The RIAA had ZERO leverage on Microsoft to push this.
"Your platform needs to support DRM or there won't be any content published on it by us or any of our partners" is "ZERO leverage" ? What planet are you from ?
This is like saying the tax department has no "ZERO leverage" over you because, after all, you can just go around not earning any money.
You are misinformed. Apple has DRM but they did not volunteer DRM like Microsoft. They were forced to implement DRM by the music industry or no store.
So how is this different from "DRM or no content published for your platform", exactly ?
No, the point of discussion is that the computer industry has done just fine without them so far.
Not where that market overlaps with Hollywood & co. they haven't. What proportion of people do you think have HTPCs ? I'd be surprised if it was even a single-digit percentage of people who owned TVs.
Millions dollars worth of office desktops and servers being sold every year are utterly irrelevant in a comparison with revenue being generated in the context of media consumption.
I've clearly drunk the kool-aid since I believe that if computers aren't a big platform in the first place, hollywood wouldn't give two shits either way -- just look how Universal got their DRM wet-dream on the Zune and STILL didn't play the game.
Computers aren't a big platform in Hollywood content consumption _now_, but it's pretty fucking obvious to everyone that's where they're headed. Hence the interest from big media in making sure they're not allowed to be as flexible in the future as they currently are (they started about 5-10 years too late, but they're getting up to speed quite quickly).
You speak from ignorance. I've used both and don't have the drm issues you want to believe in, and even in the worst case scenario, the requirements are NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME AS VISTA.
You can play HD-DVD, Blu-ray or otherwise DRMed content at full quality using non-DRM-encumbered hardware and those applications that won't play in a similar fashion on Vista ? Examples, please.
The seasoned pro doesn't care whether it's HDCP-protected or not - so who, exactly, is this system aimed at preventing on the computer-side? It sounds more like wasted developer time that could be spent optimising existing code or improving driver quality
I think you'll find a disturbingly large (to the RIAA, et al) amount of stuff on P2P networks and the like *does* come from so-called "casual piracy". The peron who throws a CD in their PC, rips it to MP3 and shares it. The person who uses one of those all-in-one DVD ripping/encoding tools to put their prerelease copy of a DVD up for download, etc.
DRM is meant to stop this sort of piracy and the relatively large proportion of others who benefit from it. The objective is to reduce the seeding of such material to a relatively small, well prepared group of people who are a) easier to find and b) easier to hit with criminal copyright infringement charges (after all, the argument will go, if they're serious enough to have the hardware to decrypt and capture an HDCP stream, they must be planning on doing it for profitable distribution, right ?)
Certainly the DRM omponent already stops casual copying, but I just don't see how the degraded quality over non-HDCP improves the value proposition of the DRM system - unless you're selling it to suits who assume the DRM is an unbreakable component and that those pesky unencrypted digital video streams are the only thing between them and big bucks.
Firstly the quality of the protected content needs to be good enough so that people care. Currently, it really isn't - but 5 - 10 years down the track there is likely going to be an obvious difference between "full quality" content and "degraded" content (the latter coming from either inappropriate hardware/software and/or "casual piracy").
The anti-piracy aspect of DRM is aimed at making it _hard_ to pirate content and, hence, easier to find the people who do. It's the same principle Apple use to keep OS X "Macintosh only". It's not super-difficult to get OS X onto a whitebox PC, but it's hard enough such that you have to be reasonably dedicated and tech-savvy to do so - which stops a fairly large proportion of potential OS X pirates in their tracks.
You're wrong here. While most of the blame should be placed on those, who ship DRM-tainted content, Microsoft is clearly guilty of "aiding and abetting" this scheme. Much like someone lending a gun or a car to person clearly saying they need it to rob a bank.
So giving copyright holders more tools to uphold their copyright is like robbing a bank ?
And for a share of the loot. So Microsoft is not the only party to blame, not even the party that should get most of the blame - but certainly they don't come out clean.
If the copyright holders don't restrict their content with DRM, all that DRM stuff in Vista has zero impact. Responsibility for its use therefore lies with the copyright holders, utterly.
Because those "earnings" aren't even close to be related to the same market space as Hollywood.
Not everything hollywood produces is HD either. In fact, until the last few years, hardly anything was HD.
This, however, is a false dichotomy. The point of discussion is _consuming content_ and why Hollywood has more say about how it is done than the computer industry.
