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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Topic started by: Ralf Maximus on November 09, 2007, 12:23 AM
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I'm still not a convert, but this (http://cybernetnews.com/2007/11/03/myfive-the-best-tiny-features-in-vista/) short article goes a long way towards explaining what I miss from sticking with XP. The speech-recognition video is especially intriguing, especially since I've experimented with XP's speech functionality and found it wanting.
Maybe it's because I don't have a cool British accent?
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Seems to me it is more an article about someone who hasn't installed the software to do these things on XP. The reason people most like dislike Vista is that it doesn't work well rather than not having more features than XP.
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For me (notice I emphasize that), Vista has been a poor experience in a wide variety of ways, among them driver support, DRM issues, price increases, and the continuing WGA/validation debacle. It also will eat as much hardware as you throw at it. Quad-core screams on Linux, but suddenly crawls on Vista x64. I could go on all day, but that kind of crap really makes me mad.
In the meantime, to get the bad news about Vista behind them, notice the increasing number of "Windows 7" leaks to the media over the past three weeks. Vista will join the infamous ranks of "ME" in the history of Windows OSes. Think of it this way: Vista has been so "suck-sessful" that record numbers of users are using other OS platforms, including me. Microsoft's HALO team should take over coding Win 7!
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Zaine: I've asked this every time someone raises the "problems" you mention. What problems have YOU experienced with DRM and WGA? Everytime I ask this, I never get a reply. It seems that most users get upset over problems OTHER users have claiming them as their own. DRM has never caused me a problem.
I don't think you can hold drivers against Vista. Thats a problem with developers not updating their drivers to be Vista compliance.
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Well, Bungie is no longer a direct part of Microsoft so... But don't worry, with Mark Russinovich on the company and the guy behind Office 2007 in charge of Windows 7 management, I think it could be really great. Everything is hinting as a complete breakup with past Windows' foundation, like Mac OS X did before, so that means they can focus on the OS, and not on backwards compatibility.
I'll answer Josh, but I think he already knows this. DRM only causes problems to early adopters who bought these "fantastic" new HD formats that are crippled with DRM. Not that is much of a problem today, as SlySoft cracked yesterday the last scheme behind Blu Ray. That is the only DRM present in Vista, necessary for HD video playback from those discs. Well, apart from WGA, and you know which kind of problems this caused, although it's true it did not cause a general problem for all users (apart from building up a hardware database with unique IDs identifying you). I think Zaine detailed his personal problems with Vista on his blog, so you know where to look ;)
The first thing you'll see there is not exactly DRMed though, but it's truly NSFW ;D
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I don't think you can hold drivers against Vista. -Josh
Of course we can. Either stuff works or it doesn't. XP mostly does, Vista often doesn't. I don't care if it is because I have unusual stuff, because MS have done a bad job or because other people haven't updated their drivers.
And if I'm worried about drivers, I'm not going to upgrade without being certain that everything I have or might get will work with Vista (and there's still quite a bit of software that isn't compatible and some less maintained stuff that probably will never be).
And having Vista on one computer and XP on the others means I know that I never think "I wish I had Vista on this computer", but do sometimes wish I didn't have Vista at all.
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The reason people most like dislike Vista is that it doesn't work well rather than not having more features than XP.
-Dormouse
I really punish systems by the amount of 'tweaking' I do and I have yet to find a problem with Vista. Vista works well for me.
Zaine said: Quad-core screams on Linux, but suddenly crawls on Vista x64. I could go on all day, but that kind of crap really makes me mad.
I have used both. My Quad Core 'screams' on Vista 64-bit - not literally because that would be quite disturbing! 8)
I have not experienced DRM issues either. I have not even experienced 'driver' problems (unlike XP which initially caused huge problems).
iTunes on Vista 64-bit is a really annoying - but that is an iTunes issue as I see it and not a Vista thing.
I have machines with linux, XP, Vista, Vista 64 My daughter (10) evens uses an old tablet PC with Windows 98 on it for 'experimenting' (so she says).
Every operating system has its issues but I wonder sometimes if people get into this 'let's hate it' mentality that sometimes obscures reality.
When it comes to Microsoft pricing policies - well, yes, I would like to see changes there.
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Of course the driver problems are Microsoft's fault -- and no one else's. Ten or fifteen years ago, finding drivers was a huge problem. Recently Microsoft took a giant leap in fixing this, primarily through the "unified driver" model, that allowed a manufacturer to deploy drivers to all variants of their hardware in a single package. This made it easier for us to find drivers, and it made it easier for manufacturers to support their hardware.
In Vista, Microsoft made the conscious decision to do away with the unified driver model. In one stroke, all of our old drivers are invalidated, through no fault of the manufacturers. So MS has broken the old drivers, and made it harder for new ones to be produced (or found by us users). Who are you going to blame.
On top of that, one of the primary reasons for MS's decision was (AIUI) the complete end-to-end DRM support. These problems are the direct result of the DRM obsession.
I have no reason to believe that DRM doesn't work, other than the reports of it monopolizing the CPU when media is playing. But this is precisely what I'm afraid of. When I'm at my computer I have a task to do, and listening to music or having a little video window in the corner is just a nice-to-have. But MS has implemented a design that transforms my current wastage of a few percent of CPU cycles to something that materially interferes* with the work I'm doing. And that's just not acceptable.
* Or so I've been told; I haven't tried it myself.
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I don't think you can hold drivers against Vista. -Josh
Of course we can. Either stuff works or it doesn't. XP mostly does, Vista often doesn't. I don't care if it is because I have unusual stuff, because MS have done a bad job or because other people haven't updated their drivers.
And if I'm worried about drivers, I'm not going to upgrade without being certain that everything I have or might get will work with Vista (and there's still quite a bit of software that isn't compatible and some less maintained stuff that probably will never be).
And having Vista on one computer and XP on the others means I know that I never think "I wish I had Vista on this computer", but do sometimes wish I didn't have Vista at all.
-Dormouse
So, you blame Microsoft for the fact that your stuff doesn't work? This, my friend, is where Microsoft gets screwed over. They are forced to retain backward compatibility with the sacrifice of not being able to move forward in technology. Microsoft decided to make changes to the driver model to adjust to what technology is available now and where we currently stand in the technological era. I, personally, don't understand how Microsoft can be faulted for the end user requiring them, yes requiring because users value the use of their old hardware (apple doesn't have this problem since their user base is so small and their hardware isnt as easily upgraded or vast in selection), to maintain backwards compatibility when it comes to driver models and honestly commend Microsoft for moving forward and changing things for the better (I.E., no unsigned drivers in 64 bit Windows).
You say it is harder for device manufacturers to make these new drivers, I again don't agree here. Microsoft has had API's available since Vista entered beta status. That is well over a years time to make drivers which will operate on Vista. Yes, the model changed, but the time existed and was given for manufacturers to update their code.
I have several purchased WMA/WMV protected media files which play fine with no excessive usage. As stated above, the only built-in DRM with Vista is in regards to HDCP protected content, as stated above, that is included in the new age HD formats. So, unless you play a BRD or HD-DVD in a video window in the corner of your screen, you wont notice any performance hits.
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So, you blame Microsoft for the fact that your stuff doesn't work? -Josh
No, I don't blame MS; I don't care about MS. My stuff does work; it is just that it is 100% certain to work with XP and much less than 100% certain to work with Vista. So I don't move to Vista. That is not a problem for me and I don't blame anyone for it.
