Ask Your Vista Questions Here.

PART,1
Cost analysis of Vista DRM

p2pnet.net News:- DRM = Digital Restrictions Management = Consumer Control and the Vista Content Protection specification, "could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history," believes computer scientist / writer Peter Gutmann.

Below, he breaks his thoughts down. In detail.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
By Peter Gutmann, last updated 22 December 2006

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 ardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

Executive Summary

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

Introduction

This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of Vista's content protection. The political issues (under the heading of DRM) have been examined in exhaustive detail elsewhere and won't be commented on further, unless it's relevant to the cost analysis. However, one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista's content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that's unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible. This conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows content-protection specs, with manufacturers being given no hard-and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. The documentation is peppered with sentences like:

It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter of the specification and provide additional content-protection features because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect premium content"

This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications, but is dictated by the fact that what the spec is trying to achieve is fundamentally impossible. Readers should keep this requirement to display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the following analysis [Note A].

Disabling of Functionality

Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content. In other words if you've invested a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from a digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content. Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista's content protection, so the same applies to a high-end video setup fed from component video.

Indirect Disabling of Functionality

As well as overt disabling of functionality, there's also covert disabling of functionality. For example PC voice communications rely on automatic echo cancellation (AEC) in order to work. AEC requires feeding back a sample of the audio mix into the echo cancellation subsystem, but with Vista's content protection this isn't permitted any more because this might allow access to premium content. What is permitted is a highly-degraded form of feedback that might possibly still sort-of be enough for some sort of minimal echo cancellation purposes.

The requirement to disable audio and video output plays havoc with standard system operations, because the security policy used is a so-called "system high" policy: The overall sensitivity level is that of the most sensitive data present in the system. So the instant any audio derived from premium content appears on your system, signal degradation and disabling of outputs will occur. What makes this particularly entertaining is the fact that the downgrading/disabling is dynamic, so if the premium-content signal is intermittent or varies (for example music that fades out), various outputs and output quality will fade in and out, or turn on and off, in sync. Normally this behaviour would be a trigger for reinstalling device drivers or even a warranty return of the affected hardware, but in this case it's just a signal that everything is functioning as intended.

Decreased Playback Quality

Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it. This is done through a "constrictor" that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up-scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in quality. So if you're using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high-quality DVI signal on your video card and there's protected content present, the picture you're going to see will be, as the spec puts it, "slightly fuzzy", a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a yard sale. In fact the spec specifically still allows for old VGA analog outputs, but even that's only because disallowing them would upset too many existing owners of analog monitors. In the future even analog VGA output will probably have to be disabled. The only thing that seems to be explicitly allowed is the extremely low-quality TV-out, provided that Macrovision is applied to it.

The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) "fuzzy with less detail".

Amusingly, the Vista content protection docs say that it'll be left to graphics chip manufacturers to differentiate their product based on (deliberately degraded) video quality. This seems a bit like breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.

Beyond the obvious playback-quality implications of deliberately degraded output, this measure can have serious repercussions in applications where high-quality reproduction of content is vital. For example the field of medical imaging either bans outright or strongly frowns on any form of lossy compression because artifacts introduced by the compression process can cause mis-diagnoses and in extreme cases even become life-threatening. Consider a medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer (the CDROM drives installed in workplace PCs inevitably spend most of their working lives playing music or MP3 CDs to drown out workplace noise). If there's any premium content present in there, the image will be subtly altered by Vista's content protection, potentially creating exactly the life-threatening situation that the medical industry has worked so hard to avoid. The scary thing is that there's no easy way around this - Vista will silently modify displayed content under certain (almost impossible-to-predict in advance) situations discernable only to Vista's built-in content-protection subsystem.

Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that's unique to that device type.

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.

Elimination of Unified Drivers

The HFS process has another cost involved with it. Most hardware vendors have (thankfully) moved to unified driver models instead of the plethora of individual drivers that abounded some years ago. Since HFS requires unique identification and handling of not just each device type (for example each graphics chip) but each variant of each device type (for example each stepping of each graphics chip) to handle the situation where a problem is found with one variation of a device, it's no longer possible to create one-size-fits-all drivers for an entire range of devices like the current Catalyst/Detonator/ForceWare drivers. Every little variation of every device type out there must now be individually accommodated in custom code in order for the HFS process to be fully effective.

If a graphics chip is integrated directly into the motherboard and there's no easy access to the device bus then the need for bus encryption (see "Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption" below) is removed. Because the encryption requirement is so onerous, it's quite possible that this means of providing graphics capabilities will suddenly become more popular after the release of Vista. However, this leads to a problem: It's no longer possible to tell if a graphics chip is situated on a plug-in card or attached to the motherboard, since as far as the system is concerned they're both just devices sitting on the AGP/PCIe bus. The solution to this problem is to make the two deliberately incompatible, so that HFS can detect a chip on a plug-in card vs. one on the motherboard. Again, this does nothing more than increase costs and driver complexity.

Further problems occur with audio drivers. To the system, HDMI audio looks like S/PDIF, a deliberate design decision to make handling of drivers easier. In order to provide the ability to disable output, it's necessary to make HDMI codecs deliberately incompatible with S/PDIF codecs, despite the fact that they were specifically designed to appear identical in order to ease driver support and reduce development costs.

