Windows Vista sucks

[Netko]

Or you merely are an individual who does not want to run the risk of being locked out of their hardware, having their software remotely uninstalled, or being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM.

Please explain to me the mechanism of "of being locked out of their hardware" (the only one that springs to mind is activation/WGA, which is an antipiracy tool - yes, Vista is much tougher on pirate then earlier, and while I'm not all that enthused about the change, it isn't all that unreasonable), "having their software remotely uninstalled" (seriously wtf? remotely uninstalled? by all means, slow/link the mechanism), and being " being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM." (the media DRM claim was debunked already, please specify what other DRM you are talking about and the way it victimizes the user).

[RThurmont]

two words: driver revocation

[SirNitram]

two words: driver revocation

To expand:

All that is needed to break vast swaths of computers is someone grabbing a cheap-o peice of media-related hardware, crack it, and post he cracked it. This will get back to Microsoft, and they will revoke the Drivers.

Say it's an old, old graphics card, the kind you only see anymore in dumps and corporate enviroments because it's enough to run Excel. I want you to imagine how many of those there are, in corporate enviroments. I want you to picture one morning, the drivers are revoked, and none of those computers display to monitors anymore.

And no one's gonna rewrite the driver for that old peice of junk.

[Zac Naloen]

Or you merely are an individual who does not want to run the risk of being locked out of their hardware, having their software remotely uninstalled, or being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM.

and what are the chances of this happening if everything you have is legal exactly?

[Uraniun235]

Say it's an old, old graphics card, the kind you only see anymore in dumps and corporate enviroments because it's enough to run Excel. I want you to imagine how many of those there are, in corporate enviroments. I want you to picture one morning, the drivers are revoked, and none of those computers display to monitors anymore.

And no one's gonna rewrite the driver for that old peice of junk.

First, computers that old are probably not in service any more in large corporations. Corporate environments (at least, well managed ones) tend to regularly refresh their computer inventory because it is more cost effective to have newer and more reliable hardware than it is to be constantly trying to keep older hardware afloat. (My boss keeps saying that the "industry standard" is a three-year refresh plan, i.e. hardware is replaced after about three years. His last job was in the IT department of a large-ish credit union.)

Second, computers that old are probably not going to run Vista, or at least not be called upon to run Vista; if a company is running old hardware, odds are very good they are also running old software. I know that the USBank branches around here still run their teller stations on Windows 2000.

All that is needed to break vast swaths of computers is someone grabbing a cheap-o peice of media-related hardware, crack it, and post he cracked it.

If you've "cracked the hardware" I'm not sure how rewriting the driver would do much good.

Also can we get some links going into some detail over "driver revocation"?

[Netko]

Lol. Seriously lol. The only thing in that scenario that no longer works is (drumroll please) protected content that now has to go through the constraint token so the picture gets downgraded to about DVD level - and only for that content (that media stream if you want to be technical). You can have another non-DRMed video or a DRMed video with an older revocation list (yes, big bad Microsoft won't zap you over the internet and downgrade your video, you have to buy a disc with the driver on its revocation list) playing in its full glory right next to the downgraded protected crap. This is exactly the type of bullshit FUD thats going around about Vista.

Anyone with a bit of sense would smell the bullshit involved when someone claims something as outrageous and stupid as the idea that Microsoft would suddenly totally disable graphics cards. For fucks sake, on 32 bit Windows and on 64 bit with a little tweaking you don't even have to have a signed driver! In fact, ATI and nVidia usually release their latest drivers as unsigned first! Coincidentlly, that also downgrades protected content - are we noticing a pattern perhaps - hopefully next time content protections standards will not be written by idiotic Hollywood studios.

Ok, so "being locked out of their hardware" is now shot down, I'm still waiting for the oh, so horrible "having their software remotely uninstalled" and " being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM." I would really appreciate if this time the supposed facts weren't pure bullshit.

[Durandal]

512, IIRC, with a 1.66 mhz Core Duo. That such a machine gets frequent slowdowns when using OS X (by far the biggest contributor is Safari) is, to me, an example of why OS X is bloatware.

RAM is cheap. Buy more. It'll be like using a completely different machine if you put another gig or 1.5 GB in there.

