Quicksilver, or even Spotlight, on a Mac is easier - hit the key (or mouse button) to open it, start typing application name, within 3 or 4 letters, you got it, hit return. On my laptop, I never even move my hands off the keys.
You can do precisely the same thing in VISTA, i.e. click the start button and start typing the application name.
First, I don't think anybody would call a 4GB system as low-end, the point is that performance gets better as you add more RAM, this is hardly news.
Second, I think the original article is confusing the use of system RAM in Vista with the use of USB memory sticks for additional caching. When I built my system for Vista beta testing I started out with 1GB of RAM, last summer I upped that to 2GB (~$100 for 2x512MB sticks of 667MHz DDR2) I've since added a 2GB USB stick for another 17 dollars, so memory costs are not that great. The result is a system that is very responsive.
I was responding to the original poster who said they would not install until they could have GPLd codes and players, what you've described is something different.
I agree, so far I've found very little that doesn't work. Paintshop Pro X ran with degraded aero graphics, but PSP-XI is now out and solves that problem. The only other thing I've had problems with is Audio Cleaning Labs 11 from MAGIX, but they have a patch out now so that should be fixed. Apart from those two programs I've not had any problems with software compatibility.
I don't see why not. I use a Mac as my primary machine, but the media player I use for all videos, including DVDs is GPL'd, and also runs fine on my FreeBSD box. The preferences UI is a bit rough around the edges, but apart from that it's a very nice piece of software. I can't remember the last time I ran across a video file it couldn't play.
A GPL player isn't that big of a deal, the problem is the codecs, many of which are proprietary. On the Mac that's not such a big problem because the purveyors of those codecs support them on the Mac platform and any player (GPL or otherwise) should be able to use them. On LINUX, you don't find the same level of support for codecs and even if companies like REAL or MS or Apple decide to release codecs for LINUX they are extremely unlikely to release them under the GPL.
Actually, that's known mortality rate. Chances are that it's less than 50%.Since we only actually known for the most part about the serious cases, the actual kill rate could be much less.
And it is quite conceivable that a mutated H5N1 that was more infectious might be less deadly. But even a mortality rate of 5% for a disease that could infect hundreds of millions if not 1+billion would still lead to an awful lot of dead people.
I live near where a recent 'outbreak' of Avian Flu has occurred in England. Forgive me for perhaps not seeing the bigger picture, but what's the big deal? regular flu kills more people every winter in the UK alone than Avian Flu has the world over - ever. AFAIK anyway.
To understand the concern around H5N1 you need to consider two things:
1. Mortality rate - H5N1 has a very high mortality rate, something like 60% of the people who get it, die! Regular flu has a mortality rate much much lower (several orders of magnitude) so H5N1 is potentially very dangerous.
2. Transmissability - so far H5N1 has proved rather hard to catch (thankfully) but if that changes (something that has happened with other flu viruses) then you have the perfect storm of easy infection combined with high mortality.
For an idea of how bad a Flu epidemic can get, try typing "flu 1919" into Google, that epidemic is believed to have killed as many as 60 million worldwide. Today such an outbreak would probably be worse because it would be spread more quickly around the globe, would have many more densely packed cities to infect and a large (certainly in Africa) group of immune-compromised potential victims because of HIV.
According to the test, "Microsoft Live OneCare caught 99.91% of the known active viruses it was tested against. This left it vulnerable to 37 separate malicious programs." And that was the *worst* result. A 99.91% success rate isn't exactly horrible.
Another thing that the needs to be considered is how prevalent are the viruses that sneaked by, chances are the ones that got through the AV software are ones that are pretty rare and haven't been seen too much in the wild yet. So the actual chances of anybody catching a virus when running any of these AV programs are very small indeed.
I actually ran my Vista machine throughout the beta without AV protection and continued to do so until last weekend with no ill effects. I'm now using the AVG free edition and I don't plan on paying anybody for AV protection in the future.
I wonder if this means that MS will stop requiring floppies to install a 3rd party RAID controller during the installation.
It's so long since I did an XP or Server install that I can't rembmer whether insist on a floppy for this. But Windows Vista certainly doesn't it's happy with USB keys, CD-ROMs etc. Of course that doesn't help if the rocket scientists at companies like INtel distribute their boot drivers in a form that requires a floppy!!! Seriously, I had get the SATA RAID drivers for the ICH7 chipset and the package (a self installing zipped.exe) will not let you unpack it on anything but a real bona-fide floppy drive. They actually went to some trouble to prevent it from being unpacked to a USB stick! I eventually had to get a USB floppy just to unpack Intel's drivers! Hopefully some measure of sanity will permeate into the people who package drivers!
The only reason you were able to do that is that no encryption keys (the ones that software accessing the transport path will need) have yet been revoked.
I assume you are responding to my claim that DVDDecrypt etc work just fine in VISTA. If so, then you are just showing your ignorance of the whole issue. The ability to revoke encryption keys is only part of the HD/BLuRay spec, DVDs continue to use the same scheme they've always used and VISTA continues to allow you to use applications like DVDdecrypt to decrypt them. There is no key revocation mechanism for DVD, and VISTA does nothing to change that. So before you go spouting off more clueless claptrap, you might want to get a basic understanding of the issues involved. Note, the DRM required for HD content is no different than that implemented in commercial HD/BluRay players, so it's not an MS thing, it's a licensing issue enforced by the studios.
Well everybody is entitled to an opinion, no matter how misguided.
> Microsoft won the US anti-trust case in practice (they "lost"),
Huh?
> And besides, how is not aligning with the media corps less anti-trusty than doing so?
Because they would be forcing those other companies to do something that they would not otherwise do, just because Microsoft has a de-facto monopoly on the desktop. How would MS dictating something like this be different from them telling PC vendors what software they could install, or locking out AV companies that didn't do things their way.
> Being found guilty doesn't mean MS need to suck up to every special interest
But it does mean that they have to be very careful about throwing their weight around to force other companies to do their bidding.
I'm not a strong believer in the "Microsoft has no real choice" hypothesis. I don't think MS need the RI/MPAA members of the world as much as they need MS. First of all, MS are a part of, and presumably very active, member of the AACS licensing agency.
You forget about a little thing called anti-trust. If MS turned round to the Studios and said "we are Microsoft" and we aren't going to honor your DRM and if you want to play media on PCs, you'll just have to agree, they would barely get the words out before someone was calling the Justice department about MS's use of it's monopoly power.
Actually, what's funny is that CD/DVD burning software is the first thing I thought of when GP mentioned things that didn't work. I would't be surprised if high-end video cards that support HD video had issues, too.
Just more Fud, no surprise there I guess. I've been using dvddecrypt & imgburn on Vista without problems, in fact I used imgburn with all the various pre-release versions of Vista in order to burn the next version to DVD after I downloaded during beta. Work just they way they did before, no DRM problems at all. Problems with DVD/CD writer programs are far from universal, some work, some don't. My guess is that some used unsupported APIs. Also, if there was some vast Vista DRM conspiracy, how come companies like NERO have since released working versions of their products?
and this article says that "Similar to S/PDIF, Windows Vista does not require component video outputs to be disabled, but rather enables the enforcement of the usage policy set by content owners or service providers, including with respect to output restrictions and image constraint" which sidesteps the point that a disc can disable the current standard connection from a normal computer to a normal TV you fucks!!!
This is exactly the same as what every commercial HD-DVD or BluRay does, honouring the image constraint token is a requirement for anybody who wants to play these discs. The studios say that they will not start enforicing image constraint until 2011 (IIRC) so it's not going to affect anyone until the studios turn it on. Microsoft had only two choices in this regard, ignore supporting playback of HD media, or support image constraint. The path they've chosen to follow gives you the choice of whether you want to punish the studios by boycotting such media because of the DRM issues. If you don't play HD media then you have no problem, if you do play HD media, then bitch at the studios for demanding things like image constraint.
Microsoft has been doing download distribution of VISTA along with license keys throughout the beta program, I would imagine that the system they will be similar. The activation key is created by a server at Microsoft and it's basically the same thing you'd get on the outside of shrink wrapped box. If I forgot the key I can go back to my Microsoft account and retrieve it, or I can keep a copy on a burned CD or whatever.
As for corrupted downloads, in the process of the Vista beta I downloaded probably 10-15 different copies of the DVD ISO as I progressed through various builds and never had a single corrupted ISO, so I don't see that being a problem. If it had been corrupt I would simply have gone back and re-downloaded. I don't see any reason why the new system would not work the same way since there is no danger from a user downloading multiple copies of the ISO.
Soon, we will be safe from the most dangerous disease of all! So many people have been killed by Bird Fl... wait a minute... that's not right at all.
Sigh..., what we know about Bird Flu includes:
1. When it does infect humans it has a very high mortality rate (about 80% IIRC)
2. It's an influenza virus with a well documented history of mutating and causing massive epidemics
So far (2) hasn't happened, but what the risk is very real, feel free to stick your head in the sand and ignore the risk if you like. Don't expect responsible governments to do so. Just consider a flu virus hitting the US with on a 10% mortality rate and infecting millions, you would at best get hundreds of thousands of dead in relatively short period of time, and if it followed the pattern of the 1918 pandemic, then those dead would be heavily skewed towards young, fit, adults.
Instead of obeying the instructions of the OWNER of the media.
Quite, but your argument is with the rights holder, not with Microsoft, as I said, if Microsoft did anything else they would be sued by the MPAA etc, which might make them a few friends amongst some users, but would inevitably result in them losing spectacularly and having to respect the restrictions placed on the content by the rights holder.
You can dislike the way the movie companies etc want to protect their content as much as you like and I agree to a large degree. But that doesn't change the fact that MS has simply done the same thing that every manufacturer of HD-DVD and BluRay DVD players have done, i.e. observe restrictions from the studios, the other choices being not be able to play the content, or get sued for cracking the DRM.
The DRM embedded in Vista has been well hashed here and I believe the implementation will cause many people headaches, especially those wanting to view digital media.
blah, blah, blah. The DRM in Vista will simply obey the restrictions placed on the media by the supplier of that media, it won't magically add new DRM restrictions. It happily plays non-DRM content and also allows you do all the same things you did on XP like ripping CD to MP3, ripping DVD, etc.
So just what is the monstrous DRM that is being foisted on unwilling consumers, yes it honors the Studio restrictions on playback of HD-DVD and BlueRay content, but that's to be expected. The only other options for MS would have been to ignore the studio restrictions and get taken to court and lose, or not support playback at all. Me I'm glad they chose to provide the option for me to play this content so that I can decide if I want to live the Studio's DRM requirements.
I'm willing to bet that when OSX supports playback of the same content it will do it with exactly the same restrictions. Whether LINUX will ever play such media is another question entirely.
Agreed, the issues are not insurmountable, though the SAS one is tricky, as you'd either need to put SAS on the motherboard or hope somebody will put a SAS interface on something like a PC-Card interface, neither of which is particularly likely given the small market for such devices.
Two problems:
1. It will be considerably hotter and more power hungry than standard laptop drives that spin at roughly 1/3rd of the speed.
2. It has a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface which you don't find in laptops.
So, no, you can't stick one in a laptop
For Windows, probably not as far reaching as you might think. My understanding is that only piece of BSD code was the IP stack, and this has been rewritten from scratch in VISTA (coincidence?)
Secondly, I demand my right to shift materials that I've rightfully purchased onto other media. For example, I have a MythTV installation. On it, I have my entire music collection, not to mention a mass of recorded video, and eventually I plan to have my DVD collection ripped as well. DRM means I can no longer do any of these things, which restricts my ability to enjoy the content I've purchased.
