Microsoft please die!

Kale · Post by **Kale** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:13 am

Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7

...the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over...

...even after reboot has locked you out of your own Local Settings folder...

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid ... 16/2259257

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:54 am

I'm not too worried, it's going to be hard enough to sell win6.2 so soon after the vista problem with a price tag like it has. If they do things like this then many customers will stay away.

Can't say I'm in a big rush to go to this new OS, it's going to take me another couple of years to get vista working like XP so I can use it.

Cost / benefits analysis on win7 just doesn't add up. Pay a fortune for MS to turn off some of the things that pissed people off in vista.

Win8 will be another cost to turn off this kind of crap in win7 :roll:

IMHO, people only go to vista for the 64bit driver support or because it was preinstalled and they don't have the skills to remove it.

maw · Post by **maw** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:57 am

Oh, come on people! A poorly written story on Slashdot without any references whatsoever and you jump on it?? Please... :roll: :roll:

The fact that you cannot record everything you hear without degradation in the sound quality is indeed there. That's true for Vista also. It's one of the reasons for rewriting the entire DirectSound subsystem for Vista. However, unlike some blabbering moron seems to think, the content player has to request this secure path for it to be active.

As for the problem with accessing your own Local Settings that is just bull.

Windows 7 is very likely to be an even bigger success than XP was. And speaking as one with the responsibility of almost 300 computers at work, we never for a second thought of exchanging XP with Vista, but we have already far reaching plans on upgrading to Windows 7 shortly after it is released. This is something I hear from a lot of other IT-departments.

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:24 am

What I hear from IT departments these days is:

"Budget cutbacks, all projects are on hold till reviewed and only high priority revenue effecting projects will continue"

I haven't heard of anyone looking at vista or win7 at large corporations yet.

Post by **idle** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:28 am

I would agree that Windows 7 may have a chance to finally deliver some benefits though, I'm not entirely convinced yet.

Regardless of what MS does there will always be a work around!
It just may not happen right away.

What I don't like about windows 7 is that it reminds me of having an 800 x 600 resolution, it simply hogs the visual real estate rather than scaling to suit.

Conclusion Ms work in opposition of Moores law, but we all knew that anyway! Personally I don't see any benefit moving to 64 bit OS and even if I did, I know that the only real benefits I'd see would be from games.

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:54 am

you can give eboostr a bigger cache as you have more memory

my BinaryInspector 64bit version can open larger files

I admit though, 64bit is a bigger deal in the server space than client at this stage, memory is cheap though.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 5:23 pm

Anything designed by a committe of fools should be held as suspect and ultimately discarded!!!

Look at the cruddy eurotrash camo design for the US Army BDU uniforms... Or Windows Vista... BOTH have the same level of actual usability!

utopiomania · Post by **utopiomania** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:52 pm

Hah Haah..

good illustration Kale.. My current problem with MS is MS update. Everytime I use my Slooooow Asus eepc, I spend
the first hour or two in freeze-up land because it continuosly downloads biig blobs of updates to correct their crappy software quality.

If I get real tired of this I might pee on it and put it all on youtube.

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:44 am

could be competing disk IO against the OS partition

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 9:26 pm

maw wrote:Windows 7 is very likely to be an even bigger success than XP was. And speaking as one with the responsibility of almost 300 computers at work, we never for a second thought of exchanging XP with Vista, but we have already far reaching plans on upgrading to Windows 7 shortly after it is released. This is something I hear from a lot of other IT-departments.

I personally wouldn't go that far to say that Windows 7 will be more successful than Windows XP was. I would believe that Windows 7 will be a lot more successful than Windows Vista was (or wasn't

).

From an IT perspective, I know the IT department where I work has long ago declared there would be no upgrade to Vista. What if any plans they have for Windows 7, I haven't heard yet.

idle wrote:Personally I don't see any benefit moving to 64 bit OS

At present, there is only one viable reason to go with a 64 bit OS and that is the need to be able to access more than 4 GB of memory space.