And Thurmont, you keep saying that Vista has terrible backwards compatibility.. is this compared to Mac OSX that doesn't even tell you when the software your trying to run isn't designed for that version of OSX it just sorta runs.. and does nothing and doesn't tell you why? For something that is supposed to be easy and intuitive it certainly seems to confuse many IT newbs i've encountered.

What the hell are you talking about? It's the application developer's responsibility to inform the user that the application requires a certain version of OS X and to handle incompatibilities gracefully.

[Zac Naloen]

What the hell are you talking about? It's the application developer's responsibility to inform the user that the application requires a certain version of OS X and to handle incompatibilities gracefully.

Perhaps you should tell that to all the OSX application writers out there who don't.

This happens to people I know who use macs even with commercial software. It says it's loading and then nothing happens, leaving them scratching their heads.

[Durandal]

Perhaps you should tell that to all the OSX application writers out there who don't.

No, perhaps you should. You're the one having the problem.

This happens to people I know who use macs even with commercial software. It says it's loading and then nothing happens, leaving them scratching their heads.

You're not making any sense.

[Zac Naloen]

Perhaps you should tell that to all the OSX application writers out there who don't.

No, perhaps you should. You're the one having the problem.

This happens to people I know who use macs even with commercial software. It says it's loading and then nothing happens, leaving them scratching their heads.

You're not making any sense.

Actually I'm not the one having the problem I don't use macs and I really couldn't care less.


And I'm making perfect sense if you just thought about what I am saying.

Person has mac software they bought two years ago. It's put into applications folder. They double click on the icon, it starts bouncing around in the toolbar and then nothing further happens.

I'm called in to find out why and I check the versions to find that it's designed for Panther. But the software doesn't say "oh sorry, i'm designed for an older version of this operating system" it just doesn't do anything at all. To an IT newb this isn't very helpful.

[SirNitram]

Say it's an old, old graphics card, the kind you only see anymore in dumps and corporate enviroments because it's enough to run Excel. I want you to imagine how many of those there are, in corporate enviroments. I want you to picture one morning, the drivers are revoked, and none of those computers display to monitors anymore.

And no one's gonna rewrite the driver for that old peice of junk.

First, computers that old are probably not in service any more in large corporations. Corporate environments (at least, well managed ones) tend to regularly refresh their computer inventory because it is more cost effective to have newer and more reliable hardware than it is to be constantly trying to keep older hardware afloat. (My boss keeps saying that the "industry standard" is a three-year refresh plan, i.e. hardware is replaced after about three years. His last job was in the IT department of a large-ish credit union.)

Well, this could lead into a long spiel on how many corporations are well-managed, and what percentage of those bother with IT upgrades. Given I was specifically talking about graphics cards and not computers, this is a further aspect of this. You really don't need more than a TNT2 to run Excel.

Second, computers that old are probably not going to run Vista, or at least not be called upon to run Vista; if a company is running old hardware, odds are very good they are also running old software. I know that the USBank branches around here still run their teller stations on Windows 2000.

Again, this comes down to the company, how well managed it is, and whether it's IT section is sane. Given I've not seen many cases of the last, this is still a problem.

All that is needed to break vast swaths of computers is someone grabbing a cheap-o peice of media-related hardware, crack it, and post he cracked it.

If you've "cracked the hardware" I'm not sure how rewriting the driver would do much good.

I'm not sure either. Ask Microsoft; they're the ones that require it. I have no bloody clue, but they have a proper PR response:

What is revocation and where is it used?

Renewal and revocation mechanisms are an important part of providing robust protection for commercial audiovisual content. In the rare event that a revocation is required, Microsoft will work with the affected IHV to ensure that a new driver is made available, ideally in advance of the actual revocation. Revocation only impacts a graphics driver's ability to receive certain commercial audiovisual content; otherwise, the revoked driver will continue to function normally.

Given the track record on these OS' of identifying things correctly.. Yea, I can see problems even if that's 100% accurate.

Also can we get some links going into some detail over "driver revocation"?

Microsoft's own information is here: Link

EFF has some stuff on it, and refers to it as component revocation: Link

One thing that jumps out is that unsigned drivers will no longer work with any form of 'Protected Content'. And if you're crazy enough to think the IP-obsessed industries of the world won't leap on that and make all their media protected content, you're not thinking hard. Unsigned drivers are the norm, because Microsoft's buearacracy is exactly what you'd expect from such a huge company.

