By contrast, OSX has delivered nothing quite as dramatic between 10.0 and 10.3.
There have been a slew of new iXXX apps, eye candy, plus several incremental updates to the OSX kernel (mostly Apple catching up with the BSD world) and fixes for speed and stability.
Now for your list:
Journaled/Encrypted FS: true, worthy additions. In fact, the *only* _OS_ feature worth mentioning on your list. The rest are:
a) either bundled apps that should either come from ISVs or be separately downloadable (perhaps for a fee), or b) eye candy improvements (You don't see MS charging for every DirectX upgrade, do you?) c) Developer toolset improvement -- despite what you think, the vast majority of Mac users don't give a shit about this, or which compiler the OS was compiled with. If Apple recompiles its shipping kernel with a new compiler it should probably send a kernel update. d) Speed/Perf improvements: see comments in earlier post.
> It would be like going from WinME to WinXP in comparision.
WinME: no security model, no journaling, no ACLs, kernelmode and userland mixed up, no POSIX layer, irrational system limitations all over the place.
WinXP: security model, journaling FS, ACLs, cleanly separated kernel/user mode, POSIX layer, *plus* a vastly different and better kernel, plus true-blue 32-bit OS with no silly limits.
The upgrade price from ME to XP Home was $99 MSRP, available for $75-$85 at most places.
By contrast, OSX has delivered nothing quite as dramatic between 10.0 and 10.3. There have been a slew of new iXXX apps, eye candy, plus several incremental updates to the OSX kernel (mostly Apple catching up with the BSD world) and fixes for speed and stability.
To be fair, OSX was a *spanking new* OS (like NT 3.1) and deserves some time to `settle down'. What i find disturbing is Apple's need to charge early adopters for their show of support.
The user is not at fault here. YOU are. What kind of an admin lets users software on their boxes AND THEN cribs that gee whiz, they've installed crap toolbars? Windows 2000 has these dinky things called security policies, perhaps you'd like to read up.
You want pristine boxes, give your users a locked down box. Otherwise STFU. You should be happy your boss is apathetic, a slightly less apathetic boss would probably just fire you for being so incompetent.
Most old software for Windows (esp. those designed for Win9x, which had no security model) needed admin-level permissions to run on NT. Today, to meet "certified for XP" logo guidelines you have to ensure that users/power users can use your software without needing the admin password.
Since 2000, all MS apps I can think of run quite happily as root. The problem is with third-party software (e.g. Visual Cafe never quite worked for "Power User"-class users on Win2000), but even this is coming down because of the "certified for xp" program, which makes it really easy for QA teams to benchmark their apps against a MS-supplied best-practices template.
Windows 2000 and later can be hardened and secured quite easily. Head over to TechNet and read some docs instead of cribbing.
FilePlanet has a Quicktime movie of the Half-Life 2 E3 presentation. Looks like the physics engine will ensure you can interact with almost anything in the game.
Unfortunately, for _true_ interaction, you need a dataglove and some kind of a HUD. (Question: how much would they cost if mass-made?) FPSs' gun metaphor (and consoles' controllers) are what is really holding back fully interactive gameplay.
Actually, windows nt before 4.0 ran video drivers in usermode, which is where NT gained its hogslow reputation from.
From 4.0, video drivers ran in kernel mode: something I don't fully understand. I can understand a workstation OS's video drivers running in kernelmode, so AutoCAD, SoftImage et al run well. But why do Windows NT Server's video drivers need to be in kernelmode?
Although my previous house WAS adjacent to just about the only street in the bay area where BOTH of Pac Bell's rings ran down the same set of manholes.
Of course HP is simplistic -- they were never intended to be anything other than children's fiction. If you don't like it, don't read it!
I read the Potter series mainly to see what the fuss was about. Since I had low expectations, I didn't mind them very much. While *obviously* not in the same league as Tolkien or Philip K Dick, they are much *less* simplistic than some other children's books, and certainly more fun than the books I had as a child (barring Roald Dahl).
Btw, if you can, read book 3 -- ".. the Prisoner of Azkaban". It's much better than book 2. And AOLTW has roped in Alfonso Cuaron (Y tu mama tambien) to direct it, and I'm expecting a much better movie as a result.
> When you buy a single MSDN universal, you have a single license for one developer and NOT five developers.
A single developer gets a license for upto N copies of the software, where N is usually between 3..10. (Or unlimited, in the case of the library.) I don't think the grandparent meant 1 MSDN sub can be shared among 5 devs.
