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Dec. 27th, 2006
A 7,000 word study as to what Microsoft's "Premium Content Protection" will truly cost you and your computer. It is not pretty. Hmmm... Premium Content Protection... PCP... a coincidence?
It's a long read and gets very techie at times, but it's important. Basically Vista is probably going to drive up hardware costs and will downgrade audio and video quality if any non-premium content is mixed with premium content. It is especially troubling to the medical imaging field where any lossy compression is expressly forbidden because artifacts added when the image is uncompressed can result in mis-diagnosis. So if you're playing an MP3 CD while looking at x-rays, a whole bunch of people could be in trouble because this degradation is done silently and in real-time.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
It will be very interesting to see Microsoft's response to this article and the ensuing arguments back and forth. Meanwhile, one absolute truth remains: even though Vista only currently exists for corporate use and will not be available to consumers until late January, six serious security flaws have already been discovered.
It boils down to this: as long as this Hollywood protectionism is as pervasively integrated into the OS as it is, I won't buy Vista for my personal use. I know my campus of the university that I work at won't be buying it for at least two years, and considering all the weird stuff that we use, who knows if we will be able to make it work then?
When I have the money, I'm going Mac. There are two programs that currently keep me in the Windows arena: Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access. My skill with SQL Server hasn't done anything to get me a job, so maybe I'd be better off going to Oracle, I know there's a lot more Oracle in my area than SQL Server. And what I'm doing in Access can be done in other products, just not as easily. So why should I pay money to MS for an OS that by design will slow down system performance?
It's a long read and gets very techie at times, but it's important. Basically Vista is probably going to drive up hardware costs and will downgrade audio and video quality if any non-premium content is mixed with premium content. It is especially troubling to the medical imaging field where any lossy compression is expressly forbidden because artifacts added when the image is uncompressed can result in mis-diagnosis. So if you're playing an MP3 CD while looking at x-rays, a whole bunch of people could be in trouble because this degradation is done silently and in real-time.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
It will be very interesting to see Microsoft's response to this article and the ensuing arguments back and forth. Meanwhile, one absolute truth remains: even though Vista only currently exists for corporate use and will not be available to consumers until late January, six serious security flaws have already been discovered.
It boils down to this: as long as this Hollywood protectionism is as pervasively integrated into the OS as it is, I won't buy Vista for my personal use. I know my campus of the university that I work at won't be buying it for at least two years, and considering all the weird stuff that we use, who knows if we will be able to make it work then?
When I have the money, I'm going Mac. There are two programs that currently keep me in the Windows arena: Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access. My skill with SQL Server hasn't done anything to get me a job, so maybe I'd be better off going to Oracle, I know there's a lot more Oracle in my area than SQL Server. And what I'm doing in Access can be done in other products, just not as easily. So why should I pay money to MS for an OS that by design will slow down system performance?
Top 10 mistakes in web page design
Dec. 27th, 2006 12:01 pmI need to review my sites. I know I don't make most of these, still, it never hurts to check.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
The Least Essential Albums of 2006!
Dec. 27th, 2006 05:15 pmYes, the list that we've all been waiting for: music to avoid that came out last year! Some of the comments are great.
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/56969
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/56969