But there is a constant monitor that evaluates if a content is protected or not, especially since as far as I remember the specification allows to protect only a portion of a file. Even if you are playing unprotected content, outputting it via analog and having no problem at all it does not mean that the DRM is inactive, only that the playback is not restricted "yet" and is monitored for a restriction request.
That is not how the system works.
Also you seem to forget the "Tilt Bits" which have been the bane of my early Vista experience, getting reset at every little voltage fluctuation in order to protect the "Protected Path".
Evidence ?
I would have thought that the network performance degradation when playing unprotected mp3s would have empirically proved that point for anyone interested.
It had nothing to do with DRM, nor was it specific to "playing unprotected MP3s" (which is some genuinely "empirical" evidence it was not DRM-related).
The Protected Path is only active when a playback app requests it. Vista does not sit there monitoring everything you do looking for stuff that's copyrighted - not only because it would be pointless (since the system has no way of identifying whether or not some random data stream is copyrighted), but also because of the insane overheads involved in doing so.
I can install XP on any hardware and I receive updates as long as my licence is validated.
Wow. Just like Vista.
Not being able to run the full OS without a constantly validated key that is tied to my hardware (unlike W2k and WXP) is a dongle.
Vista will work fine, even if your key won't validate. Of course, if it is actually genuine, and won't validate, then you just call up Microsoft and they'll give you another one.
The dongle having a limited number of installations before I need to ask permission is an expiry date. Vista and Win7 are dongled with an expiry date.
No, they're not.
That's a red herring, and you probably know it.
How is an example of a more restrictive licensing scheme (for an OS that _you_ originally mentioned), in a discussion about licensing schemes, "a red herring" ? It's particularly relevant, given your talk of "dongles", since a Macintosh is basically nothing more than a "dongle" these days.
"In order to prevent users from copying DRM content, Windows Vista provides process isolation and continually monitors what kernel-mode software is loaded. If an unverified component is detected, then Vista will stop playing DRM content, rather than risk having the content copied."
Vista has to start playing DRM-encumbered content before the Protected Path is activated. That is how the system is designed, that is how the system works. If you have a credible source that says otherwise, please link to it, because all the actual documentation from MicrosoftM shows that the Protected Path is only used for DRM-encumbered media, and only active when a playback application requests it.
If you wish to prove it to yourself, then simply output some HD audio over a SPDDIF output, and some HD video over a non-HDCP video output. These are things the Protected Path will not allow, yet (I'll save you the trouble), both work fine.
After all if you can turn it off what is to stop some filthy non *.A.A loving scum from simply replacing key files and loading a virtual device?
What kind of "virtual device" are you planning on installing ? How are you going to convince the rest of the system it's a legitimate part of the Protected Path ?
But I don't want MY OS, which I payed good money for, slowed down by crap I will never use.
It's not. No DRM-encumbered media, no DRM running.
And yes, protected path runs 24/7.
No, it does not, and this is so stupidly trivial to prove that it boggles the mind anyone would ever argue otherwise. Fire up some HD video to a non-HDCP monitor. Congratulations, you've just demonstrated that the Protected Path isn't active.
That is how it keeps you from using an Alcohol 120% style driver from bypassing it.
Get a better program. Daemon Tools works fine in Vista, even 64-bit Vista.
The point of getting Windows 7 out ASAP is to prevent all those XP downgraders from running into an issue during the next upgrade cycle.
Except there's nothing really "ASAP" about Windows 7. It's falling right into the typical Windows release cycle. Heck, if anything it'll be a marginally longer than average interval from Vista to Windows 7.
Er, why ? I can see why you wouldn't like the collapsing-many-into-one part, because I do as well, but I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't want grouping turned on. Indeed, in my XP installs I always tweak it to set the collapse threshold very high, so I can still get the grouping, but without the stupid collapsing part.
Has anyone, in the history of humanity, ever gotten that to work? I don't mean the part where it connects to some anonymous server in Redmond and sends them god-knows-what information -- I mean, has anyone actually come out on the other end of that process with a driver? In fifteen years I haven't seen it happen even once, and I don't think I've ever heard of it happening.
Sure, heaps of times. Typically with disk controllers, but also sound cards, bluetooth controllers and fingerprint scanners,
I have converted 3 people to *nix since October. All three came from the 'used Xp just fine, but what is this?' crowd, right after getting a new PC with Vista pre-installed. All three have commented on how easy their computers are to use now, and wished they had heard of this *nix thing years ago.
The differences between even Windows 95 and Vista, are trivial compared to the differences between Windows and any Linux distribution I've ever seen.
