«

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:40:05 +1300, Stephen Williams wrote:

> I couldn't care less if Linux is better
> than windows or not

You'll be caring when you suddenly find Micro$oft in the minority.

20% year-on-year growth for Linux will quickly catch up on Micro$oft's
4.7% and leave it well behind.


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to Linux, and
it does all the things that they want."

Nathan Mercer wrote:
> Philip wrote:
>
>> Nathan Mercer wrote:
>>> attention getting subject line
>>>
>>> Great, multi part article on Windows Vista technology advances:
>>>
>>> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1931913,00.asp
>>>
>>> It's worth the read.
>>>
>>> "It's hard to take a real look at Vista, both on the surface and
>>> under the hood, and consider it just another Windows rehash. This is a
>>> dramatic, whole-hog upgrade of the Windows platform. If you got
>>> anything out of this article, we hope it's the realization that Vista
>>> is not simply the Windows XP/2000 code base that has been slowly
>>> evolving over the years with some fancy graphics and icons slapped onto
>>> it. It should be clear that Vista is really the next generation of
>>> operating system from Microsoft, every bit as significant as the leap
>>> from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 or the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X."
>>>
>> A good article and it makes the new product seem desirable. But I'd like
>> to know more about the inbuilt DRM capacities that have been rumored for
>> months.
>
> Can you go into a bit more detail around the DRM?
>
> Are you talking about NGCSB? or the BitLocker Drive Encryption? Or
> DRM of High Definition content or?
>
I'm deeply suspicious of the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base".
What it seems to me to threaten is that my computer, in my home, will be
arbitrarily prevented from doing things I may wish to do with it.

As Ross Anderson says at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq-1.0.html

"It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the
applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with
the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM):
Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a
Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music
industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able
to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to
play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing
possibilities will open up."

That's invading the privacy of my home, attacking the concept of fair
use, extending the reach of copyright far beyond any idea of anti piracy
and simply allowing content owners to charge many times for things they
couldn't charge for before. The classic case, already spelled out in Ken
Fisher's article at ars technica:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...log-hole.ars/2
is that stopping a video and re-winding is is something you can be
charged extra for.

I don't want that or anything like it. Nor do I accept that Disney or
Microsoft or Sony can tell me I can't watch the DVD I bought on my US
holiday in my home in New Zealand. They already tried that with the vile
"region code" system, which I have disabled on all my DVD players, and I
will not give these or any other companies power over my use of my
equipment in my home to tell me what I can do with product I have
legally bought and paid for.

And then we get to the Fritz chip.

Ross Anderson writes:

"TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run
unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted
remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather
than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the
software stop working but so may the files it created. "

Unlicensed software? Open source software? Something I wrote myself?
This is another gross intrusion into my ability to do what I want to do
in my home on my computer that I own.

I will not allow any organisation to delete files I have created on my
computer. I would hope that New Zealand law would define that as a
criminal intrusion into my computer, and would order substantial
punishments for any corporation that tried it on.

I will need quite a lot of assurance that Vista will not impose any of
this BS on me before I would allow it anywhere near a computer that I
administer.

And so long as New Zealand does not have a Free Trade Agreement with the
US, and we have not bowed down to US State Department pressure to turn
our copyright law has into a clone of the vile DMCA in the US, I think
we should hold out against the implementation of any of these unwanted,
undesirable and unnecessary measures in our computing environment.

That's what I meant about DRM.

Philip

E. Scrooge wrote:
> "Nathan Mercer" <> wrote in message
> news: oups.com...
>> attention getting subject line
>>
>> Great, multi part article on Windows Vista technology advances:
>>
>> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1931913,00.asp
>>
>> It's worth the read.
>>
>> "It's hard to take a real look at Vista, both on the surface and
>> under the hood, and consider it just another Windows rehash. This is a
>> dramatic, whole-hog upgrade of the Windows platform. If you got
>> anything out of this article, we hope it's the realization that Vista
>> is not simply the Windows XP/2000 code base that has been slowly
>> evolving over the years with some fancy graphics and icons slapped onto
>> it. It should be clear that Vista is really the next generation of
>> operating system from Microsoft, every bit as significant as the leap
>> from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 or the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X."
>
>
> I'm amazed at how stable and reliable BETA2 is already. I couldn't back to
> using Windows2000.
> The new XP interface grows on you after a while, I've been using a BETA2
> build for a month now and have got used to the new interface. Some of the
> UI enhancements around working with digital files like pictures and
> video/audio is pretty cool.
>
> Specifically Windows Media Player 8 is very cool.. The new look and feel of
> it, being able to rip down to WMA format, burn to a CD, find Internet radio
> stations etc all from the one program is pretty impessive. The new codecs
> that Microsoft have put in there are very impressive too. Near VHS quality
> at 250K and near DVD quality at 500K
>
>
> Nathan
>
> Remember that post and many others when XP was released?
>
> So you're now saying that XP never was that great after all. And you'll be
> playing a similar tune when Vista is replaced with Asta in about another 5
> years time.
>
> Nothing like having a good solid platform but it still take real programs to
> actually get any work done on. Not a damn thing can be done on a bare OS
> alone. Even Miscrosoft have real programs to help people get what they want
> done.
>
>
> And the Microsoft ads along with the :"Start Me Up" Rollings Stones crap
> claimed that XP was completely secure. By harping on how secure XP is
> Microsoft were advertising people to dump Windows 98 to use XP instead.

