So what happened to the DRM controversy?

Did people just stop caring?
One of the major things turning me away from vista is this crap but people seem to have just stopped talking about it. I guess it's inevitable that I'll have to upgrade to vista if I want to keep gaming, but damn it I hate it.

if I lost you, this is what i'm talking about:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut [...] _cost.html
Talks about how vista can disable any hardware it wants to and also has all kinds of rights management crap running in the background slowing your system down.

So did people just decide they don't care about it?

Most of the article has already been completely disputed by other articles when it was actually put to the test. DRM is still a controversy in the computer world, but so far Vista issues have proven to be more about poorly written hardware drivers/apps that are being resolved than actual DRM problems that everyone jumped to the conclusion they were.

but what about the performance hits? supposedly all this protection crap running in the background will slow the performance down, hence the high standards for hardware in vista. Has this proven to not exist, or just not enough for people to notice?

the complacency of the general public disturbs me. i hate having to submit to an all controlling software company.... i wish there were more options.

except that drm checking system is still running in the background.......

c'mon, let's get it out, what are you really whinning about? 'supposedly' just means that you personally don't have any problems.

And who is manipulating you (or are you just trying to manipulate this crowd)? Exactly, who is fussing about performance? A couple of nvida users who just need to be patient for good drivers? I certainly am not, (I have one of those ATI cards that pkellmey just mentioned ), I have more cpu (when I not actully working) than I can possibly take advantage of. And when I am working, I have nothing going on that could possibly involve DRM issues.

Now this is really funny
disturbed about 'complacency of the general public', and yet here you are running Vista (probably Ultimate), in an open forum, just _wishing_ there were other options...

? I'm not running any kind of vista... Not sure why you think that as I never implied that I was. If you don't want to read posts, then don't respond to them.

I'm not trying to manipulate anyone. Did you happen to read the article I linked to? People have said it's a non-issue but don't relate that to anything but being able to burn they're music. Are people who say there are no performance hits running vista on the same system they were running on XP to compare? In an article on THG they state that to get a truly good experience on vista you have to have the latest dual core system. Now people will say it's part graphics, which I'm sure it is, but what about all the background checking protection stuff. If you read the article you can see just how much your computer is doing just to make sure that you aren't using illegal "premium" content.

Was that all theoretical and vista doesn't actually do that? or have people just decided there's nothing that can be done about it?

joke, if you're just going to antagonistically shoot your mouth off, don't bother responding. I guess there's always someone who just wants to be an ass. From your posts I can guess that you opinion on this subject is limited to if you can or can't burn your pirated dvds, so without technical info you're pretty much useless. I'm not whining about anything. I'm asking. This was a huge deal when vista came out and then it suddenly just disappeared and I'm wondering why.

The "article" you linked to has already been linked to a few bazillion times. You've gone beyond flogging the dead horse; you're now flogging the horse skeleton.

Someone keenly pointed out that this "article" had already been modified from it's original version. Now, in and of itself, that isn't a problem... but when you make absolutely no mention that you've edited your "article" or why... you lose credibility. I have no problem when people want to make corrections to a published work such as this... however, I do have a problem when the author can't admit to being mistaken.

i still care about the drm issue and had several topics in the past that related to it --- but nobody else seemed to care other than those that say drm is way future --- so i stopped posting. Specifically, almost all arguements said something along lines:

1) guttman article has been disproven (which i believe it has not)

2) Drm allows you play high def movie --- so microsoft had to do it (to me its like so what as it is not what i use computer for)

3) that drm issue is overstated

4) Vista runs fine for them --- so there is no problem

--- maybe they are right and I am wrong --- decided to let others post on this issue as most comments seemed heavily favored for vista --- since there have been no new topics posted since mine (other than yours) it appears that drm is none issue for most users of this forum and the issues in gutman article is invalid from thier perspective no matter what I say.