I do blame MS for their outrageous upgrade costs. Outrageous in the context of OEM costs, Linux costs and current OS costs (small, nil and nil).
I do blame them for producing something that brings no significant benefit to me, or at least I think it is their responsibility. I don't really care enough to blame them.
I had expected to upgrade everything to Vista. Now I'll give it a complete miss, as I did ME, except for the one system I have it on. Everything has Linux installed too. Everyone, even the kids, finds Linux easy. As things are, I probably won't upgrade Windows beyond XP.
Do I blame MS for that? No, I don't really care. Their systems are overly restrictive and getting worse. I think it will prove to be a failing business model. But I have alternatives, so I don't care whether they succeed or not.
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So, you blame Microsoft for the fact that your stuff doesn't work? This, my friend, is where Microsoft gets screwed over. They are forced to retain backward compatibility with the sacrifice of not being able to move forward in technology. ... You say it is harder for device manufacturers to make these new drivers, I again don't agree here. Microsoft has had API's available since Vista entered beta status. That is well over a years time to make drivers which will operate on Vista. Yes, the model changed, but the time existed and was given for manufacturers to update their code.
-Josh
The implications of your response that MS must be free to move forward have profound effects on the rest of the industry. In particular, in order to open this door for Microsoft, you should realize that you're closing it for hardware manufacturers.
In the past, the hardware manufacturers were happily buzzing along creating new hardware and tweaking their unified drivers to handle it. Suddenly Microsoft rewrites the plot of the story. Now the H/W guys must go back to re-write new drivers to ensure backwards compatibility with their own, old products. And since they've only got finite resources, this must mean that they aren't able to invest as much into development of new products, which is the only way they have of making revenue.
So what are you going to do when you're in the H/W manufacturer's shoes? Are you going to pull all of your developers off of new projects so they can go back and build Vista drivers for old products that aren't even on store shelves anymore? Or are you going to acknowledge that some previous customers won't be happy, but if you want to stay in business you've got to continue the revenue stream by selling the products you're currently working on?
I don't see how you can overlook the cost that MS's own decisions are costing the hardware developers, in saying that MS has the right to move forward without looking back.
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well i think MS has given hardware developers a nice long run between 1998 and 2006 nearly where they have had to only tweak and refine their drivers...
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Thanks Josh. Let me answer specifically from personal experience, using Vista x64. I'll take the long way, so be patient with me.
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DRM
From what Microsoft marketed to us on what Vista would do from 2004-06 and what we got, it's been really disappointing for me. And when you compare Vista to Apple's OS X Leopard and something like Fedora 8 or Ubuntu 7.10 on the GNU/Linux side, you quickly find it ain't so special after all, and includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.
And unlike other OSes, with Vista you don't get to refuse them.
Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. Peter Gutmann (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html) wrote a well-circulated article about it, and was widely attacked for it. Certain high-quality output paths — audio and video — are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely (ask Sternfan network guys about this). And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of all this, and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look good.
http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2007/01/23/microsoft-on-content-protection-in-vista/
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/01/22/microsoft-spins-drm-tale-in-blog
As you noted, the BBC, Apple, Disney, NBC, Sony, et al. love DRM, too. Some of these companies (including Jobs on music for iTunes, but not for movies) have realized that DRM just annoys their customers. Like every other DRM system ever invented, Microsoft's won't keep the professional pirates from making copies of whatever they want. The DRM security in Vista was broken the day it was released. Sure, Microsoft will patch it, but the patched system will get broken as well. It's an arms race, and the defenders can't possibly win. Every time Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is patched, it's broken within minutes or hours.
I believe that Microsoft knows this and also knows that it doesn't matter. This isn't about stopping pirates and the small percentage of people who download free movies from the Internet. This isn't even about Microsoft satisfying its Hollywood customers at the expense of those of us paying for the privilege of using Vista. This is about the overwhelming majority of honest users and who owns the distribution channels to them. And while it may have started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary formats.
Microsoft is reaching for a much bigger prize than Apple: not just Hollywood, but also peripheral hardware vendors. Vista's DRM requires driver developers to comply with all kinds of rules and be certified; otherwise, they don't work. Why else has HP simply chosen not to write Vista drivers for over 70% of their existing printers? HP publicly stated they wouldn't begin tackling that task seriously until Vista-SP1 was released. And Microsoft talks about expanding this to independent software vendors as well. It's another war for control of the computer market.
Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are not only stuck with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate fair-use rights for the content we buy, we're stuck with DRM systems that interfere with all of our computer use — even the uses that have nothing to do with copyright.
So far in almost a full year of release, the market has not righted this wrong, because Microsoft's 92% OS position gives it much more power than we consumers can hope to have. It might not be as obvious as Microsoft using its operating system monopoly to kill Netscape and own the browser market, but it's really no different. Microsoft's entertainment market grab might further entrench its monopoly position, but it will cause serious damage to both the computer and entertainment industries. The EU fights this battle with Redmond daily. DRM is bad, both for consumers and for the entertainment industry: something the entertainment industry is just starting to realize, but Microsoft will continue fighting. The result of my Vista experience is that it was the final straw that drove me from Windows to GNU/Linux, and few people were bigger fans of Microsoft than I was.
In light of that experience, the only advice I can offer others is to not upgrade to Vista. It will be hard. Microsoft's bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean that it will be increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with new computers. Even Dell makes it hard to buy a laptop with either XP or Ubuntu installed on it. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us all out if it wants to. Yes, every time someone shifts to Macintosh, we hear about it, and some (way) fewer number will switch to GNU/Linux like I did, but most folks are stuck on Windows. My real desire is for Microsoft to get on with Windows 7 development and get sensible. Stop with the 5-version OS nonsense; just give us the best OS you make, period.
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WGA
WGA is a barrier that makes it more difficult for paying customers to legally use Microsoft software and products. Why does Microsoft need to employ WGA against me, a 20+ year user of its products?
— I'm honest.
— I bought your software.
— I registered your software with the serial number and activation code you provided me.
— I didn't steal it.
— I'm not copying it.
— I'm not sharing it.
Why punish me? I don't steal software and I don't mind when people who do get caught. But when Microsoft's WGA servers went down for 24+ hours back in late August, I was one of those who took the hit. It’s not such a big deal until Microsoft starts branding you as a pirate and shutting down parts of your computer just because someone’s unplugged their Windows Genuine Advantage software DRM authentication service, as happened to 12,000 people back in August, me included. I didn't make a big deal of it because my principal OS is GNU/Linux and I booted up the Vista machine to see if it was out. True to form, I could surf the net for ONE HOUR, and then I was automatically logged out. That ain't right. My copy of Windows should be good, period, after it's been validated. It shouldn't have to be re-validated continuously. If Microsoft says it doesn't phone home daily, then how come my system went down that long day? How did it know otherwise that my Vista was bad, and on that day?
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
For argument's sake, let's you and me assume WGA is about preventing piracy. Like DRM, does it really, or is this another irony of Microsoft, who sells Vista for $775 in Denmark and $400/Ultimate in the US and $3 in China. $3?!! Why can't I have China's price?
