Timeless Stare

Today I launched my new website after spending almost 3.5 months working on it in my spare time. The previous site was launched in 2007, so a refresh was necessary. Along with some updated information about the services that I offer I have also updated all my portfolios and there’s a lot of new work to see. I’ve also finally written some more about my background and there are some testimonials from people I’ve worked with over the years to give you an idea of what it’s like to work with me. I’ve gotten feedback from clients in the past who mentioned that I had to “sell myself more” and talk more about my work. I could totally understand them, I’m not one to go out and promote myself or boast about my work. I find that very difficult to do, but at the same time I also realize that sometimes I have to act like a salesman in order to sell my services. So instead of me talking about my work, I choose to have some of my clients giving their opinion about their experiences in working with me.

I’m still doing a little tweaking in the background but the site is now essentially complete. In the near future, as time permits, I’ll also be updating my blog to match the design of my new website more closely. Head on over to take a look and if you have any feedback whatsoever, just leave a comment on this blog post.

Screenshot of the Grumman Ag-Cat G-164A in Microsoft Flight Simulator X

I’ve been searching for a nice version of the Grumman Ag-Cat aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator for a very very very long time. There’s a post here on my blog where I first mentioned it back in January 2006, and another one where I mentioned it again in 2007. And even before that, I was searching for this aircraft for older versions of Flight Simulator. But every time I would search on the Internet, I would end up disappointed because of not finding anything, or, because of finding something that tried to resemble an Ag-Cat but wasn’t quite finished.

By the end of 2009 I thought of searching for the aircraft again on various websites related to Flight Simulator, and you’ll never be able to imagine how excited I got when I found a very nicely done model by Marcel du Plessis from South Africa. The original version that I found was done for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, but I was using what is now the latest version, Flight Simulator X. So I downloaded the aircraft and installed it and was happy to see that most of it worked quite well in the newer version of Flight Simulator even though it was designed for the older version. There were however quite a few things that didn’t function correctly. I sent an email to Marcel asking about his plans for an update for Flight Simulator X, and he basically said that he had no plans to update the aircraft. So I asked if I could have the source files so I could try to update it myself, but unfortunately due to bad experiences in the past he didn’t feel like giving me those files. However, he did give me permission to modify the aircraft as much as I could, and fix it as much as possible with just the files I already had.

So I went ahead and tried to fix as much of the issues as possible. Below is a list of things I had to fix:

• Entries in the aircraft configuration files, coordinates and other data.
• The spray effects needed tweaking to work correctly.
• The panel configuration had to change due to missing gauges. All gauges have been replaced except for the stall light warning which won’t work on Flight Simulator X.
• The Boom Pressure gauge needed tweaking to work in Flight Simulator X.

In addition to this, I’ve also created new sounds for the model that sound more realistic. I used the sounds from the Goose G21A aircraft from Flight Simulator X and modified and remixed them for the Ag-Cat. The new sounds come very very close to what an actual Ag-Cat sounds like!

I’ve also added 5 new repaints for the aircraft, two of them are new and one is a modified version of the original texture by Marcel du Plessis. The repaints and registrations on the aircrafts are from actual aircrafts here in Suriname. You can see the repaints in the pictures below:

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Some of the things I could not fix (because I did not have the source files):

• I could not add new functionality to the aircraft for Flight Simulator X, such as the aircraft casting shadows on itself, etc.
• The glass on the cockpit has a minor rendering issue: dynamic scenery (houses, trees etc.) isn’t visible through it when viewed from the outside.

Download

To download the aircraft simply click on the following link: AgCat.zip. Please note that this file has been updated on July 14th, 2010. In case you downloaded it prior to this date, download it again. Two additional repaints (the green ones seen above) were added.

Installation

After downloading the zip file, extract all files into the main Flight Simulator X folder. If you use Winzip or a similar program and choose to extract the files with the directory structure, then all files will be placed in the right folders. After doing this, you can start Flight Simulator X and you should be able to see the 3 versions of the Ag-Cat when selecting an aircraft. Don’t forget to read the original Ag-Cat Quick Guide PDF document for instructions on how to operate the aircraft, how to activate the spray system and how to make the pilot visible among other things.

If you like the aircraft, please take the time to send an email to Marcel du Plessis and thank him for his incredible work in making such a detailed model for the Ag-Cat. Maybe if he gets enough comments he’ll be motivated to do an update . Also don’t forget to leave a comment below and let me know any feedback you may have.

Video

Screenshots

Below are some more screenshots of the Ag-Cat in Flight Simulator X.

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If you’ve been following the news you probably heard about the recent issues Google is having with China. However it is important to get a good perspective on the whole issue. And so far I think this article on The Inquirer has really nailed it:

But we should not be surprised as it is starting to look like the whole thing is as much an embarrassment to the US government as it is to Google. Suggestions are that the same software Google uses to snoop on customers for US law enforcement might have provided Chinese hackers with their attack vector.

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…the trend toward building surveillance capability into telecommunications architecture amounts to a breach-by-design and is a serious security risk.

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With the automated process in place all the Chinese would have had to do was hack into it and all the information they wanted would have been available to them.

If this is true, it is running counter to the official story that claims Chinese dissidents were tricked with a bogus Trojan. It highlights the weaknesses in Google’s cloud computing plans and how the US government’s obsession to snoop on its citizens actually puts them at risk.

Fortunately for both Google and the US government, they can sidetrack the problem with a bit of spin that paints them as ‘fighting for freedom’ against the Chinese government’s attempts to clamp down on free speech.

China has been successfully squeezing Internet companies for years and neither Google nor the US government had complained much.

Yet when the future of cloud based computing is threatened then Google apparently feels it is a good idea to threaten to pull out of China.

The US government too has an interest in Google’s cloud based initiative succeeding. Instead of having to get court orders to snoop at many ISPs it will only have to deal with one company, with which it could develop a very cosy relationship over time.

However if Google’s snooping software did provide the Chinese attack vector, then it could make people less happy with both the government and cloud based computing.

So the White House now enters the spin war on Google’s side.

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Google is onto a PR winner here. With even Reporters Without Borders hailing Google’s move, no one is taking any time to wonder how Chinese hackers were able to get into its cloud.

When Google decided it was the right thing to do to assist the Chinese government with censoring information on the Internet back in 2006, I wrote a post where I discussed the hypocrisy of the situation. In that post I wrote the following:

Similarly, Google thinks, and/or would like us to think, that they are helping the Chinese people by at least trying to provide them with the information they are allowed to view, instead of denying them access to all information, but in the process, they are willingly helping the Chinese government with committing a crime against their people. They are actually helping the government there to restrict freedom of speech and to deny the people there their basic rights.

So much for “Don’t be evil.” Google PR are making all kinds of sharp turns right now trying to explain their way out of this and making them look good, but it won’t work.

And it will only go downhill from here. Once they start doing business there and start to rely on it, the Chinese government will have more power over them and will get them to agree to even more things. Like I said before, corporations are only interested in protecting their interests, and you’d be surprised at the things they can be willing to do in order to protect themselves. In the world we live in, everything seems to be about interests and protecting them. That always seems to have the highest priority instead of moral principles and ethics. Just look at Microsoft. They are willing to fight the EU, South Korea and the US government to be able to release certain software with Windows, but gladly comply to the Chinese government’s request to censor information! Isn’t that just lovely?

It is important to remember the reasons why Google went to do business in China in the first place and why they decided to help the Chinese government with censorship back then. Because this will allow you to see through their current PR-spin bullshit about “fighting for freedom.” This isn’t about freedom, it is about protecting Google’s own (business) interests. It is about hiding the fact that they have holes built into their software that allow people, such as the Criminals in Action (CIA), NSA and other parts of the US government to snoop on people. Before this happened, Google was perfectly happy with helping the Chinese government with censorship. Now all of a sudden they feel the need to “fight for freedom.”

Also take note of the fact that money from the CIA was used to finance Google in the beginning. Google is very much in bed with the US government when it comes to cloud computing, and this is one of the reasons why cloud computing is a bad idea. If you’re new to this, take the time to read the links in this post, and if nothing else, at least read the following to understand just how far this goes: Google “in bed” with CIA.

This is what Google is trying to hide right now. It is important that we not make this easy for them to do.

Microsoft is at it again. Back in 2006, I had already written about them stopping support for Playsforsure on new devices, which meant that people who bought music using Microsoft’s Playsforsure DRM infection, would not be able to play their music on new devices, including Microsoft’s own Zune player. This was called one of the more massive screwings of customers by Microsoft.

Well it looks like Microsoft has outdone themselves this time, because they are going to stop supporting their MSN music service:

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it’s done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. “As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers,” reads the e-mail seen by Ars. “You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.”

This doesn’t just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running. 

This means that people who invested their money in music from MSN store will soon find that their entire music collection is unusable. To me, this is simply unbelievable. This is another clear example of what happens when you buy DRM infected products. And it further shows why piracy seems to be a better choice these days. Also check out this article:

Today, MS is saying that come August 31, a week or four shy of the two-year anniversary of the night of long knives, you will not be able to re-authorise your music. That means that the music is yours to keep. On one PC. As long as it doesn’t crash. Or you don’t update your OS. Or something doesn’t just decide to stop the music playing. If you do any of these things, you just lost your music permanently.

Basically, MS is stealing from you. It has your money, but you can’t have access the services you bought any more. So they are stopping, and legally, you are screwed. Microsoft has got your money though.

We have been saying for years that ANY sort of DRM is unacceptable, and this goes to show you exactly what we mean. Anyone who bought music from MS just got screwed, period, without recourse. It also proves what we have said for almost the same amount of time, Piracy is the Better Choice (R)(TM)(C).

MS has once again proven that if you steal the music, legality aside, you get a better product. Legally purchased music is demonstrably worse than pirated music. There has never been a case that I am aware of of a pirated copy deciding not to play any more because someone in Redmond decided it was inconvenient. You just get a better product, cheaper too, but also illegal.

Read my previous post on this subject to find out how you can recognize DRM infected products in the future so you don’t waste your money on the long term.

Another thing that has me amazed, is that I cannot understand how consumers seem to be so tolerant these days. It seems companies can do to consumers what they want and even rip them off, like Microsoft is now doing, without them even saying anything about it. Such a move from Microsoft should at least have sparked some major PR issues for them if not lawsuits. But consumers these days appear to have a very high level of tolerance. I recently also wrote about the bad quality control at Canon, with regards to their DSLR products. And there you see a similar problem, consumers are having issues with the products not working well, even out of the box, and many are complaining, but it looks like they just accept it for some reason as being normal. When has it become normal for a company to massively screw so many customers on such a large scale, as Microsoft is doing? When has it become normal to buy a DSLR and finding out that it does not work (well) as soon as you power it on? When has it become normal to buy a lens for your DSLR and finding out it only takes soft pictures and doesn’t focus well?

One thing seems to be clear, and that is that if companies are able to do this with customers, it’s because the customers are stupid enough to let it happen.

Even after the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Vista, the operating system has still not improved much. It is practically as slow and resource hungry as it was without SP1. So it’s no surprise that business still aren’t upgrading to Vista. The only reason why Microsoft has managed to sell as much Vista licenses as they have up till now, is because new computers come with it preinstalled. If it weren’t for that, sales of Vista would have been a lot more tragic than they are right now.

