Well so far I'm totally unimpressed with the Vista vista, looks way too much like OSX which I dislike with a vengeance.

But that leads to another question pehaps. How is OSX going to be able to comply with all this given it's built on open source code?

Only a small part of OSX is actually open source...

Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.

Yeah - that's scientific...

:-)

Sounds like (no pun intended :O) you're not familiar with Marcel Marceau?

:-)

It didn't get past me - I was commenting on tone.

Part of me was idly wondering why Microsoft is doing this. What's in it for them that it's worth their while to cripple the end user's experience when other systems out there won't be doing that? Isn't it in their best interest to make the user's experience as good as possible?

Oh, right. Microsoft isn't just software. They are a content provider too.

Then the other thing i wonder is how long it will be before some enterprising hackers release a patch or two that shuts off all the protection and lets Vista work with all devices at full quality. Probably not long at all.

Sigh, that was depressing...

I think the problem is that Microsoft is run by committee nowadays.

This prevents straightforward decisions, and you get the 18 different ways to turn off a laptop in Vista (or was it 43?), to pacify the various committee contingents (like the U.N. General Assembly where it seems every decision is watered down until it is generally acceptable and completely meaningless).

Poor Jim Allchin (who headed up Microsoft's XP and Vista development) said it was impossible for him to get anything done the last few years in that environment, and I'm sure he wasn't getting any support from Ballmer who is after all their ueber-bureaucrat.

Previously, Jim could go to Bill to make things happen, but now Bill is too busy with his outside activities.

"Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd."

What the author of the document fails to realise is that the high-resolution content of an SACD disc has never been transmitted via S/P-DIF, the data is DSD and is incompatible. S/P-DIF does not have the bandwidth required, let alone the content protection demanded by the software manufacturers. Stand-alone SACD players only output 44.1kHz PCM on their S/P-DIF interfaces, and then only when playing the disc's CD-DA layer, upon which there is no copy protection (just like any other CD). The only digital interfaces supported are Firewire and certain proprietary solutions, such as Denon Link.

Moreover, there are no PC or MAC consumer SACD drives, so playing the SACD content in a PC is impossible in the first place...

After all that, I didn't read any more of the article, with such a glaring error in the first couple of paragraphs the rest can't really be trusted.

Don't you think that this mere illustration of a content protection problem is unrelated to the facts at the core?

Especially since he generously says at the end, "it's possible that there may be some inaccuracies present, which I'm sure I'll hear about."

The whole situation can really be summarized in one sentence:
To save yourself an immense amount of trouble, stay with Windows XP for the next 1-2 years at least.

(...and even 2 years may be an overly optimistic timespan. Remember XP three years ago, before the last 26870 or so security patches? And that came from a much less complex code base.)

“Windows Vista? And what a vista! All you see as you look around your garden is a 60foot high brick wall” — Crosbie Fitch.

LOL. Too true.

I know there are a lot of people that don't want to move to Vista - myself included. What concerns me is that the software makers will start releasing new software for Vista only. That is the only reason I have XP.

Perhaps, it's a good time for the Vegas devs to start working on a Linux version instead! Please!

vista will catch on & sell like hot cakes... because people will have no choice. Schools will automatically get it with their new PC's. So will businesses. So will home users. Remember ME? It sucked the big one, but everybody still had it because, frankly, what other choice did they have?

However... the other side of the coin is that this could be exactly what the industry needs... a major company to turn it on it's head & then start to fall apart. Mac's use PC hardware now. Every thing's getting pretty much standardized... *NIX OS's (includes OSX) could start to build momentum. This isn't 20, 10, or even 5 years ago when majority of the public was technology illiterate. They're getting smarter & don't want to be told how to run their hardware. They're starting to know how to use it & won't appreciate that being taken away.

:)

All latest versions of these.

vegas, acid, soundforge

fusion

xsi, lightwave

flash, dreamweaver, fireworks

other photoediing stuff, corel draw,

All work without any problems on Win2K pro

We don't even need windows XP, Who cares about vista, it will be a while before you're forced to upgrade.

I wrote about this few weeks ago (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=504767&Replies=1). Since it didn't create any discussion I thought that I had completely misunderstood this.

Unfortunately not.

Actually, I *have* heard Marcel Marceau.

Now that I've read ALL of it, it is indeed kind of depressing and at this stage of the game I don't think there's much hope for it change.

Firstly we're all going to pay for this, whether we use Vista or not. Manufacturers will be implimenting the hardware needed to support this and as they'ce said, the costs will be passed on. They're certainly not going to maintain products that don't work with Vista.

We can say uSoft were forced into this by the studios or we say as the article suggests that uSoft could have told them to go shove it. Well that's all fine and dandy but uSoft doesn't live in a vacuum. I'd be pretty certain they'd be watching their backs thinking what would happen if Apple caved in to the studios demands. uSoft have hitched a large part of their future to the HTPC market and they'd sure like to stay ahead of Apple on this one.

Now the problem is, that Apple or anyone else can't tell the studios to stick it because they'll just say 'fine, we're quite happy, uSoft can have all our business'. The same would have happened if Apple had done the deed first, uSoft would have been forced to go along anyway or suffer the consequences. Might have given them the moral high ground but left their shareholders pretty annoyed.

The only answer would have been for everyone, collectively, to tell the studios they can keep their HD content in the vaults until it rots or the copyright expires. I suspect the studios would have caved in first, the value of those assets is going down pretty quick these days.

Or we could all refuse to buy Vista or any other OS cobbled by this unnecessary burden, it seems we're all being asked to pay to protect someone else's property on the assumption that we're all thieves. What'e even stupider is in the end it's all for nothing anyway, even uSoft know the goal of preventing the theft of the asset is impossible, that's why the specs contain so many subjective terms that mean nothing, just to create the appearance of doing something, an appearance that it would seem we're all going to bear the cost of whether we use XP, OSX or Unix.

Non!

Actually, I *have* heard Marcel Marceau.
I take that to mean that you have also seen him live then, because I don't recall the shuffling of his shoes getting picked up on TV. Seeing him live was certainly an unforgettable experience. We were spellbound allright!

Or did you see Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, where he had the only speaking part?
(His line, "Non", shouldn't have been too hard to memorize.)

Mac's use PC hardware now.
You mean a single Intel CPU makes it "PC hardware"?
Frankly, I think the Mac hardware is a bit ahead of PC hardware in a couple of ways, starting with the 21st century replacement for the 1970s BIOS chips we still have to suffer with in our PCs thanks to Muckrosoft.

Vista was originally going to finally do away with the BIOS, but this was lost when they had to throw out all their OS code and start from scratch again with the 2003 Server code. Back to BIOS.

Mel Brooks? "Silent Movie"? The only "speaking" part was Marcel. Ah, irony. How clever was that - eh?

Let's not forget his speaking role as Professor Ping in Barbarella...

..and because of his excellent English (NOT sign language!), he worked as a liaison officer with General Patton's army during WWII.

What a character!

Coursie? I'm "speechless"!

Gonna redredge my memory for the Fonda movie . ..

Thanks for the article Bjorn.............................................I think?

John