The point is to illustrate which industry is more important to the US economy and thus more 'deserving' of special treatment.
But you're not compariong apples with apples. It would be like making some sort of comparison between the performance car and performance car accessories markets, but using the revenue from every different kind of vehicle as the measure of "influence" the performance car market has.
This line of argument is pretty much a dead end. The reason is that there are at least two commercially available HD software players from Intervideo and Cyberlink that will play both HD and BD on non-vista systems at full resolution. If Hollywood needed PCs less than PCs needed hollywood, they would never have licensed Intervideo and Cyberlink to run on systems without vista's boatload of drm.
Both of those programs similarly require DRM-laden hardware to play back at full quality and (as alluded to on Cyberlink's website, at least) possibly to play back at all.
I figured you knew what you were talking about until right there. Last I heard, the only reason Apple put DRM on stuff bought from iTunes in the first place was that without it, the RIAA wouldn't allow them to sell their songs. If it's changed since then, please let me know, but...
Right. So basically exactly the same situation as DRM capabilities being put into Vista so it could be used as a platform for premium content.
Certainly P2P provides high definition, professionally produced content.
2 out of 3 ain't bad, but still insufficient.
If the computer industry didn't bow down to the MPAA, anyone who wanted to play content on their computers would probably just pirate it (with some exceptions, obviously)
Even though the computer has "bowed down" to the MPAA, there's still nothing stopping them.
Of course, all these degraded audio/video paths are pointless - it's not Joe Regular on a Vista machine trying to capture the video of Superman from his DVI port and the audio from his SPDIF port. The well-organised pirates that rip these things will just get a HDCP removal box, break/exploit the DRM system behind the video or find a flaw in a hardware player to exploit.
Certainly. But that is not the sort of piracy DRM is meant to stop (in as much as DRM is supposed to stop piracy).
As I see it, this downgrading is only making it more awkward for Joe Regular to buy a computer that will play content without it being degraded. So he's more likely to go to or just watch it on a TV. The former hurts the MPAA, the latter hurts the computer industry
Except it's unlikely anything he gets from a torrent site is going to have the quality, fidelity, simplicity and convenience of an off the shelf HD-DVD (or similar).
There is another alternative: The operating system on my computer can play content at full quality. Why do you insist this is not an option?
Because the people who are responsible for creating and publishing the content are saying it won't be.
You cannot violate the copyright on media you have purchased (say an HD-DVD or Blu-ray DVD) by playing it back on your computer.
No, but you probably can violate the DMCA. Additionally, this does not translate to "I am entitled to be able to view the content in whatever way I want".
I should, of course, be able to play back the media I have purchased on my own computer at full quality.
Why ? If the copyright holder says you can't, why should you be able to ?
In this regard, Windows Vista is a problem in that Windows Vista downgrades the user experience on "protected" content.
No, the content being protected by DRM is the problem. Vista is just doing what the copyright holder tells it to. If the copyright holder doesn't flag his content as DRM-protected, Vista will quite happily play back anything you want in full 1080p, 7.1 glory.
Not really. With DRM, copyright holders are just saying "I'll allow you to make a copy of my art if you only view it with particular players [etc]".
This is not fundamentally different from, say, people GPLing their code and saying "I'll allow you to make copies of my code if you do the same with yours".
Now, monied interest have gone to considerable lengths to convince you that if watch your DVD on an iPod that you are somehow breaking the law, but that is nonsense. I have a feeling you know that, too. But for some reason, you're intent on claiming a view of copyright that is nirvana for corporate interests. It certainly doesn't help the artist or consumer.
I'm trying to get across the point that copyright (at the very least in its current form, and IMHO in general) is the real problem here. Not Vista. Not DRM. _Copyright_. The principle of copyright is that "intellectual property" must be treated in the same fashion as physical property from the buyers perspective, but not the sellers. This principle is broken.
A pyrrhic victory would require some sort of substantial loss. I doubt many would call the loss of Microsoft's newest OS a loss.
You have a strange idea of "many".
Your post seems to imply that Microsoft is blameless for leading the DRM charge. DRM and bad copyright legislation are things that we need to fix but that doesn't mean we should ignore the villains who advocate them.
Microsoft's software is nothing more than an enabler. To actually _do_ anything, it requires DRM restrictions be set on the content by the copyright holder.
The _only_ place where blame should be placed, for DRM-encumbered content, is in the hands of the copyright holder.