Denial-of-Service via Driver Revocation

Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will cease to function (details on this are a bit vague here, presumably some minimum functionality like generic 640x480 VGA support will still be available in order for the system to boot). This means that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all support for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found. Again, details are sketchy, but if it's a device problem then presumably the device turns into a paperweight once it's revoked. If it's an older device for which the vendor isn't interested in rewriting their drivers (and in the fast-moving hardware market most devices enter "legacy" status within a year of two of their replacement models becoming available), all devices of that type worldwide become permanently unusable.

The threat of driver revocation is the ultimate nuclear option, the crack of the commissars' pistols reminding the faithful of their duty [Note B]. The exact details of the hammer that vendors will be hit with is buried in confidential licensing agreements, but I've heard mention of multimillion dollar fines and embargoes on further shipment of devices alongside the driver revocation mentioned above.

Decreased System Reliability

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software drivers) set so-called "tilt bits" if they detect anything unusual. For example if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets set. Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer (for example starting up or plugging in a bus-powered device may cause a small glitch in power supply voltages, or drivers may not quite manage device state as precisely as they think). Previously this was no problem - the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and things will function as normal. In other words small variances in performance are a normal part of system

functioning. Furthermore, the degree of variance can differ widely across systems, with some handling large changes in system parameters and others only small ones. One very obvious way to observe this is what happens when a bunch of PCs get hit by a momentary power outage. Effects will vary from powering down, to various types of crash, to nothing at all, all triggered by exactly the same external event.

With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone. Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack. The effect that this will have on system reliability should require no further explanation.

Content-protection "features" like tilt bits also have worrying denial-of-service (DoS) implications. It's probably a good thing that modern malware is created by programmers with the commercial interests of the phishing and spam industries in mind rather than just creating as much havoc as possible. With the number of easily-accessible grenade pins that Vista's content protection provides, any piece of malware that decides to pull a few of them will cause considerable damage. The homeland security implications of this seem quite serious, since a tiny, easily-hidden piece of malware would be enough to render a machine unusable, while the very nature of Vista's content protection would make it almost impossible to determine why the denial-of-service is occurring. Furthermore, the malware authors, who are taking advantage of "content-protection" features, would be protected by the DMCA against any attempts to reverse-engineer or disable the content-protection "features" that they're abusing.

Even without deliberate abuse by malware, the homeland security implications of an external agent being empowered to turn off your IT infrastructure in response to a content leak discovered in some chipset that you coincidentally happen to be using is a serious concern for potential Vista users. Non-US governments are already nervous enough about using a US-supplied operating system without having this remote DoS capability built into the operating system. And like the medical-image-degradation issue, you won't find out about this until it's too late, turning Vista PCs into ticking time bombs if the revocation functionality is ever employed.

 

PART,2

Cost analysis of Vista DRM

Increased Hardware Costs

Vista includes various requirements for "robustness" in which the content industry, through "hardware robustness rules", dictates design requirements to hardware manufacturers. For example, only certain layouts of a board are allowed in order to make it harder for outsiders to access parts of the board. Possibly for the first time ever, computer design is being dictated not by electronic design rules, physical layout requirements, and thermal issues, but by the wishes of the content industry. Apart from the massive headache that this poses to device manufacturers, it also imposes additional increased costs beyond the ones incurred simply by having to lay out board designs in a suboptimal manner. Video card manufacturers typically produce a one-size-fits-all design (often a minimally-altered copy of the chipset vendor's reference design), and then populate different classes and price levels of cards in different ways. For example a low-end card will have low-cost, minimal or absent TV-out encoders, DVI circuitry, RAMDACs, and various other add-ons used to differentiate budget from premium video cards. You can see this on the cheaper cards by observing the unpopulated bond pads on circuit boards, and gamers and the like will be familiar with cut-a-trace/resolder-a-resistor sidegrades of video cards. Vista's content-protection requirements eliminate this one-size-fits-all design, banning the use of separate TV-out encoders, DVI circuitry, RAMDACs, and other discretionary add-ons. Everything has to be custom-designed and laid out so that there are no unnecessary accessible signal links on the board. This means that a low-cost card isn't just a high-cost card with components omitted, and conversely a high-cost card isn't just a low-cost card with additional discretionary components added, each one has to be a completely custom design created to ensure that no signal on the board is accessible.

This extends beyond simple board design all the way down to chip design. Instead of adding an external DVI chip, it now has to be integrated into the graphics chip, along with any other functionality normally supplied by an external chip. So instead of varying video card cost based on optional components, the chipset vendor now has to integrate everything into a one-size-fits-all premium-featured graphics chip, even if all the user wants is a budget card for their kids' PC.

Increased Cost due to Requirement to License Unnecessary Third-party IP

Protecting all of this precious premium content requires a lot of additional technology. Unfortunately much of this is owned by third parties and requires additional licensing. For example HDCP for HDMI is owned by Intel, so in order to send a signal over HDMI you have to pay royalties to Intel, even though you could do exactly the same thing for free over DVI. Similarly, since even AES-128 on a modern CPU isn't fast enough to encrypt high-bandwidth content, companies are required to license the Intel-owned Cascaded Cipher, an AES-128-based transform that's designed to offer a generally similar level of security but with less processing overhead.

The need to obtain unnecessary technology licenses extends beyond basic hardware IP. In order to demonstrate their commitment to the cause, Microsoft have recommended as part of their "robustness rules" that vendors license third-party code obfuscation tools to provide virus-like stealth capabilities for their device drivers in order to make it difficult to interfere with their operations or reverse-engineer them. Vendors like Cloakware and Arxan have actually added "robustness solutions" web pages to their sites in anticipation of this lucrative market. This must be a nightmare for device vendors, for whom it's already enough of a task getting fully functional drivers deployed without having to deal with adding stealth-virus-like technology on top of the basic driver functionality.

Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption

In order to prevent tampering with in-system communications, all communication flows have to be encrypted and/or authenticated. For example content to video cards has to be encrypted with AES-128. This requirement for cryptography extends beyond basic content encryption to encompass not just data flowing over various buses but also command and control data flowing between software components. For example communications between user-mode and kernel-mode components are authenticated with OMAC message authentication-code tags, at considerable cost to both ends of the connection.

In order to prevent active attacks, device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware ever 30ms to ensure that everything appears kosher. This means that even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers has to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that... nothing continues to happen. In addition to this polling, further device-specific polling is also done, for example Vista polls video devices on each video frame displayed in order to check that all of the grenade pins (tilt bits) are still as they should be.

On-board graphics create an additional problem in that blocks of precious content will end up stored in system memory, from where they could be paged to disk. In order to avoid this, Vista tags such pages with a special protection bit indicating that they need to be encrypted before being paged out and decrypted again after being paged in. Vista doesn't provide any other pagefile encryption, and will quite happily page banking PINs, credit card details, private, personal data, and other sensitive information, in plaintext. The content-protection requirements make it fairly clear that in Microsoft's eyes a frame of premium content is worth more than (say) a user's medical records or their banking PIN.

In addition to the CPU costs, the desire to render data inaccessible at any level means that video decompression can't be done in the CPU any more, since there isn't sufficient CPU power available to both decompress the video and encrypt the resulting uncompressed data stream to the video card. As a result, much of the decompression has to be integrated into the graphics chip. At a minimum this includes IDCT, MPEG motion compensation, and the Windows Media VC-1 codec. As a corollary to the "Increased Hardware Costs" problem above, this means that you can't ship a low-end graphics chip without video codec support any more.

The inability to perform decoding in software also means that any premium-content compression scheme not supported by the graphics hardware can't be implemented. If things like the Ogg video codec ever eventuate and get used for premium content, they had better be done using something like Windows Media VC-1 or they'll be a non-starter under Vista or Vista-approved hardware. This is particularly troubling for the high-quality digital cinema (D-Cinema) specification, which uses Motion JPEG2000 (MJ2K) because standard MPEG and equivalents don't provide sufficient image quality. Since JPEG2000 uses wavelet-based compression rather than MPEG's DCT-based compression, and wavelet-based compression isn't on the hardware codec list, it's not possible to play back D-Cinema premium content. Because *all* D-Cinema content will (presumably) be premium content, the result is no playback at all until the hardware support appears in PCs at some indeterminate point in the future. Compare this to the situation with MPEG video, where early software codecs like the XingMPEG en/decoder practically created the market for PC video. Today, thanks to Vista's content protection, the opening up of new markets in this manner would be impossible.

The high-end graphics and audio market are dominated entirely by gamers, who will do anything to gain the tiniest bit of extra performance, like buying Bigfoot Networks' $250 "Killer NIC" ethernet card in the hope that it'll help reduce their network latency by a few milliseconds. These are people buying $500-$1000 graphics and sound cards for which one single sale brings the device vendors more than the few cents they get from the video/audio portion of an entire roomful of integrated-graphics-and-sound PCs. I wonder how this market segment will react to knowing that their top-of-the-line hardware is being hamstrung by all of the content-protection "features" that Vista hogties it with?

Unnecessary Device Resource Consumption

As part of the bus-protection scheme, devices are required to implement AES-128 encryption in order to receive content from Vista. This has to be done via a hardware decryption engine on the graphics chip, which would typically be implemented by throwing away a rendering pipeline or two to make room for the AES engine.

Establishing the AES key with the device hardware requires further cryptographic overhead, in this case a 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman key exchange. In programmable devices this can be done (with considerable effort) in the device (for example in programmable shader hardware), or more simply by throwing out a few more rendering pipelines and implementing a public-key-cryptography engine in the freed-up space.

Needless to say, the need to develop, test, and integrate encryption engines into audio/video devices will only add to their cost, as covered in "Increased Hardware Costs" above, and the fact that their losing precious performance in order to accommodate Vista's content protection will make gamers less than happy.

Final Thoughts

"No amount of coordination will be successful unless it's designed with the needs of the customer in mind. Microsoft believes that a good user experience is a requirement for adoption" -- Microsoft.

At the end of all this, the question remains: Why is Microsoft going to this much trouble? Ask most people what they picture when you use the term "premium media player" and they'll respond with "A PVR" or "A DVD player" and not "A Windows PC". So why go to this much effort to try and turn the PC into something that it's not?

In July 2006, Cory Doctorow published an analysis of the anti-competitive nature of Apple's iTunes copy-restriction system ("Apple's Copy Protection Isn't Just Bad For Consumers, It's Bad For Business", Cory Doctorow, Information Week, 31 July 2006). The only reason I can imagine why Microsoft would put its programmers, device vendors, third-party developers, and ultimately its customers, through this much pain is because once this copy protection is entrenched, Microsoft will completely own the distribution channel. In the same way that Apple has managed to acquire a monopolistic lock-in on their music distribution channel (an example being the Motorola ROKR fiasco, which was so crippled by Apple-imposed restrictions that it was dead the moment it appeared), so Microsoft will totally control the premium-content distribution channel. Not only will they be able to lock out any competitors, but because they will then represent the only available distribution channel they'll be able to dictate terms back to the content providers whose needs they are nominally serving in the same way that Apple has already dictated terms back to the music industry: Play by Apple's rules, or we won't carry your content. The result will be a technologically enforced monopoly that makes their current de-facto Windows monopoly seem like a velvet glove in comparison.