BasicGuy · Post by **BasicGuy** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 10:29 pm

Dudes, look under the hood... Win7 IS Vista... the only diff is the eye candy, a few cosmetic changes to the way the GUI is organized and the minor revision number in the OS descriptor. Win7 is the same bunch of crap that Vista was, repackaged and targeted at the HTPC crowd...

UAC is still there, Windows Defender is still there, the same buggy, exploitable .dll files are still there... All the same bloatware junk that has made MS such a famous name is all right there under the wrapping...

Anyone who might think MS would give up the man years of development put into Vista just because of slack sales needs to think again. There has been no new announcement of any "new" OS out of Redmond since Vista. Just because they changed the minor number in the OS version doesn't make in "new and improved" in my book. The MS spin doctors are working overtime to make sure the computing masses are fully brain-washed before W7 goes market. Not only that, but you can bet your bottom dollar, the beta that people are using will be "easily and seamlessly" upgradeable to a full version online... MS wouldn't want you to lose all that wonderful configuring you've been doing would they?

And yes, the DRM issue IS real. Slashdot article or not, the fact that it has surfaced at all, should be a warning. So if you want the OS on YOUR PC to lock you out of YOUR own data on YOUR own hard drive, then step up and buy a copy... I've already experienced this first hand on the beta I've been evaluating... No way ANY OS is going to impede me from getting to ANYTHING on my PC...

I do IT consulting for a lot of clients and the one thing I won't be recommending is Win7...

Cheers!

maw · Post by **maw** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:03 am

BasicGuy wrote:Dudes, look under the hood... Win7 IS Vista... the only diff is the eye candy, a few cosmetic changes to the way the GUI is organized and the minor revision number in the OS descriptor. Win7 is the same bunch of crap that Vista was, repackaged and targeted at the HTPC crowd...

Dude, there is a lot more to Windows 7 than just a little eye candy and GUI changes. Most of the changes are in the kernel and subsystems connected to the kernel. In fact, Windows 7 is everything Vista should have been after 5 years of development.

If you wish to brush up on what has changed under the hood, have a look at the developers blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

UAC is still there, Windows Defender is still there, the same buggy, exploitable .dll files are still there... All the same bloatware junk that has made MS such a famous name is all right there under the wrapping...

Was that the worst you could come up with? UAC has been tweaked so it's not even annoying me anymore. Windows Defender is good enough for most people and certainly better than not running any anti-spyware, even though I personally just disable it. Exploitable .dll files.. And how do you propose they get rid of them? By breaking all backwards compatibility? Yeah, that would sell a lot of copies...

The MS spin doctors are working overtime to make sure the computing masses are fully brain-washed before W7 goes market.

??? In fact, it's the average users who are raving about how wonderful Windows 7 is. And that is what counts. And when even Paul Thurrott is raving about a beta of Windows, then you really can't go wrong.

Not only that, but you can bet your bottom dollar, the beta that people are using will be "easily and seamlessly" upgradeable to a full version online... MS wouldn't want you to lose all that wonderful configuring you've been doing would they?

In fact, it will not. You will need to reinstall. Same goes for the RC soon to be realeased.

And yes, the DRM issue IS real. Slashdot article or not, the fact that it has surfaced at all, should be a warning. So if you want the OS on YOUR PC to lock you out of YOUR own data on YOUR own hard drive, then step up and buy a copy... I've already experienced this first hand on the beta I've been evaluating... No way ANY OS is going to impede me from getting to ANYTHING on my PC...

Sigh.. There is NO DRM that prevents you from accessing your own data on your own PC. Period. If you can't access something then it's because of wrong permissions, nothing else.

I do IT consulting for a lot of clients and the one thing I won't be recommending is Win7...

That's your prerogative of course.

PB · Post by PB » Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:51 am

> how do you propose they get rid of them? By breaking all backwards compatibility?

Backwards compatibility is something that stifles advancement. IMO, there
should be a point where Microsoft just breaks Windows and does it all from
scratch, with new fresh clean code. But, they simply can't, so all versions of
Windows will be forever bloated due to retaining backwards compatibility.
It's both their blessing and their curse. No wonder they're so interested in
virtual machine technology: it wouldn't surprise me if they did what I just
said but throw in a virtual machine on the install DVD to let users run old
apps when required. Hmm. You read it here first.