> What? Individual libraries don't appear as processes, so that argument isn't applicable.
Yes, but you can see which libraries have dependencies on mshtml or shdocvw. WinInet I am not sure -- if you use IE's mobsync.exe, WinInet may load, but then several third party software uses WinInet too.
If you load Win2k cleanly (especially with Active Desktop disabled, e.g. through TweakUI), you definitely will not load mshtml *or* shdocvw.
With all of this, IE still creams Moz (and Firebird) in startup times. One overhead IE does not have is that it uses native widgets for everything, whereas Moz/Firebird loses (I am guessing) while constructing all the dinky little XUL widgets.
Btw:
- Some parts of Windows 2000's UI do use shdocvw. But definitely not at startup!
- IIRC Windows ME and XP have an OS feature that "optimizes" load times for frequently used libraries and apps. Office (again IIRC) uses this feature. But this feature is available for *any* windows app, not just the MS ones.
I assume the grandparent meant an "MSDN Universal" subscription, not MSDE (which is a desktop database engine).
MSDN Universal specifically allows you to put Office to dual-use: development+test, as well as use it for day-to-day business tasks like email, memos, spreadsheets etc on one system. (Search for "Can I use Office, Project, and Visio for development and testing of applications?" in the page linked to above.)
For probably a lot less than half a billion dollars they could hire Linus himself and probably have more than enough left over to hire Alan Cox, RMS, and pretty much whomever else they please.
Yeah, hire a Finn, a Brit, a Brazilian, assorted Germans... all prima donna type kernel geeks who are totally unpredictable. Next the Army will set up PARC II to give these geeks a playground to play in.
By your argument, Ford ought to produce its own tyres. and Unilever and Walmart its own trucks. That's called "Vertical Integration" and it's dead as a concept. Today organizations stay lean and mean by specializing at *one* particular job and being the best at it. Note the corollary of this is that some organizations will get VERY good at what they do, and it will make more sense for other organizations to go to them rather than the second-in-market, even if second-in-market is very good indeed. And yes, post win2k, MS as a desktop has gotten very good indeed -- and light years ahead of the sewn-together OS that is Red Hat 8.
Methinks the problem isn't whether to jump ship, it's when and how. Is Linux ready for the desktop doesn't refer to yesterday's desktops, it refers to tomorrows desktops.
Hate to break this to you, but (the current state of) Linux isn't even ready for yesterday's desktops. If (the current state of) Linux is what you think tomorrow's desktops will be like, then I think I'll just go back to the command line.
Btw - Linux-the-kernel is ready for the desktop. It's Linux-the-OS that lags, largely because it does provide the consistent interfaces (programmatic and UI) that the market has been demanding since the early 90s.
>However, this doesn't change the fact that the original post >about "owning" XP is wrong. Microsoft still "owns" the software
I was the original poster, and I think you are being somewhat pedantic. *All* commercial software -- OSX, Photoshop, etc, is licensed, not sold. You do not "own" the code, or IP rights to the code, but you DO own the right to use it. In XP Retail's case, you own that right forever.
>>you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home >>edition) you *own* it
This is for all practical purposes true to any person other than the good folk on debian-legal;-) and the occasional slashdotter. For the vast majority of users, owning the rights to use a piece of software forever == owning that software.
However, if you wish to nitpick, I will take back my words and replace them with:
If you purchase a full, upgrade or OEM copy of Windows XP, you have the right to use it forever.
Incidentally, Microsoft does have time-limited EULAs and those are written differently; the XP Home and Pro Retail EULAs are not time-limited.
>Also, this EULA is subject to change with each patch or service pack
Changes/addenda to the EULA do not change the basic permanent nature of the contract. In particular, rights granted by the main product EULA cannot be revoked by service pack or patch EULAs.
> I quote from section 19 of the WinXP EULA, "The Product is licensed, not sold."
Yes, and the license is a perpetual license, with clearly defined exit paths for both parties. Unlike, say, Oracle's annual licensing scheme. Or Microsoft's Value Pack for Partners (or whatever they call it these days) License.
With a full, upgrade or OEM license (OEM license is bound to the equipment it came with), you are at liberty to use WinXP 'til judgement day (just don't ask for patches for that long) and MS *cannot* say a word unless you've violated their EULA.
Also, EULAs in practice are rarely terminated. MS cannot arbitarily terminate your EULA, they have to show cause.
> IIRC with WinXP you are only purchasing a subscription for a year or so.
