We got a ice/snow storm here in St. Louis and since I can't back the car off the driveway I did some reading. The most interesting read of the day was this paper by Perter Gutmann:
[quote]Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium contentâ€
A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
I haven't got through all of it yet but it is interesting, maybe I don't want to deal with vista, It looked like to could be fun to fool around with but hmm. who votes that gfx companies start focusing more on opengl api and linux it up so they can make drivers easier again and we don't have to pay microsoft so much. or we could go the route of sueing microsoft for making an excess amount of hardware not work that should. like people tried to sue nvidia for drivers that weren't ready. I'll keep reading it's interesting.
some tough words but I like them. I noticed a lot of ATI quotes and nothing from any other companies but Microsoft any reason?And as the example above shows, they'll also be able to dictate terms to consumers in order to ensure a continual revenue flow. The result will be a technologically enforced monopoly that makes their current de-facto Windows monopoly seem like a velvet glove in comparison
That does blow.Whether you use Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 95, Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Solaris (on x86), or almost any other OS, Windows content protection will make your hardware more expensive, less reliable, more difficult to program for, more difficult to support, more vulnerable to hostile code, and with more compatibility problems. Because Windows dominates the market and device vendors are unlikely to design and manufacture two different versions of their products, non-Windows users will be paying for Windows Vista content-protection measures in products even if they never run Windows on them.