Engadget: How would you change Vista?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/19/how-would-you-change-windows-vista/


Big deal..another Vista is questionable article.  This one specifically mentions (in article) the obvious - remove wga? lose drm? one version? bla bla

*if you can sence an air of futility in my tone - i guess its inevitable...

this "article" ...that came out today...  is just so C9 2 YEARS AGO

we've all said this ... we've takled, complained, laughed, joked and made cartoons and movies about it

and this is the article that comes out today.

Ive always said - ill never post a "im leaving" post..  (and i wont) but man it gets so hard sometimes.  Can you imagine all the input from us over last 3-almost 4 years? ( * "bah - c9 is just the same regular 100 or so posters")   Yeah ..maybe it is.  But i guess you want us all to give up!

If youre looking for a point to this thread... i dont have one. Obviously.

edit * im actually not in a bad mood either   .. just...so.....frustrated


..where's that all in one Live download... gasp...gasp...must...have...good...press...soooooon...

- i would put in a blue business/lite theme asap (see office)

- i would make c9 user feedback results measurable ( digg style voting - per thread) = tag rating - linked to wiki style list page

- i would get rid of EVERY domain name - but microsoft.com - of which c9 is half the screen

- i would make MS .com have 2 choices - Enterprise/Business customers - Click here and then  Everyone Else = site like apple

- Zune 2 - i would call Xune. all Surface.

*im trying to think of new ideas.. as engadget seems incapable of looking through old ones..

Chinmay007 wrote:

Microsoft needs like an internal eXperimental Computing Facility or Skunkworks full of a bunch of psychotic computer nerds and freedom to whatever they want with expensive equipment.

They do that in Building 7.

Chinmay007 wrote:

Microsoft needs like an internal eXperimental Computing Facility or Skunkworks full of a bunch of psychotic computer nerds and freedom to whatever they want with expensive equipment.

That's MSR.

they had one with adam bosworth=.Net was born

i always had hope for 3 degrees skunkworks - if only for branding / freedom reasons

Chinmay007 wrote:

Microsoft needs like an internal eXperimental Computing Facility or Skunkworks full of a bunch of psychotic computer nerds and freedom to whatever they want with expensive equipment.

What exactly do you think they're doing in all the MSR centers and in the Live Labs?

W3bbo wrote:



Chinmay007 wrote: Microsoft needs like an internal eXperimental Computing Facility or Skunkworks full of a bunch of psychotic computer nerds and freedom to whatever they want with expensive equipment.

That's MSR.

dare i say - no its not... the cool stuff at ms comes out of funded, individual inspired projects

*or at least in every book ive read it did

And jamie, yes, let's all ride the white horse and get rid of that nasty DRM!

Oh... you wanted to watch that DVD? Sorry, no can do.

Engadget wrote:

And besides that impressive Aero GUI -- which many PCs can't take advantage of anyway -- what is Vista really offering us that XP didn't?

Sigh. I'm fed up of answering that question. People don't listen. They hear what they want to hear and agree with their baseless misinformed opinions. They "know" Vista is bad because my friend's friend's uncle's pet installed it once and it crashed, so he's back to using Linux again or something.

People object to WGA and UAC and DRM because they are a visible example of something that techies tend to not like - DRM because it makes their illegal torrenting useless, UAC because it makes their powerusing slightly slower and WGA because it means they have to pay for their software. And if techies are using Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) to object to something in technology, then surely they must be right?

Fact is, DRM means that content producers can be more confident in giving you copyrighted materials, UAC means your system is more secure and WGA means that Microsoft can spend money on building better software that is closer to what you want because it's rate-of-return is higher and it isn't spending all its resources on combatting software piracy.

PaoloM wrote:



Chinmay007 wrote: Microsoft needs like an internal eXperimental Computing Facility or Skunkworks full of a bunch of psychotic computer nerds and freedom to whatever they want with expensive equipment.

What exactly do you think you're doing in all the MSR centers and in the Live Labs?

At MSR: cool stuff that never makes it into an actual product (unless it's a random project MSR's been working on that marketing suddenly decided to capitalise upon, example: MS Surface, then disappears into obscurity)

At Live Labs: new ways to bombard their users with even more adverts and provide information overload with cluttered user-interfaces and contrived product schemes. But every once in a while they take the latest offerings from the Exchange team, wrap it up in a turquise and white banner then shove it on the Internet

Sure, whatever.

For once I hoped to have a reasonable thread with jamie and w3bbo involved. Alas it appears that this is not the case. Again.

W3bbo wrote:



At MSR: cool stuff that never makes it into an actual product (unless it's a random project MSR's been working on that marketing suddenly decided to capitalise upon, example: MS Surface, then disappears into obscurity)

Like C# and Speech Recognition and managed code and .NET and NTFS ... the list goes on and on and on.

PaoloM wrote:

And jamie, yes, let's all ride the white horse and get rid of that nasty DRM!

Oh... you wanted to watch that DVD? Sorry, no can do.

Then no can do.  Why are YOU making up my mind for me?  Ill take it back and get a credit. I wont watch it.  I am thinking of paying extra to go with Bullfrog.ca Power (wind and solar) than using toronto hydro.

