The problem was in approaching any carrier at all. What they should have done is make the phone available both in a fully paid non-lockable version, as well as offer to sell it through any carrier that wants to buy it up front in exchange for fleecing their customers with evil time period contracts.
Also, how is harping on a 2-year contract even a valid point? Almost ALL people sign up for two-year contracts to get the discount on their cell phone.
Outside of USA, Inc., that's not the case. In the USA, most people have these N-year contracts because that's usually the only option available. I'd rather buy my phone up front, fully paid, and get competitive monthly rates from each of the carriers. They should be competing on their rates and quality of service, rather than what phone they can advertise. I don't want to be limited to replacing my phone in lock-step with term contracts. And I don't want to be giving providers or manufacturers private info like SSN (which they require if they are advancing credit, which is what a discount phone really is). And besides, when you work out the pricing of getting a discount phone through a carrier, you end up getting raped on the deal. Almost ALL people never look close enough to realize that.
Yeah, I know some people are poor enough that they can only afford a phone paid for via one of these discount plans, or worse, get stuck with the pre-paid phone plans at triple phone call rates and time-expired balances that vanish if they don't refill on time. That's in part why these people are still as poor as they are, because they get economically raped by big corporations that know they can get away with it. I have the money to afford buying dozens of iPhones up front. I'd look at buying one as an "investment" in myself, keeping the money over the long term that would otherwise end up in excessive amounts in the hands of big corporations.
Sure, I am interested. This news indicates a minor step towards making the iPhone viable for me.
No, I don't "want" anyone to do anything, other than know that plans have been released for iPhone.
You will let us know when the iPhone is finally made available unlocked so that we can use it with any carrier of choice, and when plans are available with no time periods for those who buy the whole phone up front, and when Apple finally releases the codes to allow us to develop and deploy our own applications, right? Be sure to let your buddy Steve know that we are waiting.
... but the basic sampling of the analogue original is not one of them.
Well, actually, it is, at least as carried out by CD makers. With only 16 bits of resolution... and that's only for the parts at full volume without anything else at the same time... there are some aliasing effects. In reality, fewer bits get used because most of the time the full volume is not present. And when things get quieter, the quality gets worse because you're now down in the 8 bits or less range.
In theory, 44.1 kHz sampling is good enough, given enough bits, and the proper encoders and decoders used. But this design was a compromise at the time (done a few years before the first CDs even showed up) due to the limited capacity.
Given today's ability to store bits for high definition video, we could go with an even higher sampling rate and even more bits (I'd choose 192 kHz with 32 bits sampling per channel). That can then be compressed using a lossless algorithm like FLAC. It would likely fit fine on a DVD. There would certainly be an excess in the sampling from the point of view of theory. But you'd need it to cover up the way big corporations always try to cut costs by degrading the quality (as opposed to cutting executive salaries and bonuses and golf course memberships).
This woman should just leave it alone, she already caught a break with the charges being dropped.
OK, then you pay her legal bills and compensate her for her loss of time. But that alone won't be enough to get the RIAA (or MPAA when it's their turn) to realize they need to be sure they have real evidence before pursuing anyone else in the future. They need to have a genuine fear of the cost of losing cases where they didn't really have a cause to sue.
By the way, the article is not about AT&T. It's about the Apple iPhone.
However, the Apple iPhone is tied to AT&T. One has to sign 2 years of their life away to a crappy phone company to be able to use an Apple iPhone. This was a decision by Apple (and probably Steve Jobs) to do this instead of making it available as an open unlocked phone that could be used by all providers. That's as much an Apple issue as anything.
Reducing power demand is easy. I've already done this in one server facility. Just change the voltage being fed to the computers with dual voltage or wide voltage range switching power supplies from 120 volts to 208 or 240 volts. The power supplies will on average use about 3% less power. Additionally, because the total current being used is less, the heating losses in the wiring leading to the computers will be significantly reduced (although it is usually only 1% to 2% of the total power demand). In the case of 3 phase power systems, a substantial current will be present on neutrals, causing a lot more loss (and in some cases a potential fire hazard). By connecting computers between phases in 208Y/120 volt power systems (line to line instead of line to neutral), the accumulation of currents on the neutrals will be eliminated. The currents on the phase conductors will be greater, but not by as much. The power lost heating up the conduits will be less. Alternatively, they could switch certain power systems to 416Y/240 volts and reduce the current even more (although this would require going back to line to neutral connections).
