is IT really going to be Vista? 14

[wolluf]

could vista be the proverbial straw (that breaks the camel's back)?

MS charge ridiculous prices for their operating system(s) - given their complete market dominance.

MS have developed total paranoia over piracy - how long before WGA runs into a major legal battle with another large corporation (or 2)?

Having touted below par o/s for years (windows 3, 95, 98, ME), they belatedly developed their NT flavour - and got it reasonably right with XP (all the 'security' issues are only there because they are so successful). The operating system serves most people reasonably well. So why replace it. One word - revenue.

Complications. XP comes in Home and Pro - basically so they could charge a premium for Pro. This also increases support issues. Vista is at least doubling this (same reason again - revenue). No benefit to the customer. One version is a lot easier to support - but they can't charge premium rates for it. What are the development costs to hobble the basic o/s (which is what they do). We, the customers pay for that.

What are the development costs for 'activation' (which immediately kick-started a whole new piracy operation which wasn't there previously - Newton, he say, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) and WGA? Who pays for this - the customer of course.

I fix PCs in peoples homes. Virtually nobody is interested in the 'interface' (other than it doesn't change too much, so the little technical expertise already gained isn't lost), but look at Aero. People mainly want machines that will surf their favourite sites, send & receive email, do some word processing, let their kids run games/messenger, working at a reasonable speed.

There is no reasonable alternative (ubuntu is best linux I've tried in years, but its still not an alternative), and Vista will go on new PCs of course, so it will probably be business as usual. But having beta tested Vista for a year or so now, all I can see is it need lots more resources and gives very little extra. And has more annoying things that need turning off (another observation - people mainly are not impressed with constant 'should this be run' type questions, which Vista seems to abound in).

Sounds like a rant - oh well, its been a while!

 

[Glenn9999]

Stevehewitt is the unofficial Microsoft spinster...err spokesman

Which explains a great deal. Thanks for getting that fact out there so we can look at his posts for what they are.

 

[Stevehewitt]

Has it really come to personal attacks? Please, this is a professional forum as you both well know (I've been in threads with both of you for as long as I can remember). Give the playground tactics a rest and come up with something constructive.




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[Grenage]

Indeed, there is little need for that. Discussion groups/forums will always be full of disagreements, it would be a boring world if we all agreed. /wink

As Jim mentioned, unlike 2000 or XP, most companies I have spoken to will not rush to replace all of the machines for the new OS. We'll simple replace them as they break down or become too slow for the task assigned.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[Glenn9999]

Has it really come to personal attacks? Please, this is a professional forum as you both well know (I've been in threads with both of you for as long as I can remember). Give the playground tactics a rest and come up with something constructive.

No personal attacks coming from here or meant from here. It just helps, when seeing opinions, to know where the interests of the opinion-writer lies (regarding my last post). Like with politics, I can see "Average Joe" talking about his opinions in a more objective light than "Democrat Jane" that works for the Democratic candidate's election campaign. Or in the case of business, "average small business owner" versus the VP of Dell when talking about the quality of Dell computers.

 

[ecobb]

Glenn, I think kHz's comment was meant as a joke. I don't believe it is a fact, as you claimed, and certainly doesn't help you "to know where the interests of the opinion-writer [Stevehewitt] lies".

Hope This Helps!

ECAR
ECAR Technologies

http://www.ecartech.com

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[kHz]

It was.

 

[pmonett]

A smily, or a wink, would have helped understand that I believe.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[Trevoke]

I only have one thing that I noticed from SteveHewitt's posts. He seems very fact-oriented, but he denies things the way people denied fusion technology : it can't be dangerous, look, all it does it this! As opposed to looking at what can be done with it..

Anyway, Steve wrote ... "Our mobile users will be very happy with that!"

What gets me is "our". Why would he say "our" if he doesn't work for Microsoft?

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[ecobb]

Why would he say "our" if he doesn't work for Microsoft?