The worst part, of course, is nothing to do with revocation(Which, if I trust a company's PR person on technical issues.. Note the dripping irony.. I overstated the threat of), really. It's that it's all completely useless ways to expend more cash and uptime resources for.. What? Mickey Mouse's bottom line. Consider for a moment, Patch Tuesdays. Sensible move. Not even really nasty exploits bump the timetable. But cracking PlaysForSure did bump it. Faster Patch Ever is the actual title. I love the guys at Wired.

[Elessar]

Person has mac software they bought two years ago. It's put into applications folder. They double click on the icon, it starts bouncing around in the toolbar and then nothing further happens.

I'm called in to find out why and I check the versions to find that it's designed for Panther. But the software doesn't say "oh sorry, i'm designed for an older version of this operating system" it just doesn't do anything at all. To an IT newb this isn't very helpful.

So this is your example that OSX has terrible backwards compatibility? One program you have failed to even name, for a (possibly duplicable) bug that is clearly the developer's fault, all the while ignoring features like OSX's Rosetta -- which allows programs that execute on entirely different CPU architectures to run on x86 transparently?

Fucking ridiculous.

[Uraniun235]

Again, this comes down to the company, how well managed it is, and whether it's IT section is sane. Given I've not seen many cases of the last, this is still a problem.

Are you sure it was faulty management on the part of the IT director and not on the budget his bosses gave him? A lot of managers out there try to scrimp and save as much as possible on their IT budgets, to the point of forcing IT departments to start half-assing things in order to meet the needs of the company.

Although, as pointed out, not really important to the matter at hand.

Given I was specifically talking about graphics cards and not computers, this is a further aspect of this. You really don't need more than a TNT2 to run Excel.

I'm not sure what you're getting at as old computer parts aren't going to carry over into new computers, but it's not important anyway.

One thing that jumps out is that unsigned drivers will no longer work with any form of 'Protected Content'. And if you're crazy enough to think the IP-obsessed industries of the world won't leap on that and make all their media protected content, you're not thinking hard. Unsigned drivers are the norm, because Microsoft's buearacracy is exactly what you'd expect from such a huge company.

But if a lot of workers are just using Office, I'm not sure where 'protected content' is going to come into play; I'm pretty sure there's no flag you can set in Excel files to make them require HDCP. Okay, but seriously, unless the workstation is itself involved in multimedia creation/manipulation, I have a hard time believing that suddenly every app is going to require a Protected Environment.

Further, the links you provided show nothing about turning on the computer one day and finding that the video card no longer works; the EFF article only seems to indicate that the Protected Environment cannot be established in the presence of revoked hardware. They won't be able to play protected content on their computers, but again I don't see how music and video playback being broken is going to affect the vast majority of company wage-earners.

I'm not saying there are no companies or positions that couldn't be negatively affected, but I'm still skeptical that the number that would be affected would be hugely significant.

The worst part, of course, is nothing to do with revocation(Which, if I trust a company's PR person on technical issues.. Note the dripping irony.. I overstated the threat of), really. It's that it's all completely useless ways to expend more cash and uptime resources for.. What? Mickey Mouse's bottom line.

The thing is that if the industry doesn't play ball, Hollywood is ready to shrug and simply abandon PC playback. It's happened before with SACD and DVD-A. Microsoft wants people to be able to use their OS as a "media center" and having Hollywood lock them out would be detrimental to that.

[RThurmont]

and what are the chances of this happening if everything you have is legal exactly?

You wouldn't have to be doing anything wrong at all-if a driver company has their driver revoked for some reason, you're going to be stuck with a crippled operating system. Also, Microsoft's track record of false positives with WGA Notifications is not exactly, ahhh, encouraging.

Lol. Seriously lol. The only thing in that scenario that no longer works is (drumroll please) protected content that now has to go through the constraint token so the picture gets downgraded to about DVD level - and only for that content (that media stream if you want to be technical). You can have another non-DRMed video or a DRMed video with an older revocation list (yes, big bad Microsoft won't zap you over the internet and downgrade your video, you have to buy a disc with the driver on its revocation list) playing in its full glory right next to the downgraded protected crap. This is exactly the type of bullshit FUD thats going around about Vista.

