edited july 2007

I am posting this as topic because i no longer no how to post a topic in this forum. . I did not want to bring this topic to the forefront; but was unable to find a way to post a new topic due to the navigation problems on this site. So i went back a long ways to finally find a topic that i posted

Microsoft wields great power in the Nation's economy. Its policies, software, and standards influence numerous business consumers and developers of technology , and, may result in economic prosperity or economic failure, for a number of businesses of all sizes throughout the country, as well as entire segments of an industry. The purpose of the antitrust laws is to refrain from one company controling an entire industry and to encourage compitition; however, in this case microsoft is eliminating compitition and can control or effect all industries that rely on the pc in addition to the pc industry itself. Thus, the decisions and policies of microsoft can have an economic impact on the entire nations economy. I do not mind microsoft having a monopoly but great care should be taken so as to ensure this power is not abused.

The article is FUD. Plain and simple FUD. In fact it rambles widely and draws extremely spurious conclusions while espousing obviously biased opinion(s) all based on very, very little hard fact. Here's my take :

"Decreased Playback Quality" - Yes, Vista has the ability to degrade the output of premium content if you don't have a HDMI compliant system and a subscription to the content. Imagine that. You aren't going to be able to watch "premium content" if you don't have a subscription. Sound familiar ? I think it's currently called .... cable TV.

"Elimination of Unified Drivers" - First off, who cares ? I mean were unified drivers some Holy Grail that I missed in the last 25 years ? And I remember when all we needed was a *.inf file for the majority of hardware as the binaries are already built into the OS.

"Problems with Drivers" - Again, don't blame Microsoft for the inabilities of the hardware companies. People want HD and the industry is willing to provide it as a "premium content" on their terms.

"Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support" - Impossible ! The author himself even uses the term "This potential “closing” of the PC's historically open platform..." and in fact he knows that it's not possible as there are too many people already using non-standard OS'es. Even Mac is essentially non-standard. The author states "A quarter of a century ago, IBM made the momentous decision to make their PC an open platform by publishing complete hardware details and allowing anyone to compete on the open market." and yet somehow he seems to completely overlooked the fact that in 1987 IBM attempted to push the PC industry into using a bus that it had devised called the Micro Channel Architecture (MCA). While it was a step forward for technology nobody bought into it as it was proprietary and it took the PC industry (Intel specifically) 5 more years to develop PCI 2.0

"Denial-of-Service via Driver/Device Revocation" - Horse pucky ! Exactly what does Vista have to do with the inability of manufacturers like ATI, nVidia or anyone else, to get HDMI compliant hardware out the door ? And if anybody is attempting to run Vista on an nVidia TNT2 card, they need their head examined !

"Decreased System Reliability" - Nothing shown to be a definitive cause of system instability on the part of Windows Vista. Statements like "There's plenty of real-world evidence to show that this happens all the time" are hardly supporting.

"Increased Hardware Costs" - You know, I can buy an entire computer system for less than what a 16MB SIMM cost me in 1993 ! What does he want ? Everyone to run Via EPIA mini-ITX systems with an OS like Damn Small Linux ? That's not what the public wants !! They want HD video on their computers !! (Please don't ask me why as I have no idea. I have never confused a computer with a TV)

"Increased Cost due to Requirement to License Unnecessary Third-party IP" "Protecting all of this precious premium content requires a lot of additional technology." - Yes but people want it and the industry is not going to stand idly by and let their content and/or patents be used without permission and compensation. We're talking hundreds of thousands of revenue streams here ! Everyone wants a piece of the action.

"Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption" - Like this is new ? Spyware, adware and all the other crap being foisted onto computers these days combine with the virtually-mandatory security programs to bring systems to a crawl. A Commodore 64 ran fine on 64K of RAM but I doubt most end users today would find it satisfactory.

