OpenCable solves the access problem from the consumer's perspective -- compliant third-party boxes should connect to the cable network and get properly authorized. In order to receive premium encrypted content, the consumer will still have to get a POD from their cable company. There is a standard physical interface in an OpenCable STB that the POD plugs into.
From the cable company's perspective, if they are using one of the proprietary encryption schemes provided by Motorola or Scientific Atlanta, which are covered by patents, the cable company will have to obtain proprietary PODs. Moto and SA will charge an arm or a leg for those devices to make up for lost STB sales. Many cable companies would like to get "out from under" Moto and SA's thumb.
In the past, that required that the company broadcast two complete copies of the digital line-up, one encrypted using the proprietary technology and one using some new, less-expensive, hopefully-open system. The Sony technology reduces the dual broadcast penalty from 100% of bandwidth to something less than 10%. The STB part of Passage can be implemented in a POD.
So OpenCable and Passage are complimentary technologies solving different problems. OpenCable enables third-party STBs; Passage allows the cable operator to reduce their costs by adding a second, cheaper encryption scheme that can be used by new boxes.
Sounds more like it would be unique to OV, if they implemented it.
For audio, maybe.
SPIHT implemented a scheme for image compression where you could just whack the bits off the end of the compressed data for an image and get a lower-resolution version (choose an arbitrary compression rate and it's simple to generate). And an Israeli company called VDO did something similar for video, where lowering the resolution was a simple matter of whacking off the last bits for each frame.
This appears to be a fairly natural thing for compression based on wavelet transforms, which were used by both SPIHT and VDO.
at a broadband provider, based on detailed (monitor software in the PC, extensive interviews with the families, in-home time-lapse video recordings) ethnographic studies of the subscribers:
Broadband subscribers use the Internet for significantly more minutes per day than they did when they were dial-up users, and
High-speed is why they sign up, but always-on is the reason that they rearrange their furniture in order to get the computer out of the back room and into regular "family" space.
Once they get to the point where the PC is in the kitchen or family room, and it's always on, and the Internet connection is just there, the Internet becomes the prefered source of information for almost everything: news, weather, movie listings, encyclopedia articles, etc.
First, you need to establish how necessary it is to their jobs to work on a platform different from the rest of the company. This doesn't have to be a platform war. There are plenty of reasons for them to want a different platform, pick your battles carefully.
This is an excellent point, and I was surprised at how far down I had scrolled before someone made it. There is a lot of software that is only available for the Windows platform, and the users may have legitimate needs for a specific program requiring Windows with regard to a client and/or project. The general flavor of the original question doesn't really suggest that situation, but it's clearly possible.
In such a case, it is almost certainly appropriate to provide support for the Windows hosts for that single purpose. That doesn't mean that those hosts are supported for "regular" functions such as e-mail, file and printer sharing, or Web browsing.
If it's just a case of a couple of users who prefer Windows over the Mac, at some point someone with budget authority needs to make a basic decision on the relative costs of (a) those users' happiness versus (b) the very real costs in software and time associated with adding support for Windows on the network. A company with 150 desktops will have someone watching over the budget, and their answer is probably "We're a Mac shop, get over it."
Read the chapter "The Surgical Team" in TMMM. Some of the quoted work led to IBM trying the "chief programmer team" concept using that organization on real projects. The results were pretty staggering -- an order of magnitude increase in productivity, IIRC. The long-term problem, and reason that they had to give up on the technique, was that there were a lot more projects than there were people qualified to be "chief programmers."
There are a lot of people who think they can invent new algorithms, do innovative design, and generate boatloads of well-structured easy-to-maintain code. There are a lot fewer people who can really do it. And I'll cheefully admit that I'm not one of them.
It doesn't consider quality (except for the simple case - it works vs. it doesn't work because it's DRMed), and a lot of warez spread does, in fact, consider quality. Would you rather have a shakycam, a good telesync, a transcoded dvdrip or a true, non-transcoded progressive master from good quality film? Would you rather have an awful two-disc VCD, a two-disc SVCD or a one-disc XVID? A 64kbps mp3 encoded with Xing, a LAME VBR --alt-preset standard mp3, a q4 (128kbps nominal) Vorbis, a q6 Vorbis or a lossless FLAC, APE or SHN? Who'd want a crack that's less than 100%?
This topic can be addressed by an extension of the arguments given in the paper. The paper argues that technical DRM will not work (fundamentally because technology favors the attackers, not the media companies) and legal enforcement of DRM will be difficult at best (due to overlapping small darknets). That leaves economic solutions to the "problem," something I've been arguing for for years.