Glad you posted though ---- at least there is one other person in forum who is concerned with issue.

there is difference between apple and vista----read:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut [...] _cost.html

continuing the muse --- but from a different point of view as vista is something to worry about

The issues in the guttman article are true from my perspective. Maybe a debate is in order as you claim that not everything in the article was false --- so the question is what is false and what is true. This is the issue that needs to be discussed --- what is true and what is false.

Zoron,

first question --- what is true to you in guttman article?

I know they're different animals, but still you get my point. Um... the DRM in Vista... I haven't had any problems with it. I mean, even when I beta-tested Vista last year and the year before that I didn't have too many problems (aside from the fact that it was beta). Personally, I haven't found anything to worry about with Vista's DRM, but if I find anything I'll be sure to let you guys know.

You know, I took a lot of flames backing up Vista telling people just to give it time, test it out, and within 2 months you'd either like it or switch back, most likely just stick with it.

I'm glad this thread came up again... Its shows how everyone started running their yaps before they tested it out. Me? I like Vista.. but I'm still using XP.

Anyhow, I didn't care much about the DRM topics because it was too early for anyone to have any real experience with it.

And it just fades away.. each OS, this same timeline unfolds. Everyone complains, the complainers go away, then people start talking about how much they like the OS over the previous..

first i just want to say I don't like apple either. They're just as bad as m$ but seem to have a better PR department.

No I don't have experience with it on my system personally, but that's also why I posted asking questions to people who have. But sadly it seems like a lot of people will post that it's a non-issue because they don't "notice" anything. Well different people pay different amounts of attention, and without having technical info as to whether or not these DRM policies slow my system down or not, I'm not really getting any useful answers.

In another forum someone who was defending m$ pointed me to an m$ blog.
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/ [...] swers.aspx
Out of that whole site I find the comments below the 20 questions and silver tongued answers to be the most interesting.

here's what bothers me from that link:

Extra right protection is going to drag down my computer, when it's pretty much an unnecessary feature considering people have already hacked it. So they've programmed things into vista that will cost me more because to get the same gaming experience I have now, I'll have to upgrade everything to get just an equal experience on vista.

now at the bottom it says:

Kind of contradictory eh? They say it will hit the cpu performance, but then try to say it won't effect gaming? bs. CPUs are major part of gaming. For the copy protection to actually work some level of it will have to run all the time checking to see if you trying to use "premium" content.

I hate having extra crap on my system that I don't want dragging down my game and work experience. The comments are full of people who are just as concerned as me. I thought this community would be very concerned about it as well but I guess it's not. It bothers me what we allow to happen because the majority of the people just don't care. Me, I like to get the most bang for my buck and when other people limit or control things I spent my hard earned money on, I get very upset. There's no reason my system should ever been threatened with being choked or disabled. I'm surprised it doesn't bother more people.

it goes away because the mass market either isn't informed or doesn't care and those who do give up trying to tell people about it or discuss or whatever. When the majority of people are happy to allow m$ to control everything, what can the few of us do? Money drives everything.

I'd switch to linux in a heartbeat if it supported everything program that I like to use or all the games I like to play... but sadly linux is still very niche and commercial software rarely creates versions for that OS. I could go the ol community software route, but to stay consistent in my industry that'd make it very hard to share files etc....

What they are saying is that the service spins off a process that only activates when it detects premium content. I know of very few games that include premium content - so the process does not kick off to hamper your gaming. Hence, the quote is completely accurate - no CPU hit.


How is that accurate? It only activates when it detects the content, ok. But that means that there is always something running so that it can detect the content. Which means something extra always running, slowing my system down. If you can turn that off then that'd be great, but somehow I doubt m$ allows you to disable their content detection system they seem to have worked so hard to include. I want my system only running the things I want running so that whatever I'm using can take full advantage of my hardware.

