Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

You put things in such a negative light. Uncle Bill is just making sure that we have the best possible Windows experience. Surely you can't expect to have your Windows(tm) Experience be guaranteed if every piece of equipment isn't validated with a "Designed for Windows(tm)" sticker? Obviously, this means that your CPU will have to meet Microsoft's rigorous quality standards, but it's also important that your keyboard, mouse, printer, speakers, and, yes, even your monitor, all contribute to optimizing this experience. As an example, I, for one, look forward to the day when my keyboard will no longer let me sully the proud Microsoft name by mistyping it as MicroSoft, and I'd certainly like to see others prevented from typing the phrase "Microsoft sucks". Obviously, any printer or monitor that isn't capable of rendering the Windows(tm) logo in a all its glory shouldn't be allowed to besmirch it with a substandard attempt! All this is possible once every aspect of your computer system falls under the benevolent approval process of Uncle Bill, and I certainly don't begrudge Microsoft the few extra pennies they'll earn for the valuable job they're doing!

This will be circumvented within an hour of the Longhorn release (by which time, of course, most people who care will be using Leopard).

Seems like this would not be an issue if monitors came with the appropriate standards. It's easy to bash MS, but looks like the fault is w/monitor makers . After all, the article said the new DVD formats will have the same security. It has nothing to do with fair use and it's not an MS issue, but a monitor issue. Shame on monitor makers for selling monitors not up to current standards.

It's draconian and not at all in the interests of the consumer. Stop treating legitimate users as criminals.

Sorry, but using this as a reason to not use Longhorn is just ridiculous. The only content that will be restricted is content that takes advantage of the DRM. All your existing content will still work fine. In fact, if you use Mac OSX you won't even have the *option* to use this DRM content since it (as of yet) isn't supported. So with Windows you would be able to use all the DRM content AND all the content that you could watch on OSX or Linux. So what's the big deal? In my eyes it is just making available more content to you.

Microsoft in charge of DRM for the content owners?? They can't even protect their own IP! The Windows Genuine Advantage program is their second attempt to get people to stop making copies of Windows XP...and Windows itself is supposed to stop people from copying Hollywood's IP? C'mon. In less than an hour, you can find and download a "Corporate Edition" of XP from the net and install it without the hassled of online activation. I'm sure hacked versions of Longhorn will allow you to be "lucky" with every digital bit of content you use it to view :)

Please... stop the overreaction. If you read the story, you'll notice that it is not a downgrade of any existing features. Everything that works today will continue to work in longhorn. The only thing that changes is that in the future, if content producers want to restrict people from watching their digital content on non-approved monitors, then they will be able to. You might argue that you see no benefit to this (and of course, for average consumers there are none), but it may allow some companies to release content they wouldn't otherwise release. Kinda like iTunes' DRM allowed the record comanies to release legal music. That said, as a consumer, it's all entirely optional. You don't need that drm enable monitor unless you want to watch drm'd content. It also seems that since virtually none of these monitors exist today, if someone releases content w/ these restrictions, they are limiting their potential audience by quite a bit, so their are market forces agains this scheme.

Comment by James Robertson

Last commenter says:

That said, as a consumer, it's all entirely optional. You don't need that drm enable monitor unless you want to watch drm'd content. It also seems that since virtually none of these monitors exist today, if someone releases content w/ these restrictions, they are limiting their potential audience by quite a bit, so their are market forces agains this scheme.

Just as government agencies tend to classify everything in site out of inertia, I fully expect the RIAA and the MPAA to do the same. At which point, consumers will be screwed over. Thanks for "helping" me though...