Most "pirated" copies do not represent lost sales for the content owner. Individuals with large libraries of MP3s (for example) would not have purchased the CDs for all of that content if the MP3s had not been available. Content owner revenues are maximized by setting the prices appropriately. The best price is not necessarily the one that maximizes the number of disks sold. Major-league baseball teams, as an example, generally find that revenue is maximized with ticket prices that leave 10-20% of their seats unsold.
Quality should also be reflected in the price. If the choice is between a 64kbps MP3 and nothing, then the MP3 might be a good deal. Different people will make different choices between the MP3 and a lossless original based on the price. Even in the darknet world, these things have different "prices" in terms of storage space, download bandwidth, and availability.
The mainstream media companies aren't against general-purpose computers per se, just against software that manipulates their media files in ways they don't like.
I'm very much afraid that Microsoft is setting up to offer those companies a deal that will be hard to refuse: 95% of the existing desktops and media formats that are protected by patents. The patents give them the power to restrict software that manipulates those files to just the authors that play by their rules for DRM. The existing desktops means DRM is only an upgrade away for the vast majority of the market.
Write to your representatives in Congress. Use paper -- it's usually more effective than e-mail. Ask them to support your rights to fair use of digital media. Tell them the issue is important to you, and will affect how you vote. Vote. Write again supporting legislation to rein in the DMCA when it is introduced -- you'll read about it on Slashdot. 10,000 letters supporting a position will make a Senator nervous. 100,000 will make them very nervous.
Did you get any kind of severance when you left? If so, what kinds of terms and conditions were attached to it? I have a friend whose severance required that he provide help, without additional compensation, on intellectual property matters (he had multiple patents pending when he was laid off) should the company require it. They did, to the tune of about 100 hours.
Assuming nothing of that sort, you could do a couple of different things. If you're really trying to start a contracting gig, send a follow-up letter pointing out that you solved their problem quickly and easily, you're in business, this one was pro bono to show your talent, but in the future they would need to pay you. Quote hourly and retainer rates. If you just want to feel morally superior, send them a bill. Twice your previous hourly rate sounds right. Include all travel time. Take pride in the fact that you pay your debts, even if they don't.
No mod points today, but I'd give you "interesting" rather than "troll".
I can understand giving a candidate a short written test intended to demonstrate that they can put words together into sentences and organize a few paragraphs intelligently. It may not be possible for them to produce materials from previous jobs demonstrating that specific competence. If I were to receive such a test, however, I would expect the tester to explain what was being tested. My impression from other responders is that those who have been given such tests are not getting that explanation.
My own thoughts on the written tests that are of the form "Identify all syntax errors in the following block of Perl code" is that the correct answer is "That's what compilers are for." The Army used to have a question on the written exams for Officers Candidate School that gave a detailed list of materials, topo maps of a stream, information about the abilities of a group of men, asked "How do you build a bridge across the stream?" and left considerable space for a detailed answer. The correct answer is "Sergeant, take this pile of stuff and these men and build a bridge across the stream. I'll be back in two hours."
So the abstractions save us time working, but they don't save us time learning.
Sure they do, because they provide a means to better organize the concepts that you have to learn. Take a simple example from physics: Newton's laws of motions are perfectly adequate in the large majority of cases; relativity is important only in cases where velocities approach that of light. Rather than teaching just relativity, we teach Newton first, then point out that it fails near the speed of light, then teach relativity. IMHO, that beats the hell out of teaching relativity first, then pointing out that there are simplifications that work 99% of the time.
The software field is notorious for employing people working whose course of study has been analogous to learning Newton but not learning that there are conditions under which that isn't sufficient. I am not in favor of requiring licensing for all software developers, but there are reasons that states do not allow people to, for example, hire themselves out to do bridge design unless they have demonstrated certain minimum training and competences.
I had the opportunity to get some beta products for powerline networking 18 months ago and have been using it to connect the 2nd floor and the basement. The performance has been rock solid -- about 1.6 Mbps for TCP transfers, minimal variation in that, doesn't seem to be affected at all by major appliances turning on or off, etc. It was a noticable improvement over the wireless rig I was using before that, but wireless performance and prices have changed a lot in 18 months.
My understanding of the technology is that the signal is completely blocked by power company transformers, so the maximum "sniffing" range that I have to worry about are the other three houses on the same transformer that I'm on. If my neighbors are sniffing my traffic, they haven't bothered to tell me about it.