Overall, Vista's content-protection functionality seems like an astonishingly short-sighted piece of engineering, concentrating entirely on content protection with no consideration given to the enormous repercussions of the measures employed. It's something like the PC equivalent of the (hastily dropped) proposal mooted in Europe to put RFID tags into high-value banknotes as an anti-counterfeiting measure, completely ignoring the fact that the major users of this technology would end up being criminals who would use it to remotely identify the most lucrative robbery targets.

The worst thing about all of this is that there's no escape. Hardware manufacturers will have to drink the kool-aid (and the reference to mass suicide here is deliberate [Note C]) in order to work with Vista: "There is no requirement to sign the [content-protection] license; but without a certificate, no premium content will be passed to the driver". Of course as a device manufacturer you can choose to opt out, if you don't mind your device only ever being able to display low-quality, fuzzy, blurry video and audio when premium content is present, while your competitors don't have this (artificially-created) problem.

As a user, there is simply no escape. Whether you use Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 95, Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Solaris (on x86), or almost any other OS, Windows content protection will make your hardware more expensive, less reliable, more difficult to program for, more difficult to support, more vulnerable to hostile code, and with more compatibility problems.

Here's an offer to Microsoft: If we, the consumers, promise to never, ever, ever buy a single HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc containing any precious premium content [Note D], will you in exchange withhold this poison from the computer industry? Please?

Acknowledgements

This document was put together with input from various sources, including a number that requested that I keep their contributions anonymous (in some cases I've simplified or rewritten some details to ensure that the original, potentially traceable wording of non-public requirements docs isn't used). Because it wasn't always possible to go back to the sources and verify exact details, it's possible that there may be some inaccuracies present, which I'm sure I'll hear about fairly quickly. No doubt Microsoft (who won't want a view of Vista as being broken by design to take root) will also provide their spin on the details.

In addition to the material present here, I'd be interested in getting further input both from people at Microsoft involved in implementing the content protection measures and from device vendors who are required to implement the hardware and driver software measures. I know from the Microsoft sources that contributed that many of them care deeply about providing the best possible audio/video user experience for Vista users and are quite distressed about having to spend time implementing large amounts of anti-functionality when it's already hard enough to get things running smoothly without the intentional crippling. I'm always open to further input, and will keep all contributions confidential unless you give me permission to repeat something.

If you want to encrypt things, my PGP key is linked from my home page.

Footnotes

Note A: I'll make a prediction at this point that, given that it's trying to do the impossible, the Vista content protection will take less than a day to bypass if the bypass mechanism is something like a driver bug or a simple security hole that applies only to one piece of code (and can therefore be quickly patched), and less than a week to comprehensively bypass in a driver/hardware-independent manner. This doesn't mean it'll be broken the day or week that it appears, but simply that once a sufficiently skilled attacker is motivated to bypass the protection, it'll take them less than a day or a week to do so.

Note B: I see some impressive class-action suits to follow if this revocation mechanism is ever applied. Perhaps Microsoft or the content providers will buy everyone who owns a device that inadvertently leaks content and is then disabled by the revocation process replacement hardware for their system. Some contributors have commented that they can't see the revocation system ever being used because the consumer backlash would be too enormous, but then the legal backlash from not going ahead could be equally extreme. For anyone who's read "Guns of August", the situation seems a bit like pre-WWI Europe with people sitting on step 1 of enormously complex battle plans that can't be backed out of once triggered, no matter how obvious it is that going ahead with them is a bad idea. Driver revocation is a lose/lose situation for Microsoft, they're in for some serious pain whether they do or they don't. Their lawyers must have been asleep when they let themselves get painted into this particular corner.

Note C: The "kool-aid" reference may be slightly unfamiliar to non-US readers, it's a reference to the 1978 Jonestown mass-suicide in which Jim Jones' followers drank Flavor Aid laced with poison in order to demonstrate their dedication to the cause. In popular usage the term "kool-aid" is substituted for Flavor Aid because it has more brand recognition.

Note D: If I do ever want to play back premium content, I'll wait a few years and then buy a $50 Chinese-made set-top player to do it, not a $1000 Windows PC. It's somewhat bizarre that I have to go to Communist China in order to find vendors who actually understand the consumer's needs.

[Gutmann is a computer scientist-cum-photographer based in Auckland, New Zealand. He's particularly interested in security architecture, security usability (or more precisely the lack thereof), and hardware security, and has written widely in those fields. He's discovered assorted flaws in publicly released cryptosystems and protocols. He is the developer of the cryptlib open source software security library and contributed to PGP version 2. He's also known for his analysis of data deletion on electronic memory media, magnetic and otherwise, and devised the Gutmann method for erasing data from a hard drive more or less securely. For more from the Wikipedia, click here. Also check out Gutman's old home page ;]

(Cheers, Peter)
http://p2pnet.net/story/10823?PHPSESSID=f9fa8297a8475bbe209cf077c019e799

 

2 things come to mind afer reading some of your stories on this page ireland :
1) Joe wilcox has had his tongue up billy gates' @sshole so long he's able to tell what bill ate for dinner the night before, so what he says about vista is as trustworthy as a psychopath standing next to a corpse with a bloody knife, swearing he didn't do it...
2) it seems the negative stories and reports are the general tone about vista, which is good, because maybe now microsoft will finally be held accountable for their bullsh*t and antitrust law breaches.

