What is almost impossible, is to know what proportion of the sale price of any new brand-name PC goes to Microsoft. Actually its very easy to put a pretty close upper bounds on it.
XP Home from NewEgg (OEM) costs about $80 to any random joe. Pro is ~$140.
So there you go, there's your upper limit. Figure Dell's price is 1/2 to 2/3 of that. Plus MS gives 'marketing-incentive' kickbacks per machine sold with windows.
So for XP Home its probably between $25-50, maybe less.
Show me a Best Buy, Circuit City, Comp USA, Office Max, Staples, or Office Depot where you can buy a non-windows based PC... They don't exist. So what? Only an idiot buys a computer from one of those stores. All they offer is the ultra-craptastical consumer-level garbage from the likes of Sony, HP, and other odd brands. They're garbage, you dont want them.
I also seem to remember that Wal-Mart was selling Linux boxen for a while, not sure if they still are.
Even on the Dell web site, the only machines with no OS at all are certain servers. I did find a couple "open source" latitude models... You mean here, where they offer an 'open-source' option on EVERY single latitude model except the D4x0? You realize that if you buy a laptop from dell, you dont want anything but a latitude, right? The rest are either consumer-level garbage (inspiron), or workstation-replacements (precision).
Or how about here, where they offer an 'open-source' option on damn near every one of their business class lines, including their new oh-so-confusing vostro small business line?
Or how about the couple of experimental machines they offer with Ubuntu, as you can see here?
... with "freedos" and found the difference to be $30 less than the exact same machine with Windows XP Home (which is interesting considering that Dell pays more for XP home Actually, 30 seconds of research will show you that the upper bound of XP Home for an OEM is ~$80, as seen on NewEgg. You know Dell's price is lower than that, plus the 'marketing incentive' kickbacks, right? So $30 sounds about right, and given their expanded support needs and configuration options, they probably run smaller margins on those in the end.
I should NEVER be forced to buy Windows when I buy hardware no matter where I decide to buy it from. Yeah, and I should get magical sprinklings of fairy dust on my food from McDonalds.
Bottom line is that you're NOT forced to buy windows when you buy hardware. You can buy from the business-class lines from all the tier-1 vendors (which is what you want, the consumer-level stuff is terrible), or you can buy from a linux manufacturer, like system76, or you can build the machine yourself with parts from newegg or your locally owned white-box low-end-craptacular parts store.
I want a computer without Windows!! Where can I buy one...?
Answer: I can't. Actually its pretty trivial to do so. Pick from the tier-1 vendors. Whoo, that was hard.
Yes, there's some places to get one but they cost the same, or more, as a computer with Windows. No, they dont. They cost anywhere between ~$100 less, and ~$50 more. Product pricing in the computer industry is complex.
How can this be when a retail copy of Windows costs {$hundreds}? What does the retail cost of windows have to do with the tier-1 volume oem cost of windows?
It's reasonably well accepted that XP costs between $50-100 for Dell. OEM cost for XP Home at NewEgg is ~$90. XP Pro at NewEgg is ~$140. Vista prices for Home Basic and Business are roughly equivalent.
You know Dell gets better prices than that.
Then it starts to get complex. MS offers 'marketing incentives' back to companies like Dell to the tune of ~$50 per machine that they sell with windows. Then they get some dollar amount from various TrialWare vendors for putting their crap on the system.
Then there's smaller support and configuration costs for supporting fewer OS's.
Given all this, its completely reasonable that a Windows version of a machine from Dell would cost the same, or even very slightly less than a box with Linux. In reality, it usually comes out a little more expensive, which is also reasonable (some lines dont get trialware, they may not offer os support on linux, etc).
Bottom line, you want a computer pre-built with Linux, there are tons of choices to do so. At most, you may have a perceived loss of maybe $50 (Dell's worst case price differential assuming a very simple pricing model).
Unless you're buying a crapola $500 computer, the $50 disappears in the noise, assuming you even paid it in the first place.
The fundamental security flaws in the APIs that Windows has been burdened with are still there. Can you name any of these, or is this just hand-waving?
The longest running serious issue I'm aware of was the potential for badness in windows messaging between low priv processes and high priv processes (ie, the Shatter attack). But this one has been heavily mitigated for years, and relied on bad practices by system software vendors to work at all. And this is gone now with the new window manager in Vista.
So can you elaborate on these 'fundamental security flaws in the APIs'?
Dell offers XP Home or Pro, in addition to all the Vista licenses, on every single model they sell. I dont know where you found that page, or if its even linked from anything anymore, but you went to some great lengths to cherry pick one old/inaccurate page to try to make a point.
I'm not going to go to the trouble to repeat my research here, but Lenovo, HP, and Dell all offer XP or Vista on every model I could find.
I'm not sure if you really meant to reply to me or not, as I didnt come within a light year of any 'ad hominem' attacks.
My core problem with this kind of thing is that you're completely wasting the outrage and anger, by aiming it at Microsoft.
MS didnt make the law. MS didnt create a draconian and insane copyright situation in the US.
The only reason you see this kind of stuff (at least in the US) on hardware and software is because the US Congress is largely bought and paid for by the highest bidder. So you have things like the DMCA and 100+ year copyright terms.