From the beginning I and many others have said that the prices were also extremely high for all versions of Windows Vista, with the Ultimate edition being the worst. I wonder what those who bought the ultimate edition got for the extra money they spent, because up till now, Microsoft has failed to deliver anything of extra value to those users. Recently they’ve been trying to cut prices as well, and you have to really appreciate the PR speak here:

Microsoft made the announcement on its website, in the form of a Q &A with Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing (must have a big business card).

Says Brooks:

“Windows Vista has been on the market for more than a year now, with more than 100 million licences sold in its first year. While this is great progress … we’ve observed market behaviour that suggests an opportunity to expand Windows stand-alone sales to other segments of the consumer market. Over the past year, we conducted promotions in several different markets combining various marketing tactics with lower price points on different stand-alone versions of Windows Vista. While the promotions varied region to region, one constant emerged – an increase in demand among consumers that went beyond tech enthusiasts and build-it-yourself types.”

So as you can see, Microsoft has “observed market behaviour that suggests an opportunity to expand Windows stand-alone sales to other segments of the consumer market.” Do you know what that means? I think the “observed market behaviour” was the behaviour of people not wanting to buy Vista. I think what he was trying to say was: “We noticed Vista isn’t selling well and are now forced to lower prices of stand-alone licenses so we can hope to sell some more of it since people don’t seem to want it, unless they have no choice but to accept it with a new PC.” It’s not selling, and they have no choice but to lower the exorbitant prices they were selling Vista at.

Recently Gartner explained why Vista is broken:

Microsoft’s operating system (OS) development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many apps and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office… well, it’s just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft.

Those arguments probably don’t surprise you. (See Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista? and Vista Never Had Its Moment in 2007.) But the Gartner analysts offered several more points to show how Windows is in a whole new world of hurt. High on the list is Windows’ complexity, its lack of modularity, its hardware footprint (particularly on low-end PCs), and the increasing movement to Web-based and other OS-agnostic applications.

When I tried installing a fresh Windows Vista SP1 copy, I was surprised to find out that a problem I mentioned a year ago during installation still existed.  This is what I wrote back then:

One area where it’s clearly visible how they rushed to get Vista finished by cutting out as much functionality is the Setup routine. If you’re not lucky, you might be presented with a message during Setup that it could find no supported hard drives to install Windows Vista on. It turns out that this happens when no partition on your hard disks is set as active. But here’s the thing: You can actually partition your hard disks during the setup procedure and format them, but somehow, Microsoft forgot to provide a small button somewhere where users can actually set an active partition after they have partitioned their hard disks during setup! How stupid can you get? So you provide the functionality to partition and format disks, but not to activate a partition, even though this same setup routine requires it to continue! Simply fucking amazing. I can’t tell you how much this frustrated me. I had to quit setup, then find out why I was getting this “no drives supported to install” message (THEY COULDN’T EVEN JUST PROVIDE A CLEAR MESSAGE SAYING THERE ARE NO ACTIVE PARTITIONS!!!), download a bootdisk CD to load another partition utility to activate a partition, then load setup again and continue installing. Needless to say, it took quite some time to figure it out.

Imagine how I felt when I was presented with that same message that Vista could not find any supported drives to install itself. And this, while right before that message, it presented me with a list of hard drives and partitions, and allowed me to actually select a partition to install to!! I lost more than an hour troubleshooting and trying to find out why it was doing this. And this time, it appeared that the problem was a USB memory stick that was attached to the PC. Only after I had removed it did the install continue. This is just an incredible example of the bad quality of the product.

I think Gartner is right about everything they said of Windows Vista. It has become slow and bloated. Everyday I hear about more people around me who switch to Mac OS X, because it is so fast and requires a lot less resources. Others are sticking with Windows XP for now. Microsoft has to do something totally radical if it wants to stay in the OS business. I think that the only good option they have is to start from scratch and build a new operating system from the ground up, without any backwards compatibility for current software and older hardware. That new operating system could then be released with a virtual machine containing an image of a licensed copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista so that users will still be able to use their older software inside that virtual machine. But for the new OS, everyone will have to at the very least recompile their applications, or significantly rewrite them to be able to run natively. With this approach, the new OS will be free of bloat, and as a result use a lot less resources and be a lot less complex, while at the same time it can be built according to today’s standards. It will also enable Microsoft to be free to innovate instead of being limited by the existing infrastructure and compatibility issues.

And if there are still smart people working at Microsoft, they are already looking into this.

Bill Gates essentially admitted recently that Windows Vista sucks. He even laughingly joked about it:

In a fairly frank interview with Gizmodo, Gates was asked if he thought there any Microsoft product that “could have had more polish.”

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Instead Gates replid: “Ask me after we have shipped the next version of Windows”.

The implication is fairly obvious. Bill thinks that Vista could have had more polish when it hit the shops. He can’t say so now because that would undermine Vista’s already flagging sales.

And here is the video so you can see for yourself.

I’ve written a number of articles about how badly I think Windows Vista sucks. I had warned about it sucking even before it shipped. Microsoft did such a half-assed job, people all over the world are suffering because of it every day. I’m just glad I didn’t pay for it, because I’d have felt so much worse if I had. Especially when you see Gates laugh about it while you know you paid $400 for junk and him making huge profits from it.

And pay special attention to the fact that he can’t talk about how Vista sucks until “after we have shipped the next version of Windows.” In other words, he can’t talk about it now because otherwise nobody would want it. So he’s pretty OK with knowingly selling crap to everyone, and getting richer from it while joking about it on stage. This is even worse compared to when he said that he was against DRM and that DRM was bad for users, while failing to notice that most Microsoft software and hardware products shipping at the time included DRM. Products he was responsible for.

That’s Bill Gates for you, people!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know what I think of Windows Vista. And it’s not just me, but many others are dealing with issues with Windows Vista every day. If it’s not the defects in the software, then Microsoft just decides one day that a couple of thousand users are using illegal copies of Vista and puts their computer in reduced functionality mode – something that they can only attribute to their stupidity and are now trying to fix in the first service pack for Vista.

The last few weeks I’ve been dealing with another issue that seems to be widespread as well. As if Vista isn’t already very slow compared to Windows XP, for some reason, certain processes in Vista just like using lots of CPU time making it look like you’re running Vista on a Pentium CPU with 64MB of RAM. These processes, depending on the time of day, atmospheric pressure and possibly positions of planets in our galaxy, can be any one of “TrustedInstaller.exe”, “msnmsgr.exe”, “iexplore.exe”, “explorer.exe”, “msmpeng.exe”, “slsvc.exe” and “searchindexer.exe.” Sometimes, when I am not very lucky, I can even see two of the processes fighting eachother for available CPU time while my entire machine slows down. I’ve become used to running Vista with task manager open all the time to keep an eye on what’s going on when I suddenly can’t open a goddamn window without waiting 2 minutes. You think it’s just me? Just do a search on Google, and look at how many people are suffering! And these are just the people who write about it! When grandma can’t open a new email window at home in a reasonable amount of time, she’s not likely to know what’s going on, let alone post about it on the Internet.

I can get so furious about this. At this point I’m just waiting for Microsoft to release Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista next week, and hope for their sake that it will fix this issue among so many other issues. The entire industry is disappointed with Windows Vista, and they have good reason to be disappointed. Windows Vista is a lemon, it’s worse than Windows Me at this point. And all of this was to be expected. It should never have gotten released so quickly as so many, including me, have argued in the past. I can’t even begin to think of recommending Vista to anyone. Everything is just slower in Vista. If I didn’t have to reinstall loads of software, I’d have gone back to Windows XP in a split-second. If the service pack fails to address these issues, I am going back to Windows XP the next day.

I can’t imagine the support nightmare of running this OS in an enterprise environment. May god have mercy with the IT staff of companies that decide to switch to Vista.

My new website has just been launched at www.kareldonk.com. Feel free to take a look. It contains the latest information about the services I have to offer as well as updated portfolios. I’ve been working on the site in my spare time for about 2 months now, and it was about time I could finally have my own work-related website to direct potential customers to. Until recently, I didn’t even have my own businesscard. This also partly explains the lack of frequent updates on my blog for the last 2 months.

Any feedback that you may have is ofcourse very welcome.

It looks like Windows Genuine Crapvantage is causing trouble again for Microsoft. It seems it has been marking the Windows Vista and XP installations of many people as illegal, causing the operating systems to go into reduced functionality mode. This is not the first time this is happening, and many people, including me, have warned about the possibilities of these things happening. I can’t tell you how furious I would have been if I had to deal with my OS going into reduced functionality mode when I need to get things done. Fortunately, I won’t have to deal with this kind of stuff because there’s a nice crack available for Windows Vista activation (just search for the Vista Activator FF 2.1.2.1.2).

Microsoft has disappointed a lot of people, including me, with Windows Vista. It’s a very mediocre OS release and has many issues. People are calling it the second Windows Me, and that’s exactly what it looks like. This is what the head of Acer thinks about it:

The head of Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, hit out at Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, saying that the “entire industry” was disappointed by it.

“The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista,” the head of the world’s fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday.

Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales.

“And that’s not going to change in the second half of this year,” Lanci said.

“I really don’t think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista,” he added.

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“Stability is certainly a problem,” he said.

And when he says that the entire industry is disappointed by Vista, he’s not kidding:

Sales resulting from demand for Vista however are not as high as had been expected by some. A major memory producer, Samsung Electronics, said that the demand for memory chips due to the launch of Windows Vista had not materialised as expected. Charles Guo of JP Morgan said that major vendors were sceptical about the increased demand due to Vista so were prepared for potential disappointment.

Just ask Dell:

Amid significant customer demand in the United States, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs.

Starting immediately, Dell said it is adding XP Home and Professional as options on four Inspiron laptop models and two Dimension desktops.

And here’s more:

ALTHOUGH WE knew that Vista sales were mixed for Microsoft, according to Reuters there appears to be a drift backwards to XP.
The wire said that some consumers are seeking out machines equipped with the more compatible Windows XP and PC makers and retailers are re-introducing the OS into product lines. HP, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba are all offering XP machines.

Craig Rabe, owner of the Computer Cafe, an independent computer store in Arlington, Massachusetts, said he received so many complaints about Vista he stopped selling machines loaded with the software.

This is something to be ashamed about. Think about it, Windows Vista is available and people still want a much older Windows XP. There’s even significant demand for it. Why is that? When you realize the many issues Vista has it becomes easy to understand. Issues such as incompatibility with many applications and hardware, difficulty to find good working drivers for certain hardware, the fact that it’s just bloated, works SO MUCH slower than Windows XP on the same hardware (simple file copy operations can take 5 times longer and even more, video and sound playback are much slower), uses more battery power and computer resources, is infected with loads of DRM crap and on top of that costs a fortune.

Microsoft has everything working against Vista right now, and with stupid unnecessary crap like Windows Genuine Crapvantage making things worse, they’re only hurting themselves even more for the long term. The product is mediocre at best, and they still insist on the extremely high prices. Isn’t that just suicide? They’re only making their suicide note even longer. I continue to see more people around me switching to Mac OS X and Linux, and I never thought I’d see the day where Microsoft was actually helping people to make the switch.

While the RIAA is still busy suing children and dead people, music companies are now looking more and more at distributing their music without the use of DRM. It looks like people are finally becoming wiser:

Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks, finds a survey.

