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Vista Security The 'Longest Suicide Note in History'?
rar42 writes "The Inquirer is reporting on an analysis of Vista by Peter Gutmann — a medical imaging specialist. This isn't the usual anti-Microsoft story — just a professional looking at what is going to happen to his computer if it is upgraded to Microsoft Vista. From the article: 'Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost,' says Gutmann."
From TFA:
At first, I shared some cognitive dissonance with Gutman; China, however, is governed by Chinese and for Chinese: they're allowed to act in their own best interests.
The U.S., on the other hand, is beholden to parasites and corporations; and compelled into an unnecessary decline.
You're not supposed to use a consumer grade OS for mission critical apps anyway. So if you went with a vendor that builds its apps on such an OS, then you are at fault.
In this case, dupes are a good thing.
This attack on your freedoms needs to become widely known.
If they dupe this every other day until next June, it is good.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
We sure know the priority isn't security either
In fact, if they only wasted the half of the time they wasted in DRM in security improvements...
I mean, if you read the DRM protection work...they completely redid everything that could break DRM, they break compatibility, they're even planning systems that need to re-do the hardware to require encryption on the *system*bus* just to keep hardware hackers from stealing contents at that place and hence making the DRM useless.....
If they had wasted all those efforts in improving security...vista would be the most secure consumer os available
...but from the PR standpoint, it's a WIN. I'm all for discouraging Windows use, but I'm also one for personal
choice. And if it means someone has to give people crutches in the short-term to score points in the long run
so be it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The message is clear. They believe their monopoly can be best maintained by catering to producers, rather than to consumers. Consumer choice is not driving that market.
Consumer choice is not driving that market.
Consumer choice never drives the market in a monopoly situation. You get what I feel like producing, and you pay what I feel like charging. If you don't like it, tough.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If your Sun system has been up 2+ years it is at least 3 chip generations old and comparing that to your new Linux box is unfair. Try running Linux on a SUN Quad Opteron and I bet you'll find it kicks ass. They have some awesome benchmarks with Solaris 10 x86 and Linux on the Opterons.
The world never had any entertainment before the dawn of DRM & copyright.
[sarcasm off]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
use Vista, but not DRM content...
Is there anything limiting the use of high quality, non-DRM'd media?
Mainly, I think it's a question of complance with laws like the DMCA, and not getting sued. if the RIAA sues hundreds/thousands of individuals for large amounts of money, do you think MS wants to have to defend a case that they 'aided' copyright violations?
I find it hard to, in the same breath, fault Microsoft for violation of the law for extending their markets, and fault them for not disreguarding the laws reguarding others IP.
Imagine what would happen to the market for iTunes purchases if Windows had the built in ability to crack iTunes content protection...
I don't know why Microsoft is bending over for the media companies.
They're not. Microsoft has a monopoly. They can tell anyone to get lost.
But "compliance" with "requirements" of the RIAA and MPAA is perfect cover for their real game plan, which is to eliminate Open Source (Linux, etc). If Microsoft simply pressured hardware manufacturers (video cards etc) never to release specs, and also to spend billions making it impossible to reverse-engineer their programming specs, just to stop programmers from developing Linux drivers, they'd lose an antitrust action in court.
But by wrapping the plan up in the excuse that it's to meet RIAA and MPAA requirements, Microsoft has a perfect defense.
"The technology in Vista also doesn't PREVENT you from doing anything, it has the 'requirements' so that HDCP content CAN BE PLAYED, something NO OTHER OS OFFERS!! It takes away NOTHING..."
Whoa, wait a second...
From the Wikipedia page on HDCP:
"HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players allow content providers to set an Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag that will only output full-resolution digital signals using HDCP. If such a player is connected to a non-HDCP-enabled television set and the content is flagged, the player will output a downsampled 480p signal."