No problems with power surges damaging anything, and front-range Colorado is one of the lightning capitals of the world.
Also, unless you have a major objection to it, focus your energy on smaller companies. Companies with 5 or 6 people can much more readily see the benefits of having a swissarmy knife
I'm facing impending unemployment -- we are being acquired and the new owners are simply discarding the headquarters staff -- and am also a generalist. I was talking to my financial advisor yesterday, who also works with an outplacement firm, and he made the same point about smaller companies. He says a significant number are in need of technical help, and that they prefer getting a generalist who can solve one type of problem this week and a completely different problem next week.
As the "networking" one might do to find those positions is quite different than looking for a position at another big corporation, his comments gave me something to think about in organizing my own job search.
I actually thought this was fairly clever, having MS police themselves, so that any failure to comply with the terms of the agreement means that someone at MS is at fault. IIRC, failure to comply with terms of this type of settlement can get people jail time. I worked at Bellcore (now Telcordia) when it was created in 1984 as part of the breakup of AT&T. The court-ordered restrictions on internal behavior were self-policed, and the training classes for managers began and ended with "Remember, you personally can go to jail if you don't do this properly."
I don't think even MS is arrogant enough to put members of their board of directors at risk of jail time by asking them to violate these terms, or by trying to conceal violations from them.
I think this is a valid point; the companies that will be able to best benefit by using overseas developers will be large corporations doing large software projects. A small company would be much harder-pressed to effectively export, say, a two-member programming team working against a tight schedule.
I do worry that exporting jobs on a large scale will result in an actual example of Keynes' "corporate paradox of thrift": if one company saves costs by exporting those jobs, it does well, but if all companies behave that way, the resulting decline in the overall economy may cause their revenues to eventually decrease faster than their costs.
We obviously have different interpretations of the language in the Appeals Court ruling. I read it as saying the breakup order was unreasonable in light of the brevity of the remedy hearings that Jackson held -- not that it was unreasonable in light of the guilty verdicts which were upheld. After all, they upheld everything except the bundling verdict, which was remanded with instructions to apply a different (and more difficult to prove) standard. The DOJ declined to "try again" on the bundling charge.
I was furious with the DOJ/MS "settlement" as it didn't address many of the violations. In particular, mingling OS and application code was found to be illegal, that decision was upheld by the Appeals Court, and the proposed settlement completely ignored it.
The problem is that they're circumventing the restrictions imposed on them.
Excuse me... imposed on them?
MS claims they are voluntarily complying with the terms of the agreement that they negotiated with the DOJ. That agreement has not been accepted by the judge, hence has no force. I still believe that the judge will decide that Jackson was right the first time around and that splitting the company is the only way to reliably keep MS from repeating the illegal actions that they were convicted of. Remember that the Appeals Court did not say that splitting the company was wrong, only that Jackson had not conducted proceedings appropriate for such a harsh penalty.
Until the judge issues her decision, anything that MS is doing is just posturing...
Now there are some smart folks at Microsoft, I can't credit the theory
that no one there understands what they are doing. The alternative, of
course, leads to what may be denigrated as 'conspiracy theory' but in
this case it seems reasonable, for the reasons stated above.
Personally, I'm more inclined to regard this as a situation analogous to American automakers at the beginning of the 70's. At that time they built large, unreliable, poor-milage vehicles and their strengths were styling and marketing. Then a shock to the system (oil crisis) caused buyers to value other attributes, and the Japanese firms were able to make inroads into the market that continue to this day.
There is no question that ActiveX made certain kinds of Windows development faster and easier, created a whole subindustry for people writing and selling ActiveX components, and made it possible to do neat things within the IE framework. It remains unclear whether or not you can ever make ActiveX really secure on a machine connected to the Internet. Think of the plague of badly-behaved ActiveX components as the "shock to the system". If people begin to value security more than they do the flood of features or the ease of development, something else will make inroads into the market...
One that I like that has unexpected results, uses very little equipment, and involves no loud noises is fooling around with a Mobius Strip (a paper loop with a half twist) and related objects. Let the kids demonstrate, by drawing a line on it without picking up the pencil, that it has only one side. Similarly for one edge. Cut it down the middle, like you wanted to split it into two thinner loops, and you get one long loop. Make a loop with a full twist and cut it down the middle and you get two interlocked loops.
