December 25, 2006
Misc.
A few randoms before bed. I get the packing pulled out of my face in the morning. Doesn't that sound fun. I'm thinking I'll be hitting the narcos they gave me again. Cause... damn.
Also: Listen to Hem. I was made aware of them a few years ago, but never actually listened to their music until this morning. Why not until now? Because I wasn't paying attention. Why now? Umm. Because it was on my hard drive.
What follows is just as random but of much less general interest. You have been warned.
Finally: Those of you with a tendency to geek out from time to time should read this. It's a long and detailed analysis of the new content "protection" regime imposed under the forthcoming Windows Vista. Boingboing picked this up on Saturday, and Slashdot is running a story today, but they don't seem to provide a link to the actual document. It's a really fascinating read. In essence, Microsoft is attempting to exert total and final control over every single aspect of your computer. If things don't check out, things get shut down. And from the way it's being described, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing that your average user will not tolerate. Has Microsoft finally written the OS that no one wants?
It seems a foregone conclusion that it has just lost the entire medical imaging community as clients, because it forces the system to downscale image quality, something prohibited in medical practice for obvious reasons. And power-users (read as gamers), who almost entirely dominate the high-end hardware market, do so for precisely the same reasons: attempting to eek the last iota of performance out of their hardware. What do you think will happen when it turns out that their spanking new $800 video card is actually spending a lot of time just making nice with Windows? I mean, Microsoft seems to be introducing a product that early adopters won't adopt because they're early adopters.
And users are probably not going to put up with being forced to upgrade their hardware because Windows has disabled it due to non-compliant drivers. I mean, it's one thing for the system to say "Hey, are you sure you want to install this, because we have no idea whether or not it actually works." It's another thing entirely to say "You may only use the hardware we approve." Apple never dreamed of so draconian a measure of control.
I agree with the author entirely: consumers will not accept this intrusion. The result will be either that the system is immediately compromised or it will simply not take.