Perhaps that makes no sence to you..  so i would never dream of imposing it on you.

but you dont understand anything i say anyway ... well thats good. neither do i.

jamie wrote:



PaoloM wrote: And jamie, yes, let's all ride the white horse and get rid of that nasty DRM! Oh... you wanted to watch that DVD? Sorry, no can do.

Then no can do.  Why are YOU making up my mind for me?  Ill take it back and get a credit. I wont watch it.  I am thinking of paying extra to go with Bullfrog.ca Power (wind and solar) than using toronto hydro.

Perhaps that makes no sence to you..  so i would never dream of imposing it on you.

but you dont understand anything i say anyway ... well thats good. neither do i.

DRM isn't imposed by Vista. It's made available in Vista.

You can watch DRM-less media in Vista and you can watch DRM media in Vista.

You can watch DRM-less media in Linux, OSX and WinXP, but you cannot (afaik) watch them in Vista. Removal of the DRM service in Vista is taking away your choice, not adding to it.

evildictaitor wrote:



Removal of the DRM service in Vista is taking away your choice, not adding to it.

haha

sorry.  um its taking away cpu cycles...

a computer is not a platform for politics.

it should be agnostic

Chinmay007 wrote:



evildictaitor wrote:  W3bbo wrote:  At MSR: cool stuff that never makes it into an actual product (unless it's a random project MSR's been working on that marketing suddenly decided to capitalise upon, example: MS Surface, then disappears into obscurity) Like C# and Speech Recognition and managed code and .NET and NTFS ... the list goes on and on and on.

C# = inspired by Java
Speech Recognition = worked on before Microsoft existed
managed code = see above
NTFS = meh, old technology now

Really we better then that. MS Surface was a good start (and apparently originally started by MSR). Zune would have been a good start if it wasn't for the insane DRM attached to it.

C# is very different to Java, although the syntax and frontend might be simmilar.

Speech Recognition is a problem that will be still be being worked on in a hundred years, that doesn't mean that MSR hasn't done real and measurable work since then (PS. Speech Recog prior to 1980, really not so good).

NTFS might be old, but it's good.

jamie wrote:



evildictaitor wrote:  Removal of the DRM service in Vista is taking away your choice, not adding to it.

haha

sorry.  um its taking away cpu cycles...

a computer is not a platform for politics.

it should be agnostic

Not if you watch DRM-less content.
Besides, imo it's much better solution MS implementing content protection than third parties doing it. Imagine Sony and ten other bigger companies each implementing their own kernel driver to support DRM media. It would be mess, a big one.

evildictaitor wrote:

C# is very different to Java, although the syntax and frontend might be simmilar.

Speech Recognition is a problem that will be still be being worked on in a hundred years, that doesn't mean that MSR hasn't done real and measurable work since then (PS. Speech Recog prior to 1980, really not so good).

NTFS might be old, but it's good.

It's been speculated that key portions of the CLR (like the Garbage Collector) have been requisitioned from the Microsoft JVM. But yeah, MSR did do a lot of work on the CLR.

And I thought NTFS was the work of the NT team, which started work before MSR was even founded? (In fact, the Wikipedia article on MSR doesn't list NTFS as their projects)

evildictaitor wrote:



jamie wrote:  PaoloM wrote: And jamie, yes, let's all ride the white horse and get rid of that nasty DRM! Oh... you wanted to watch that DVD? Sorry, no can do. Then no can do.  Why are YOU making up my mind for me?  Ill take it back and get a credit. I wont watch it.  I am thinking of paying extra to go with Bullfrog.ca Power (wind and solar) than using toronto hydro. Perhaps that makes no sence to you..  so i would never dream of imposing it on you. but you dont understand anything i say anyway ... well thats good. neither do i.

DRM isn't imposed by Vista. It's made available in Vista.

You can watch DRM-less media in Vista and you can watch DRM media in Vista.

You can watch DRM-less media in Linux, OSX and WinXP, but you cannot (afaik) watch them in Vista. Removal of the DRM service in Vista is taking away your choice, not adding to it.

Vista facilitates DRM. Microsoft included DRM because Hollywood told them to, Microsoft then tells the consumer that if Windows didn't include the DRM, then Hollywood would never release content that would run on the PC platform.

I'm calling their bluff, I don't think Microsoft had the spine to stand up for consumer rights. How, exactly, is Hollywood going to not produce content for the PC? It's an effective monopoly, if Microsoft says "no" they've got no-one else to turn to. Apple has similar anti-DRM sentiment (and who'se marketshare is too small anyway), and Linux is never going to allow it.

There's no reason for the PVP and PUMA features in Vista except to give the Hollywood execs a nice feeling inside. They'll be cracked eventually. As a user of a CRT, I'm particularly annoyed that DRM'd media only plays on HDMI monitors.

And how, exactly, is HDMI's encryption and handshakes (which are known to cause many problems) supposed to stop "piracy"?

No DRM is crack-proof, the media industry doesn't want to change things and adopt a less "tough" attitude (because they can't be shown not doing anything about it), the end result is the legitimate consumer suffers while the criminal pirate gangs go on unimpeded and consumers of pirated material derive even more enjoyment than ever before (with even higher qualitity releases on bittorrent, for example).

With DRM, no-one wins... except the company that implements it. Ultimately the legit consumer gains nothing.