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Aero To Be Unavailable To Pirates
An anonymous reader writes "Users thinking of pirating the next version of Windows may have a surprise in store: no Aero for you. The upcoming Microsoft OS will run a check to ensure the copy was legally purchased. If it comes up short, the shiniest part of the OS will not be available." From the article: "At first an optional program, the piracy check eventually became mandatory for many types of Windows XP downloads, but was not required to run any aspect of the operating system itself. Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers. But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system."
I guess this will merely separate the real pirates from the need pirates.
I'm not going to hide anything, I pirated Matlab and Mathematica in college. But I wasn't selling them or making a profit off them, I was simply installing old versions of them so that I could get my homework done without having to go to campus and be restricted by lab hours. I have since uninstalled them and don't feel wrong for using them to accomplish assignments.
I think there are a lot of pirates here in America and overseas that just want a functioning OS on which they can install their games and quicken and other such Win32 software. Even I would prefer a Windows "Lite" over Windows with Aero. The last thing I want is some fancy pants CPU hog with Rosie O'Donnel sized memory footprints running around in the background!
I would really like to see a free Windows OS "Core" kernal system that doesn't have any features but can be downloaded and installed easily. You could purchase more and more expansions or just buy the loaded omgwtfbbq$999 version of Windows right off the bat with everything from Office Suite Complex SP8 to Windows Media Player with more skins than an 18th century fur trader.
The real pirates are going to try everything to be able to crack and sell these advanced copies. They'll do it regardless of what features Windows has. There's already speculation on how to do it.
If you're making one version more secure than another, you're simply admitting that you're not too concerned about the minimal package being pirated but you cannot afford to have Aero pirated. I think that says a lot about how you really view the core operating system and how it's becoming recognized more and more as a necessary tool and not some software bonus. Many software models have developed into being very successful by offering a "Lite" version of the software product for free and encouraging an upgrade to more features by buying a full fledged license from the homepage. The very piece of software I'm using right now to author and spellcheck this post (Textpad) is marketed in this manner.
So I welcome this new news that only the rich, powerful & non-collegiate will have Aero. Let them have their bells and whistles!
My work here is dung.
Every majoy piece of software is going "phone home" from here on out.
Insert witty sig here.
How long before the Corporate Edition gets leaked?
FTA: With the new operating system, Microsoft is offering plenty of new graphics tricks, including translucent windows, animated flips between open programs and "live icons" that show a graphical representation of the file in question.
Many 'pirate' copies currently run on less-than-optimal hardware, yes? Microsoft's plans will make this 'pirate edition' less of a resource hog so for many it actually sounds like a pretty good upgrade over the legit version.
Trolling is a art,
Working validation crack in 3, 2, 1...
That will put a real crimp in my computing when I don't buy when it comes out in 2009.
Oh wait. I wasn't going to buy it anyway.
I want to write a Linux program that runs a series of invasive system checks to make sure you didn't pay for it.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Somebody please correct me if I have been mistaken.
I understand and respect Microsoft wanting to be able to ensure that as many copies of their software is legit as possible, but from what I understand, Vista is going to *require* signed drivers for it to work, which I would also assume plays some part in the Windows Genuine Advantage program. I would assume that it costs money and requires licensing and such to get a driver signed. Doesn't this qualify as a form of extortion and abuse of Microsoft's monopoly? By requiring signed drivers, they're effectively forcing everybody to pay them an "extortion fee" in order for other companies to be able to make hardware for users to run their systems. Doesn't this present problems for Microsoft? How can they be allowed to do this, considering their monopoly status?
I really don't like the idea of Microsoft forcing me into using signed drivers and such in order to take advantage of the software I legally purchased. There's countless reasons for this, but I would think that Microsoft's monopoly status alone would be enough to stop them from abusing these sorts of practices.
A community-oriented lyrics site
Really, thank you. You have now given me the final reason NOT to upgrade.
As a poster in a previous article said, I'll keep my copy of W2K running as long as I can and when, for whatever reason, it is no longer useful I will devote my time and resources to learning how to use Linux though Apple might come first.
Thank you Microsoft. Your ineptness will be your undoing.
I can't wait to see what happens when businesses realize the cost to upgrade to your latest abomination and all the attendant problems that will occur.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Doesn't this seem to hint that Vista is bloated? I may be dumb, but if they can just take out Aero feature that means that they left a second graphic system in place. I am just curious what sort of resources are being wasted on the duel setup...
So does this mean that with all the fancy graphics etc. turned off, pirated versions will run faster?
Save the DOS prompt: It's an endangered species!
1) Is Aero relevant to Vista's inner workings, i.e. is it a real limitation to its functionality if missing? If yes, how severe a limitation?
2) How does Aero differ from numerous attempts at 3D desktops that are already out there? Why will users really miss it?
3) What are the chances that Aero will stay off-limits to "pirates" for any extended period of time?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Chances are for as much system resources that Aero suck up I will probably turn it off anyways. I have always thought that windows shiny things we a complete waist of resources anyways.
Thanks Microsoft!
PS Pirates help lower global warming!
Buy a MacIntel complete with OSX. You don't need the 2096 processor supercomputer to have the shiny effects on the GUI, nor will you have to jump through hoops just to prove that you're not a filthy pirate. And as far as I can tell so far having trialed the Vista February CTP, the shiny effects work considerably better under OSX than they do on Vista - ie they feel like they've been there since day one rather than hacked on top.
The first thing I do when I install XP is disable Luna and all the graphical tweaks except for show window contents while dragging. XP is nice and snappy and stable when you make it look like 95!
/ uptime.0.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7022/1036/1600
So what M$ are telling me is if I want a version that isn't overbloated with GUI eye candy requiring multiple GB Ram, massive GPU's I should grab the pirate version instead of purchasing.
Cool.
Get a pirated version and you don't need a new video card.
Are you threatening me? *said with silly ethnic accent* This is going to be a direct challenge to pirates everywhere. It will either be disabled,or faked out. it always is. I wonder how long until pseudo authentication servers for versions with hacked code pop up.
That's sort of an odd message to send, isn't it? "We think you're a software pirate. Or maybe you're just poor. Either way, you don't get the shiny shiny."
Does that mean 'pirates' won't need an as-powerful machine to run the next version of Windows? ;)
but seriously, this will be as successful as their WGA attempt. It will frustrate legit windows owners more than it will put a dent on 'piracy'.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Wait, you mean if I pirate it, I won;t ever have to have my resources hogged by pointless eye candy.
I only have three words for you then... SHIVER ME TIMBERS!!!
AAAARRRRRR!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
So as a reward for not paying for the software MS make the software run faster and consume less memory?
I certinaly hope they offer turning off this bloatware feature to paying customers... otherwise they might see piracy go up!!
Two things...
1. Haven't microsoft tried this 'validation' thing already with downloading copies of directx? That didn;t appear to work very well.
2.I don't care what people say...windows is still expensive. If windows was more affordable to the average user, maybe piracy wouldn't be such an issue.
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
Don't worry, EU will look into that.
Ooooh, Aeroglass! Aaaah! Watch how mesmerized I am by cheap screen effects that won't even run on 90% of the computers out there!
Big F#&^ing Deal!
If Microsoft really wanted to curb piracy by disabling certain features without a phone-home license, they should target something a little bit more functional. I imagine that the software pirates of China will be quite happy to use their free copy of Vista without aeroglass.
There's a whole slew of consultants in my field who always beg me to get JDeveloper up and running in their dev environments and I always recoil in horror and start asking pointed questions of "Why?"
Huge footprint, doesn't play well with the products I develop for, and has crashed more than once. Give me the simple elegance of TextPad any day of the week; I can program my own debugging lines and watches into it if I need them. -1 offtopic.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I only know enough about law to tell you this:
No one gives a shit about enforcing anti-trust laws in the current administration.
Sadly, that is not the biggest of our concerns. If we make it to 2009 without nuking someone, I will be happy. We can worry about corporations raping the public after that.
Have they ever gotten around to telling us why we want Aero-glass? First thing I do whenever I'm on a XP machine, including other peoples' because I'm rude, is disable the XP theme system and get back to something useful. I don't want the close button on a window to be large because that makes it easy to hit by accident. GUI design 101, and XP fails it hard.
So, what makes bubble buttons and transparency effects something I should want? Is Microsoft trying to bank on GUI wiener-size competition to get people to pay hundreds of dollars for a legtimate installation of the OS?
Oh, yeah...they're going to try to stick it in the gamer market by making everyone upgrade for DX10...which will likely only give you full performance on Trusted Hardware, just like the high-res video bunk.
Let's hear it for Microsoft. 1) My GUI looks better than yours. 2) DX10 is so much more efficient, it almost makes up for the performance lost by binding 70% of your system resources to the GUI that looks better than yours. 3) We don't like your installation of Linux on your other partition, so we're using Oklahoma power to reach in and delete it all, and install this cool IDE device driver from StarForce. 4) You're welcome!
If there were compelling reasons to upgrade, Microsoft wouldn't have to look at other means to grow their Windows' sales, the upgrade sales would carry them forward.
The only reason I keep a copy of Windows installed on a small partition my PC is so I can run iTunes and as I have decided to buy a MacBook pro my iTunes OS will now by OSX, obviously I'll still be using Linux as my day to day OS. I get eye candy with OSX and GLX so who honestly need Aero (or indeed Windows)? To answer my own question the only people that do still need Windows are those organisations that have painted themselves into a corner with their application selections over the years. Buying application that only work with Windows and have closed standards, exchange/outlook, those crappy VB6 cheapo developments... you get the picture. These organisations don't need to upgrade though as upgrading brings very little.
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Umm, How will this affect corporate versions? Will the release of Vista require your computer to talk to another computer on your corporate network which then talks back to Microsoft to ensure that your copy is legitimate?
If Microsoft starts demanding activation from corporate customers, I think things will get interesting and amusing all at the same time.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
A lot (most?) of the piracy drives off of corporate copies. These typically don't call home. I can't imagine how you could force a corporation to grant internet connections for the purposes of licensing. If Vista corporate licensing still doesn't phone home, then the problem is far from solved. If they wish to force corporations to allow phoning home, they are going to have quite a stuggle getting companies to upgrade. The no-net workaround, calling in for an authorization code, is even worse when you have hundreds or thousands of computers.
My prediction is that someone will be clever enough to write a daemon that will intercept the "phone home" activity and provide the response that the OS requires. Add some names to the hosts file along with the appropriate challenge-response and I'm thinking that'll just about do the trick.
All I have to say to microsoft is good luck.
why?
Because as long as it's there there'll be a way around it.
Who the hell wants the extra features anyway? especially if you're a gamer..
Aero = YEY mem and video HOG
yeah fuck that.
Oh it's worse than that.
This will severely impair the independent engineering of new hardware peripherals capable of working with windows, and in addition will cause a major problem for people trying to make hardware emulators like deamon tools.
This is specifically by hollywood order in order to more easily secure their DRM, and it doesn't hurt much that it also has the beneficial side effects of allowing microsoft to charge "developer fees" to anyone who wants to make new hardware and help make an oligopoly of existing hardware vendors by locking out new entrants.
I expect one of two things to happen:
either new antitrust cases are filed, or the pc/software market gains barriers which cause stagnation to the point it threatens the viability of the majority perceived "PC" as anything more than a delivery device for major cartel vendors.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Dear Pirates, OS X is just as shiny as Vista, has no hard protection, and might work on your machine just as well as windows does. Welcome, come on in, we're actually in serious need of more bad boys: While you're trying out os x, you might try to port some windows games or crack some apps that haven't been cracked in 5 years, like Logic Pro (requires dongle) and ProTools (requires hardware) and give something back to the community :-D
How in the world are we ever going to solve Global Warming unless we stop discriminating against pirates? Sheesh!