Why should users have to deal with that? Seriously? When there are hundreds of free alternatives where you don't have to put up with that garbage? From my perspective, a user would be better off using Syllable, an unstable alpha hobbyist OS, than Vista, an OS that gives a third party the ability to remotely cripple their system. However, fortunately, there are large numbers of mature, stable alternatives as well (of which Linux is certainly the most suitable replacement for the average user).

First, computers that old are probably not in service any more in large corporations

Hahaha. Hahahahahahahaha.

There are corporations that are using computers so old, that Microsoft has developed and marketed an operating system specifically for them, Windows Essentials for Legacy PCs, as the computers are too slow (or lack the storage space) to run Windows XP. Many companies still have to maintain ancient legacy apps such as Access 97, as various executives created databases in Access 97 which have not proven to be portable to later versions (I saw one estimate that Access 97 was the most widely supported legacy app). However, your argument is valid with respect to well managed IT environments, but most IT environments are not that well managed. Anyway, users shouldn't have to discard older hardware arbitrarily when it is still useful, and IMO, a well managed IT department would have a strategy for maximizing utilization of older systems while avoiding dependencies on unsupported legacy proprietary software.

RAM is cheap. Buy more. It'll be like using a completely different machine if you put another gig or 1.5 GB in there.

Dang it man, you said earlier in this thread that OS X should be running just fine on my system. My point is that its not, and Apple's much vaunted speed is a myth. I probably will (reluctantly) buy more RAM, but that's irrelevant.

[Stark]

I've got three Mac laptops of varying age running OSX with 512 or 1024 meg, and it works fine on all of them. Sure, I avoid Safari, but I also never turn the damn laptops off. This includes a PowerPC iBook, an older Intel MacBook and a C2D Intel MacBook. Is it specific apps that give you problems, or OSX functions like search?

[RThurmont]

The problem is that whenever I run Safari, the system slows to a crawl, and IMO, when your default browser does that, that's really annoying.

[Stark]

The problem is that whenever I run Safari, the system slows to a crawl, and IMO, when your default browser does that, that's really annoying.

Ah - explains why I've never had that problem, I've never used Safari for any length of time on a Mac.

[SirNitram]

Again, this comes down to the company, how well managed it is, and whether it's IT section is sane. Given I've not seen many cases of the last, this is still a problem.

Are you sure it was faulty management on the part of the IT director and not on the budget his bosses gave him? A lot of managers out there try to scrimp and save as much as possible on their IT budgets, to the point of forcing IT departments to start half-assing things in order to meet the needs of the company.

Although, as pointed out, not really important to the matter at hand.

I dunno; is it still good management if the next layer is cutting your knees off? But back to the point.

Given I was specifically talking about graphics cards and not computers, this is a further aspect of this. You really don't need more than a TNT2 to run Excel.

I'm not sure what you're getting at as old computer parts aren't going to carry over into new computers, but it's not important anyway.

One thing that jumps out is that unsigned drivers will no longer work with any form of 'Protected Content'. And if you're crazy enough to think the IP-obsessed industries of the world won't leap on that and make all their media protected content, you're not thinking hard. Unsigned drivers are the norm, because Microsoft's buearacracy is exactly what you'd expect from such a huge company.

But if a lot of workers are just using Office, I'm not sure where 'protected content' is going to come into play; I'm pretty sure there's no flag you can set in Excel files to make them require HDCP. Okay, but seriously, unless the workstation is itself involved in multimedia creation/manipulation, I have a hard time believing that suddenly every app is going to require a Protected Environment.

Paranoia. I remember a version of Windows that determined it had scanned your entire partition the first time it encountered the letters 'FAT' together.

Further, the links you provided show nothing about turning on the computer one day and finding that the video card no longer works; the EFF article only seems to indicate that the Protected Environment cannot be established in the presence of revoked hardware. They won't be able to play protected content on their computers, but again I don't see how music and video playback being broken is going to affect the vast majority of company wage-earners.

I'm very skeptical on whether it will be that limited for one reason: It comes from a PR guy. But if it's accurate, then yes, I overblew the threat.