I just wonder if the NSA already knows this. Maybe the analysts do, but what about the facility managers?
USA is a war country. The only way for the president to gain power is to declare a war. A war on drugs, a war on hippies, a war on terrorists, a war on geeks, a war on freedom. Good war or bad, it's what power hungry presidents have to do.
Once such virtualization (assuming it is sealed against any DRM exploits and doesn't provide for mobilization of a VM) is allowed, that creates a situation where Microsoft doesn't have control of the hardware. Then another OS could be easily run side by side (since virtualization can create multiple virtual machines). And people might try some free operating system, discover that it almost meets their needs, and will have an opportunity to gradually migrate over to using that free operating system for all their needs (something they can't do if they just replace Windows with some free operating system directly on a machine running one OS at a time).
But the DRM issue is just as real. The underlying virtualization system, or the operating system underneath it, if there is one, could tap into the decrypted content the Windows DRM-enabled media software thinks it is delivering strictly to hardware. Transfers of pixels to video card frame buffers, and transfers of audio samples to a sound card, can be captured along the way without anything added inside Windows that Windows might have a chance to detect.
What Microsoft fears more than the movie and music industry, though, is just losing control. If the software can be tapped virtually, they know the content producers will eventually move to a pure hardware DRM model where the encrypted content is just copied as is over to special new hardware that does the decryption in sealed tamper resistant chips. In the case of video, the video card won't even be decrypting it, but instead, will just ship it out to an HDCP enabled video monitor that acts as the sealed decryption device.
Of course we know those forms of DRM won't really stop piracy since the analog hole (shoot the screen with a camcorder) is still there, and multiple generations of that one lossy copy will lose no further as it reaches the computers of millions of internet users world wide. And Microsoft may well know that, too. But Microsoft is very fearful that the content industry will still move to that step of doing DRM in hardware. Microsoft fears that step because doing so takes away their market advantage by allowing a free operating system to do the same shuffling of still-encrypted data from storage to DRM-enabled hardware.
The advantage of digital for piracy is not that you can get a perfect copy. Perfection is not the goal in piracy. In many cases a camcorder shooting a screen is fine. Instead, the advantage of digital is that the quality is not degraded further as an infinite number of generations are made. Traditional pirates were limited to making 2 to 5 generations of VHS tapes because after that, almost nothing was left of the original movie. But an analog ripped (not cracked) MPEG file can be traded all over the world without any further single bit errors (although some of that will happen at times). The internet scares the content industry because of the speed (the latest release can be in the hands of millions before the big opening). Digital scares them because it enables the multi generational sharing as we already see in P2P. The problem is, they are fixated on encryption, which is at best going to prevent the average Joe from making a perfect copy and sharing with his neighbor across the street. When Joe finally figures out how to make an analog rip or just shoots it off his screen with a camcorder, his neighbor might reject it because it's not perfect, but you can bet the world will eat it up via the internet.
This might actually be a good thing. How? Internet radio webcasters could still use non-evil licensed music such as available on places like magnatune.com. That would then give the non-evil music more air-play and boost its acceptance over that of the companies with the old business model of music (based on rape the listener just enough to avoid their death). Carried far enough, maybe the old business model will finally die the death it deserves.
Comcast inserts local ads on TV channels. But at least they are permitted to do that with the channel producer's permission. In the case of national networks that are optional to carry, this might be part of the contact that have to get that channel carried (reduced rates the producer has to pay, or higher rates Comcast pays, depending on which channel). With over the air stations that they must carry, the station has to get part of that revenue to go along with it (which in theory helps pay the cost of station operation and program sources just like the station ads do). I see nothing wrong with it because the content provider gets some benefit (revenue or carriage) from it, as long as the program content itself is not covered up (which my local Comcast was doing accidentally for a week, once, due to some misprogrammed computer).
However, if the providers of content are not a party to this process, then I do see some serious legal issues, including copyright, with it.
We need to have more web sites make the switch to HTTPS and do redirects from their HTTP to go to their HTTPS sites.
Even HTTPS can be ad-pimped if you didn't literally use HTTPS to begin with. If the first access you do is plain HTTP, the ad-pimpers could replace the HTTPS redirect to an HTTPS server of their own. Your browser would accept that because it's using a hostname of the ad-pimper. That server would then do HTTPS to access the original site (which thinks it is seeing a client behaviour in that server). Your only clue would be something funny in the URL, such as "https://yro.slashdot.org:validated-secure@web.moo noveraddison.com/article.pl?sid=07/06/23/1233212". I don't think they know how to pull this off just yet, but I bet they will try it when more sites do redirects to HTTPS (because the average internet user won't really know to do that). They will get away with this because those same average users won't really know of anything wrong in such a URL.
