Windows Vista .. anyone cares?

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Remember what happened to Keri Russell at the beginning of Mission Impossible 3? Yeah, that's what my head just did. 0_o
 
bear said:
And pardon my vast ignorance, but what is VALVe?
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VALVe is a game shop, primarily known for Half-Life and Half-Life 2. They use a live logon system instead of product activation. You have to be logged on (or have a cached session for offline mode) in order to play the games.

If a product checks itself 'while installing', it needs an Internet connection and does pretty much the same thing it would do after the fact. Consider if Windows needed a live Internet connection to install, instead of prompting you to activate after it's been installed (which would be HORRIBLE for an OS, since the drivers won't even be there half of the time, but you know what I mean :) )

Watch Norton Ghost 10 install ... it's a lot more like Microsoft than it used to be.

Again, DRM is different. That's to allow the system to know you have the right to a particular piece of media, like an MP3 player.
 
So DRM is a media anti-pirating program, that's being ported over to software installation? I think I got that. And TXT(what's that acronym stand for?) is basically the same thing for hardware...I get that. So, basically what it sounds like to me, is Microsoft is trying to make it where you have to buy DRM/TXT friendly software/hardware to run a Vista machine. that about right?
 
Silverlight said:
The CPU stuff is new to the release of the new Intel Core 2 Duos. That's why no one knows much about it
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I have the Core 2 Duo documentation in front of me ... can you give me a clue as to what 'feature' this is so I can find it? I see nothing in here relating to DRM. There is a 'Digital Media Boost' on the Xeon platform, but I'm just not seeing ANYTHING in the IA-32 or Intel 64 architectures to support it, outside of the typical CPUID stuff, but that would be a software-level feature to implement.
 
bear said:
So DRM is a media anti-pirating program, that's being ported over to software installation? I think I got that. And TXT(what's that acronym stand for?) is basically the same thing for hardware...I get that. So, basically what it sounds like to me, is Microsoft is trying to make it where you have to buy DRM/TXT friendly software/hardware to run a Vista machine. that about right?
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That's not quite how I would describe it, but of course I am as fallable as the next person :D

I would break it down like this:

DRM is a software/hardware feature that exists to protect copyrighted media. Like MP3s. It's been around a long time, it just keeps evolving. If you've ever bought something from MSN Music, and tried to play it on another computer without doing anything else, you'd see DRM in action.

WGA is a Microsoft activation technology for Windows. It uses a hash of your hardware to determine if you illegally re-installed the OS on another system. If you re-install on the SAME system, it's not supposed to care. They've promised this will be the case for Vista as well. This doesn't leverage any hardware, it merely uses the hardware to identify the system.

Product Activation is a general term for a software anti-piracy technique. Microsoft Office uses it, Norton uses it, all kinds of people use it. Like WGA, it identifies your computer by it's hardware (usually) and stores that information with the company. If you try to install the software on another computer (or yes, in the case of some products, more than "n" computers), you will have to resolve that with the company.

Take for example my MSDN license. I can install Windows (any version) on 10 different computers, as many times as I want to. If I exceed 10, I'm screwed. So I can put Vista on my desktop AND my laptop using the same product key. If I get a new PC next year, I can install it on that too. It has nothing to do with my hardware itself, just the identification of the system.
 
Just to let ya'll know, this info ain't goin ta waste. I'm jottin it all down in a notebook. Very interesting stuff, this.

The reason I asked about the DRM/TXT friendly software, was Ms. Silverlight, and another person said something about no support. could be that the program just didn't have the drivers at the time. *shrugs* either could be as likely as the other.

Thanks for the crash course in tech djp952, Ms. Silverlight! very enlightening...
 
No worries! and as for you djp, I will ask my friend where he found it and I shall post it here for you. It's pretty freaky stuff!
 
First, free software will one day rule the world. Companies should make their products WORTH the money if they want to sell. Some of the music industry people agree that their products are overpriced, even going so far as to sell products to distributors at lowered prices (which didn't work, since most distributors ignored the request to pass the savings onto the consumers).