The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms.

Many of those responding said current DRM systems were “not fit for purpose” and got in the way of what consumers wanted to do.

Despite this few respondents said DRM would disappear in the near future.

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The study revealed that about 54% of those executives questioned thought that current DRM systems were too restrictive.

Also, 62% believed that dropping DRM and releasing music files that can be enjoyed on any MP3 player would boost the take-up of digital music generally. However, Mr Mulligan pointed out that this percentage changed depending on which sector of the industry was answering.

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales – though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

They’ve been talking about this in private as early as late 2006, but most likely much earlier. And it looks like changes could come within months:

Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said this weekend that a move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format from at least one of the four major record companies could come within months.

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But behind the public posturing, there are signs of a new appreciation in the industry for unrestricted copies, which could be sold as singles or through subscription services or made freely available on advertising-supporting Internet sites.

– EMI Group last week said it would offer free streaming music on Baidu.com, the leading Web site and search engine in China, where 90 percent of music is pirated. EMI and Baidu also agreed to explore developing advertising-supported music download services. EMI this summer licensed its recordings to Qtrax, an ad-supported music distribution service.

– VirginMega and FNAC, two of the top music retailers in France, said last week that they would sell DRM-free music tracks from independent labels. DRM is a “pain in the neck” for consumers, Julian Ulrich, general manager of VirginMega, told Warren’s Washington Internet Daily, a newsletter. The 350,000 songs, Kennedy said, is a sizable amount.

– Yahoo’s experiments ? last year it offered a handful of tracks from Norah Jones, Jessica Simpson, Jesse McCartney and Relient K without any digital restrictions ? will continue this year, David Goldberg, head of Yahoo Music, said during an interview at Midem. Two of the major labels, Sony BMG and EMI, agreed to the tests in 2006.

– Amazon.com, the Internet retailer, is looking into starting a digital music download service that is DRM-free, MusicWeek magazine wrote Jan. 6.

“In 2007, the majors will get the message, and the DRM wall will begin to crumble,” the journalist Antony Bruno wrote in Billboard magazine this month.

That could change the equation for Apple, which has dominated the sales of both Internet music and digital music players. Apple does not share or license the DRM that its products use, thus restricting music sales to its own products. Apple representatives would not be interviewed for this article.

Reading the last part of the above quote, it was absolutely no surprise that this month, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs came out playing Ghandi, pretending not to like DRM and trying to promote a DRM-free distribution of music. Charlie Demerjian basically took care of Jobs here, but allow me to have my take on it as well. Here are some quotes:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

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Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven?t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

…

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

So all of this begs the following questions:

• Couldn’t Jobs “imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats” back in 2003? Couldn’t he see that “in such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players”?
• Couldn’t he see back in 2003 that “DRMs haven?t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy”?
• Couldn’t he see how DRM free music would overall lead to more sales of music and be more positive for music companies back in 2003 when he sold out to them with iTunes?

We all know he could, because if he couldn’t he would have to be pretty retarded for someone in his position. So what happened back in 2003, Steve? In case this is all still a mystery to the reader, back in 2003 this was purely a business decision for Jobs, and it still is today when he pretends to be the Ghandi of the music industry. Jobs could care less about what users want and if DRM is good or bad, he saw an opportunity to make money including DRM in iTunes, mainly by locking out competitors, and he took it, largely ignoring issues it was causing for users. And because of that, Jobs and Apple made loads of cash in the last few years at the expense of consumers. He would have continued to do so, if it weren’t for the fact that music companies are now looking at distributing music without DRM. What this means for Jobs is that suddenly, even more companies will be able to freely distribute music, and Apple won’t be able to lock them out anymore. So before all of this happens, Jobs made a 180 degree turn and now pretends he doesn’t like DRM. And the public largely bought it too. “WOW! Steve Jobs doesn’t like DRM! Finally! Someone important on our side! Way to go Steve Jobs!” They fail to realize Jobs is just a hypocrite looking at his own interests. It’s the same thing which I discussed about Google here. The fact that Apple is now getting sued to death because of DRM in various countries around the world also helped.

Let’s also not forget the fact that Bill Gates made a similar decision as well which I wrote about before:

Even Bill Gates sounded stupid when he admitted DRM sucked for users, and that he is against DRM that ties content to a single device, but somehow failing to notice that the technology is being included in the latest software and hardware products from Microsoft, for which he is still responsible. What?s going on exactly?

They’re all just hypocrites. And now that DRM is starting to die, I’m sure everyone at Microsoft is absolutely happy with the fact that they spent all that time crippling Windows Vista and other products with DRM “features” while it may not be used that much anymore in the future anyway. Looking at all the issues it is causing for Windows Vista now, I’m sure they’re almost bursting into tears at Microsoft right now. You could have used all that time for better purposes, huh guys? Microsoft now has to go through loads of problems because of DRM in Windows Vista and it’s backfiring heavily. Recently Bruce Schneier wrote his opinion about Windows Vista, and it doesn’t look good at all. Many users are reporting issues with Windows Vista largely having to do with DRM. And while many industry analysts were very optimistic about Windows Vista sales before its release, it’s now becoming clear that Vista is selling much less than Windows XP:

Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista at retail stores significantly trailed those of Windows XP in each product’s first week on shelves, according to new figures from NPD.

The market research firm’s data showed the number of copies of Vista purchased was nearly 59 percent less than the number for its predecessor XP, looking at the first week of sales. Revenue was also down, but less dramatically, with the dollar value of first-week Vista sales off 32 percent from that seen with XP.

Even our beloved Steve-O told analysts recently they were a little too excited about the effect Windows Vista would have on Microsoft’s financial results for 2008. It’s no surprise that Windows Vista is doing worse than Windows XP. If you’ve been following the news for the last few months, and certainly if you’ve been reading my posts here, it was to be expected. Vista just has too much working against it right now. Most of it is discussed in my review. But problems are still being reported, largely having to do with application incompatibility. The claim has been made that Vista breaks 90% of games, and it seems to be the case indeed. I know I can’t run Quake 4 on Vista because it keeps crashing at the “loading” screen. Apart from that, hardware manufacturers are still struggling to make their drivers work in Windows Vista. Not only Creative, but also nVidia can’t yet release working final drivers for their latest products. In Creative’s case, here is why:

Creative said on the matter, “The changes to the audio implementation and subsystem were quite major, requiring a fundamental rewrite of the driver model and features to take account of the lack of direct hardware support” and continued, “Additionally, removing DirectX 3DAudio hardware support required a work-around, in the form of Creative Alchemy, which was available before Vista hit the retail shelves to restoremulti-channel EAX audio.”

…

Creative also cited a change in WHQL procedures by Microsoft that have been “time consuming” and resulted in further significant delays.

Changes to the audio and video subsystem were indeed quite major in Vista. And we already know why: Because of the DRM features that were included in Vista. Peter Gutmann has all the details here.

Windows Vista is looking to become the next Windows Me at this point, but let’s hope Microsoft can do something about this in the near future. But to be honest, it doesn’t look very good and Microsoft has really made some terrible decisions with Vista that are going to cost them dearly.

A year ago I wrote about Google’s hypocritical decision to help the Chinese government with censoring information in China. There was no doubt that this decision was made based on pure business reasons. They sold themselves out to the Chinese government expecting to be able to gain (more) access to the big market in China, even against their own principles. A quote from my previous post:

Don’t be evil? Sure, but everyone forgot to ask the important question. Don’t be evil to whom exactly? It appears the answer is: “To our shareholders.” Just like I wrote before about Microsoft, Google is now a corporation, and they are going to have to keep shareholders happy. That stock price has got to keep going up! Doing anything to make shareholders upset is suicide.

So do you think that Google, similar to Microsoft and Yahoo, are going to want to risk losing business in China? I doubt it. For all their good intentions, Larry and Sergey don?t have the balls to truly not be evil.

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Google thinks, and/or would like us to think, that they are helping the Chinese people by at least trying to provide them with the information they are allowed to view, instead of denying them access to all information, but in the process, they are willingly helping the Chinese government with committing a crime against their people. They are actually helping the government there to restrict freedom of speech and to deny the people there their basic rights.

So much for “Don’t be evil.” Google PR are making all kinds of sharp turns right now trying to explain their way out of this and making them look good, but it won’t work.

And it will only go downhill from here. Once they start doing business there and start to rely on it, the Chinese government will have more power over them and will get them to agree to even more things.

Not very long after that, Google started waking up to reality in China. Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, had to admit that “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.” A quote:

As Brin noted:

“Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.”

It made more sense from the start. It seems that they are taking such a position now only because the Chinese government is coming with even more, and quite likely far reaching, demands which could explain why they suddenly started blocking more of Google’s services.

Ofcourse, I saw that coming way in advance (I seem to be saying this more often these days in my posts), as you can see from the previous quote above.

And very recently, almost a year later, both of Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, admitted again that the decision to censor information in its search engine in China was bad for the company:

Google’s decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.

Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its “Don’t be evil” motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”
The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying “perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense”.

And ofcourse we all know that the reversal never came. They still seem to be happily censoring information in China and doing business with the Chinese government as much as possible. Also pay special attention to the following remark by Brin:

“On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”

This is a clear indication of how they evaluate these decisions at Google. “On a business level.” So when the Google founders talk about the decision being bad for Google, it’s purely on a business level. They could care less about ethics, about doing what’s right, about living up to their “Don’t be evil” slogan, and about principles. As long as things are good for business, they’ll go ahead with it no matter what. And this was ofcourse their motivation to help censor information at the very beginning as I wrote. But when they don’t get what they want from the Chinese government, then suddenly the “principled approach makes more sense.”

So remember, it is very important to know why Google regrets censoring information in China. Not because they came to see that it was against their “Don’t be evil” slogan and that it was a bad thing to do, but because they didn’t get the business results from it that they hoped to get.

And when you know this, it is also easy to understand why there has since been no reversal of that decision. Since this is purely about business, a reversal would mean losing even more business, so that’s not an option. If this was about doing what’s right, about living up to their false “goody two shoes” image, they would have reversed their decision a year ago already.

So when you hear about how good they are at Google, remember this. Also don’t forget about the many times that they have already been caught censoring information on their main search engine as well. And don’t forget about the fact that they are in bed with Criminals In Action (CIA) and seem to be helping the CIA with a lot of questionable things. I guess it’s a result of accepting money from the CIA to launch the company. Why don’t Page and Brin talk about that?

Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan officially became the equivalent of Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan a long while ago.

Now that Windows Vista has officially been launched and is available, I want to give my thoughts on it as a product. And as you can see from the title of this post, it’s not going to be very positive. If you’ve been reading my previous posts on Windows Vista, you already know most of the problems I have with it.

One of the reasons why it is such a big disappointment is because of what we were promised during PDC 2003. Windows Vista as it is today is just a fraction of what it was supposed to be. Essentially it is just a big service pack to Windows XP as far as I’m concerned. When you’ve installed it, apart from the new Aero interface and changes to the Start menu, Control Panel and Windows Explorer, most users won’t notice any difference between using Vista and using Windows XP. There’s no feature, on the surface, that would make any user want to have Windows Vista. And a lot of reviews that I’m seeing online seem to agree with this:

With the full release of Vista of our collective doorstep it seems that many techies are wondering if they should jump on the Vista bandwagon. HardOCP brings us its Windows Vista Ramblings and concludes that the only reason to upgrade is if your ego demands it, and in fact common sense suggests holding for now until some of the kinks have been ironed out.