Without this environment, you wouldnt be seeing companies like MS being forced to make these sorts of faustian bargains.
Even if you had the mythical monkey's paw and wished MS out of existence... nothing would change. The laws would still be there, and every piece of hardware or software in existence that is made by a company (ie, other than open source) would still have these limitations.
Just please lets all at least direct our anger at the right bad guy. MS aint perfect, but they're not the problem here. Vitriol against them is wasted.
Agreed. My only argument is that I dont think its so unreasonable to not buy HD-DVD or BluRay videos. I wont, and havent. It's just not worth it to me to support those folks.
It's the same reason I wont buy music CD's. The whole damn thing is a scam. But I do enjoy allofmp3.com and am so glad to see them come back.
It would be tougher for me to give up music than movies, but even without alternatives, I dont think I'd be willing to buy CDs anymore.
I'm really not as zealous and extreme as this sounds, I just dont want to play anymore. The whole thing (the copyright situation in the US) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I guess if Microsoft is simply adhering to some law which mandates that high-def output can't be shown on HDMI ports (without begging for special permission from the copyright holder) then the feature is justified in some sense. It's not a law per se, other than a second order effect of the DMCA. With that, MS cant reverse-engineer or implement their own clean-room solution. So they have to go begging to the HD-DVD and BluRay associations.
My understanding is that in order to get these licenses from these associations, they have to implement these protections.
So its not a law directly, but a side effect of DMCA giving the copyright holder ultimate authority over their works, and the ability to bring criminal actions against anyone who contributes to infringing their copyright, ie, certain technologies.
Without the DMCA and certain other copyright laws, companies like MS could just give the finger to copyright holders/distributors. But as things are now (at least in the US), there's not much choice.
Again, he uses an incredible sleight of hand here. He doesn't deny that certificate signing is required, and talks about buying a certificate, which he notes are not controlled by Microsoft but are listed on Microsoft's site:
Bottom line, ergo, you have to have a signed driver for use in the kernel one way or the other. He doesn't deny that at all, and it's an incredible piece of trying to tell us that the emperor is actually wearing clothes. It seems to me that you're the one using sleight of hand here. The code signing thing is a complete and utter non-issue.
If you want to roll your own, then sign with your own cert. Works beautifully. Zero cost, zero involvement with Microsoft.
If you want your signed driver to be trusted by everyone by default, then you have to get it signed by someone in the trusted certificates group. So you pay a nominal amount to get a code-signing cert.
Again, very low cost for a business, and zero involvement by Microsoft.
You consider the stealthy inclusion of a quality kill-switch that can be arbitrarily enabled in the future on "unapproved" hardware to be a triviality? You're overdramatizing.
This 'quality kill switch' ONLY works when playing the DRM media. HD content without DRM does not have any effect on the system. Without that quality kill switch, MS would not have been able to contract the privilege of playing back HD-DVD or BluRay.
This is naive thinking, and doesnt apply to the real world.
Let's say MS chose not to implement DRM in Vista.
They would then not be allowed to playback BluRay or HD-DVD in Windows Media Player.
Consumers would then cry foul.... why cant my PC play these discs, when my $60 bluray player does so without any problem. Heck, they say, even my XBox 360 can play them.
Then MS would be screwed, they wouldnt be able to enter the media-player in the living room market at all.
This would not be a good choice for a business to make. And its conceivable (though not very likely) that they would get sued by their stockholders, for putting someone's personal political statements above making a useful product.
Basically, MS had two choices here, and only two. Either allow BluRay and HD-DVD with DRM, or dont allow them at all. There was no other choice.
MS doesnt make a choice to create and distribute media in DRM formats.
However, if MS wants to purchase the rights to play HD-DVD and BluRay, they must sign a contract that requires them to implement DRM.
There is no other choice for MS. Just like there is no other choice for Apple.
Complaining about MS is asinine and pointless. You're basically playing into the bad guys' hands. Go after the content holders and distributors. The Disneys of the world that have single-handedly corrupted social rights through lobbying of congress.
And please dont come back saying, MS should just ignore the rules. That is naive, silly thinking. MS is a business. If they sign a clear contract, and then violate that contract, they will get sued and lose. Period.
If thats really what you want, then you need to take it up with the people who created the situation. Ie, the US Congress and the courts (at least in the US).
Badgering MS about adhering to the law is pointless, and a waste of everybody's time.
If you dont like the law, take it up with the lawmakers.
Of course, I think we all know your chances of making any changes that way.
So the only recourse is to dont support people who distribute media in DRM'd formats. Go after the MPAA, RIAA, and their backers, the distribution companies, labels and studios.
Microsoft is just an unfortunate middle man, caught between a rock and a hard place.
I think you're the one being purposefully disingenuous here. Lets look:
It's not as if there is free competition in operating systems (if there were, a competitor to Microsoft selling a Windows-compatible system would produce a version that supported HD output on all devices, and consumers would buy it instead). Let's examine this. It all depends on what you mean by 'HD output'.
If you mean that the hardware and software is capable and willing to play open 720p or 1080i/1080p content, without any restrictions, then yes, Windows will do that now. Both Vista and XP. So no magical 'windows-compatible' competition needed.