40 bits is plenty (unless you are going to be exchanging private info) for ad spoofing protection. While cracking 40 bits is certainly doable, it's not worth doing it to insert an ad (at least in 2007). And 40 bits is trivial for computers to do these days.
What choices are out there if the main concern is vendor lock-in? What "open" DRM alternatives exist?
How about "iPlayer"... just have BBC write it using good portable programming practices, including strict adherence to standard interfaces, and then it will run on all the major OSes... BSD, Linux, OS/X, Solaris, and Windows
Yes, the author is a newbie. Apparently he is not a newbie at development and programming, but is a newbie to the way open source is structured. Something that is specific-project-neutral but tells people about how open source is done would be very helpful. Beyond that, the best I can suggest is to hold your breath and dive in. Don't be afraid to ask question; just admit what you don't know and show you're willing to learn, and willing to do the work to learn, but just need to be pointed in the right direction. Different projects do things in different ways. Many use one of many different source version control systems. Some don't use any at all. Larger projects have dedicated servers and recompile everything from the latest check-ins (new source added in) every night or so. Some just do it all manually when someone feels like it. Myownprojects are written by myself and have none of that fancy stuff.
But it might be a good idea. Unlike TV, which in both analog and digital is confined to a specific slice of spectrum (6 MHz wide in North America), FM actually occupies much more spectrum than the 200 kHz channel spacing. And this spectrum usage is uneven. Most of the signal is near the center, but the sidebands, some as far out as +/- 800 kHz, do carry some information at a lower power. The end result is that squeezing FM signals together is trickier. It's all a matter of degree, too... the closer they get, the more impact there is.
Analog TV had channel spacing requirements, too, but that was a filtering issue. That's basically a non-issue anymore, and new digital channels are going to be right next to each other in a lot of markets (and it works just fine).
If audio broadcasting went digital, it could also go with directly adjacent channels. If digital radio at FM quality can fit in 200 kHz (with compression it can), then you can easily have stations at 101.1, 101.3, 101.5, 101.7, and 101.9, with no major interference problems (although for another issue, you can't have more than 2 of them on the same transmitting antenna).
What I propose is that after all analog TV is off the air, use the 76 MHz to 88 MHz spectrum as a new digital radio starter band. This corresponds to TV channels 5 and 6 in North America. In areas where channel 5 or channel 6 is in use, only half of 76-88 MHz would be available for radio. Most TV stations are abandoning low band VHF because it doesn't do so well for TV. But it's fine for radio with the narrower signals. We'll need new radios to receive digital anyway, so we'll get new radios that can tune 76-88 Mhz as well. But they will need to be able to do digital on the rest of the FM spectrum, because eventually it should all be converted over to digital (with some kind of OFDM modulation since it will be heavily mobile). We might even want to extend digital radio to other spectrum slices like 54-72 Mhz and even 174-216 Mhz, allocated around the TV channels (since with both being digital, this can work just fine).
Seriously, do they actually expect this to do anything at all to stop DVD copying or piracy?
No. Not at all. They expect the public, and more importantly, the politicians they own, to buy the story (that it stops copying and piracy). They expect these kinds of restrictions to force the purchase of redundant copies of DVDs to drive up more revenue... at least among those people who are not downloading from the internet.
The proposed amendment would also prohibit software manufacturers to create "virtual drives," running a DVD image from a hard drive. The previous Kaleidescape case touched upon the company's use of ripping a DVD to a large internal hard drive, and playing back the movie on demand without the need for a physical disk to be inserted into the drive.
This is likely why Microsoft backed off their decision to reverse the restriction against running Windows Vista under virtualization. The CCA and/or MPAA got wind of this change and put the pressure on Microsoft to not do this (at least for versions of Vista that have the software to play DVDs and the DRM the CCA licensing requires). A virtual DVD drive underneath Vista, mapped from a file image, could fake the DVD enough to possibly fool the DRM code into believing it really is a DVD. There are also a number of other things that can be done with virtualization to defeat what the DRM media software does, especially if the virtualization is hosted on Linux.