Microsoft Happy with the Evolution of Windows Vista Piracy (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Happy-with-the-Evolution-of-Windows-Vista-Piracy-50577.shtml)
Microsoft says college students can 'steal' Office (http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9777020-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20)
Why Piracy Hurts Open Source (http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000266)
Microsoft seals its Windows and opens the door to Linux (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1956941,00.html)
Microsoft Exec Admits That Company Benefits From Piracy (http://techdirt.com/articles/20070312/165448.shtml)
'Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth' (http://wilshipley.com/blog/2007/02/piracy-reduction-can-be-source-of.html)
Beyond the whole "trust" factor, it creeps me out that my PC phones home every day to Microsoft's servers to validate my copy of Windows not once, but — "It is important to note that WGA Validation still collects information that is used to determine whether the version of Windows is genuine (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/jun06/06-27WGA.mspx)" — any time it wants. Even Ed Bott (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=84) is creeped out over it and notes how its malfunction tanked people's computers. Ed even wrote a more detailed (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=142) post on WGA's continuing failures. If you're a business, you cannot — can never — allow another company to hold your data hostage. Again, I already bought, registered, and activated your software. You have my money. You have my credit card. You have my name, my address, my IP address, my email, and so on. How MUCH MORE does Microsoft need to validate me?
It's the equivalent of waking up every morning and calling your wife a cheating bitch... until she proves otherwise. It gets old fast. Keep treating her like one and you won't be married for long. Same rule of behavior applies to loyal users. Call them thieves long enough, and they'll bolt.
Microsoft's whole WGA campaign remains nakedly disingenuous (is that an oxymoron?). This Microsoft press release (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/jun06/06-27WGA.mspx) speaks at length about the problems that pirated software causes for businesses and users, and persists in the notion that WGA exists principally to help Microsoft's customers. It never once says, "We're doing this to prevent people from stealing the software we've spent millions to develop."
Here's the irony: when you make it difficult for registered users to legally use your software, you encourage piracy at worst, and switching to other alternatives at least. When it's easier to download a copy of Vista (or XP or Office) from usenet that has all the latest updates and bypasses activation and registration than it is to comply, it's bad news for Microsoft.
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Zaine: fantastic post!
I do think DRM probably doesn't adversely affect a majority of users (arguments have been made back and forth over Guttman's article), but as an analogy I ditched IE as a browser not because I couldn't view web pages, but because Microsoft's land grab via proprietry access to an open global resource was outrageous.
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Thanks nontroppo. My wish is to have several good/great operating system choices. Which I why I look forward to Vista's successor. After its first week in users' hands, Leopard ain't looking so great (http://tomkarpik.com/articles/massive-data-loss-bug-in-leopard/) all the sudden with its data loss bug.
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Brilliant - cracking bug!!! Does anyone actually test filing system actions?
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Thanks nontroppo. My wish is to have several good/great operating system choices. Which I why I look forward to Vista's successor. After its first week in users' hands, Leopard ain't looking so great (http://tomkarpik.com/articles/massive-data-loss-bug-in-leopard/) all the sudden with its data loss bug.
-zridling
wow. Quite something.
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I already have all those 5 features and more with a decent explorer replacement like xplorer 2 or total commander. With Dopus, I'd have ten times as many features. And they would be full featured and extensible with plugins, along with being insanely customizable.
Listing the renaming improvement as a 'feature' is ridiculous.
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Zaine: it is a feature. It simply allows the user to test Time Machine functions properly... ;)
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I'm no Apple fan by any measure, but I give them credit for fixing Time Machine quickly. Still, it's a shame that almost all new versions of major software are betas. Doesn't anyone test this crap before they release it anymore?!!
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I'm no Apple fan by any measure, but I give them credit for fixing Time Machine quickly. Still, it's a shame that almost all new versions of major software are betas. Doesn't anyone test this crap before they release it anymore?!!
-zridling
I hear you. However, another perspective might be worthwhile...
Step back a moment and look at how freekin complex these new releases are. Vista's in-memory footprint is, what? 512 MEGABYTES? I guarantee you that's not all stack space.
We're reached the point where some of these megaprojects are more like encouraging growth in an organism than building anything. Vista spanned seven(?) years of active development with zillions of developers cycling in and out at various times.
I know QA testors, I've been a QA testor, and yet I cannot fathom what a Vista regression test plan must look like. My sweaty imagination conjures up file cabinets of documentation just for stuff like COM.
Pile on all the rewritten and "optimized" stuff, backwards compatibility for 12+ years of Windows NT baggage, and some poor business decisions that generated terriffic pressure to ship the thing out the door! Now!
Hell, I'm amazed there aren't more problems.
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I never thought of it that way, Ralf. At some point, you do have to get it out the door. By working so long on Vista, it created another level of complexity as they couldn't keep up with changes that were going on around them — hardware vendors were moving on to 64-bit, Web 2.0 was advancing by the day, and backward compatibility was just overwhelming.
Ironic that the greatest advantage of the Windows platform has become its greatest weakness. I think some of this could have been cured if Microsoft would have only sold Vista in 64-bit versions, which would have forced anyone who wanted it to [effectively] buy a new system to run it.
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I don't want to appear as an apologist for MS but they do have an awesome job getting stuff tested just because of the shear diversity of hardware out there and the fact that anyone, his dog or cat can build a system from scratch from an infinite number of components all with third party drivers that MS by and large have little control over. Everyone then expects all versions of Windows to work flawlessly first time.
What's Apple's excuse? I thought system reliability out of the box was the whole point of Apple hardware lockdown (even to the point that you can even get into some of the boxes they produce - they won't even let users change batteries for god's sake!)
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What's Apple's excuse? I thought system reliability out of the box was the whole point of Apple hardware lockdown (even to the point that you can even get into some of the boxes they produce - they won't even let users change batteries for god's sake!)
-Carol Haynes
Apple's not making the money on the software in those cases.
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Things ain't looking too hot for Vista adoption in the workplace:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/it_pros_if_not_vista_maybe_macintosh.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
XP is still clearly the greatest threat to Vista.
What's Apple's excuse?
Um, they fixed the move bug as soon as possible (which affected only a small minority of users behaviours, as clearly evidenced by the fact no one complained about this before). This was not a hardware complexity issue, but a simple software bug. Vista had a complex bug where moving >4000 files could fail, and it took them over 8 months to fix it (with some reports that it still ain't fixed). I'm sorry, but Microsofts patching record really ain't great. The security mess that is XP has things unpatched for months, again hardware is irrelevant here.
I thought system reliability out of the box was the whole point of Apple hardware lockdown (even to the point that you can even get into some of the boxes they produce - they won't even let users change batteries for god's sake!)
Huh!? :o I can access my battery just fine, can on a MBPro too, can on my Partners old iBook. I can open the Mac pro perfectly (and the chassis is much better organised for modification than our Dell workstations). I suspect it ain't easy to open a Mac mini, but the same would go for a micro PC.
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Still, it's a shame that almost all new versions of major software are betas. Doesn't anyone test this crap before they release it anymore?!!
-zridling
Sure thing, but then you make a tiny little last-minute change, just a little innocent code reorganization, and... *b00m*. Of course that never happened to me, and certainly not with the fSekrit 1.3 release. *cough*.
I think some of this could have been cured if Microsoft would have only sold Vista in 64-bit versions, which would have forced anyone who wanted it to [effectively] buy a new system to run it.