Or, to put it another way, it's a great struggle, indeed, to believe someone confused going from, say, Windows XP to Vista (where the UI differences are pretty much all cosmetic), would not be completely lost at sea going from XP to Linux $DISTRO (where many UI differences are functional).
I guess Apple is effectively selling a licence of OS X with every box sold you could argue their licensing is a giant dongle which doubles as a computer.
Correct. No Mac, no OS X. In that context, a very occasional - if any at all - phone call to Microsoft (ie: the worst experience _most_ people will have) is hardly restrictive.
With Vista and Win7, Microsoft is tying the activation code to the hardware and telling me that I have to ask permission to change hardware. Is the difference clearer now?
No, because XP has WGA as well. Even with WGA, it *still* doesn't come anywhere close to "a dongle with an expiry date".
I don't see your point. I can install Tiger or Leopard on any of my Macs at any time. I have often moved between Panther and Tiger for development projects.
Can you install Tiger or Leopard on something that isn't a Mac ?
How about the litany of major usability issues that Windows has had for years that MS wants to constantly ignore? Especially given that Gates has sent memos out criticizing the Windows team, and they still don't address these issues.
Usability took a big step backwards with Vista, and most of those issues haven't been addressed in 7.
Then you need to complain to the people responsible for DRM-encumbering your media, as only they have the ability to create and release non-DRM-encumbered versions.
It's been a while since I've last used Windows (I'm a health professional, not an IT specialist so...), but I was under the impression that parts of Vista's abysmal file-copy/network-copy was due to the DRM embedded in the OS?
Nope.
Also there's the aspects of HDCP, and CSS that preclude easily cutting/copying/pasting/recording of AV on Windows (when last I checked, but this has the caveat that it's been a while...though maybe only eighteen months, give or take).
It's a struggle to see how HDCP or CSS could have any conceivable impact on "cutting/copying/pasting/recording of AV". Source ?
The licensing model of Vista (and Win7) is like dongle, only worse: it's a dongle with an expiry date. It penalizes the customer. If I buy an authentication key, *I* should be the one to say on which computer I install it. I shouldn't have to call Redmond for permission if I change computers.
1. It's no different to XP, which everyone seems to now hold up as some sort of gold standard.
2. It's still streets ahead of OS X, and OS X's licensing doesn't seem to have slowed it down too much.
.. and if you compile statically, you also don't need a package system, since there are now no external dependencies...
Of course, the amount of RAM and hard disk space you're going to waste will be rather large. To say nothing of the maintenance nightmare that any required security patching will produce.
... but to claim that "a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies. " is a lie at best, since the whole antitrust case was on the way that IE was supposedly such a core component of the Windows OS, and that so many processes and programs depended on it, or libraries (dlls) that were part of it...
That is a completely different and separate issue. Interdependencies within the standard OS components have next to zero impact on anyone outside of the OS vendor.
Windows does NOT have the problem that Linux[0] has, where installing application A requires application B, which in turn requires library C, which then requires a more recent version of library D, which then requires newer versions of applications E, F, L, R and S, but application L doesn't work with the current version of library C, so you need an older one, but the older one means that application Z loses some functionality - and so on, and so forth.
Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.
Duh. If you deliberately set out to break Windows, you can do it. What's your point ?
[0] Strictly speaking, it's probably more accurate to say "GNU", rather than "Linux", since dependency hell is largely a non-issue outside of GNU/$SOMETHING. "Non-GNU" Linux systems, however, are very thin on the ground, so it's not unreasonable to treat them as interchangeable.
MS "systems" have lacked and still lack a unified, easy to use package management system such as have been available elsewhere for years.
That's because packaging systems (*especially* on Linux) exist largely to solve a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies.
OS X lacks a packaging system for much the same reason - there's simply no compelling need for one.
(Of course, it doesn't take much imagination to realise the level of apoplectic outrage that would come out of Slashdot, et al, if the only easy way to install software on Windows was via a centralised repository controlled by Microsoft.)
What software does Apple sell that doesn't require a dongle^H^H^H^H^H^HMacintosh ?
(I'm sure there is some, but I must admit I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.)
Microsoft sells software and hardware. You may have heard of the Xbox360 or the Zune.
Microsoft's hardware interests are relatively small (although they're certainly larger than Apple's software interests).
The generalization that Apple sells computers and Microsoft sells software is a gross one, to say the least.
Actually it's a pretty good one, because it quickly and easily identifies the basic structure of the basic business models behind each company.
The bulk of Apple's business is built around selling hardware. The bulk of Microsoft's business is built around selling software. That's just the way it is.
