Your post is an interesting mix of tinfoil-hattery and plain old FUD. The ADVERTISED RESOLUTION is, in fact, the ACTUAL RESOLUTION. Furthermore, as I just explained in a separate post, you're wrong about the "quest for ever smaller downloads." I have 9 "30 minute" sitcoms in my Purchased folder. The median length is 21:22 and the median file size is 245.1 MB.
That's actually a little over the "10MB per Minute" that in my experience is common of ripped DVDs and such.
The TV shows I've purchased look great on my television. The idea that they're somehow designed for small screens is incorrect. A 22 minute TV show is about 250MB.
Are you suggesting that people can no longer find the music?
How on earth would more offerings hurt the store? It would maybe mean less MUSIC sales, but is it your theory that people just stopped buying there because now they have a larger selection?
First, it doesn't matter what your COSTS are. It only matters what your PROFITS are. As long as Windows still makes big PROFITS, it's not going anywhere.
Second, most OSS is developed not by a confederation of independent-minded developers working in concert to advance a common idea. Most OSS is developed by professional developers being paid to develop it.
Third, Operating Systems don't survive in the wild based on their merits. They survive based on their momentum. Do you think that nobody could dream-up a better Unix? I'm sure they could. But do you think all of a sudden that every mainframe, etc, would just switch because 'it's better?'. It's a FANTASY to think that KDE or ABC or PDQ or XYZ or anything else will replace Windows. Windows begets windows. It's not monopolistic: the same would be true if Ghandi was the Chairman of the Board. People just like what they're comfortable with.
Windows is an interface to a complex world. It would be like changing the way a car functions. A lot of people have spent a lot of time and a lot of money training how to use something. That has a value. People aren't going to just throw it away.
Fourth, I've seen Microsoft engineers recently blogging about this concept. The general crux is simple: The weight of a Windows release is its bloat cause by its need for backwards compatibility. Their solution is that each new version of windows is not backwards compatitable. That they'd spend NO TIME AT ALL trying for this. Instead, each install of, say, Vista2, would include a VM. That VM would be capable of running versions of Vista, XP, 2000, 98, 95, etc, that are installed with the OS. So when you click on an app that requires XP, a VM launches with XP in it, and the program is run in that context. I'm inclined to think that when Microsoft insiders talk about an 'end of an era' they mean something like this. I first read about it on a MSFT blog, but i'm not sure which one.
"Therefore, you are most emphatically not average! You can't extrapolate your experience to the "average user."
If I use my PC 300 hours a month without an intrusive crash, then the average XP install can probably expect the same. I don't do any special Voo Doo magic with my install. The last time I installed from scratch was 2 years ago. I don't do anything magic to get rid of malware: I run Microsoft OneCare like basically every other Windows Update user.
Say what you want, but I seldom see users running insecure, instable installs of XP. Three years ago on an average PC of an "Average" (non slashdot reading) user, when I had to fix it up, I would run AdAware, run SpyBot, check MSConfig, turn on the firewall, etc.
Today, I make sure that Windows Updates are set to "Automatic Install" and I install the critical and recommended patches. Problem Solved.
You realize that Replay doesn't exist anymore and Tivo does?
It looks like those guys at Replay (which was made by a larger corp that I'm sure you know but I can't remember) are just patting themselves on their backs for how many "good" decisions they made.
Seriously, though, Tivo decided not to make general warfare on the people that they need, like content companies. Instead of giving a commercial skip button to users, they just programmed a 30-second skip easter egg. It works great. Commercial hits, I press the button 3 or 4 times and i'm back to the program. Meanwhile, Tivo isn't getting harassed by media companies and run out of business.
Instead of just providing unlimited access to content, Tivo played by their rules. Because of that, I can schedule shows from any internet connected PC, share photos and other content on my LAN, etc.
Replay tried revolution and got smited down. Tivo has used incremental evolution to change the business and to change the expectations of media companies. Theres a saying that one used to apply to Tivo and now more aptly fits Replay: Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land.