XP is waaaaayy better than 98.

>
> And if Vista is the big jump that Windows 95 was from W3.1, lets not forget
> the big lemon that the first version of Windows 95 was compared to Windows
> 95B that was only shipped out later on new computers.

95 was way ahead of 3.1 at the time.
So what? All software has bugs. You could do a lot more, a lot better
with 95 (any version) than 3.1

snip crap

Have A Nice Cup of Tea wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:16:28 +1300, David wrote:
>
>> Any built-in support for DRM. eg. will it stop me from reading a DVD from
>> another region, and will the OS handle DRM'd WMA's etc differently? I
>> guess what I really want to know, does Vista include any "features" that
>> will stop me doing any of the things I can do on my PC now (with or
>> without 3rd party software) (regardless of their legality, that's
>> unrelated).
>
> Indeed!
>
> The OS should not dictate what people can do with certain files, or
> certain types of media. The moment the OS starts preventing people from
> doing what they want to do, is the moment that OS becomes redundant.

You mean, how Linux won't let people write NTFS partitions?

"SchoolTech" <> wrote in message
news:44052f2a$...
> E. Scrooge wrote:
>> "Nathan Mercer" <> wrote in message
>> news: oups.com...
>>> attention getting subject line
>>>
>>> Great, multi part article on Windows Vista technology advances:
>>>
>>> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1931913,00.asp
>>>
>>> It's worth the read.
>>>
>>> "It's hard to take a real look at Vista, both on the surface and
>>> under the hood, and consider it just another Windows rehash. This is a
>>> dramatic, whole-hog upgrade of the Windows platform. If you got
>>> anything out of this article, we hope it's the realization that Vista
>>> is not simply the Windows XP/2000 code base that has been slowly
>>> evolving over the years with some fancy graphics and icons slapped onto
>>> it. It should be clear that Vista is really the next generation of
>>> operating system from Microsoft, every bit as significant as the leap
>>> from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 or the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X."
>>
>>
>> I'm amazed at how stable and reliable BETA2 is already. I couldn't back
>> to
>> using Windows2000.
>> The new XP interface grows on you after a while, I've been using a BETA2
>> build for a month now and have got used to the new interface. Some of
>> the
>> UI enhancements around working with digital files like pictures and
>> video/audio is pretty cool.
>>
>> Specifically Windows Media Player 8 is very cool.. The new look and feel
>> of
>> it, being able to rip down to WMA format, burn to a CD, find Internet
>> radio
>> stations etc all from the one program is pretty impessive. The new
>> codecs
>> that Microsoft have put in there are very impressive too. Near VHS
>> quality
>> at 250K and near DVD quality at 500K
>>
>>
>> Nathan
>>
>> Remember that post and many others when XP was released?
>>
>> So you're now saying that XP never was that great after all. And you'll
>> be playing a similar tune when Vista is replaced with Asta in about
>> another 5 years time.
>>
>> Nothing like having a good solid platform but it still take real programs
>> to actually get any work done on. Not a damn thing can be done on a bare
>> OS alone. Even Miscrosoft have real programs to help people get what
>> they want done.
>>
>>
>> And the Microsoft ads along with the :"Start Me Up" Rollings Stones crap
>> claimed that XP was completely secure. By harping on how secure XP is
>> Microsoft were advertising people to dump Windows 98 to use XP instead.
>
> XP is waaaaayy better than 98.
>
>>
>> And if Vista is the big jump that Windows 95 was from W3.1, lets not
>> forget the big lemon that the first version of Windows 95 was compared to
>> Windows 95B that was only shipped out later on new computers.
>
> 95 was way ahead of 3.1 at the time.
> So what? All software has bugs. You could do a lot more, a lot better with
> 95 (any version) than 3.1
>
> snip crap

Windows 95 was crap. Windows 95B was more stable and better than Windows 98
as well. W98SE isn't that great either.

XP is very stable. But you were also the fool that was trying to run XP on
old upgraded computers that fit for the rubbish dump from memory.