I'm not saying there are no companies or positions that couldn't be negatively affected, but I'm still skeptical that the number that would be affected would be hugely significant.

The worst part, of course, is nothing to do with revocation(Which, if I trust a company's PR person on technical issues.. Note the dripping irony.. I overstated the threat of), really. It's that it's all completely useless ways to expend more cash and uptime resources for.. What? Mickey Mouse's bottom line.

The thing is that if the industry doesn't play ball, Hollywood is ready to shrug and simply abandon PC playback. It's happened before with SACD and DVD-A. Microsoft wants people to be able to use their OS as a "media center" and having Hollywood lock them out would be detrimental to that.

It's flatly retarded to do it, however. Compare the revenue of the two industries to see why. And you know what? Even with endless features installed simply to cripple a Vista computer, it doesn't accomplish shit, as the AACS crack demonstrated.

[Zac Naloen]

Person has mac software they bought two years ago. It's put into applications folder. They double click on the icon, it starts bouncing around in the toolbar and then nothing further happens.

I'm called in to find out why and I check the versions to find that it's designed for Panther. But the software doesn't say "oh sorry, i'm designed for an older version of this operating system" it just doesn't do anything at all. To an IT newb this isn't very helpful.

So this is your example that OSX has terrible backwards compatibility? One program you have failed to even name, for a (possibly duplicable) bug that is clearly the developer's fault, all the while ignoring features like OSX's Rosetta -- which allows programs that execute on entirely different CPU architectures to run on x86 transparently?

Fucking ridiculous.

I couldn't give a shit about Rosetta, I'm describing a problem encountered by at least 3 Mac users I know. All of who'm are IT newbs and haven't got a clue what Rosetta even is. Whether it's the developers fault is irrelavent windows seems to have little difficulty popping up an error message and suggesting to run in compatiblity mode.

Oh and if you want a name. Fucking Iphoto. My girlfriend wanted to use an older version of Iphoto because (in her words) the new version is a piece of shit. It installed, she tried to run it and fuck all happened. No errors, nothing.

[Netko]

I'm very skeptical on whether it will be that limited for one reason: It comes from a PR guy. But if it's accurate, then yes, I overblew the threat.

Your handwaving how they won't be able to just disable the protected content mechanism (which will still display the image at DVD quality levels, just not higher then that) when I had shown in the previous post the exact method (driver being on a disc's revocation list) that absolutely prohibits shutting down of other subsystems. In fact, the driver is at no point shut down, its just that Vista's decoding subsystem for those types of content modifies the media stream coming from the disc (downgrades it) if it cannot establish a protected/trusted environment (which it can't in the presence of a revoked or unsigned driver). I repeat, the driver is never shut down, it never stops working, its facilities for protected content aren't even shut down, its just that Vista doesn't trust them any more.

And as far as protected content goes, this only applies to AACS protected stuff ie Bluray and HDDVD, and possibly new HD WMV files. It absolutely doesn't affect non-HD content. Older media like DVD don't use this stuff but their own protections that are implemented since XP.

Why should users have to deal with that? Seriously? When there are hundreds of free alternatives where you don't have to put up with that garbage? From my perspective, a user would be better off using Syllable, an unstable alpha hobbyist OS, than Vista, an OS that gives a third party the ability to remotely cripple their system. However, fortunately, there are large numbers of mature, stable alternatives as well (of which Linux is certainly the most suitable replacement for the average user).

Quite simply, because they can't play that content on those systems because they don't implement those mechanisms and the retarded Hollywood executives demand them to be able to playback HD content (at least HD content on Bluray and HDDVD). If you don't have and don't want protected content (like say me) then it doesn't matter either way, the new DRM system is inert on Vista and you can play non-protected content or older protected content (oops, on Linux there are legit players on only a couple of distros) just as well as on Linux etc. If you however do want to play it, and there are people that do, right now you can only play that content on computers running Vista, at least legally. I just don't see why the user should be offended at being able to do something that he can't do on other systems. Yes, the hoops you have to jump through to play that content are absolutely retarded (for example, currently there is no graphics card that has the necessary protected output - HDMI - that even allows you to play the files at all without downgrading the stream, however the content companies have decided to not impose the downgrading in non-protected environments until 2011. because of it so people aren't seeing problems) and hopefully the next copy protection system if we must have it will be sane instead of this crap, but it still doesn't negate the fact that you can do something on Vista that you can't on other systems and you are somehow attempting to make it seem like that is a bad thing.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation/evidence of :

- "having their software remotely uninstalled"

-" being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM."

