Re: Windows Vista - worst OS yet?

On a sunny day (Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:31:17 -0800) it happened "Paul Hovnanian
P.E." <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in <45A86EA5.9490F6CC@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

I think all this DRM stuff is going to cause the PC industry to fork at
both the hardware and software level.


The problem (or non-problem) here is that any system that can store and process 'data' can
also be used for multimedia.
So one person will crack a copyright protected medium (DVD whatever), and then it will
be distributed as 'data'.

The whole idea (Hollywood) to make an 'uncrackable' disk is so daft... but a lot of people see
sales opportunity here for snake oil *that is why so many of these crypto systems).

In fact we already _have_ the 2 systems you want, there are DVD players (with firmware and
hardware that only allow some disks to play in some resolutions).
And there is the PC.
The PC is a 'data' machine, and all borders vanish.
For example, a normal DVD on ISO9660 file-system as used for say 'video DVD' has a specific
directory structure, requires authoring (to make that structure and and features like subtitles
and multiple languages, and other unrelated things like buttons and menus).
All that extra stuff needs space and .VOB files are broken into pieces of about 1GB (ISO9660
only supports 2GB file sizes, all a big suck system).

But I do not store my movies that way (from digital TV).
I store the whole transport stream I recorded from satellite inclusive subtitles, multiple
languages, teletext, program information, what not.
And then I record that as one stream, as a DVD image.
In Linux:
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=thunderball.ts

And playing back can be done in 2 ways, copy disk to harddisk, and then play,
or play the image directly:
cat /dev/dvd | xine -D -f stdin:/
or copy to harddisk and play like:
cp /dev/dvd thunderball.ts
mplayer -fs -ao oss:/dev/dsp1 -cache 8192 -vop pp=0x20000 thunderball.ts


The thunderball.ts DVD will not play in standalone players, only on the 'data' PC.
But that PC can send it anywhere, copy it any time, etc, only advantages.

So as to your idea; as long as we can store process 'data' we have the edge on any crippled
system made by those companies trying to sell snakeoil to Hollywood.
That is why 2 systems _can_ exist, but it would make no sense.

In the music case Hollywood has finally seen that, and gone to cheap legal music downloads,
like ipod, many sites are available now.
The movies will follow for the same reason.
You cannot stop technical process, I have predicted 6 years ago that one day ALL Hollywood
ever produced would fit on ONE medium, and it would be on everyones bookshelf, and could
be copied in a few minutes :-)
That clearly is the future were we are heading when we extrapolate storage space over the last
25 years towards the future.
That would put the value of a single movie from Hollywood at less then a fraction of a cent.
_ONLY NEW PRODUCTIONS_ would add value.
Good for creativity.



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