Windows Vista - worst OS yet?

[snip]

It is rather trivial to counter this remote switch-off capability. Just don't connect it to the internet. Don't update the OS anymore. Get another machine with another OS for this purpose

Rene

Reply to
Rene Tschaggelar
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I think all this DRM stuff is going to cause the PC industry to fork at both the hardware and software level. If I want to build applications for the (as yet nonexistent) integrated home multimedia/TV/gaming platform, I'm going to have to comply with the specifications dictated by Hollywood. On the other hand, if I want to build apps for office/engineering/internet use, why should I maintain an expensive DRM compliance infrastructure?

I think the PC will split into two separate architectures:

One, optimized for entertainment systems, will have all of the DRM hardware built in. But, in order to ensure the security of the protected content, the software API will be restricted to 'authorized' applications developers willing to sign all the NDAs, expose their technology to entertainment industry audits and submit to trusted applications digital signing protocols. Access to the internet must be restricted to trusted services, because anything unknown must be assumed to be hostile to he rights of the protected content on the platform.

The other, optimized for productivity, will be an open system, accessible to all developers. The only filtering or blocking will be against known hostile agents (spyware, spam, etc.) but newly developed apps or protocols will be allowed and assumed to be benign until proven otherwise. The hardware need not have protected data paths with encryption (and the performance penalties that implies) because the content hosted on the system is assumed to be owned (or made available to) the system's users with little or no restriction. Securing users from access to their own content is pointless. Tools and documentation for development on such a platform will be freely available and bear no onerous licensing restrictions. The barriers to entry for software developers on such a system will be much lower than those for the secure platform in terms of both cost and up front licensing requirements. So, for applications that don't require DRM, their cost and time to market will be much lower.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

On a sunny day (Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:31:17 -0800) it happened "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in :

The problem (or non-problem) here is that any system that can store and process 'data' can also be used for multimedia. So one person will crack a copyright protected medium (DVD whatever), and then it will be distributed as 'data'.

The whole idea (Hollywood) to make an 'uncrackable' disk is so daft... but a lot of people see sales opportunity here for snake oil *that is why so many of these crypto systems).

In fact we already _have_ the 2 systems you want, there are DVD players (with firmware and hardware that only allow some disks to play in some resolutions). And there is the PC. The PC is a 'data' machine, and all borders vanish. For example, a normal DVD on ISO9660 file-system as used for say 'video DVD' has a specific directory structure, requires authoring (to make that structure and and features like subtitles and multiple languages, and other unrelated things like buttons and menus). All that extra stuff needs space and .VOB files are broken into pieces of about

1GB (ISO9660 only supports 2GB file sizes, all a big suck system).

But I do not store my movies that way (from digital TV). I store the whole transport stream I recorded from satellite inclusive subtitles, multiple languages, teletext, program information, what not. And then I record that as one stream, as a DVD image. In Linux: growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=thunderball.ts

And playing back can be done in 2 ways, copy disk to harddisk, and then play, or play the image directly: cat /dev/dvd | xine -D -f stdin:/ or copy to harddisk and play like: cp /dev/dvd thunderball.ts mplayer -fs -ao oss:/dev/dsp1 -cache 8192 -vop pp=0x20000 thunderball.ts

The thunderball.ts DVD will not play in standalone players, only on the 'data' PC. But that PC can send it anywhere, copy it any time, etc, only advantages.

So as to your idea; as long as we can store process 'data' we have the edge on any crippled system made by those companies trying to sell snakeoil to Hollywood. That is why 2 systems _can_ exist, but it would make no sense.

In the music case Hollywood has finally seen that, and gone to cheap legal music downloads, like ipod, many sites are available now. The movies will follow for the same reason. You cannot stop technical process, I have predicted 6 years ago that one day ALL Hollywood ever produced would fit on ONE medium, and it would be on everyones bookshelf, and could be copied in a few minutes :-) That clearly is the future were we are heading when we extrapolate storage space over the last

25 years towards the future. That would put the value of a single movie from Hollywood at less then a fraction of a cent. _ONLY NEW PRODUCTIONS_ would add value. Good for creativity.
Reply to
Jan Panteltje

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:31:17 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E." Gave us:

The problem the industry content owners are trying to thwart is high quality A/V content copying and theft, and or even bit-for-bit theft of high quality A/V content.

Keeping a PC from being able to do that in the future will not be easy as processing capacity in both computing and graphics increases.

I like your model, but stifling a PC's capacity to snatch such content is also cutting down on their ability to perform high end 2-D,

3-D, and video routines and rederings.

I think that software that is capable of copying such content is where DRM should be, and in now way should it be some native routine in the OS as it is such a mutative world.

Reply to
MassiveProng

no, it's far better for playing cheap asian discs...

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   Jasen
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Reply to
jasen

[snip]

Not so much 'high quality' theft, but theft in general. Lower quality reproductions are sufficient to support most of the media black market. Witness people sneaking camcorders into theaters or (low quality) audio equipment into concerts. The market segment that is willing to buy inexpensive pirated product but will not buy it unless it is high quality is vanishingly small.

In fact, studios will benefit from the ease of making illicit bit-for-bit copies. Digital watermarks, serial numbers, etc. will be preserved, so copies posted on servers by lazy pirates will be detectable by automated means (web crawlers designed to locate watermarks, for example). Smart pirates will filter such identification out, but interestingly enough, the MPAA's demands that untrusted platforms downconvert playback material helps even the stupid pirates out. Frame grabbing a 480i video signal is trivially easy and will still make a decent 'pirate quality' DVD.

Its not the snatching that will be difficult, as long as the source is available in analog or unencrypted form. So, platforms to support home video processing, or high resolution medical image storage and transmission will still be available. What will happen is that the potential for the DRM modules to kick in if they mistake such inputs for 'pirated content' will drive users to select open platforms for such uses. While newer DRM encryption schemes will refuse to play back on such systems, that's why you'll have a $50 WalMart brand DVD player for your TV set.

But its too easy to strip DRM off of present day DVDs. At this point, the copy software will treat the stripped content just like your home movies. Copying s/w that errs on the side of treating all content as suspect (until the DRM authenticates it) will be far too failure prone for engineering, medical and other professional applications.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

formatting link

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    Boris Mohar
Reply to
Boris Mohar

It's the "Microsoft Bob" of OSs.

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

I agree. It was a knee jerk action without actually checking the source. I promise to be more careful next time. He is one ugly excuse waste of meat.

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    Boris Mohar
Reply to
Boris Mohar

this one:

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there's no hack attempt on that URL, and there wasn't two weeks ago either. you're making shit up.

this one:

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On your reccomendation I checked it out, you certainly seem to be troubled by the truth.

Bye. Jasen

Reply to
jasen

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