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Have you seen screenshots of Aero Glass? It looks like the short films of a first year computer animation student http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/longhorn3/Aer o%20Glass%20-%20Contacts.jpg. It is for this same reason Luna in XP gets very old very fast, and anyone wanting to get some serious work done turns it off.
Or, did anyone consider the fact that these all look like crap because they can be turned off--they are only add-ons to the plain style that was introduced with Win95. They get in the way. Would anyone even consider turning off Aqua, even if you could. No, because it is part of the system, part of your work flow. (Disclaimer: I have Win2000, OS X and Ubuntu machines)
Besides, as people have noted, most individuals who are installing pirated versions have computers that can't handle Areo Glass anyway. Any computer capable enough will come with Visa pre-installed, whenever that happens to be. The rest of us be thankful that we can get the garbage out of the way, even if you believe that Visa will be able to do some real work. Me, I'll keep Windows 2000, because really haven't seen any real innovation since then--it is stable and uncluttered, which is about as good as Windows can get.
While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that driver rootkit on your machine.
i t/kmsigning.mspx:
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority. This is not done through Microsoft (and is different from their certification programs).
Here's the text from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64b
To obtain a PIC, a publisher must first obtain a VeriSign Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate. Registration with Verisign results in establishing a credential that can be used to establish a Microsoft Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) account. The publisher can then use that certificate to authenticate itself to Microsoft. If the certificate is valid, Microsoft issues a PIC.
A publisher typically completes the authentication process once a year through the Winqual Web site. The process is completed over a channel that is protected by the secure sockets layer (SSL). Figure 1 illustrates the process of obtaining a PIC. For more information about Winqual, see "Resources" at the end of this paper.
Figure 1. Obtaining a PIC
Important: The process of obtaining a PIC is separate from the Windows Logo Program submission process. The PIC signing capability does not replace the WHQL program. Microsoft encourages publishers to use the WHQL programs such as the Logo and Driver Reliability Signing programs, whenever possible. The primary purpose of the PIC program is to introduce identity into the kernel-mode and driver ecosystem, in cases where participation in the WHQL program might not be suitable. The PIC signing capability does not require the publisher to pass certain Windows Logo Program testing requirements associated with WHQL.
Has XP's product activation actually reduced piracy significantly? Have MS actually checked this? Most people buy their machines with Windows pre-installed. I can't imagine piracy to make that big a dent in sales.
I'll just pirate windows basic! Then there won't be any reproducussions for my thievery... except that I'd be running windows.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
...Mr. and Mrs. Consumer, see a row of machines in Best Buy all sporting the spiffy Aero look and read a barrage of publicity about how great the new system is. ...They buy a cheap machine at Costco with Vista Home preinstalled, fire it up, and think they've been cheated or given the wrong OS because it looks just the machine they dropped off at the annual hazardous waste disposal day; ...Call Microsoft to find out what's wrong and get barraged by a hostile cross-examination about the provenance of their system.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's a good solution, seriously. Think about it. Just don't allow the thing to dial home. Unplug it from the net. Run your games or uber-business apps on it, and have a $300 Linux box for web/email. It's an optimal solution even today.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers."
Reducing piracy is also the most sure way of reducing the number of people using Windows.
I find the microsoft stance on reducing piracy pretty half-hearted. If they can turn of Aero on pirated versions, they could also turn of the whole OS easily. They don't because the large market share, either payed for or not, helps keep them their monopoly.
They just can't come down on piracy, because they'll hurt themselves too much.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I can understand that people don't want to have their resources used up by the OS just to look pretty, but that's missing the point here. People _DO_ want to have the shiny-shiny turned on. They are upgrading because they want to see the fancy new things that Microsoft is marketing at them (See, we look just like Apple! Look at the shiny Windows OS... ooooooooh).
So like they say, the casual pirates are going to have to either buy a real version, or way until the real pirates find a way to defeat the checks. I expect that will happen no matter what, but most home users aren't going to be satisfied unless they can look as omfg pew! pew! pew!!!1!1 as they can. And that means that maybe some of them will actually buy what MS is dangling for them.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority. This is not done through Microsoft (and is different from their certification programs).
They have to develop them though. There's got to be some means by which they can install unsigned drivers and test on a variety of configurations without having to acquire a special developers edition of vista for each test station.
enough said...
Ehm, sorry, not a native speaker ...
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
If the priated copy has no Aero, wouldn't it run faster? I would disable Aero anyway the first thing i install Vista.
As if millions of software vendors in the far east cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
How will this affect people such as my grandparents who use their computer only for tax/accounting purposes and aren't on a network. Sure you can make the argument "then they wouldn't need the porch version of winblows". That's a fine and dandy argument but does that force anyone wanting to use it to be 1) on a LAN/WAN or 2) Tech-Savvy and leave those not willing out in the cold of new technologies? How does this fit into the Chinese governments mandate posted yesterday 'The End of Naked PCs in China?' http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/12/12 14205
This is just another Microsoft move to control the masses. Personally, I enjoy seeing this, I think this will help Linux move forward more than Gates and his minions realize. (wishful thinking)
the average XP user downloads cygwin, ming, lcc-win32 or others for development, OpenOffice for a suite, firefox/mozilla for browsing, etc...
I cry utter bullshit on each element, and ask you to give a cite for a single one.
1-average xp user downloads cygwin
2-average xp user downloads lcc-win32
3-average xp user downloads/uses open office
4-average xp user uses firefox/mozilla
2nd, the price of XPhome+office student&teacher edition is about 325$ retail.
the AVERAGE XP user wants a free media player, and all the other XP goodies,
and doesn't give a shit about superior alternatives for most of it... they want easy.
now, your personal experience (and mine) is not the same- but it's also ABOVE average- FAR ABOVE average- than the average xp user.
and- selling to the average man- IS what sells.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Gee, I don't have to use their fancy, bloated 3D GUI?
Next thing you know, they'll eliminate Messenger, that gawdawful virus attractor and system resource waster that I have to use 3rd party tools to remove from XP. Then, they'll get rid of the CD burning stuff in XP that's useless to me. Then, they'll probably get rid of all the helpful messages that line up on the left-hand side of every window that I don't need or use since I have been using Windows for 10+ years. And wizards; they'll probably decide not to help me with every little system task just because I didn't buy Windows.
In short, if this trend continues, I'll soon be able to get the Windows I always dreamed of; lean, mean, slimmed-down and ready to do some real work! And all I gotta do is steal it rather than buy it! Thank you, Microsoft!
I wonder why the parent is marked troll?
It is so true though...
Today MS admitted that its market share was largely due to piracy. Rather than MS Windows being the best value for the money, it is the best widely distributed and supported free OS. A such, the MS will be adopting a new strategy in which the OS will be given away, and only support contracts and cosmetic add ons will be sold. A senior MS official was quoted as saying "Consumer have always realized that MS Windows had no real financial value, and now MS itself has come to the same conclusions. The technology in MS Windows is 20 years old, of no innovative consequence. We will focus of serving bussiness customers and leveraging the MS Office franchise to grow the company"
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
in the future more and more things wil be tied to the web. Office applications like writely and ajaxWrite. Photo librarys. Maybe even your music and TV. You won't want to unplug to run the OS.
On the otherhand I like this solution to piracy. If it detects a piarate copy it hobbles the OS but does not shut it down. That makes it safe to use in case it glitches on you and mis-detects it's lic status.
I'd take it one step further and change the mouse to an oversized hot pink X with a desktop that says "Liscence key not valid". Anyone seeing that on someone elses computer would know it was stolen and there might be social pressure to pay for what you can steal.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh.. so they only have to give kickbacks to verisign and microsoft for the "right" to develop drivers for windows..
I'm sorry but that argument doesnt fly with me. However small, it's still extortionate and more importantly orwellian.
Why the hell should I have to give microsoft any information about me in order to make compatible drivers? That's a bit extreme..
Do owners of second hand '65 mustangs have to obtain "special licenses" from ford to build out their engines?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That means all we have to do is pirate Vista and we don't have to put up with the ugly, useless Microsoft angry fruitsalad UI disaster called Aero...
...Sign me up!
"While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that driver rootkit on your machine."
Yes, I'm sure that's what they told you. Oceania has always been at war and all that shizz, you know?
Hackers will find ways to bypass these restrictions easily enough. Security holes (old AND new) will allow dishonest people to do whatever they want anyway.
That's not even counting on the possibility of hackers getting their spyware signed. Remember when people managed to get keys signed in Microsoft's name? You REALLY trust Verisign with this? I sure don't.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
No, the way to reduce "piracy" and grow sales is to
This would only be a problem if there were no alternative. The tighter they squeeze, the more fat corporate licenses will slip through their fingers.
Is there any way we could persuade them to squeeze harder?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Many moons ago I purchased a copy of quickbooks pro with the intent of using it as a cash register software. When I got it home and installed it I was shocked. A pop up window warned me that I had to register the copy of software. I looked at every word on the box. I searched the documents that came with it. They all claimed it as, "a full version". The pop up window continued to nag so I called the number it presented me with. The poor soul on the line, with a woble in her voice, explained how I still needed to "register" the software with the company. I politely asked if the call was being recorded, to remove her ear from the phone, and explained my disapproval.
The silver in this cloud was simple to find. I returned the software for a refund (those were the good days). Downloaded a copy of RedHat 4.1 and started on a road to custom LAMP invironments for small retail shops.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
...so if I were to pirate Windows (I'm speaking hypothetically as Mac OS X user), and MS knows it, they'll prevent me from using the part of the OS that sucks up system resources like there's no tomorrow? Awesome. Pirate Windows and it will run faster.
blog |
"If it comes up short, the shiniest part of the OS will not be available."
Might that not be a blessing?
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Product Activation completely killed the warez market for Windows XP. Seriously, why does Microsoft even try?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Aero is "penis" in Arabic :D
... If I pirate the next version of windows, the first thing I would have disabled after installation will be disabled automatically?
Sweet.
Microsoft still wants pirates to be able to run the software. After they check all that, decide you are a pirate, it only disables part of Windows Vista? Why not just disable the whole thing? Is Linux getting a little to close for comfort?
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
Sadly, that is not the biggest of our concerns.
Some time ago, I might have read that to mean that we as a nation had bigger concerns, and thus the administration had bigger concerns, and that the concern was over the people getting away with antitrust violations.
Now, however, it is the administration that is the concern.
In your heart, you know he might
Observations:
1) People complain that XP and previous versions of windows have an "ugly" look
2) People are generally welcoming of the Aero look'n'feel as they believe it is catching up with OS X and will be pleasing.
3) A LOT of people complained when (early versions of) Microsoft's Validation software decided to phone home to register at really inconvenient times (with no access to internet) and then completely locked users out of their PC's.
This proposal from MS neatly avoids the repeat of the catastrophe of (3), and encourages people who believe in (2) to purchase their software.
People who do not believe in (2) also seem to be people who stand by (1).....There is no pleasing them.... They will just carry on pirating the software, using it every day , yet complain the software looks terrible.
To all those who are going to mention the inevitable crack: I'm not going to do any online banking, shopping, or even read my private e-mail on a cracked operating system. I suggest you don't either. Who knows what the author of the crack will put in there?
I wish Microsoft would go all out and prevent software pirates from using Vista online at all. Much like the technology used in online games such as Battlefield and World of Warcraft. If a fraction of the software pirates converted into Linux-users maybe Linux would have enough users for hardware companies to support us.
Look, we all know the warez scene *will* get around this. Once agian, this is simply a road block to keep joe sixpack from casually making copies of Vista.
I give it a month tops after Vista's release before a galaxy of pirate vista inall cds surface.