Meanwhile bit-tech has put up its Windows Vista review and it sings something of a different song. The review covers an explanation of all the varieties of Vista available and a thorough look at various components, but the end result remains the same, there is no need to upgrade for now.

Elite Bastards has gotten somewhat more specific with its review of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition and comes up with very similar conclusion, namely that Vista includes some nice new features, gamers will have to upgrade at some point if they want to play DirectX 10 games and that there is no pressing need to upgrade any time soon. This review also touches on the problem of driver and application compatibility, something early adopters of Vista are going to have to be very wary of.

I saw this coming way in advance:

So far there’s nothing really special about Vista in my opinion. It looks like Windows XP with some new features built-in, like searching capabilities and a new user interface. Most of the work seems to have been done in technology working behind the scenes. Mostly things that will make error reporting much better and will improve the stability and security of the OS.

…

So apart from technology on the back-end that has been improved and updated a little, the only changes on the surface seem to be the UI and the search features. It takes some time to get used to the new layout of the UI and the new icons. I’m now waiting for Beta 2 to see what is going to be really exciting about Vista. Right now it seems that it will certainly be an improvement compared to Windows XP, but it won’t be something revolutionary.

To be honest, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 is good enough to last 2 more years as it is now. Maybe longer. It’s good enough to be able to compete with Mac OS and Linux on the desktop for 2 more years with minor updates. There was no need to rush Windows Vista out so soon, apart from pressure from businesses who signed up for Software Assurance. The fact that Microsoft did release Windows Vista the way they did will have more negative consequences for them than positive ones. Even on those same businesses who were crying out for Vista to be released soon, because they are the same ones who will now refuse to implement it because of the quality and incompatibility issues. Like I wrote before, I wish Microsoft had taken the time to truly make Vista the OS that they promised us:

I am however disappointed in the fact that they keep pulling great features out of Longhorn. WinFS is one of them, and other smaller things like the sidebar have also disappeared. And it seems certain features that do stay will be much simpler compared to what was originally planned. If it was my decision, I would have taken as much time as is needed to get everything out the way it was planned starting in 2003. Microsoft should just push the release date for Longhorn to 2007 or early 2008 if this is what is needed. I believe Windows XP has enough potential to carry on until that time with another service pack. Windows XP SP3 could have IE 7, .NET Framework 2.0, the latest version of Media Player and other software updates. Microsoft could even add some new themes to refresh the UI.

Instead, they cut down on many features and basically did a rush-job to be able to RTM Vista in November 2006. Vista is now available to the public for merely a day, and there are already 5 updates available which are bug fixes. Even the DRM functionality in Vista already seems to be cracked, which shows how half-assed the implementation probably is, no doubt because of the rush-job they did. And I’ve had a couple of different issues while using Vista as well. Sometimes my laptop just hangs after waking up from hibernation and I have to turn it off and on again. I also get random crashes of rundll.exe sometimes and “COM Surrogate” quite often. After some crashes of rundll.exe I can’t restart or shutdown the PC using the options in the Start menu. They just don’t respond. So I have to turn off the PC by pressing the power button and hold it long enough for the PC to turn off without Windows shutting down properly. Internet Explorer also tends to crash sometimes.

One area where it’s clearly visible how they rushed to get Vista finished by cutting out as much functionality is the Setup routine. If you’re not lucky, you might be presented with a message during Setup that it could find no supported hard drives to install Windows Vista on. It turns out that this happens when no partition on your hard disks is set as active. But here’s the thing: You can actually partition your hard disks during the setup procedure and format them, but somehow, Microsoft forgot to provide a small button somewhere where users can actually set an active partition after they have partitioned their hard disks during setup! How stupid can you get? So you provide the functionality to partition and format disks, but not to activate a partition, even though this same setup routine requires it to continue! Simply fucking amazing. I can’t tell you how much this frustrated me. I had to quit setup, then find out why I was getting this “no drives supported to install” message (THEY COULDN’T EVEN JUST PROVIDE A CLEAR MESSAGE SAYING THERE ARE NO ACTIVE PARTITIONS!!!), download a bootdisk CD to load another partition utility to activate a partition, then load setup again and continue installing. Needless to say, it took quite some time to figure it out.

Then there’s the issues when using multiple monitors. Sometimes this just produces weird results. One time I was trying to configure different resolutions on both screens, when both of them just went black, and there was no way to do something about it. I had to turn off the PC again without shutting down properly to be able to get back to a working display.

And then there’s also the fact that Vista just feels much slower and bloated in a way. The Aero UI certainly makes things feel smoother, but things like Windows Explorer generating thumbnails for folders containing videos and images are just too slow and resource intensive. This was MUCH faster on Windows XP on the same machine. Windows Media Player also works slower and feels much heavier when using it, to the point where I sometimes just resort to using VLC because it works faster, uses less resources and gives smoother video playback. This is probably a result of the DRM “features” that have been introduced with Vista. It also has an impact on the quality of sound and video playback even on high end systems.

Let’s also not forget all the application incompatibility problems that are being introduced with Windows Vista due to the implementation of new security features like User Account Control (UAC) which in my opinion could have been left out of the OS. A lot of applications refuse to install or don’t work properly after installation unless you give them full administrator rights. Users are going to have to deal with an insane amount of dialog boxes being presented because of the new security features, to the point where it can actually impact productivity. Sometimes it can take as much as 5 times longer to simply delete a file, compared to Windows XP, because of all the dialog boxes with questions that you have to answer. This will simply train users to click on the “Allow” buttons so they can continue to work, and won’t actually stop viruses and spyware getting installed. It also impacts the user experience because the UAC dialogs just take over the whole screen everytime in a hard and rude way. It takes away a lot from the gracefulness of the Aero experience. Vista also switches to the Basic theme everytime an application is used which is not compatible with the Aero theme, and this happens quite often for me and is really annoying. In the case of the QuickTime ActiveX control, when this is loaded in a webpage in one of the tabs in Internet Explorer, Vista switches to the Basic UI, but doesn’t switch back to Aero when you close the tab containing the ActiveX control. You have to close the entire Internet Explorer window with all the tabs you had open, in order for Vista to switch back to Aero. And that is quite annoying as well.

So it’s no surprise that Microsoft now seems to be in a hurry to fix issues with Windows Vista:

Reckon you won’t upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That’s looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft’s latest email blast.

The company has put out a call for “customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07 (calendar year 2007).”

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However, the Redmond clarion call declares that “regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack.”

So, yes, the still not-yet-released Vista has “high impact issues”.

At least they admit to the “high impact issues.”

In my opinion, they should have waited and tested everything a lot more and release a product with more quality in the end. Almost everyone is going to wait now for the first service pack release before they consider using Vista, and even then, will wonder what the benefits are that they will get from using it. The DRM “features” in Vista and the fact that it is so expensive won’t help either. And by the time the first Service Pack for Vista comes out, companies will wonder again if they should go ahead and deploy Vista, or if they should just wait a year for the next release of Windows, which is already planned for 2008. The only way they’ll get people to buy Vista is to not sell Windows XP anymore and to make certain software only available for Windows Vista, like DirectX 10.

With Vista, Microsoft has given a unique opportunity for the competition to catch up with them because of various reasons. The most important reasons are the fact that the quality of the OS isn’t very good, the absurdly high prices, the fact that there is no (compelling) reason to upgrade, the anti-consumer DRM “features” and locking down the OS with Software Craptection Platform which will backfire on them. People are already writing about the fact that Apple should now take a chance and start supporting Mac OS on third party hardware:

THE INTRODUCTION OF Microsoft Windows Vista and its’ many confusing and progressively expensive flavors has opened up a er, period of opportunity for Apple (formerly Apple Computer). Will Steve Jobs take a really bold chance to increase his market share or just play it safe with his little fiefdom of iPods, iTunes and forthcoming iTV?

Operating systems may not be sleek and sexy to Steve, since he realizes he can make more recurring revenue off of music at a dollar a pop than selling decent hardware.

However, Vista is being beaten like a dead horse by the mass media ? most of them already are enthralled to the God of Jobs if you read between the lines, so Microsoft could make nuclear fusion work tomorrow and they’d give it a lukewarm review at best. The consensus view out of the babbling punditry is “Don’t buy Vista today, unless you have to buy a new computer tomorrow.”

Even Microsoft’s own Jim Allchin wrote to Gates and Ballmer before about wanting to use a Mac:

“Mr. Allchin says, I’m not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. … I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.”

And from here:

“In my view, we lost our way,” Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp.

“I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.”

And it seems today that still very little has changed. It’s sad that Allchin will be leaving Microsoft with Vista being the last version of Windows he worked on, because it’s a disappointment. He did a much better job with Windows XP. And he’s not the only one who would buy a Mac. Check out this hilarious email exchange between Microsoft executives who were drooling all over Mac OS Tiger:

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

As you may know, Mac OS Tiger introduced the features promised for Vista way back in 2004, and now in 2007, Vista is still having a lot of difficulty giving us what Mac OS has had for so long, but what they promised way before Mac OS actually had those features. As a longtime Microsoft fan, all of this makes me sad, just like Charlie Demerjian. I can only hope they change course very soon, but I’m not seeing anything that points in that direction. As a developer I remain excited about the various new technologies available right now and coming out soon, but with an OS as mediocre and expensive as Vista, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Like I wrote before, if my clients don’t want to use it or it is too expensive for them, I’ll have to look at developing on other OS’s in the near future. I’m also not willing to put up with the DRM crap and the high prices for Vista myself and might be forced into looking at alternative OS’s in the near future as well.

The lack of quality in the software might also be caused by the fact that employees at Microsoft don’t seem to be very excited or motivated these days to create superior products. This is a result of the various issues at Microsoft among which the bureaucracy that seems to exist there now. Apart from that, employees also don’t seem to be compensated very well for their work, and aren’t happy because of it. Why can’t Microsoft create an environment for their employees similar to Google? Why can’t they invest in the people who the company depends on the most to create kick-ass software? Why can’t they keep those people happy and attract even more of them? Instead, top managers and partners seem to be getting more financial compensation than they deserve right now, while the rest of the employees are being neglected. In addition, I’ve heard stories of employees at Microsoft getting “fired” from their team and having to join other teams because they had the guts to point out obvious flaws inside the software the team was working on. That kind of stuff is just amazing.

What are you doing about all of this, Steve-O?

Charlie Demerjian continues to give Microsoft a hard time regarding the new DRM technologies introduced in Windows Vista. It seems Microsoft officially responded on the official Windows Vista Blog to a paper posted by Peter Guttman not too long ago. Read Demerjian’s article before you continue to read this post.

It’ll probably be no surprise to you when I say that I agree with Demerjian. Microsoft has basically confirmed everything Peter Guttman wrote in his paper, but tried to make it either sound like they were doing the consumers a favour or that they had no choice but to go along. In short, they tried to put a positive spin on it, probably hoping to brainwash everyone.

Although their response reads like PR-speak, it is certainly better than that one time when they tried to put a positive spin on WinFS development being halted. It seems they still haven’t learned much from Robert Scoble. I know there are lots of smart people working at Microsoft, but these days they seem to be letting me down a lot more often.