Theres merit to being a pioneer, and if what they wanted was merit, the Replay guys got it. But if what they wanted was profit and a viable product, they could've learned a lot from Tivo.
Plus, the Tivo interface has always been a mile past Replays.
"Ask the average person on the street and they'll initially tell you they want Windows, but if you prod them a little you'll eventually find out that what they really want is the applications that run on Windows, and that the OS isn't that great"
I think they'd probably say that what they REALLY want is the applications that run on Windows and that the OS is irrelevant. I really doubt that most people have negative or positive feelings about Windows. An analogy that I think is somewhat apt is that of airline travel. Nobody cares whether they fly in an Airbus or a Boeing. The vast majority don't even know the difference, or that there is a difference. The only difference they see is what their specific Airline (PC Maker) does to differentiate their plane (Windows) from their competitors. Furthermore, I think if you told people that there was another airline manufacturer, and that it would be cheaper to fly on airlines that buy from that company, and that companies airplanes crash less, the biggest thing you'd get from customers is skepticism. They have brand loyalty. They like Delta (Dell) and they don't have a problem with Delta crashing, and they hear about crashes, but it's not often, and it's not very serious.
In other words, Linux solves a problem that most people don't have. They don't know or care about their OS. They don't want to. I use my XP PC 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I seldom have a crash. This idea that Windows just doesn't serve an average user, I think, is misguided. It does just fine.
And before you deride Microsoft for it's business practices, remember this: One mans "shady deals" is the next mans "capitalism." Despite corporate personhood, a corporation itself needs no ethics or morals. The people that run it should have them, but not the company itself. The most unethical thing that a company can do is sacrifice profits because you're worried about making people like you and giving them warm fuzzies. Did Microsoft screw IBM over OS/2? Yes. Has IBM screwed over people in its past? I'm sure they have. But did Microsoft do something wrong? No way. Microsoft didn't have a monopoly back then. I think NT beat OS/2 to the market by a small margin, if at all. I'm not positive about that, but I know they were released near each other. If OS/2 was the better product, it would've succeeded in the market place.
And about QDOS, here is the excerpt from Wikipedia:
"SCP later claimed in court that Microsoft had concealed its relationship with IBM in order to purchase the operating system cheaply (even though Microsoft was still under a nondisclosure agreement and the PC's degree of success was not widely foreseen)."
This seems to me like a "boo hoo hoo" deal. SCP sold them a nonexclusive license. They obviously wanted to make the sale so badly that they sold it for what they thought a small company could afford. This was a BAD BUSINESS DECISION on their part and was not Microsofts fault. Especially considering that, according to the same article, Microsoft was under a non-disclosure agreement with IBM. It would have been not only unethical, but opened them up to tort if they disclosed their relationship with IBM.
Microsoft isn't candyland. I'm not saying that I would want to invite the company to my house for christmas dinner. But this is business, in America. It's ruthless and cut throat and unforgiving, and that's one of the reasons that America is the most powerful economy in world history.
A far more important measure of a Business than how they treat their competitors is how they treat their employees and their customers. Look at software prices. Windows is expensive but it's not unduly expensive. Look at how many software packages sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Windows, maybe the largest "application" ever built sells for a couple hundred. Yes, they do try to extract every dollar from their customer that they possibly can, but since when is that unethical? Apple does it. They could, if they wanted to, provide a way to upgrade the device or
The difference is that MSN and Yahoo have managed to achieve relative parity with Google. That is, if Google went Enron today, you'd still have products of near google quality. People are loyal to google, I know that I am, but I also know that there isn't a chance in hell that I would change my OS to use Google, as the ancestor of this thread suggested.
When I upgraded to VS2005 (from 2003) I had a similar "freeze" problem when intellisense was updating. It made me furious. It actually ruined my day. It made me literally depressed about going into work.
So I reformatted my otherwise ship-shape XP install, re-imaged, re-installed VS2005 from scratch (instead of the upgrade I did from 2003 originally), and the problem was fixed. It happens now very rarely. Once a month, maybe. The only reason I even notice it when it happens now is because I had such a problem in the beginning.