Because MS has already has media file formats with DRM acceptable to the studios, has proposed an OS with the same DRM enforcement, and appears to be driving Intel to put the needed hardware enforcement into the processors. Sen. Fritz Hollings has introduced legislation that could end up, if enacted, requiring all devices capable of displaying media (ie, putting pictures on a screen or making noise) to use such processors and software. Why would you attack the one major software vendor who is doing things your way, and is capable of delivering millions of conforming users with a simple software upgrade?
As is mine, at least some of the time. And every day, I marvel at the fact that people around the world contributed something over $1B in labor to make that possible.
One of the reasons that I believe MS didn't hammer harder on the success of Linux during their antitrust trial is that it would put them in the position of saying, in effect, "Look! There are no barriers to entering the OS business! Anyone who can get $1B in free labor can be successful!"
I always thought that one area where MS has an advantage over the typical open-source application is that their developers are all on salary. So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do. As opposed to the open-source problem of finding someone who wants to do it.
Let's face it, lots of the little things that make an application "full featured" in the eyes of the typical home or business consumer are a drag to code.
Ethnographic studies of some high-speed data subscribers in the Boston area support this. While high-speed was the reason that these people initially subscribed, the always-on aspect of the service caused a significant number to rearrange furniture as necessary in order to bring their PC out of the office/den and into the kitchen/family room. The PC then took on a much bigger role as an information source. For example, checking the day's weather forecast on the PC rather than listening to the radio.
A few years ago I had an opportunity to chat with the manager of the studio where a variety of community-channel shows were shot. She was very concerned about the increase in production costs that high-def would require. Most of the shows were talking heads, and the furniture was typically purchased at flea markets and garage sales. On standard-def it looked just fine; on high-def, it looked like the junk it was. I think that you're right, that standard-def is going to be with us for a long time...
Microsoft has, or has announced, multiple devices for the home that can do more if appropriate networking is available. XBox and the announced tablet device are two such devices. In many (most?) households, wireless is going to be the technology of choice for connecting the household PC and these other devices. Some of the services that MS will want to run between the devices will require certain capabilities. For example, streamed video from the PC to the XBox will require quality of service and DRM guarantees. By introducing their own line of hardware, MS assures themselves that wireless networking implementing all of those portions of the standards will be available.
Almost by definition, there can be no such thing as an effective open source DRM server. To be effective, the software must honor DRM parameters embedded within, for example, a media file. If the source code is available under a license like the GPL, nothing stops a user from modifiying it to ignore those parameters, rendering it ineffective.
MS is offering the mainstream media companies a very attractive package: file formats and software components that implement DRM and are protected by patents. Only licensed implemenations are allowed. Reverse engineering is illegal, not because of something of questionable legal standing in the DMCA, but because of long-standing patent protections. Any copy in a different format is clearly unauthorized and illegal.
Would you write a reader for such files if you knew that MS could easily win the patent infringement suit against you and get a $1M judgement? Would you keep MP4 copies made from Windows Media files on your disk if the MPAA or RIAA could easily win the infringement case against you in local court and have your PC confiscated?
Slashdot Mirror
OpenCable solves the access problem from the consumer's perspective -- compliant third-party boxes should connect to the cable network and get properly authorized. In order to receive premium encrypted content, the consumer will still have to get a POD from their cable company. There is a standard physical interface in an OpenCable STB that the POD plugs into.
From the cable company's perspective, if they are using one of the proprietary encryption schemes provided by Motorola or Scientific Atlanta, which are covered by patents, the cable company will have to obtain proprietary PODs. Moto and SA will charge an arm or a leg for those devices to make up for lost STB sales. Many cable companies would like to get "out from under" Moto and SA's thumb.
In the past, that required that the company broadcast two complete copies of the digital line-up, one encrypted using the proprietary technology and one using some new, less-expensive, hopefully-open system. The Sony technology reduces the dual broadcast penalty from 100% of bandwidth to something less than 10%. The STB part of Passage can be implemented in a POD.
So OpenCable and Passage are complimentary technologies solving different problems. OpenCable enables third-party STBs; Passage allows the cable operator to reduce their costs by adding a second, cheaper encryption scheme that can be used by new boxes.
This appears to be a fairly natural thing for compression based on wavelet transforms, which were used by both SPIHT and VDO.
-
Broadband subscribers use the Internet for significantly more minutes per day than they did when they were dial-up users, and
-
High-speed is why they sign up, but always-on is the reason that they rearrange their furniture in order to get the computer out of the back room and into regular "family" space.