You never saw Microsoft attacking a filesharing program but Microsoft was first in line to implement DRM.
No they weren't. Things like Macrovision are essentially DRM, and they've been around for over a decade. More recently, Apple were well and truly there in force first, with the iTunes store.
Microsoft volunteered to implement DRM measures and led the technological way in the DRM arena. Some companies resisted but caved, some caved without a fight but microsoft is the only company I know of that actually volunteered before any content provider could even think about demanding.
Uh, hello ? Apple ? The most popular MP3 player in the world ? The biggest online music store in the marketplace ?
Which explains why youtube is a flash in the pan, as is all the p2p sharing of movies that we hear about at the start of every single movie shown in the theater nowadays.
Youtube and P2P provide high definition, professionally produced, legal content ?
False dichotomy. You're assuming that the only full-quality experience is provide by RIAA/MPAA-owned content.
Not in the slightest. I'm assuming that the vast majority of content the majority of people are going to be actively seeking out, will be sourced from the RIAA, MPAA and friends.
You'll need a _very_ convincing argument to demonstrate why this assumption is even unreasonable, let alone "false".
Realize your options, and the RIAA/MPAA is dead in the water.
It's not the people on Slashdot, that you need to convince of this.
US computer industry yearly revenue - ~$300B+
MPAA member yearly revenue - ~$50B.
Take out the revenue generated from servers, business desktops, embedded devices and other such things which have zero relevance to the comparison.
Just why do you think that an industry that is at least 6x larger does not have a realistic chance of forcing hollywood to capitulate rather than the other way around?
Because Hollywood has something the computer industry wants, but not vice versa[0]. The vast majority of commercial, professional, high quality media is consumed through standalone devices like DVD players, set top boxes and CD players, not computers - and this is not likely to change in the near future.
The impact on Hollywood of computers not being able to play hi-def content would be negligible, because people will simply use their standalone devices. The impact on a computer platform that cannot play hi-def content will be more significant, because there is no alternative for the software developer (ie: no real source of alternative content that people will want).
[0] The iPod was a notable exception, but there probably won't be another such aberration any time soon.
No, it doesn't. Which is why with non-DRM hardware you're more likely to get the degraded video, like Vista.
Not providing the capacity to downgrade makes movie studios more likely to sell at least some copies without a requirement of downgrading.
Unlikely, given that pretty much every media playing device is going to follow the degraded media path.
Critics of digital restrictions management would prefer less of a selection of major studio works vs. the temptation to activate a downgrading requirement.
Then critics of DRM need to come up with a better way to convince media cartels to produce such content than "you're trampling on our rights". Or buy their own laws that are more favourable.
The idea that any image constraint needs to be applied other than matching the output to the specs of the available hardware is a specious one at best. Legitimate users get punished, and it's unlikely to affect the illegitimate users in the slightest.
The biggest monopoly in the world, the largest company in the biggest country in the world, run by the richest person on earth, that controls 90% of the desktop computers on the planet, and has the highest cash reserves of any commercial entity --- is being strong armed!?!?!
Yes.
It may be difficult for some Slashdotters lacking real-world perspective to get a grip on, but Microsoft is not the biggest, nastiest, greediest and/or most powerful corporation in the world. They're not even close.
I do not think it would be right for Slashdot to neglect to report on the nice new "feature" of Windows Vista whereby Windows Vista downgrades the user experience if "protected" content is involved, do you?
Your whole premise is wrong. Vista doesn't "downgrade the user experience", it plays content at a lower quality, in lieu of not playing it at all. "Downgrading" suggests there is an actual alternative of a "full-quality experience" _without_ DRM-capable software and hardware, when realistically the only choices are a blank screen or copyright (/DMCA) violations.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA had ZERO leverage on Microsoft to push this.
"Your platform needs to support DRM or there won't be any content published on it by us or any of our partners" is "ZERO leverage" ? What planet are you from ?
This is like saying the tax department has no "ZERO leverage" over you because, after all, you can just go around not earning any money.
You are misinformed. Apple has DRM but they did not volunteer DRM like Microsoft. They were forced to implement DRM by the music industry or no store.
So how is this different from "DRM or no content published for your platform", exactly ?
No, the point of discussion is that the computer industry has done just fine without them so far.
Not where that market overlaps with Hollywood & co. they haven't. What proportion of people do you think have HTPCs ? I'd be surprised if it was even a single-digit percentage of people who owned TVs.