-zridling
Hear ye, hear ye!
I think it was a stupid move of MS to do a 32-bit version of Vista. Almost as bad a move as releasing WinMe instead of focusing exclusively on Win2k/NT5 - makes adaption take longer, spending more time on drivers, testing, etc.
Of course there's so many other things wrong with Vista that this isn't my biggests complaint, but still...
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I think it was a stupid move of MS to do a 32-bit version of Vista. Almost as bad a move as releasing WinMe instead of focusing exclusively on Win2k/NT5 - makes adaption take longer, spending more time on drivers, testing, etc.
Yes! They might have been able to shave years off the release date had they not done this. On the other hand...
The strategy has always been to drive corporate customers to early adoption first, then worry about the rest of the world. Consumer money's nice, but what they really want is the millions of dollars in upgrade fees from Fortune 500 organizations.
Had they dropped 32-bit support many corporate IT departments would've taken a pass. It's just that simple. Ironic how low Vista's adoption number have been in corporate america, right? As a strategy, it all looked so good on paper! Classic example of battle-plans not surviving contact with the enemy.
What baffles me: what's in the Vista feature set targeted to business users? Surely not Aero... so pretending that Vista is bug-free and wicked fast on old hardware for a moment, what on earth would compel a business XP user to crave Vista? I think a few must-have features (WinFS?) dropped off the list as development progressed.
If they're smart, they'll drop 32-bit in Windows 7 and keep cranking out service packs for XP until the new Intel 1024-bit terrahertz processors make that impossible.
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I didn't say they should drop 32-bit support - just not make a 32bit version. In the same sense that 32bit versions of 9x and NT don't have 16-bit versions, but can still run 16-bit apps through WOW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_on_Windows).
This would still mean having to maintain 32-bit wrappers-to-64bit-native-calls and a few other things, but that's a whole lot less than a full 32-bit version of the OS...
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@nontroppo - I'm jumping in making some assumptions here, but wanted to note that I *think* Carol was referring to things like CMOS batteries WRT Macs computers (as opposed to the batteries that power laptops) and the non-user replaceable batteries in iPods. Of course, in the portable music sphere Apple is far from being the only manufacturer doing this - AFAICT Samsung, Sandisk, Creative, etc. all design their players this way. I don't know if this is to reduce the likelihood of the end-user mucking up their player or if it's got more to do with the technology and keeping the size down (probably a combo of both thought...). Hope I haven't misinterpreted what you were drivng at, Carol :o
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What I don't understand is why did MS even insist on going 32 vs. 64 bit route? *nix and OS X handle this much more cleanly, and arguments have been made about why LP64 (*nix, OS X etc) is better than LLP64 (Vista):
http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/lp64_wp.html
With LP64, I download a single binary that supports all platforms without having to worry (and neither did the developer during building). When 64bit apps come out[1], i can run them alongside my existing 32bit apps. This seems like a win-win. Is it because the driver model cannot handle such a shared environment?
Ah, CMOS batteries, no idea, though there arecompanies (http://www.macbattery.com/) selling replacements for most macs since the 90s so this is not a general issue.
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[1] Geekbench has tests for both 32bit and 64bit - I tested my machine for both without having to install two OSs, rebooting etc. There is a 8-10% performance boost for the areas covered.
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With LP64, I download a single binary that supports all platforms without having to worry (and neither did the developer during building). When 64bit apps come out[1], i can run them alongside my existing 32bit apps. This seems like a win-win. Is it because the driver model cannot handle such a shared environment?
-nontroppo
I bet that's it. Though if that's the case, I don't know why they couldn't offer a parallel 64-bit driver stack for vendors to target. Or even "thunk" old 32-bit drivers for obsolete hardware; it'd be slower, but I bet people would accept that for hardware that isn't supported any more.
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@nontroppo - I'm jumping in making some assumptions here, but wanted to note that I *think* Carol was referring to things like CMOS batteries WRT Macs computers (as opposed to the batteries that power laptops) and the non-user replaceable batteries in iPods. Of course, in the portable music sphere Apple is far from being the only manufacturer doing this - AFAICT Samsung, Sandisk, Creative, etc. all design their players this way. I don't know if this is to reduce the likelihood of the end-user mucking up their player or if it's got more to do with the technology and keeping the size down (probably a combo of both thought...). Hope I haven't misinterpreted what you were drivng at, Carol :o
-Darwin
Nope - that is pretty much it. Can't see the argument working for the original iPods though which were built like bricks and could easily have had a replacable battery compartment. As for Creative they have now followed suit which is why I have stuck to the Zen Micro/Photo which has batteries you can change (I even bought about 4 or 5 spare batteries before they disappeared from sale).
I don't believe that the battery situation is anything to do with style or form factor - it is one way to guarantee that users spend even more money with the manufacturer and that third party battery manufacturers can't cash in on the deal. Otherwise why do Apple charge so much for battery replacements? For many people it is now cheaper to chuck their iPod and buy a new one which (like printer manufacturers who sell their goods cheaper than the replacement ink cartridges) is, IMHO, criminally irresponsible and a disgusting waste of dwindling world resources.
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I think you're being too critical of the manufacturers. There's a definite advantage to using custom-sized lithium-polymer batteries. Standard AAA batteries force the design into a certain shape and (iirc) the energy density lithium-polymer is higher, so the AAA NiMH batteries would need to be bigger. The custom Li-polymer batteries allow the manufacturers to build the devices smaller (and with a definitive style).
As long as consumers value small size and style, custom batteries will be what you get.
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Imho ILP64 is the better choice, since "int" ought to be the "native int size", for performance reasons (okay, using 32bit ints isn't that bad on x86-64 because of how that architecture was hacked together, but still...)
Kernel and drivers need to be recompiled for 64bit. It would be possible to construct a thunking layer, but you don't want that for performance reasons. And it would take quite some work, since 32bit drivers obviously can't use 64bit pointers.
And some usermode apps on a 64bit os do need to be 64bit, or at least be 64-bit aware - as soon as memory addresses or sizes are involved.
nontroppo: when you download a "single binary that supports all platforms", it's probably 32bit. And that's doable on windows as well, since x86-64 natively supports running 32bit code (at the expense of not running 16-bit code in long mode). lots of code, both on windows and lunix, don't port cleanly to 64bit mode, because of st00pid programmers (NO, you CANNOT always fit a void* in an int).
You use an "int" when you want native integer size, you use "size_t" when you want address-space-size, ptrdiff_t when dealing arithmethically with pointers, etc. If you specifically need 32- or 64-bit integers (for file formats etc.), you use sint32/uint32/sint64/uint64 typedefs, specifically. It's not as complicated as some people want you to think, but you have to do this from the ground up, not as an afterthought.
For usermode code, there's a 32<>64 thunking layer, it's the most sane way to handle things.
Here's a bunch of links:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2419.asp
http://www.viva64.com/articles/The_Peculiarities_of_Development_of_64-bit_Applications.html
http://www.viva64.com/articles/Application_port_to_64-bit_platforms_or_never_cackle_till_your_egg_is_laid.html
http://www.viva64.com/articles/Driver_Development_for_Windows_64-bit.html
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Here's a threadjack...
At what point will CPU registers stop getting wider? 128 bits? 256 bits? Surely there's a point at which we won't need to go further...