The issue, aside from the potential of m$ controlling everything about my pc experience, is extra processes and programs running that I don't need nor want. I don't want something constantly running checks of my system just to make sure that m$ doesn't get sued by hollywood. I want my system running my programs, not theirs. Unless I decide to go open source I guess there's really no choice, but it's surprising what people are willing to deal with. "Noone has found they can't play content".... so far. Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. The tools are all in place, they just haven't turned them on yet. But my main concern is the extra shit slowing my system. I don't need nor want it. I personally am avoiding vista until I have no choice.

Not enough to be concerned with? lol... sigh... There's always a reason for concern man. This "conspiracy theory" is much more than some ramblings of people on the internet. These are highly qualified individuals with good standing within their profession. I don't really think one day in the near future people will turn on vista and everything will be under m$ control, but I do think we are headed in a direction of fewer to no choices with corporations controlling everything on our pc. Some will welcome this with open arms. I do not.

that's what i'm asking people for here. to say you don't "notice" a slow-down or performance decrease is extremely relative. I suppose I could go out and buy vista to experiment, but that's an expensive experiment. I have used vista on other systems but didn't at a glance didn't see a reason to upgrade yet, but that's beside the point.

as far as conspiracy theorizing goes, in my opinion; if you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention. Saying it hasn't happened yet is just silly. I haven't been in a car crash yet so why should I wear my seat belt... basically saying the same thing.

good info thanks

I tend to agree with you on that one. I get in this type of arguement often about individual vs social responsibility. Always comes down to majority rules, a lot like everything else such as software. Insurance is a giant scam all around. I don't even want to get started on that.

Is this related at all to the new HD-DVD/Blue Ray players that are supposed to start shipping with updated protection this summer?

Good links. They both show why people are completely confused on this issue. The 2nd link was the rebuttal document tpwards people who believed Vista was the beginning of a DRM nightmare. The first link is nearly humorous in its inability to give any information at all one way or the other. They both agree, right now the orginal DRM impact was overstated and should be considered minimal, but who knows what the future holds.

pkellmey,

I guess the question might be --- if it is not the drm --- then what is wrong with vista ---- as there is something wrong with it --- i have tried it and my software crashes --- but then again i am a business user (specifically i perform high speed scanning and ocr work). Never had this problem before in a transition to another operating system upgrade to microsoft ----always looked forward to the next upgrade --- maybe microsoft left no upgrade path for some users such as myself. Perhaps, it might be the perception ---- that drm is causing the problem --- but what is most relavent is that the problem does exist for many users whether it be because of drm or not--- this is main thing---- there are a lot of problems with vista --- to me --- drm clearly sets up trip wires that exaggerate potential problems and setup a hardware and compatiblity issue that would not otherwise exist -- whatever the cause, clearly the problem is not going away anytime soon.

Your USB flash player really sounds like its a BIOS issue or driver issue.

If you're having problems listening to music off your flash drive, but other music is fine, (assumed since you stated this problem is with your USB flash drives) one must look at the USB drives itself.

Update your BIOS and see if there is an USB update. I know in the past I've had to update several motherboards because of CRC on HDDs and USB reading issues.

I highly doubt its DRM causing you this problem or an issue within Vista itself. Want to know for sure? Copy all your files off your flash drive to your hard drive, run the music. Does it crash? Yes: Issue sits with Vista or your MP3s. If it doesn't? Problem is with your USB/motherboard.

Why would you be in a hurry to upgrade anyway? As long as XP continues to be supported; it is completely unnecessary for businesses to upgrade at this point in time. You have the luxury of waiting until the problems are worked out... so enjoy it.

I am not sure about the cost of doing business portion of the issue, but you don't have to upgrade - I'm stilling running Windows NT 4 on some of my servers at work due to software compat issues. Currently, hardware is cheaper than it has ever been as far as "bang for the buck". Your compatibility issues may be more the hardware/software that you are choosing for the builds and this is the time when you really find out which vendors are willing to work with you to find solutions - ditch those that can't support you if you can. XP may not be supported for very long but you can guarantee that XP apps will be out there for years to come - take that time to find good alt. vendors to support you. However, you can't blame your other issues with DRM - that issue is about hi-def, protected content and little to do with anything else.