Transcendent writes "Microsoft Windows Update is offering a download for their 1.0 version of the 'Microsoft Windows Rights Management client,' if you care to download it. Seems that you need Win98 SE and up (or at least that's the minimum 'supported'). Details are here. Although it's not required or a 'critical' update, this just paves the road for all of Microsoft's software to require DRM technology on your computer. Quote from the details page: 'Installing this client allows RM-aware applications to work with Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to provide licenses for publishing and consuming RM-protected information.' This, dubbed 'Activation', entails that 'your computer will be automatically connected via the Internet ... in order to create and save on your computer a system component that is associated with your hardware.' Hmmm... me no like ..."
And Skynet has launched!!
Getcha free chains here! Bondage! Suffering! Leather gear, only the hottest from Microsoft! Trade-ins on unwanted liberty a specialty, test-whip today's amazing offer!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Something tells me GNU/RMS is not going to like Microsoft's choice of acronyms.
tato (and tato only)
This post is strictly opinion, including the spelling.
I, for one, welcome our new DRM overlords. And, as a trusted TV personality, I want to remind them that I can be useful in rounding up workers for their underground intellectual property lawsuit caves.
Everyone at the Office (TM) complains about having to use the cubicles next to the Windows (TM) where the mid-day Sun (TM) can be unbearable. I hope that this patch can help us respect each other's rights about sitting next to the Windows (TM)
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Windows 1984 and up is what it was supposed to say...
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
But then the shining becon of freedom shone through on a land far away. The champoin of freedom in a world which had become a matrix of digital prisons. The ones that stood up to it all without flinching.
The Chinese...
I, for one, welcome our new, um, overlordish overlords.
Good has been winning over for evil for too long. I'm glad that we will begin to see the balance restored.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Microsoft will be releasing their next major version of Windows under the name "Linus" in the tradition of their new "RMS" digital rights management client.
I have to admit, when I read the headline "Microsoft Offers a DRM Patch" I was pretty happy because I thought it meant they had issued a patch FOR DRM, in the same way a patch for "remote code execution exploit #502937" helps you avoid remote code execution exploit #502937.
...key-exchanging overlords.
(P.S. I also welcome the chance at fooling said overlords.)
>But Grandad, didn't you try to fight them?
/. for karma points.
No, but I posted witty clever comments on
DRM is used in Linux kernel on desktop computers - Direct Rendering Module is needed for open source implementation of hardware accelerated OpenGL.
RMS is used mostly for marketing - eeryone knows Richard Stallman.
And finally - RM is upcase of very important Unix command, which allows to remove both applications and copyrighted data.
Damn Microsoft, must you steal everything? Try to think about your own acronyms. Try to create something instead stealing all the time.
However, Microsoft is referring to its implementation of DRM as RMS, which Mr. Stallman would expand as Restrictions Management Services. Windows users who don't read Slashdot are likely to confuse these initials with Mr. Stallman's initials and think Mr. Stallman endorses Restrictions Management Services.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Logic, reason, and calm rationality in a Slashdot discussion? Burn him at the stake, boys!
"Sufferin' succotash."
Microsoft is giving us the opportunity to activate the much-anticipated Windows RM technology on our computers--absolutely free--enabling "certain features of the software," and they've given us their word that they won't collect any personally identifiable information. Isn't that enough for you people?
Man, if Microsoft started handing out bags of money on the street while nursing sick puppies back to health, you guys still wouldn't trust them.
Me, I'm going to install it right now. I can't wait to see what sort of new and exciting functionality is added to my com--[PLEASE ENTER A VALID CREDIT CARD NUMBER TO COMPLETE THIS POST]
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I have been emailing microsoft 5x a week requesting an update like this. I need more restrictions in my life. After I got out of the clink, I realized that having freedom and the option to choose what I want to do was just dangerous. Now, if they incorporate some micro (or even macro) payment stratagies into this DRM stuff then I'll feel like I paid multiple times to view or use the same materials. pfft
Prediction:
Windows Rights Management System (RMS) will eventually give way to Windows Everybody Supports Rights management (ESR)