YRI. (You recollect incorrectly.) When you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home edition) you *own* it. MS will support it with free patches and updates 'til Dec 2006. (Corporate customers will get free security patches 'til 2008.) After that, you are on your own. If you wish to continue to use it, you're welcome.
Note the free updates+patches thing. That entitles you to free downloads (patches, software) from Windows Update. If you purchased XP Home for $199 ($99 if you upgraded) in December 2001 when it was released, you would get patches and updates 'til Dec 2006. Compares pretty well with Red Hat's $60/yr RHN sub (= $300 for updates). But hell, with Red Hat, you have to upgrade the OS every year or so because Red Hat doesn't support non-AS releases for more than 1 (or is it 2?) years.
Well-written apps that conformed to documented interfaces and API calls are indeed backward compatible. The page you link to gives IIS 5 and Exchange 2000 as examples -- these were not "normal well written apps" by any understanding. They were pushed to customers as being very tightly integrated with Windows 2000 Server ("joined to the hip" was one of the phrases used) and indeed, the interactions between IIS 5/Exchange2000 and Win2k Server was never fully clear to most MS developers. So how surprising is it that these don't work with Win2003? This is like complaining that McAfee's antivirus for Win98 won't work on WinXP.
> As my employer has found out they are in the continual > process of making customers re-write their applications > to run on Windows.
Well, gee whiz Sherlock, suppose your app relies on a behavior of Windows (say overwriting %winsysdir%\MSVCRT.DLL) that is no longer available in a new version of Windows (e.g. over-writing files in %winsysdir% will fail in Windows 2000 and above because of SFP), then _obviously_ you have to rewrite.
There are thousands of shrinkwrapped and custom-written apps around which run on Windows 2003 just fine. I can run the DOS Doom just fine on Windows 2003. Ditto every version of Word from v6 to v9. Ditto my old copy of Turbo C. And Notepad v1.0. And Half-Life. Just because yours was hosed means NOTHING. No OS on earth has given 100% perfect binary forward compatibility, and Windows' record in this is actually pretty good.
I get you -- although I feel comparing console/tty emacs start times against a GUI word processor like Word seems sort of unfair, which is why I was comparing "cold start" times of Word 2002 versus XEmacs on Windows 2000. Word 2002 does pretty well there. Of course, gvim does better than both of them;-)
Compare this with Word, which probably has a comparable number of features, but they're all in the menus all the time. It takes forever to load all of this code (versus a mere moment to load enough of Emacs to do the thing you're trying to do), and you have to sort through all of the features to find the one you want to use.
Although your point is otherwise valid, your example is bad. On my 1.7GHz P4, Word 2002 takes less time than XEmacs to load (with only C, C++, Java, perl and C# modes enabled -- no mail and other crap). And Word definitely does not load in "every bit of code" before it starts -- thats what DLLs are for.
I have to admit that I'm a bit confused by this. First of all, it's a two-sentence statement in a chat room, so there is very little information to go on.
+1 Insightful. This entire story -- especially the verbiage about DRM -- is derived from a two-sentence throwaway chat transcript comment that never even mentioned DRM. Classic Slashdot-style reading-between-lines.
This is the story IMHO: no more separate IE downloads. You will get IE from now on through Windows Update (or OS Service Packs). So those using Windows 2000 and above will keep getting updates, and Win9x users will have to switch if they want newer features.
Btw, I don't think DRM is out of the question. But real hardware-powered DRM isn't here yet, and won't be in the next 5 years. And even then, I doubt its uptake.
The President of India can. He is a head of state (not head of government) and largely ceremonial, wielding no real power (bit like British Royalty or Australia's Governer General). So his statement has no more weight than Prince Philip saying modern English Architecture sucks -- it is just an opinion. Of course, the current Indian president is a widely respected missile scientist (and IIRC once head of India's space programme) and is technically savvy, but there's no way the Indian government is going to act on what he says.
The day India's prime minister (who holds all real power) says this, it'll be news.
As an aside, once upon a time, almost every piece of modern technology we use today: guns, watches, clocks, automobiles -- were all hand-crafted, and the crafters would look down with disdain at the notion that mere machines could do the work they did. Folk who are interested in old firearms or timepieces will know what I'm talking about.
Each of these crafts fell to the altar of assembly-line mass production. One of the few crafts that has still not fallen is writing software, which, CASE tools notwithstanding, must still be designed and then crafted, diagram by diagram and then line by line, by actual human beings.
API-driven programming, e.g. Java, has reduced the amount of skill required to write code somewhat, but good design still cannot be mass-produced. And till the time it can be, programming will continue to attract geeks.