 

Vista Won't End Windows XP Availability


Joe Wilcox
Joe Wilcox

I can't count how many times people have asked me if Windows XP would be available on new PCs following Vista's release.

In the near term, the answer is as much a factor of user demand and OEM and system builder policies. That said, Microsoft will make Windows XP available for from 12 to 24 months after Vista's general availability, depending on the sales channel.

According to Microsoft's Life-Cycle Policy Web site, Windows XP Home, Professional, Tablet PC, Media Center and 64-bit editions will be available in direct OEM and retail licenses for 12 months following the beginning of Windows Vista's general availability, which is scheduled to be Jan. 30, 2007. System builder licenses will be available for another 12--or total 24--months from Vista's general availability, it said.

License availability doesn't necessarily mean operating system availability. I presume Microsoft will get Windows XP off retail shelves as quickly as possible after Vista ships. OEMs are another matter. While I generally like Windows Vista, I agree with some users of the "gold" code who say the operating system feels unfinished, like a work in progress. Some customers choosing to wait may ask OEMs or system builders for Windows XP.

Kevin Bailey, an IT manager from Bowling Green, Ky., said, after experiencing technical support problems following a Windows Vista upgrade, "Microsoft isn't ready for the general release."

As businesses grapple with Windows Vista testing and deployment, and consumers with the hefty price increases (Vista ultimate's suggested retail price is $399, or $259 as an upgrade), Windows XP may yet have some sales longevity left.

Some advice to Microsoft, for the benefit of partners: Why not let OEMs and some system builders provide Vista DVDs without product IDs to consumers and small businesses that purchase Windows XP PCs after January 30? The DVDs would create opportunity for a later upsell opportunity for you and your partners--not just Vista but components like extra memory, too. The whole point of the new Vista DVDs is to make easier in-place upgrades, such as Windows Vista Home Premium to Ultimate. Why not extend that sales opportunity to post-Vista-launch Windows XP sales?
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/cont...xp_availability.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

 

Here's what I know of Windows Vista Ultimate. You can have the option of installing 7 different types of vista. There;s a window change thing when you hold windows button/tab. The gadget sidebar is cool. The voice recognition is good. It is very stable. Has a elegant design. Installation takes half/hour. Almost anoingly great protection. Better search function. Usb drivers and most other drivers work. Almost all programs work and if is a game it will automaticlly adjust the color settings then put it back to normal when done. Over all a better experience. Ultimate rocks. I got it from a friend but his motherboard wasn't compatible with vista so the usb doesn't work. I love it and wen it comes out you should get it. Srry it this stuffs been posted but the post are soooooooo long.

Forgot to mention that this copy I have is genuine final copy RCM, VISTA FINAL. Its in no way a frankinbuild.

 

I say you're an idiot.
If you would have read any of the previous posts properly, you would realise that the fancy looks only hide the monster underneath.
Better protection ? who are you kidding here?
Vista is vulnerable to malware and exploits from 2004, and it still retains errors in the code that where first found in XP, and still microsoft claims this hunk of sh*t was coded from the ground up...

I've said it before, and i'll say it again : all you smacktards who want vista just because it "looks so great, and has such nice functions" should trade in your computers for teething rings.
Anyone that willingly subjects himself to all the DRM and all the "protections" that make microsoft's monopoly position bigger than it already was, and who then comes here asking "why can't i copy my dvd's anymore?" and stuff like that can rest assured that i will ridicule them to no end and i will relentlessly rub in that i warned you dummies about this.

 

21Q
the reason you gloating is ye got vista to work.
i have vista working for months.

soon as the vista program is over i will be wiping the hard drive clean..and will install windows 2000...

even if its free or cracked ,movie studios,vista operating system and microsoft drm own you they could not even get xp-right using 2000 base system !!!!!!!!!!! and they are pushing this crap...

i am informing the world that Vista Beta and final "was one of the worst operating system experiences that I've ever encountered."

 

The worst thing is, who will these morons turn to when their precious new hunk of junk doesn't work ?
That's right, us "nerds" here at Afterdawn.
Tell me, does anyone here feel like even trying to fix the problems that this monster will cause ?

I say the first sign of vista trouble, we should lock the doors of AD, because if we don't, we will be washed down the drain by all the idiots coming here asking for help.

 

soon drd will have a vista board installed..

the reason i was asked to be in the vista program,i was a beta tester for xp-poop crap operating system..

example of a xp-poop problem i seen in the last couple of days....sp-2 files get corrupted..and need repaired..

simple to fix just redownload sp-2 and reinstall..if xp lets you..

 

No fiend, we'll just get all the confused Vista users to pm you with their problems. And I thought I did not suffer idiots kindly! They'll never come back after you have enlightened them. LMAO

 

Garmoon, you do that, and i'll be forced to skin you alive and eat whatever pets, children and other relatives you might have running around there.

 

and The_Fiend sure knows how to take care of children..

 

Fiend, about vista, extremly well said. Hit the nail right on the head.

 

The writing on the wall...

Bristol City Council has dumped Microsoft Office, Corel Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 from 5,000 user desktops as part of a migration to the open source StarOffice 7.

The local authority estimates that the move will save it some £1.4m over the next five years.