Second, DRM SUCKS. Not the purpose, but the actual implementation of it by people like Sony is horrible. You hear all about the horror stories, how Sony's latest DRM opens up a hole in your computer that hackers can (and will) exploit (See Blizzard's Warden being tricked by Sony's highly insecure and exploitable cloaking program. This could happen to your virus scanner.) Either they're dense or they don't care about their consumer's computer security, because they're obviously going to be scaring away customers with these things and driving some of them to downloading "safe" versions of "Sony's" music, if they weren't doing so already.

I support Nintendo's DRM, which doesn't hurt the consumer yet makes it incredibly difficult for people to play ROMs on emulators.

It's really incredible that Sony's hackers can find a way to make a gaping hole in your computer's security but can't make it safe.
 
MightyDingo said:
I am still fighting with XP. I don't even want to know about Vista. I want my '98 back.

I am getting farther and farther away from cutting edge. I used to know computers pretty well, but now I am almost lost.

Didn't Kurt Rambus play for the Lakers? :?
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All this "Tech Talk"... :huh

Anyway, Kurt Rambis played for the Lakers.
 
I think the "Free Software" model will work best when there are paid support options available. At my old job, when we were setting up the Campus Course Management System, there were plenty of open source options available for us, but given the size of the campus and the demands put upon the product, we weren't going to go with anything unless we had a 24/7 response unit to solve some of the nasty issues. Believe you me, we definitely needed it on more than one occasion.

With that kind of model, the geeks can get their free software and run/support it to their heart's content. Those that need it, can still get up and running for free, but have a model of making sure things run smooth for a smart fee.

Now djp952 might never talk to me again <sniff />, but with Vista and all, if I had to do it all over again, and had the money, I'd probably get a Mac with Intel Dual Core and fire up a Virtual Machine running Windows XP/Vista. That way I can do all of the *NIX tweaking I want and still get the apps I want via the virtual machine. I honestly don't play that many games anymore to demand that kind of graphics power or needs.

Please still be my friend djp.... 8^D
 
Macs suck. End of story. Benchmark testing proves that Macs are underpowered pieces of crap and deserve to go die in a hole n.n I know they use Intel chips now, but the class of chips they use is extremely low quality. The only thing that macs have going right is Final Cut Pro. That's all they have that is actually good XD. Put a mac and PC beside each other with the same hardware...watch the PC murder the mac in terms of performance XD Yes I have tried it...yay working at Best Buy! n.n And no, you don't want to run a VM, they are worse than having the old Intel i386 processors...-.- Yay performance hits! -.-
 
Oh, and as Uncle says: ONE MORE THING! Macs have an unoptimized operating system n.n And they are still proprietary for the most part n.n OPEN SOURCE FOREVER! LINUX FTW!~ XD
 
Dillie-O said:
Please still be my friend djp.... 8^D
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Disagreeing with me certainly won't make me dislike you -- LOL! The world would be rather boring if there was nobody to argue with ;)

I've been running Vista RTM (6.0.6000) since Thursday night, and I think it's pretty nice. Way better than the RCs, they commented out the "set_cpu_emulation(80286);" and "consume_2x_ram(TRUE);" lines in the kernel or something. It's running just jim-cracking-dandy on my 3.5 year old P4 3.06Ghz system here. Not quite as fast as XP, but honestly not that far removed. You do need to turn off a bunch of crap, though, but not much more than you usually would in XP.

Let's see ... my XP setup would suck down about 350MB idle (loads of development tools will do that to you), Vista is consuming about 475MB with the same software installed, and the Aero Glass interface enabled.

Office 2007 is pretty nice too. I can't say I love the 'ribbons', but they're not really bothering me either.

Doesn't look like M$ is getting much love from this crowd, but they've always been good to me, I almost never have to pay for anything from them. It's all who you know, I suppose. Each to their own. I'm still going to make RONIN work properly on it :D
 
Nah, I'm not trying to diss Bill, just looking at the variety of options open. I will admit I'm a smidge jealous of the MSDN universal there which does open up some options.

I guess I used to be hard on the OS bashing wars but nowadays, just give me a programming language and something I can read my forums up with and I'm happy. Maybe I'm getting old 8^D

Yeah! djp952 is still my friend! 8^D Whoops, USC game is back from half time. Gotta run!
 
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