Millions dollars worth of office desktops and servers being sold every year are utterly irrelevant in a comparison with revenue being generated in the context of media consumption.
I've clearly drunk the kool-aid since I believe that if computers aren't a big platform in the first place, hollywood wouldn't give two shits either way -- just look how Universal got their DRM wet-dream on the Zune and STILL didn't play the game.
Computers aren't a big platform in Hollywood content consumption _now_, but it's pretty fucking obvious to everyone that's where they're headed. Hence the interest from big media in making sure they're not allowed to be as flexible in the future as they currently are (they started about 5-10 years too late, but they're getting up to speed quite quickly).
You speak from ignorance. I've used both and don't have the drm issues you want to believe in, and even in the worst case scenario, the requirements are NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME AS VISTA.
You can play HD-DVD, Blu-ray or otherwise DRMed content at full quality using non-DRM-encumbered hardware and those applications that won't play in a similar fashion on Vista ? Examples, please.
Or continuing to watch it without any constraints on another OS which does this just fine already rather than 'upgrading' to Vista...
This would be great. What platform does it ?
The seasoned pro doesn't care whether it's HDCP-protected or not - so who, exactly, is this system aimed at preventing on the computer-side? It sounds more like wasted developer time that could be spent optimising existing code or improving driver quality
I think you'll find a disturbingly large (to the RIAA, et al) amount of stuff on P2P networks and the like *does* come from so-called "casual piracy". The peron who throws a CD in their PC, rips it to MP3 and shares it. The person who uses one of those all-in-one DVD ripping/encoding tools to put their prerelease copy of a DVD up for download, etc.
DRM is meant to stop this sort of piracy and the relatively large proportion of others who benefit from it. The objective is to reduce the seeding of such material to a relatively small, well prepared group of people who are a) easier to find and b) easier to hit with criminal copyright infringement charges (after all, the argument will go, if they're serious enough to have the hardware to decrypt and capture an HDCP stream, they must be planning on doing it for profitable distribution, right ?)
Certainly the DRM omponent already stops casual copying, but I just don't see how the degraded quality over non-HDCP improves the value proposition of the DRM system - unless you're selling it to suits who assume the DRM is an unbreakable component and that those pesky unencrypted digital video streams are the only thing between them and big bucks.
Firstly the quality of the protected content needs to be good enough so that people care. Currently, it really isn't - but 5 - 10 years down the track there is likely going to be an obvious difference between "full quality" content and "degraded" content (the latter coming from either inappropriate hardware/software and/or "casual piracy").
The anti-piracy aspect of DRM is aimed at making it _hard_ to pirate content and, hence, easier to find the people who do. It's the same principle Apple use to keep OS X "Macintosh only". It's not super-difficult to get OS X onto a whitebox PC, but it's hard enough such that you have to be reasonably dedicated and tech-savvy to do so - which stops a fairly large proportion of potential OS X pirates in their tracks.
You're wrong here. While most of the blame should be placed on those, who ship DRM-tainted content, Microsoft is clearly guilty of "aiding and abetting" this scheme. Much like someone lending a gun or a car to person clearly saying they need it to rob a bank.
So giving copyright holders more tools to uphold their copyright is like robbing a bank ?
And for a share of the loot. So Microsoft is not the only party to blame, not even the party that should get most of the blame - but certainly they don't come out clean.
If the copyright holders don't restrict their content with DRM, all that DRM stuff in Vista has zero impact. Responsibility for its use therefore lies with the copyright holders, utterly.
Why does it have zero relevance?
Because those "earnings" aren't even close to be related to the same market space as Hollywood.
Not everything hollywood produces is HD either. In fact, until the last few years, hardly anything was HD.
This, however, is a false dichotomy. The point of discussion is _consuming content_ and why Hollywood has more say about how it is done than the computer industry.
The point is to illustrate which industry is more important to the US economy and thus more 'deserving' of special treatment.
But you're not compariong apples with apples. It would be like making some sort of comparison between the performance car and performance car accessories markets, but using the revenue from every different kind of vehicle as the measure of "influence" the performance car market has.
This line of argument is pretty much a dead end. The reason is that there are at least two commercially available HD software players from Intervideo and Cyberlink that will play both HD and BD on non-vista systems at full resolution. If Hollywood needed PCs less than PCs needed hollywood, they would never have licensed Intervideo and Cyberlink to run on systems without vista's boatload of drm.