As far as I know, being able to run two different "desktops" so to speak (Aero and non-Aero) would require some sort of modularization, and people would probably be able to make their own desktop even more Advanced then Aero. This leads me to believe (and the wording of the article from skimming through it seeming to maybe hint at this) that the graphics drivers or Vista OS may be crippled to plain not support Direct3D if it is not legit or is a lower version, allowing MS to have even more control of what systems can do what (since even a cheap system can play decent games now with a decent vid card and enough cheap memory). Hopefully this is just misguided paranoia though.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Now, instead of "Who would pirate Windows Vista" it has become "Who would pay for Windows Vista Basic?"
What got me was that they're actually making the basic version not with poor users in mind, but with non-users in mind. They think that they can draw people with a cheap version in that wouldn't protest if we took away something as basic as MULTITASKING.8 .html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050910-529
"
First up, there's Starter Edition, which like XP Starter Edition, is a crippled (and lame) product aimed at the two-thirds world. It will limit users to three concurrent applications, and provide only basic TCP/IP networking, and won't be suitable for most games. The next step up is Home Basic Edition, which is really the sibling to today's Windows XP Home. However, as the name suggests, there's also Home Premium Edition, and this is where we start to split features like hairs and create a gaggle of products. HPE will build on the the Basic Edition by adding, most notably, the next-generation of Media Center capabilities, including support for HDTV, DVD authoring, and even DVD ripping backed up (of course) by Windows DRM. For non-corporate types, this is probably going to be the OS that most people use. It's similar to XP Pro in power, but with all of the added bells and whistles for entertainment. Well, most of them.
Windows Vista Professional Edition won't occupy the same spot that XP Pro occupies today, because this time it's truly aimed at businesses. It won't feature the MCE functionality that Home Premium Edition has, but it begins to provide the kind of functionality you'd expect in a business environment, such as support for non-Microsoft networking protocols and Domain support. But don't expect too many businesses to necessarily turn to PE. Microsoft is also planning both a Small Business Edition and an Enterprise Edition, which build upon pro by adding (seemingly minor) features aimed at appealing to each market. SBE, for instance, includes a networked backup solution, while EE will include things like Virtual PC integration, and the ability to encrypt an entire volume of information.
Last but not least, there's Ultimate Edition. Hey, I'm just glad that they didn't call it Extreme Edition. I'll leave it to Paul Thurrott, who has all of the details, to explain (and promote) this beast:
The best operating system ever offered for a personal PC, optimized for the individual. Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition, so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online "Club" services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product). Microsoft is still investigating how to position its most impressive Windows release yet, and is looking into offering Ultimate Edition owners such services as extended A1 subscriptions, free music downloads, free movie downloads, Online Spotlight and entertainment software, preferred product support, and custom themes. There is nothing like Vista Ultimate Edition today. This version is aimed at high-end PC users and technology influencers, gamers, digital media enthusiasts, and students.
"
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
M$ would ensure that Aero was running. Every last bit of bloat for every single bell, whistle, wing-ding, and wizz-bang. Hell, have multiple instances of running!
Is it Vista? Yep!
Is it "pretty?" Yep, subjectively!
Is it slower than my Zaurus sl5500 trying to load (and run) Kstars? Sure is!
Can you surf goat pr0n? I can't even bring up a command shell, nope!
-AC
People, people, people. At first, when you're trying to move from Windows to Linux, it seems very hard. Everything is just that bit different enough to almost make it worthwhile giving up. /var/log/syslog into Google or readthefuckingmanual.net.
I didn't "trust" Linux with my hard drive partitions, so I would power down, unplug the IDE from the Windows drive, and plug it into the Linux one. Eventually, I learnt that it was Windows more likely to "accidentally" mess up my Linux partitions.
I kept backups of all my data on the Windows drive, until I realise that Linux has alternatives to all the programs I use, and they work fine. (Getting mail out of the PST file was a pain)
But a few months later on, things start making sense. You actually start to understand why the screwy security features like the one that means you can't just type "progname" in a directory with progname in it are there. And all of a sudden, you can work perfectly well again, with the occasional paste of an error from
Just break that addiction. Do it. It's a bit strange at first, but you have to do it sometime. Do it now. Why not?
Get your own free personal location tracker
My question is, does this mean that in order to use Aero, Windows Vista machines have to be connected to the internet? I work in a facility that places severe restrictions on computers connected to the internet, so to get around that I have separate machines for internet and development, and the machine I use for development is not and will never be connected to the internet. I'm not hating on Microsoft's fancy bells and whistles, I don't believe that it's bloat at all on a modern computer, and I especially don't think Luna on XP ever slowed down a capable machine. But I think it's a mistake to assume that every computer has internet access. You mean to tell me I won't be able to use the full features of the OS that I bought because I can't connect to tell Microsoft I'm legit?
While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that driver rootkit on your machine.
But it won't do anything to stop Hacker McSony
... allowing pirates to use some crippled version of windows is crucial for keeping the market
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
It will be interesting if MS checks whether a Mac is running an OEM version of Windows (or for that matter Office).
As Apple isn't installing OEM versions of the Windows OS, any OEM version running on a Mac has to be illegal. The Genuine Advantage check could easily determine if the OS is running on a Mac and if the OS is an OEM version. If so, it could flag that the version is not correctly licensed.
If I were releasing the new Windows, I would make sure that a "pirated" copy without activation would be FORCED to use the most resources. Forced to use DX10. Forced to use AERO. Forced to preload every damn DLL in the system.
Basically, force the "pirate" to consider (and buy) a new PC to run the shiny new 'ware.
Sure, the "pirate" has saved by not buying a retail copy of the new Windows. Microsoft, on the other hand, gets money from the hardware vendors (bulk licensing). They aren't going to get money directly from the "pirate" anyway; this would provide some revenue.
Same deal for the "home" edition. Load that sucker up with some serious suckage of software. Force the home user (builder) into adding more memory and fancy graphics. Which forces the base price of a PC up, and makes everyone happy-happy.
I think that the current strategy is backwards.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I use PsPad myself, Nice syntax stuff & free.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I will never again pay microsloth for an OS - it causes more trouble than pirating the damn things.
what happens if i disconnect from the internet while installing, microsoft cant expect everyone who uses vista to have the internet...
portfolio
The DVD consortium has got away with it.
I am trolling
Grow up.
No one is being "forced" to build hardware for 95% of the world's PC market. They are there because that is where the money is.
The cost of a signed driver will be barely visible as a line item on page 36. Insignificant compared to the other barriers to entry in this market : engineering, production, marketing and sales.
Maybe M$ doesn't realize that people can always find a way to get things they aren't supposed to have. I was lucky enought to get my copy of Windows XP from my uni, so I don't have to worry at this point about WGA checks. I'm sure many have you have seen the Windows Genuine Advantage crack floating around... there's always gonna be a way around something.
Aero to be unavailable to existing users. Seriously. I think one of the major reasons they pushed Vista back is there were just not enough HDMI compliant monitors out there. For most of the world, the CRT's and most of the LCD's wont support it as they don't provide the end-to-end encryption Vista demands if you want to see the high res video, including the Aero theme.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Actually, you're allowed to fill your swimming pool with a hose pipe, but you're not allowed to water your garden. Interesting ban...
I take pretty good care of my gear. I'm not too concerned about Hacker McPhee. I've not had a virus in over 8 years despite running Windows without A/V protection. It's outfits like Sony--"legitimate manufacturers"--that worry me more these days.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So what it boils down to is that priates will get a faster version of vista (if it ever ships) than people suckered into paying for it.
The customer is always right after all - right where we want them.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
To be honest, it has little to do with what you or the original poster is talking about. The real reason they're going forward with this is Microsoft is sick and tired of flaky drivers crashing Windows and them getting blamed for it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a video card manufacturer release a new shiny drivers that gives 10% better FPS while crashing to a blue screen every other game session. A couple months later they release the WHQL version (the one actually tested and signed off on by MS) and everything works fine.
There's a lot of things wrong with Windows code, but one of the best ways to crash the system is flaky drivers. MS is trying to remove that as a factor.
Given my machine can't handle Aero, maybe pirating isn't such a bad idea :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
To me, this is not only a reason to upgrade, but a reason to pirate the OS, or at least prevent it from calling home. I don't want spiffy GUI effects, and if not paying for the OS is going to get me just what I want... well, that's just perfect.
/ Per
Besides the principle of the matter (Microsoft abusing its monopoly where it shouldn't), your "who cares" rant really only applies to $400 graphics cards. What about the $50 hard drive that Joe Blow wants to purchase because it's in his budget range? All of a sudden that $2 (or whatever, I pulled that number out of my butt) driver signing line item starts to add up.
A community-oriented lyrics site
[NOTE: "Ubuntu" is merely an example (and I'm not an Ubuntu dev, nor do I speak for them); just about all Linux people would likely love to have even a fraction of the Windows pirate marketshare.]
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
My problem with requiring signed drivers is that you won't be able to run "beta" versions of drivers to potentially fix problems with the release version. I've had to do this on more than one occasion and I'm not even a regular Windows user. Drivers aren't signed until they are tested and certified by Microsoft, right?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Ok... you are partially correct on the facts and only slightly correct in your conclusion.
As announced thus far, only the x64 builds of Vista will REQUIRE signed drivers. I believe one of the other respondents satisfied the "monopoly/extortion" portion.
Microsoft used to promise that the entire Windows would not be available to pirates... Well, they are getting closer to reality every time.
Rethinking email
If they really have some method of detecting piracy that they think will actually work on pirates (unlike every other protection scheme ever released that only punishes the innocent), why not make it disable the whole bloody OS instead of just the pretty GUI?
Think about it. Microsoft can't afford to seriously crack down on piracy... not with the new Mactels, not when distros like Ubuntu are making such giant strides for Linux noobs everywhere. At the same time, they do want to prevent piracy of their OS from becoming (more) mainstream. Hence, they allow us the ability to pirate their core OS, while blocking all of the glitter. We might not care about the glitter (though I must say I don't understand why everyone here prefers to look at gray on gray all day. Yes, XP on default is Fischer Price, but that's a hell of a lot better on the eyes than gray on gray), but your average consumer does. Your average consumer won't give a shit about the techincal advances of Vista; they'll just want the eye candy. Your average consumer is also the least likely to want to jump ship to something that's harder, less flashy, and/or less compatible with their favorite software.
So, Microsoft is putting the squeeze on those customers they know won't jump ship by leaving out the glitter, thus reducing their incentive to pirate, while simultaneously leaving the door open for the tech-savvy (who are generally much less impressed by glitter) to pirate Vista-sans-glitter, thus reducing their incentive to jump ship to OS X or Linux.
Too bad it's all going to fail miserably. I've got $1000 that says Vista-with-glitter will be pirated within the first month. Any takers?
Ported to every unix under the sun. Can handle an 80000 line text files with syntax high lighting for almost every known language with no noticeable decrease in speed. Quanta chokes on a 1000 line javascript file. Eclipse for me slows to a craw at 1200 lines, taking 2-3 seconds for characters to appear. Nedit is the quickest most efficient editor with a GUI of ever used.
So I can eliminate bloat by pirating the software? That can't be right. Must read article. Yawn.
We're going to leave that up to my good friend Lawyer McShyster.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
There is no software that can't be pirated. With enough time and ingenuity any software will get opened up and passed around for free. All the copies of windows in my home are pirated including XP and I have no issues with patches and updates. I pirate software regularly since i'm too broke to buy it. This little annoyance that MS added will soon be overcome.
"There's no need to fear the Pirates are here!"
(for those that don't get the reference check out Underdog one of the greatest cartoons ever.)
WTF?
I would be more worried about that $20 gameboy usb link cable that some guy made, and sold less than 1000 units of. He probably started the project as a hobby, and once it worked, figured he could share his results with others.
Too bad he couldn't even start programming his usb device driver. Maybe he should go do something useful with his time, like watch a DVD or buy a new game.