Demerjian already pointed out some issues in Microsoft’s response on their blog, but when you read their response, there are so many more issues I can point out. For example, Microsoft says:

Associating usage policies with commercial content is not new to Windows Vista, or to the industry. In fact, much of the functionality discussed in the paper has been part of previous versions of Windows, and hasn?t resulted in significant consumer problems ? as evidenced by the widespread consumer use of digital media in Windows XP. For example:

• Standard definition DVD playback has required selective use of Macrovision ACP on analog television outputs since it was introduced in the 1990s. DVD playback on and in Windows has always supported this.
• The ability to restrict audio outputs (e.g., S/PDIF) for certain types of content has been available since Windows Millennium Edition (ME) and has been available in all subsequent versions of Windows.
• The Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) was released over 2 years ago for Windows XP, and provides applications with the ability to detect output types and enable certain protections on video outputs such as HDCP, CGMS-A, and Macrovision ACP.

Notice the attempt at trying to make people think the DRM technologies in Vista don’t matter much since such technologies have been in Windows ever since Windows Me. It’s the standard “Hey, it’s been in previous versions for over X years and nobody had any issues with it!” argument, which should lead people to have a reaction similar to “Well gee, I guess if it has been in Windows for so long, and I never even noticed it or had issues because of it, it can’t be that bad…” It’s comparable to slowly passing laws without people knowing about much of it, and then enforcing them all much later when it’s too late and pretend like nothing is wrong because they’ve existed all those years and nobody had any issues with them.

They’re only going to be able to fool people with this who don’t bother to think about it long enough. I don’t care if this technology existed and was included ever since MS-DOS 5.0!! It doesn’t matter. What matters is when it’s being used! That’s the issue here. It’s going to be used now, and people are going to start having to deal with it as a result! The fact that it existed for 7 years in Windows is irrelevant! In addition it’s gotten much worse because the technology got more advanced, and it will only get a lot more worse once the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB – formerly Palladium) technology gets ready in the next version of Windows and they start using it for DRM enforcement.

Here’s another blatant lie:

Will Windows Vista content protection features increase CPU resource consumption?

Yes. However, the use of additional CPU cycles is inevitable, as the PC provides consumers with additional functionality. Windows Vista’s content protection features were developed to carefully balance the need to provide robust protection from commercial content while still enabling great new experiences such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback.

For those of you running Windows Vista, start Windows Media Player and play a random MP3 audio file. Go into Task Manager and look for a process called “mfpmp.exe” with description “Media Foundation Protected Pipeline EXE.” Notice how much CPU it uses. On my machine it fluctuates between 10% and 20% CPU time. Other users are seeing even larger consumption of CPU resources, just check out this comment.

And now the question for Microsoft: Why exactly is mfpmp.exe needed to play an MP3 file, when you say the content protection technology is there for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?? What additional functionality am I getting, exactly, from mfpmp.exe when I play an MP3 file? As it is now, the content protection technology just uses more resources while providing no benefits at all to the user, just like Peter Guttman wrote in his paper and we’ve all argued before. No wonder there are sometimes gaps in the audio on my PC, which by the way ran much faster on Windows XP. I thought Vista was about more robust video and audio playback?? Even high end systems have these issues. I find myself using VLC to play video files more often now because Media Player feels so slow and bloated. Even when playing MP3 files, VLC uses much less CPU resources compared to mfpmp.exe and wmplayer.exe combined!

There’s just no way Microsoft can explain away all of this. You had better own up to these issues in an honest way and start satisfying your customers soon because it’s only going to work against you. What happened to all the smart people at Microsoft? Even Bill Gates sounded stupid when he admitted DRM sucked for users, and that he is against DRM that ties content to a single device, but somehow failing to notice that the technology is being included in the latest software and hardware products from Microsoft, for which he is still responsible. What’s going on exactly? Stuff like this makes me feel like I live in Wonderland.

I’m expecting to meet Alice any day now.

As crazy as this may sound, we’re heading into a time when it seems like piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content. The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian explains why this will be the case in a recent article. Head on over and read the article. If you haven’t yet done so, also read a recent paper by Peter Gutmann which I also discussed here to learn about the details of the content protection technology in Windows Vista and the latest PC hardware.

I am never, ever, going to buy HD-DVD content. Ever. If I ever buy HD-DVD content I hope I get struck by lightning at the very instant. And this ofcourse just like the fact that I never bought music from Apple’s DRM infected iTunes, even though I do own an iPod Nano. Instead, I’m just going to rip CD’s and download MP3 files because that’s much easier to do for a whole number of reasons, one of which is that I can actually backup my music when and however I want, and can easily use it on almost any device I want, however and whenever I like.

If you read Demerjian’s article, and Gutmann’s paper, you’ll be amazed at how stupid Microsoft and all the people behind these copy protection technologies actually are. This is going to backfire on them in so many different ways it’s kind of scary. It’s amazing that they actually expect consumers to put up with all of this. It’ll be even more amazing if they actually get consumers to put up with it too. They’ll probably have short term success with selling this HD-DVD crap to consumers, but on the long run it’s going to be a lot more difficult as consumers begin realizing they were screwed and experiencing the disadvantages of the copy protection technologies first hand. Kindof like what seems to be happening to Apple’s iTunes. Perhaps now that AACS copy protection technology has been cracked, people might still buy HD-DVD content because they know they’ll still be able to make copies and remove the restrictions.

But it’ll still be too much of a hassle and it seems piracy is still going to be the better choice. I don’t usually like to make predictions for the new year, but in this case I’ll make an exception: I predict that traffic at The Pirate Bay is going to increase significantly in 2007. So to the crew at The Pirate Bay, if you guys are reading this, make sure you plan ahead for the growth and start preparing some extra servers and bandwidth. You’re going to need it.

Peter Gutmann has written up a paper analyzing the costs that are being introduced with the content protection mechanisms in Windows Vista. You can read the paper on his website here. Most of what’s in his paper is not new information to those of us following the development of Windows Vista, but he does a good job of summarizing a lot of the disadvantages of the new content protection mechanisms in Windows Vista.

Keep in mind that a lot of the things discussed there are also still at their version 1.0 stage of development, and it will only get worse as this technology matures. You can compare it to the way Microsoft changed Windows Genuine Crapvantage and Product Craptivation in Windows Vista and made things more complex for systems administrators in the end. Apart from the technology being in its infancy, much of it was also left out of Windows Vista because it wasn’t ready yet. This includes large parts of Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB). So if you think what is discussed in that paper is already really bad, this is to remind you of the fact that it’ll get much worse in the future if Microsoft continues their current policy.

Gutmann also mentions the following:

Note A: I’ll make a prediction at this point that, given that it’s trying to do the impossible, the Vista content protection will take less than a day to bypass if the bypass mechanism is something like a driver bug or a simple security hole that applies only to one piece of code (and can therefore be quickly patched), and less than a week to comprehensively bypass in a driver/hardware-independent manner. This doesn’t mean it’ll be broken the day or week that it appears, but simply that once a sufficiently skilled attacker is motivated to bypass the protection, it’ll take them less than a day or a week to do so.

This is a certainty. Just look at how Windows Media DRM continues to get cracked everytime, and look at how Microsoft’s latest anti-piracy efforts were easily bypassed. The only thing they achieve everytime is make the system a lot more complex and difficult to manage, not only for themselves, but also for end-users.

Not only that, but as Gutmann writes, all these extra “features” just make the software more bloated with no benefits to the end-user, and as a result requires faster hardware to run on:

Note C: We already have multiple reports from Vista reviewers of playback problems with video and audio content, with video frames dropped and audio stuttering even on high-end systems. Time will tell whether this problem is due to immature drivers, or has been caused by the overhead imposed by Vista’s content protection mechanisms interfering with playback.

If you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, you need faster hardware to be able to do the same things you did on Windows XP with slower and cheaper hardware. And that mostly because Microsoft added loads of software that does absolutely nothing of real use to the end-user and could easily have been left out.

One of the few things in Gutmann’s paper that gives me hope for the future is the following:

I know from the Microsoft sources that contributed that many of them care deeply about providing the best possible audio/video user experience for Vista users and are quite distressed about having to spend time implementing large amounts of anti-functionality when it’s already hard enough to get things running smoothly without the intentional crippling.

I always wondered if the team working on software like Genuine Crapvantage, Product Craptivation and the other Software Craptection Platform stuff goes to work very motivated every day knowing what they have to work on. In a previous post, I also asked if the Most Evil Team at Microsoft were proud of their work. If these people are really distressed about all of this, why don’t they take action? Why continue to work on these “features”? What is our beloved Steve-O (pictured on the right) doing these days? Even Bill Gates himself recently stated that DRM causes too much pain for end users:

Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

So this leads to the following question I want to ask Gates: “Why did you then allow this technology to get into Windows Vista and other Microsoft products??” Surely he was in a position to not allow this technology to make it into any final Microsoft product if he really thought that it was bad for users. Does this make sense to you? Not to me. It’s just more stuff that points to how bad Gates screwed up during Windows Vista’s development.

All this content protection technology in Vista is going to make users dislike using it. I know it will make me dislike using it if Windows keeps degrading my user experience everytime I load some unsupported and “potentially harmful” (to the content providers, obviously) software. As it is now, things like User Account Control (UAC) are already giving me a hard time when I use Vista. For example, compared to Windows XP, I have to click an additional 3-4 times to delete a file in Windows Vista thanks to UAC, while it also seems to take 5 times longer. And with the high prices for Windows Vista, it will only make it less attractive.

Let’s also not forget a recent study by Forrester Research, that showed that sales at Apple’s DRM infected iTunes Music Store have dropped off dramatically during the first half of 2006:

December 13, 2006 (Reuters) — Sales at Apple Computer Inc.’s online music shop iTunes Music Store dropped off dramatically in the first six months of 2006, according to a recent survey.

Since January, the number of monthly iTunes transactions has declined 58%, while the average size per purchase declined by 17%, leading to a 65% overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue, U.S. market research group Forrester Research Inc. said in a report on the results of a study of North American consumers.

“It is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal, or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music,” Forrester said in the report, which was published for Forrester clients last week and made available to Reuters today.

There has been some controversy over what the results of this survey actually mean, but if it really shows that sales at iTunes have declined that much, it might be because buyers were reaching their saturation level for DRM infected music. What might have happened, is that buyers are only now beginning to realize the limitations of content they buy at iTunes. The reason why they are realizing it now is probably because they are experiencing it first hand. After about 2-3 years, most of them might be upgrading their computer, or upgrading to newer iPod models or even different devices and are beginning to discover how “easy” it is to move the content they bought on iTunes over to new devices. Most of them will likely be learning a very hard lesson too. And perhaps that is what has resulted in a decline of sales through iTunes.

And if Microsoft continues with their current policy, the same thing is going to happen with all of their DRM infected products. Apart from Windows Vista, that also includes their Zune music player. People might upgrade to Windows Vista initially, but if they later discover the limitations being imposed by all the content protection software, we might see a similar decline in Windows Vista sales after some time. And just like iTunes, it won’t be clear if Windows will ever be able to recover from that since it might already be too late. Once consumers have learned the hard lesson, they aren’t likely to go back.