Because he was refering to the users at whatever company he does work at? I do it all the time. "Our Servers", "Our Laptops", "Our Idiot Users", "Our Mobile Users"...

I guess I don't see what the big deal is with where SteveHewitt works. So what if he works at MS? We should all feel honored that a MS employee took the time to give us some facts and attempt to have a debate/discussion.

So what if he doesn't? Does that make him any more/less knowledgable?

Hope This Helps!

ECAR
ECAR Technologies

http://www.ecartech.com

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[kHz]

A smily, or a wink, would have helped understand that I believe.

Go blow it out your ...

 

[Trevoke]

Hey, I don't care one way or the other, it just sounded strange to me.. Our servers, but 'my' users I'm learning from this whole conversation.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[jsteph]

...we should all feel honored that a MS employee took the time to give us some facts...

I have to assume this is tounge-in-cheek.

Do you feel honored when, say, pharmacy.com makes a presence in your inbox to tell you 'facts' about how well their 'enhancement' drugs work?

Nothing against MS or SteveHewitt (whom I do not believe is an MS employee), but I don't hold MS--or any corporation--in such a high regard that I'd feel 'honored' with their presence, *especially* when that corporation stands to make a huge profit on that product.

I tend to ignore the obvious MS bashers who spout nothing but doom and gloom, but I also tend to give less credence to anyone blowing all sorts of sunshine and nothing at all negative about a product--especially when that product has a long, lineage of security flaws, overstepping privacy bounds, etc. Companies don't change overnight.

To get back to one of the contentious issues in this topic, while I believe it's true that the TPM, DRM, etc, were not invented by MS, I belive MS is definitely part of a consortium that promotes those things, and it appears that Vista will not give users a choice as to whether their hardware information is sent to them. Whether this information is a direct violation of privacy is sort of beside my point.

If Ford, for instance, asked me about the makeup of my garage--what size, what's the roofing material, what do I have on the shelves of my garage--ie, what carwash soap do I use, what oil do I use when I change the oil, etc, I would like to have the *right* to not give that information. If Ford (to strech this analogy to fit better) hid a camera in each of their cars and sent back video of my garage and it's contents, then I have a real big problem with that.
--Jim

 

[Stevehewitt]

Hi Jim,

I completely agree with every single point in your post.

True regarding MS being involved with the DRM/TPM. I personally would have prefered it as an optional update than something included with the OS. Not because I think the included DRM technology has anything wrong technically, but because it could be a sign of things to come.

Could you please provide me with a link to the source DRM/TPM information as I have not been able to find any reference on the MS website about sending back hardware information. (Other than the error reporting, but as we all know users/admins can choose if that happens or not). I was under the impression that the DRM only checks that your monitor is HDCP compliant, and if it's not the DRM restricts output to DVD quality. (E.G. If the monitor is not HDCP compliant then you can't get the 'HD' part of the HD-DVD movie, same with Blue-Ray)

Cheers,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[Glenn9999]

I was under the impression that the DRM only checks that your monitor is HDCP compliant, and if it's not the DRM restricts output to DVD quality. (E.G. If the monitor is not HDCP compliant then you can't get the 'HD' part of the HD-DVD movie, same with Blue-Ray)

Actually it severely limits fair use (you don't play it with THEIR player on HDCP capable equipment, you don't get a good quality picture AT ALL), and from what I'm reading now in another forum, there's a lot of content creators up in arms and rushing out to buy non-DRM compliant equipment (specifically tuner and video cards), because they're all finding that HDCP limits their capability to create content beyond a certain resolution, like 1080p content. Evidently from their research, this was a contingency that Microsoft agreed to from the MPAA so Vista would be able to play the HD-DVD content without lawsuits from them and the movie companies.

Of course, this points back to the problem that's been pointed out of Microsoft, that they are cowtowing to this. As was pointed out before, their real customers they're listening to for Vista are the MPAA and the RIAA and not the end-user. The question would be why Microsoft isn't answering to their real users.