The browser itself appears to be leaning more toward the UI design of Chrome. Which fits it well, IMHO. The new Coverflow feature is surprisingly slick and doesn't feel tacked on at all. The bonjour integration feels like a new management console for the network. I can surf all the devices and get important information on their location and status. I can even change the settings!
Which makes me wonder if the next version of OS X is going to use Safari-based widgets for network and printer management. Hmm...
Heh. Safari+OSX 2009 == Internet Explorer+Windows 1997. Be fascinating to see how _that_ pans out.
On a more serious note, does Safari have remotely decent session/state save and restore yet ? The SessionSaver extension is unquestionably FireFox's killer feature, IMHO (the again, I typically have 10+ FireFox windows and 150+ tabs open at once, so a FireFox crash without SessionSaver would be fairly traumatic).
Paravirtualized drivers are included with XenServer, and windows guests run extremely well, even faster than VMware in many cases; in general, XenServer boasts a higher consolidation ratio than VMware.
I doubt that very much. Xen cannot oversubscribe RAM, and has no equivalent of VMWare's memory deduplication. Xen might (*might*) give you better usage of available CPU power - but that's typically the last thing you run out of when consolidating VMs.
There was a popular Intel chipset that was supported in Vista Beta one and then never supported again. It was also a chipset that was pushed heavily in the laptop market. I think it was the 945? Anyway remember we are talking 2K5 here and Intel had more laptops in the upper ranges than they do now.
I think it was the 915. However, I am sceptical it - or any other integrated video chipset - could be found in such an expensive laptop, even one dating from 2005. Heck, I have an old Dell Precision M60, it has a dedicated video card and didn't cost that much more than US$2100, in 2003.
Just read the one from the higher up complaining he spent $2100 on a laptop and got "an email machine" because it said it was Vista Capable and wasn't.
I must admit I'm struggling to conceive of a way you could spend $2100 on a laptop and _not_ have something capable of running Vista "Premium".
Let's also not forget a few other things about games today vs back then:
* massively higher distribution volumes
* much lower distribution costs (not just because of things like Steam, either - used to be all games came with a nicely printed manual, plus other goodies, and much larger boxes).
Slashdot Mirror
But there is a constant monitor that evaluates if a content is protected or not, especially since as far as I remember the specification allows to protect only a portion of a file. Even if you are playing unprotected content, outputting it via analog and having no problem at all it does not mean that the DRM is inactive, only that the playback is not restricted "yet" and is monitored for a restriction request.
That is not how the system works.
Also you seem to forget the "Tilt Bits" which have been the bane of my early Vista experience, getting reset at every little voltage fluctuation in order to protect the "Protected Path".
Evidence ?
I would have thought that the network performance degradation when playing unprotected mp3s would have empirically proved that point for anyone interested.
It had nothing to do with DRM, nor was it specific to "playing unprotected MP3s" (which is some genuinely "empirical" evidence it was not DRM-related).
The Protected Path is only active when a playback app requests it. Vista does not sit there monitoring everything you do looking for stuff that's copyrighted - not only because it would be pointless (since the system has no way of identifying whether or not some random data stream is copyrighted), but also because of the insane overheads involved in doing so.
I can install XP on any hardware and I receive updates as long as my licence is validated.
Wow. Just like Vista.
Not being able to run the full OS without a constantly validated key that is tied to my hardware (unlike W2k and WXP) is a dongle.
Vista will work fine, even if your key won't validate. Of course, if it is actually genuine, and won't validate, then you just call up Microsoft and they'll give you another one.
The dongle having a limited number of installations before I need to ask permission is an expiry date. Vista and Win7 are dongled with an expiry date.
No, they're not.
That's a red herring, and you probably know it.
How is an example of a more restrictive licensing scheme (for an OS that _you_ originally mentioned), in a discussion about licensing schemes, "a red herring" ? It's particularly relevant, given your talk of "dongles", since a Macintosh is basically nothing more than a "dongle" these days.
Uuhhh Do YOU even understand how DRM works?
Yes.
"In order to prevent users from copying DRM content, Windows Vista provides process isolation and continually monitors what kernel-mode software is loaded. If an unverified component is detected, then Vista will stop playing DRM content, rather than risk having the content copied."
Vista has to start playing DRM-encumbered content before the Protected Path is activated. That is how the system is designed, that is how the system works. If you have a credible source that says otherwise, please link to it, because all the actual documentation from MicrosoftM shows that the Protected Path is only used for DRM-encumbered media, and only active when a playback application requests it.
If you wish to prove it to yourself, then simply output some HD audio over a SPDDIF output, and some HD video over a non-HDCP video output. These are things the Protected Path will not allow, yet (I'll save you the trouble), both work fine.