I don't want to sound like Bill Gates who wondered aloud why anyone would need more than 640K, but seriously, how much directly addressable RAM makes sense? Petabytes? Exobytes?
I guess I'm just looking forward to the "1024 bits sucks, you need Vista-4096" wars.
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Generic-use registers don't need to be wider than 64bit, this is quite sufficient (as long as there's CPU instructions that make working with arbitrarily large numbers easy enough) - for SIMD, they might very well get wider (and iirc SSE-something-soon will move from 128bit to 256bit). But for address space and general registers? I daresay 64bit is enough.
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I think you're being too critical of the manufacturers. There's a definite advantage to using custom-sized lithium-polymer batteries. Standard AAA batteries force the design into a certain shape and (iirc) the energy density lithium-polymer is higher, so the AAA NiMH batteries would need to be bigger. The custom Li-polymer batteries allow the manufacturers to build the devices smaller (and with a definitive style).
As long as consumers value small size and style, custom batteries will be what you get.
-CWuestefeld
Some Li-Ion batteries are tiny with good power output (such as the ones used in the early Creative Zen Micro) and much better and smaller than some of those used in other players - like the iPod early models. If the battery specs were released other companies would produce cheap replacements (just look eg. at the cost of Canon's Li-Ion replacements compared to the UniRoss equivalents and many other makes).
Sorry I am really cynical about this - how can Apple justify $100+ costs to replace a battery that would only probably cost $20 if others were allowed to manufacture them? It is just profiteering and most other manufacturers have simply jumped on the bandwagon.
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nontroppo: when you download a "single binary that supports all platforms", it's probably 32bit.
Universal binaries support up to four platform architectures, 32 and 64bit PowerPC and Intel builds in one executable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/64bit.html
More than that I don't really understand, except that I don't have to worry about choosing a 32bit or 64bitOS as an end user.
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Ahhh, you're on Mac OS :)
Mac universal binary is actually an "archive" format, which contains multiple executables - one for each of the supported platforms. Which means that they are, as the wikipedia links says, fat.
It also means that each executable inside the fat binary is built specifically for the platform it targets, and that of course means the source code needs to be portable. So there's no magic, really.
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No magic, just a bit of convenience ;) In general, I simply like the fact that i don't have to choose a 32bit or 64bit OS, I just have an OS that runs 32bit code and will run 64bit apps as they come out. This i hope will lower the barrier to developers ensuring 64bit portability, because everyone will be able to run them without reinstalling their OS.
If you are fat-phobic, there are apps on OS X that will put your apps on a diet, liposucking the platforms not needed out :)
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No magic, just a bit of convenience ;) In general, I simply like the fact that i don't have to choose a 32bit or 64bit OS, I just have an OS that runs 32bit code and will run 64bit apps as they come out.
-nontroppo
Then you have chosen (or rather, it has been chosen for you): you're running a 64bit OS. A 32bit OS won't run 64bit apps - the 32bit binary from the fatexe will be chosen.
That said, I heard something about the 64bit version of OS X being somewhat peculiar.
This i hope will lower the barrier to developers ensuring 64bit portability, because everyone will be able to run them without reinstalling their OS.
-nontroppo
Actually it doesn't help wrt. 64bit portability - sure fat binaries are very smart, but it's still the programmer's job to, in source code, make sure his code compiles cleanly for both 32- and 64-bit modes. I'm not sure if xcode automatically compiles for each platform, or if you have to specify which platforms your fatexe should build for, but I can assure you that 32/64bit portable code doesn't happen by magic, you do need to design properly.
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Then you have chosen (or rather, it has been chosen for you): you're running a 64bit OS. A 32bit OS won't run 64bit apps - the 32bit binary from the fatexe will be chosen.
That said, I heard something about the 64bit version of OS X being somewhat peculiar.-f0dder
Yes, the details have been obfuscated from the user, he/she just runs an app and if the platform supports it it will be 64bit.
As for being peculiar, in Tiger the core OS was 64bit, but the frameworks were not, so only specialised code could run and a seperate process was needed for a UI. Now, everything except for the old carbon compatibility UI layer (from system 8 days) is 64bit. This means some apps that still use that will have to transition away from it to enable transparent 64bit OS support.
Actually it doesn't help wrt. 64bit portability - sure fat binaries are very smart, but it's still the programmer's job to, in source code, make sure his code compiles cleanly for both 32- and 64-bit modes. I'm not sure if xcode automatically compiles for each platform, or if you have to specify which platforms your fatexe should build for, but I can assure you that 32/64bit portable code doesn't happen by magic, you do need to design properly.-f0dder
Oh, I agree. My point was that the potential 64bit user base is now every Leopard Mac that has a 64bit PowerPC or Intel chip, as a percentage of the total userbase that is going to be significant[1] (what is the proportion of 32bit to 64bit vista installs?). That gives a Mac developer incentive to do the grunt work to make his code portable, because in theory anyone with a newer mac and Leopard will benefit.
----
[1] A number of mac developers have suggested their next versions will be Leopard only because of the benefits Developers gain coding for Leopard. Most of their users feedback has been positive AFAICT, they have a high rate of new OS adopters.
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Oh, I agree. My point was that the potential 64bit user base is now every Leopard Mac that has a 64bit PowerPC or Intel chip, as a percentage of the total userbase that is going to be significant[1] (what is the proportion of 32bit to 64bit vista installs?). That gives a Mac developer incentive to do the grunt work to make his code portable, because in theory anyone with a newer mac and Leopard will benefit.
-nontroppo
I dunno about the ratio - and I'd like to repeat what I've said earlier, releasing a 32bit version of Vista was a mistake. Just like it was a mistake not to put more pressure on driver manufacturer when XP64 was released. Lots and lots of 32bit windows code runs just fine under 64bit, and the problematic stuff is either stuff that breaks on non-administrative accounts (ie., from developers with a "win9x mindset"), or because of crappy protection code.
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According to known news (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7), windows 7 will be released as 32bit and 64 bit too, so we're not done yet :)
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According to known news (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7), windows 7 will be released as 32bit and 64 bit too, so we're not done yet :)
-justice
Morons.
Vista is already at the point where you probably don't want to run it on hardware that isn't 64bit capable... I doubt Windows 7 will be better, sure their design ideas sound nice, but they'll fsck it up just as badly as they did with Vista. sigh.
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I find stupid that they decide to release Windows 7 for 32 bits CPUs as well BUT that may mean the requirements of the OS will be similar to Windows Vista. 64 bit CPUs were introduced in 2003, even 7 years later we're going to deal with 32 bits... I was planning the move to 64 bits, but at this rate, even the AmigaOS 5 will be a 64-bits native build! ;D. Well, maybe they'll plug an XBOX 360 introducing a really cool product.
This poses the question, why move to Vista with Windows 7 down the road? It will be another ME, even if Microsoft didn't intend to make it so, and not being THAT bad, if everyone chooses that road.
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The only reasons for moving to Vista would be DirectX10 (which could be done for XP, but of course MS won't), possibly hardware drivers (Hybrid HardDrives not being supported on XP... although that's not too big a loss with the current generation of H-HDDs as performance is bleh), and when applications start (artificially or not) to depend on Vista.
There's some kernel improvements I certainly wouldn't mind, but they're bogged down by all the crap that's been added to the GUI, Vista is such a pig :(
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This poses the question, why move to Vista with Windows 7 down the road?