Once they get to the point where the PC is in the kitchen or family room, and it's always on, and the Internet connection is just there, the Internet becomes the prefered source of information for almost everything: news, weather, movie listings, encyclopedia articles, etc.In such a case, it is almost certainly appropriate to provide support for the Windows hosts for that single purpose. That doesn't mean that those hosts are supported for "regular" functions such as e-mail, file and printer sharing, or Web browsing.
If it's just a case of a couple of users who prefer Windows over the Mac, at some point someone with budget authority needs to make a basic decision on the relative costs of (a) those users' happiness versus (b) the very real costs in software and time associated with adding support for Windows on the network. A company with 150 desktops will have someone watching over the budget, and their answer is probably "We're a Mac shop, get over it."
Read the chapter "The Surgical Team" in TMMM. Some of the quoted work led to IBM trying the "chief programmer team" concept using that organization on real projects. The results were pretty staggering -- an order of magnitude increase in productivity, IIRC. The long-term problem, and reason that they had to give up on the technique, was that there were a lot more projects than there were people qualified to be "chief programmers."
There are a lot of people who think they can invent new algorithms, do innovative design, and generate boatloads of well-structured easy-to-maintain code. There are a lot fewer people who can really do it. And I'll cheefully admit that I'm not one of them.
Most "pirated" copies do not represent lost sales for the content owner. Individuals with large libraries of MP3s (for example) would not have purchased the CDs for all of that content if the MP3s had not been available. Content owner revenues are maximized by setting the prices appropriately. The best price is not necessarily the one that maximizes the number of disks sold. Major-league baseball teams, as an example, generally find that revenue is maximized with ticket prices that leave 10-20% of their seats unsold.
Quality should also be reflected in the price. If the choice is between a 64kbps MP3 and nothing, then the MP3 might be a good deal. Different people will make different choices between the MP3 and a lossless original based on the price. Even in the darknet world, these things have different "prices" in terms of storage space, download bandwidth, and availability.
The mainstream media companies aren't against general-purpose computers per se, just against software that manipulates their media files in ways they don't like.
I'm very much afraid that Microsoft is setting up to offer those companies a deal that will be hard to refuse: 95% of the existing desktops and media formats that are protected by patents. The patents give them the power to restrict software that manipulates those files to just the authors that play by their rules for DRM. The existing desktops means DRM is only an upgrade away for the vast majority of the market.
Write to your representatives in Congress. Use paper -- it's usually more effective than e-mail. Ask them to support your rights to fair use of digital media. Tell them the issue is important to you, and will affect how you vote. Vote. Write again supporting legislation to rein in the DMCA when it is introduced -- you'll read about it on Slashdot. 10,000 letters supporting a position will make a Senator nervous. 100,000 will make them very nervous.
Assuming nothing of that sort, you could do a couple of different things. If you're really trying to start a contracting gig, send a follow-up letter pointing out that you solved their problem quickly and easily, you're in business, this one was pro bono to show your talent, but in the future they would need to pay you. Quote hourly and retainer rates. If you just want to feel morally superior, send them a bill. Twice your previous hourly rate sounds right. Include all travel time. Take pride in the fact that you pay your debts, even if they don't.
No mod points today, but I'd give you "interesting" rather than "troll".
I can understand giving a candidate a short written test intended to demonstrate that they can put words together into sentences and organize a few paragraphs intelligently. It may not be possible for them to produce materials from previous jobs demonstrating that specific competence. If I were to receive such a test, however, I would expect the tester to explain what was being tested. My impression from other responders is that those who have been given such tests are not getting that explanation.
My own thoughts on the written tests that are of the form "Identify all syntax errors in the following block of Perl code" is that the correct answer is "That's what compilers are for." The Army used to have a question on the written exams for Officers Candidate School that gave a detailed list of materials, topo maps of a stream, information about the abilities of a group of men, asked "How do you build a bridge across the stream?" and left considerable space for a detailed answer. The correct answer is "Sergeant, take this pile of stuff and these men and build a bridge across the stream. I'll be back in two hours."
The software field is notorious for employing people working whose course of study has been analogous to learning Newton but not learning that there are conditions under which that isn't sufficient. I am not in favor of requiring licensing for all software developers, but there are reasons that states do not allow people to, for example, hire themselves out to do bridge design unless they have demonstrated certain minimum training and competences.
My understanding of the technology is that the signal is completely blocked by power company transformers, so the maximum "sniffing" range that I have to worry about are the other three houses on the same transformer that I'm on. If my neighbors are sniffing my traffic, they haven't bothered to tell me about it.
No problems with power surges damaging anything, and front-range Colorado is one of the lightning capitals of the world.
As the "networking" one might do to find those positions is quite different than looking for a position at another big corporation, his comments gave me something to think about in organizing my own job search.
I don't think even MS is arrogant enough to put members of their board of directors at risk of jail time by asking them to violate these terms, or by trying to conceal violations from them.
I think this is a valid point; the companies that will be able to best benefit by using overseas developers will be large corporations doing large software projects. A small company would be much harder-pressed to effectively export, say, a two-member programming team working against a tight schedule.
I do worry that exporting jobs on a large scale will result in an actual example of Keynes' "corporate paradox of thrift": if one company saves costs by exporting those jobs, it does well, but if all companies behave that way, the resulting decline in the overall economy may cause their revenues to eventually decrease faster than their costs.
I was furious with the DOJ/MS "settlement" as it didn't address many of the violations. In particular, mingling OS and application code was found to be illegal, that decision was upheld by the Appeals Court, and the proposed settlement completely ignored it.
Until the judge issues her decision, anything that MS is doing is just posturing...
There is no question that ActiveX made certain kinds of Windows development faster and easier, created a whole subindustry for people writing and selling ActiveX components, and made it possible to do neat things within the IE framework. It remains unclear whether or not you can ever make ActiveX really secure on a machine connected to the Internet. Think of the plague of badly-behaved ActiveX components as the "shock to the system". If people begin to value security more than they do the flood of features or the ease of development, something else will make inroads into the market...
There's even a cool Escher print based on it.
Because MS has already has media file formats with DRM acceptable to the studios, has proposed an OS with the same DRM enforcement, and appears to be driving Intel to put the needed hardware enforcement into the processors. Sen. Fritz Hollings has introduced legislation that could end up, if enacted, requiring all devices capable of displaying media (ie, putting pictures on a screen or making noise) to use such processors and software. Why would you attack the one major software vendor who is doing things your way, and is capable of delivering millions of conforming users with a simple software upgrade?
Just today's paranoid thought...
One of the reasons that I believe MS didn't hammer harder on the success of Linux during their antitrust trial is that it would put them in the position of saying, in effect, "Look! There are no barriers to entering the OS business! Anyone who can get $1B in free labor can be successful!"
I always thought that one area where MS has an advantage over the typical open-source application is that their developers are all on salary. So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do. As opposed to the open-source problem of finding someone who wants to do it.
Let's face it, lots of the little things that make an application "full featured" in the eyes of the typical home or business consumer are a drag to code.
Ethnographic studies of some high-speed data subscribers in the Boston area support this. While high-speed was the reason that these people initially subscribed, the always-on aspect of the service caused a significant number to rearrange furniture as necessary in order to bring their PC out of the office/den and into the kitchen/family room. The PC then took on a much bigger role as an information source. For example, checking the day's weather forecast on the PC rather than listening to the radio.
A few years ago I had an opportunity to chat with the manager of the studio where a variety of community-channel shows were shot. She was very concerned about the increase in production costs that high-def would require. Most of the shows were talking heads, and the furniture was typically purchased at flea markets and garage sales. On standard-def it looked just fine; on high-def, it looked like the junk it was. I think that you're right, that standard-def is going to be with us for a long time...
Microsoft has, or has announced, multiple devices for the home that can do more if appropriate networking is available. XBox and the announced tablet device are two such devices. In many (most?) households, wireless is going to be the technology of choice for connecting the household PC and these other devices. Some of the services that MS will want to run between the devices will require certain capabilities. For example, streamed video from the PC to the XBox will require quality of service and DRM guarantees. By introducing their own line of hardware, MS assures themselves that wireless networking implementing all of those portions of the standards will be available.
Just one paranoid line of reasoning...
Almost by definition, there can be no such thing as an effective open source DRM server. To be effective, the software must honor DRM parameters embedded within, for example, a media file. If the source code is available under a license like the GPL, nothing stops a user from modifiying it to ignore those parameters, rendering it ineffective.
MS is offering the mainstream media companies a very attractive package: file formats and software components that implement DRM and are protected by patents. Only licensed implemenations are allowed. Reverse engineering is illegal, not because of something of questionable legal standing in the DMCA, but because of long-standing patent protections. Any copy in a different format is clearly unauthorized and illegal.
Would you write a reader for such files if you knew that MS could easily win the patent infringement suit against you and get a $1M judgement? Would you keep MP4 copies made from Windows Media files on your disk if the MPAA or RIAA could easily win the infringement case against you in local court and have your PC confiscated?