10 11 Reasons Why Vista is a Killer OS

Welcome to 2007, the year Microsoft becomes our Big Brother, telling us what we can and cannot read and watch.

Peter Gutmann of the University of New Zealand has documented ten reasons why Vista kills technological advance. His 7,000-word paper, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, is sourced from Microsoft and ATI documents, including the "Vista Content Protection Specification." The ten reasons Vista will kill your business include:

1. Disabling of Functionality
2. Decreased Playback Quality
3. Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support
4. Elimination of Unified Drivers
5. Denial-of-Service via Driver Revocation
6. Decreased System Reliability
7. Increased Hardware Costs
8. Increased Cost due to Requirement to License Unnecessary Third-party IP
9. Unnecessary CPU Resource Consumption
10. Unnecessary Device Resource Consumption

Microsoft hopes you'll be so distracted by the shiny user inteface that you won't notice it slipping on the handcuffs.

If CAD vendors were to become even more fearful of losing customers to competitors, I could see some of them being desirous of utilizing Vista's DRM [digital rights mismanagement] to go even further in locking up design files. The effort could be spun along the lines of, oh, how about: "Trusted Customers."

IPP [intellectual property protection] is the new god over business, its name is Janus, and Microsoft is the high priest.

Update

Canadian computer manufacturer MDG said that its tests have shown almost 200 older software programs are incompatible with Vista... - "Craplets" cause problems in the bowels of Vista

Comments

[Anthony Frausto-Robledo]

You don't have to go that far. "Trusted Data" is far enough for some CAD vendors, who shall go unnamed, to lock-in customers with fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Anytime you smell FUD you have to step back and begin to question everything.

It's interesting to compare Apple and Microsoft when it comes to lock-in. Apple never goes the FUD route. They argue instead that "we build the whole widget and want to be fully responsible" or "our customers aren't asking for this now" -- as in the case of DRM with iTunes/iPod.

I personally think both arguments are far more grown-up and honest. At least you can verify the latter with 3rd party research. And you can opt out of the former.

Microsoft and others have this dirty habit of using FUD to get you into the same business relationship.

[John Burrill]

I read that article too. it was posted on Google groups (comp.cad.solidworks if I remember correctly)
I forwarded the article to NPR incase they wanted to run with it, but my question is, has anyone seen this stuff at work-installed Solidworks on release-candidate Vista, installed vista drivers, connected an HMDMI device and copied an HDDVD to their hard drives to see what the net effect is?

Yeah, I don't care either. I'm just pissed at the idea of the money coming out of my pocket to help Microsoft grease it's negotiating wheels with the likes of Sony BMG (lousy root-kit dropping bastards)

[dave]

This article is a major source of FUD. Certainly many of it's facts are wrong. If you don't want to opt-in to DRM in order to get access to HD content, then you don't have to.

[ralphg]

Dave:

The article is FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] only if you have a financial interest in seeing Vista succeed.