If you mean that the hardware and software will be licensed to play HD-DVD or BlueRay content, but then will violate the terms of their contract and have their hardware/software ignore the protection token, then you're just being silly. These are businesses. If a business enters into a contract with the folks who administer BluRay and HD-DVD, and then violate that contract, they will get sued, and enjoined from selling product.
Businesses, who have to not get sued into obvlion for violation of contract, have two choices and only two choices, with regard to BluRay and HD-DVD.
1. Sign the contract, and abide by it, which means use the PAP/PVP and respect the protection token.
2. Dont allow the users to play BluRay and HD-DVD.
There is no other option for businesses. Just like no business allows you to play DVD's without paying the dvd association (whatever its called), and being subject to the terms of the contract.
No amount of this magical competition (dont know what you call Linux and Apple, if they're not competition) will eliminate this legal problem.
Let's face it, consumers cannot *choose* to turn off the DRM... there is no checkbox in the Vista control panel for 'do not cripple digital media output', even though it would be technically very easy for Microsoft to implement. Having no effective competitor in the marketplace they have no incentive to give users what they want. This is just nonsense. It's really simple: If you dont like the terms of BluRay or HD-DVD, then dont support them. Vote with your dollars.
But the way to turn off DRM in Vista is to not pay for and consume DRM media. Why would you pay someone to screw you over? HD content works just fine if you didnt get it with DRM. Vista will play H.264/mp4 videos just fine, with no restrictions, no reductions, no problems. Over VGA, DVI, etc. I've done it, its not that exciting. It 'just works'.
It sounds like what you want is for MS to reverse-engineer and crack BluRay and HD-DVD and then sell that in their product. But of course, this is obviously ridiculous, as they'd get sued, and they'd lose. Very quickly.
In the current political environment, if you want to watch content on HD-DVD and BluRay you have to abide by the terms those folks demand. So your choice is to watch it, or not watch it. If you watch it, its under their terms.
It may be possible in the future that, like DVDCSS, someone will write a nice decoder for BluRay and HD-DVD and make it open source. And then a bunch of people will get sued, the lawsuit will probably fail, and it'll trickle out to the world, and the content distributors will go to work on version 3.
The only reason this works though is that with open source, there's no one to sue, and even if there was, they'd probably be individuals, with no ability to pay.
But for MS, there is no choice. They're a business, they have to abide by the contracts they enter into. Respecting the content protection token is the price to get the rights to decode the formats at this time in our society.
If this is the argument you wish to use, then any individual with a modicum of intellectual honesty cannot accept either paper, because, after all, both are just speculation. Not quite. The TFA included actual first hand testing... on Vista (of all things). And real substantiated sources.
Gutmann's writing is pure, unsubstantiated speculation. He's never once, not ever, never tested Vista itself to see if any of his theories about how things might work are actually right.
Thats been the biggest problem with Gutmann since day one: he basically comes up with a theory, assumes that his theory is true (without any experimental evidence), and then goes off on a rampage about the side effects of his theory.
But he never actually backs them up with (gasp) experimental testing. In fact, he cant even be bothered to stoop down to the level to actually test Vista itself. So his whole house-of-cards argument falls down for anyone who's successfully played HD content over VGA and DVI.
It's basically like a bad religion. Alot of hand waving and "believe me, belive me", with no foundation in reality.
How many other people ship software that is barely half-done and filled with known bugs... Pretty much every software group on the planet that has to ship to a schedule. About the only groups that dont _have_ to exhibit this behavior is open source groups who release 'when its ready'. Of course, the reality of these is that they usually ship with many known bugs anyway. After all, unless you release, there's no software.
... many of which seem to be marked as either WILL-NOT-FIX or FEATURE-NOT-BUG? Wow, MS really has an issue status named FEATURE-NOT-BUG? And you've seen this? Can you post a screenshot?
(yes, I know, but the best way to respond to nonsense is with more nonsense)
Now, of those, how many are shipping this garbage by forcing it to be installed on nearly ever new PC sold, and doing everything in their power to prevent anyone from getting a copy of the older/functional version? Yeah, cause its so hard to find computersshipping with XP. Or maybe OEM versions of XP is what you prefer?
Not how every one of those from Lenovo, Dell, and HP offers XP as a standard option? In fact, in past month, we've shipped XP machines straight from Dell to a number of clients.
These issues are largely intentionally designed into the platform. To mis-quote an old favorite: Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. There may be fundamental problems in the code, maybe not. But, like Gutmann, you seem to be just making up these problems, assuming them to be true, and then making pronouncements and judgements based on these made-up theories.
As for the Intel a/b/g 3945, that isn't really a fair assessment. I really recommend you install the latest Windows XP (or Vista) and see if that wireless card works. I'd bet you a bottle of wine that it doesn't! And, I bet you'd find all other wanky stuff not working in a fresh install of XP (sound, wired network card, touchpad, so on...). Fair enough on that.... I had in my head that Intel had started open sourcing their drivers for this kind of stuff, so I guess I assumed it would be packaged in. I cant seem to find any documentation of this now when I look though, so I guess I had just mis-heard something.