IDC have released their top 10 predictions for “Worldwide System Infrastructure Software” in 2007 yesterday, and it doesn’t look good for Microsoft Windows. The following two predictions are of interest here:

9. Microsoft’s client operating system anti-piracy efforts will backfire. Microsoft’s anti-piracy campaign will drive customers toward Linux.

10. Our expectations remain consistent that Windows Vista in 2007 will not uplift the operating system or PC market spend dramatically, but we are predicting a meaningful shift of adoption favoring premium Windows Vista SKUs.

In a previous post, where I mentioned the high prices for Windows Vista together with the fact that Microsoft is further locking down the OS to prevent piracy, I had already mentioned the possibility of their anti-piracy efforts backfiring on them:

In addition to those high prices, Microsoft have also further locked down Windows Vista and made it more difficult for people to use pirated versions. These two strategies complement eachother. On the one hand you have the high prices, and on the other hand you also force people to have to buy a legal copy. This is, ofcourse, to sell more copies and make even more money.

But this strategy, again if I am correct, is going to massively backfire on Microsoft. There are two options. First, if people are able to reliably crack Windows Vista, even more people will use pirated versions of Vista because the prices are simply too high for them to be able to afford a legal copy. And this means Microsoft is actually going to sell less copies and make less money, although they will be able to keep their marketshare. In the second option, if people aren?t able to reliably crack Windows Vista, those people that were using pirated version of Windows XP are going to have to switch to an alternative OS, like Mac OS X or Linux. In addition, a lot of people using a legal copy of Windows XP might not be able to afford Windows Vista and could also potentially switch to a different OS. So in this second option, not only is Microsoft going to sell less copies of Vista, but they are also going to lose lots of users to other OS?s, and as a result lose marketshare.

With the IDC now essentially saying the same thing, I think Microsoft had better look into this and change their course. In that post I also mentioned the fact that I could not understand why Microsoft is taking such drastic, and quite frankly boneheaded measures, at a time when it seems that more governments and companies around the world are looking at using open source software, and are switching to Linux. If Microsoft is lucky, they might sell less copies of Windows Vista due to even more piracy because of the high prices, but keep much of their market share because of the fact that it seems Windows Vista’s anti-piracy measures can easily be circumvented. If they aren’t, they will lose marketshare to Mac OS X and Linux while also selling less.

Microsoft taking such drastic measures to lock down Windows, and at the same time maintaining the high prices for the OS can only be explained by greed. It’s widely known that their profit margins for Windows and Office are abnormally high already. It’s not like they’re taking a huge hit from all the piracy going on right now.

So again, why are they going down this path when it isn’t really necessary? Is there any other explanation except for greed? Don’t they realize the prices are too high? Just check out this poll on Channel 9:

What do you think of Windows Vista pricing?

Much too high – 36.6%
A bit too high – 45.7%
Quite reasonable – 14.6%
Cheaper than expected – 2.2%
Dirt cheap – 1%

I hope our beloved Steve-O realizes the mistake they are making very soon, otherwise it’s not going to look good for them on the long run. As a developer I am seriously thinking about looking at Linux more and more these days. With Microsoft charging down the path they are on right now, I might have to prepare for the fact that my clients will expect me to develop on Linux in the future because they won’t be able to afford Windows Vista. This is becoming an increasingly more real possibility, and I’m quite sure people who know me will tell you that they would never have dreamed hearing this from me.

On the picture above you can see our beloved Steve-O during the launch of Windows Vista with next to him Lenovo’s CEO William Amelio. Steve-O understandably looked very happy that day, no doubt glad the long development cycle of Windows Vista finally came to an end. However, things have since changed, and I wouldn’t want to be in Steve-O’s office when he finds out about the stuff below.

If you’re on, and perhaps even if you’re near, the Microsoft Campus in Redmond these days, you’ll probably notice a lot of noise coming from one of the buildings. You’ll hear people yelling, screaming and maybe even loud cries. You’ll also hear cracking, loud bangs and other similar noise coming from that building – the kind of noise you usually expect to hear at a building demolition site. Occasionally you might even see random furniture fly straight through one of the windows and landing nearby.

That’s likely the building where the team responsible for the group of software called “Software Craptection Platform” in Windows Vista is located. I know what you’re thinking; usually you’d assume that’s probably the building where Ballmer’s office was located. But right now I have reason to believe that it is more likely to be the “Software Craptection Platform” team.

The reason for that is that Windows Vista is already being widely pirated even though “Software Craptection Platform” was supposed to make that more difficult. As you can see on this forum, the Business and Enterprise versions of Vista can be installed without a key, or, using the default key, and can then be activated against a Key Management Server (KMS) in China. Windows Vista can then be used for 180 days before you have to activate it again. Let me now include the important text below just in case it gets removed:

found this this minute – over 6000 people reporting it works. KMS method to activate your Vista !! (Business edition only)

Step 01:

Install Vista FINAL RELEASE with Key YFKBB-PQJJV-G996G-VWGXY-2V3X8

Choose “Business edition” ONLY not others !!

Step 02:

When Windows setup completed and Internet access setup completed. Open Command Prompt under “Administrator Mode”, That is, right click the Command Prompt icon, select “run as admin”

Activate your Business Vista against sito.kmip.net

(This is a private KMS server for Volume License 2.0a activiation).

Now in command prompt (Admin mode)

type -

cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms sito.kmip.net

cscript C:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -ato

Activate completed !!

Now you may wish to check the activation status

type -

cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -dlv

*************

KMS Volume License activate requires re-activate every 180 days. The reactive will be done automatically.

Only works for Business Vista and Enterprise Vista, not other editions!!

And I imagine there will be more public KMS servers to choose from in the near future. The Chinese are only leading the way at the moment. I imagine Microsoft is going to find a way to block users who have activated against one of these public KMS servers from getting updates on Windows Update and through Genuine Crapvantage, but at least Vista can be used without buying it.

If you thought that was already an issue for Microsoft, then get a load of this: A VMWare image can now be downloaded which contains a fully activated Key Management Server in it. Users can now download this image, run it in VMWare locally and activate Windows Vista against it as many times as they want. If the 180 days expire, you can just fire up the image in VMWare again and activate against your own local KMS. This article sums it up nicely:

The idea behind KMS is that you have a single PC running KMS which can then handle activation for all your Vista clients, so that they don?t have to connect back to Microsoft every single time.

The downside of KMS is that the activation is only good for 180 days, to discourage people bringing in their home systems, activating them and wandering off again.

Bearing in mind that KMS wasn?t scheduled to be released until next year, pirates have managed to get hold of KMS and produce a standalone, fully-activated KMS server called “Windows Vista Local Activation Server ? MelindaGates”. Tongue-in-cheek of course?the first “cracked” version of Vista was called Vista BillGates.

The download is a VMWare image, and the idea behind it is that you download and install VMWare Player (a legal free download), boot the image and use some VBS script (supplied with the activation server download) to have the client Vista machine get its activation from the local server. And that?s it ? no communication back to Microsoft.

Of course, in line with the Volume Activation 2.0 model, this only works with Vista Business and Enterprise editions, as they are the only ones which will accept KMS keys.

Home and Ultimate editions still use normal single-use activation that calls back to Microsoft for validation of the product ID.

On one hand, this is strikes a serious blow to Vista?s activation model. Simply possessing the Vista DVD (which was released on the boards about two weeks ago) wasn?t enough to get you past the robust activation requirements. But if you can load up a local activation server and activate Vista that way, it sort of makes the whole thing redundant.

There are two caveats though. Vista still has to be installed with a KMS product key, so if that activated system ever goes through the WGA system with a known pirated key, Microsoft will be able to track it down and eventually close the loop.

The second is that this is a true KMS server, so the activation is only good for 180 days, then the client needs re-activation.

And there you have it. This is as good as the FCKGW DevilsOwn Windows XP release which I wrote about not too long ago. Microsoft was only able to solve that problem by blocking the FCKGW key with the first service pack for Windows XP. This time, they might be able to block users activating through the local KMS much earlier through Windows Update and Windows Genuine Crapvantage, but that’s only going to work for those who try to download updates from Microsoft.

But this is an ongoing effort as far as the pirates are concerned and I think it’s safe to say we should expect even better hacks in the future. What is also pretty clear is that all the effort Microsoft put into Software Craptection Platform was essentially for nothing, as pirates are still able to work around it, and the only thing Microsoft seems to have achieved is make life more difficult for system administrators, who now have the additional headache of setting up KMSs in their organization. In addition, volume license customers are sure to enjoy working in “reduced functionality mode” when Windows Genuine Crapvantage suddenly decides they are using a pirated version of Windows Vista. They’re going to especially love it when they have a deadline to reach on that same day as well.

Finally, here’s an idea for Microsoft: Why don’t you guys take the Software Craptection Platform team out of their misery, merge them with the IE team and have them work on a download manager for IE 7 similar to what FireFox has? – A feature which is loooong overdue in my opinion. Doing that, they could add 100000000000 times more value to Windows Vista compared to what they’ve been doing.

Ex CIA agent Robert Steele recently spoke about the relationship between the CIA and Google again, and mentioned how CIA seed money helped to finance Google’s launch. He did this on the Alex Jones show, where he not too long ago had already mentioned how Google was providing assistence to the CIA.

From this article:

An ex-CIA agent has gone further than ever before in detailing Google’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground and naming for the first time Google’s CIA point man.

Robert David Steele , a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and a former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, is the CEO of OSS.net .

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on his previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception.

“I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn’t fund what I call the open source world,” said Steele, citing “trusted individuals” as his sources for the claim.

“They’ve been together for quite a while,” added Steele.

Asked to impart to what level Google is “in bed” with the CIA, Steele described the bond as a “small but significant relationship,” adding, “it is by no means dominating Google in fact Google has been embarrassed because everything the CIA asked it to do they couldn’t do.”

“I also think it’s very very wrong of Google to have this relationship,” cautioned Steele.

The former agent went further than before in identifying by name Google’s liaison at the CIA.

“Let me say very explicitly – their contact at the CIA is named Dr. Rick Steinheiser, he’s in the Office of Research and Development,” said Steele.

Steele highlighted Google’s blatant censorship policies whereby press releases put out by credible organizations that are critical of Dick Cheney and other administration members don’t make it to Google News even though they are carried by PR Newswire.

We have repeatedly highlighted past examples of censorship on behalf of Google, including their blacklisting of a mainstream news website that was mildly critical of China, and also the deliberate stifling and manipulation of Alex Jones’ Terror Storm film ranking on Google Video. Google was also caught red-handed attempting to bury the Charlie Sheen 9/11 story at the height of its notoriety.

Notice how Steele even names Google’s contact at the CIA. I’d like to see Google deny this one like they did before. If they keep denying, it will only hurt them even more in the future.

I mentioned before in a previous post that in my opinion the prices for Microsoft’s latest version of Windows, called Windows Vista, are way too high. The Business version costs about $300 while the Ultimate version costs an incredible $400. If you thought those prices were high, you’re not going to believe the following.

The prices in Europe have recently been published, and according to that website, the prices for Windows Vista in Europe are going to be 409 Euros (about $531.70) for the Business version, and 549 Euros (about $713.70) for the Ultimate version.

I almost can’t believe it.

