> MS to do so, in favor of the DRM technology in Vista? For some reason this
> oppressive DRM technology caused a furor years ago, but nowadays nobody
> remembers it anymore or talks about it. Why has everybody forgotten it?)

Because they've taken to complaining about Vista in general instead? ;-)

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By the way, what *does* Vista offer over XP? Besides DirectX 10, that is.
In other words, why should anyone switch voluntarily?

  From what I have seen, the list of planned but later *dropped* features
is larger than the actual list of new features, compared to XP.

  I can't resist the urge to, once again, admire Apple as opposed to MS.
Each new version of MacOS X has been faster and lighter than previous
versions, and with new useful features. Most MacOS X users *want* to
upgrade to the later version. Usually they don't need to be forced.
(Sure, exceptions *always* exist, but this is my general impression.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   (Btw, am I just being paranoid, or is one of the reasons for MS to so
> quickly stop support for XP that the music and film industry is pressuring
> MS to do so, in favor of the DRM technology in Vista? For some reason this
> oppressive DRM technology caused a furor years ago, but nowadays nobody
> remembers it anymore or talks about it. Why has everybody forgotten it?)

Because nobody buys music online?  I never will, at least.

My entire music collection (now approaching 20 gigs - I never thought 
I'd get this much!) is encoded from CDs.

I'm working on encoding my DVD collection, as well.

And guess what... none of it is infected with DRM!  Eat that, MAFIAA!

...Chambers

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Chambers wrote:

> And guess what... none of it is infected with DRM!  Eat that, MAFIAA!

Give it a few years and it will be illegal to own a digital audio or 
video device that does not enforce MAFIAA DRM policy. Eat that.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:
>   By the way, what *does* Vista offer over XP? Besides DirectX 10, that is.
> In other words, why should anyone switch voluntarily?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Window_Manager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Component
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Color_System

I didn't see mention of them in the wikipedia articles, but there are 
supposed to be great improvements in how Windows utilizes all types of 
memory (RAM, flash drives, and hdds).  Things like using available 
memory to preload your favorite programs, swapping data out to flash 
drives instead of magnetic drives, etc, as well as better memory 
partitioning and protection (OK, that parts in the "Security and safety" 
above).

>   From what I have seen, the list of planned but later *dropped* features
> is larger than the actual list of new features, compared to XP.

That's true of any software project, isn't it?  But realistically, you 
can't offer everything to everyone.

Besides which, some of the features just weren't good ideas.  I mean, 
making the entire file system a relational database?  IIRC, they didn't 
drop that one because of implementation problems, but because in 
practice it sucked.

>   I can't resist the urge to, once again, admire Apple as opposed to MS.
> Each new version of MacOS X has been faster and lighter than previous
> versions, and with new useful features. Most MacOS X users *want* to
> upgrade to the later version. Usually they don't need to be forced.
> (Sure, exceptions *always* exist, but this is my general impression.)

I recently had the opportunity to turn a white box PC into a Hackintosh, 
and the results were less than astounding.

OK, I can understand things not working quite right since it wasn't 
actually a Mac (though the main components were the same ones that Apple 
uses, CPU, GPU, etc).  But honestly, working with the OS itself... 
maybe I'm just at the point where I'm OS agnostic, and don't care what 
system the computer runs, as long as it does what I want it to do. 
After using it for a while on the white box, Mac OS X failed to impress me.

What *does* impress me is the rabid fervor of its fans.

...Chambers

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Invisible wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
> 
>> And guess what... none of it is infected with DRM!  Eat that, MAFIAA!
> 
> Give it a few years and it will be illegal to own a digital audio or 
> video device that does not enforce MAFIAA DRM policy. Eat that.
> 

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...

...Chambers

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And lo on Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:01 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Chambers wrote:
>
>> And guess what... none of it is infected with DRM!  Eat that, MAFIAA!
>
> Give it a few years and it will be illegal to own a digital audio or  
> video device that does not enforce MAFIAA DRM policy. Eat that.

Nah DRM will just become defacto on mainstream devices and they won't play  
any non-DRM content; and those devices that do play non-DRM conteny won't  
be authorised to play DRM content. If any of the anti-DRM's protest  
they'll just be called pirates.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Chambers wrote:
> I didn't see mention of them in the wikipedia articles, 

Yeah. In general, there's a whole bunch of stuff that end-users rarely 
see. The whole protection bit, the whole secure-desktop-communication 
bit. Stuff like System Restore in XP, and other stuff that programs can 
use but which end-users don't really see (like transactional file 
systems) keep showing up.

There's really only so much an OS can do for a user. You can make the 
apps better, and Apple "improves" the OS by making better apps to come 
with it. If MS did that, people would start suing them for monopoly 
practices again.

So there's a number of things that either lead to better performance 
(like the memory management) or to easier programming, but not a whole 
lot you can do that the user is going to see vividly.

Of course, if it doesn't work, it's going to suck regardless of what 
it's *supposed* to do.

> making the entire file system a relational database?  IIRC, they didn't 
> drop that one because of implementation problems, but because in 
> practice it sucked.

Actually, it worked quite well for some systems. Like PR1ME, a business 
mainframe. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

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"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote in message
news:486a4450@news.povray.org...

> Besides which, some of the features just weren't good ideas.  I mean,
> making the entire file system a relational database?  IIRC, they didn't
> drop that one because of implementation problems, but because in
> practice it sucked.

From what I heard from one of the devs some time back, was that WinFS was
dropped because the feature set they were given was too ambitious. Instead
of starting small and building on that, the project was scoped to do
everything at once. It was taking too long and producing too little and got
scrapped.

It was more a failure of management than of technology.

Wasn't a complete loss. Several of the senior devs got folded into the SQL
Server dev team and contributed to enhancements of the SQL storage engine,
including the FileStream feature.

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In article <op.udmbx0ogc3xi7v@news.povray.org>, 
phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk says...
> And lo on Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:01 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did 
 
> spake, saying:
> 
> > Chambers wrote:
> >
> >> And guess what... none of it is infected with DRM!  Eat that, MAFIAA!
> >
> > Give it a few years and it will be illegal to own a digital audio or 
 
> > video device that does not enforce MAFIAA DRM policy. Eat that.
> 
> Nah DRM will just become defacto on mainstream devices and they won't pla
y  
> any non-DRM content; and those devices that do play non-DRM conteny won't
  
> be authorised to play DRM content. If any of the anti-DRM's protest  
> they'll just be called pirates.
> 
What? Am I the only one that missed the news reports of "major" 
producers, including I believe Sony, giving up on a lot of the DRM and 
pulling it from products, because it a) pissed off customers, b) didn't 
work anyway, and probably c), in sony's case, got them in serious damn 
trouble when they had something that "could" work, but created worse 
security issues than it solved?

Must have completely imagined this trend, which is why iToons also 
mentioned recently considering (or already) abandoning it. lol

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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