Windows Vista content protection: a big long suicide note

Damn good thing i am still using Win98SE....

sci.electronics.design.

Heaven forbid! All you need is Linux.

Performers ? They are just the hook onto which such technologies and laws are mounted. There are tons of people involved into this content protection : Engineers, lawers, copyright companies, national copyright agencies. You can be sure the performer still gets just peanuts if at all.

Rene

Plus information on the hardware to run it (or anything) on - which will be missing before we know the way things are going...

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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Chris F.A. Johns> > Jan Panteltje wrote:

sci.electronics.design.

sci.electronics.design.

No; that will *not* solve the problem. The DRM BS is affecting *all* hardware, meaning that if you want to use it in a reasonably effective manner (or maybe even *use* it at all), then the software must be re-written for each and every piece of hardware, and the writer must then purchase a licence and sign non-disclosure agreements to get the encryption and decryption engines etc.

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:55:53 +0000, Robert Baer wrote: ....

Me things it might be good to hang on to those old drives around the house-- we may not like the new drives yet to be released. I might just buy a few cheap DVD drives, IDE drives, before the makers funk with them for Vista; current and older drives should continue to work with linux I should think, right?

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 10:53:37 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote: ..

My posting signature says it all (wake up world, dump Windows, rebel against Microsoft, MS is really pissing me off these days):

If you have walked all these days with closed ears and mind asleep, wake up now! -- Gandalf

What works now should continue to work in the future, unless something breaks or you're using a MICRO$~1 product. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Actually Joel is right on this one. While certainly not all single layer burners can be upgraded, that's not what Joel said. He merely said "many" which is 100% true (note that "many" does not mean "majority" since even 1% of all single layer burners will be in the range of millions). On the other hand, you assertion that "none" can be upgraded is definitely 100% false.

I think you meant to say the "write" head since almost all single layer burners are designed to "read" double layers.

Not "perhaps", it happened. The "few" (in terms of percentage) that were released qualifies as "many" (in terms of total numbers).

This is what Joel said. They would be updatable but the manufacturers decided not to release the update firmware. Instead they merely released the old hardware with new firmware (and maybe some hardware adjustment/improvement) at much higher prices.

Ay, the good folks who produce Geda and friends need to work over the linux installs better. They spent too much time making MS windows install well.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. :-)

In general I think the promise of, "upgradable firmware to protect against obsolescence!" is largely marketing fluff: Occasionally major functionality upgrades do occur, but in general there are just a few bug fixes and minor tweaks added if *anything* happens -- I've owned more than one piece of hardware where there were never any upgrades released.

Starting to get wildly off-topic here:

To a certain extent this is a reflection of our "throwaway" society, and while I can see the long-term problem with that approach, one could also argue that fully expecting to buy a new PC, cell phone, etc. every couple of years does stimulate technological R&D and the economy.

In Penn & Teller's TV show, "Bullshit!" one episode makes the point that a landfill 35 miles square (~80% the size of Rhode Island) by 200 feet deep could contain *all* the trash projected to be generated within the U.S. over the next millenium.

---Joel

Probably (much) worse than that. They are probably made to deliberately be difficult to access - buried amid glued/plastic-welded parts done that way partly to be cheap to assemble, but at least partly (if not, cynically, entirely) to assure that repairing the thing will not be economical. I've certainly seen that approach in computer peripherals that are designed to fail.

Sure, they have to replace a few sets under warranty that would otherwise be repairable, but they don't have to worry about anyone being perfectly happy with their 10 year old TV in the future business model of selling a new TV every 3 years, and keeping the warrantee down to a year or less.

One more reason to blow up the TV (and not replace it).

On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:53:35 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E." Gave us:

Not if one is running MicroSoft Visual Soldering for Windows Vista! Hehehehe.... ;-] These kids today have it made... The little punks!

This is the Usenet. That is to be expected.

I was reading up on the various technologies used for flat panel TV sets. In the description of LCD sets, one of the cons was that the life of the set was governed by the life of the cold cathode lamps. Huh!? I had a 2.5" LCD TV that I managed to 'rescue' by replacing the lamp (they are a couple of bucks ordered online).

So these wizards are telling us to take an otherwise operational TV set (>$1000) and throw it out when what should be a trivial part to replace* burns out??

• No doubt, the lamps aren't in some sort of user accessible lamp holder and would require some (shudder!) soldering.