The virtualizable version of Linux costs 2 and 3 times as much as the non-virtualizable version of Linux. Additionally, Linux has a restriction that each copy may only be running on one machine or disk drive at a time.
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The problem was in approaching any carrier at all. What they should have done is make the phone available both in a fully paid non-lockable version, as well as offer to sell it through any carrier that wants to buy it up front in exchange for fleecing their customers with evil time period contracts.
Outside of USA, Inc., that's not the case. In the USA, most people have these N-year contracts because that's usually the only option available. I'd rather buy my phone up front, fully paid, and get competitive monthly rates from each of the carriers. They should be competing on their rates and quality of service, rather than what phone they can advertise. I don't want to be limited to replacing my phone in lock-step with term contracts. And I don't want to be giving providers or manufacturers private info like SSN (which they require if they are advancing credit, which is what a discount phone really is). And besides, when you work out the pricing of getting a discount phone through a carrier, you end up getting raped on the deal. Almost ALL people never look close enough to realize that.
Yeah, I know some people are poor enough that they can only afford a phone paid for via one of these discount plans, or worse, get stuck with the pre-paid phone plans at triple phone call rates and time-expired balances that vanish if they don't refill on time. That's in part why these people are still as poor as they are, because they get economically raped by big corporations that know they can get away with it. I have the money to afford buying dozens of iPhones up front. I'd look at buying one as an "investment" in myself, keeping the money over the long term that would otherwise end up in excessive amounts in the hands of big corporations.
Sure, I am interested. This news indicates a minor step towards making the iPhone viable for me.
You will let us know when the iPhone is finally made available unlocked so that we can use it with any carrier of choice, and when plans are available with no time periods for those who buy the whole phone up front, and when Apple finally releases the codes to allow us to develop and deploy our own applications, right? Be sure to let your buddy Steve know that we are waiting.
Well, actually, it is, at least as carried out by CD makers. With only 16 bits of resolution ... and that's only for the parts at full volume without anything else at the same time ... there are some aliasing effects. In reality, fewer bits get used because most of the time the full volume is not present. And when things get quieter, the quality gets worse because you're now down in the 8 bits or less range.
In theory, 44.1 kHz sampling is good enough, given enough bits, and the proper encoders and decoders used. But this design was a compromise at the time (done a few years before the first CDs even showed up) due to the limited capacity.
Given today's ability to store bits for high definition video, we could go with an even higher sampling rate and even more bits (I'd choose 192 kHz with 32 bits sampling per channel). That can then be compressed using a lossless algorithm like FLAC. It would likely fit fine on a DVD. There would certainly be an excess in the sampling from the point of view of theory. But you'd need it to cover up the way big corporations always try to cut costs by degrading the quality (as opposed to cutting executive salaries and bonuses and golf course memberships).
OK, then you pay her legal bills and compensate her for her loss of time. But that alone won't be enough to get the RIAA (or MPAA when it's their turn) to realize they need to be sure they have real evidence before pursuing anyone else in the future. They need to have a genuine fear of the cost of losing cases where they didn't really have a cause to sue.
... getting high speed internet there. Damn, those packets are sure taking a long time.
Yes they have. We just had to erase it from their memory. They seemed to think it was real. This way, we get them to do the hard work.
However, the Apple iPhone is tied to AT&T. One has to sign 2 years of their life away to a crappy phone company to be able to use an Apple iPhone. This was a decision by Apple (and probably Steve Jobs) to do this instead of making it available as an open unlocked phone that could be used by all providers. That's as much an Apple issue as anything.
If that was true, they wouldn't have tied it to a crappy phone company.
Reducing power demand is easy. I've already done this in one server facility. Just change the voltage being fed to the computers with dual voltage or wide voltage range switching power supplies from 120 volts to 208 or 240 volts. The power supplies will on average use about 3% less power. Additionally, because the total current being used is less, the heating losses in the wiring leading to the computers will be significantly reduced (although it is usually only 1% to 2% of the total power demand). In the case of 3 phase power systems, a substantial current will be present on neutrals, causing a lot more loss (and in some cases a potential fire hazard). By connecting computers between phases in 208Y/120 volt power systems (line to line instead of line to neutral), the accumulation of currents on the neutrals will be eliminated. The currents on the phase conductors will be greater, but not by as much. The power lost heating up the conduits will be less. Alternatively, they could switch certain power systems to 416Y/240 volts and reduce the current even more (although this would require going back to line to neutral connections).