I think a lot of admins of Linux distros are going to be very happy when they realize the garbage Microsoft is letting loose upon the world with their next OS upgrade.

 

[Glenn9999]

I tend to ignore the obvious MS bashers who spout nothing but doom and gloom, but I also tend to give less credence to anyone blowing all sorts of sunshine and nothing at all negative about a product--especially when that product has a long, lineage of security flaws, overstepping privacy bounds, etc. Companies don't change overnight.

Exactly. You have to look at the history of the company but also not dismiss what people say too easily and evaluate it on the face of it.

There will always be zealots on every side of things who can never see anything positive about anything besides whatever they're zealots for, and you can usually figure them out by reading the whole of their posts, but there are always those with honest opinions, and that genuineness will come out. Like with the posts here, if the khz joke was anything it was easy to take it seriously because of all the positive smoke blowing going on. You really have to be able to identify the position the person is coming from whether to take them seriously or not.

Personally I would love to see Microsoft be responsive to its end users, but I don't see that. Couple that with the honestly abysmal review I had of looking at Vista, and I don't see much hope.

Evidently, I'm not alone, as I don't have to go far to find people that either don't like Vista or like the post above, are treating its impending release as a doomsday nightmare for some reason or another. Contrast that with the fact that I have to search a very long time to find something as positively glowing as StevenHewitt's posts here.

Personally I would love to see genuine improvements in Windows, but at the same time, I'd love to see Linux improve itself - I could give a worse review of my average Linux adventure, simply because Linux is so immature. It's obvious, though, that Microsoft doesn't listen to its customers (it's a monopoly, what reason would it have to?), so I'm not holding my breath that they will. As proven with Internet Explorer the only way they'll start listening is if some competitor comes along and threatens their monopoly.

Let's just say, despite how horrid I find Linux, it's becoming a more attractive alternative everyday, especially given what is going on. And I know that's where I'm going once Microsoft's forced obsolesence forces me away from XP.

 

[Glenn9999]

True regarding MS being involved with the DRM/TPM. I personally would have prefered it as an optional update than something included with the OS.

As I understand it, changes in functionality to satisfy the DRM/TPM crowd compose a super-majority of the functionality changes in Vista. Those changes are a core part of the OS.

You want it optionally, then don't upgrade to Vista. That's really what it comes down to.

 

[jsteph]

SteveHewitt,
What I refer to with regard to sending back hardware info, was taken from the wikipedia article on TPM, specifically the Remote Attestation.

MS already does this with it's XP activation. MS takes hardware information at the time of XP activation, and if you pass a certain threshold of hardware changes--such as you got a new NIC and a new video card--you may have just lost your XP license and have to re-activate.

And the problem there is that it's not so much the privacy thing, it's that it's just a pain to have to do that, plus the implication that I'm 'guilty' until I make a phone call and ask (beg?) to get my copy of XP reactivated bcause I decided to get a new video card.

But another issue is that this hardware info is very valuable information for marketers. Now, one may say 'who cares if MS knows my brand of NIC?' for example. But knowing very accurate real-world figures on PC accessories, is something for which marketing firms pay dearly. To have a research firm do a survey to get this info, or harvest and compile sales figures from dozens or hundreds of companies is expensive and not nearly as accurate as bona-fide numbers of active, in-use hardware on over 80% of the world's PC's.

Why should MS get this for free? I think MS has no more right to scan my personal computer and amass a valuable database of information--info that would bring megabucks to anyone selling these lists--than, say, Mattel does when my daughter loads a Barbie game on her PC.