-Lashiec
Because Windows 7 will be 5 years late, all the promised new stuff will be lost/forgotten and there will be even more DRM crap and you will need a second mortgage for the amount of hardware required to run Word 2013 at half the speed of Word 2000. .Net framework will require 5Gb of RAM to itself because there will be about 15 versions all trying to be be RAM resident simultaneously. Never mind by then you might get Explorer 7.1 and Windows Media Player 12.
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Carol, I've brought this point up time and time again. WHAT DRM CRAP? The only DRM I've seen is for HD Content and playback over a video card which requires HDCP support. Other than that, I've not seen any DRM problems in vista.
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This poses the question, why move to Vista with Windows 7 down the road?
-Lashiec
Because Windows 7 will be 5 years late, all the promised new stuff will be lost/forgotten and there will be even more DRM crap and you will need a second mortgage for the amount of hardware required to run Word 2013 at half the speed of Word 2000. .Net framework will require 5Gb of RAM to itself because there will be about 15 versions all trying to be be RAM resident simultaneously.
-Carol Haynes
Ah Carol, ever the optimist. :-)
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fodder - in my (limited) experience, disabling the Aero GUI and the themes service and running Vista in classic mode does little to help the resource issue that you are referring to. Granted I gave up before tweaking the GUI beyond that (ie hadn't gone into the relevant diaologue to turn off the rest of the non-essential eye candy like animated wnidows and fading tooltips in and out, etc. but still... Found it to be unbearably slow given the notebook that it was running on (Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM and 128 MB dedicated video memory).
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Carol, I've brought this point up time and time again. WHAT DRM CRAP? The only DRM I've seen is for HD Content and playback over a video card which requires HDCP support. Other than that, I've not seen any DRM problems in vista.
-Josh
I believe the term "DRM crap" covers the entire Vista infrastructure that's constantly prowling for violations. Even if you never stick a copyrighted work in your DVD drive, it's got to run the gauntlet of checks and verifications imposed by the o/s.
THAT sucks. THAT's crap. It's a drag on resources, and assumes that all Vista customers are crooks even if you don't own any DVD movies. It's a penalty all must bear because Microsoft wanted to make the entertainment industry happy.
So even if Vista works for you and works well, you're paying a price in wasted cpu cycles and bloated code for a "feature" you may never have used.
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Yes but its all built into the Kernel along with all the other stuff that has been overlaid and is so annoying and resource hungry - OK perhaps its bad example and a cheap shot but I'll bet Windows 7 is even heavier on resources and more restrictive to end users. What about the restriction that if you change your memory or CPU you will probably have to buy a new copy 'cos they won't let you activate Vista on a second hardware system!
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Ah Carol, ever the optimist. :-)
-Ralf Maximus
Actually 5 years late is probably optimistic if Vista is anything to go by. Who can remember all the whizzo stuff promised for Longhorn? How much of it has actually appeared in Vista?
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Ah Carol, ever the optimist. :-)
-Ralf Maximus
Actually 5 years late is probably optimistic if Vista is anything to go by. Who can remember all the whizzo stuff promised for Longhorn? How much of it has actually appeared in Vista?
-Carol Haynes
It's ironic, but despite the smiley I never meant that to be ironic. I think 5+ years is about right for the next version of Windows, assuming they attack the project with the same Army of Programmers methodology they used for Vista.
On the other hand, maybe they've had a wee bit of fear struck into their scaley, cold hearts. Maybe there have been some "oh, shit!" meetings in Redmond and now they realize they have to do something, anything, to regain the fear of their customers... and not just the loathing.
So mmmmaybe (Ralf rummages around in his colon, *pop*) Windows 7 comes out in late 2009.
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Well, MS probably will fsck up Windows7, but the current design plans and status sounds good... stripping the kernel and having a very small one running already, etc. If only powerusers (and not just system builders / OEMs with a shitload of cash) were allowed to build really custom version, something like nlite (http://www.nliteos.com) on steroids. Would own.
www.tinykrnl.org / www.reactos.org aren't functional enough, and if they ever approach that, they'll be shut down. Bother.
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So mmmmaybe (Ralf rummages around in his colon, *pop*) Windows 7 comes out in late 2009.
Now there's an image to take with me to the dinner table!
;D
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Yes but its all built into the Kernel along with all the other stuff that has been overlaid and is so annoying and resource hungry - OK perhaps its bad example and a cheap shot but I'll bet Windows 7 is even heavier on resources and more restrictive to end users. What about the restriction that if you change your memory or CPU you will probably have to buy a new copy 'cos they won't let you activate Vista on a second hardware system!
-Carol Haynes
Actually, I've changed out both on my current system WITH vista installed and have had no problems re-activating. I upgraded from 2 to 4GB of ram and my pentium D was upgraded as well due to a deal I saw online which made it worthwhile. And, from what I've seen, the DRM services only activate when Media player tries to play a protected disc. I can use Zoom player or VLC and play the same files without those services.
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That's interesting because what you have done with hardware specifically contradicts what MS actually published when all the VISTA activation hoo-haa blew up. Maybe they have had second thoughts.
Did you actually have to reactivate or did it just not bother to ask when you restarted your system? Under XP swapping the CPU or memory didn't seem to force a reactivation - but they originally said this would promt VISTA.
Strange.
As for the DRM nonsense - as far as I understand it (and I'm probably wrong) I was under the impression it was running all the time checking all media/AV files for DRM before allowing you to play them - even when DRM was not involved, such as your own home movies recorded on a camcorder.
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I have seen no drm related services running. The only ones that start occur when I startup WMP. VLC uses its own codecs and filters when playing back media. ZP uses custom third party codecs (ffdshow, xvid, etc). So no, there are no drm related services. Anyways, the DRM people complain about in Vista is related to HDCP and HD video playback. Not individual files (mp3, avi, etc).
I also did not have to reactivate after swapping my CPU. Perhaps its because I am running Vista Ult, I dont know. But I was never prompted to do so.
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Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption
“Since [encryption] uses CPU cycles, an OEM may have to bump the speed grade on the CPU to maintain equivalent multimedia performance. This cost is passed on to purchasers of multimedia PCs” — ATI.
In order to prevent tampering with in-system communications, all communication flows have to be encrypted and/or authenticated. For example content sent to video devices has to be encrypted with AES-128. This requirement for cryptography extends beyond basic content encryption to encompass not just data flowing over various buses but also command and control data flowing between software components. For example communications between user-mode and kernel-mode components are authenticated with OMAC message authentication-code tags, at considerable cost to both ends of the connection
In order to prevent active attacks, device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware every 30ms for digital outputs and every 150 ms for analog ones to ensure that everything appears kosher. This means that even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers has to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that… nothing continues to happen (commenting on this mechanism, Leo Laporte in his Security Now podcast with Steve Gibson calls Vista “an operating system that is insanely paranoid”)
An indication of the level of complexity added to the software can be seen by looking at a block diagram of Vista's Media Interoperability Gateway (MIG). Of the eleven components that make up the MIG, only two (the audio and video decoders) are actually used to render content. The remaining nine are used to apply content-protection measures.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
DRM is not a service, it is a fundamental rearchitecture of interprocess communication in a PC, from the drivers that have had to be recoded to be Vista-compatible to the motherboard and peripheral hardware.