You cannot do what Microsoft does until you have what Microsoft has -- complete market dominance
And MS itself doesn't do all of the activation crap in product segments where it's trying to prove itself, or win a PR exercise. Case in point: SQL Server has no activation. Neither does VS.Net.
Slashdot Mirror
Journaled/Encrypted FS: true, worthy additions. In fact, the *only* _OS_ feature worth mentioning on your list. The rest are:
a) either bundled apps that should either come from ISVs or be separately downloadable (perhaps for a fee), or
b) eye candy improvements (You don't see MS charging for every DirectX upgrade, do you?)
c) Developer toolset improvement -- despite what you think, the vast majority of Mac users don't give a shit about this, or which compiler the OS was compiled with. If Apple recompiles its shipping kernel with a new compiler it should probably send a kernel update.
d) Speed/Perf improvements: see comments in earlier post.
> It would be like going from WinME to WinXP in comparision.
WinME: no security model, no journaling, no ACLs, kernelmode and userland mixed up, no POSIX layer, irrational system limitations all over the place.
WinXP: security model, journaling FS, ACLs, cleanly separated kernel/user mode, POSIX layer, *plus* a vastly different and better kernel, plus true-blue 32-bit OS with no silly limits.
The upgrade price from ME to XP Home was $99 MSRP, available for $75-$85 at most places.
By contrast, OSX has delivered nothing quite as dramatic between 10.0 and 10.3. There have been a slew of new iXXX apps, eye candy, plus several incremental updates to the OSX kernel (mostly Apple catching up with the BSD world) and fixes for speed and stability.
To be fair, OSX was a *spanking new* OS (like NT 3.1) and deserves some time to `settle down'. What i find disturbing is Apple's need to charge early adopters for their show of support.
The user is not at fault here. YOU are. What kind of an admin lets users software on their boxes AND THEN cribs that gee whiz, they've installed crap toolbars? Windows 2000 has these dinky things called security policies, perhaps you'd like to read up.
You want pristine boxes, give your users a locked down box. Otherwise STFU. You should be happy your boss is apathetic, a slightly less apathetic boss would probably just fire you for being so incompetent.
Most old software for Windows (esp. those designed for Win9x, which had no security model) needed admin-level permissions to run on NT. Today, to meet "certified for XP" logo guidelines you have to ensure that users/power users can use your software without needing the admin password.
Since 2000, all MS apps I can think of run quite happily as root. The problem is with third-party software (e.g. Visual Cafe never quite worked for "Power User"-class users on Win2000), but even this is coming down because of the "certified for xp" program, which makes it really easy for QA teams to benchmark their apps against a MS-supplied best-practices template.
Windows 2000 and later can be hardened and secured quite easily. Head over to TechNet and read some docs instead of cribbing.
FilePlanet has a Quicktime movie of the Half-Life 2 E3 presentation. Looks like the physics engine will ensure you can interact with almost anything in the game.
Unfortunately, for _true_ interaction, you need a dataglove and some kind of a HUD. (Question: how much would they cost if mass-made?) FPSs' gun metaphor (and consoles' controllers) are what is really holding back fully interactive gameplay.
Actually, windows nt before 4.0 ran video drivers in usermode, which is where NT gained its hogslow reputation from.
From 4.0, video drivers ran in kernel mode: something I don't fully understand. I can understand a workstation OS's video drivers running in kernelmode, so AutoCAD, SoftImage et al run well. But why do Windows NT Server's video drivers need to be in kernelmode?
Of course HP is simplistic -- they were never intended to be anything other than children's fiction. If you don't like it, don't read it!
I read the Potter series mainly to see what the fuss was about. Since I had low expectations, I didn't mind them very much. While *obviously* not in the same league as Tolkien or Philip K Dick, they are much *less* simplistic than some other children's books, and certainly more fun than the books I had as a child (barring Roald Dahl).
Btw, if you can, read book 3 -- ".. the Prisoner of Azkaban". It's much better than book 2. And AOLTW has roped in Alfonso Cuaron (Y tu mama tambien) to direct it, and I'm expecting a much better movie as a result.
> When you buy a single MSDN universal, you have a single license for one developer and NOT five developers.
A single developer gets a license for upto N copies of the software, where N is usually between 3..10. (Or unlimited, in the case of the library.) I don't think the grandparent meant 1 MSDN sub can be shared among 5 devs.
> What? Individual libraries don't appear as processes, so that argument isn't applicable.