Both of those programs similarly require DRM-laden hardware to play back at full quality and (as alluded to on Cyberlink's website, at least) possibly to play back at all.
Application or OS, pick your poison.
I figured you knew what you were talking about until right there. Last I heard, the only reason Apple put DRM on stuff bought from iTunes in the first place was that without it, the RIAA wouldn't allow them to sell their songs. If it's changed since then, please let me know, but...
Right. So basically exactly the same situation as DRM capabilities being put into Vista so it could be used as a platform for premium content.
Certainly P2P provides high definition, professionally produced content.
2 out of 3 ain't bad, but still insufficient.
If the computer industry didn't bow down to the MPAA, anyone who wanted to play content on their computers would probably just pirate it (with some exceptions, obviously)
Even though the computer has "bowed down" to the MPAA, there's still nothing stopping them.
Of course, all these degraded audio/video paths are pointless - it's not Joe Regular on a Vista machine trying to capture the video of Superman from his DVI port and the audio from his SPDIF port. The well-organised pirates that rip these things will just get a HDCP removal box, break/exploit the DRM system behind the video or find a flaw in a hardware player to exploit.
Certainly. But that is not the sort of piracy DRM is meant to stop (in as much as DRM is supposed to stop piracy).
As I see it, this downgrading is only making it more awkward for Joe Regular to buy a computer that will play content without it being degraded. So he's more likely to go to or just watch it on a TV. The former hurts the MPAA, the latter hurts the computer industry
Except it's unlikely anything he gets from a torrent site is going to have the quality, fidelity, simplicity and convenience of an off the shelf HD-DVD (or similar).
There is another alternative: The operating system on my computer can play content at full quality. Why do you insist this is not an option?
Because the people who are responsible for creating and publishing the content are saying it won't be.
You cannot violate the copyright on media you have purchased (say an HD-DVD or Blu-ray DVD) by playing it back on your computer.
No, but you probably can violate the DMCA. Additionally, this does not translate to "I am entitled to be able to view the content in whatever way I want".
I should, of course, be able to play back the media I have purchased on my own computer at full quality.
Why ? If the copyright holder says you can't, why should you be able to ?
In this regard, Windows Vista is a problem in that Windows Vista downgrades the user experience on "protected" content.
No, the content being protected by DRM is the problem. Vista is just doing what the copyright holder tells it to. If the copyright holder doesn't flag his content as DRM-protected, Vista will quite happily play back anything you want in full 1080p, 7.1 glory.
So your original post was wrong - DRM does stop me doing something with the disc.
No, it stops you doing something with the content on the disc.
That's pretty significant difference.
Not really. With DRM, copyright holders are just saying "I'll allow you to make a copy of my art if you only view it with particular players [etc]".
This is not fundamentally different from, say, people GPLing their code and saying "I'll allow you to make copies of my code if you do the same with yours".
Now, monied interest have gone to considerable lengths to convince you that if watch your DVD on an iPod that you are somehow breaking the law, but that is nonsense. I have a feeling you know that, too. But for some reason, you're intent on claiming a view of copyright that is nirvana for corporate interests. It certainly doesn't help the artist or consumer.
I'm trying to get across the point that copyright (at the very least in its current form, and IMHO in general) is the real problem here. Not Vista. Not DRM. _Copyright_. The principle of copyright is that "intellectual property" must be treated in the same fashion as physical property from the buyers perspective, but not the sellers. This principle is broken.
The Vista DRM can still turn off the output if you are using a non DRM device and attempting to play protected content.
Please provide evidence for your claim. The linked article *expressly refutes* it.
Standards provide freedom, and therefore encourage higher quality results.
You need to explain this to the GGP poster. He doesn't seem to get it.
A pyrrhic victory would require some sort of substantial loss. I doubt many would call the loss of Microsoft's newest OS a loss.
You have a strange idea of "many".
Your post seems to imply that Microsoft is blameless for leading the DRM charge. DRM and bad copyright legislation are things that we need to fix but that doesn't mean we should ignore the villains who advocate them.
Microsoft's software is nothing more than an enabler. To actually _do_ anything, it requires DRM restrictions be set on the content by the copyright holder.
The _only_ place where blame should be placed, for DRM-encumbered content, is in the hands of the copyright holder.
You never saw Microsoft attacking a filesharing program but Microsoft was first in line to implement DRM.