Who in their right mind is going to pay THAT much money for Windows Vista? Honestly? This is just so absurd, my mind refuses to comprehend it. And I thought the US prices were high!

I installed the final version of Windows Vista yesterday on a test computer, and I have to admit that it certainly is an improvement over Windows XP, but nothing revolutionary. It’s even less of an improvement compared to what Windows XP was to Windows 2000. It certainly is FAR from what Bill Gates promised us during PDC 2003. In that regard Vista could even be considered a failure.

Does Microsoft really expect people to spend that much money on an OS alone? Compare this to Mac OS X Tiger, which costs about $105 on Amazon, and offers virtually the same features as the Ultimate version of Windows Vista. The price difference is incredible. Also compare this to the various Linux distributions that are available these days, and ask yourself if you really need Windows Vista. Most people use their computer simply to browse the Internet, use a wordprocessor or spreadsheet and for some basic multimedia functionality. Most Linux distributions today can handle those tasks pretty well already. And Mac OS X certainly is even more capable for those tasks, and is as good as Windows Vista Business which is 3 times more expensive, and comes very close to Windows Vista Ultimate, which is 4 times more expensive.

So again, why the hell would someone spend THAT much money on Windows Vista? To be honest, if I had to spend that much money to buy Vista, I’d be switching to Mac OS X or Linux instead. And if I’m correct, many people are going to do just that in 2007 if Microsoft doesn’t do something about the prices fast.

In addition to those high prices, Microsoft have also further locked down Windows Vista and made it more difficult for people to use pirated versions. These two strategies complement eachother. On the one hand you have the high prices, and on the other hand you also force people to have to buy a legal copy. This is, ofcourse, to sell more copies and make even more money.

But this strategy, again if I am correct, is going to massively backfire on Microsoft. There are two options. First, if people are able to reliably crack Windows Vista, even more people will use pirated versions of Vista because the prices are simply too high for them to be able to afford a legal copy. And this means Microsoft is actually going to sell less copies and make less money, although they will be able to keep their marketshare. In the second option, if people aren’t able to reliably crack Windows Vista, those people that were using pirated version of Windows XP are going to have to switch to an alternative OS, like Mac OS X or Linux. In addition, a lot of people using a legal copy of Windows XP might not be able to afford Windows Vista and could also potentially switch to a different OS. So in this second option, not only is Microsoft going to sell less copies of Vista, but they are also going to lose lots of users to other OS’s, and as a result lose marketshare.

At a time when there are increasingly more stories appearing everywhere of companies and governments around the world switching to Linux, I can’t help but wonder why Microsoft is going down this path. It’s almost like they are encouraging people to switch to another OS and making it more difficult to choose Windows.

In a recent article, our beloved Steve-O was interviewed:

In an interview, Ballmer said that more than 20 percent of its software running around the world is pirated and the company aims to lower that figure with a new authentication program to run in Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Microsoft is probably going to succeed, but the mistake they are making is to assume the people part of that 20% are actually going to buy Vista. There is a reason those people are running pirated versions of Windows XP, and that is likely because they cannot afford it. If they cannot afford XP, they most certainly are not going to be able to buy Vista at those absurdly high prices. The thing that is more likely to happen, is that these people are going to switch to another OS. So if I was Microsoft, I’d expect to lose at least 20% of my marketshare in the near future.

Steve-O goes on to say:

“We’re trying to make it easier for people who somehow have received improperly licensed versions to get legal, and we also put more roadblocks in,” said Ballmer, declining to specify how much it can reduce the piracy rate. “It will help,” he said.

He actually claims Microsoft is making it easier for people to get legal, by putting in more roadblocks and maintaining those incredibly high prices for the software. I’m sorry, but what?? If anything, more roadblocks plus high prices will make it easier for people to not use Vista at all. And that will not only reduce the piracy rate, as he is hoping, but also the number of Windows users in the future.

Way to go Steve-O!

John Battelle made a post on his website claiming that “an official Google spokesperson” said that “The statements related to Google are completely untrue.” The statements that “official Google spokesperson” refers to, according to John Battelle, are the ones which are summarized in a previous post of mine which you can find here.

First of all, notice how the name of this “official Google spokesperson” isn’t mentioned at all. At least the “conspiracy theorists” have the guts to name their sources and not be anonymous themselves when they make their claims:

A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is “in bed with” the intelligence agency and the U.S. government. He has also gone public on his deep suspicions about the official explanation behind 9/11.

Robert David Steele appeared on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show and began by voicing his deep doubts about the official 9/11 story.

…

Steele raised eyebrows when he confirmed from his contacts within the CIA and Google that Google was working in tandem with “the agency,” a claim made especially volatile by the fact that Google was recently caught censoring Alex Jones’ Terror Storm and has targeted other websites for blackout in the past.

“I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off,” said the ex-CIA man.

“Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development,” said Steele.

Steele called for more scrutiny to be placed on Google if it continues to engage in nefarious practices, saying, “If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized.”

Aaaw yeah.

Secondly, notice how we have to get Google’s remarks from someone else on, as far as I’m concerned, a random blog. Why can’t they release an official press release, or comment about it on their own blog? Then at least we can know for sure it’s official, and not have to rely on questionable claims made on some blog.

What is Google afraid of? Why can’t they just be open and be transparent about things? One of the reasons probably is that they simply cannot deny their links with the CIA. They know that if they officially do this, Alex Jones will fry their ass on Prisonplanet by releasing even more information about their deals with the CIA. So they might as well keep quiet and hope people will forget about this soon.

Ofcourse, we won’t let people forget.

This caught my attention this morning, and ofcourse was no surprise to me:

A BLOKE WHO used to work for the CIA, Robert David Steele said Google and the CIA are “in bed” with one another.
Dozens of radio listeners tuned in to hear the remarks on the Alex Jones show

Ex-spook Steele reckoned in bed with the CIA was a bad place to be.

“Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government, “he said. “That is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off.”

Also from here:

Steele stated ‘I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off ‘. Steele says he has confirmed this information with his contacts within the agency. The question this raises is who is controlling information that may be seen as controversial? Is censorship-taking place and how would one go about proving that censorship has taken place?

…

Michael Hampton who writes for www.homelandstupidity.us wrote “Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users? privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism.” As for Steele he stated, “If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized”.

I warned you before in almost exact same words with examples:

• P2P is the Future of the Internet
• Google Caught In Censorship
• Google admits to censorship, then does it again
• You are losing your privacy on the Internet

If you haven’t yet done so, read the above posts. Is there still any doubt as to what is going on?

This article also caught my attention this morning:

VOULIAGMENI, Greece – Internet search leader Google and other major U.S. technology companies insisted Tuesday that their products benefit Chinese citizens despite government restrictions and warnings that online censorship is spreading.

Providing some information is better than giving none at all, the companies said, but human rights groups warned that heavy filtering of Web content is increasing in developing countries ? with some using China as a model.

China denied it censored Internet sites at all, saying criminal investigations are unrelated to freedom of expression.

Human rights groups have sharply criticized Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – news), and Microsoft Corp., along with technology provider Cisco Systems Inc., accusing them of helping the Chinese government restrict information and crack down on dissidents.

“We concluded that we would prefer to provide as much information to the Chinese people as we could through the Google search engines, in spite of the fact that we also are self-censoring material which the China government tells us we are not to exhibit,” said Vint Cerf, a Google vice president.

First of all, notice how Google is trying to talk their way out of this and trying to make it sound like they are doing something good. Please read my previous post on this topic for more. Google’s hypocrisy seems to have no limits. “Do no evil” indeed. I had hoped before that they would see what mistake they are making, but it seems the people actually in control at Google don’t feel like listening to Brin.

Secondly, notice how China is claiming that it is not censoring information. Do they think we’re THAT stupid? Claims like this are nothing but a serious insult to our intelligence. How dumb do you have to think people are to make such a claim, and actually expect them to believe you??

In a previous post, I mentioned a trend we can now see in the media globally: Consolidate, Centralize and Control. In that post I also mentioned how the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and General Electric Capital are funding organizations to buy what is remaining of the independent print media. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and tons of other media around the world not too long ago bought MySpace, one of the largest social networking websites on the Internet. It looks like he might also be buying Digg soon. The same thing is happening on the Internet that happened to other media like TV and print years ago. They’re trying to gain control over the Internet this way. For more information on this, watch two documentaries called Outfoxed and Orwell Rolls In His Grave.

Imagine if you could control public opinion. Imagine if you could influence public opinion through the media in such a way that you could manipulate or program people into believing what you want them to believe. Imagine if you had 80% control of all the media that people go to for their information. Any dictator would love to have such a “democracy”, where he can assure himself that the people will always support his views. Here’s a link to give you an idea of what I’m talking about: Pentagon Will “Catapult the Propaganda” Via U.S. Media.

Update:

It appears the CIA, through their venture capital company In-Q-Tel (a government intelligence agency having a venture capital company?), actually owns Google stock. And get this:

Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism. In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.

IT contractors and intelligence officials familiar with the arrangement confirmed to HSToday.us that Google had been providing assistance to the intelligence community, but would not say under what authority that assistance had been requested or provided.

The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.

What a world. The more I research, the more I find out how stupid I actually am. Thanks to Rick Siegel for leading me to this info.

Update 2:

Also be sure to check this latest post on this subject on Homelandstupidity.us.

Update 3:

It appears Google and the CIA might also be sharing computers and networks:

In a recent twist on my delving into the larger than life link between the corporate entities of Google and the CIA, which lie in military grade computer sharing, mutual facilities and a direct access line between the two, this tid bit comes up. How did the CIA get so much stock when the common man got access to none?

Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan has now officially become the equivalent of Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan.

I wrote before about the trend we’re now seeing on the Internet of centralizing services where managing user data (private, behavioral, content etc.) is involved. In that article I also mentioned how the companies offering those kinds of services will increasingly encourage users to give them and trust them with more and more of their data. Even, and indeed especially, their personal data. In that article I also mentioned why they would want to do this, and I mentioned the very terrible consequences for users and the Internet in the future. Among many more, those consequences include the loss of privacy, the loss of control over (personal) information and content and ultimately the loss of freedom.

I mentioned how this was one of the reasons why there is now a big battle going on against Peer to Peer (P2P) applications on the Internet. The problem is that these applications guarantee freedom on the Internet, and put control in the hands of the users by design. This is ofcourse a problem for those who want to control everything on the Internet. And they also know that it can only get worse, since what we have now are merely what you can call the first generation of P2P software. Their power will only increase in the future.

We’ve recently seen how Google, who already have their own video service, have bought YouTube, one of the most popular video services on the Internet. Again you can see the centralization that is going on. It’s a standard theme you will continue to notice from now on: Consolidate, Centralize and Control. It is good to see at least one user posting the following reaction to that article above:

YouTube will operate independently???
No such thing!!!.

I love Google but I have a real problem with so many smaller companies being absorbed by larger ones. Especially when we are talking about “broadcast communication”.

Larger communications companies are quickly snatching up smaller ones. Places that used to be the playground of small startup bands and local talent that once had a chance to become known. Used to be a time once local talent made a name for itself, it was then discovered by local radio stations, then played across the country if they were good enough. With so many stations being absorbed by larger ones, a few people can simply say, “WE DON’T WANT THAT GROUP PLAYED” and no one will ever know you exist.

