As for lack of support, where else are the media companies going to go if MS says no to DRM? People aren't going to take "No support for PCs" as an answer with Blu-Ray boasting a 50 gig capacity for storage.
That's my whole point. If MS blocked all DRM from existing in Vista, they would only be harming themselves. Media companies would take the "fuck you, we still have standalone players" (and lots of them) approach, and would-be customers would whine continually that they can't play back tons of media. As it was, the media companies made certain demands, and you can't reasonably blame MS for not wanting to kill off their entire media center thing, especially with the install base of the 360 and its functionality as a media center extender. Take your pick. Everyone at Slashdot is all too busy compiling the latest Linux kernel to be bothered with MS software anyways, and is only posting to kill some time:)
The storage aspect is irrelevant. DRM is on movies, not the discs themselves. It's not like I'm adding CSS protection to my DVD backups. Why on earth would Blu-Ray change that?
We've seen numerous problems with file handling in Vista, and nothing to suggest they were DRM-related. Very large files and large quantities have both proven problematic. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest it's related to the intended use and then removal of WinFS, but I don't have anything to back that.
Anyways, signatures don't give you permission to deal with files, they just state their origins. No different than in real life - stuff with my signature on it passed by me. Embedded metadata, of sorts. With DRM, you've got an encrypted version of the file wrapped with a few bytes that provide enough information to decrypt the data with the right credentials. A lock and locker, basically (except the locker is made of hardened semen from Zeus and the lock is a hundred-rotation, thousand number jobbie so brute forcing it would take an unfathomably long time).
So again, let's not attempt to blame everything on DRM. Most of Vista's faults result from standard Redmond incompetence.
The terms don't say that they reserve the right to snoop in on your communications.
They probably do. I can't claim to have read the terms recently, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that kind of clause in there. In -1pt, I'm sure, but that's beside the point.
Of course, this kind of thing is the fundamental basis for net neutrality laws or lack thereof, and the idea of being a common carrier. Do we just spit out bits and have no responsibility for what those bits form, or do we give ourselves the ability to prioritize bits by analyizing their contents, but suddenly be responsible for what those bits are?
They want to have their cake (throttling) and eat it too (pass the buck for copyright infringement). I don't think at this point the free market alone has the ability to make this work out in the long run, since the semi-free, somewhat-subsidized market has created a handful of monoliths that end up buying each other out in hopes to re-form Ma Bell, and the people that made the market semi-free and somewhat-subsidized aren't doing their part by keeping that monster in check. All sides end up half-assing things, resulting in the customers losing.
I'd almost like to let the ISPs have their cake and throttle away. When they try to pass the buck and get the downloader sued, that downloader should bring back the argument of "well, they were trying to throttle the traffic based on what was in it, so they're responsible here too - and they have a fuckton more money than I do so why don't you sue them instead". It only needs to happen once before we all to back to neutral networks and, with some luck, a relatively sane system.
Could we please stop trolling about this? The copy protection on Vista is about the same as XP. The support for existing DRM-protected media is the same if not better; that does NOT force DRM on you, just allows you to use media that some video bigwig thought needs the protection - if it weren't supported at all because MS tried to take a stance against it, then we'd just be complaining about the lack of support. DRM is not magically added to your existing media, though I expect the stupid default behavior dating back to WMP9 if not earlier to add copy protection to ripped CDs remains (as I use neither XP nor Vista, I can't comment for sure).
If you're going to complain about Microsoft and DRM, do it with the 360, which apparently was patched to require HDCP over HDMI for games - absolutely senseless in every sense of the word, and entirely their fault. Vista is no different from XP in the fact that the OS has its own relatively ineffective copy protection, and is compatible with DRM-laden media.
Sure it does. Their terms say you can't do something. If you go ahead and do it anyways, they have every right to end your service.
That's about the extent of what they can do given the terms, but given how few options there are for internet connectivity, it's a fairly serious threat.
You can buy distilled water by the gallon, as well as standard bottled water-quality water. It's usually cheaper than a bottle of Dasani to boot (generally in the 89c-$1.25 range). Unless the water is a third as efficient as gasoline, it'd be cheaper at least in "at the pump" costs.
Of course, that doesn't factor in the eventual clean water crisis, the environmental effects of making all that damn plastic for the bottles (which is made from, you guessed it, oil!) etc, etc. But at the only level that my fellow Americans will care about, it'd be quite a lot cheaper.