[Netko]

The worst part, of course, is nothing to do with revocation(Which, if I trust a company's PR person on technical issues.. Note the dripping irony.. I overstated the threat of), really. It's that it's all completely useless ways to expend more cash and uptime resources for.. What? Mickey Mouse's bottom line.

The thing is that if the industry doesn't play ball, Hollywood is ready to shrug and simply abandon PC playback. It's happened before with SACD and DVD-A. Microsoft wants people to be able to use their OS as a "media center" and having Hollywood lock them out would be detrimental to that.

It's flatly retarded to do it, however. Compare the revenue of the two industries to see why. And you know what? Even with endless features installed simply to cripple a Vista computer, it doesn't accomplish shit, as the AACS crack demonstrated.

But it would happen again. A more apt example then SACD and DVD-A is CableCard. There, the industry absolutely crippled PC playback by demanding that each model (as in, the assembled PC) with the ability to use CableCard has to be certified by CableLabs.

Yes, its absolutely retarded, however the content industry currently believes that its better to lose PC playback, which they don't consider to be a big market, and depend on standalone players then to lose control over their precious content. If copyright was rolled back to something sane we might start seeing the CE industry get some backbone and tell the content industry to fuck off with those hairbrained schemes, however while they control all the content and have another outlet except PCs (standalones), those idiotic mechanisms will continue to be deployed so that at least some form of legal viewing capability is available (at least on Windows and MacOS).

[RThurmont]

Quite simply, because they can't play that content on those systems because they don't implement those mechanisms and the retarded Hollywood executives ~SNIP~ ke that is a bad thing.

I would rather that Microsoft made no effort to pander to Hollywood, and consumers were unable to play HD DVD and BluRay video discs on their computers, than see the loss of consumer control that Vista introduces. Anyway, who cares about BluRay and HD DVD? It's just another retarded money grabbing attempt by Hollywood to force you to rebuy your entire collection.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation/evidence of :

- "having their software remotely uninstalled"

-" being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM."

If you'd actually bother to read the literature around this, you'll note that there have been some reports of Vista having the ability to remotely uninstall software at Microsoft's dictate (I believe this had to do with Windows Defender, but don't quote me on that, just read Slashdot), and of course, Vista's DRM victimizing people, well, that doesn't even need to be explained.

BTW, why are there so many Vista fanboys leaping to its defense in this thread? Seriously? Vista already has virtually guaranteed 50% marketshare in three or four years time, if not more marketshare, so why are people still springing to its defense? IMO, it's an OS that is quite capable of defending itself, and there is much more reason for people who actually care about computing to advocate alternative platforms at this time.

[Xon]

I believe this had to do with Windows Defender, but don't quote me on that, just read Slashdot

Slashdot is not remotely a crediable source..

Also Windows Defender deletes applications(how it deletes stuff is often better than the uninstaller, but it doesnt uninstall it) which are marked as various types of (potential)malware and if it even does that is whole dependant on the settings. And by default it does not.

[Netko]

Quite simply, because they can't play that content on those systems because they don't implement those mechanisms and the retarded Hollywood executives ~SNIP~ ke that is a bad thing.

I would rather that Microsoft made no effort to pander to Hollywood, and consumers were unable to play HD DVD and BluRay video discs on their computers, than see the loss of consumer control that Vista introduces. Anyway, who cares about BluRay and HD DVD? It's just another retarded money grabbing attempt by Hollywood to force you to rebuy your entire collection.

I agree on what it is, especially with the protections involved which is why I won't support it by buying any movies on those formats (I will buy one or the other, hopefully when combo drives are widely available so that I don't have to worry about compatibility, for backup purposes, once the prices for recorders reach reasonable levels). However, I also realize there are people that might want to buy those formats and those people should have the option of viewing them on the computer. Let the formats fall because they have that idiotic protection and people get a degraded image because one little thing in their video or audio path isn't capable of enforcing the protection or because their driver got revoked or because of another stupid reason why they degrade the image, but not because of ideology and forcing non-playability on PCs.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation/evidence of :

- "having their software remotely uninstalled"

-" being otherwised victimized by Vista's DRM."