Yes, but you can see which libraries have dependencies on mshtml or shdocvw. WinInet I am not sure -- if you use IE's mobsync.exe, WinInet may load, but then several third party software uses WinInet too.
If you load Win2k cleanly (especially with Active Desktop disabled, e.g. through TweakUI), you definitely will not load mshtml *or* shdocvw.
With all of this, IE still creams Moz (and Firebird) in startup times. One overhead IE does not have is that it uses native widgets for everything, whereas Moz/Firebird loses (I am guessing) while constructing all the dinky little XUL widgets.
Btw:
- Some parts of Windows 2000's UI do use shdocvw. But definitely not at startup!
- IIRC Windows ME and XP have an OS feature that "optimizes" load times for frequently used libraries and apps. Office (again IIRC) uses this feature. But this feature is available for *any* windows app, not just the MS ones.
I assume the grandparent meant an "MSDN Universal" subscription, not MSDE (which is a desktop database engine).
MSDN Universal specifically allows you to put Office to dual-use: development+test, as well as use it for day-to-day business tasks like email, memos, spreadsheets etc on one system. (Search for "Can I use Office, Project, and Visio for development and testing of applications?" in the page linked to above.)
For probably a lot less than half a billion dollars they could hire Linus himself and probably have more than enough left over to hire Alan Cox, RMS, and pretty much whomever else they please.
Yeah, hire a Finn, a Brit, a Brazilian, assorted Germans... all prima donna type kernel geeks who are totally unpredictable. Next the Army will set up PARC II to give these geeks a playground to play in.
By your argument, Ford ought to produce its own tyres. and Unilever and Walmart its own trucks. That's called "Vertical Integration" and it's dead as a concept. Today organizations stay lean and mean by specializing at *one* particular job and being the best at it. Note the corollary of this is that some organizations will get VERY good at what they do, and it will make more sense for other organizations to go to them rather than the second-in-market, even if second-in-market is very good indeed. And yes, post win2k, MS as a desktop has gotten very good indeed -- and light years ahead of the sewn-together OS that is Red Hat 8.
Since when has large corporate rollouts == good? Cube farms have been rolled out in the thousands in lots of corporations, that makes 'em good?
> -Happy Linux Desktop User
== Sheep.
If you want to talk about a Unix desktop (hell, desktop) done right, talk about OSX. Otherwise STFU about how Linux is desktop nirvana.
Methinks the problem isn't whether to jump ship, it's when and how. Is Linux ready for the desktop doesn't refer to yesterday's desktops, it refers to tomorrows desktops.
Hate to break this to you, but (the current state of) Linux isn't even ready for yesterday's desktops. If (the current state of) Linux is what you think tomorrow's desktops will be like, then I think I'll just go back to the command line.
Btw - Linux-the-kernel is ready for the desktop. It's Linux-the-OS that lags, largely because it does provide the consistent interfaces (programmatic and UI) that the market has been demanding since the early 90s.
>about "owning" XP is wrong. Microsoft still "owns" the software
I was the original poster, and I think you are being somewhat pedantic. *All* commercial software -- OSX, Photoshop, etc, is licensed, not sold. You do not "own" the code, or IP rights to the code, but you DO own the right to use it. In XP Retail's case, you own that right forever.
>>you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home
>>edition) you *own* it
This is for all practical purposes true to any person other than the good folk on debian-legal
However, if you wish to nitpick, I will take back my words and replace them with: Incidentally, Microsoft does have time-limited EULAs and those are written differently; the XP Home and Pro Retail EULAs are not time-limited.
>Also, this EULA is subject to change with each patch or service pack
Changes/addenda to the EULA do not change the basic permanent nature of the contract. In particular, rights granted by the main product EULA cannot be revoked by service pack or patch EULAs.
> I quote from section 19 of the WinXP EULA, "The Product is licensed, not sold."
Yes, and the license is a perpetual license, with clearly defined exit paths for both parties. Unlike, say, Oracle's annual licensing scheme. Or Microsoft's Value Pack for Partners (or whatever they call it these days) License.
With a full, upgrade or OEM license (OEM license is bound to the equipment it came with), you are at liberty to use WinXP 'til judgement day (just don't ask for patches for that long) and MS *cannot* say a word unless you've violated their EULA.
Also, EULAs in practice are rarely terminated. MS cannot arbitarily terminate your EULA, they have to show cause.
> The advantage of Red Hat, though, is that you can get the OS for free
And get patches for only one year. Ridiculous. The upgrade treadmill has costs even if you aren't paying for the OS.