= = = = = = = = = Mods please note: This is simply an exercise to determine how to lower karma - if you're just looking to burn points, don't bother wasting them...there are better alternatives than making my day, thanks.
Translation: "My karma is teetering on the brink of going negative. Don't mod me down, bro!"
Have you never seen a rackmount server? Something in a pretty similar enclosure continues to exist - though as another responder points out, it's an unnecessarily large footprint for desktop use (probably the single largest reason I don't have a nice rackmount for my home server).
Fair enough, but what about those of us who wear worn out sneakers to work? I'd happily get brown shoes over black if I thought it were important to anyone, but as I don't consider my current employer to be part of my long-term career, I intend to stick with the comfort of my needs-replacing sneakers.
And in this case, the parent/router/nanny software can act as the store clerk that checks for ID. It's impossible (logistically or otherwise) to do it at the ISP level, or else you cut off legitimate access. To throw in yet another bad analogy as any thread like this is chock full of, this would be more along the lines of expecting truckers that are transporting cigarettes to make sure no kids buy them - without blocking legitimate access, it simply cannot be done.
So, you were going for "the more chips on a blade/rack unit, the more processing power you can fit in a 42U", right? The power and conversions, I should think (not exactly being a server admin) are more dependent on the efficiency of the chips or rack units that house them, not so much the number of cores. Double the cores without increasing the effenciency of the chips and you still double the power draw for your CPU overhead (which means you need a bigger, more powerful HVAC as well), it's just fitting in less square footage.
Has that ever been proven? Seems to me that the idea is just some conspiracy theory someone came up with for whatever reason - probably as an excuse to not get his daughter a cell phone.
It's not like I have cell signal when my phone is on anyways, let alone while it's off. I'm generally labeled as a conspiracy theorist, but this whole idea of always-recording-your-every-word cell phones seems a bit far-fetched, especially given the general incompetence of those in the cellular industry.
You don't think there's a slight chance that the possibility of tracking is just an excuse to stop communications nationwide as they feel convenient, do you? They may be ass holes, but they're not stupid.
As someone who works for a.NET company and does freelance work in PHP, I'd suggest that include()s tend to be just as if not more effective, depending on your development style. Of course I'm not the slightest bit experienced with.NET (and even less so with VB/C#, though I could probably pick up the latter in a weekend if I was bothered, given my background with C) and probably am doing it wrong, but my experience with.NET and Master Pages tends to give me a ton of half-assed template files and messy URLs. With PHP, I just call in the appropriate information in index.php with includes (always pulling in header, sidebar, footer as you effectively do in a master page, and sucking in the main content dynamically in some form or another as if it were a contentplaceholder) - and with a touch of.htaccess trickery, I get pretty URLs that I've never found a way to do with aspx work.
It really depends on your background and coding style, if you ask me. I'm not a coder at my day job but I have to be reasonably familiar with what goes on behind the scenes, as I'll have to build out some sample stuff for potential customers from time to time. I almost always find this to be a much more frustrating experience than when I'm doing my freelance php, but a lot of that is the development tools available on Windows really suck compared to what's on the Mac, in my opinion (and for my workflow).
Do you only have one program ever open at a time? Not all of my software is multi-core aware by any means, but it still makes a tremendous difference when they're not all fighting over the same bit of silicon. I tend to have a dozen or so programs open at any given time at home (not to mention background processes) and while they're not all resource hogs, I like being able to let something churn away in the background without slowing down what I'm working on at the time to a crawl.
Does it really matter? Just because the math to double things is easier doesn't make it a more cost-effective move. Maybe due to the shape of the chip, it's a lot cheaper to make a triple-core die than a quad. It's not like the extra core should have any weird effects - apps that support multiple procs/cores will use the extra resources, and those that don't won't. My work XP machine can only use 3GB of RAM (despite having 4GB physically in there) and there's no detriment to such a setup.
Yes, I find it strange. But does it really matter? I doubt it. For all we know, someone at Intel just thought the "sex-" prefix would be funny, rather than the expected "quad-" or "octo-".
I had similar fun with the (Novell-based?) netsend command in a batch file. Given that you spam your sysadmin with popup windows, it's surprisingly difficult to stop for a two-liner.