I know for a fact that the 3945 doesnt work out of the box for XP, not sure about Vista. I wish we had more less-featured but barely functional drivers that worked across all intel, for example, or all nvidia. Linux does a much better job of this in general, the only place windows seems to excel is in the video fallback.
I also agree that the Nvidia driver package was really nice. I was quite impressed with how easy and brainless it was, they had wrapped up all the logic and work inside their scripts, and it pretty much 'just worked'. At this stage in my career, I really like things that 'just work'. I know brainless isnt something usually associated with Linux, but man, I just really dont want to fight so hard to get video or network working. I want to work a little higher on the abstraction stack.
Also Installing windows XP or vista is far more challenging that Ubuntu, but most users cant install any OS. I've got to strongly disagree with this.
In the best case scenario, both are easy, and 'just work'.
On windows, if none of the hardware is supported out of the box, the hardest thing you have to do is go download drivers, and then install them. Then you hit MS Update, and patch, with the firewall cranked up. Thats as bad as it gets. It may be slow (patching an xpsp2 windows, for example), but its easy and straightforward.
The worst case scenaior on Linux is much, much worse. Situations where video doesnt work, at all, without grub changes, or finding an 'alternate' install disc. Where you have to poke through arcane 'blacklist' files to prefer one driver or another. Where you have to download the windows driver for the wifi for it to work with yet another piece of software. Where 3d hardware 'just wont work'. Where the laptop buttons and special features 'just dont work'. Same with hibernate/standby.
So yeah, when Linux works, in the best-case scenario, its better than even the best case windows scenario, because apt-get update and apt-get upgrade are superior to MS Update. But in every situation below that, its much, much worse.
It should not be possible for a fresh install of an OS to not have any video whatsoever.
But try installing the current version of Kubuntu on a Dell Latitude D630. This is possibly the most commonly purchased corporate laptop in the universe at the moment.
But do an install and just nothing... black screen. Cant even open a terminal. I'm not sure how this is possible. Even windows has a software framebuffer driver that will do 640x480 on anything.
To get past this initial problem, I had to (after consulting with the local linux expert) actually go into the grub boot editor, and remove the/splash from the boot options. Otherwise, no video whatsoever, ever.
At that point, I could get a terminal, but still no X.
So right out of the bat, a standard nvidia video card, and the Intel a/b/g 3945, dont work out of the box. These are the two most common video cards and wifi cards in existence.
The broadcom 43xx gigabit nic was wonky as well, and it would cause error messages to flash across the terminal every 30 seconds or so. Even inside Vim, right across my content! I had to blacklist the drivers there.
And look at the insanity that has to be done to get it working:
Video should always work, always, under every circumstance. There is no excuse not to have a generic framebuffer driver to fallback to. There is no excuse for an obscure grub startup setting to stop you from having command line access.
I'm not expecting everything to work out of the box, but there has to be generic fallback drivers.
I will say that the experience once I got the nvidia drivers downloaded and started was outstanding. NVidia makes a really nice script/program to build and install drivers, and fully configure X. That was really nice.
But why do I need the windows driver for my wifi card to use it under linux? Doesnt Intel open source their linux drivers?
Then after all that, everything was flaky and buggy. Gaim/Pidgin would randomly duplicate its own windows. Thunderbird crashes alot. Evolution would just 'disappear' after like the 3rd install wizard screen. No crash message, no warning, no complaint, just 'poof' and its gone.
And its not like I'm doing anything tweaky to install these apps, just apt-get install whatever. Not sure how I could be doing that wrong.
And dont even get me started on standby/hibernate. And how LVM will sometimes decide that it cannot install itself... because it just cant. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Now... all that being said, apt-get is wonderful. But honestly... thats the only really compelling thing I could find with Kubuntu on that 630. Everything else was just a time sink and a royal pain in the ass. I'm sure it'd be better if I had a machine with certified drivers on a disc for everything.
You'll find that it wont do you any good. You need to have the updates signed by MS private key, which is probably behind a locked vault and has never touched a machine that is on a network.
Even owning the MS update servers themselves wont do you any good.
So your only real options are to either steal MS private keys (hard, have to do it physically), or to modify system files to not check for the key, or respect a different key. But in the latter case, your box is already owned, so its kind of pointless.
If Microsoft could update Windows without your permission, it means there is a backdoor in the OS, put there by Microsoft. No, it doesnt.
It just means that Automatic Updates doesnt respect your 'notify, but dont install' for certain classes of updates, namely updates to AU/WU itself.
Hence, if you RTFA, why this phenomenon only happens when you have it set to 'notify, dont download or install', or 'download, notify, but dont install'. But it doesnt happen if you have AU turned off to do nothing.
The answer to what you're describing is not to give up relational dbs, but to design your schema correctly.
There are tried and true approaches to the problems you describe; several actually for most of them, depending on your needs.
If you run into these problems due to an evolutionary growth into these features, then its time to stop, take a step back, and re-architect your schemas to handle these needs from the get go.
There's no reason at all to resort to hacks like stored procedures and triggers. These are only used when your schema is fundamentally mismatched to your needs, and so you have to be continuously cleaning up after your data mods.
Any mature system doesnt ever delete 'entity' objects from the DB. That would just be silly (and wouldnt be possible if you had referential integrity set up correctly). So all of these sorts of entities have an 'active' column, that determines whether they're active or not.