I for one welcome our improved piracy countermeasure overlords. People who are savvy enough to download torrents and burn ISOs of MS warez are smart enough to use Linux. The harder MS makes it, the more users will cave and use Linux. Debian, mostly.
When you have hundreds of thousands of computers, you install Windows on one machine... authenticate it, install any software you're going to be using, then create an image that you put on the other 99,999 machines. If you think corporations install Windows by hand on hundreds of thousands of computers, you're sorely mistaken.
"...VeriSign Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate"
These certificates cost $499/year from Verisign, and there are probably other fees involved in getting a PIC. I don't know if Microsoft will allow certificates from other vendors (considering what Verisign charges for a simple SSL certificate and what we've seen them do when they've had exclusive control of a market, they'd better), but no developer who gives away software for free is going to be very appreciative of this.
In any case, that link infers that administrators may still install unsigned drivers. Administrator access should be required to install *any* driver anyway.
Allright, I'm officially confuzed.
Windows is / will be a commercial program. If Microsoft manages to develop a fool-proof system to identify pirated copies / installations, why would they allow those installations to run at all? Why not just set up the system so that Windows, upon identifying itself as pirated, simply uninstalls or refuses to run or whatever?
Conceptually, this is like setting up a car with anti-theft system that disables windshield wipers and bright headlights if car is stolen - but still allows the thief to drive it around.
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
A friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous) works for a very large news distribution and financial company, and they recently went through an *enormous* hassle when Microsoft decided to invalidate the old "volume license" key for XP that they previously used. (As part of the whole new "Windows validation" thing, etc. - they let the old corporate key "expire" when their licensing came up for renewal, and issued them a new one to use instead.)
All of a sudden, thousands of workstations around the globe were reporting errors about being unable to get Windows updates - and you can imagine the amount of work this created for I.T., rolling each and every PC over to use the new key!
I never did hear how it turned out - except I'm pretty sure they were big enough to apply some pressure on MS to re-activate their old key code, given the circumstances.
Guess I'll stick with XP!
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
Signed drivers are about two things:
1. Cutting down the number of Windows device makers to a "more manageable number" -- a Microsoft executive made a public statement saying that.
2. Putting what device makers are left under the legal control of Microsoft.
3. DRM. Your driver does get signed unless you make sure it obeys DRM restrictions, broadcast/copyright flags etc etc. Closely linked with 1 and 2.
Step 1: Create a CA certificate (this can be done with OpenSSL)
Step 2: Install the certificate as a trusted root CA in windows
Step 3: Sign your drivers with your CA
Step 4: Pro--(no, I would hate myself if I perpetuated that cliche)
As long as this is possible (and I imageine it will be), driver and code signing is a GOOD thing! Better security and better stability--exactly what windows needs.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Didn't they try some kind of validation check for Windows Update for XP that is easily circumvented by a javascript line entered into the address bar prior to clicking "express" or "custom"? Pretty sure it was posted on /., but I'm too lazy to look it up. Boingboing was the linked source for the javascript. In any event, that validation check was bypassed in no time. As long as the validation check requires checking something on the end user's PC, can't it just be edited?
Ok, so for everyone that has a machine not vista worthy, all you need to do is pirate the software so it will run on your system.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Xgl/Compiz is still free, which from all appearances, seems better than Aero, if you're into that sort of thing.
I don't think Win2K has any activatation cr@p. And none of this home-version vs pro-version vs other-version, stuff either.
It will run practically everything that XP will run, and does not have that cartoon interface by default. Win2K also takes slightly less resources. I also think Win2K works well with Samba.
My guess is: it will probably be supported by hw/sw vendors for a few more years, at least.
What is this Aero horseshit and can I play Oblivion without it?
- Kevin
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
Jokes aside, this is mostly true. I think this is an atempt to squeeze a little money out, like the genuine advantage, which is client verification only and can be faked. If they wanted to kill piracy they would very easily do it, but this would mean market share drop. People would try then OSX or Linux, and when market share falls for home users, it would fell for professional and corporate users also. So we wait and see, but my prediction is that those who really want to, would enjoy all microsoft goodies in th years to come.
Those hardware requirements are pretty hefty. We'll see how much hype Aero get's from actual users and whether this will be the deciding factor in purchasing the basic of standard versions.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
I believe Microsoft must know from the start this Aero protection is not very secure, and will be (sooner than later) cracked. If not, why wouldn't they apply it to the full operating system?
Just my opinion.
My other post is a First.
Actually that would be corporations raping corporations. Signed drivers have cost to the hardware producers, and if they pass the cost on to the consumer, they are no longer competetive.
If I don't pay for Vista, I don't have to put up with the bloated interface? Somebody give me a torrent!
This will only affect small businesses who license some microsoft software for every computer, and license other microsoft software for one computer then use it on every computer.
Those small businesses will now be forced to pay more than they can afford in order to keep using the microsoft suite of software.
In other words, small businesses will be looking for a cheaper alternative to microsoft titles that "phone home", and imo, certain open source titles are ready for business use.
Hence, the only thing I see this doing is reducing the microsoft market share, which might be a good thing for the world at large, but it will be a bad thing for microsoft.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
Every one of those tactics has a downside. The effect on employee morale is pretty well known by now and I hear the effect on MSFT customers from my business clients every day. So this type of integrity checking doesn't surprise me at all.
The downside is not all of those "pirates" are actually illegal. There are bound to be a few orphans who don't have their original disks or through some other innocent circumstance can't prove they're the rightful owner. They'll get abused for a few more dollars and go away mad. Most will take it and move on, quite a few will carry the grudge and look for an alternative.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
they're effectively forcing everybody to pay them an "extortion fee" in order for other companies to be able to make hardware for users to run their systems. Doesn't this present problems for Microsoft? How can they be allowed to do this, considering their monopoly status?
In defense of MS (something rarely heard around here, including from me), the biggest cause, by far, of instability in Microsoft's recent OS releases is problematic hardware drivers. Antitrust questions aside, I have to think this will help improve the quality and stability of the OS by forcing drivers to be more thoroughly examined and tested.
At least in theory.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
As an avid Linux user, I really couldn't care less what Microsoft does to their customer base. They could charge your left kidney for a copy, in fact, I hope they do because the further Microsoft pushes this envelope, the more people are going to become aware of their options and jump ship.
I'm not saying they should use Linux, or OSX, or Be or any other system, I'm just saying they should use something that's not Windows. Microsoft has killed the hardware standard, they have killed open specifications, they have killed all the things that made software development explode into a massive industry 20 years ago. They made themselves the gatekeepers, the ones you must appease to gain the necessary knowledge and tools to develop for the mainstream and software has suffered as a result.
I, for one, want the good ol' days back. I want the days when I didn't have to pay for SDKs or wade through millions of malformed API calls that follow no logical topology, I want the days when software cost money because somebody sat down and worked hard on it, not because they had to license 20 different IPs to make it.
Do yourself a favor, and don't buy Vista. Your Dell probably can't run it anyway. Windows is so wasteful (Linux is too, but degrees of magnitude less) that my dual-boot laptop can run off battery for a full hour longer when I boot Linux and do the same amount of work. Running idle (even with a finly tuned startup configuration and very few resident applications running: daemon tools, zone alarm, and some inescapable Intel driver console nonsense) Windows requires an amazing 240 MB of memory just to sit there. When I start surfing the web, using GAIM, and whatever else I may need to do, that shoots up to over 600MB, and I'm in the swap. On Linux, while sitting idle (with X running, of course) my idle memory usage is... 14MB. That's right, less memory than my 486 had. When I start using Firefox, Gaim, wireless internet, etc. I shoot up to about 78~150. I can surf the web, chat, and write an OO document all without using the hard drive (once everything is loaded). That doesn't just beat Windows performance, that destroys it. Your computer isn't too slow to run a modern operating system, the operating system is just too fat.
That's not the whole of it either, Linux is getting slimmer. Every day, there are people debugging, trimming, fixing, and refining the code. The kernel gets smaller, things get more efficient, more secure, and the excess is cut away. When I upgrade to a new version of Linux my computer actually gets faster and that has never happened with Windows.
Don't support the forced hardware cycle, don't buy Windows, don't even pirate it.
Also, apologies to everyone for this turning into a rant of sorts, but it really needed to be said.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
(Note - read the whole thing before assuming I went off at the hip on this post. It's stream of consciousness, something I know is rare at /.)
t ions.asp
:P
t ions_final.asp
/., I'm going to stick my own opinion out there:
Or at least, I thought it wasn't going to until I read this list:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_edi
The specific line to look at is "Windows Activation Services". If this is correct, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is going to be about the most pirated version of Windows ever.
The original story I'd heard back when the rumors of seven different versions popped up was that only the basic Business version wouldn't have product activation code built into it - and that it would be lacking hardware Direct3D and OpenGL support, as well as Aero Glass. Since your basic office workstation doesn't need 3d hardware acceleration, (No, CAD/CAM/Maya/whatever is NOT your basic office workstation) and pirates would be more likely to look down on that version as "crippleware" that would keep the amount of piracy down to a dull roar.
From that chart, if it's accurate, it looks like ALL the business versions, as well as Ultimate, are lacking product activation, and since all business versions support Aero, they all have at least Direct3D implemented - no idea if Microsoft will continue to support OpenGL, however.
Then I noticed the little line at the top about how this page was out of date, and there's an updated page. The URL is:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_edi
I did a diff of the two pages... (Currently examining diff)
Nothing too radical, except the licensing line is missing. Hmm. Make of that what you will. Google isn't turning up a whole heck of a lot. Now that I'm looking even further, it looks like "Windows Activation Services" has something to do with IIS 7.0, not product activation.
Since I can't find anything on Google, and this is
All versions of XP except for volume-licensed versions of Business and Enterprise (which is only being released on a volume license deal) will have product activation. The number of corporate users who will actually buy the Ultimate Edition is a small enough fraction (and most likely, will wield enough political power - I.E. CEO types who think it's neat to have all the toys, and can make somebody else do all the gruntwork for them) that product activation isn't going to be a big deal for that version.
So, if you want any of the home features, you're going to be stuck with product activation IMO.
InThane
>While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver
>requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that
>driver rootkit on your machine.
Actually the real reason is to close the equivalent of the 'analog loophole' in software.
The easiest way to bypass DRM, for let's say, copyrighted music, in a highly DRMed system, is to write 'fake' soundcard driver. The driver would capture the unencripted audio in digital form.
You could even write a video card driver to capture video.
This is a zero-sum play by Microsoft. They're doing this to increase Windows revenues because they've sold about all they can sell, so growing the revenue base is getting much harder. But how many of these hackers will actually buy a legitimate copy once they're forced to?
.Net (the original .Net, Passport-based centralized authentication controlled by Microsoft) are two examples of this. I see a danger area here. They could actually HELP increase Linux adoption rates by forcing hackers to stop using Windows. All those thieves out there are surely not going to go legit just to get Aero.
Microsoft has this habit of making bold plans that eventually backfire. Software Assurance and
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Vista BETA 2 runs like a dog. Aero may look pretty, but you'll only see it in slow motion.
Frankly, if you want Vista, get a glass theme for XP and save yourself the expense, plus it'll run 300% faster.
"2) How does Aero differ from numerous attempts at 3D desktops that are already out there? Why will users really miss it?"
The community could come up with a replacement if it was that important. Just look at what we did with Mac OSX.
I'd argue that offloading the graphic generation from the CPU/RAM to a video board and video memory might be a good thing. It could mean a more responsive GUI, less bogged down processor, and a better user experience.