Anyway, it's a PITA, but it obviously does have a fix. Whats funny is that out of 5 developers here, mine was the only one with that problem.
I use GMail, too. I've used it practically since it launched. I love it. It's great.
But it's not a killer app. A fraction of a fraction of internet users have Gmail addresses, and even fewer use gmail as their main client. A killer-app this does not make.
While I don't know if anyone "official" has ever defined it, my idea of what it is has always been: An application that's so essential and in such demand that it makes other products obsolete and leads users into purchasing the hardware/software/platform necessary just to run it.
As far as Microsoft goes, I'd say they have two user-facing apps of this ilk: Windows & Excel. Excel basically sells the entire $350 office package by itself. I've paid probably $700 over the past Decade for MS Office. I really doubt I'd spend $100 on Gmail, let alone $700. It's just a thing where GMail is just web-based email. Yes, it's really good web based email, but there are thousands of others. Yes, there is Open Office, and now Google Spreadsheets, but Excel still stands alone.
THAT is a killer app.
But if you broaden the scope to include everything (not just user-facing apps) there are others:.Net/Visual Studio which is the defacto small business platform, The backoffice stack of Active Directory / Exchange / Windows Server, Oracle is such a killer-app that it's the only thing the company sells, Obviously OSX is in itself a killer-app that single-handedly has (a few) people switching their whole digital life around just to use it. Google has search, which has spawned cottage industries around it and has completely dominated everything else.
Whether the Google Fanbois with Mod Points like it or not, this is the truth. The only thing that Google has that's CLOSE to a killer app is Search. And the day that Google makes its bread-and-butter Linux only is the day that Yahoo regains the title of #1 in search.
Get over it: Google, while an important up-and-commer is nowhere near what Microsoft is in terms of importance and reliance in personal computing.
Aside from the usual Slashdot Microsoft Haters, if you ask your average user "What would you rather give up: Windows and Office or Google Search?" what do you think they would say?
The truth is, most internet users probably use another search engine sometimes. And most probably remember a time before Google reigned them all. But do they ever use another office suite? Another Operating System? Do they remember a time before Windows and Office?
Get over it. Right now, in terms of economic reliance, business would be royally fucked if Microsoft just imploded enron-style. Google? Not so much.
"Google doesn't even have to release its own OS, all it has to do is begin favoring Linux distributions strongly and MS loses that section of the market"
Are you suggesting that people would leave behind Windows to follow some Google applications?
Maybe, in 5 years, if Google builds a killer-app that is anything CLOSE to Microsoft Office AND Microsoft totally fucks everything up.
No Shit.. but you're asking a question that was already answered in the summary. You know, that "second problem" they mentioned: "enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine" <br><br> Hey, I didn't RTFA either, but at the very least I RTFAS.
Seriously, if you claim that was just dumb luck, well, don't expect me to respond. There are a million things that could've killed Microsoft (or any company) in its infancy.
Yes, we can tell you hate microsoft, but lets not discount how difficult it is to build a successful business, let alone the most successful business in its industry.
"No. Popular with angsty kids who still consider their favorite band-of-the-week as a defining characteristic of their very existence."
You can choose to believe that or not. The choice is largely one of ignorance or not.
There are a huge number of people on MySpace, and pigeonholing them in the way you have is akin to a MySpacer saying "Slashdot? That's popular with pale-skinned computer geeks that have no friends, no life, and no social skills. They live in their moms basement at age 35 and consider their computer operating system a defining characteristic of their very existence"
The point I'm trying to make is that if you think that MySpace is full of superficial, ignorant people who accept stereotypes at face value, then you, sir, based on your comments, would fit right in.
In DRM, you are always given both the ciphertext and the key needed to read it. The DRM tries to stop you getting at the plaintext and the key.
In PGP, you have the ciphertext and the key. But PGP doesn't attempt to stop you getting at the plaintext - that is the purpose of the tool. It is meaningless to attack the PGP client: what more do you want from it?"
This is a perfect example of your jumping to conclusions. Once again you ASSUMED you knew what I meant, so you attacked it.