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It can be useful to remember that HDCP drm restrictions are not Microsoft fault but the standard behind HDCP who require such measures if one wants to play the appropriate hi-def movie. For example there has been / is still a hot debate going in the Linux community because it was suggested the kernel needed DRM measures for this very same functionality. Unless I've been mistaken.
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As Gutmann says:
“We were only following orders” has historically worked rather poorly as an excuse, and it doesn't work too well here either. This is just an example of the Dank defence. The Dank defence, as reported by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Grosso, was used by someone who was picked up carrying a shotgun in a park at night. With six previous violent crime convictions on his record, he explained his presence in the park by saying that a man called “Dank” had held a gun to his head and forced him to carry the shotgun. When the police turned up, “Dank ” ran away, leaving him holding the bag (or at least the shotgun). As the Assistant U.S. Attorney put it, “the jurors chose not to believe the defendant's story”. In Vista's case, we're being asked to believe that Hollywood is holding a gun to Microsoft's head and forcing them to cripple their flagship product and inflict all manner of pain on their business partners and customers, and Microsoft has no choice but to comply.
I choose not to believe the defendant's story.
If no software vendor implemented HDCP, another standard that didn't impose such radical changes would take its place.
Edit: And now the burden to comply for *nix and OSX is much higher as they will be forced into the feature parity game.
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Actually, by looking through Gutmann's slides (80 pages worth!), which are an update of his early report:
http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf
It looks as if Vista's DRM is slowly unravelling in several aspects, as well as an ever increasing list of HDCP workarounds. There are some fascinating tidbits there on the new set of security backdoors to the Vista kernel due to the signed driver model in x64 too.
Did anyone read about tilt bits? Just amazing. Gutmann shows how hardware vendors are basically faking their way around them to keep Vista happy.
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Good point regarding HDCP.
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Everytime I read this stuff I just get angry all over again.
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CNet's gadget arm have included, rightly or wrongly, Vista in its Top10 worst tech products of all time:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49293700-10,00.htm
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For example there has been / is still a hot debate going in the Linux community because it was suggested the kernel needed DRM measures for this very same functionality. Unless I've been mistaken.
-justice
It will not happen -- or if it does someone will fork the kernel and produce a version without all that DRM crap. Servers don't need it and many workstation/desktop/laptop users don't watch DVDs (let alone HD-DVDs) on their computer. (They have a TV for that. Bigger screen. More comfortable seating. Etc.) If there were a HD-DVD ready DRM-ed to the gills Linux kernel today, I doubt many would use it. That's the beauty of open source, stuff like this can't be forced on those who have no use for it and do not want to pay the price in CPU cycles and RAM just to have it there.
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You can't do (the kind of) DRM (the media wants) in an open kernel, realistically, anyway. It needs all the obfuscation to be effective.
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CNet's gadget arm have included, rightly or wrongly, Vista in its Top10 worst tech products of all time:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49293700-10,00.htm
-nontroppo
I really liked that page - I always wanted a Sinclair C5!
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Carol: me too! 8) In the year 2048 we will all drive around in Sinclair C5's with HUD mount ZX-80s...
It will not happen -- or if it does someone will fork the kernel and produce a version without all that DRM crap.
Ah, I'd not thought this through. My big fear for OS X has been the eventual "upgrade" to DRMed OS X, but as the kernel is open-source I think hackers will simply build a fork we can use instead of the official kernel.
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There is a slim possibility that the whole DRM fracas will die down soon and the media companies will drop the whole thing in favor of some new approach. Perhaps they will discover a sane way to license music and movies without treating the customers as crooks.
It happened with cassette audio tapes, and again with VHS in the 1970s. For years they struggled to embed lockouts in tape machines to prevent users from illegally copying tapes, or recording from source. That eventually stopped when the numbers came in and they paid attention: consumer recording actually ENHANCED interest in the licensed materials.
Maybe the wrinkly old bastards in charge will take a lesson from history and back off on DRM.
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It's funny - I often think about the advent of the audio cassette in the late '60s and the video tape in the mid to late 70's and wonder if there was this level of paranoia about piracy. I recorded songs off FM radio, entire albums off friends without a care in the world and didn't hear or read a peep about piracy when "I were a lad" in the 80's... Now you can't swing a dead chicken without worrying about DRM (well, CRM in that case...). I guess it's the perceived scale of the "problem" today?
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I often think about the advent of the audio cassette in the late '60s and the video tape in the mid to late 70's and wonder if there was this level of paranoia about piracy.
You betcha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music).
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Well, that settles that (scratches an old itch, so to speak). I suppose today's teens are just as blissfully unaware of/unmoved by the legality of swapping music. Some interesting reading, Ralf. Thanks. I liked the anecdote about the Dead Kennedy's tape that was released blank on one side, labelled: "Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank so you can help" (even if most people didn't have the equipment to actually record anything on it).
(https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/esmileys/gen3/5Large/TFR1E0.gif)
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The funny thing is those who were home taping in those years are the ones directing the companies pushing DRM down everyone's throat.
Or maybe they were the ones who refused to do it, got laughed off by the cool kids, and now they're taking their revenge ;D
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I'm not sure that I follow, Lashiec... Are you suggesting that the directors of the RIAA companies that are being so dogmatic about DRM are the same kids that were home taping "in the day" (or that they were the nerdy ones spending their paperroute money on legit Perry Como LPs)?
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Could be one of those two things. I suggest a EFF-funded investigation of those people's past :)
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The funny thing is those who were home taping in those years are the ones directing the companies pushing DRM down everyone's throat.
Or maybe they were the ones who refused to do it, got laughed off by the cool kids, and now they're taking their revenge ;D
-Lashiec
Interesting idea, but most of the RIAA top dogs are wrinkly white dudes in their 60's and 70's. That would put them in their 30's or 40's during the "recoding on tape is the new Apocalypse" era. Not saying they WEREN'T guilty of that which they accuse the world, but they weren't kids.
Which, if they were engaging in such heinous activities, makes their hypocrisy even worse. Kids can use the defense that they don't know any better.
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Oh, then the situation is a bit different from Spain. BTW, wasn't the son of one of those top dogs involved in P2P interchange of songs?
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Ralf: Interesting idea, but most of the RIAA top dogs are wrinkly white dudes in their 60's and 70's. That would put them in their 30's or 40's during the "recoding on tape is the new Apocalypse" era.
I think you're about a decade adrift there, Ralf. I think that someone in their 60's would have been in their 20's then. Remember when, for example, The Beatles (through their company, Apple) promised to introduce a way to prevent tape recording from their records?
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Whelp... 1980 was 27 years ago. Somebody who just turned 60 now would've been 33 years old. A 70-year-old, 43. High quality cassette tape recorders were just starting to become affordable right about then.
If you're thinking of VHS/Betamax, that would've been around 1975 or so.
Oh christ! Are you using that fancy european metric time?
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??? I had cassette tapes back in the early 70s. OK they weren't great but we used to share tapes and record from the radio.
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Right you are. I looked it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_deck#History
Apparently I'm about 5 years off, in that "regular folk" could afford a hi-fi stereo cassette deck by the mid 1970's. Audiophiles had them a few years earlier.
