Vista: The world's longest suicide note?

[warmowski]

Peter Gutman, a PhD in New Zealand with a huge, huge background in crypto has finished a eye-popping analysis of Vista's hidden costs.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

Real informative. Before I read this, I thought of Vista as an OS security enhancement that was broken by design. Now I see I was wrong. Vista is a reworking of core OS components to provide copy protection for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content - and THAT is broken by design as well.

Like the idea of your OS deciding if 24-bit audio is okay to use, or if you can use your SPDIF outs? If that's not annoying enough, what about the OS SUDDENLY deciding, in mid session, to shut down those outs or throttle back the bitrate on you?

This is looking like the biggest pile of suck in a very long time.

-r

[dolivas]

DRM is going to totally choke the life out of computers and free flow of ideas. Similar to Vista would be Sony's history of supporting their own dubious, and faulty DRM media like ATRAC, CD root kits etc..

I just think it's a joke they're trying to disable s/pdif or YPbPr connections from the get go to stem piracy. A user should be allowed to make those decisions themselves for media they bought themselves. Having software preinstalled in the first place that even gives you those options is draconian since it's put under the suspicion endusers can't be trusted to do the right thing. If anything what recent debaucles Sony had installing rootkit's and generally mucking up users cpu and being sued should have made Microsoft ease up on their copy protections.

Microsoft though has history of having screwy DRM i.e. their recent escapades touting Zune's flexible content sharing Squirts, 3-day loans of songs to other users but not supporting their own PlaysForSure DRM scheme they have other companies go through when they seek to have mp3/aac players that work correctly with Windows Media Player. A player which compared to other programs like Winamp, iTunes, foobar is pretty archaic and boring.

I have a strong premonition that Vista is going to bite MS in the you know where if they don't ease up on the copy protection. We've already seen it happen recently with PS3 sales really stagnating even during the holiday season because people don't see the benefit of paying more for something that doesn't deliver much of an improvement.

[mikegee]

yikes! i'm not a computer expert, but let me ask you guys; wouldnt it make sense just to keep xp on my pc and not upgrade? or if someone gets a new pc with vista, can they choose to run xp instead of vista? or are their similar issues with xp too?

thnx

[mikegee]

ps

in your opinions, do you think this is going to be another Millenium? ie windows ME? ouch...

[dagosto]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Screw Vista, go with Windows x64.

[warmowski]

I agree that XP x64 looks like it's the best Windows choice for any new hardware. I just have no trigger time on it at all. With luck I will get it running under Bootcamp pretty soon on a new Macbook...

Here's a fairly decent MS article (.doc file) on x64 that spells out the whats and wherefores in plain english:

http://tinyurl.com/yxpxmo

To me, Vista says "stay away" in different ways. The two messages I get loud and clear are: ridiculous hidden resource overhead for DRM, and super-stupid security "fixes".

x64 is a kind of surprising and timely option. I kind of wish I had more time and boxes to get a PC native evaluation install running. Soon enough I hope, one way or the other.

-r

[dagosto]

I'd like to get back to Gutmann seeing as I had some time to read this analysis over the weekend. Here's the link again:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

There is some scary sh%@ in here. The stuff that gets me starts at the section titled "Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support"

The part that really got me was Driver Revocation. Supposedly if the system detects a weakness in a driver that might cause it to become hackable this not only disables that driver on that local system but can send a message to Microsoft who then does the same on all other computers. Couple this with the elimination of unified drivers and you have a particularly horrid problem.

If there is a particular device that is being used to pirate media, not just the device but all the chips inside could have their drivers revoked. This could cause drivers from other, benign peripherals to be shut off just because it uses one of the same chips.

Yikes. Head for the Hills.

[FRETPICK]

Originally Posted by dagosto

I'd like to get back to Gutmann seeing as I had some time to read this analysis over the weekend. Here's the link again:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

There is some scary sh%@ in here. The stuff that gets me starts at the section titled "Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support"

The part that really got me was Driver Revocation. Supposedly if the system detects a weakness in a driver that might cause it to become hackable this not only disables that driver on that local system but can send a message to Microsoft who then does the same on all other computers. Couple this with the elimination of unified drivers and you have a particularly horrid problem.

If there is a particular device that is being used to pirate media, not just the device but all the chips inside could have their drivers revoked. This could cause drivers from other, benign peripherals to be shut off just because it uses one of the same chips.

Yikes. Head for the Hills.

OMG!

[Ben]

Dan, you suggest x64, but is x64 able to use all the XP 32bit drivers? I have a lot of hardware (korg ms-20 controller, tascam us-2400, edirol stuff,...) And I read somewhere that a lot of VST plugins and instuments don't work on x64. Or are they dead wrong? I'd like to hear the disadvantages, if there are any because I am on the verge of building a new PC, and Vista is not welcome (yet?)
Thanks!
Ben

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by Ben

Dan, you suggest x64, but is x64 able to use all the XP 32bit drivers? I have a lot of hardware (korg ms-20 controller, tascam us-2400, edirol stuff,...) And I read somewhere that a lot of VST plugins and instuments don't work on x64. Or are they dead wrong? I'd like to hear the disadvantages, if there are any because I am on the verge of building a new PC, and Vista is not welcome (yet?)
Thanks!
Ben

It would be up to the DAW program or wrapper to handle these issues. XP or Vista will not matter. I know Sonar has "bit-bridge" so my 32-bit plugs will run fine when I update, which will be in a couple of weeks.