Don't make it 1K and you'll be in business. Take Adobe's offerings for example. 1600-2000USD for Production Studio ( http://www.adobe.com/products/productionstudio/ma
Pricing always leads to pirating. Make it a pain in the @$$ and offer it for $50 for home users, or sell groups of licenses (4 computers per street address) and most people will buy. Make it $500 and people won't. Windows XP is $200USD, Word in itself is $180USD! It's a question of value. These days the OS costs as much if not more than a new PC!
Sell high to enterprise, and low to home and small business. Get people hooked on Office, so that if they go to a place of business, they're pre-trained in it. Make it cheap and attainable for home users and few-man office shops.
I don't think this is it. If an organization is pirating Windows, which is extremely common in businesses, then they'll stand out like a sore thumb as I'm sure the 'basic' version won't be a corporate offering. It's like a call-home. The 'Microsoft Police' come in and will very simply see what computers look crappy and which don't. You know where the licenses are right away. You can't assume a license is there, as you'll see it. As a user in a University, you'll see right away which PCs are legit.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Since when was I going to be "available" to pirates in the first place??? Guess I need to go into hiding before the next Talk Like A Pirate Day...
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Wow, that looks crap. I kept hearing all this hype about it, and thought it was going to be really slick... Hadn't seen a screenshot, though.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Here http://www.bewarethecheese.com/areo.jpg
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
So, since the Aero interface makes Direct3D grab the GPU to draw the windows etc, which then means that no OpenGL windows can be shown inside the Aero desktop, does it follow from this announcement that people using pirated copies of the OS get better out-of-the-box OpenGL support?
You're the one that needs to "grow up".
No one forces you to eat food that hasn't come out of a trashcan, or to live in a real dwelling. So in reality, no one forces you to put up with the insane and opressive practices that are chronicled in works such as Dilbert.
You are always free to rummage through the garbage and live on the street.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This seems to be wise advice for the non-rich.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm sure I'm not the only one who disabled the bubble-gum blue/green motif, so how would this be a detriment?
Here's the deal.
You are ALREADY paying extra on hardware you buy for use with linux for the hardware developers to write Windows drives that you will never use, or for the "bonus" software bundled with various equipment. The cost of signing is insignificant, but WILL probably slow the release of new drivers.
Worse, the manufacturers frequently refuse to release full documentation which would allow Linux developers to write a driver. This is one reason I will never buy ATI video cards. At least nvidia has linux drivers for the common platforms, but they still annoy me by not releasing programming docs.
If the current beta versions of Vista are anything to go by, the signed driver requirment will not be strictly enforced. In the present builds there is an option in the bootloader (F8 during startup), where you can select "Enable Unsigned Drivers" or something like that.
The implementation makes sense - it stops lusers from getting rootkitted by running a bad attachments, yet allows those who know what they are doing to bypass the checks.
Yeah, after all, just look how critical signed drivers have been in preventing rootkits on Linux boxes...
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Because on any given day, how many unsigned nVidia drivers are running on systems?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
So, if Windows detects that it's a stolen copy.... it will check that... and then continue happily to run? Would it not make more sense to have it not run at all, not just the shiny bits noone wants?
I'd take it one step further and change the mouse to an oversized hot pink X with a desktop that says "Liscence key not valid". Anyone seeing that on someone elses computer would know it was stolen and there might be social pressure to pay for what you can steal.
But they don't want that. Microsoft has never really tried to cut off illegal users in all these years, although it could've done so at any point. They were content with that fact that piracy made their products spread and made them a de factor standard.
They cannot afford to actually hurt Windows users, even non-paying ones. The very fact that they're starting to do things like this now has a clear meaning for me: their sales are going down.
Their revenue is starting to take a turn for the worse to the point they have to start tightening the knot. As long as money was coming in thick they could afford to ignore the pirates. They don't ignore them anymore. Think about it. Why not? Dunno, it's just a speculation, but it makes damn good sense.
As for the pink bunny screen, no sane software produced would do that in a million years, for exactly the reasons above. You can be pretty sure that someone you embarass like that will NEVER buy. A MAYBE is better than NEVER. As long as there's a chance in hell of a purchase, they'll let the pirate be, no matter how loud they cry "thief" via BSA and all that.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
WHQL has nothing to do with the new certified drivers in Vista.
The only thing that signing these drivers does is to tell you "Yes, this driver was made by company X and is trusted by MS".
Company X can opt to do WHQL, but is not required to do this.
And WHQL, although a good idea, doesn't work that great either. It only has to follow a few rules. But those drivers can still fuck up your OS.
What power has law where only money rules.
Who allowed that wikipedia guy, Akhristov it seems, to install Vista on my main home computer ?
I'm Alex, I have a P4 2.4C, with a Radeon 9500Pro, Manufacturer and Model Unknown as I assembled it myself, it's clearly my computer !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Where mega corporations really do have the Genuine Advantage. Good luck with that.
One of the main things that pushes young people into the computer business is a desire to tinker around with and even screw up their computers for fun or profit.
Anymore, for the young tinkerer, it's Linux or nothing.
What happened to the days when kids had stacks of floppies labelled DOS 3.3, DOS 6.22, PC-DOS, etc., virtually none of which were legal copies? And did it prevent Microsoft from achieving accendancy? Hardly.
What is Microsoft's plan for when they've poisoned the waters so badly with young developers that no one will be seen near a MS building?
With Apple preparing to stake a claim to part of the Windows market, hardware virtualization and compatibilities layers such as WINE all coming on, Microsoft couldn't make a dumber and more unnecessarily aggressive move.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
So what? More and more it sounds like Vista is just going to be a colossal pain in the ass. I'm perfectly happy with XP. It doesn't everything I want to do, and is stable for me, to boot. When the time comes to upgrade my hardware, I have my XP discs to install it on that. I just don't have that incessant feeling to *want* Vista. When will we see programs that actually REQUIRE Vista? I mean, it may say "recommended", but I'm pretty sure it'll be at least 5 years before that even begins to happen. If I buy a cheapo dell laptop or something, I usually reformat and reinstall the OS anyway. I'm guessing I'd probably go with XP there, too. When the time comes that I *don't* use XP, I'm guessing Ubuntu and the linux scene will be a VERY good alternative (that XGL stuff anyone?), and who knows where the Mac scene will be. I think the whole OS thing is coming to a head, with interoperability of software taking off and virtualization becoming mainstream. I have a feeling Microsoft as an OS company is nearing it's end of growth (if it hasnt' already), and all it will have left is it's Office to stand on. Just my $.02.
That the consumer is going to reap the benefits of all the extra time put into Vista.....
I don't find any need for vista. I don't need all that fancy windows and flying glass to edit video. XP works just fine. Besides, most computers are appliances. How many people waste their time with a $600 toaster when a $16 one works fine.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Now people will really be made to switch. Windows is over-priced and the piracy of Windows actually helps Microsoft because a lot of people get used to the interface, and application at home on their pirated version of Windows which creates demand for the tools and OS at work.
As people won't be able to get Windows for free they'll start adopting other OSs so all-in-all this helps Microsoft fight its own monopoly.
>Yeah, after all, just look how critical signed drivers have been in preventing rootkits on Linux boxes...
t kits%22
Ooh, yeah, amazingly successful: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22linux+roo
Learn more, noob.
So, Microsoft is putting the squeeze on those customers they know won't jump ship by leaving out the glitter, thus reducing their incentive to pirate
Hrm? You mean the consumers who weren't going to pirate anyways?
I mean... We are talking about Joe Sixpack, right? I mean it is kind of pointless to target people for piracy who wouldn't know how to burn an ISO image much less find one on the internet... Or even be able to find a CD key on google?!
I agree. MS is just wasting their time with this.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This will severely impair the independent engineering of new hardware peripherals capable of working with windows, and in addition will cause a major problem for people trying to make hardware emulators like deamon tools.
Uh....you guys do know there are SDKs for Microsoft in which they get copies of the OS before anyone else to develop on...right? People like Dell don't just blindly write drivers for a new OS before even seeing it...
I expect one of two things to happen:
either new antitrust cases are filed, (and promptly thrown out when they realize they CAN get a copy to develop with
or the pc/software market gains barriers which cause stagnation to the point it threatens the viability of the majority perceived "PC" as anything more than a delivery device for major cartel vendors.
I hear that all the time on slashdot....yet....nobody here would have a problem getting a pc without Windows installed on it. I've never bought one that did have it installed.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
removal of choice is not an "upgrade"
Actually the next version of Gaim will remove a lot of the choices that were previously available. Why? To make things easier for users. There were so many choices that it was difficult to find what you wanted.
So, yes, removal of choice can be an upgrade, as long as it is for the benefit of the user. At least with Gaim you can tinker with the source code if you need really badly do need to change something.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
This means that you'll no longer have Windows' ugly "Large Fonts" mode for high-dpi monitors (like those on a laptop that display 1600x1200 in a 14" LCD) - rather, you'll simply tell Windows the DPI of your monitor and it will be able to scale the entire system UI to fit - from icons to text to graphical elements in the GUI. Instead of having to choose between a) everything being really small, b) using a lower, non-native resolution that causes your LCD to become blurry, or c) putting up with "Large Fonts" mode, you will now simply enjoy the same-sized interface but with greater clarity.
This seems like a minor point, but it removes a huge barrier that, in my opinion, has plagued applications since day 1: dependence on pixel size. This is the most important aspect of Aero, and it really is something MS can be proud of if they pull it off. Licensing, pirating, and "activation" issues aside, the Aero interface in Vista will be something that every teenage girl and geek alike will want, in the end. It will make our computing experience just a little bit better.
Check out this video if you want to understand why Aero really is something important: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1146 94
Vector icons: http://www.iconbase.com/iconbase/aero-eps.html
And the biggest cause of problematic hardware drivers is the closed-source nature of Windows.
At least Linux driver authors have access to the kernel source. Even those nasty binary-only abominations are developed with access to the kernel source; so there's at least a chance they'll be stable-ish when used with a kernel similar enough to what the driver author was using.
Even drivers developed entirely by third parties using the "French café" technique benefit from the fact that many people can understand and improve them. I seem to remember that deficiencies in hardware have been revealed through the creation of Linux drivers, but that might have been something else -- apologies if so.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system.
So for about two, maybe three weeks "pirates" won't get Aero but the honest guy can't afford to pay full price never gets it?
Yep, that sounds like the M$ I know and love...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
I don't know about drivers and stuff but currently getting things like a CSP signed by Microsoft is free.
I have always assumed the certification process for drivers is similar. As long as you meet the requirements anyone can get a driver signed. I mean even now drivers have to be signed by Microsoft or it will pop up a dialog about unsigned drivers or whatever. If it doesn't do that when you install your HP printer driver that means HP had to get it signed by Microsoft.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
All these things and more should be the straw that broke the camels back...or the last idiot idea from M$ to break the consumers balls.
Either way they obviously took the wrong path.
Does anyone really care about eye candy? I use XP and I have all "eye candy" shut off, no themes etc.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
WTF are driver developers supposed to do in all this, anyway? How do you get Microsoft to sign or approve a driver that you haven't developed yet? How do you develop it if Microsoft hasn't approved you yet? If you don't have some pre-existing relationship, what do you do?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I see they took a hint from the games industry and - if Aero sucks up resources as badly as XPs "shiny lollipop" default theme - made a step to ensure that those who run an unlicensed copy actually have a more comfortable experience.(1)
(1) in games, this is where the NoCD hacks make the game more enjoyable even to those who bought the original.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cause you know too much McSony can cause high blood pressure and heart disease, not to mention that sluggish feeling.
http://www.connect.com/McD_info.html
Cheesy Movie Night
It should say the 99.9999% of new stuff in the OS won't be available to pirates.
Drivers aren't signed until they are tested and certified by Microsoft, right?
No, this isn't the case. You can sign drivers yourself if you have a code signing cert from Verisign and have registered with MS to get a cert signed by them. The manditory signing is only on x64 versions too.