In the salary example you give, you DO want to store the 'current' salary field in the employees table, but then you also have a 'positions' or 'incumbents' table to store the history of things that change over time.
I think the core problem you're describing is due to the fact that you're trying to store all of this stuff in one table. And thats not the correct approach.
The 'event based storage' you're talking about is another table, with one row per event. Some folks advocate another approach, where entity tables are versioned, and all old versions are kept (sometimes moved to another table), so you can see the history of all changes for all time. Thats not a very well normalized solution, but there are times when its appropriate.
Not really arguing with your overall point, just some fact-checking fixups.
XP doesn't come with a web server installed, or sendmail, or ping/ssh/ftp/sftp/scp/etc. services. XP ships with IIS, its just not installed by default (which is the correct behavior). This includes an FTP server and an SMTP server if you choose to install them when you install the web server. It's all part of IIS.
XP includes ping and ftp. They're called 'ping' and 'ftp' respectively.
All windows boxes ARE sorely lacking in that there's no SSH/SCP/SFTP server built in by default.
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XP Home from NewEgg (OEM) costs about $80 to any random joe. Pro is ~$140.
So there you go, there's your upper limit. Figure Dell's price is 1/2 to 2/3 of that. Plus MS gives 'marketing-incentive' kickbacks per machine sold with windows.
So for XP Home its probably between $25-50, maybe less.
I also seem to remember that Wal-Mart was selling Linux boxen for a while, not sure if they still are. Even on the Dell web site, the only machines with no OS at all are certain servers. I did find a couple "open source" latitude models
'open-source' option on EVERY single latitude model except the D4x0? You realize that if you buy a laptop from dell, you dont want anything but a latitude, right? The rest are either consumer-level garbage (inspiron), or workstation-replacements (precision).
Or how about here, where they offer an 'open-source' option on damn near every one of their business class lines, including their new oh-so-confusing vostro small business line?
Or how about the couple of experimental machines they offer with Ubuntu, as you can see here?
... with "freedos" and found the difference to be $30 less than the exact same machine with Windows XP Home (which is interesting considering that Dell pays more for XP home Actually, 30 seconds of research will show you that the upper bound of XP Home for an OEM is ~$80, as seen on NewEgg. You know Dell's price is lower than that, plus the 'marketing incentive' kickbacks, right? So $30 sounds about right, and given their expanded support needs and configuration options, they probably run smaller margins on those in the end. I should NEVER be forced to buy Windows when I buy hardware no matter where I decide to buy it from. Yeah, and I should get magical sprinklings of fairy dust on my food from McDonalds.Bottom line is that you're NOT forced to buy windows when you buy hardware. You can buy from the business-class lines from all the tier-1 vendors (which is what you want, the consumer-level stuff is terrible), or you can buy from a linux manufacturer, like system76, or you can build the machine yourself with parts from newegg or your locally owned white-box low-end-craptacular parts store.
You should be a happy man/woman/entity.
Answer: I can't. Actually its pretty trivial to do so. Pick from the tier-1 vendors. Whoo, that was hard. Yes, there's some places to get one but they cost the same, or more, as a computer with Windows. No, they dont. They cost anywhere between ~$100 less, and ~$50 more. Product pricing in the computer industry is complex. How can this be when a retail copy of Windows costs {$hundreds}? What does the retail cost of windows have to do with the tier-1 volume oem cost of windows?
It's reasonably well accepted that XP costs between $50-100 for Dell. OEM cost for XP Home at NewEgg is ~$90. XP Pro at NewEgg is ~$140. Vista prices for Home Basic and Business are roughly equivalent.
You know Dell gets better prices than that.
Then it starts to get complex. MS offers 'marketing incentives' back to companies like Dell to the tune of ~$50 per machine that they sell with windows. Then they get some dollar amount from various TrialWare vendors for putting their crap on the system.
Then there's smaller support and configuration costs for supporting fewer OS's.
Given all this, its completely reasonable that a Windows version of a machine from Dell would cost the same, or even very slightly less than a box with Linux. In reality, it usually comes out a little more expensive, which is also reasonable (some lines dont get trialware, they may not offer os support on linux, etc).
Bottom line, you want a computer pre-built with Linux, there are tons of choices to do so. At most, you may have a perceived loss of maybe $50 (Dell's worst case price differential assuming a very simple pricing model).
Unless you're buying a crapola $500 computer, the $50 disappears in the noise, assuming you even paid it in the first place.
The longest running serious issue I'm aware of was the potential for badness in windows messaging between low priv processes and high priv processes (ie, the Shatter attack). But this one has been heavily mitigated for years, and relied on bad practices by system software vendors to work at all. And this is gone now with the new window manager in Vista.
So can you elaborate on these 'fundamental security flaws in the APIs'?
Are you kidding me?
Here's a counterexample:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/latit?~ck=anav&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
Dell offers XP Home or Pro, in addition to all the Vista licenses, on every single model they sell. I dont know where you found that page, or if its even linked from anything anymore, but you went to some great lengths to cherry pick one old/inaccurate page to try to make a point.
I'm not going to go to the trouble to repeat my research here, but Lenovo, HP, and Dell all offer XP or Vista on every model I could find.
