I just installed Vista on my laptop over the weekend, and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the biggest new feature of the OS...
Solitaire--basically unchanged from Windows 3.0 to Windows XP--has been totally overhauled. It's a DirectX game now. It's even been rated E by the ESRB. (Minesweeper, OTOH, is rated M for extreme violence and nudity.)
Another thing that a test would allow for is for mothers to terminate such a pregnancy. It'd be a lot better to know for sure than to wonder if your baby is going to die randomly.
Well, the kid might wander out into the street and get hit by a bus when he's 5. Might as well snuff him before then so that can't happen.
I'm sure there are others. Vista's code signing requirement will make it difficult for any open-source program to do any of the things listed above. Large OSS projects backed by a company will probably be able to get a certificate from Microsoft and sign official builds, but third parties will be unable to modify and redistribute binaries, which is counter to the spirit of open source. I'm sure this is not an accident. Smaller OSS projects (such as installable file systems for ext3 or reiser) will most likely jsut disappear.
"Can't" or "shouldn't"? I bought an OEM copy of XP Pro a couple of years ago, and it installed and runs just fine after a complete upgrade to the machine - the only things that are original are the monitor and the case.
Me too--after a power surge killed the mobo and hard drive, I built what amounted to a completely new PC. I installed the OEM copy of XP I originally purchased on the new machine and noticed in the EULA that it only applied to the original "computer".
So I actually e-mailed Microsoft and aksed what constitutes a "computer" according to the OEM license. They wouldn't tell me. Years later, they decided it's the motherboard--replace the motherboard and your Windows license vanishes in a puff of smoke. Unless the motherboard is replaced due to a "defect". I'm going to assume being bricked by a blown out PSU qualifies as a "defect".
In any event, WPA and WGA proceeded without incident, so I guess MS agrees.
Along those lines... suppose the motherboard was rendered "defective" by some other means (whoops, the soldering iron slipped when I was volt-modding it). Now I need to replace the motherboard. But they don't make that model anymore! Shoot! Guess I'll have to get a newer one. But my CPU has an obsolete socket! Darn! Guess I'll have to upgrade. But my memory and video card won't work in the new board. Drat!
The putative reason for requiring all kernel-mode code to be digitally signed in x64 was to prevent rootkits... but the real reason is to harden DRM.
Microsoft's gall is just stunning... "unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection". So disk emulation, installable file systems, packet sniffing, intrusion detection, volume encryption... all this functionality relies on kernel mode code and is available in open-source form for Windows XP. But now it's "malware" and will not be allowed on Vista because doing so would also enable circumvention of DRM.
Of course the driver signing requirement will not stop digitally signed malware from the likes of Sony BMG.
All this "we like OSS" blather aside, Microsoft is preparing to prevent some types of OSS from running in the future. Specifically, they will require all drivers to bear digital signatures under Windows Vista. IIRC, the key can come from WHQL or Verisign (who will offer keys only to "legitimate corporations").
This doesn't just affect hardware. Off the top of my head, this will break WinPCap (as used by Ethereal), loopback image mounting with FileDisk, volume encryption with TrueCrypt, various installable file system drivers for HFS+, ext3, reiserfs, etc.
Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 uses rootkit-like techniques to hide encrypted files from the Win32 API. I wrote a little about it in my blog a few days ago.
First if you install Windows into a VM from a legit Windows XP CD and try to download any updates the Genuine Windows Advantage test fails. So MS already knows if you're running VMware.
I had no trouble passing the XP "Genuine Advantage" test in a VM (it was under VMware RC3, though, but I doubt that'd make a difference). (I had to submit to the MS spyware so I could play with Microsoft's new rootkit, but I didn't want to infect my real machine with either...)
I think MS wants you to buy multiple copies of Windows if you're planning to run in a VM as well as on the real silicon.
Yeah, that could be why you had trouble validating...
But, if one had to kill themselves in space, personally a pill that slips one into a deep sleep and then death in my opinion would be a lot more respectable in my opinion, more peaceful, and a hell of a lot less violent and painful than simply exposing oneself to a vacuum.