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:52 am

hmmmmm....
It takes 5-6 years to create vista and 1.5 years to create win7
All the vista drivers work with win7
Look at the version numbers from vista to win7... Win 6.0.6 and Win 6.1.7

@Maw, I think most of the kernel and subsystems connected to the kernel are the same or very similar in these versions.

I'd be surprised if there's anything more than some incremental improvements done to address corporate customer feedback.

Bigger than a service pack I guess but only in that it has the extras that didn't make the vista deadline. An SP and "Plus! (tm)" pack in one perhaps

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:59 pm

1. That article is pure BS.

2. MS has even said in the beta news groups, in official replies from MS, that DRM restrictions in Windows 7 have actually been eased from what they were in Vista.

3. A little known fact; if your hardware does not use DRM the DRM features in either Vista or Win 7 will not even budge. The OS DRM features don't even kick in until the hardware lets it know it it wants a little DRM lovin and then all the OS does is address what the hardware wants just like it does for every piece of hardware DRM or not. Even then, you don't notice anything from the DRM features in Vista or Windows 7 that is anything detrimental, in fact you really don't notice anything at all. I'm sure someone out there would be able to measure something in some way, but lets face it what would be the real world difference between for example 1.00000000001 and 1.00000000002 if the 1.00000000002 represented the effect that any DRM feature in the OS had when you don't see or hear the difference at all and you still get what you were after?

4. I'm not sure what they did at slash dot, but ...this crap:

"Re — Photoshop: That Photoshop stopped functioning after we messed with one of its nag DLLs was not so much a surprise, but what was a surprise: Noting that Win7 allows programs like Photoshop to insert themselves stealthily into your firewall exception list. Further, that the OS allows large software vendors to penetrate your machine. Even further, that that permission is responsible for disabling of a program based on a modified DLL. And then finding that the OS even after reboot has locked you out of your own Local Settings folder; has denied you permission to move or delete the modified DLL; and refuses to allow the replacement of the Local Settings folder after it is unlocked with Unlocker to move it to the Desktop for examination (where it also denies you entry to your own folder). Setting permissions to 'allow everyone' was disabled!

Re — media: Under XP you could select 'Stereo Mix' or similar under audio recording inputs and nicely capture any program then playing. No longer. "

I'm using windows 7, and my Photoshop did not "insert" its self "stealthily" into my firewall exceptions, or at all. And what large vendors are they refering to anyway....??? And in addition i'm still able to capture audio programs and my "inputs" were not "degraded" in anyway by any software and the hardware is fully DRM compliant.

And then there is this part "Re — media: Under XP you could select 'Stereo Mix' or similar under audio recording inputs and nicely capture any program then playing. No longer. "

This guy is comparing XP to Windows 7? Gheesh!!!!...for cripes sake, get with the times. Lets see...my Ford Ranger pickup runs differently then the first Model A Ford did....so this means there is some sort of plot? But anyway....I don't have any problem at all selecting anything nor capturing anything at all. I can get into all folders and i'm not locked out of anything.

It sounds like this guy has butchered up Windows 7 a little too much in trying to figure what makes it tick and just finally got to the point where he simply buggered up a little too much. But you know something, what this really sounds like to me is that he's got a piece of hardware thats not playing nicely and is having problems and is most likely a hard drive issue. I've seen these same symptoms (being locked out of stuff and things like that) with a failing hard drive before. Either that or he did an upgrade install to Windows 7 over a screwed up XP install. The general rule of thumb about MS operating systems is to do a clean install and never an upgrade because you risk inherenting any previous OS issues that were un-resolved with incompatable software and hardware. Oh there are just too many reasons why there is so much wrong with this panic report, and it seems as if someone is just trying to start something and its just a little too "creative" for my taste. This slash dot article is just so much bull shit that i can smell it from here.