This means "beta" drivers will be signed by their developers and runnable on Vista. The net effect of the code signing is it just raises the bar a little on who can write drivers for the system, and potentially causes headaches for open source drivers like ext2 and winpcap (which is where I see the main problem).
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
j00 c@Nn0+ cr@x0r 0ur n3\/\/ g3NuiN3 @dv@N+@g3 ch3x0r, \/\/3 @r3 31i+3 j00 @r3 n00bz! ph3@r 0ur 3NcryP+i0N, n0 3y3 c@Ndy ph0r j00 bi+ch3$!
p@y uP, \/\/3 0\/\/N j00!
-bi11 g@+3$
Non-admin users on XP can install device drivers? Anyway, "Note: Even users with administrator privileges cannot load unsigned kernel-mode code on x64-based systems. This applies for any software module that loads in kernel mode, including device drivers, filter drivers, and kernel services." What mode does, say, a network driver run in? Also looks like in order to play DRM'd stuff, you'll need a signed driver.
It will not allow aero to run, but all the botnets will still be able to function, whew, I was worried for a few minutes there, i love getting my spam and virii without having to go and find them.
Ahem... cough... cough...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
You know I, and I suppose many others, familiar with large corporation tactics, have a funny filter for reading articles like that, I see the actual article text, but somehow what I end up reading is along those lines:
"Last time we had some crap in that checked crap on install to ensure you don't have unwanted crap. Now we moved a similar crap on our sites so you can't download our crap without passing through our crap first.
In the new OS, we've tons and tons and tons of wonderful new crap, but that crap will not run unless you pass through our other crap again, which was updated with all sort os of new kinds of crap. Basically we ensure you don't get crap if you don't pay crap. But even if you would pay, you still get all of the crap."
Sorry for the crappy comment.
Sure they can. The cost of piracy is already rolled into the price of legally licensed software. They can't recover development, manufacturing or marketing costs on pirated software so if somebody buys a copy of Windows that was formerly pirated, the entire purchase price of that copy of software is profit.
I went to a shindig on Microsoft's campus while Windows XP was still in beta. There were about 600 people in the room and during the Q&A period on Windows Product Activation I mentioned what I said above and asked the guy if they were going to lower the price of Windows XP since the ~50% of pirated OS were now gonna be legal and if someone purchased a previously pirated copy of Windows they didn't even have to pay development, manufacturing or marketing costs. Those costs were already factored into the copy of the software that *wasn't* pirated ;-)
Insuring everybody pays for Windows would be a huge thing for MS.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Does anyone take M$ press releases seriously anymore? When has M$ implemented a protection or priviledge that wasn't neutralized by crackers in a couple of weeks? And not offering the best part of the OS experience in the consumer package... way to trade upsell revenue for customer respec... oh wait no one respects M$ we just endure them. Damn. My guess... they'll be rushing to offer Aero as a free upgrade after everyone gets upset about it and pirates the pro version.
I like to use 'kate' that comes with KDE...good syntax highlighting....ease of use with mulitple files open, has a terminal built in it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you pirate Windows, they'll prevent you from using ONE OF the parts of the OS that sucks up systems resources like there's no tomorrow.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I am sorry for the off topic, but I must reply to this sig.
Fufubag writes: "I saw a vision that told me The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe."
So, you are saying that 2000 years from now (when this writing is ancient) that this will be empirical evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster actually did create the universe? If you ask me, something had to create the universe (or create something somewhere along the line), but there is absolutely no evidence, empirical or otherwise.
That happened to us because Microsoft had a fight with our parent company. They invalidated our key despite the fact that it was different from our parent company's key. As a result, we put Debian Linux on every computer in the main office just so we could keep business going. We had bought every user in the office a 20G iPod the month before but hadn't yet distributed them to the employees. It was very simple to put Debian on the iPod and get the PC's to boot off of it. It was very easy to connect four iPods to my computer with USB to copy the files to multiple iPods at the same time. I didn't even have to open-up the case on any of the computers. Also, since the user's files and settings were on the iPod, the users were now able to travel from office to office without losing anything. Of course we had an end of shift script that did an rsync back to our server.
That all worked great until the iPods started failing. According to Apple they don't have enough cooling for the harddrive for that type of use since it is mounted in rubber to protect it from shocks. That was annoying, but the iPods did get us through a tough couple of months.
For the other offices since we didn't have as many UNIX guys at them, we ended-up having to buy new copies of Windows for them. I really hated to have to give Microsoft money twice for screwing us over, but we didn't have enough manpower to do anything differently.
As a result of Microsoft's unethical and illegal actions, our CEO of over 20 years was fired due to problems with lost sales, late shipments, and upset customers. It was sad to see a 30 year employee lose his job like that because of Microsoft.
>FTA: With the new operating system, Microsoft is offering plenty of new graphics tricks, including translucent windows
nVidia drivers have been doing this trick in Windows for years. It's been kicking around in Linux for years in various programs and/or window managers. No one seems to care very much about it.>animated flips between open programs
Now there's a great productivity tool.>and "live icons" that show a graphical representation of the file in question.
KDE has done this for years. I'd be happy with a good solid core OS and leave the window manager tricks to the Enlightenment and IceWM fanatics.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
No shit rootkits exist for Linux in general. Show me one example of a video driver based rootkit you fucking tool.
Reminds me of Windows Mobile 5, what my new Axim (now with less features then last years model!) uses. I may be getting the details wrong, but my understanding by default only code with a trusted certificate can be run on it, which is far from cheap and requires constant renewing. This basically locks out freeware from running on the new device. I wonder if this is where we're going for Desktops, only approved developers allowed.
I may be getting a few details wrong since from what I read this is only a major issue on the Smartphones running WM5 where they're locked in to this. The Axim has that "feature" toned down somewhat, but apparently this broke a lot of older applications. Corrections or further information on this appreciated.
I'm sure I'll be forced to upgrade to Vista at some point (although XP serves me quite well right now), but I really couldn't give two shits if it has some wizz-bang new theme because I've been using the classic theme since Windows NT anyway. The "Theme" service is the first thing that's disabled when I install XP.
Drivers aren't signed until they are tested and certified by Microsoft, right?
Wrong.
Your confusing certification with signing. Driver signing is just like signing a webpage or a document. It just ensures that the driver is coming from who it says it is from. It has nothing to do with microsoft. The company simply signs up with Verisign and gets a key and such, and signs their drivers with it. Very easy and inexpensive.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
You maybe right that some pieces of software phone home. But on the other hand I seriously doubt that business critical servers are connected to the net.
No kidding! Like yourself I have been very careful about exposing my PC and (touch wood) have not been hit by a virus for about the same amount of time as yourself. I just bought a brand new Dell and I can't believe the garbage that is installed. It took me an hour just to uninstall and delete the garbage software I did not want! The hackers are not the problem (ok they are), but software companies are just as much of a problem.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
And the biggest cause of problematic hardware drivers is the closed-source nature of Windows.
Well, that will never change. Overall, I would suggest that this new system of signed drivers will probably help the end-users. Of course, that's against the million things that MS does to hurt the end-users, but that's another thing.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It'll make his life a little harder perhaps. I suspect the goal of signing drivers is to enforce tracability and accountability. The CA's will have to work harder to ensure the identity of person who they're issuing certificates to. The owners of certificates will have to ensure the security of the cert and private key. There is no fool-proof system, but I suspect this is just a step in the right direction, just as SPF is for email (it doesn't stop spammers, but restricts them a little, and makes them more tracable through DNS, assuming they haven't hacked it).
second, wasn't there an article on
third, personally, I'm a gamer - whether I have a top of the line system or not (though I don't think nice as they are Athlon 3400 with 1.5 gigs of ram, and a builtin ATI radeon 200xpress counts as top of the line, so I would think it applies more to me than people with top of the line systems) - I dont think I'd want (at first anyway, but my eyes could get used to a purty desktop) an extra feature like a shiny desktop if its gonna suck performance from FEAR or whatnot...
What I'm trying to point out is not that Linux is immune, but that under an OSS system, where you would be much more likely to be running a video driver not written by the manufacturer than under Windows, a video driver based rootkit has still not materialized. At least none that I've ever heard of or can find a reference to on Google.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
It makes sense once you remember those screenshots are essentially geek porn. You'll drool over the pinup, fantasize with sleeping with her, maybe even do so if some miracle gives you the opportunity, but seldom would any geek want to permanently live with the whole reality behind the pretty pictures.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...before somebody cracks it.
I mean, come on. Remember how Windows XP was supposed to phone home and authenticate?
Remember how easily that was cracked with a patch that swapped in files from a no-need-to-authenticate version?
I predict this will be cracked very quickly.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Agreed. I can think of, maybe, 2 or 3 pieces of harware I run that didn't pop the 'warning, your shiz aint signed' warning.
If I can't 'continue anyway' I may not continue at all...
- skinnytie -
I use Kate whenever I'm in a KDE box. I'm mostly sitting in Windows at work, however, due to the copious amounts of Word documentation that comes along with the Consulting racket.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I assume you've never built anything for which you need to write drivers.
The idea of paying for a cert for my TG-16 to serial connector is absurd. Freedoms are being removed.
Granted, they are being removed legally and from a software I choose to use. Legality and right doesn't always imply ideal or freedom.
- skinnytie -
I think this is just another reason that Vista will be a complete failure!
Here is just a few reasons that Vista will fail!
1) Vista will be the first windows version that will truly compete with itself.
When 98 was released not allot of people had PCs. When XP came out, finally the vast majority of people now have computers. So, people already have XP and will be reluctant to upgrade to Vista. XP suites their needs and they will not have to upgrade their computer and re-buy the whole operating system all over again.
2) Vista is a resource hog; needing at least 2GHz+ and 512MB of ram and a DirectX 9 compatible graphic card.
Allot of people have fairly new computers that XP runs with relative speed. They will see no need to upgrade because they'll need to also buy a new computer to be able to run Vista at a usable speed. So Microsoft says 512MB of ram, but that's just the OS, what about when you want to load a program that also needs allot of ram. With the new computers having 3GHz and dual core, running XP is smooth, but Vista is so resource intensive that even the latest computers would slow to a crawl. People have gotten used to their relatively fast computers, but Vista will slow that all down, and people wont upgrade.
3) Vista has a totally redesigned UI
For newbies and computer illiterate people (which is the vast majority of windows users) ANY change in the UI is a BIG frustration. Even if Microsoft says that the UI is an improvement that doesn't matter. People are reluctant to change and Vista is definably a change. Most people have now gotten familiar with XP and now Microsoft wants to change everything on them. Most people will stick with what's familiar and that means XP.
4) Vista is way overpriced and too confusing with 6+ versions.
Who is going to go out and Buy Vista? Not many because theirs are 4 consumer versions and 2 business versions; way to many for people to know what one to get. And on top of that the prices are high compared to XP that has had slight price drops. No, the only way people are going to get Vista is if the computer comes with it.
5) Useless DRM and other restrictive measures.
With Vista cripplingly your resolution of Hi Def DVDs if you don't have a "secure" digital monitor hook up and other "secure" digital path ways; people are going to be really ticked off. And other totally whacked restrictions that I can't remember right now.
6) The Pirated version of Vista will be "cheep" and "fast"
Wow I'm surprised (ok not really) that Vista will disable Aero on pirated copies and the Basic version. That means that pirated will be that way to go to get a really cheep version of Vista that is actually less resource hogging. That will further dissolve any market share that Microsoft wishes to gain by coming out with Vista.
7+) And there's propably even more reasons that XP will be the last windows OS to actually snatch a good percent of the previous windows market share.
The vrms webpage also has a red mark that seems to say you also need a package of Depends.
If this is the case, then hell yes.