The migration was prompted to help meet the government's requirements for improved efficiency in the public sector as set out in the Gershon Review.

According to the council, as well as saving money, the project aims to ensure a more consistent use of software systems across its departments and services where a mixture of products are currently used.

Most of the council's departments will transfer to the new software, although some 1,800 desktops in the city's education service, including schools, will remain on Microsoft Office for the time being.

This is because of the preferential financial terms that Microsoft currently offers for product licences to educational establishments, but has so far not been prepared to extend to other public sector users.

A limited number of other council staff will retain access to Microsoft Office applications where they need to manage the few documents with specific technical features not yet fully supported in StarOffice.

Councillor John Bees, Bristol's executive member for central support services, suggested that the council's decision marks one of the most significant migrations from Microsoft products in the UK.

"This is further evidence that the city council is determined to be as cost effective as it can in the way it works, while neither compromising the quality of its services to the public or the resources available to staff," he said.

"Our IT specialists have spent three years evaluating the options and investigating in detail the technical, financial and cultural issues involved in switching the majority of our desktops to StarOffice. We are convinced that this is the right way forward and will offer benefits all round."

 

@ The Fiend

You'd make a good Cajun, Sha. We'll eat anything, if it's prepared correctly with enough cayenne.

 

I'm not trying to gloat. I'm only saying what I think of it, srry if it came off as gloating. Plus I haven't had any problems with vista. It will ask you for about everything when you do something, I cant even run winrar normally. With the looks I was only saying it looked nice, I know that looks aren't everything. I have had xp have settings crash on me when I shut it off from when button when it freezes and now I have to dell with those. The worst I have had here is the mouse crazy for a second when ever I click continue. AS for malware I haven't gotten any. The source defenitly isn't ground up but its much better than xp.

 

i am informing the world that Vista Beta and final "was one of the worst operating system experiences that I've ever encountered."

IF YE GET AND USE VISTA THAT MEANS YE KISS THE MOVIE STUDIOS MICROSOFT AND MEDIA COMPANY'S ON THE ASS.
IRELAND


Cost analysis of Vista DRM: Part II

p2pnet.net news view:- Microsoft doesn't merely use DRM. To all intents and purposes it is DRM, better known as Digital Rights Management, Digital Restrictions Management or or just plain CRAP for Content Restriction, Annulment, and Protection, as ZDNet's David Berlind called it, eventually deferring to Richard Stallman's Cancellation, Restriction, and Punishment. We call it, simply, CCG, short for Consumer Control Gear.

But whichever way you dress it up, and whichever side of whatever fence you're on, bottom line, it's all about bottom lines. It's about finding ways to use legal systems around the world to force you do what the corporations want you to do, or not do, as the case is increasingly becoming, with applications and packages you mistakenly thought you'd bought and paid for, and usually through the nose.

"This June [2002] Microsoft started talking publicly about 'Palladium,' a system that combines software and hardware controls for 'trusted' computing and which it hopes to have in operation by 2004," we said in an early p2pnet post, going on:

"In Microsoft terms, 'trusted' means total system control for Bill and the Boyz and in fact, Palladium looks a lot like a variation on the 'Broadcast Flag' scheme through which the movie, electronics and record companies want to use purpose-built technology to make sure consumers [you] can't see, hear or use anything not owned, or approved, by them."

The post centred on TC / TCG / LaGrande / NGSCB / Longhorn / Palladium / TCPA, an analysis by Britain's Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. In it, among other things, he says:

For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: TC looks like being the answer to his prayer.

There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are 'born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.

There are some gotchas too. For example, TC can support remote censorship. In its simplest form, applications may be designed to delete pirated music under remote control. For example, if a protected song is extracted from a hacked TC platform and made available on the web as an MP3 file, then TC-compliant media player software may detect it using a watermark, report it, and be instructed remotely to delete it (as well as all other material that came through that platform). This business model, called traitor tracing, has been researched extensively by Microsoft (and others). In general, digital objects created using TC systems remain under the control of their creators, rather than under the control of the person who owns the machine on which they happen to be stored (as at present). So someone who writes a paper that a court decides is defamatory can be compelled to censor it - and the software company that wrote the word processor could be ordered to do the deletion if she refuses. Given such possibilities, we can expect TC to be used to suppress everything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders.

The gotcha for businesses is that your software suppliers can make it much harder for you to switch to their competitors' products. At a simple level, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor. Such blatant lock-in might be prohibited by the competition authorities, but there are subtler lock-in strategies that are much harder to regulate.

Ross also says:

With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. Microsoft says that TC won't make anything suddenly stop working. But a recent software update for Windows Media Player has caused controversy by insisting that users agree to future anti-piracy measures, which may include measures that delete pirated content found on your computer. Also, some programs that give people more control over their PCs, such as VMware and Total Recorder, are not going to work properly under TC. So you may have to use a different player - and if your player will play pirate MP3s, then it may not be authorised to play the new, protected, titles.

Does that look familiar?

The Net should be all about freedom of speech and freedom of choice. And it is, as far as millions of people are concerned. But Microsoft and the others of its ilk view both concepts with horror and are hell bent on making sure you consume, consume, consume only product they make and they sell.

Once upon a time, manufacturers and retailers lived by the credo, The Customer is Ways Right. Not any more. In the digital 21st century, customers are always wrong and have been reduced to mindless 'consumers,' drones with no will of their own who eagerly slurp down whatever the huge multinationals such as Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, AMD, Adobe, and so on, care to dish up. And that's the way the conglomerates and monopolies want to keep it.