I'm not sure if you really meant to reply to me or not, as I didnt come within a light year of any 'ad hominem' attacks.
... nothing would change. The laws would still be there, and every piece of hardware or software in existence that is made by a company (ie, other than open source) would still have these limitations.
My core problem with this kind of thing is that you're completely wasting the outrage and anger, by aiming it at Microsoft.
MS didnt make the law. MS didnt create a draconian and insane copyright situation in the US.
The only reason you see this kind of stuff (at least in the US) on hardware and software is because the US Congress is largely bought and paid for by the highest bidder. So you have things like the DMCA and 100+ year copyright terms.
Without this environment, you wouldnt be seeing companies like MS being forced to make these sorts of faustian bargains.
Even if you had the mythical monkey's paw and wished MS out of existence
Just please lets all at least direct our anger at the right bad guy. MS aint perfect, but they're not the problem here. Vitriol against them is wasted.
Agreed. My only argument is that I dont think its so unreasonable to not buy HD-DVD or BluRay videos. I wont, and havent. It's just not worth it to me to support those folks.
It's the same reason I wont buy music CD's. The whole damn thing is a scam. But I do enjoy allofmp3.com and am so glad to see them come back.
It would be tougher for me to give up music than movies, but even without alternatives, I dont think I'd be willing to buy CDs anymore.
I'm really not as zealous and extreme as this sounds, I just dont want to play anymore. The whole thing (the copyright situation in the US) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
My understanding is that in order to get these licenses from these associations, they have to implement these protections.
So its not a law directly, but a side effect of DMCA giving the copyright holder ultimate authority over their works, and the ability to bring criminal actions against anyone who contributes to infringing their copyright, ie, certain technologies.
Without the DMCA and certain other copyright laws, companies like MS could just give the finger to copyright holders/distributors. But as things are now (at least in the US), there's not much choice.
Bottom line, ergo, you have to have a signed driver for use in the kernel one way or the other. He doesn't deny that at all, and it's an incredible piece of trying to tell us that the emperor is actually wearing clothes. It seems to me that you're the one using sleight of hand here. The code signing thing is a complete and utter non-issue.
If you want to roll your own, then sign with your own cert. Works beautifully. Zero cost, zero involvement with Microsoft.
If you want your signed driver to be trusted by everyone by default, then you have to get it signed by someone in the trusted certificates group. So you pay a nominal amount to get a code-signing cert.
Again, very low cost for a business, and zero involvement by Microsoft.
I dont see a problem here, can you clarify?
I'll make it easy for you.
If its any of these:
DVD, CD, HD-DVD, or BluRay
Then its DRM, dont buy it. Or at least be aware that its DRM.
There, you've been warned.
If you dont like it, then dont give money to the people that invented it and lobbied for the DMCA.
This 'quality kill switch' ONLY works when playing the DRM media. HD content without DRM does not have any effect on the system. Without that quality kill switch, MS would not have been able to contract the privilege of playing back HD-DVD or BluRay.
If you dont want to support DRM, dont buy DRM.
This is naive thinking, and doesnt apply to the real world.
.... why cant my PC play these discs, when my $60 bluray player does so without any problem. Heck, they say, even my XBox 360 can play them.
Let's say MS chose not to implement DRM in Vista.
They would then not be allowed to playback BluRay or HD-DVD in Windows Media Player.
Consumers would then cry foul
Then MS would be screwed, they wouldnt be able to enter the media-player in the living room market at all.
This would not be a good choice for a business to make. And its conceivable (though not very likely) that they would get sued by their stockholders, for putting someone's personal political statements above making a useful product.
Basically, MS had two choices here, and only two. Either allow BluRay and HD-DVD with DRM, or dont allow them at all. There was no other choice.
This is anti-logic.
MS doesnt make a choice to create and distribute media in DRM formats.
However, if MS wants to purchase the rights to play HD-DVD and BluRay, they must sign a contract that requires them to implement DRM.
There is no other choice for MS. Just like there is no other choice for Apple.
Complaining about MS is asinine and pointless. You're basically playing into the bad guys' hands. Go after the content holders and distributors. The Disneys of the world that have single-handedly corrupted social rights through lobbying of congress.
And please dont come back saying, MS should just ignore the rules. That is naive, silly thinking. MS is a business. If they sign a clear contract, and then violate that contract, they will get sued and lose. Period.
If thats really what you want, then you need to take it up with the people who created the situation. Ie, the US Congress and the courts (at least in the US).
Badgering MS about adhering to the law is pointless, and a waste of everybody's time.
If you dont like the law, take it up with the lawmakers.
Of course, I think we all know your chances of making any changes that way.
So the only recourse is to dont support people who distribute media in DRM'd formats. Go after the MPAA, RIAA, and their backers, the distribution companies, labels and studios.
Microsoft is just an unfortunate middle man, caught between a rock and a hard place.
So vote with your dollars, dont buy DRM media.
If the laws are good in theory but stupid in practice (and they are), they will in practice be broken. Sure, we all agree the laws are broken.
But they are the laws, so even if individuals dont have to adhere, MS does.
In short, this isnt a Microsoft problem, this is a US congress problem.