If you'd actually bother to read the literature around this, you'll note that there have been some reports of Vista having the ability to remotely uninstall software at Microsoft's dictate (I believe this had to do with Windows Defender, but don't quote me on that, just read Slashdot), and of course, Vista's DRM victimizing people, well, that doesn't even need to be explained.

BTW, why are there so many Vista fanboys leaping to its defense in this thread? Seriously? Vista already has virtually guaranteed 50% marketshare in three or four years time, if not more marketshare, so why are people still springing to its defense? IMO, it's an OS that is quite capable of defending itself, and there is much more reason for people who actually care about computing to advocate alternative platforms at this time.

As has been already explained by Xon, Defender is an anti-malware service and it doesn't delete anything without prior consent. It just flags the software and then presents you with options (deletion, quarantine, don't do anything) - of course, this behavior is modifiable. Yes, it can delete programs against "their will", so to speak, but it isn't done remotely (you have to actively authorize it one way or another) and, so far (and Defender existed in previous incarnations for a few years now) no software has been flagged as something that should be deleted without a good reason (there have been some poweruser tools flagged as possible malware - without a deletion recommendation - because of their potential to be part of a viral payload to establish a zombie computer, but if you are the user who installed them then obviously you installed them and know about it so you can ignore that flagging).

So, now that thats explained, how bout that other victimization?

As for people that care about computing - I personally care a lot about it, infact, I'm currently studying for a B.Sc. degree in computing. As for defending Vista, I'm only defending it when people who bash it get their facts wrong, as you did in this thread. I obviously am not happy about the DRM and think its stupid and pointless and should die die die, however, that doesn't excuse people from telling misinformation and FUD about systems involved (see, this is part of the passion about computing, I like to know how something works, not just an abstract paragraph about its functionality that leads to wild theories about what it can and cannot do). As for alternative platforms, they have their place, however that does not mean Windows doesn't have its place as well and enthusiasts should be platform agnostic - which I feel I am .

I don't post in Linux threads because simply I don't use it that much, not enough to consider myself an expert on it the way I can for Windows, except in a VM for my Uni projects that require it - but I don't consider it an inferior platform for a power user. However, disregarding its 10x more powerful shell/command line (which is why I program my pure C command line tools for Uni on it), it just doesn't offer any real incentives for me to switch. All the big successful OSS projects have Windows ports (I'm typing this from Firefox), and Linux's GUI applications are on par or inferior. There is simply no impetus for me to switch while big bad MS is providing me with its software library for free (as you can see, MSDNAA was a very smart move on MS's part), and because I lack that experience with it I bow out of Linux threads. I will never contradict a Linux advocate while he is using actual facts about his system or Windows - I will however always correct what I know is wrong.

[SirNitram]

And as far as protected content goes, this only applies to AACS protected stuff ie Bluray and HDDVD, and possibly new HD WMV files. It absolutely doesn't affect non-HD content. Older media like DVD don't use this stuff but their own protections that are implemented since XP.

Go read the links to Microsoft's own stuff: This exists independent of definition and media format.

But it would happen again. A more apt example then SACD and DVD-A is CableCard. There, the industry absolutely crippled PC playback by demanding that each model (as in, the assembled PC) with the ability to use CableCard has to be certified by CableLabs.

Did they have Microsoft sign off on it, saying they must comply?

Yes, its absolutely retarded, however the content industry currently believes that its better to lose PC playback, which they don't consider to be a big market, and depend on standalone players then to lose control over their precious content. If copyright was rolled back to something sane we might start seeing the CE industry get some backbone and tell the content industry to fuck off with those hairbrained schemes, however while they control all the content and have another outlet except PCs (standalones), those idiotic mechanisms will continue to be deployed so that at least some form of legal viewing capability is available (at least on Windows and MacOS).

It's all okay because Mickey Mouse doesn't realize IT is many, many times his size? That's the most retarded rebuttal in a while.