Slashdot Mirror
Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
David Gerard writes "Security researcher Peter Gutmann has released A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, a detailed explanation of just what the protected-content paths in Windows Vista mean to you the consumer: increased hardware cost and even less OS robustness. 'This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry ... The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.'"
But, but, but... what about the high cost of retraining everyone to use all these new weird applications that don't make as much sense as Windows applications!!!? What about the steep learning curve since Linux is just inherently harder to use!!!? What about the fact that when the user tries to hit some valid work related site that needs to access media like Powerpoint, Flash 9 and higher, Windows Media Video, and the like that they won't be able to or will have a reduced quality end-user experience compared to MS Windows??? I've seen the Xine plug-in for Firefox and it doesn't work right. Instead of embedding the content in the browser as it should it pops open a new window and only about 20% of the time does the content actually play!! What about the fact that unless you've got a few gurus on your staff, when there's a problem there's NO ONE to go to for support once the problem is out of your league? Forums? HAH! Yeah, you've got a down critical situation with your users and you're going to fart away valuable time on forums where you may or may not get an answer in a day? A week? A month? A year? Never? The only answer if to get Windows Vista because it was built for real work and not for geeks with no life. Got that?
[DISCLAIMER: The poster called 'eno2001' does not believe in what he stated above at all and is merely parodying the typical lies and misconceptions about GNU/Linux that come from the anti-Linux crowd. The poster called 'eno2001' expects many good responses to the false arguments presented above from the pro-Linux community. All anti-linux sentiments will be laughed at unless you're really good at what you do. The 'eno2001' has spoken.]
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Not true.
We don't have to look too far into the past to see that not every Microsoft OS product has been a raging success. *cough* *cough* Windows ME
Happy Windows ME users were few and far between in my experience. Not having native USB support as well as having a host of stability issues that were hard to debug, etc. few people upgraded to it or quickly upgraded away from it when XP became wildly available.
I realize that the document linked to is written with what seems to be an almost inflammatory bias, it does sound that the Vista Content Protection is a move in the wrong direction for the content publishing industry and lawyers rather than the consumers.
Not even Microsoft is immune to the forces of the market. They do have dominance in a field where migrations away from a product are often expensive and time consuming but, at the very least, if they produce a crap product, people will not upgrade to it.
People making new purchases are much freer to choose from a competitor that may not have the same problems.
I think the point was more on the lines of, if you want to play blu-ray discs all you need to do is buy a blu-ray player.
But in reality that $2000 LCD monitor you have isn't going to help because it can't tell the video card that its a protected device, well you need to go buy a new monitor.
Wait that $500 video card can't detect trusted monitors, better go buy a new card that can.
Oh yeah, and that all digital surround sound system, well it isn't going to work at all so you need to go buy an analog one.
We can't force them to make the right choice NOW, because they won't make it. They'll provide zero content.
Not true. The content cabal claimed that without a broadcast flag, their government-mandated efforts to switch to digital broadcast HDTV would be tantamount to suicide, and they threatened to obstruct the production of content in HD until such a flag was passed. Here we are, three years after the FCC first tried to implement the broadcast flag by providential decree, and we have a bevy of digital broadcast high-definition programming with no broadcast flag.
The reason the content cabal will never provide "zero content" is because there's too much money to be made even without DRM. The only reason they want DRM is because it provides them with additional control over the content that they sell to us that goes beyond copyright and piracy prevention. It's the same reason they have things like User Operation Prohibited and Region Codes in the DVD spec. Neither of those forms of DRM have anything to do with preventing piracy. UOP is used to force-feed advertising (and the ubiquitously-ignored FBI warning) to the paying customer, and region codes are used to exploit worldwide market arbitrage.
They are fighting tooth and nail today to get DRM everywhere they can, because they know that once the technological dust settles and the standards that we'll be using for the next 20 years mature, if it doesn't have DRM in it, it never will in any meaningful sense.