After all if you can turn it off what is to stop some filthy non *.A.A loving scum from simply replacing key files and loading a virtual device?
What kind of "virtual device" are you planning on installing ? How are you going to convince the rest of the system it's a legitimate part of the Protected Path ?
But I don't want MY OS, which I payed good money for, slowed down by crap I will never use.
It's not. No DRM-encumbered media, no DRM running.
And yes, protected path runs 24/7.
No, it does not, and this is so stupidly trivial to prove that it boggles the mind anyone would ever argue otherwise. Fire up some HD video to a non-HDCP monitor. Congratulations, you've just demonstrated that the Protected Path isn't active.
That is how it keeps you from using an Alcohol 120% style driver from bypassing it.
Get a better program. Daemon Tools works fine in Vista, even 64-bit Vista.
The point of getting Windows 7 out ASAP is to prevent all those XP downgraders from running into an issue during the next upgrade cycle.
Except there's nothing really "ASAP" about Windows 7. It's falling right into the typical Windows release cycle. Heck, if anything it'll be a marginally longer than average interval from Vista to Windows 7.
This is a VERY serious design flaw.
Er, why ? I can see why you wouldn't like the collapsing-many-into-one part, because I do as well, but I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't want grouping turned on. Indeed, in my XP installs I always tweak it to set the collapse threshold very high, so I can still get the grouping, but without the stupid collapsing part.
Has anyone, in the history of humanity, ever gotten that to work? I don't mean the part where it connects to some anonymous server in Redmond and sends them god-knows-what information -- I mean, has anyone actually come out on the other end of that process with a driver? In fifteen years I haven't seen it happen even once, and I don't think I've ever heard of it happening.
Sure, heaps of times. Typically with disk controllers, but also sound cards, bluetooth controllers and fingerprint scanners,
I have converted 3 people to *nix since October. All three came from the 'used Xp just fine, but what is this?' crowd, right after getting a new PC with Vista pre-installed. All three have commented on how easy their computers are to use now, and wished they had heard of this *nix thing years ago.
The differences between even Windows 95 and Vista, are trivial compared to the differences between Windows and any Linux distribution I've ever seen.
Or, to put it another way, it's a great struggle, indeed, to believe someone confused going from, say, Windows XP to Vista (where the UI differences are pretty much all cosmetic), would not be completely lost at sea going from XP to Linux $DISTRO (where many UI differences are functional).
I guess Apple is effectively selling a licence of OS X with every box sold you could argue their licensing is a giant dongle which doubles as a computer.
Correct. No Mac, no OS X. In that context, a very occasional - if any at all - phone call to Microsoft (ie: the worst experience _most_ people will have) is hardly restrictive.
With Vista and Win7, Microsoft is tying the activation code to the hardware and telling me that I have to ask permission to change hardware. Is the difference clearer now?
No, because XP has WGA as well. Even with WGA, it *still* doesn't come anywhere close to "a dongle with an expiry date".
I don't see your point. I can install Tiger or Leopard on any of my Macs at any time. I have often moved between Panther and Tiger for development projects.
Can you install Tiger or Leopard on something that isn't a Mac ?
How about the litany of major usability issues that Windows has had for years that MS wants to constantly ignore? Especially given that Gates has sent memos out criticizing the Windows team, and they still don't address these issues.
Usability took a big step backwards with Vista, and most of those issues haven't been addressed in 7.
For example ?
Then you need to complain to the people responsible for DRM-encumbering your media, as only they have the ability to create and release non-DRM-encumbered versions.
It's been a while since I've last used Windows (I'm a health professional, not an IT specialist so...), but I was under the impression that parts of Vista's abysmal file-copy/network-copy was due to the DRM embedded in the OS?
Nope.
Also there's the aspects of HDCP, and CSS that preclude easily cutting/copying/pasting/recording of AV on Windows (when last I checked, but this has the caveat that it's been a while...though maybe only eighteen months, give or take).
It's a struggle to see how HDCP or CSS could have any conceivable impact on "cutting/copying/pasting/recording of AV". Source ?
The licensing model of Vista (and Win7) is like dongle, only worse: it's a dongle with an expiry date. It penalizes the customer. If I buy an authentication key, *I* should be the one to say on which computer I install it. I shouldn't have to call Redmond for permission if I change computers.
1. It's no different to XP, which everyone seems to now hold up as some sort of gold standard.
2. It's still streets ahead of OS X, and OS X's licensing doesn't seem to have slowed it down too much.
But after your $179 you get to keep the software.
Just like Windows and OS X, you mean ?
Pay again after the 1st year if you want another year of support with 2 business day response times.
Pay again after the first year if you want to be able to patch your systems, I think you mean - you know, the thing everyone else doesn't charge for.
Of course, the amount of RAM and hard disk space you're going to waste will be rather large. To say nothing of the maintenance nightmare that any required security patching will produce.
That is a completely different and separate issue. Interdependencies within the standard OS components have next to zero impact on anyone outside of the OS vendor.
Windows does NOT have the problem that Linux[0] has, where installing application A requires application B, which in turn requires library C, which then requires a more recent version of library D, which then requires newer versions of applications E, F, L, R and S, but application L doesn't work with the current version of library C, so you need an older one, but the older one means that application Z loses some functionality - and so on, and so forth.
Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.
Duh. If you deliberately set out to break Windows, you can do it. What's your point ?
[0] Strictly speaking, it's probably more accurate to say "GNU", rather than "Linux", since dependency hell is largely a non-issue outside of GNU/$SOMETHING. "Non-GNU" Linux systems, however, are very thin on the ground, so it's not unreasonable to treat them as interchangeable.
MS "systems" have lacked and still lack a unified, easy to use package management system such as have been available elsewhere for years.
That's because packaging systems (*especially* on Linux) exist largely to solve a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies.
OS X lacks a packaging system for much the same reason - there's simply no compelling need for one.
(Of course, it doesn't take much imagination to realise the level of apoplectic outrage that would come out of Slashdot, et al, if the only easy way to install software on Windows was via a centralised repository controlled by Microsoft.)
Vista is $235.95 [amazon.com].
Vista is $109.99.
Redhat RHEL is $179 [redhat.com]
Redhat RHEL is $179 per year.
Apple sells hardware and software.
What software does Apple sell that doesn't require a dongle^H^H^H^H^H^HMacintosh ?
(I'm sure there is some, but I must admit I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.)
Microsoft sells software and hardware. You may have heard of the Xbox360 or the Zune.
Microsoft's hardware interests are relatively small (although they're certainly larger than Apple's software interests).
The generalization that Apple sells computers and Microsoft sells software is a gross one, to say the least.
Actually it's a pretty good one, because it quickly and easily identifies the basic structure of the basic business models behind each company.
The bulk of Apple's business is built around selling hardware. The bulk of Microsoft's business is built around selling software. That's just the way it is.
If Nitro is just marketing speak for SFX (SquirrelFish Extreme) then Apple is guilty of the worst "up to" benchmark numbers crap possible:
Hey, at Apple, that's one of the great traditions !
The browser itself appears to be leaning more toward the UI design of Chrome. Which fits it well, IMHO. The new Coverflow feature is surprisingly slick and doesn't feel tacked on at all. The bonjour integration feels like a new management console for the network. I can surf all the devices and get important information on their location and status. I can even change the settings!
Which makes me wonder if the next version of OS X is going to use Safari-based widgets for network and printer management. Hmm...
Heh. Safari+OSX 2009 == Internet Explorer+Windows 1997. Be fascinating to see how _that_ pans out.
On a more serious note, does Safari have remotely decent session/state save and restore yet ? The SessionSaver extension is unquestionably FireFox's killer feature, IMHO (the again, I typically have 10+ FireFox windows and 150+ tabs open at once, so a FireFox crash without SessionSaver would be fairly traumatic).
Paravirtualized drivers are included with XenServer, and windows guests run extremely well, even faster than VMware in many cases; in general, XenServer boasts a higher consolidation ratio than VMware.
I doubt that very much. Xen cannot oversubscribe RAM, and has no equivalent of VMWare's memory deduplication. Xen might (*might*) give you better usage of available CPU power - but that's typically the last thing you run out of when consolidating VMs.
There was a popular Intel chipset that was supported in Vista Beta one and then never supported again. It was also a chipset that was pushed heavily in the laptop market. I think it was the 945? Anyway remember we are talking 2K5 here and Intel had more laptops in the upper ranges than they do now.
I think it was the 915. However, I am sceptical it - or any other integrated video chipset - could be found in such an expensive laptop, even one dating from 2005. Heck, I have an old Dell Precision M60, it has a dedicated video card and didn't cost that much more than US$2100, in 2003.
Just read the one from the higher up complaining he spent $2100 on a laptop and got "an email machine" because it said it was Vista Capable and wasn't.
I must admit I'm struggling to conceive of a way you could spend $2100 on a laptop and _not_ have something capable of running Vista "Premium".
Let's also not forget inflation.
Let's also not forget a few other things about games today vs back then:
* massively higher distribution volumes
* much lower distribution costs (not just because of things like Steam, either - used to be all games came with a nicely printed manual, plus other goodies, and much larger boxes).