I just wonder if the NSA already knows this. Maybe the analysts do, but what about the facility managers?
No Child Left Behind is achieved by holding all the rest back.
USA is a war country. The only way for the president to gain power is to declare a war. A war on drugs, a war on hippies, a war on terrorists, a war on geeks, a war on freedom. Good war or bad, it's what power hungry presidents have to do.
Make Gmail users where 5 point-down triangles colored blue, red, yellow, blue, green?
Once such virtualization (assuming it is sealed against any DRM exploits and doesn't provide for mobilization of a VM) is allowed, that creates a situation where Microsoft doesn't have control of the hardware. Then another OS could be easily run side by side (since virtualization can create multiple virtual machines). And people might try some free operating system, discover that it almost meets their needs, and will have an opportunity to gradually migrate over to using that free operating system for all their needs (something they can't do if they just replace Windows with some free operating system directly on a machine running one OS at a time).
But the DRM issue is just as real. The underlying virtualization system, or the operating system underneath it, if there is one, could tap into the decrypted content the Windows DRM-enabled media software thinks it is delivering strictly to hardware. Transfers of pixels to video card frame buffers, and transfers of audio samples to a sound card, can be captured along the way without anything added inside Windows that Windows might have a chance to detect.
What Microsoft fears more than the movie and music industry, though, is just losing control. If the software can be tapped virtually, they know the content producers will eventually move to a pure hardware DRM model where the encrypted content is just copied as is over to special new hardware that does the decryption in sealed tamper resistant chips. In the case of video, the video card won't even be decrypting it, but instead, will just ship it out to an HDCP enabled video monitor that acts as the sealed decryption device.
Of course we know those forms of DRM won't really stop piracy since the analog hole (shoot the screen with a camcorder) is still there, and multiple generations of that one lossy copy will lose no further as it reaches the computers of millions of internet users world wide. And Microsoft may well know that, too. But Microsoft is very fearful that the content industry will still move to that step of doing DRM in hardware. Microsoft fears that step because doing so takes away their market advantage by allowing a free operating system to do the same shuffling of still-encrypted data from storage to DRM-enabled hardware.
The advantage of digital for piracy is not that you can get a perfect copy. Perfection is not the goal in piracy. In many cases a camcorder shooting a screen is fine. Instead, the advantage of digital is that the quality is not degraded further as an infinite number of generations are made. Traditional pirates were limited to making 2 to 5 generations of VHS tapes because after that, almost nothing was left of the original movie. But an analog ripped (not cracked) MPEG file can be traded all over the world without any further single bit errors (although some of that will happen at times). The internet scares the content industry because of the speed (the latest release can be in the hands of millions before the big opening). Digital scares them because it enables the multi generational sharing as we already see in P2P. The problem is, they are fixated on encryption, which is at best going to prevent the average Joe from making a perfect copy and sharing with his neighbor across the street. When Joe finally figures out how to make an analog rip or just shoots it off his screen with a camcorder, his neighbor might reject it because it's not perfect, but you can bet the world will eat it up via the internet.
This might actually be a good thing. How? Internet radio webcasters could still use non-evil licensed music such as available on places like magnatune.com. That would then give the non-evil music more air-play and boost its acceptance over that of the companies with the old business model of music (based on rape the listener just enough to avoid their death). Carried far enough, maybe the old business model will finally die the death it deserves.
Comcast inserts local ads on TV channels. But at least they are permitted to do that with the channel producer's permission. In the case of national networks that are optional to carry, this might be part of the contact that have to get that channel carried (reduced rates the producer has to pay, or higher rates Comcast pays, depending on which channel). With over the air stations that they must carry, the station has to get part of that revenue to go along with it (which in theory helps pay the cost of station operation and program sources just like the station ads do). I see nothing wrong with it because the content provider gets some benefit (revenue or carriage) from it, as long as the program content itself is not covered up (which my local Comcast was doing accidentally for a week, once, due to some misprogrammed computer).
However, if the providers of content are not a party to this process, then I do see some serious legal issues, including copyright, with it.
We need to have more web sites make the switch to HTTPS and do redirects from their HTTP to go to their HTTPS sites.