Dude, you seriously should take a remedial reading course. Or maybe just see a shrink. Quit thinking you know the answer when you're not even understanding the question.
"I reckon you should publish that before making your magic unbreakable DRM that's completely resistant to inspection using a virtual machine. Consider it a public service. Then do the DRM thing and become super rich."
I was waiting for you to slip into such hyperbolic drivel that you releived yourself of all credibility. I knew it would only be a matter of time, and I was right.
I'm not going to go 15 rounds with an A.C. who, apparently, lacks basic reading comprihension skills. The fact is that I never suggested most of the things that you attributed to me. It's like you read 10 random words from each of my posts and assembled them in you head to mean what you WANTED them to mean.
"This statement is meaningless, and suggests a lack of understanding about this subject. The security of PGP doesn't depend on the algorithm being secret."
Actually, your post is meaningless and suggests a lack of comprehension and a desire to jump to conclusions.
Try this: read my post and instead of asking "how could this be wrong?" ask "how could this be right?"
All you need to do to break PGP is to crack the client application. I'll stand by this. You're so smart, you figure it. But it has nothing to do with not 'keeping the algo secret.' Try again.
If the client app decrypts the file in memory, then applies user-specific DRM, then writes the file, the only way you're going to to "strike" is thru an exploit in the OS or the client application.
Which, as I just mentioned in another comment, is much easier said than done. It's like saying "All you need to do to crack PGP is to "strike" the PGP client." It's true, but you haven't actually seen it done.
DRM isn't perfect, but it doesn't need to be. The only test is whether it's sufficiently difficult to break the DRM that it "costs" more than it's worth.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post is an interesting mix of tinfoil-hattery and plain old FUD. The ADVERTISED RESOLUTION is, in fact, the ACTUAL RESOLUTION. Furthermore, as I just explained in a separate post, you're wrong about the "quest for ever smaller downloads." I have 9 "30 minute" sitcoms in my Purchased folder. The median length is 21:22 and the median file size is 245.1 MB.
That's actually a little over the "10MB per Minute" that in my experience is common of ripped DVDs and such.
The TV shows I've purchased look great on my television. The idea that they're somehow designed for small screens is incorrect. A 22 minute TV show is about 250MB.
Are you suggesting that people can no longer find the music?
How on earth would more offerings hurt the store? It would maybe mean less MUSIC sales, but is it your theory that people just stopped buying there because now they have a larger selection?
"The chips won't work in brown devices."
dirty f'in racist chips.
First, it doesn't matter what your COSTS are. It only matters what your PROFITS are. As long as Windows still makes big PROFITS, it's not going anywhere.
Second, most OSS is developed not by a confederation of independent-minded developers working in concert to advance a common idea. Most OSS is developed by professional developers being paid to develop it.
Third, Operating Systems don't survive in the wild based on their merits. They survive based on their momentum. Do you think that nobody could dream-up a better Unix? I'm sure they could. But do you think all of a sudden that every mainframe, etc, would just switch because 'it's better?'. It's a FANTASY to think that KDE or ABC or PDQ or XYZ or anything else will replace Windows. Windows begets windows. It's not monopolistic: the same would be true if Ghandi was the Chairman of the Board. People just like what they're comfortable with.
Windows is an interface to a complex world. It would be like changing the way a car functions. A lot of people have spent a lot of time and a lot of money training how to use something. That has a value. People aren't going to just throw it away.
Fourth, I've seen Microsoft engineers recently blogging about this concept. The general crux is simple: The weight of a Windows release is its bloat cause by its need for backwards compatibility. Their solution is that each new version of windows is not backwards compatitable. That they'd spend NO TIME AT ALL trying for this. Instead, each install of, say, Vista2, would include a VM. That VM would be capable of running versions of Vista, XP, 2000, 98, 95, etc, that are installed with the OS. So when you click on an app that requires XP, a VM launches with XP in it, and the program is run in that context. I'm inclined to think that when Microsoft insiders talk about an 'end of an era' they mean something like this. I first read about it on a MSFT blog, but i'm not sure which one.