Yesterday we ran a special from Peter Gutmann in New Zealand. It features a detailed cost analysis of Microsoft's Vista.

In the executive summary, he says simply:

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

And in the intro ...

... one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista's content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that's unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible. This conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows content-protection specs, with manufacturers being given no hard-and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. The documentation is peppered with sentences like:

It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter of the specification and provide additional content-protection features because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect premium content"

This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications, but is dictated by the fact that what the spec is trying to achieve is fundamentally impossible. Readers should keep this requirement to display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the following analysis ....

Below, in order of appearance, are several clips from p2pnet Readers' Write comment posts.

The underlying problem is that the homeputer has evolved from a device where information is created and shared, to a channel for "content consumption". When it fails to handle the increasing flow of "content", they ask you to buy a new one.

And ...

... maybe MS should add an 11th Law to their list* to avoid confusion. Law #11: If you allow your computer to run Microsoft Vista it is not your Computer anymore. ;-)

And ...

Could someone please define "premium content" for me? Because as far as I know, in all my years of computing since Windows 3.1, I've never ever had any use for this so called "premium content". Personally I think the vast majority of PC users out there don't either. I mean, granted the stuff Apple has been doing with their iPod and music service seems to have become pretty popular over the past several years, but this is about the only thing I can think of that sort of matters to anyone.

Hmm, perhaps "premium content" stands for anything that is afflicted with DRM then? Well if that be the case, then we really shouldn't have anything to worry about. Because as far as I know, most folks avoid the stuff, which is easily done and has been for a very long time now.

Basically all this article amounts to is a rant of theoretics based entirely on something that, on paper anyways, looks a little bit scary. I'd rather wait until Vista has been out for a few months before making any judgments if you don't mind. Until then I'm going to stick with my pirated copy of XP (which I've had since XP first came out in 2001) for as long as I can, thank you very much. Once support is pulled from that, which it inevitably will be some day (how else is M$ going to force everyone to upgrade?), then perhaps I'll consider finally moving to either Vista or Linux. Which ever direction the world has taken I guess, though neither of those would be my first pick if I had any say in the matter. But the reason why I say that is a whole 'nother ball of wax, so TTFN. ;-)

And ...

What is MS planning to do if (or when) Ati and Nvidia refuse to play ball and support all these restrictions. Since this stuff is only needed for allegedly premium content, what real need do their high-end 3d adaptors have for it? Noone buys a 1950XTX/8800GTX just to watch movies on after all. Noone buys an X-Fi to listen to mp3's either.

Unless MS offers to cover all these added development costs, i can see the hardware industry telling MS to re-insert it all back into whichever orifice it came from.

And ...

The information I got from sources at (names-withheld) vendors indicated that this was going to go into their entire product line. Because MS owns most of the market, no vendor can afford to opt out. Refusing to play ball isn't an option. - Peter (author of the article).

And ...

That sucks ass. I'll just use Linux when using XP is not an option anymore.

Also, who cares about this premium content shit? There's anough stuff already released to entertain you 'till you die, many times over. Tons of DVDs I haven't watched, and they can all be ripped, lots of CDs out there, the best music has already been made, current music sucks anyway. CDs can be ripped too. Not now, but eventually the cartels' business model will collapse.

The more restrictions they all put on people, to secure their wallets are fat, the more people become fed up with the model. I feel like getting a couple of rentals right now so that I can rip 'em, not because I need to, not because I want to, but because I can, I am in charge, and I will always make sure I am in charge, no mother fusking corporate assholes are ever going to dictate what to do at home, with my computer. No fusking way.

This is going to backfire on them, Blueray and HD-DVD movies have a nice copy protection mechanism, pretty strong, and if a device becomes compromised, they will just block it; do you think people who bought a brand X model Y high def optical disk player are going to be happy when their devices can no longer play any new releases, or if it becomes a brick after a non disclosed firmware upgrade. These people are going to be pissed. Because I simply don't want to be on that boat, I won't buy a high def optical disc player, therefore I won't rent or buy high def movies. I will get free stuff from my local library though.

Do you want games, there are tons of games out there, many of their copy protections can be bypassed, just don't get any Starforce games (that was really good to know, thanks Jon!). You want older console games, there are thousands of those. I still play pac man once in a while, the ROM of course, either on Windows or Linux, or Mortal Kombat, or Elevator Action, 1942. Etc... The point is there's so much stuff out there that who cares about what the cartels' future plans for content control are. It's not that I encourage people to break the law, just to be a rebel, it's that these guys are thugs, and I don't do business with thugs.

Plus the number of creative stuff, mostly software, some movies and some music, that are being released under more friendly, and non greedy licenses, is incresing very fast. Open source software, creative commons etc...

OK, enough rant.

And ...

That used to be my opinion too. Unfortunately it's far easier said than done. The problem is that Linux can be a huge pain in the ass to get up and running smoothly, so much so that I don't think the average user, whom probably makes up the vast majority of PC users our there, will want to bother despite all the great things that are touted about Linux. I know I've certainly lost a lot of sleep over the problems I've encountered with trying Linux out, and pulled out copious amounts of hair in frustration to match.

Me? Well I'm a more advanced user than your average joe, though I wouldn't call myself hardcore or anything. In fact I'd say I'm pretty close to being an average joe too. I do build my own PC's, do all my own software installs, my own troubleshooting, and so on. Despite for how long I've used some form of Windows or another, there are still vast parts of it that are a complete mystery to me. As much as I would love to switch to Linux and never use a Microsoft product again (and trust me, I would if it wasn't such a huge PITA), it just isn't going to happen. At least not any time soon anyways, with the way things are right now.

