There appear(s) to be a whole lot of overhead protecting content, and a
requirement for 'appropriate hardware' to enforce same. An interesting
piece, though not good bedtime reading unless you like to fall asleep
furious, can be found at:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
This is the Gutmann piece the article references.
There is apparently deliberate degradation not only of video 'premium
content', but of audio content as well.
I came away from the article with the impression that it doesn't wake up
the 'Spanish Inquisition' until premium content is accessed, but I could
easily be mistaken. The other question that begs is whether or not it
falls asleep again when you stop touching the content...
Mike Galgano
Dennis Bagley wrote:
For those of you pondering Micro$oft'$ new O/S, Vista, below is an
excerpt from an article by
Michael Geist. This article was also in the January 29, 2007 edition
of the Toronto Star.
The web site I clipped this from is:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1640/159/
Please note the quote from the M$ EULA in the first paragraph below,
second sentence.......
That almost sounds (to me) like no one is allowed to use third
party software in Vista let alone
create something that works "better" than the default "goodies"
that came with Vista.
What do you think?
Dennis
Quote from Michael Geist's article
For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about
who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you
some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other
rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations,
Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical
limitations in the software."
Those technical limitations have proven to be even more controversial
than the legal ones. Last December, Peter Guttman, a computer
scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand released a
paper called "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection."
The paper pieced together the technical fine print behind Vista,
unraveling numerous limitations in the new software seemingly
installed at the direct request of Hollywood interests.
Guttman focused primarily on the restrictions associated with the
ability to playback high-definition content from the next-generation
DVDs such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (referred to as "premium content").
He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of
premium content when played on most computer monitors.
Guttman's research suggests that consumers will pay more for less with
poorer picture quality yet higher costs since Microsoft needed to
obtain licenses from third parties in order to access the technology
that protects premium content (those license fees were presumably
incorporated into Vista's price). Moreover, he calculated that the
technological controls would require considerable consumption of
computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to
ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content.
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