Which is why I recommend Debian these days.
> IIRC with WinXP you are only purchasing a subscription for a year or so.
YRI. (You recollect incorrectly.) When you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home edition) you *own* it. MS will support it with free patches and updates 'til Dec 2006. (Corporate customers will get free security patches 'til 2008.)
After that, you are on your own. If you wish to continue to use it, you're welcome.
Note the free updates+patches thing. That entitles you to free downloads (patches, software) from Windows Update. If you purchased XP Home for $199 ($99 if you upgraded) in December 2001 when it was released, you would get patches and updates 'til Dec 2006. Compares pretty well with Red Hat's $60/yr RHN sub (= $300 for updates). But hell, with Red Hat, you have to upgrade the OS every year or so because Red Hat doesn't support non-AS releases for more than 1 (or is it 2?) years.
MS' Lifecycle policy webpage is here.
Well-written apps that conformed to documented interfaces and API calls are indeed backward compatible. The page you link to gives IIS 5 and Exchange 2000 as examples -- these were not "normal well written apps" by any understanding. They were pushed to customers as being very tightly integrated with Windows 2000 Server ("joined to the hip" was one of the phrases used) and indeed, the interactions between IIS 5/Exchange2000 and Win2k Server was never fully clear to most MS developers. So how surprising is it that these don't work with Win2003? This is like complaining that McAfee's antivirus for Win98 won't work on WinXP.
> As my employer has found out they are in the continual
> process of making customers re-write their applications
> to run on Windows.
Well, gee whiz Sherlock, suppose your app relies on a behavior of Windows (say overwriting %winsysdir%\MSVCRT.DLL) that is no longer available in a new version of Windows (e.g. over-writing files in %winsysdir% will fail in Windows 2000 and above because of SFP), then _obviously_ you have to rewrite.
There are thousands of shrinkwrapped and custom-written apps around which run on Windows 2003 just fine. I can run the DOS Doom just fine on Windows 2003. Ditto every version of Word from v6 to v9. Ditto my old copy of Turbo C. And Notepad v1.0. And Half-Life. Just because yours was hosed means NOTHING. No OS on earth has given 100% perfect binary forward compatibility, and Windows' record in this is actually pretty good.
I get you -- although I feel comparing console/tty emacs start times against a GUI word processor like Word seems sort of unfair, which is why I was comparing "cold start" times of Word 2002 versus XEmacs on Windows 2000. Word 2002 does pretty well there. Of course, gvim does better than both of them ;-)
I have to admit that I'm a bit confused by this. First of all, it's a two-sentence statement in a chat room, so there is very little information to go on.
+1 Insightful. This entire story -- especially the verbiage about DRM -- is derived from a two-sentence throwaway chat transcript comment that never even mentioned DRM. Classic Slashdot-style reading-between-lines.
This is the story IMHO: no more separate IE downloads. You will get IE from now on through Windows Update (or OS Service Packs). So those using Windows 2000 and above will keep getting updates, and Win9x users will have to switch if they want newer features.
Btw, I don't think DRM is out of the question. But real hardware-powered DRM isn't here yet, and won't be in the next 5 years. And even then, I doubt its uptake.
The President of India can. He is a head of state (not head of government) and largely ceremonial, wielding no real power (bit like British Royalty or Australia's Governer General). So his statement has no more weight than Prince Philip saying modern English Architecture sucks -- it is just an opinion. Of course, the current Indian president is a widely respected missile scientist (and IIRC once head of India's space programme) and is technically savvy, but there's no way the Indian government is going to act on what he says.
The day India's prime minister (who holds all real power) says this, it'll be news.
As an aside, once upon a time, almost every piece of modern technology we use today: guns, watches, clocks, automobiles -- were all hand-crafted, and the crafters would look down with disdain at the notion that mere machines could do the work they did. Folk who are interested in old firearms or timepieces will know what I'm talking about.
Each of these crafts fell to the altar of assembly-line mass production. One of the few crafts that has still not fallen is writing software, which, CASE tools notwithstanding, must still be designed and then crafted, diagram by diagram and then line by line, by actual human beings.
API-driven programming, e.g. Java, has reduced the amount of skill required to write code somewhat, but good design still cannot be mass-produced. And till the time it can be, programming will continue to attract geeks.
You cannot do what Microsoft does until you have what Microsoft has -- complete market dominance
And MS itself doesn't do all of the activation crap in product segments where it's trying to prove itself, or win a PR exercise. Case in point: SQL Server has no activation. Neither does VS.Net.