Vista should be good, but it won't really matter to a lot of XP owners, and
those owners will have a lot more software on their computers than just XP.
It's been said when XP was released that it wouldn't need any patches unlike
previous version of Windows.

E. Scrooge

SchoolTech wrote:
> Have A Nice Cup of Tea wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:16:28 +1300, David wrote:
>>
>>> Any built-in support for DRM. eg. will it stop me from reading a DVD
>>> from
>>> another region, and will the OS handle DRM'd WMA's etc differently? I
>>> guess what I really want to know, does Vista include any "features" that
>>> will stop me doing any of the things I can do on my PC now (with or
>>> without 3rd party software) (regardless of their legality, that's
>>> unrelated).
>>
>>
>> Indeed!
>>
>> The OS should not dictate what people can do with certain files, or
>> certain types of media. The moment the OS starts preventing people from
>> doing what they want to do, is the moment that OS becomes redundant.
>
>
> You mean, how Linux won't let people write NTFS partitions?

Carry on troll showing your ignorance.

Linux will allow you to write to NTFS, but it has to be enabled.

There would seem to be a long history of why not, two of the biggest are,

1) NFTS is a proprietry disk format with MS holding patents on it. Now
while MS has little incentive to take a private developer to court over
it, if RH or SUSE ship with write enabled well you never know....see
groklaw.com on sco.

2) It is a closed spec so the capability to write has been reverse
engineered, this usually works, however if MS decides to release a bug
fix and the Linux reverse engineers dont catch it, your data could get
trashed. MS did this quite frequently with netbios, I wouldnt put it
passed MS to do the same again if it was worth its while.

All you do is show up just why open standards are so importnat to
everyone but a convicted monopolist.

regards

Thing

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:23:02 +1300, SchoolTech wrote:

>> The OS should not dictate what people can do with certain files, or
>> certain types of media. The moment the OS starts preventing people from
>> doing what they want to do, is the moment that OS becomes redundant.
>
> You mean, how Linux won't let people write NTFS partitions?

No. Not at all.

Linux *would* be able to write to NTFS partitions if information to enable
the developers to do that was available to them without patent licensing
issues.

Meanwhile most if not all other recent file systems are usable.


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to Linux, and
it does all the things that they want."

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:45:51 +1300, E. Scrooge wrote:

> It's been said when XP was released that it wouldn't need any
> patches unlike previous version of Windows.

And then... LOL - one week later...


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to Linux, and
it does all the things that they want."

Stephen Williams wrote:
>>I have no intention of ever again installing any Micro$oft software on any
>>computer in my home.
>>
>>Micro$oft is history. Linux is what's cool at present and will be
>>everywhere in the near future. A sustained 20% year on year growth is not
>>something to dismiss lightly.
>>
>>
>>Have A Nice Cup of Tea
>>
>>--
>>Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to
>>Linux, and
>>it does all the things that they want."
>>
>
>
> Yeah same old story, but the "near future" never seems to arrive. Also it
> seems you are the last linux extremist left in this news group, not really a
> good sign of growth.

Or actually you could take it as a good sign.

> The general public wants windows, the general public gets windows. I get
> lots of money from removing spyware etc from windows. The status quo is
> great!

What the general public want is an easy to use, does all they need,
cheap computer.

A small % want the bleeding edge $1000 video card, most are happy with
on board video, just look at the market share %s for video chip sets,
vista wont be the best thing for these basic platforms.

While I am sure its great work for you, it is not terribly professional
know is it? Just keep taking easy money off punters....

There is enough evidence that people are moving to Macs and Linux as an
alternative, usually the brighter ones, that trend will continue.

Given the professional attacks on Windows these days more and more
people are worried that their bank accounts and personal data will go
west. Vista will lock down people's ability to do what they want on
their PCs, quite often what they want is enshrined as fair use in the
US, so as MS and the RIAA squeeze tighter and tighter so the migration
will continue.

regards

Thing

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 08:55:43 +1000, Nathan Mercer wrote:

> attention getting subject line
>
> Great, multi part article on Windows Vista technology advances:
>
> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1931913,00.asp
>
> It's worth the read.
>
> "It's hard to take a real look at Vista, both on the surface and under
> the hood, and consider it just another Windows rehash. This is a
> dramatic, whole-hog upgrade of the Windows platform. If you got anything
> out of this article, we hope it's the realization that Vista is not
> simply the Windows XP/2000 code base that has been slowly evolving over
> the years with some fancy graphics and icons slapped onto it. It should
> be clear that Vista is really the next generation of operating system
> from Microsoft, every bit as significant as the leap from Windows 3.1 to
> Windows 95 or the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X."

Because Vista is actually a vacuum cleaner ?
(just joking)
I remember Win95 launch day - it was an amazing change.
Shame it had to take the old code over with it.

cheers
BrianM
OpenSUSE10