(no subject)

[theweaselking]

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
by Peter Gutmann

Executive Summary
-----------------

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to
provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data
from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs
considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical
support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not
only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the
protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever
come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for
example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document
analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral
damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

Executive Executive Summary
---------------------------

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history.

Comments

[matgb]

That turned up on Planet Wordpress the other day, I meant to quote it but, um, forgot.

Nice to see the suicide note quote being reused in an apposite manner. I really hope Ubuntu or another Linux distro can get itself set up so that it's easy enough to install, and manufacturers/retailers figure out that selling PCs without the Vista licence but with free Linux would mean they can price dirt cheap.

I'm not touching it with anything unless I've no choice, and I'll go back to figuring out Ubuntu at some point just because. Stoopid DRM restrictions, at some point someone (probably Korea) is going to do an anti-trust/competetive practice thing, and DRM will be shown up for what it is in the MSM as well as to people paying attention already.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

When's the last time you installed Ubuntu? Because the latest version has a pretty graphical installer that works better and is easier to use than the XP one imho.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Installer, yes. Post-installer, no. The interface still breaks in ways it shouldn't, and the documentation still veers back and forth between nonexistent, unhelpfully simple, and unhelpfully complicated, with nothing in between.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

So like windows then.

[kjn]

Well, I got Ubuntu 6.06 for PowerPC from my brother awhile back, and I can't say I saw any pretty graphical installer since I got thrown into a extremely crappy pre-bootloader first thing when I started my iMac G5 from the CD.

[matgb]

February; I've got a stack of 5.10 CDs, but I messed up and put it on the wrong partition, and it didn't want to talk to my modem, so I scratched it all, reput in XP, and said I'd get back to it later. Never got around to it :-(

I'll give it another go, but I'll want dual boot and shared filespace, and it's not a priority as of yet. I just know that it'll be more popular once Vista comes around.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The wonders of a monopoly: "If you sell any machines without Vista, you cannot sell any machines with Vista."

They've done that before, with 98.

[matgb]

They did? Ouch.

I'm thinking if they do, then someone needs to take them to court for abuse of position, '98 was pre-Netscape case, right?

And a manufacturer may have the guts to just go 'stuff it', and that would make it interesting.

Or Apple will release an official port of OSX.

[giza.livejournal.com]

> "If you sell any machines without Vista, you cannot sell any machines with Vista."

That sounds very close to, "If you're not with us, you're against us."

Kinda creepy.