"Therefore, you are most emphatically not average! You can't extrapolate your experience to the "average user."
If I use my PC 300 hours a month without an intrusive crash, then the average XP install can probably expect the same. I don't do any special Voo Doo magic with my install. The last time I installed from scratch was 2 years ago. I don't do anything magic to get rid of malware: I run Microsoft OneCare like basically every other Windows Update user.
Say what you want, but I seldom see users running insecure, instable installs of XP. Three years ago on an average PC of an "Average" (non slashdot reading) user, when I had to fix it up, I would run AdAware, run SpyBot, check MSConfig, turn on the firewall, etc.
Today, I make sure that Windows Updates are set to "Automatic Install" and I install the critical and recommended patches. Problem Solved.
You realize that Replay doesn't exist anymore and Tivo does?
It looks like those guys at Replay (which was made by a larger corp that I'm sure you know but I can't remember) are just patting themselves on their backs for how many "good" decisions they made.
Seriously, though, Tivo decided not to make general warfare on the people that they need, like content companies. Instead of giving a commercial skip button to users, they just programmed a 30-second skip easter egg. It works great. Commercial hits, I press the button 3 or 4 times and i'm back to the program. Meanwhile, Tivo isn't getting harassed by media companies and run out of business.
Instead of just providing unlimited access to content, Tivo played by their rules. Because of that, I can schedule shows from any internet connected PC, share photos and other content on my LAN, etc.
Replay tried revolution and got smited down. Tivo has used incremental evolution to change the business and to change the expectations of media companies. Theres a saying that one used to apply to Tivo and now more aptly fits Replay: Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land.
Theres merit to being a pioneer, and if what they wanted was merit, the Replay guys got it. But if what they wanted was profit and a viable product, they could've learned a lot from Tivo.
Plus, the Tivo interface has always been a mile past Replays.
"Ask the average person on the street and they'll initially tell you they want Windows, but if you prod them a little you'll eventually find out that what they really want is the applications that run on Windows, and that the OS isn't that great"
I think they'd probably say that what they REALLY want is the applications that run on Windows and that the OS is irrelevant. I really doubt that most people have negative or positive feelings about Windows. An analogy that I think is somewhat apt is that of airline travel. Nobody cares whether they fly in an Airbus or a Boeing. The vast majority don't even know the difference, or that there is a difference. The only difference they see is what their specific Airline (PC Maker) does to differentiate their plane (Windows) from their competitors. Furthermore, I think if you told people that there was another airline manufacturer, and that it would be cheaper to fly on airlines that buy from that company, and that companies airplanes crash less, the biggest thing you'd get from customers is skepticism. They have brand loyalty. They like Delta (Dell) and they don't have a problem with Delta crashing, and they hear about crashes, but it's not often, and it's not very serious.
In other words, Linux solves a problem that most people don't have. They don't know or care about their OS. They don't want to. I use my XP PC 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I seldom have a crash. This idea that Windows just doesn't serve an average user, I think, is misguided. It does just fine.
And before you deride Microsoft for it's business practices, remember this: One mans "shady deals" is the next mans "capitalism." Despite corporate personhood, a corporation itself needs no ethics or morals. The people that run it should have them, but not the company itself. The most unethical thing that a company can do is sacrifice profits because you're worried about making people like you and giving them warm fuzzies. Did Microsoft screw IBM over OS/2? Yes. Has IBM screwed over people in its past? I'm sure they have. But did Microsoft do something wrong? No way. Microsoft didn't have a monopoly back then. I think NT beat OS/2 to the market by a small margin, if at all. I'm not positive about that, but I know they were released near each other. If OS/2 was the better product, it would've succeeded in the market place.
And about QDOS, here is the excerpt from Wikipedia:
"SCP later claimed in court that Microsoft had concealed its relationship with IBM in order to purchase the operating system cheaply (even though Microsoft was still under a nondisclosure agreement and the PC's degree of success was not widely foreseen)."