Lovell's words, not mine. He also has this to say:
"If you've got to buy the farm, better to do it while riding a corkscrewing rocket up through the atmosphere, or steering a tumbling spacecraft down to Earth, or getting stuck in orbit with a dead retrorocket, or being marooned on the face of the moon."
A suicide pill might be peaceful, but totally unbecoming a respectable pilot with the Right Stuff.
From the prologue of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger:
Stories about poison pills always made Jim Lovell laugh. Poison pills! Forget about it! First of all, there just weren't any situations in which you'd ever really consider making an early exit. And even if there were, you had a hell of a lot of easier ways to do it than poison pills. The command module had a crank for the cabin vent, after all. One turn of the handle, and five pounds per square inch of cozy capsule pressure would instantly be exposed to the zero pounds-per-square-inch pressure of space. Whatever air was left in your lungs would explode out in an angry rush, your blood would quickly--and literally--boil, and your traumatized system would simply shut up shop. The whole thing would be over in just a few seconds. It was no slower, really, than some ridiculous poison pill, and it was a lot more respectable.
As we have mentioned previously, as the WGA Notifications program expands in the future, customers may be required to participate. [emphasis added] Microsoft is gathering feedback in select markets to learn how it can best meet its customers' needs and will keep customers informed of any changes to the program.
Maybe when Microsoft says "required to participate" they mean something other than "install our spyware or get shut down", but I'm at a loss as to what.
Furthermore, why should WGA ever need to confirm that a copy is legit more than ONCE? if a given install was legit last week, how could it possibly become pirated next week?
It couldn't. But maybe the install that passed the legit check last week was really pirated, and Microsoft just discovered the hack. They'll want to push out a new legit check at the next opportunity so they can nag/spy on/remotely disable the latest group of perceived pirates.
How many legit customers get shut out of their own machines as a result of this remains to be seen... For as many times as I've seen 100% legal systems spontaneously "de-activate" themselves as a result of moving a PCI card, installing a driver, or for no apparent reason at all, I think it's bound to happen.
It's not completely unsubstantiated--a Microsoft spokesperson upon being questioned about it would not deny it, but only gave this somewhat cryptic reply:
As we have mentioned previously, as the WGA Notifications program expands in the future, customers may be required to participate. [emphasis added] Microsoft is gathering feedback in select markets to learn how it can best meet its customers' needs and will keep customers informed of any changes to the program.
It's anyone's guess what "required to participate" means, but the "kill switch" theory is more than just wild speculation.
In 2006, the RIAA claimed that ripping CDs and backing them up does not constitute fair use, because tracks from ripped CDs do not maintain the controversial DRM to protect the music file from copyright infringement. They argue that, there is no evidence that any of the relevant media are "unusually subject to damage" and that "even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices."
Hmm. I've always suspsected that the goal of DRM is to make you pay for the same thing over and over. This confirms my suspicion.
Interestingly enough, this is still on the RIAA's website:
If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.
Re: I refuse to spend real money on a disappearing product.
No ice-cream for you then. And how do you manage to read Slashdot without electricity? Or a subscription to an ISP? I think you'll find that a lot of the money that you spend is on "disappearing products".
I would call electricity and ISP "services" rather than "products". As for ice cream... I originally thought about qualifying "product" with "non consumable", but I thought it would be pedantic. But this is Slashdot... what was I thinking?
I blogged about why I won't purchase any "Plays for sure" music. The DRM is practically guaranteed to make your music collection disappear.
Any system that restricts copying the music you paid for will eventually lock out the paying customer. I refuse to spend real money on a disappearing product.
I pay $15/month for 256kbit DSL (which mostly fits my needs, but I download Linux ISOs at work). 1.5MBit DSL runs $27. Both of these prices are for the line only (I spend another $17 for the ISP).
3MBit cable from Comcast runs $60/month (although they're always sending me flyers advertising $25/month for three months but not listing the price after that anywhere... geez, are there really customers who are so irresponsibly myopic they won't even look three months into the future?)