I understand the need to prevent pirating, and I know MS would probably *claim* that they don't sell this info--just as AOL might claim they don't make profit from their massive database of web-surfing habits of their 20 million users. But information is power, and as I've said before about human nature--they're not going to amass this huge and valuable database and then use it only for validating XP activation or DRM authentication, saying "to use this information for other purposes would be wrong".
--Jim

 

[Tarwn]

Do any articles actually outline what information is sent to MS? I have had experience with packages that handle that type of hardware locking, and usually when they are using information on hardware components to key against they are not using "This guy has a 100Gb drive with 40Gb of Pron" but are instead using the unique id assigned to that drive by the manufacturer, or the unique MAC assigned to the network card, or the serial from the CPU. Most of the pre-setup keys that I encountered the last time I worked with one of these were a combination of several different hardware id's or a hardware id and the serial number for the software, etc that were then used to generate a unique software key that wasn't reversible.
Granted, if the original manufacturer made available what range of serial numbers or MACs it used for which products and you had an algorithm that generated a reversible key, then you could probably extrapolate what type of hardware they have, but even that level of information is fairly useless.

If they are going to use this new technology to have your computer call back every time you drop a CD/DVD/HD_DVD in your computer, then thats a bit invasive unless you can turn it off (at which point it's just like using tools that already are built into Winamp, and etc). If they are truly building a backdoor into their OS that they can connect to or that reports what software is installed and what your doing with that software, regardless of what kind of firewall, etc is in place, well, I kind of doubt that would sell well with businesses.

I don't know. I don't like the restrictions being placed upon the market in order to view HD content, but I have to agree with above posters when it just seems like they are following the restrictions they have to follow to offer that functionality.

 

[jsteph]

If they are truly building a backdoor into their OS that they can connect to or that reports what software is installed and what your doing with that software...

My point about this type of thing really is more abstract, and you've got to back to my point about humans.

This is a major corporation, and there are literally billions of dollars at stake here. Without sounding too dramatic, just look through history and see what sorts of things people have lied, cheated, and stolen for--for less than $20 people have murdered one another. All the way up to the major corporate scandals involving seemingly good, fine upstanding pillars of society, who do flagrantly illegal things for personal enrichment--and how often does this go on where people *don't* get caught or the amounts involved aren't newsworthy.

Now take any human, and take and issue that isn't really etched in stone whether it's illegal at all. Then put all this that we've learned about human nature and ask yourself if--when faced with the question of whether to do something that my not even be illegal, for a the chance of billions of dollars and furthering a corporations near total market domination--and ask yourself if you think they'll just say "nah, that might be wrong".

I don't mean to sound negative about my species, but if you look at it in the abstract, it really seems a no-brainer that MS would do anything they could to get this back-door installed--if it isn't already --and get it done as soon as possible.

And just as every defendant in court says "I didn't do it", so will MS's PR machine say "We'd never do that", or "We're not doing anything illegal". I expect that, and strangely I don't really fault them so much for that, they're a business and that's what business' do--they make a profit.

So to me, it has nothing to do with what MS may say or deny on the issue, in my opinion it's a much older and simpler question with an easy answer.
--Jim

 

[Stevehewitt]

Yeah, I don't want MS to have my entire hardware portfolio on some database. As jsteph said, whilst MS say they aren't doing anything illegal or reselling it it's a case of taking their word on it.
(On don't actually believe they would, as the various agencies, governments and privacy groups would have a field day in court with them!)

Regarding what is sent back, I have always thought the same as tarwn[b/] that is's various hardware components id's and MAC addresses plus the MS 'product id'.

The HD-DVD / Blue-Ray DRM included with Vista does not do that. The DRM checks that the monitor is HDCP compliant. If it's not it restricts output to 'DVD Quality'. This the DRM in Vista will output a downsampled 960x540p signal to the non-HDCP monitor.

Anyone who is not familiar with HDCP: I'd recommend reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP.

Hopefully this article will also clear up the 'DRM' that's included with Vista and probably Apple's Leopard OS:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hdcp-vista.ars

Not trying to be funny guys, but this doesn't seem to be as terrible and shocking as has been made out. There could be some other DRM other than activation and the HDCP compliance but the DRM mentioned doesn't do anything that particularly scares me or puts my privacy at risk.

Cheers,



Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson