A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protectio

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html this makes an interesting read, and gives an interesting insight as to the extremes microsoft is going to assume you are a criminal. Some of the licence implications make me wonder how long it will be before you have to purchase a licence from ms before windows will run applications you write...

Didn't read all of it but makes me want to stay with my current Windows XP PC in a cave until the end of time....

The paper's been around for a while now. It still makes me want to dump not only Vista, but also my Macs and switch entirely to really free software - and in my world, that would be FreeBSD.

Seems to be a result of Hollywood saying, "We don't like PC owners playing our 'premium content' because they are a bunch of pirates. Put some heavy DRM protection in there"

Who in their right mind would want to watch ANY movie on a PC though? In my experience I rarely get though a whole movie without SOME disruption. Be it a Windows popup (You have unused Icons on the desktop!), juddery playback (because of HD activity in the background), screen savers kicking in, you get the picture.

I can't imagine how smoothly hi-definition DRM content is going to play back with all the extra grunt going on.
I also doubt very much that I'm going to sell the house, car, and granny to get all the DRM-happy hardware to play said 'premium content'


It seems to be a case of, "turn the scews a little tighter and see if they squeal"
All this activation/genuine advantage bilge puts me off using the PC.
I rarely bother to read any MS EULA since they seem to fill them with stuff like, "We reserve the right to change anything in here at any time"

Whats the point of reading it when they can chop and change parts willy-nilly. Plus, I don't think EULAs hold up in a court of law since software authors are not law makers.

Other than that, I'm not interesting in Windows ME: The directors cut (aka Vista)

My thoughts exactly. I do have Vista Ultimate installed because I have to. But so far it has been a very non-*wow* experience. The UAC drives me crazy and this morning my 400 euro Vista decided it wasn't "Genuine" anymore...I rarely scream at machines but this was really the last drop after 1 month of frustration.

Articles like the one above make feel a bit more miserable about MS and Vista everyday.

It concerns me that my perfectly legal Windows O/S could quite easily become 'inoperative' at the drop of a hat.

What happens to Vista if a "Not Genuine" flag is raised?

I read that it becomes unusable apart from internet access so you can re-activate.
I'll be plenty peeved if I had no internet access available and needed to save a document/picture/whatever and Vista said no.

Incidently, the Aussies are paying $751 for Ultimate .. (!)

http://apcmag.com/4035/751_for_windows_vista_ultimate_official_australian_pricing_revealed

Internet access wasn't much help, neither the support desk from MS. After forcing the product activation app ("slui 4" in the command prompt) to use registration via telephone i could re-register my Vista and get it Windows Genuine "Advantage" *barf* approved...or whatever.

The fellow on the phone and the computerized lady asked me about 3 or 4 times if i was really installing Vista on 1 machine (what do they think? 1 is more than enough misery). I had to enter two ranges of 48 digits and I got my Genuine Vista back. I haven't got the faintest idea what was the cause of all this. Maybe the bios update i did a couple of days ago.

All in all it cost me a mornings work and endless frustration over a piece of shitty copy protection.

Hummm, mayby you can answer this.

Is it true that Vista becomes "not Genuine" if you swap hardware in and out?

I cannot tell, the only hardware i did change was the removal of my Creative X-Fi card because there weren't and still are no good drivers for it and that didn't trigger WGA to fail.
The flashing of the bios did however trigger a full reset on my drivers. Every driver was reinstalled. I did that a couple of days ago.

This morning i wanted to download some DX software from the MSDN site and i needed to "validate" my comp before i could download. The validation went tits up and from that point Vista said that i needed to reactivate the product. Which i did but without results. I called MS support and after some verbal bashing from my side they offered to call me back for some more tech support. Nothing heard sofar. On teh web was an article from someone with the same problems, i did what was suggested (activate by phone) et voila, Vista is "genuine" agian.

The only thing i can think of which could cause all this was me upgrading my motherboard bios. Hardly a swap in hardware. Too be honest i am afraid now of even change my usb devices, which actually i did before all went wrong ( i removed a usb phone ).

Depends on which license you have. OEM then yes. If you make non-incremental hardware improvements.

Anyway there's no reason to fret over this. Thankfully Microsoft didn't manage to properly implement their own specification, so the real Vista is not currently as draconian as the paper suggests. Whether it will after enough patches is anyone's guess.

I think once these problems start bothering the top companies that Microsoft are trying to please, they'll consider doing away with the whole scheme.

At least I hope that's what happens. Then again, the top companies will probably simply call their tech support people, who will probably have scripts to fix the problem on the fly. So the ones who decide to use the software might never even know about it.