No work or choice by Microsoft will affect it. The only recourse is via Congress or the courts.
If you mean that the hardware and software is capable and willing to play open 720p or 1080i/1080p content, without any restrictions, then yes, Windows will do that now. Both Vista and XP. So no magical 'windows-compatible' competition needed.
If you mean that the hardware and software will be licensed to play HD-DVD or BlueRay content, but then will violate the terms of their contract and have their hardware/software ignore the protection token, then you're just being silly. These are businesses. If a business enters into a contract with the folks who administer BluRay and HD-DVD, and then violate that contract, they will get sued, and enjoined from selling product.
Businesses, who have to not get sued into obvlion for violation of contract, have two choices and only two choices, with regard to BluRay and HD-DVD.
1. Sign the contract, and abide by it, which means use the PAP/PVP and respect the protection token.
2. Dont allow the users to play BluRay and HD-DVD.
There is no other option for businesses. Just like no business allows you to play DVD's without paying the dvd association (whatever its called), and being subject to the terms of the contract.
No amount of this magical competition (dont know what you call Linux and Apple, if they're not competition) will eliminate this legal problem. Let's face it, consumers cannot *choose* to turn off the DRM... there is no checkbox in the Vista control panel for 'do not cripple digital media output', even though it would be technically very easy for Microsoft to implement. Having no effective competitor in the marketplace they have no incentive to give users what they want. This is just nonsense. It's really simple: If you dont like the terms of BluRay or HD-DVD, then dont support them. Vote with your dollars.
But the way to turn off DRM in Vista is to not pay for and consume DRM media. Why would you pay someone to screw you over? HD content works just fine if you didnt get it with DRM. Vista will play H.264/mp4 videos just fine, with no restrictions, no reductions, no problems. Over VGA, DVI, etc. I've done it, its not that exciting. It 'just works'.
It sounds like what you want is for MS to reverse-engineer and crack BluRay and HD-DVD and then sell that in their product. But of course, this is obviously ridiculous, as they'd get sued, and they'd lose. Very quickly.
In the current political environment, if you want to watch content on HD-DVD and BluRay you have to abide by the terms those folks demand. So your choice is to watch it, or not watch it. If you watch it, its under their terms.
It may be possible in the future that, like DVDCSS, someone will write a nice decoder for BluRay and HD-DVD and make it open source. And then a bunch of people will get sued, the lawsuit will probably fail, and it'll trickle out to the world, and the content distributors will go to work on version 3.
The only reason this works though is that with open source, there's no one to sue, and even if there was, they'd probably be individuals, with no ability to pay.
But for MS, there is no choice. They're a business, they have to abide by the contracts they enter into. Respecting the content protection token is the price to get the rights to decode the formats at this time in our society.
Gutmann's writing is pure, unsubstantiated speculation. He's never once, not ever, never tested Vista itself to see if any of his theories about how things might work are actually right.
Thats been the biggest problem with Gutmann since day one: he basically comes up with a theory, assumes that his theory is true (without any experimental evidence), and then goes off on a rampage about the side effects of his theory.
But he never actually backs them up with (gasp) experimental testing. In fact, he cant even be bothered to stoop down to the level to actually test Vista itself. So his whole house-of-cards argument falls down for anyone who's successfully played HD content over VGA and DVI.
It's basically like a bad religion. Alot of hand waving and "believe me, belive me", with no foundation in reality.
Gutmann is a bad scientist.
... many of which seem to be marked as either WILL-NOT-FIX or FEATURE-NOT-BUG? Wow, MS really has an issue status named FEATURE-NOT-BUG? And you've seen this? Can you post a screenshot?(yes, I know, but the best way to respond to nonsense is with more nonsense) Now, of those, how many are shipping this garbage by forcing it to be installed on nearly ever new PC sold, and doing everything in their power to prevent anyone from getting a copy of the older/functional version? Yeah, cause its so hard to find computers shipping with XP. Or maybe OEM versions of XP is what you prefer?
Not how every one of those from Lenovo, Dell, and HP offers XP as a standard option? In fact, in past month, we've shipped XP machines straight from Dell to a number of clients. These issues are largely intentionally designed into the platform. To mis-quote an old favorite: Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. There may be fundamental problems in the code, maybe not. But, like Gutmann, you seem to be just making up these problems, assuming them to be true, and then making pronouncements and judgements based on these made-up theories.
I know for a fact that the 3945 doesnt work out of the box for XP, not sure about Vista. I wish we had more less-featured but barely functional drivers that worked across all intel, for example, or all nvidia. Linux does a much better job of this in general, the only place windows seems to excel is in the video fallback.
I also agree that the Nvidia driver package was really nice. I was quite impressed with how easy and brainless it was, they had wrapped up all the logic and work inside their scripts, and it pretty much 'just worked'. At this stage in my career, I really like things that 'just work'. I know brainless isnt something usually associated with Linux, but man, I just really dont want to fight so hard to get video or network working. I want to work a little higher on the abstraction stack.
In the best case scenario, both are easy, and 'just work'.
On windows, if none of the hardware is supported out of the box, the hardest thing you have to do is go download drivers, and then install them. Then you hit MS Update, and patch, with the firewall cranked up. Thats as bad as it gets. It may be slow (patching an xpsp2 windows, for example), but its easy and straightforward.