- skinnytie -
There's this whole science devoted to understanding what is the optimal combination of colours that would least stress the eyes. It is important for people who stare at the screen for the better part of the day not to screw up their vision. Gray is one of those easy to look at colours.
You forget that almost every Joe Sixpack has his friend Tim Techie who provides advice and DVD/CD-Rs filled with warez. I know I've certainly done my share of spreading pirated copies of XP to the clueless masses...
So, if Microsoft's crazy little scheme actually works, Joe installs pirated Vista and says WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP and demands that Tim put it back the way it was.
RTFA? What's TFA?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Waded thru the thread to find that Aero is a 2d desktop using 3d acceleration. Does this mean at last that OEMs will stop using part of the system ram to provide ram for the graphics card and put a dedicated graphics card in the machines they sell? =D
Manufacturers already submit drivers for WHQL certification that basically do the following:
if (run_by_whql) {
do_stuff_slowly_and_safely ();
} else {
do_stuff_quickly_and_buggily ();
}
I'm not convinced that this will change anything.
Yes, but surely the lack of contrast more than cancels out any advantage gained by using the color gray?
If Windows requires signed drivers, you don't think NVidia or whoever will be smart enough to just start signing their beta drives? They have a certificiate since they are going to sign the final version. You think they'll just give you beta drivers that can't be used at all? Do you also think that when a website is still under construction it can't use https since that requires a certificate?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
The (admittedly not broadly illustrated) point was that if Microsoft actually managed to stamp out all piracy, they would will encourage massive migration to OS X and Linux, thus destroying their monopolistic stranglehold on the operating system market. The profits "lost" (though as you've pointed out, they aren't really lost in any traditional sense of the term) through piracy are nothing compared to the profits they would lose if they were forced to confront real competition. Linux is free and extremely powerful for all those who care to learn it, and OS X is easy, pretty and blows Windows out of the water at everything but 3D gaming, so at this point the only thing keeping Window's massive predominance alive is momentum and Microsoft's monopolistic practices.
Can someone, anyone, please give me some legit reasons why I would want to upgrade to Vista for my home PC? I don't mean this as a joke, some please knee-jerk Microsoft haters don't flood me with jokes. It seems to me that Vista offers me nothing.
Microsoft tried 180 time bombs and those don't stop people. They tried seriel numbers and activation schemes and work arounds came out quickly.Lets see just how long this holds people back. My bet? not very long at all.
Is this a one time activation? Or is it an every time you start the computer kind of thing? If it's one time, is this really that different from the current activation of XP? If it's not, what if a user wanted Aero while not connected to the internet?
I suspect the answers are Yes, No, Not really, and not an issue because answer to #2, but I the article really had no worthwhile information in it.
$5 says the day following it's release, a cracked / oem / VLK licenced copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (crackers don't usually bother with second rate versions FYI Microsoft) is available for download, installs just as easy / easier than the officially released version, and has no incumbrences with any of their craptastic crippling maneuvers.
Remember how halflife 2 and the whole steam thing was supposed to end piracy of that game? It took TWELVE HOURS for sombody to write a steam server emulator and trick the game so it could be copied and played.
The only people that are thwarted by microsoft's anti-piracy measures are people that don't know any better.
Windows! Anti-piracy features now in effect for grandmother's e-mail only machine! All you guys that have been at this for more than 12 seconds, microsoft has news for you all in 2014 when the new version is released, better watch out!
[REQ! Vista Aero Enabler part 05-08/25. Parts missing on my server!]
Suck it M$. And thats from sombody who actually pays for legit copies of Windows XP.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Let's see, Microsoft made its fortune with a computer UI based on a windowing metaphor. But with Aero, that metaphor has mutated. Instead of programs displaying in a "window" they display in little miniature flat-panel displays within the real display. no doubt also a flat panel. The new UI metaphor is a parody of itself. No wonder it isn't really usable. It's truly a joke.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Crap my biggest concern is making it to 2009 without being nuked.
between the taunting and teasing and the general anti-american sentiment out there in the real world it wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that someone tries to smuggle a bomb into the country.
If you think we will stop them, consider the amount of drugs that get smuggled in daily. That once they are inside they can move easily.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Hasta la Vista, baby.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
That's all sorts of libel, guy.
Even worse... I wonder if MS could get away with "If you write a driver for Linux your driver for Windows will be un-signable"
Yes I know I should go get my Tinfoil Hat (tm)
If we get to November 2006 without glassing Iran I'll be overjoyed.
There's got to be some means by which they can install unsigned drivers and test on a variety of configurations without having to acquire a special developers edition of vista for each test station.
There is, but you have to press F8 at each boot to disable driver signing. The setting cannot be saved between boots.
In Soviet Russia, pirates restrict Microsoft.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority.
What about hobbyist hardware makers, such as people involved in amateur radio or in homebrew development for video game consoles? How will they be able to afford $500 per year, for a total of $2500 over the expected 5-year life of Windows Vista?
"Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows and to promote alternative operating systems, such as GNU/Linux and Mac OS.
Interesting strategy...
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
No one gives a shit about enforcing anti-trust laws in the current administration.
This is a technical problem that can be solved in Nov 2006. Help elect a House and/or Senate where the Republicans do not have a majority lock, and things will start to change. Articles of impeachment would be a nice first order of business. The rest will follow suit naturally.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
First they made two versions of the XBox 360 (one with hard drive and one without), and now they're making versions of Vista (with and without Aero). Why would they want to fragment their market like that? As other posters have noted, in the short term, they might make more money, but in the long term, if more people choose to save money and not buy the extra drive or Aero, wouldn't the companies making the software for MS systems delay implementation of features that require Aero or the XBox hard drive? Kind of penny-wise, pound foolish in my opinion.
What would motivate them to exclude customers like that?
A specification called "Trusted Network Connect" has been published on the TrustedComputingGroup.org web site. Implementations of TNC collect "endpoint configuration information", allowing the owner of a network to deny a computer access to the network unless it meets the following requirements:
Dialer programs under TNC are charged with enforcing the integrity of the runtime environment on the computer being connected to the network. Now to answer your question, the integrity checks will often include the following features:
TNC may initially sound benign or even desirable when the network owner is an employer. But imagine when the network is that of a residential Internet service provider, and customers have to pay extra per month to get some of the QOS changed or to unblock specific ports. Once almost all computers still in operation have a working TPM (again, by 2015), both the local cable company and the local telephone company are likely to see TNC as a cash cow for their residential Internet access customers. TNC would let them advertise anti-malware, anti-spam, parental control, and helping in the fight against terrorism and child pornography. They're likely to deny you an IP address unless your machine is "trusted". Those 2 percent or fewer customers using a computer without a TPM would just be considered collateral damage who can just go back to dial-up.
Fact, MS already views non-windows OS on x86 as piracy.
Fact, MS views every PC sold as "theirs" they have finally settled on the Motherboard as the core "computer" in recent licensing clarifications.
Fact, the new DRM specs for WMA, HD DVD, etc all require certified hardware & OS combinations.
Final Fact, MS is trying to "grow" their OS sales when they're already a monopoly.
There's only several ways they can do this, all bad for slashdotters. White box accounts for almost 20% of the PC market still. That's local shops and newegg sales roughly. I see MS as cutting out the "grey" OEM license market all together. I could see MS taking the "basic" version of windows to Asus, Gigabyte, Tyan, etc and forcing them to bundle it with all their motherboards [for a fee of course] or be called "pirates". It would probably be a condition of getting the equipment certified for all the DRM. The biggest market of "pirates" are whiteboxers and resold used hardware, this makes sure every Mobo leaves the line gauranteed to have a MS OS. If makers don't use the MS option then you and I will never be able to buy "full" windows for the hardware. Hence, OSS will be severely hampered because windows will finally be forced on all mobos off the line! I can't see MS saying you "can't" run linux, but could see them forcing the Mobo makers to bundle a copy with every piece as "piracy prevention".
with all the fuss about late shipping and need for more profit, MS is setting us up for something? I think the "switch" to do this already exists in XP but they're waiting for Vista to "flip" it then mop up XP a little while later.
Actually, the pork lobby might object on the grounds that you're defamating their product. You might have a lawsuit on your hands, like when the beef lobby sued Oprah.
It would be evidence in favor of it, but the real question is how much evidence there would be at that time promoting the FSM version of God. In a looser sense, the FSM story corroborates the other stories of A God. All the stories of God share elements that corroborate each other, and some that don't. Evidence for something does not mean that that something actually exists. Strictly speaking, FSM writings are evidence that the FSM exists right now, just not very weighty evidence. Simplistic equation: Evidence = variety of documentation * net intelligence of adherents * independence of discovery
Bill Gates might like that but RMS would not. Freedom is about your ability to use your computer, change and share your code as you please, not price. As IBM and others are reaping billions of dollars, we can say that the market is rewarding free software and those who know how to use it.
The whole M$ party line is bullshit. They would like you to think the only way to make money is to give up your freedom and that they are the only people who can run your computer. Part of that freedom is to hire who you want to fix your problems. The only thing Bill hates more than losing a sale is someone else making one. As features, available in other OS's, fall off Vista It should be obvious by now that many other groups are making better software to run your computer. Non free sucks that way, so put your money where it will do you some good for a change.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What's the deal with the eyecandy that I can't achieve using Windowblinds? Is it really worth a $400 graphics card? I have a new mac-using friend who was going on and on about all the themes...I was just like "oh yeah, I can do that too with Windowblinds!"
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Please explain to me how having Aero disabled is a bad thing? Currently, I use XP with the old "Classic" theme because I can't stand the eye-candy-crap that's in the current OS...
As I now understand, there will be the following versions for Windows Vistaf ault.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/versions/de
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Business - Pirated Aero Disabled
Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows Vista Enterprise - Pirated Aero Disabled
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Home Premium - Pirated Aero Disabled
Windows Vista Ultimate
Windows Vista - Pirated Aero Disabled
Windows Vista Home Basic - Authentic Aero Disabled
and then there are other third party versions like,
Windows Vista Business - Cracked Aero Enabled
and so forth.
Does this mean that Microsoft wants people to start trading pirated copies of Linux? Oh wait...
Step 2: Install the certificate as a trusted root CA in windows
And if the operating system uses separate sets of trusted root certificates for SSL and for driver signing and fails to allow you to modify the list of trusted root certificates for driver signing, then what?
Try "./progname" next time, or modify your path to include /home/username/bin if you need programs to run and you are not root. Be sure to "chmod u+x progname" first. Works great if you like to play with compilers.
And all of a sudden, you can work perfectly well again, with the occasional paste of an error from /var/log/syslog into Google
I'm glad you feel that way but things have gotten much easier than that if you use the right distribution. The average user no longer sees those errors with distributions like Mepis. The average user won't touch the command line again. When things don't work, there's more than enough local help but the local Windoze skill base is going away. RTFM is and always will be for the few people who actually care. In the free software world, there is a manual and it works. The non free world is far more frustrating and people are leaving it. I've given Mepis to plenty of people who used it and never read a man page.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The company simply signs up with Verisign and gets a key and such, and signs their drivers with it. Very easy and inexpensive.
If I am selling very low volume, then how do I come up with the 500 USD per year?
is make the pirated copy use MORE resources! Maybe make it so that the pirated copy farms out CPU cycles as well as collects consumer info and displays ads.
Most Windows pirate are people who don't want to give M$ monet, but are too slackey to get into Linux. One reason Windoze and Office became so dominant is the complete lack of copy protection on M$ products for years and years. Maybe this will help wean people away from M$ and help to further erode their market share.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
That certificate costs several thousand dollars. There will likely be additional fees from Microsoft.
What this means is that low-volume hardware becomes instantly more expensive, and amateur driver developers are locked out. You won't even be loading a test driver into your system without getting it signed. That should make driver dev a whole lot of fun.
