Vista DRM Diatribe (and Cartman does Warcraft)

Only 363 shopping days 'til Xmas! Yes, it's IT Blogwatch, in which Microsoft critics and defenders duke it out over Vista's DRM technology. Not to mention a South Park sendup of World of Warcraft addiction ...

Peter Gutmann takes aim with a 7,000-word analysis of Vista's DRM mechanisms:

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista ...

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Applied Abstractions is appalled:

It seems like Microsoft is trying to close the "analog hole" by using market fiat to require all hardware vendors to downgrade performance unless all devices are certified as DRM-capable. ...

I'll withhold judgement until I hear from people who know hardware design better than me, but this sounds like a major stumbling block for Vista adoption. The underlying market dynamics in the computer market, as Nick Carr recently said it, is that "hardware wants to be software, and software wants to be free." The Vista content protection specs seem to want to reverse that. I don't think it will work, long-term: As Gutmann points out, cheap and single-use hardware devices can be created that circumvent premium content protection quite easily.

Nom du Keyboard, Slashdot, just knew there was something fishy:

I knew there had to be some reason for Vista's 800MB memory footprint. FOR GOD'S SAKE - WTF DOES AN O/S NEED 800MB FOR? Now we know. To screw us over and make everyone buy the latest Intel (and AMD) quad processors for acceptable performance.

This makes XP seem positively desirable, meaning MS will certainly shut down XP product activation soon.

Robotskip, Slashdot, comes to Redmond's defense:

Microsoft is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Microsoft finally fixed a hell of a lot of things in Windows and added a lot of things which were sorely missing and guess what ? Some small group of kids on a website complain about how Microsoft is 'forcing' it down their throat. ...

You know what I'm sick of having rammed down my throat ... ? FOSS. I don't have this silly inherent belief that all software should be free and I'm personally okay for paying for software someone like me worked hard to create. Sure, open source is wonderful (I use a lot of it, daily) but what many anti-Microsoft people want to admit (Or they're just to self-obsessed and ignorant to realise) is that Windows is basically perfectly fine for most consumers.

mmell, Slashdot: It's all about the business users:

Who is the primary adopter of Microsoft Operating Systems? Businesses!

Let me say that again: Businesses!

Most businesses aren't concerned that their employees may not be able to view HD content on their desktop PC's, as that is not what they hire people to do (in general). As long as Microsoft can assert that a desktop machine running Windows Vista will continue to be able to fulfill enterprise business requirements in a stable, reliable way there will be plenty of businesses perfectly ready to plunk down their money to get what Microsoft promises will be "the most stable and secure computing experience to date." ...

Don't like what you see in Vista? Too bad - once it's entrenched in business it'll make inroads in the home ...

Digitaldoom, Slashdot:

To see these old chestnuts dragged out with every new version of Windows. There isn't a single new complaint since Windows95. Most of it unqualified paranoid ranting. Keep notes and you can be amused when all this starts again with Windows Vienna!

dspisak, Slashdot: It's a pack of lies!:

While I think Peter Gutmann is a capable fellow on the tech side I fail to see one piece of actual FACT presented in his paper that purports to support his rashly concluded suppositions.

He doesnt have access to the Vista source code

He doesnt have access into any special insight(s) to the hardware manufacturers

His entire argument is based off of speculation and nothing factually provable

Nothing in his paper actually examines the "cost" of the Vista DRM ...

I know this is Slashdot and all, but seriously people, before you jump on the "Vista BAD!" bandwagon why dont you actually LEARN about your "enemy" instead of reading what others want you to think Vista is like. So far to date I have read a few anti-Vista articles that I have found to be 100% opposite of my own experience with it. Will it be the same way for everyone else? I dont know, but thats is the point, you wont until you actually try the damn thing out and see what happens.

Skippern, via Schneier on Security, gets the last word:

 

Scary

I can see two possible outcomes of this.

1) More people migrate to alternative systems, such as Mac or Linux

2) Prices of old (but not yet replaced) hardware drops like a rock in water.

What does this mean to me? Possibly not much since the only place I use Windows is on my work computers, and with the rate of hardware updates done here, it'll take atleast 10 years before Vista is supported.

Buffer overflow:

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• Valleywag: The tech reporters who flack for Second Life
• Ron Drabkin: The Google API kerfuffle, and what it means for start-ups
• Goeland86, Slashdot: Vista Security The 'Longest Suicide Note in History'?
• Nate Anderson: Goodbye SSL padlock; hello green safety bar
• The 2006 Year in Review for IT Folks

Around Computerworld

• Michael R. Farnum: Practicing "Headlines Security" is not a good idea
• Shark Tank: The magic of the (gadget) season
• Douglas Schweitzer: Maybe Santa could have benefited from a Website security audit!
• C. J. Kelly: The inadequacy of airport security
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Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Novell's Allison is Google's Allison (and the 50 best 'toons, evah)
• Google's list is lacking (and breaking blenders)
• Face finder, or privacy polluter? (and tracking Santa in 3D)
• The iPhone is here! What? Oh crud. (and movie bloopers)
• We are all Time's POTY (and be a perfect SO)
• Microsoft Mix & Mash Meeting Moot? (and Vista plagiarism)
• Apple's iTunes slumps! iTunes grows! Huh? (and IPv4 map)
• Older posts

And finally ... South Park sends up WoW (warning: long and sometimes infantile)

Computerworld's Senior Online Projects Editor and blogger Ian Lamont compiled IT Blogwatch today. Next week, regular Blogwatcher Richi Jennings will return.