Bill Gates Swears Vow Against 'Son of iPod'

Future Linux-Guru writes "The LA Times is running an article on Microsoft's efforts to preempt any single manufacturer from dominating the online video market. Among the scarier revelations is the development of AACS, a new already approved security system designed to prevent piracy on HD DVDs, which subjects users to forced upgrades." From the article: "Whichever way it shakes out, Gates vows not to play the victim in 'Son of iPod.' After learning a hard lesson in the digital music business, 'we're really having to work more closely with partners in the hardware industry and content industry, to really think through the whole end-to-end experience and make it better,' Gates said. 'That's where we've done our mea culpa. We are fixing that.'"

Comments

Re:Define Paradoxical

[Tx]

Actually it is ironic. If you're going to try to be a language nazi, at least get your shit correct. Note definition 2a below.

irony ('r-n, 'r-) pronunciation
n., pl. -nies.

1.
a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See synonyms at wit1.

2.
a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).
b. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.

The trouble with the black market

[SimianOverlord]

I have an even greater moral repugnance for the black marketeers who are making a lot of money worldwide in cracked games, movies etc., selling pirated DVDs in markets and so on. Study after study has shown these people to be involved in much more horrific black market criminality than just this seemingly harmless trade, and more people should be aware of it.

In Britain for instance, the same people who are making vast profits from pirate DVDs and games are people smuggling, selling hard drugs, running child prostitution and exploitation networks in war torn places like Bosnia. They take the profits from their pirate business to help out the other parts. If it comes to a straight choice between murderers, drug dealers and paedophiles and big media companies, all jokes aside, I'd rather give my money to the CEO.

People need to be aware where the money is going, before they make the moral argument for piracy of goods.

Re:The trouble with the black market

[Trelane]

You can complain about copy protection all you want. But you must recognise it is there to cut into black marketeers profits, linux users and other consumers are just the collatoral damage of that war.

Actually, no. Generally, the black marketeers will have either inside sources to the un-DRMed originals, or they will have the resources to break the protection. (Bear in mind that US/Western copyright isn't accepted everywhere (e.g. Iran), and that all it takes is for one entity to un-lock the content for it to be loosed on the black markets!) The best that DRM aims at is keeping the average user from doing what the entity publishing the content (usually the record companies or movie producers) doesn't want them to do. This may be copying to share with a friend, transcoding the DVD to watch on a Palm, or watching the video on a player which hasn't licensed the DRM scheme (for instance, any non-embedded linux, BSD, BeOS, OS/2, Amiga, or other small OS; embedded Linux has at least one legal player you can buy from). Additionally, it has the annoying side-effect of not letting me, for instance, keep my CDs and DVDs in a nice, safe location and storing the actual movies on a big RAID and NFS-mounting them to my notebook or whatever in order to play them (or transcoding and streaming them to my palm).

So actually, the Digital Restrictions being Managed by Apple, MSFT, and the record and movie houses is leveled directly at you, not the black marketeer.

gah! typo.

[NumbThumb]

Note to self: don't nitpick, you'r bound to screw up while doing it.

Re:Son of iPod?

[Planesdragon]

The iPod equivalent for movies is a laptop.

Ah, no. THe iPod equivalent for "movies" will be whomever has their PDA/dedicated device linked to an easy to use store/download center first.

It might be a video iPod. It might be a palm lifedrive. It might be a Windows Mobile device. Or, it might just be the PSP.

The one thing I'm sure it won't be is a laptop.

Re:Son of iPod?

[ozmanjusri]

What would be interesting is something like the iPod for movies, that plugs into an already existant screen.

Nope, what would be interesting is something like the Mitsubishi Pocket LED DLP Projector http://www.mitsubishi-presentations.com/proj_pocke t.asp with a HDD DivX or similar player built in. Just add Flat White Surface and you're up and running.

Re:Think it won't work?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a pretty simple solution - if you go to Russia or China, purchase a Chineese-made DVD player (BBK brand, for instance). It has an ability to fast forward any track, it will allow you to play DVD with all region codes, plus it has added stuff like MP3, DivX, karaoke etc... Why pay your own dollars to limit your ability to buy and watch DVDs you want?

Re:Son of iPod?

[Charles W Griswold]

There is a difference between music and video. Music has maybe three widely used encodings: wma, mp3, and ogg. These formats are pretty stable, and it's no real trouble to design a music player that will support all three.

Movies are a whole other ball of wax, though. There are literally dozens of different codecs, with no clear winner, and no way of telling which codec you'll need just from looking at the file name. If (for instance) you have an ogg player and an ogg file, you know that you'll be able to listen to your music. But, if you have an mpeg file, you can't know if it'll work with your mpeg player without trying it. If it work, you may or may not be able to find the proper codec.

These are serious issues that need to be addressed before we can have a universal portable movie file player. Of course, if you just want to lock people into one particular codec, then it's no problem.

Re:Son of iPod?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just add Flat White Surface and you're up and running.

250 lux? That's a Flat White Surface in a pitch Black Room.

The correct answer was 'lasers' but they're not quite on the market yet.

Re:Here we go, aiming at our foot again

[thatguywhoiam]

Asked about his wealth he said once you reach a certin level, more money doesn't matter. Things only get so good and once you can afford the best that's it. In other words food only gets so good, cars only get so good, clothes can only be made so good and once you afford the best more money after that doesn't buy you anything better then what you can already afford.

100 Million dollars.

That is the limit of physical wealth. Beyond that, you don't buy things, you make big events and buildings 'happen'. But for the actual cushy lifestyle there is no difference between a person with 100 Million and 1+ Billion.