That sounds like it's taking away quite a lot. That sounds like it's making it so all of your HDCP-"protected" videos can only be watched at a maximum resolution of 640x480. Even worse, "downsampled" pretty much means "scaled down using some cheap commodity chip that pixelates the crap out of your video".
Were you actually being serious when you were trying to make it seem like HDCP is a feature in Vista actually beneficial to users in any manner at all? Buying HDCP-"enabled" products is just paying up your protection money so you can watch your legally purchased videos at the resolution you paid for.
In fact, buying Vista or other HDCP-enabled products makes it that much easier for companies to prevent you from doing what you want with the media you spend your hard-earned cash on. Hey, it's your choice if you want to maintain the idea that DRM is a good thing, but somehow I have a feeling you're not going to feel so good in the end when you're locked into such crippled technology.
"8 year old stuff still compiles mostly, its fluid."
./configure script changed and I might begin to see your point. But I doubt your argument holds true for enough pieces of FOSS software to be truly relevant.
Uhm, so is Linux the bedrock of computing or is it the agile warrior able to adapt to its changing foes? I'm a bit confused.
I don't know what 8 year old code you think would still compile against todays Linux. Between major changes from the pre 2.0 kernel days to now I can think of plenty of code that would break.
And then you've got your personal best friend in the world, a new version of glibc just around the corner to break things once in a while, but thats not Linux per se since Linux is just a kernel. But its all of the FOSS/FSF software that makes a Linux DISTRO.
Now show me a piece of 8 year old code that will compile on a current distro without barfing or having its
Don't need to borrow a Mac, I own four (one of which, due to a careless incident involving irreplacable single-malt scotch, is defunct). So now you're wondering, "Dude, you've got... Macs... up the wazoo... whyyyyy?"
The reason is, building a music workstation is a massive money and time investment. Money, because buying the proper cabling, software and gizmos is expensive. Time, because learning how to use that equipment properly doesn't happen overnight.
Since I really just do music production for a hobby (and the occasional vanity CD), that means I invest in new software and hardware once every, oh, ten or twelve years.
We're in year 6 for the old system.
Because of the need for an entire industry to work together, audio interfaces change even less often than that. MIDI is still the only way to get control data to and from legacy equipment, and is thus a required portion of any setup. S/PDIF will be around for a long time because it's more than good enough for pro recording quality and it's a standard.
What's ironic is that DirectX had become such a terrific multimedia I/O system that Windows was becoming a much more capable system for music development than Mac (and it pains me to admit that). And both are light years beyond what Linux can do. Good LORD is sound ever a mess under Linux.
So the point is not just that I won't be buying Vista to replace XP on my music machine anytime soon; the point is that 4 years from now, when it comes time to replace my existing music machine, I will be effectively locked out of any Windows-based solution.
Of course, a lot can happen in 4 years. Maybe Microsoft will realize their error and un-gimp their OS by then. Maybe Linux will have a sound architecture w... I can't even finish that sentence, let's stick to reality. Yeah, the next machine pretty much has to be an Apple, provided Apple doesn't do anything goofy like this.
The issue isn't the ability to play HD content, it's that the author believes Vista's DRM-centric design threaten the viability of Vista itself. The numerous interlocking DRM measures impose design restrictions on everything from device drivers to circuit board layout. Versioning requirements will prevent device manufacturers from using generic approaches to anything. Small glitches that occur routinely will set off threat flags that will abruptly cause entire devices and subsystems (including motherboards) to either stop working or switch to minimally functional modes. (That was the source of the medical imaging comments.)
I think the author's general point is that the DRM that saturates Vista will cause so many things to break, that everybody from end users to hardware and software vendors will find Vista to be more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. In my opinion, some good might ultimately come from this. The general public was warned about the content industry running Congress, but it shrugged off Intellectual Property activists as "pirates" or socialists, and just sat there while the RIAA and MPAA literally wrote legislation. Tangible inconveniences, perhaps even large-scale disasters, will get people's attention where discussions of the philosophy of copyrights and patents did not.