This seems to me like a "boo hoo hoo" deal. SCP sold them a nonexclusive license. They obviously wanted to make the sale so badly that they sold it for what they thought a small company could afford. This was a BAD BUSINESS DECISION on their part and was not Microsofts fault. Especially considering that, according to the same article, Microsoft was under a non-disclosure agreement with IBM. It would have been not only unethical, but opened them up to tort if they disclosed their relationship with IBM.
Microsoft isn't candyland. I'm not saying that I would want to invite the company to my house for christmas dinner. But this is business, in America. It's ruthless and cut throat and unforgiving, and that's one of the reasons that America is the most powerful economy in world history.
A far more important measure of a Business than how they treat their competitors is how they treat their employees and their customers. Look at software prices. Windows is expensive but it's not unduly expensive. Look at how many software packages sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Windows, maybe the largest "application" ever built sells for a couple hundred. Yes, they do try to extract every dollar from their customer that they possibly can, but since when is that unethical? Apple does it. They could, if they wanted to, provide a way to upgrade the device or
The difference is that MSN and Yahoo have managed to achieve relative parity with Google. That is, if Google went Enron today, you'd still have products of near google quality. People are loyal to google, I know that I am, but I also know that there isn't a chance in hell that I would change my OS to use Google, as the ancestor of this thread suggested.
When I upgraded to VS2005 (from 2003) I had a similar "freeze" problem when intellisense was updating. It made me furious. It actually ruined my day. It made me literally depressed about going into work.
So I reformatted my otherwise ship-shape XP install, re-imaged, re-installed VS2005 from scratch (instead of the upgrade I did from 2003 originally), and the problem was fixed. It happens now very rarely. Once a month, maybe. The only reason I even notice it when it happens now is because I had such a problem in the beginning.
Anyway, it's a PITA, but it obviously does have a fix. Whats funny is that out of 5 developers here, mine was the only one with that problem.
I use GMail, too. I've used it practically since it launched. I love it. It's great.
.Net/Visual Studio which is the defacto small business platform, The backoffice stack of Active Directory / Exchange / Windows Server, Oracle is such a killer-app that it's the only thing the company sells, Obviously OSX is in itself a killer-app that single-handedly has (a few) people switching their whole digital life around just to use it. Google has search, which has spawned cottage industries around it and has completely dominated everything else.
But it's not a killer app. A fraction of a fraction of internet users have Gmail addresses, and even fewer use gmail as their main client. A killer-app this does not make.
While I don't know if anyone "official" has ever defined it, my idea of what it is has always been: An application that's so essential and in such demand that it makes other products obsolete and leads users into purchasing the hardware/software/platform necessary just to run it.
As far as Microsoft goes, I'd say they have two user-facing apps of this ilk: Windows & Excel. Excel basically sells the entire $350 office package by itself. I've paid probably $700 over the past Decade for MS Office. I really doubt I'd spend $100 on Gmail, let alone $700. It's just a thing where GMail is just web-based email. Yes, it's really good web based email, but there are thousands of others. Yes, there is Open Office, and now Google Spreadsheets, but Excel still stands alone.
THAT is a killer app.
But if you broaden the scope to include everything (not just user-facing apps) there are others:
I'm rambling now, but you get my point.
Only on Slashdot.
50% Insightful
50% Flamebait.
Whether the Google Fanbois with Mod Points like it or not, this is the truth. The only thing that Google has that's CLOSE to a killer app is Search. And the day that Google makes its bread-and-butter Linux only is the day that Yahoo regains the title of #1 in search.
Get over it: Google, while an important up-and-commer is nowhere near what Microsoft is in terms of importance and reliance in personal computing.
Aside from the usual Slashdot Microsoft Haters, if you ask your average user "What would you rather give up: Windows and Office or Google Search?" what do you think they would say?
The truth is, most internet users probably use another search engine sometimes. And most probably remember a time before Google reigned them all. But do they ever use another office suite? Another Operating System? Do they remember a time before Windows and Office?
Get over it. Right now, in terms of economic reliance, business would be royally fucked if Microsoft just imploded enron-style. Google? Not so much.
"I refuse to touch Emacs with a 39 and a half foot pole"
Perhaps, then, my penis would be of some assistance?