Take Ububtu for instance. Easy enough to install, and it even feels similar to Windows. But then you find you need a bunch of drivers, and as we all know, finding up to date bug free drivers is difficult even under the best of circumstances under Windows, where support is supposedly better. With Linux it's an utter nightmare.

A nightmare as well is getting everything installed and running just the way you like, without all the extra junk you don't want. On top of that you have all these gobbledygook config files that you will inevitably be forced to tweak before things will work correctly, if they ever do at all. Despite often having a nice GUI included in most distros, everything still requires command lines, the majority of which only the truest hard core geek could ever understand. Simply put, the switch from Windows to Linux is not something you can do over night. Don't believe me? Ask yourself how long it took you to learn all the ins and outs of Windows and all the apps you use with it.

Ok, so if your will is strong enough to get past all of that, then you now have to track down alternative programs to replace the ones you were used to using in Windows. While it is certainly possible to do so with some effort, you also end up having to learn how they all work as some will most certainly be fairly alien to the average joe. Expect to do a lot of troubleshooting here as well. Maybe I'm just an unlucky fellow, but I've never ever found any bit of technology that just simply worked out of the box the way it's supposed to without having to troubleshoot it first lol. Good luck if you have a lot of applications to replace too. The information overload, provided you can actually find decent information to begin with (I usually end up going in circles), can be enough to make your head explode.

Even if you are still willing to go through everything I've mentioned up until this point, one other obstacle remains. Not every Windows app has a counterpart under Linux (thank goodness for Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, and the like). In some cases there will be but one, and this means you have no choice but to use it. At least in Windows you have a great many applications to choose from, with costs ranging from a small fortune to completely free.

So basically you can choose to have freedom, or have freedom to choose, but you can't have both. This is certainly an area where the ideals of free open source software (a movement that I love, don't get me wrong) tends to hamper matters rather than help them. Sometimes the love to program just isn't incentive enough to create applications, and keep them up to date. Out of everything this may be the biggest problem I have with Linux, in that it is only as strong as the weakest link. That would be the human aspect of it all. I've lost count of how many times a really fantastic app or plug-in has gone down the tubes simply because the author lost interest.

Of all applications, the most notable to me is all those DirectX games, all of which absolutely requires Windows. There is just no getting around that short of giving up on PC gaming altogether. I own a lot of games myself, many of which I haven't even played yet (hard to resist the bargain bin lol).

It's sad, but that is the way it is. There just isn't any escape from Windows. No, I'm afraid that Linux will never ever take the place of Windows. Maybe several years from now, if we're lucky, but definitely not today. So then, what to do now?

Well, like I posted before we should probably just wait and see what really happens. Once Vista is readily available to all and enough folks are using it, then that is when we should be forming a real opinion of it. Freaking out because of assumptions, assumptions that are mostly theory based on what's on paper, doesn't make any sense at all. Reality is what we should be more interested in. Besides, all of this only applies to so called "premium content". I don't think a whole lot of PC users out there care about premium content one way or another. Certainly not the kind of person that visits a place like p2pnet lol. I certainly don't. Since Windows XP has always been more than capable of doing everything we need, "premium content" or no, we should probably just stick with what we already have and what we already know. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And ...

I know Linux used to be kinda crappy for someone coming from the world of Windows, but that was then, and this is now. And now, let me tell you, Fedora 6 and Ubuntu are working REALLY REALLY NICE. It is now trivial to download and install popular packages, and common open-source media players like VLC, mplayer, and Xine support way more formats than Windows Media Player. You can even run internet explorer and most win32 apps in Linux smoothly (I can use IE to watch youtube vids smoothly).

The only thing that Windows has going for it anymore is gaming, and that is taken care of with a dual-boot setup, especially since you don't need to many updates to a WinXP install if you're only using it for gaming. As well, there are just as many console emulators for Linux as there are for Win. I emulate snes/nes/neogeo/turbogfx/coleco/c64/atari/arcade games all the time on my FC6 system. There is also a growing category of open-source games that run in OpenGL, snazzy graphics and everything. I suspect one day Linux could surpass Win in this category as well.

In the end, an OS designed FOR THE USER instead of the corporate media monopoly is going to win, it doesn't matter how big MS is. The open-source movement is growing, and in the end it's going to be more efficient overall for everyone to have a free, well supported, publicly maintained high-quality OS platform. Eventually there will be more programmers putting more hours into open-source projects than Microsoft can keep up with.

If anyone needs some help getting Fedora 6 setup, there's a good tips and tricks page at http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc6-tips.php that has the basic on installed media players and so forth....

Stay tuned.
http://p2pnet.net/story/10827?PHPSESSID=a08cb755bda54a11d314a


i am informing the world that Vista Beta and final "was one of the worst operating system experiences that I've ever encountered."

IF YE GET AND USE VISTA THAT MEANS YE KISS THE MOVIE STUDIOS MICROSOFT AND MEDIA COMPANY'S ON THE ASS.
IRELAND
IRELAND

 

Which boils down to.... OPEN SOURCE.. Make it how you want it!!

Microsh*t's days are numbered.

 

without letting consumers have fair use and personal data archiving of anything data it means the begaining of the end off free thought,once they are able to fully control things they don't like it will only get worse...