Near the end of the article the author asks "Why is Microsoft going to this much trouble?" As I've stated somewhere else Microsoft probably doesn't care much about content protection other than :

A) To protect their own IP such as Office.
B) To comply with federal regulation.
C) To avoid probable legal entanglements with content/copyright holders.
D) Perhaps they want to get in on the action as well.

There is no doubt that Microsoft has abused its' power and this was completely substantiated in July, 2001 when DoJ proved in court that Microsoft had indeed acted illegally in maintaining a Windows monopoly. Judge T.P. Jackson stated that Microsoft had ".. proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."

As to Microsoft actually " .. hurting innovation in the pc industry." with their latest version of Windows, I really don't see anything different. They have always been both "hurtful" and "helpful" though of course the first person they want to help is themselves.

FUD in your opinion but you're going to explain...

This is not subscription based. HD content (premium) must have a PVP & PAP or more simply put PMP. All premium content must remain encrypted till it reaches your eyes and ears. This means that the components must not permit access to that data stream. To insure this "Tilt Bits" are used. There are many conditions that can cause a tilt bit to be triggered. From tampering to power surges. And yes HDMI or DVI are required and later on DVI will be phased out.

MS coined the term 'Unified Drivers' and has replaced that with WHQL. Here the device maker must proove that a given device will not leak HD content and must pay MS to be allowed to play. In order for devices that are part of the PMP (protected media pathway) to be secure knowledge pertaining to the HD part or parts of the device must be closed otherwise new drivers that expose the HD content can be written by third parties. Hence, ATI will submit a video card and drivers to MS who will give ATI "hardware keys" and yes this requires a CHIP and the encryption is owned by MS, Intel, Warner Brothers, Sony, Walt Disney and others. At no point in this will open source have access to these protected devices, hence GOOD BYE OPEN SOURCE.

Drivers that leak will be revoked and while odds are that revocation will only be used as a last resort this will prevent the playback of HD content.

Well the PMP is specific just as AACS is specific and in fact the PMP must be CLOSED. Open source will not be afforded access to the decryption keys so only non encrypted media will be accessable to *nix users. AACS is owned by MICROSOFT and others so open source is DOOMED due to the death grip of MSes monopoly expantion. In order to view HD content AACS keys MUST be present. So when you read WHQL realize that the digital certificate talked about is AACS keys. Those are stored on a chip. This issue alone caused ATI to team up with AMD. ATI advertised HD compliant cards then later on AACS was implemented and required a chip to hold the digital keys so none of the cards advertised as compliant truely were.

This just re-states the above two sections. Vista is MICROSOFT thus has everything to do with everything about a given PC since it is MSes domain NOW thanks to DRM. DOS is not related to for instance ATI's ability to make, market and distribute a given video card. DOS is related to a product that stops functioning at HD playback due to a key revocation from leakage or large scale hacking.

Once tilt bits are triggered Say Good night Irene. Since the system has to poll all of the PMP components at a frantic rate it can be said that VISTA is PARANIOD. All of this to protect HD content. Decryption creates lots of overhead hence the multi core CPU.

Al things are relevant. Talking about costs let me just go to Froogle and look up an 'BFG nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX OC' and I'm looking at $850.00. Gosh, I'll get two. HD ROMs ring in around $500.00 each at this point. $200.00 ish for a mother board. Is this adding up yet for you? Vista causes a chain reaction regarding PRICE in both hard & software. Here all you need to do is look at the prices on Froogle or Pricewatch. How much is a HDMI AACS monitor??

Microsoft makes the OS and AACS so if you just want your PC for spread sheets that does not matter since the analog hole will be closed over the next few years.

HD decryption is un-necessary so it might as well be removed since Muslix64 and the Doom boy's took care of that. I want a faster PC not a bloated PC.