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That's my whole point. If MS blocked all DRM from existing in Vista, they would only be harming themselves. Media companies would take the "fuck you, we still have standalone players" (and lots of them) approach, and would-be customers would whine continually that they can't play back tons of media. As it was, the media companies made certain demands, and you can't reasonably blame MS for not wanting to kill off their entire media center thing, especially with the install base of the 360 and its functionality as a media center extender. Take your pick. Everyone at Slashdot is all too busy compiling the latest Linux kernel to be bothered with MS software anyways, and is only posting to kill some time
The storage aspect is irrelevant. DRM is on movies, not the discs themselves. It's not like I'm adding CSS protection to my DVD backups. Why on earth would Blu-Ray change that?
We've seen numerous problems with file handling in Vista, and nothing to suggest they were DRM-related. Very large files and large quantities have both proven problematic. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest it's related to the intended use and then removal of WinFS, but I don't have anything to back that.
Anyways, signatures don't give you permission to deal with files, they just state their origins. No different than in real life - stuff with my signature on it passed by me. Embedded metadata, of sorts. With DRM, you've got an encrypted version of the file wrapped with a few bytes that provide enough information to decrypt the data with the right credentials. A lock and locker, basically (except the locker is made of hardened semen from Zeus and the lock is a hundred-rotation, thousand number jobbie so brute forcing it would take an unfathomably long time).
So again, let's not attempt to blame everything on DRM. Most of Vista's faults result from standard Redmond incompetence.
They probably do. I can't claim to have read the terms recently, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that kind of clause in there. In -1pt, I'm sure, but that's beside the point.
Of course, this kind of thing is the fundamental basis for net neutrality laws or lack thereof, and the idea of being a common carrier. Do we just spit out bits and have no responsibility for what those bits form, or do we give ourselves the ability to prioritize bits by analyizing their contents, but suddenly be responsible for what those bits are?
They want to have their cake (throttling) and eat it too (pass the buck for copyright infringement). I don't think at this point the free market alone has the ability to make this work out in the long run, since the semi-free, somewhat-subsidized market has created a handful of monoliths that end up buying each other out in hopes to re-form Ma Bell, and the people that made the market semi-free and somewhat-subsidized aren't doing their part by keeping that monster in check. All sides end up half-assing things, resulting in the customers losing.
I'd almost like to let the ISPs have their cake and throttle away. When they try to pass the buck and get the downloader sued, that downloader should bring back the argument of "well, they were trying to throttle the traffic based on what was in it, so they're responsible here too - and they have a fuckton more money than I do so why don't you sue them instead". It only needs to happen once before we all to back to neutral networks and, with some luck, a relatively sane system.
Especially since we've recently been given an estimated release date.
Could we please stop trolling about this? The copy protection on Vista is about the same as XP. The support for existing DRM-protected media is the same if not better; that does NOT force DRM on you, just allows you to use media that some video bigwig thought needs the protection - if it weren't supported at all because MS tried to take a stance against it, then we'd just be complaining about the lack of support. DRM is not magically added to your existing media, though I expect the stupid default behavior dating back to WMP9 if not earlier to add copy protection to ripped CDs remains (as I use neither XP nor Vista, I can't comment for sure).
If you're going to complain about Microsoft and DRM, do it with the 360, which apparently was patched to require HDCP over HDMI for games - absolutely senseless in every sense of the word, and entirely their fault. Vista is no different from XP in the fact that the OS has its own relatively ineffective copy protection, and is compatible with DRM-laden media.
Sure it does. Their terms say you can't do something. If you go ahead and do it anyways, they have every right to end your service.
That's about the extent of what they can do given the terms, but given how few options there are for internet connectivity, it's a fairly serious threat.
True, but you can't refer to anything as "cramped" over a half-inch difference.
Well, okay. But not screens.
Why, at the used car dealership of course.
You can buy distilled water by the gallon, as well as standard bottled water-quality water. It's usually cheaper than a bottle of Dasani to boot (generally in the 89c-$1.25 range). Unless the water is a third as efficient as gasoline, it'd be cheaper at least in "at the pump" costs.
Of course, that doesn't factor in the eventual clean water crisis, the environmental effects of making all that damn plastic for the bottles (which is made from, you guessed it, oil!) etc, etc. But at the only level that my fellow Americans will care about, it'd be quite a lot cheaper.
So you're going to power your car with a water wheel? Good luck with that.