So basically every Windows application for 20 years has had "File", "Edit", "View", etc. in the top-left corner, and now Microsoft decides pull-down menus are deprecated? A "classic" option that you can turn on if you're retro?
So apparently clicking little hieroglyphs on toolbar buttons is easier than using a pull-down menu. What about accessibility? What about people who prefer to use the keyboard?
Getting rid of the underlined shortcut keys in the menus was bad enough. How long before Windows doesn't even support a keyboard anymore?
The only indication in TFA about what specific "IP rights" are allegedly being violated is Morfik's pending patent on JST ("Javascript Synthesis Technology").
What, now you can assert patents that haven't even been granted yet?! What if the patent application is denied?
BTW, I have a pending patent on replying to comments on Slashdot. You all owe me $100 per comment. BTW, I'm going to vigorously defend my intellectual property by hiring two goons named Victor and Anthony to collect my license fees. Have an nice day.
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I mean, I knew "Wii" was a stupid name... but I didn't know it was deathly stupid. Until now.
Hey, I resemble that remark!\n
I just installed Vista on my laptop over the weekend, and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the biggest new feature of the OS...
Solitaire--basically unchanged from Windows 3.0 to Windows XP--has been totally overhauled. It's a DirectX game now. It's even been rated E by the ESRB. (Minesweeper, OTOH, is rated M for extreme violence and nudity.)
Do we need to tag !!itsatrap?
Another thing that a test would allow for is for mothers to terminate such a pregnancy. It'd be a lot better to know for sure than to wonder if your baby is going to die randomly.
Well, the kid might wander out into the street and get hit by a bus when he's 5. Might as well snuff him before then so that can't happen.
This isn't just about supporting hardware. Several types of programs require kernel-mode drivers. Off the top of my head...
Installable file systems
Loopback mounts
Volume encryption
Rootkit detection
Packet sniffing
VPN software
I'm sure there are others. Vista's code signing requirement will make it difficult for any open-source program to do any of the things listed above. Large OSS projects backed by a company will probably be able to get a certificate from Microsoft and sign official builds, but third parties will be unable to modify and redistribute binaries, which is counter to the spirit of open source. I'm sure this is not an accident. Smaller OSS projects (such as installable file systems for ext3 or reiser) will most likely jsut disappear.
Me too--after a power surge killed the mobo and hard drive, I built what amounted to a completely new PC. I installed the OEM copy of XP I originally purchased on the new machine and noticed in the EULA that it only applied to the original "computer".
So I actually e-mailed Microsoft and aksed what constitutes a "computer" according to the OEM license. They wouldn't tell me. Years later, they decided it's the motherboard--replace the motherboard and your Windows license vanishes in a puff of smoke. Unless the motherboard is replaced due to a "defect". I'm going to assume being bricked by a blown out PSU qualifies as a "defect".
In any event, WPA and WGA proceeded without incident, so I guess MS agrees.
Along those lines... suppose the motherboard was rendered "defective" by some other means (whoops, the soldering iron slipped when I was volt-modding it). Now I need to replace the motherboard. But they don't make that model anymore! Shoot! Guess I'll have to get a newer one. But my CPU has an obsolete socket! Darn! Guess I'll have to upgrade. But my memory and video card won't work in the new board. Drat!
The putative reason for requiring all kernel-mode code to be digitally signed in x64 was to prevent rootkits... but the real reason is to harden DRM.
Microsoft's gall is just stunning... "unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection". So disk emulation, installable file systems, packet sniffing, intrusion detection, volume encryption... all this functionality relies on kernel mode code and is available in open-source form for Windows XP. But now it's "malware" and will not be allowed on Vista because doing so would also enable circumvention of DRM.
Of course the driver signing requirement will not stop digitally signed malware from the likes of Sony BMG.
It also had a 128mb 8x gforce 4 AGP card.
You need DirectX9-class video hardware to use the Aero interface.
Your GeForce4 is either DirectX8 (if it's a Ti series card) or DirectX7 (if it's an MX series card).