The US government consulted Bill Gates himself several times during Senate hearings regarding the DMCA. Since then MS, Sony, Intel, IBM, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, etc; have joined forces and we wind up with AACS LA, DRM, PMP and revocation. If you want to drive a *inux PC then you will be denied all of that "Rich Media Content" (DVD John used a Linux box so this is the payback the open source community gets)

This here sort of negates you're whole "This article is FUD" concept since the PMP, AACS, DRM and 'TILT BITS' close the box and force you to run Vista like it or not. Yes, Microsoft is a MONOPOLY and a DANGEROUS ONE at that that is expanding.

You go from FUD to the fact all in one post. MS's MONOPOLY has to be ENDED for the greater good and to restore confidence in the US Constitution.

edited july 2007

photographer,

wish someone like thg would do non bias review of this article as I have heard a lot of hype from both sides of the fence ---- thanks for the input photo

I'd like to see a more informed opinion as well. Where is Dr. Thomas Pabst these days anyway ?

I read that article when it was first released. It's interesting to note that a hell of a lot has been removed from it since then (most obviously the ridiculous assumption that Vista could cause major health risks due to downgraded medical imaging, which really showed that the author has virtuallly no clue what he's talking about).

Luckily, Google's Cache is immune to such embarrasment-saving censorship.

His basic train of logic to start with is that all DRM is exactly the same, and all premium content is handled exactly the same way, and that the image constraint applies to the -entire display-, not just the content in question. This isn't even to mention the various other inaccuracies and errors (such as assuming a medical imaging PC is identical to a desktop PC, and that people would sit around watching DRM video on it..perhaps if they wanted to be fired).

The whole rest of the article can be picked to shreds in pretty much the same way.

The man has to write something drastic to get a paycheck.

The medical field uses imaging anyhow to look at the picture fast. If they have any kind of error in the picture of want a better look, they create the old hard style image.. x-rays. I know this because my friend works in IT at a hospital and we talk about how the stuff works.

Computers get locked down via Active Directory anyhow, especially at hospitals due to HIPPA and other such things.

Just goes to show people rambling too often about things they know very little about.

Gremmi,

Thanks for the reply --- i remember reading this to --- did not know that this was removed. I credit the author for changing things which may be in error ---- but wish he explain his reasoning behind the deletion so as to keep us all informed

It be nice to hear from hardware manufacturers (ie:sound cards/graphic cards) if any of you are out there ---

Then your friend should know that most X-Rays are done digitally these days. Not to film. In fact when I went to a sports-medicine specialis, he didn't have any X-Ray film capability at all other than the digital image printed to a transparancy.

There are always "grains of truth" even in an article so full of FUD. Essentially some of these people are probably correct in that hardware manufacturers aren't going to support open-source softwares and operating systems such as Linux very well for use in viewing premium HD content. Evidently everyones having a hard enough time developing a platform for Windows and they sure aren't going to try to develop something for an OS that has a new release every 6 months.

edited july 2007

The present policy of imposing restrictions and complexity in both the software and hardware basically negates the policy of the past leaving the potential of pc market suspect --- this is my concern.

Then your friend should know that most X-Rays are done digitally these days. Not to film. In fact when I went to a sports-medicine specialis, he didn't have any X-Ray film capability at all other than the digital image printed to a transparancy.

X-Rays have been done digitally for a few decades now. There are still conventional film shots done as fallbacks, however. Most of the systems in the world are supplied by Fuji, AFAIK, and I know that they still sell the conventional film machines. I don't believe we've personally set any of them up, but we rarely do hospital installs anyway.

There are always "grains of truth" even in an article so full of FUD. Essentially some of these people are probably correct in that hardware manufacturers aren't going to support open-source softwares and operating systems such as Linux very well for use in viewing premium HD content. Evidently everyones having a hard enough time developing a platform for Windows and they sure aren't going to try to develop something for an OS that has a new release every 6 months.

Oh, I'm not denying that there are grains of truth to it, just that he's taken those grains and made a big ol' sandwich of untruths around it.

What exactly is DRM and how will this affect me in any way?