You missed the point of the original premise which clearly stated
"a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying)"
Personally I would find it hard to argue against a DRM scheme that did not restrict my ability to use content in whatever way I liked so long as I didn't copy it for others to consume. Unfortunately I find it hard to imagine an enforceable DRM scheme that could tell the difference between me converting the content to whatever form I like for myself vs giving the new copy to someone else. So for now, I'm not holding my breath waiting for this.
What is the difference between windows home server and a windows xp pro machine with sp2 with shares and permissions setup on it or windows vista home premium with media center or windows media center 2005?
You could always read the article which would help explain it to you, but if that's too much trouble here are the highlights:
1. Simple storage administration, no drive letters, one big filesystem, if you need more capacity just add more disk and the OS takes care of integrating it into the storage pool
2. Backup for XP & Vista clients
3. Simple policies for things virus protection, little Johny comes home and sticks his pox-ridden PC on the network, Home Server will isolate it and prevent it from infecting everybody else.
4. GUI designed for simple admin of a box that is dedicated as headless server
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You can do precisely the same thing in VISTA, i.e. click the start button and start typing the application name.
Second, I think the original article is confusing the use of system RAM in Vista with the use of USB memory sticks for additional caching. When I built my system for Vista beta testing I started out with 1GB of RAM, last summer I upped that to 2GB (~$100 for 2x512MB sticks of 667MHz DDR2) I've since added a 2GB USB stick for another 17 dollars, so memory costs are not that great. The result is a system that is very responsive.
I was responding to the original poster who said they would not install until they could have GPLd codes and players, what you've described is something different.
I agree, so far I've found very little that doesn't work. Paintshop Pro X ran with degraded aero graphics, but PSP-XI is now out and solves that problem. The only other thing I've had problems with is Audio Cleaning Labs 11 from MAGIX, but they have a patch out now so that should be fixed. Apart from those two programs I've not had any problems with software compatibility.
Don't hold your breath waiting for them.
To understand the concern around H5N1 you need to consider two things:
1. Mortality rate - H5N1 has a very high mortality rate, something like 60% of the people who get it, die! Regular flu has a mortality rate much much lower (several orders of magnitude) so H5N1 is potentially very dangerous.
2. Transmissability - so far H5N1 has proved rather hard to catch (thankfully) but if that changes (something that has happened with other flu viruses) then you have the perfect storm of easy infection combined with high mortality.
For an idea of how bad a Flu epidemic can get, try typing "flu 1919" into Google, that epidemic is believed to have killed as many as 60 million worldwide. Today such an outbreak would probably be worse because it would be spread more quickly around the globe, would have many more densely packed cities to infect and a large (certainly in Africa) group of immune-compromised potential victims because of HIV.
Another thing that the needs to be considered is how prevalent are the viruses that sneaked by, chances are the ones that got through the AV software are ones that are pretty rare and haven't been seen too much in the wild yet. So the actual chances of anybody catching a virus when running any of these AV programs are very small indeed.
I actually ran my Vista machine throughout the beta without AV protection and continued to do so until last weekend with no ill effects. I'm now using the AVG free edition and I don't plan on paying anybody for AV protection in the future.
It's so long since I did an XP or Server install that I can't rembmer whether insist on a floppy for this. But Windows Vista certainly doesn't it's happy with USB keys, CD-ROMs etc. Of course that doesn't help if the rocket scientists at companies like INtel distribute their boot drivers in a form that requires a floppy!!! Seriously, I had get the SATA RAID drivers for the ICH7 chipset and the package (a self installing zipped .exe) will not let you unpack it on anything but a real bona-fide floppy drive. They actually went to some trouble to prevent it from being unpacked to a USB stick! I eventually had to get a USB floppy just to unpack Intel's drivers! Hopefully some measure of sanity will permeate into the people who package drivers!
On that note, I'll leave you with your paranoid delusions.
I assume you are responding to my claim that DVDDecrypt etc work just fine in VISTA. If so, then you are just showing your ignorance of the whole issue. The ability to revoke encryption keys is only part of the HD/BLuRay spec, DVDs continue to use the same scheme they've always used and VISTA continues to allow you to use applications like DVDdecrypt to decrypt them. There is no key revocation mechanism for DVD, and VISTA does nothing to change that. So before you go spouting off more clueless claptrap, you might want to get a basic understanding of the issues involved. Note, the DRM required for HD content is no different than that implemented in commercial HD/BluRay players, so it's not an MS thing, it's a licensing issue enforced by the studios.
You forget about a little thing called anti-trust. If MS turned round to the Studios and said "we are Microsoft" and we aren't going to honor your DRM and if you want to play media on PCs, you'll just have to agree, they would barely get the words out before someone was calling the Justice department about MS's use of it's monopoly power.
Just more Fud, no surprise there I guess. I've been using dvddecrypt & imgburn on Vista without problems, in fact I used imgburn with all the various pre-release versions of Vista in order to burn the next version to DVD after I downloaded during beta. Work just they way they did before, no DRM problems at all. Problems with DVD/CD writer programs are far from universal, some work, some don't. My guess is that some used unsupported APIs. Also, if there was some vast Vista DRM conspiracy, how come companies like NERO have since released working versions of their products?
This is exactly the same as what every commercial HD-DVD or BluRay does, honouring the image constraint token is a requirement for anybody who wants to play these discs. The studios say that they will not start enforicing image constraint until 2011 (IIRC) so it's not going to affect anyone until the studios turn it on. Microsoft had only two choices in this regard, ignore supporting playback of HD media, or support image constraint. The path they've chosen to follow gives you the choice of whether you want to punish the studios by boycotting such media because of the DRM issues. If you don't play HD media then you have no problem, if you do play HD media, then bitch at the studios for demanding things like image constraint.
Microsoft has been doing download distribution of VISTA along with license keys throughout the beta program, I would imagine that the system they will be similar. The activation key is created by a server at Microsoft and it's basically the same thing you'd get on the outside of shrink wrapped box. If I forgot the key I can go back to my Microsoft account and retrieve it, or I can keep a copy on a burned CD or whatever.
As for corrupted downloads, in the process of the Vista beta I downloaded probably 10-15 different copies of the DVD ISO as I progressed through various builds and never had a single corrupted ISO, so I don't see that being a problem. If it had been corrupt I would simply have gone back and re-downloaded. I don't see any reason why the new system would not work the same way since there is no danger from a user downloading multiple copies of the ISO.
Sigh..., what we know about Bird Flu includes: 1. When it does infect humans it has a very high mortality rate (about 80% IIRC) 2. It's an influenza virus with a well documented history of mutating and causing massive epidemics So far (2) hasn't happened, but what the risk is very real, feel free to stick your head in the sand and ignore the risk if you like. Don't expect responsible governments to do so. Just consider a flu virus hitting the US with on a 10% mortality rate and infecting millions, you would at best get hundreds of thousands of dead in relatively short period of time, and if it followed the pattern of the 1918 pandemic, then those dead would be heavily skewed towards young, fit, adults.
Agreed, the issues are not insurmountable, though the SAS one is tricky, as you'd either need to put SAS on the motherboard or hope somebody will put a SAS interface on something like a PC-Card interface, neither of which is particularly likely given the small market for such devices.
Two problems: 1. It will be considerably hotter and more power hungry than standard laptop drives that spin at roughly 1/3rd of the speed. 2. It has a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface which you don't find in laptops. So, no, you can't stick one in a laptop
For Windows, probably not as far reaching as you might think. My understanding is that only piece of BSD code was the IP stack, and this has been rewritten from scratch in VISTA (coincidence?)
You missed the point of the original premise which clearly stated
"a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying)"
Personally I would find it hard to argue against a DRM scheme that did not restrict my ability to use content in whatever way I liked so long as I didn't copy it for others to consume. Unfortunately I find it hard to imagine an enforceable DRM scheme that could tell the difference between me converting the content to whatever form I like for myself vs giving the new copy to someone else. So for now, I'm not holding my breath waiting for this.