The worst case scenaior on Linux is much, much worse. Situations where video doesnt work, at all, without grub changes, or finding an 'alternate' install disc. Where you have to poke through arcane 'blacklist' files to prefer one driver or another. Where you have to download the windows driver for the wifi for it to work with yet another piece of software. Where 3d hardware 'just wont work'. Where the laptop buttons and special features 'just dont work'. Same with hibernate/standby.
So yeah, when Linux works, in the best-case scenario, its better than even the best case windows scenario, because apt-get update and apt-get upgrade are superior to MS Update. But in every situation below that, its much, much worse.
Linux, or at least Ubuntu, has bigger problems.
... black screen. Cant even open a terminal. I'm not sure how this is possible. Even windows has a software framebuffer driver that will do 640x480 on anything.
/splash from the boot options. Otherwise, no video whatsoever, ever.
... because it just cant. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
... all that being said, apt-get is wonderful. But honestly ... thats the only really compelling thing I could find with Kubuntu on that 630. Everything else was just a time sink and a royal pain in the ass. I'm sure it'd be better if I had a machine with certified drivers on a disc for everything.
It should not be possible for a fresh install of an OS to not have any video whatsoever.
But try installing the current version of Kubuntu on a Dell Latitude D630. This is possibly the most commonly purchased corporate laptop in the universe at the moment.
But do an install and just nothing
To get past this initial problem, I had to (after consulting with the local linux expert) actually go into the grub boot editor, and remove the
At that point, I could get a terminal, but still no X.
So right out of the bat, a standard nvidia video card, and the Intel a/b/g 3945, dont work out of the box. These are the two most common video cards and wifi cards in existence.
The broadcom 43xx gigabit nic was wonky as well, and it would cause error messages to flash across the terminal every 30 seconds or so. Even inside Vim, right across my content! I had to blacklist the drivers there.
And look at the insanity that has to be done to get it working:
http://www.control.aau.dk/~jdn/linux/d630/index.php?id=startside
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481651&page=12
Video should always work, always, under every circumstance. There is no excuse not to have a generic framebuffer driver to fallback to. There is no excuse for an obscure grub startup setting to stop you from having command line access.
I'm not expecting everything to work out of the box, but there has to be generic fallback drivers.
I will say that the experience once I got the nvidia drivers downloaded and started was outstanding. NVidia makes a really nice script/program to build and install drivers, and fully configure X. That was really nice.
But why do I need the windows driver for my wifi card to use it under linux? Doesnt Intel open source their linux drivers?
Then after all that, everything was flaky and buggy. Gaim/Pidgin would randomly duplicate its own windows. Thunderbird crashes alot. Evolution would just 'disappear' after like the 3rd install wizard screen. No crash message, no warning, no complaint, just 'poof' and its gone.
And its not like I'm doing anything tweaky to install these apps, just apt-get install whatever. Not sure how I could be doing that wrong.
And dont even get me started on standby/hibernate. And how LVM will sometimes decide that it cannot install itself
Now
This is not a backdoor.
Have you tried to fake the MS update servers?
You'll find that it wont do you any good. You need to have the updates signed by MS private key, which is probably behind a locked vault and has never touched a machine that is on a network.
Even owning the MS update servers themselves wont do you any good.
So your only real options are to either steal MS private keys (hard, have to do it physically), or to modify system files to not check for the key, or respect a different key. But in the latter case, your box is already owned, so its kind of pointless.
It just means that Automatic Updates doesnt respect your 'notify, but dont install' for certain classes of updates, namely updates to AU/WU itself.
Hence, if you RTFA, why this phenomenon only happens when you have it set to 'notify, dont download or install', or 'download, notify, but dont install'. But it doesnt happen if you have AU turned off to do nothing.
The answer to what you're describing is not to give up relational dbs, but to design your schema correctly.
There are tried and true approaches to the problems you describe; several actually for most of them, depending on your needs.
If you run into these problems due to an evolutionary growth into these features, then its time to stop, take a step back, and re-architect your schemas to handle these needs from the get go.
There's no reason at all to resort to hacks like stored procedures and triggers. These are only used when your schema is fundamentally mismatched to your needs, and so you have to be continuously cleaning up after your data mods.
Any mature system doesnt ever delete 'entity' objects from the DB. That would just be silly (and wouldnt be possible if you had referential integrity set up correctly). So all of these sorts of entities have an 'active' column, that determines whether they're active or not.
In the salary example you give, you DO want to store the 'current' salary field in the employees table, but then you also have a 'positions' or 'incumbents' table to store the history of things that change over time.
I think the core problem you're describing is due to the fact that you're trying to store all of this stuff in one table. And thats not the correct approach.
The 'event based storage' you're talking about is another table, with one row per event. Some folks advocate another approach, where entity tables are versioned, and all old versions are kept (sometimes moved to another table), so you can see the history of all changes for all time. Thats not a very well normalized solution, but there are times when its appropriate.
XP includes ping and ftp. They're called 'ping' and 'ftp' respectively.
All windows boxes ARE sorely lacking in that there's no SSH/SCP/SFTP server built in by default.