I just had my attention called to a disturbing paper on Microsoft Windows Vista. The paper is called "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection." The online version says that it was last updated 23 December 2006.
The paper describes numerous potential problems stemming from Vista's design for handling copy-protected data, like digital video and music. Among these problems are certain increased hardware costs, probable instability of computer systems, and possible worldwide computer shutdowns, performed by malware authors or by Microsoft itself.
That last sounds a little conspiracy-theory-ish, I know.
It won't help to tell you that I do not know anything about the author of the paper, Peter Gutman. Gutman titles himself a "Professional Paranoid" on his home page, which is hosted by the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The U of A's Department of Computer Science home page lists Gutman as one of several "Honorary Researchers."
Rick Downes, whose newsletters I have been reading for years, calls Gutman a "[n]oted technology expert." I know a little about Downes and consider him a highly credible source. It was his site that called my attention to the paper.
Thus, given Downes's referral, Microsoft's history, and finally, the tone and content of Gutman's paper itself, I find nothing that resembles a tinfoil hat anywhere.
The paper is a bit technical, so I am unqualified to assess the merits of some of the bit-level details. From what I do know, nothing sounds wrong. Except, of course, everything that Microsoft seems to be doing. Gutman's analysis is sound and his projections are worthy of serious consideration, in my opinion. I'll leave it there, and let you judge for yourself.
Gutman's paper is at:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
It may help to read Downes's summary first:
4 comments:
The "last frontier" of rights to be controlled, are at my fingertips. You may recall, before the 2000 election, Bush came right out and said he would dismiss Anti-Trust suits against MS were he elected.
We face a seemingly insurmountable juggernaut. The world runs on MS, and that within itself is unhealthy to have that much power concentrated at the hand of so few.
Whether the study you cite is tinfoil hat or not is really immaterial. It's a proven fact, that with each release of a MS OS, the users ability to control his own box has diminished.
And if you add Google's tremendous stranglehold on the web, with MS's stranglehold on software and OS's, you have to be blind not to see serious, profound trouble ahead. Yes, Google and MS are supposedly fighting right now. They are fighting over who controls how much, and that is all.
Our last hope lies with the age old derided hacker. May he and she live forever!!
Good response, TFWY.
Actually, there are a few "last hopes." Hackers are certainly one. I use hacker in the non-MSM sense, of course. Microsoft has yet to demonstrate an ability to successfully lock down an operating system.
The open source movement, a shining example of the kind of hacking I'm talking about, is another hope. If you read Gutman's paper, you know that he elected not to talk much about the political aspects, but it is clear that between the lines, he is saying that the easiest way to avoid the Vista nightmare is to use FLOSS.
The biggest problem will be getting people who don't want to stray away from the familiarity of Windows to put in a little up-front effort. Again, if you read Gutman's paper, you can see that there is no small amount of hope that Microsoft has made so many bad decisions that they may be the biggest force in overcoming this inertia. (Actually, you need only read Gutman's "Executive executive summary" to appreciate this point.) The design of Vista is so totalitarian and is so riddled with obvious bad side effects that people may finally run screaming from Windows. The cost of the operating system itself and the hardware needed to run it will only provide added incentive. Various Linux distributions are getting better all the time in ease of use for non-geeks. Microsoft itself may push the masses to the tipping point.
A second problem also deals with inertia. People are becoming ever more accustomed to having everything connected to, and through, their computers. There's an old cliché involving eggs and baskets which seems especially appropriate here. Gutman paints a highly plausible scenario involving a medical technician analyzing video from a diagnostic procedure while listening to music, both being played on the same computer. Since the CD is likely "premium content," a Vista-run machine will detect this. Part of the Vista design calls for degrading all signals, video and audio, when premium content is present anywhere on the system, to prevent copying. It is to be hoped that not too many medical errors get made before hospital CTOs realize that Vista is inappropriate for critical systems. (Doubtless, we'll first have to suffer through the the suits trying to ban listening to music while working.)
I'd like to see people make a slight change of attitude, so that watching videos and listening to music through their computers is viewed as a nice add-on or a convenience while traveling. I'd like to see them resist the temptation to link all electronic systems in their houses to the point where if one component fails, they all do. Gutman concludes his paper in a tone similar to this, saying that avoiding Vista will be easy, because we'll soon be able to buy a $50 standalone box to handle the decoding of encrypted premium content.
As for Google, TFWY, we continue to disagree about the degree of their evil-doing. I concede that they want to do everything for everyone, and there is certainly a danger in allowing them to pursue this dream too aggressively. But for now, Google offers one of the best counterbalances to Microsoft. It's kind of like the telephone and cable companies: most of us live in places where there is realistically only one choice for dial tone and one choice for TV. But they both want to supply both, so at least we have that modicum of competition, and hence, choice.
If we can play Google off against Microsoft for a little while longer, this gives us time to get Linux to the point where people won't fear it. The example of Firefox is pertinent here. After killing Netscape, Microsoft let Internet Explorer languish for so long that they opened up the door for popular acceptance of another browser. Mozilla reported a while back that they passed the 200 million mark in downloads for Firefox. That's not quite a dethroning of IE, yet. But it's not nothing. Firefox has gone from nothing to about 20% market share in just a couple of years.
oh how i wish i were brave enough to figure out linux and take the plunge!!!! it looks so daunting. but i HATE microsoft! *sigh*
Running Linux these days is quite easy, actually. Surfing the Web and getting email are identical, dealing with Office-y stuff like .DOCs and spreadsheets is straightforward, and there are plenty of games, graphics utilities, etc., etc.
Linux, admittedly, won't play with your iPod quite as easily. Yet. It's also not quite as good if you're hardcore gamer, demanding top-flight 3D graphics performance. But there are plenty of hopes in these areas, as well, and plenty of dedicated people working on improvements.
Best of all, you can try out Linux on your existing PC or Mac without worrying about installing anything on your hard disk. You download and burn a so-called LiveCD, stick the CD in your machine, reboot, and give Linux a test drive. It will run considerably more slowly, since CD access is way slow compared to hard disk access, but at least you'll be able to get a sense of it. You'll also be able to be sure that Linux will recognize all of your hardware, your network, etc. If you like what you see, you can install Linux on your hard disk from the LiveCD, either on a separate partition, a fresh hard disk, or just overwrite your old OS. Or buy a $200 used PC from eBay, and blast Linux onto that (one of my approaches -- works great). Once Linux is installed on a hard disk, it is at least as fast as Windows or Mac OS at running your favorite apps.
I won't go on and on. If you want some more info, ask, either here in the comments or by email. You might also visit, say, Ubuntu's site (this is one of the most popular flavors), for an introduction.
Finally, if you don't have enough bandwidth to download the software to make a LiveCD, Ubuntu will snail mail you a CD for free. Or I will. You have only to ask.
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