Even HTTPS can be ad-pimped if you didn't literally use HTTPS to begin with. If the first access you do is plain HTTP, the ad-pimpers could replace the HTTPS redirect to an HTTPS server of their own. Your browser would accept that because it's using a hostname of the ad-pimper. That server would then do HTTPS to access the original site (which thinks it is seeing a client behaviour in that server). Your only clue would be something funny in the URL, such as "https://yro.slashdot.org:validated-secure@web.moo noveraddison.com/article.pl?sid=07/06/23/1233212". I don't think they know how to pull this off just yet, but I bet they will try it when more sites do redirects to HTTPS (because the average internet user won't really know to do that). They will get away with this because those same average users won't really know of anything wrong in such a URL.
40 bits is plenty (unless you are going to be exchanging private info) for ad spoofing protection. While cracking 40 bits is certainly doable, it's not worth doing it to insert an ad (at least in 2007). And 40 bits is trivial for computers to do these days.
How about "iPlayer" ... just have BBC write it using good portable programming practices, including strict adherence to standard interfaces, and then it will run on all the major OSes ... BSD, Linux, OS/X, Solaris, and Windows
Yes, the author is a newbie. Apparently he is not a newbie at development and programming, but is a newbie to the way open source is structured. Something that is specific-project-neutral but tells people about how open source is done would be very helpful. Beyond that, the best I can suggest is to hold your breath and dive in. Don't be afraid to ask question; just admit what you don't know and show you're willing to learn, and willing to do the work to learn, but just need to be pointed in the right direction. Different projects do things in different ways. Many use one of many different source version control systems. Some don't use any at all. Larger projects have dedicated servers and recompile everything from the latest check-ins (new source added in) every night or so. Some just do it all manually when someone feels like it. My own projects are written by myself and have none of that fancy stuff.
No.
But it might be a good idea. Unlike TV, which in both analog and digital is confined to a specific slice of spectrum (6 MHz wide in North America), FM actually occupies much more spectrum than the 200 kHz channel spacing. And this spectrum usage is uneven. Most of the signal is near the center, but the sidebands, some as far out as +/- 800 kHz, do carry some information at a lower power. The end result is that squeezing FM signals together is trickier. It's all a matter of degree, too ... the closer they get, the more impact there is.
Analog TV had channel spacing requirements, too, but that was a filtering issue. That's basically a non-issue anymore, and new digital channels are going to be right next to each other in a lot of markets (and it works just fine).
If audio broadcasting went digital, it could also go with directly adjacent channels. If digital radio at FM quality can fit in 200 kHz (with compression it can), then you can easily have stations at 101.1, 101.3, 101.5, 101.7, and 101.9, with no major interference problems (although for another issue, you can't have more than 2 of them on the same transmitting antenna).
What I propose is that after all analog TV is off the air, use the 76 MHz to 88 MHz spectrum as a new digital radio starter band. This corresponds to TV channels 5 and 6 in North America. In areas where channel 5 or channel 6 is in use, only half of 76-88 MHz would be available for radio. Most TV stations are abandoning low band VHF because it doesn't do so well for TV. But it's fine for radio with the narrower signals. We'll need new radios to receive digital anyway, so we'll get new radios that can tune 76-88 Mhz as well. But they will need to be able to do digital on the rest of the FM spectrum, because eventually it should all be converted over to digital (with some kind of OFDM modulation since it will be heavily mobile). We might even want to extend digital radio to other spectrum slices like 54-72 Mhz and even 174-216 Mhz, allocated around the TV channels (since with both being digital, this can work just fine).
If I can upload w/o registering, and use different IP addresses, how do they know when I reach my 100MB limit? Cookies?
No. Not at all. They expect the public, and more importantly, the politicians they own, to buy the story (that it stops copying and piracy). They expect these kinds of restrictions to force the purchase of redundant copies of DVDs to drive up more revenue ... at least among those people who are not downloading from the internet.
This is likely why Microsoft backed off their decision to reverse the restriction against running Windows Vista under virtualization. The CCA and/or MPAA got wind of this change and put the pressure on Microsoft to not do this (at least for versions of Vista that have the software to play DVDs and the DRM the CCA licensing requires). A virtual DVD drive underneath Vista, mapped from a file image, could fake the DVD enough to possibly fool the DRM code into believing it really is a DVD. There are also a number of other things that can be done with virtualization to defeat what the DRM media software does, especially if the virtualization is hosted on Linux.
The virtualizable version of Linux costs 2 and 3 times as much as the non-virtualizable version of Linux. Additionally, Linux has a restriction that each copy may only be running on one machine or disk drive at a time.