No they weren't. Things like Macrovision are essentially DRM, and they've been around for over a decade. More recently, Apple were well and truly there in force first, with the iTunes store.
Microsoft volunteered to implement DRM measures and led the technological way in the DRM arena. Some companies resisted but caved, some caved without a fight but microsoft is the only company I know of that actually volunteered before any content provider could even think about demanding.
Uh, hello ? Apple ? The most popular MP3 player in the world ? The biggest online music store in the marketplace ?
Which explains why youtube is a flash in the pan, as is all the p2p sharing of movies that we hear about at the start of every single movie shown in the theater nowadays.
Youtube and P2P provide high definition, professionally produced, legal content ?
Your quoting one publication and he is quoting another. Your spreading FUD as much as he is.
Only on Slashdot would a post saying Vista isn't any slower than XP be considered "FUD".
False dichotomy. You're assuming that the only full-quality experience is provide by RIAA/MPAA-owned content.
Not in the slightest. I'm assuming that the vast majority of content the majority of people are going to be actively seeking out, will be sourced from the RIAA, MPAA and friends.
You'll need a _very_ convincing argument to demonstrate why this assumption is even unreasonable, let alone "false".
Realize your options, and the RIAA/MPAA is dead in the water.
It's not the people on Slashdot, that you need to convince of this.
US computer industry yearly revenue - ~$300B+
MPAA member yearly revenue - ~$50B.
Take out the revenue generated from servers, business desktops, embedded devices and other such things which have zero relevance to the comparison.
Just why do you think that an industry that is at least 6x larger does not have a realistic chance of forcing hollywood to capitulate rather than the other way around?
Because Hollywood has something the computer industry wants, but not vice versa[0]. The vast majority of commercial, professional, high quality media is consumed through standalone devices like DVD players, set top boxes and CD players, not computers - and this is not likely to change in the near future.
The impact on Hollywood of computers not being able to play hi-def content would be negligible, because people will simply use their standalone devices. The impact on a computer platform that cannot play hi-def content will be more significant, because there is no alternative for the software developer (ie: no real source of alternative content that people will want).
[0] The iPod was a notable exception, but there probably won't be another such aberration any time soon.
A blank screen doesn't make the MPAA money.
No, it doesn't. Which is why with non-DRM hardware you're more likely to get the degraded video, like Vista.
Not providing the capacity to downgrade makes movie studios more likely to sell at least some copies without a requirement of downgrading.
Unlikely, given that pretty much every media playing device is going to follow the degraded media path.
Critics of digital restrictions management would prefer less of a selection of major studio works vs. the temptation to activate a downgrading requirement.
Then critics of DRM need to come up with a better way to convince media cartels to produce such content than "you're trampling on our rights". Or buy their own laws that are more favourable.
The idea that any image constraint needs to be applied other than matching the output to the specs of the available hardware is a specious one at best. Legitimate users get punished, and it's unlikely to affect the illegitimate users in the slightest.
How are legitimate users being punished ?
How exactly does limiting the quality of the video translate into providing consumers with additional functionality?
Because watching video with degraded quality is more functionality than not being able to watch it all, which is what your other choice is.
And they could, of course. Gutmann is right: they do have the content producers by the balls on that issue.
No, they don't.
The vast majority of commercial, mass-produced content (ie: candidates for DRM restrictions) does not reach its audience via Windows.
The biggest monopoly in the world, the largest company in the biggest country in the world, run by the richest person on earth, that controls 90% of the desktop computers on the planet, and has the highest cash reserves of any commercial entity --- is being strong armed!?!?!
Yes.
It may be difficult for some Slashdotters lacking real-world perspective to get a grip on, but Microsoft is not the biggest, nastiest, greediest and/or most powerful corporation in the world. They're not even close.
Old apps are NOT old machines. I want to run VISTA on a 486, because I can run Linux on it.
So you'll agree Linux sucks because it requires a 386, whereas DOS boots off a 360k floppy on my old XT just fine ?
I do not think it would be right for Slashdot to neglect to report on the nice new "feature" of Windows Vista whereby Windows Vista downgrades the user experience if "protected" content is involved, do you?
Your whole premise is wrong. Vista doesn't "downgrade the user experience", it plays content at a lower quality, in lieu of not playing it at all. "Downgrading" suggests there is an actual alternative of a "full-quality experience" _without_ DRM-capable software and hardware, when realistically the only choices are a blank screen or copyright (/DMCA) violations.