Get rid of that ugly MS license key sticker!
All this "we like OSS" blather aside, Microsoft is preparing to prevent some types of OSS from running in the future. Specifically, they will require all drivers to bear digital signatures under Windows Vista. IIRC, the key can come from WHQL or Verisign (who will offer keys only to "legitimate corporations").
This doesn't just affect hardware. Off the top of my head, this will break WinPCap (as used by Ethereal), loopback image mounting with FileDisk, volume encryption with TrueCrypt, various installable file system drivers for HFS+, ext3, reiserfs, etc.
Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 uses rootkit-like techniques to hide encrypted files from the Win32 API. I wrote a little about it in
my blog a few days ago.
Yeah, that could be why you had trouble validating...
Lovell's words, not mine. He also has this to say:
"If you've got to buy the farm, better to do it while riding a corkscrewing rocket up through the atmosphere, or steering a tumbling spacecraft down to Earth, or getting stuck in orbit with a dead retrorocket, or being marooned on the face of the moon."
A suicide pill might be peaceful, but totally unbecoming a respectable pilot with the Right Stuff.
Maybe when Microsoft says "required to participate" they mean something other than "install our spyware or get shut down", but I'm at a loss as to what.
Furthermore, why should WGA ever need to confirm that a copy is legit more than ONCE? if a given install was legit last week, how could it possibly become pirated next week?
It couldn't. But maybe the install that passed the legit check last week was really pirated, and Microsoft just discovered the hack. They'll want to push out a new legit check at the next opportunity so they can nag/spy on/remotely disable the latest group of perceived pirates.
How many legit customers get shut out of their own machines as a result of this remains to be seen... For as many times as I've seen 100% legal systems spontaneously "de-activate" themselves as a result of moving a PCI card, installing a driver, or for no apparent reason at all, I think it's bound to happen.
It's anyone's guess what "required to participate" means, but the "kill switch" theory is more than just wild speculation.
Hmm. I've always suspsected that the goal of DRM is to make you pay for the same thing over and over. This confirms my suspicion.
Interestingly enough, this is still on the RIAA's website:
No ice-cream for you then. And how do you manage to read Slashdot without electricity? Or a subscription to an ISP? I think you'll find that a lot of the money that you spend is on "disappearing products".
I would call electricity and ISP "services" rather than "products". As for ice cream... I originally thought about qualifying "product" with "non consumable", but I thought it would be pedantic. But this is Slashdot... what was I thinking?
I blogged about why I won't purchase any "Plays for sure" music. The DRM is practically guaranteed to make your music collection disappear.
Any system that restricts copying the music you paid for will eventually lock out the paying customer. I refuse to spend real money on a disappearing product.
I pay $15/month for 256kbit DSL (which mostly fits my needs, but I download Linux ISOs at work). 1.5MBit DSL runs $27. Both of these prices are for the line only (I spend another $17 for the ISP).
3MBit cable from Comcast runs $60/month (although they're always sending me flyers advertising $25/month for three months but not listing the price after that anywhere... geez, are there really customers who are so irresponsibly myopic they won't even look three months into the future?)
So basically every Windows application for 20 years has had "File", "Edit", "View", etc. in the top-left corner, and now Microsoft decides pull-down menus are deprecated? A "classic" option that you can turn on if you're retro?
So apparently clicking little hieroglyphs on toolbar buttons is easier than using a pull-down menu. What about accessibility? What about people who prefer to use the keyboard?
Getting rid of the underlined shortcut keys in the menus was bad enough. How long before Windows doesn't even support a keyboard anymore?
The only indication in TFA about what specific "IP rights" are allegedly being violated is Morfik's pending patent on JST ("Javascript Synthesis Technology").
What, now you can assert patents that haven't even been granted yet?! What if the patent application is denied?
BTW, I have a pending patent on replying to comments on Slashdot. You all owe me $100 per comment. BTW, I'm going to vigorously defend my intellectual property by hiring two goons named Victor and Anthony to collect my license fees. Have an nice day.
Yech. As if 30MB driver downloads weren't big enough...