"Google doesn't even have to release its own OS, all it has to do is begin favoring Linux distributions strongly and MS loses that section of the market"
Are you suggesting that people would leave behind Windows to follow some Google applications?
Maybe, in 5 years, if Google builds a killer-app that is anything CLOSE to Microsoft Office AND Microsoft totally fucks everything up.
Eclipse? KDevelop? Emacs?
Again.. If linux had any dev environment that was ANYWHERE NEAR as good as VC++, maybe I wouldn't despise working on it.
No Shit.. but you're asking a question that was already answered in the summary. You know, that "second problem" they mentioned: "enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine"
<br><br>
Hey, I didn't RTFA either, but at the very least I RTFAS.
Mod me down because you hate Bill Gates and I don't.
The good thing is that I am solidly in Excellent Karma. Will you be after you get meta-moderated?
Why participate in Moderation at all if you don't agree with and follow the guidelines?
Build a multi-billion dollar corporation?
Seriously, if you claim that was just dumb luck, well, don't expect me to respond. There are a million things that could've killed Microsoft (or any company) in its infancy.
Yes, we can tell you hate microsoft, but lets not discount how difficult it is to build a successful business, let alone the most successful business in its industry.
If it were $3000 that would be an "ivory tower response." But $300? That's basically one days salary for a developer.
Actually, they have this here, in the USA, for recordable media as well.
"No. Popular with angsty kids who still consider their favorite band-of-the-week as a defining characteristic of their very existence."
You can choose to believe that or not. The choice is largely one of ignorance or not.
There are a huge number of people on MySpace, and pigeonholing them in the way you have is akin to a MySpacer saying "Slashdot? That's popular with pale-skinned computer geeks that have no friends, no life, and no social skills. They live in their moms basement at age 35 and consider their computer operating system a defining characteristic of their very existence"
The point I'm trying to make is that if you think that MySpace is full of superficial, ignorant people who accept stereotypes at face value, then you, sir, based on your comments, would fit right in.
"No, it's not true.
In DRM, you are always given both the ciphertext and the key needed to read it. The DRM tries to stop you getting at the plaintext and the key.
In PGP, you have the ciphertext and the key. But PGP doesn't attempt to stop you getting at the plaintext - that is the purpose of the tool. It is meaningless to attack the PGP client: what more do you want from it?"
This is a perfect example of your jumping to conclusions. Once again you ASSUMED you knew what I meant, so you attacked it.
Dude, you seriously should take a remedial reading course. Or maybe just see a shrink. Quit thinking you know the answer when you're not even understanding the question.
"I reckon you should publish that before making your magic unbreakable DRM that's completely resistant to inspection using a virtual machine. Consider it a public service. Then do the DRM thing and become super rich."
I was waiting for you to slip into such hyperbolic drivel that you releived yourself of all credibility. I knew it would only be a matter of time, and I was right.
I'm not going to go 15 rounds with an A.C. who, apparently, lacks basic reading comprihension skills. The fact is that I never suggested most of the things that you attributed to me. It's like you read 10 random words from each of my posts and assembled them in you head to mean what you WANTED them to mean.
"This statement is meaningless, and suggests a lack of understanding about this subject. The security of PGP doesn't depend on the algorithm being secret."
Actually, your post is meaningless and suggests a lack of comprehension and a desire to jump to conclusions.
Try this: read my post and instead of asking "how could this be wrong?" ask "how could this be right?"
All you need to do to break PGP is to crack the client application. I'll stand by this. You're so smart, you figure it. But it has nothing to do with not 'keeping the algo secret.' Try again.
If the client app decrypts the file in memory, then applies user-specific DRM, then writes the file, the only way you're going to to "strike" is thru an exploit in the OS or the client application.
Which, as I just mentioned in another comment, is much easier said than done. It's like saying "All you need to do to crack PGP is to "strike" the PGP client." It's true, but you haven't actually seen it done.
DRM isn't perfect, but it doesn't need to be. The only test is whether it's sufficiently difficult to break the DRM that it "costs" more than it's worth.