What do you get out of this? Why, DRM, and nothing else, of course.
This is yet another reason that I *must* avoid Vista in my organization. Some of the software that is critical here uses unsigned drivers. Some hardware is out of production, and the latest driver is years old. I'm not throwing out my infrastructure just because Microsoft decided to sleep with Hollywood; I'll be throwing out Microsoft, because it's far less expensive to do.
I've got $1000 that says Vista-with-glitter will be pirated within the first month.
:-)
You should know now that work like this costs about $13-14,000.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No bet from me. Just want to mention that I've always suspected these sea changes from Microsoft (like product activation being introduced in XP) are focus grouped to death and they have a pretty good idea what the impact will be. Course the whole Software Assurance License 6 (or whatever) didn't quite work out as planned (it was delayed and delayed because the customers just did not want them) but I'm pretty sure that, just like New Coke, it tested well. As for "No Aero For You Mr. Pirate," I think it doesn't really matter -- Microsoft is telling the pirates that they'll have to do without in the future just as they are doing without today. That's a threat?
Pirates are good for companies large enough to survive them. If Microsoft, Adobe, etc. could absolutley prevent anyone from ever pirating their software, there would be a much larger market for shareware and smaller competitors. Eventually, small businesses would be using StarOffice and Gimp, and as support grew, they would mature into enterprise editions. Pirates keep the little guys at bay. Microsoft is thanking them by allowing to continue to pirate the 'non-shiney' version of Windows, which in turn will help keep Liunx in the realm of the hobbiests.
Nothing is completely pirate proof. That's like saying a "secure" computer. You can get close.... and might stop 99.99999%, but there will be someone who gets around it. There's plenty of good responses above questioning why MS would just turn off the GUI, and I think they're spot on. Make it ugly for the people that don't care that much about the piracy, just want a nice looking OS, and they'll cave.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Is Apple/Steve Jobs paying attention? More than ever, we need true competition in the OS Market. Until X86 users can install OSX on the hardware of their choice, this is not going to happen. I wish Linux Desktop was the answer, but let's face it, Apple has the experience and polish to be a true contender if they would get away from this silly hardware notion they love so much. Linux is still in it's infant years.
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!
Careful there - the XP theming engine was already years -behind- Windowblinds' engine when it was released.
Guess I'll stick with XP!
:-)
Wow. After sticking with Windows 2000 for so long, it made a weird little echo in my brain to hear someone say that.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
"rather, you'll simply tell Windows the DPI of your monitor and it will be able to scale the entire system UI to fit - from icons to text to graphical elements in the GUI."
Isn't this pretty much what X Windows and OSF/Motif and Display PostScript and so forth were doing in the early 1990s?
Why on earth should that require any more graphics processing power than is available in the humblest modern CPU?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Perhaps they will require a dongle for activation. While I have no doubt that would eventually be cracked, it often takes a lot longer for dongle cracks than regular ones (at least from what I have seen). I believe it took 6 months for the latest Cubase to be cracked and even then it didn't work correctly.
I would think that is a feature. Hell, under XP I turn off the XP theme.
That's the big goocher for me, docs I'm switching back and forth between a few consultants. I might set this up to dual boot again once I reformat. (I'm either running into a hardware failure or some heinous DRM-type thing - I can only read data discs in my DVD-R now. . . all music discs/DVD show up as just plain blank. Time to reformat!)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If I were a MS manager, the only thing I would care about, would be to do everything possible to continue squeezing OEMs to preload my product, so that users would never have to face the choice of whether to buy my product or not. (DO NOT leave it to the market!)
This strategy is the only reason Microsoft is still around today, and in fact it has led to them thriving quite nicely. Protect the golden goose at all cost, because it's the only thing that matters.
The only other thing I can think of to increase Windows sales, would be for Windows to somehow damage hardware and reduce the lifetime of the machine, so that users would upgrade hardware more often -- thus buying new Windows preloads. Maybe send a memo to the OS guys to never idle the CPU, and instead always run it as hot as possible. Seek the hard drive when it's otherwise not being used. That sort of thing. This would generate a lot more revenue than worrying about piracy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As long as I (that is I ment to say an anonymous friend of mine) can run all the applications that need windows why would I care about aero. Will newer apps refuse to work without it or something?
though I must say I don't understand why everyone here prefers to look at gray on gray all day
Psst. Hey.
Right click on the Desktop, click on Properties. Go to the Appearance tab, click Advanced, and select 3D Objects.
You can change the color! Even you can change the color!
Wikipedia has an article titled "Development of Windows Vista" that summarizes and gives a timeline of the Longhorn/Vista builds from 2002-present.
A much better source for current Vista beta screenshots is Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows Build 5342 (3/24/06) Screenshot Gallery.
I'd like to think the GP made an honest mistake when he linked to 2-year-old Longhorn pre-beta screenshots to illustrate how lousy Vista is supposedly going to look. It looks suspiciously like he might be trolling, though.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
What happens when the first Vista worm comes around and:
a) Steals your legit registration number
b) Overwrites it with a pirated/blacklisted number
If companies use software that require Aero, that's effectively a Denial of Service attack.
What does Microsoft does in that case? Do you publish a tool to re-enter a serial number and re-issue serials?
This is tricky bussiness they're getting into.
"The more you [micro$oft] tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers." /* meh, I won't be using it until about 3-5 years after it is standard on all PCs. Hopefully, linux will be more than usable by then...or I can afford a Mac. */
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Pirated versions of Windows will run faster than legitimate versions then.
You've been running windows for 8 years with no anti-virus software and you've not gotten a virus in that time? Yeah, nice story but slightly unbelievable.
Meh.
If this is really about driver quality, Microsoft will include a way that advanced users can allow unsigned drivers to be used regularly. There's no reason not to unless they want to tax driver makers or block open source drivers (or both).
You, Sir...have made my day. =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
All this talk of "aero" and "pirates"...
Won't somebody please think of the children?!?!
Steven
Ok, I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this in one way or another, but it's the honest truth. I've never once paid good money for a Microsoft product. Not an OS, not an app. Never. Not even THOUGHT about it. I've PURCHASED the RIGHT to use exactly TWO operating systems in my life. One was MacOS/9, and the other was the Beta of MacOS/X. Those happened when I purchased the clamshell graphite iBook, and I was happy with all of my Apple purchases. Still am...
These days... I no longer have a Mac, unfortunately.... So, I use Ubuntu instead on my laptop... Wonderfully great Linux distro... Those guys sure know what I like to see in a free OS!
Incidentally... My 5G/iPod/60GB Video works wonderfully with Ubuntu and the right apps... Long Live Apple! (and the iPod too)
-Phyre
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thom
Just because you can easily connect a user's copy of your software to your servers doesn't mean you should.
It's for security, not anti-piracy, wink wink nudge nudge.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We're at the peak of the windowing environment. We can make the windows look as pretty as we want but it's not going to change how we work with our applications. And hence any new display of those windows will eventually wear off and we'll feel the same about working with our computers that we did 10 years ago.
Microsoft can't afford to seriously crack down on piracy... not with the new Mactels, not when distros like Ubuntu are making such giant strides for Linux noobs everywhere. At the same time, they do want to prevent piracy of their OS from becoming (more) mainstream.
As an indirect stockholder of Microsoft (I own some S&P 500 index funds) I'm hearing that Microsoft has the technology to detect pirated copies of Windows but is choosing to not disable those copies? Surely some large percentage of those disabled would go out and buy a copy thereby increasing Microsoft's revenue.
Don't the company officers have an obligation to maximize shareholder value? Choosing to not crack down on piracy is going to have a detrimental near-term financial impact. Wall Street doesn't care about the 5-year impact.
Plus as a linux advocate, well, bonus.
Of course, Microsoft has its agents reading Slashdot for ideas (yeah, you Fred), so expect that the final version of Vista won't include this feature at all.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You mean we should give up the dreams about flexible hardware, about PCI-X cards built around a huge FPGA with a simple bootloader, cards with software-defined functionality? You mean we should give up homemade hardware, we should forget about open-source PCI cards with opencore.org firmware inside, we should hand over the remains of hardware designing into the hands of megacorps with projected sales of hundreds of thousands, neglecting the single-of-a-kind makezine.com grade projects? You mean special cards for data acquisition or signal processing custom-designed for university research projects should be the past? Do you talk also about drivers for USB devices? If so, are you willing to accept you are affecting a large number of microcontroller developers, as more and more off-the-shelf chips contain built-in USB? Do you want to say that growing up means giving up, that makers should shut up and become consumers, that R&D does not belong to garages but only to megacorporate labs? Are you aware there are things beyond market and sales?
Everything can be hacked. If it is a Turing-complete machine, it can be hacked. It may take time, it may be tedious, it may be illegal, but it can be done, and given sufficient number of properly motivated (eg. pissed) people, it also will be done.
But we used some proprietary stuff of our own [as well as the CECOM schema/guidelines which we'd also contributed serious parts of] a java.jar CLI parser, even IE for quick 'unofficial' visual XML 'parsing' of deeply-nested stuff, and TextPad.
We probably added a plugin, or two, of our own design, but, regardless, when I'm on Windows and need a text editor, TextPad is it, always. I was running it on a 6-yr old Compaq with NT 4.0 in an office with new boxes and XP, Win2k, 98, and whatever, and TextPad just rocked on the old gear. My favorite Windows app.
On the Mac it's BBEdit, as a rule, but I'll fire up jEdit (which I also used at the SGML gig until I used TextPad for 10 minutes), TextMate, the 'other' JEdit, whatever. But back in Wintel land it's no contest.
yeah yeah ... I know ... shameless plug ... Offtopic, etc.
Y'know what? I know from experience that pirated copies of XP SP2 Corporate can fool the Genuine Advantage tool. So... Yeah. That's not going to stop much.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Looks like they should just give up and go home. It's never going to look good.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
already cracked
There is a reason that Windows 2000 does not have a home edition. It is the same reason that Windows NT does not have a home version. Another "Home" operating system was available and current durring the same time frame. Namely, Windows ME (95 and 98 durring the NT reign).
Windows 2000 was never intended to be used as a home Opperating system. It just works a whole lot better than ME ever could. Consequently, you cannot upgrade from "Windows 2000 Pro" to "Windows XP Home". You can only upgrade from one "Pro" system to another.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
This means I don't have to turn it off??!
"and it really is something MS can be proud of if they pull it off"
Why! Microsoft only has caught on. The only thing they can be proud if is there marketing department selling us stuff "cool and new" which the competition had for 10 years.
Martin
http://www.kde-look.org/
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Thanks that is a great little utility...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Microsoft made the Genuine Advantage check optional at first, but it is now required for windows XP. They'll just be continuing the tradition with Vista which isn't a big surprise. What I wonder is if they'll leave it easily crackable like today's WGA check.
As a side note, I recently had an invalid WGA check on a machine I was working on. I noticed on the page that Microsoft will now sell you a valid key to make your pirated version of Windows legitimate. The problem with this is that buying a valid key for your pirated windows will not guarantee that you didn't install a system with a trojan or rootkit already on it. Since they're only selling license, you'll get no media to do a clean install. Bleh.
Please, tell me you are just trying to be funny. I would rather admit I am an idiot for not realizing a joke than believe you honestly mean that. Vista? Oh, you honestly don't know, do you Here, you need all the help you can get. http://lobby4linux.com/WordPress/?p=88 and http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/26/msft_tightens _the_tr.html
If you still insist on using Microsoft Operating Systems after knowing this, then you have a home waiting for you in Cuba.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
After all nobody ever cracked that.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You don't even have to guess. Apple has been doing this in OS X since version 10.2, which was introduced 17 July, 2002 - that's four years ago, for those scoring at home.
you had me at #!