System Prefs - Mouse - Acceleration slider... move to 0.
Translation: "My karma is teetering on the brink of going negative. Don't mod me down, bro!"
Must I append "WTFVITS"* to my sig?
*watch the effing video in the summary, of course.
Have you never seen a rackmount server? Something in a pretty similar enclosure continues to exist - though as another responder points out, it's an unnecessarily large footprint for desktop use (probably the single largest reason I don't have a nice rackmount for my home server).
Fair enough, but what about those of us who wear worn out sneakers to work? I'd happily get brown shoes over black if I thought it were important to anyone, but as I don't consider my current employer to be part of my long-term career, I intend to stick with the comfort of my needs-replacing sneakers.
Must you talk about him not getting shit while you played his game from the throne? Or were you just going out of your way to mock him?
And in this case, the parent/router/nanny software can act as the store clerk that checks for ID. It's impossible (logistically or otherwise) to do it at the ISP level, or else you cut off legitimate access. To throw in yet another bad analogy as any thread like this is chock full of, this would be more along the lines of expecting truckers that are transporting cigarettes to make sure no kids buy them - without blocking legitimate access, it simply cannot be done.
So, you were going for "the more chips on a blade/rack unit, the more processing power you can fit in a 42U", right? The power and conversions, I should think (not exactly being a server admin) are more dependent on the efficiency of the chips or rack units that house them, not so much the number of cores. Double the cores without increasing the effenciency of the chips and you still double the power draw for your CPU overhead (which means you need a bigger, more powerful HVAC as well), it's just fitting in less square footage.
Has that ever been proven? Seems to me that the idea is just some conspiracy theory someone came up with for whatever reason - probably as an excuse to not get his daughter a cell phone.
It's not like I have cell signal when my phone is on anyways, let alone while it's off. I'm generally labeled as a conspiracy theorist, but this whole idea of always-recording-your-every-word cell phones seems a bit far-fetched, especially given the general incompetence of those in the cellular industry.
You don't think there's a slight chance that the possibility of tracking is just an excuse to stop communications nationwide as they feel convenient, do you? They may be ass holes, but they're not stupid.
As someone who works for a .NET company and does freelance work in PHP, I'd suggest that include()s tend to be just as if not more effective, depending on your development style. Of course I'm not the slightest bit experienced with .NET (and even less so with VB/C#, though I could probably pick up the latter in a weekend if I was bothered, given my background with C) and probably am doing it wrong, but my experience with .NET and Master Pages tends to give me a ton of half-assed template files and messy URLs. With PHP, I just call in the appropriate information in index.php with includes (always pulling in header, sidebar, footer as you effectively do in a master page, and sucking in the main content dynamically in some form or another as if it were a contentplaceholder) - and with a touch of .htaccess trickery, I get pretty URLs that I've never found a way to do with aspx work.
It really depends on your background and coding style, if you ask me. I'm not a coder at my day job but I have to be reasonably familiar with what goes on behind the scenes, as I'll have to build out some sample stuff for potential customers from time to time. I almost always find this to be a much more frustrating experience than when I'm doing my freelance php, but a lot of that is the development tools available on Windows really suck compared to what's on the Mac, in my opinion (and for my workflow).
I seem to remember Intel made some proof-of-concept 80-core chip a while ago. Close enough.
Do you only have one program ever open at a time? Not all of my software is multi-core aware by any means, but it still makes a tremendous difference when they're not all fighting over the same bit of silicon. I tend to have a dozen or so programs open at any given time at home (not to mention background processes) and while they're not all resource hogs, I like being able to let something churn away in the background without slowing down what I'm working on at the time to a crawl.
Does it really matter? Just because the math to double things is easier doesn't make it a more cost-effective move. Maybe due to the shape of the chip, it's a lot cheaper to make a triple-core die than a quad. It's not like the extra core should have any weird effects - apps that support multiple procs/cores will use the extra resources, and those that don't won't. My work XP machine can only use 3GB of RAM (despite having 4GB physically in there) and there's no detriment to such a setup.
Yes, I find it strange. But does it really matter? I doubt it. For all we know, someone at Intel just thought the "sex-" prefix would be funny, rather than the expected "quad-" or "octo-".
I had similar fun with the (Novell-based?) netsend command in a batch file. Given that you spam your sysadmin with popup windows, it's surprisingly difficult to stop for a two-liner.