I remember having a Radio Shack "Archer" mono recorder the size of a suitcase in 1969, and I used it to record everything. Had a speaker maybe 2" across. But it wasn't what you'd call "high fidelity" and I doubt anyone was worried about using it for piracy.
By the late 70's near-audiophile quality cassette decks were available for a coupla hundred bucks, which to my mind was the point of panic for the recording industry. When any schmuck with $300 can knock out studio-quality recordings... that had to ring alarm bells.
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Oh christ! Are you using that fancy european metric time?
-Ralf Maximus
Always :)
Maybe I'm adrift but I'm sure I recall fuss and commotion about recording to open-reel tape, and later cassette, well before 1980. Apple was started in '67 and the mystical anti-recording signal stuff came almost at once, if I recall it right.
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Also, remember, those were the days before the internet, and one person could share a song with millions of people, not just a few friends with a cassette mix tape. I still use cassettes in my truck, and most of the music on them is from the 60s and 70s (Jimmy Page has white hair now, damn I feel old). So it's not so much the copying as the distribution of it that drives the execs — and many artists — nuts.
If you're a one-hit wonder, you want to be able to live off the fat of that one song for life. The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, had the opposite approach, with the more (listeners) the merrier.
Still, technology like DRM presumes you're a criminal, always were, and always will be. Just say hell no.
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Also, remember, those were the days before the internet, and one person could share a song with millions of people, not just a few friends with a cassette mix tape.
-zridling
That is an excellent point, sir. Perhaps it's the internet they fear most.
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Maybe I'm adrift but I'm sure I recall fuss and commotion about recording to open-reel tape, and later cassette, well before 1980. Apple was started in '67 and the mystical anti-recording signal stuff came almost at once, if I recall it right.
-cranioscopical
I wonder if this was another one of Magic Alex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Alex)' "brainwaves"?
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This sounds wacky, but imagine if the porn industry had taken the same tack as the music companies toward online file sharing, bittorrent, usenet, etc. The music industry's only idea is to sue, which doesn't stop copying, and costs you and your artists a fortune. (Ask Apple how much money there is to be made with cheap music — billions!) Instead, the porn industry has always been on the cutting edge of web tech, adopting and assimilating everything.
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This sounds wacky
No pun intended?
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This sounds wacky, but imagine if the porn industry had taken the same tack as the music companies toward online file sharing, bittorrent, usenet, etc. The music industry's only idea is to sue, which doesn't stop copying, and costs you and your artists a fortune. (Ask Apple how much money there is to be made with cheap music — billions!) Instead, the porn industry has always been on the cutting edge of web tech, adopting and assimilating everything.
-zridling
True. But... I wonder if that comparison holds all the way down though. Ahem.
One would of course have to consider porn as a specific depicted content (a certain type of music/video, having a particular signified and referent), rather than a specific medium-form-code (and the pornography categorization is of course conditioned by the socio-cultural context). So a better comparison to start with would be : pornographic music industry (never heard a piece…) —> children song music industry. Otherwise the logic would a bit… skewed.
In other words, to be fairer, you'd have to compare "pornographic videos" too some other kind of videos and ask at least two questions : why do “pornographic music" (or… sonic porn?) succeeds where other types of "musics" fail ? Or, more likely, why do " pornographic video " succeeds where other types of video content... fail ? Which marketing strategies are transferable to other types of music/videos,… Considering the specific psychophysical, psychosexual, socio-cultural, etc. arousing mechanisms inherent to the experience of pornography. (Sorry, this is bad English… am doing my best while I’m eating my sandwich — hey, because of you Darwin, everything I say now sounds like crude puns)
Anyway, in yet other words, there are some lessons to be learned from the porn industry, maybe, but one also has to take into account the specific experience of interpreting pornographic content, which powerfully takes advantage of certain structures and tendencies of man's biology and psychology... to put it simplistically.
I have no idea if I was able to convey my “ideas” here… Don’t worry, I won’t quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn now. Back to my sandwich.
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Isn't the porn industry riddled with piracy? All that stuff has to be coming from someplace, and I can't believe it's all public domain.
Yet it still appears to be a profitable industry, otherwise all the online porn shops would've gone out of business years ago. So maybe the sheer volume of material allows a monumental amount of theft and still delivers profits? Or are porn counter-piracy measures sufficient to keep things under control?
Didn't we have a user here who works in the adult industry? Maybe we can ask him.
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Everyone can produce pr0n these days. IIRC the whole porn industry churns out far more movies every year than Hollywood and such together (although Bollywood produces movies by the bucketful)
Conclusion (after seeing the development of the thread): Vista doesn't suck because is a mean for getting more porn. And we know that with such ends, the means are more than justified ;D
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Didn't we have a user here who works in the adult industry? Maybe we can ask him.
Yeah... you're thinking of EmporerEJ (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=110686), who runs the VirtualSexMachine.com website.
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Maybe I'm adrift but I'm sure I recall fuss and commotion about recording to open-reel tape, and later cassette, well before 1980. Apple was started in '67 and the mystical anti-recording signal stuff came almost at once, if I recall it right.
-cranioscopical
I wonder if this was another one of Magic Alex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Alex)' "brainwaves"?
-Darwin
Probably... from brain to drain with little strain.
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Microsoft needs to do what Apple did when they went from OS9 to OSX:
Ditch the albatross-around-the-neck compatibility and focus on a new platform, period.
It is the ONLY way forward, and Microsoft MUST do this or face EXTINCTION.
It will happen, whether you agree or not.
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Then... the spell starts to break!
But no, it will not happen. It sounds like they want to do it with Windows 7, which sounds pretty hopeful, but Vista sounded like they were going to do something pretty radical, but ended up "Meh. Bother. Whatever".
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Ironically, I can see that axfleming is right. But I am one of the XP camp howling in protest over all of the broken applications that won't run under Vista... :-[
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But maybe you were upset because they said everything would be compatible. Apple got it right when they moved to OSX they said older stuff won't run you'll need to use an OS9 compatible layer. There is no reason why MS can't do that with Windows 7 - all new native apps but with a Windows 2000/XP/Vista compatability layer.
Hang on isn't there a compatability layer in Windows now anyway - yes but it doesn't work well! (Right click on an EXE file and you can set it to run in Windows 98 mode if you want - but don't expect anything much to happen 'cos it never worked well).
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I think you're right, Carol. What's hurt Vista the most is the pre-arrival hype. They should have taken a page from the software gaming industry and downplayed things more... too many halfway decent games were destroyed by reviewers because all the pregame hype made it sound like Jesus was personally writing the thing.
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Hang on isn't there a compatability layer in Windows now anyway - yes but it doesn't work well! (Right click on an EXE file and you can set it to run in Windows 98 mode if you want - but don't expect anything much to happen 'cos it never worked well).
-Carol Haynes
Not really MS's fault though, some of the early 32bit windows applications were very ill behaved, using direct port I/O for keyboard access (shows how some of them were really designed as DOS apps but hack-ported to win32 at the last moment), used the privileged CLI instruction because some misguided "Oh I'm so eleet I can program teh assembl0r!" programmer thought it made his apps faster, etc.
Okay, so it was partly MS's fault for letting 9x being wide open and actually putting in the extra code needed to emulate CLI/STI, and iirc Microsoft were the ones who distributed the game POD (OMFG MMX!), which did port I/O... but still... :)
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POD was a great game btw looked for something similar ever since!