The new model seems to be to drain all they can from those groups they can reap the most income from. Groups that could impact that investment are quickly snuffed out by a single voice.

That’s not independent.

With this purchase by Google, a further consolidation of voices and talent will come under the auspices of a larger, publically traded and increasingly political industry. FCC, RIAA to name a few are just a few of the controlling interests that determine exactly how independent YOUTUBE will be. That means fewer and fewer people will determine what we get to enjoy on the net, not more.

That’s not independent.

-Jazhawk

If that sounds far fetched to you, you’re in for major surprises in the future. I’ve written many articles talking about censorship by Google in the past already. This will also apply to the newly acquired YouTube. This is the same thing that has also happened to the mainstream media in the US a long time ago. Many people in the US still think there is a large variety of news corporations to choose from today, when the simple fact is, that all of those mainstream media corporations are owned by about 4-5 big corporations. You are given the illusion of choice and variety, when there is in fact not that much choice in reality. And if you watch two documentaries called “Orwell rolls in his grave” and “Outfoxed”, you will see how a small group of people decide what all the media companies they own around the world will report, and how they should do it.

At this point I should also mention that this is not only happening on the Internet, but also with print media. It has recently been reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been funding the purchase of independent newspapers around the US:

The print medium seems destined to survive only as boutique entities, much like the vinyl record form kept alive by devoted musicians and listeners.

And a major force driving print to museum-piece status: The electronic products of software colossus Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ).

So it may strike some as ironic that the philanthropy built by Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates has invested in one of the most threatened of print forms: newspapers.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has reportedly pumped funds into privately held MediaNews Group, the entity that acquired four of the papers sold by publisher McClatchy (nyse: MNI – news – people ).

…

MediaNews, which owns papers from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes, snatched up The Contra Costa Times and the venerable San Jose Mercury News, rendering itself the Bay Area’s preeminent tabloid presence. Media giant Hearst bought the former KR titles Monterey County Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press from McClatchy, but will now hand them to MediaNews — in exchange for a stake in the latter’s business beyond the San Francisco/Oakland area.

The Gates Foundation, together with other investors including General Electric Capital (nyse: GEC – news – people ), loaned some $350 million to MediaNews for the publication purchase.

Why would they want to buy what is remaining of the independent print media? Again the answer is simple: Consolidate, Centralize and Control. Also take note of the involvement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation here. Aren’t they supposed to be doing charity work? Look for a more detailed article on them, Bill Gates and Microsoft in the near future on this website.

Anyway, the reason why I mention the above, is to give you some background information on what is going on before I move on to the privacy issue. I wanted to illustrate that there really is an ongoing trend of centralization and control, and as you saw, it is not only on the Internet.

In a previous article, I mentioned that users should be more and more concerned with their privacy and trusting all those online services with their data. I also mentioned that those companies will increasingly encourage users to trust them with even more of their personal data. And guess what? Right on schedule, Microsoft released their privacy guidelines which are basically to encourage users to trust them with their (personal) data and information:

Microsoft Corp. is preparing to release privacy guidelines based on its own internal practices in hopes of getting companies to adopt more cohesive standards for safeguarding people’s personal information.

Microsoft will issue the hefty document Thursday, urging commonsense practices such as clearly telling customers why a company collects personally identifiable information like e-mail addresses or phone numbers.

…

The move comes as more people are entrusting technology companies with their communications, digital photos, business documents and other data, raising concerns about how personal information might be amassed and used. Microsoft and other companies need to make sure consumers trust them, or they risk losing that business.

In a true Orwellian way, Microsoft is actually expecting users to protect their privacy by giving away their private information to these corporations and trusting them with it. So essentially they are saying: “Protect your privacy by disclosing your private info to us. And we have good reasons for why you should do that, you see.” They are expecting people to trust those same corporations with their private data, that have a history of disclosing that private data as I have shown in another article with examples.

Also noteworthy:

Analysts credit Microsoft with having a major change of heart about privacy about five years ago, following backlash over Hailstorm, a product that sought to store all sorts of personal information under one logon, so people could more easily access accounts and products online. The product, now called Passport, was scaled back considerably after people balked at leaving all their information in the hands of just one company.

The reality is that now, while people may think they are leaving their information in the hands of various different companies, the truth is that many of those companies are property of, and/or being controlled by, the same organization or people. For example, most people in the future might think that YouTube and Google Video are two different video services, while not realizing they are both owned by the same people. Similarly, as I mentioned before, most people today think they have a lot of choice when it comes to the media, while not realizing that they are all being controlled and owned by about 4-5 big corporations. The illusion of choice is being created, while in reality, there is very little or none at all.

And it’s not just your privacy that is at stake, like I said in the beginning, but also your freedom. Just like I said would happen, YouTube recently erased 29,549 clips based on demand from Japanese media. And while the reasons for doing it may seem just, remember that there are a lot of examples where this is not the case, for example when the Chinese government demanded taking down information that was damaging to them, which is basically censorship. If they one day demand removal of videos from YouTube because it contains information they don’t want people to see, you can bet YouTube will also be deleting them. If you don’t believe me yet, check out this recent article:

Under legislation passed in Chongqing municipality, people who post “defamatory comments or remarks, launch personal attacks or seek to damage reputations online” will receive a warning or be fined between 1,000 and 5,000 yuan, the China Daily said.

“Those whose rumors cause serious consequences could be detained for five days or even more,” the paper said.

The legislation also includes fines of 3,000 to 15,000 yuan for “organizations distributing defamatory material”, the paper said.

The report comes after a Chinese court jailed dissident writer Guo Qizhen for four years on Tuesday for inciting subversion over anti-government essays he posted online.

The regulations also follow a crackdown on amateur online films that mock officially approved culture.

See that? You can bet your life on the fact that if they have to, they’ll take this crackdown of amateur online films to YouTube and Google Video. And just like Google has shown in the past, they will obey the Chinese government, willingly assist them with censorship, and take down the content. And again, not only Google has done this in the past, but also Microsoft and Yahoo. And it’s not just the Chinese government that can do this, but we’ve recently also seen the US government and Brazilian government demanding private user information from these corporations.

These are good examples of what these corporations will be capable of doing in the future, and how you cannot possibly hope to ever trust them with any of your data.

Consider yourself warned.

The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian reports that we’re all about to become DRM roadkill. Or, at least the people who were stupid enough to buy DRM protected music. Microsoft is setting the example and is showing everyone what corporations can do to those who buy DRM protected content.

Just head on over to Microsoft’s PlaysForSure website and take a look at the companies listed there. If you bought music from any of those companies, you’re going to have trouble getting that music to play in the future, even on Microsoft’s own soon to be released Zune player (their iPod competitor). Zune will not support the version of Microsoft’s DRM that is used by PlaysForSure. This means that the songs you bought won’t play on Zune, and that you will likely have to buy them all again if you want to listen to them on a Zune player. They won’t even play on an iPod, since the iPod doesn’t support Microsoft’s DRM.

Even worse, as reported before, the new DRM version that Microsoft will use, will not allow you to transfer your licenses to another device at all or make backups of them. So if that device breaks, you lose your content as well.

Demerjian calls this one of the more massive screwings of customers by Microsoft. And I have to agree. They’re even screwing their partners with this as Michael Robertson writes here:

In spite of the larger display and capacity the Zune is inferior to the MusicGremlin because it zunes your entire purchased music library. Microsoft made a corporate decision to abandon their previous technology called “Plays for Sure” and turn it into “Screwed for Sure”. Anyone who purchased music from Rhapsody, Napster, Buy.com, Wal-mart, BuyMusic, etc. will discover that music is unplayable. (Of course iTunes music won’t play either because Apple doesn’t play nicely with others.) You’ll be required to re-purchase that music or go without.

The danger with DRM is that it gives corporations the power to change the rules of the game anytime they think it will benefit their bank account, even if that means zuning your music library. There’s no better illustration of this than when the world’s largest technology company curtails support of their OWN technology abandoning their hardware partners, music stores and most importantly customers they convinced to use Plays for Sure. Microsoft will surely claim that they’ll continue to support Plays for Sure, but their actions speak louder than their words – it won’t even play on their own music players! Plays for Sure is dead for sure and it’s going to its grave with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of music fans? digital music crammed into the coffin.

Let this be a good lesson to everyone. DO NOT BUY MUSIC OR VIDEO THAT IS IN ANY WAY PROTECTED OR RESTRICTED.

How do you know if music or video is protected or restricted? Here are some things to look for:

• The music or video (content) has copy restrictions. You can’t copy the files to another computer or device and play them there. You cannot make backups of the files and play them on another device or computer, even if the old one has been damaged. You are only allowed to make a very limited number of backups.
• The content has restrictions on the number of times you can play or look at it. Restrictions can also apply to the number of days you can use the content, or it can expire after a certain time after which it becomes unusable.
• The content is distributed in a proprietary file format and cannot be played on other devices or using other software. Apple iTunes is a good example of this – You can only play music you buy from Apple on their own devices using their own software. If you’re buying music, you should make sure it is in a format that is open and widely supported, such as MP3. If you’re buying video, DivX or XVid are good formats.
• Read the End User License Agreements and make sure you understand what kind of restrictions or limitations apply to the content you’re buying. Remember that these companies probably won’t refer to them as restrictions.
• Ask questions to the people selling content to you and make sure you can play them where ever you want for however long you want. Ask them about any limitations, restrictions or protection that applies to the content.

If you must buy devices such as iPod or Zune, only buy them when you see that they support open formats such as MP3, which will ensure you that you can use your existing music collection on them. I own an iPod nano, but I never bought any music from Apple. I only put MP3 songs on my iPod. When I want to use another MP3 player, I can simply copy the MP3 music files to the other player and use them there. DRM protected content will not allow this.

So be careful with what you invest your money in. As shown above, if you make the wrong decision and buy protected content, chances are you’re going to lose your investment in the future because it becomes unusable.

I hope the most evil team at Microsoft are proud of themselves and their accomplishments. Let’s see if they can top this in the future with even more boneheaded ideas.

On the picture above, you can see Bill Gates during happier days, or at least, what he thought were happy days. As you may be able to recall, Gates posed for that picture when Windows XP went gold. That was, as you can see on the picture, 62 days before the launch of Windows XP. Microsoft had introduced their Product Craptivation software in Windows XP, which would require all retail licenses to be activated online or by phone. The idea behind it was that it would make it more difficult for people to make and distribute copies of the software because every key could only be activated on a single PC.

But a little more than a month before the official launch date, a warez group called Devils0wn managed to get their hands on a volume license copy of Windows XP including a volume license key which didn’t require activation, and distributed it on the Internet. Along with that, they released the picture above. As you can see, the word “warez” was “embroidered” on Gates’s shirt, the CD was labeled “Devils0wn XP.Corp” on the wrong side and they changed the release date to “NOW!” which was August 29, 2001.

Because of Devils0wn, people all around the world were able to “eXPerience the launch” more than a month earlier than officially planned by Microsoft. Most people can probably still remember the FCKGW key that it was distributed with, and which was blocked later in Service Pack 1 for Windows XP.

By the release of Service Pack 1 however, a tool was released which you could use to generate new working volume license keys for Windows XP. And so Microsoft had problems once again. That was probably when they decided that Product Craptivation was not enough anymore, and they went on to unleash something called Windows Genuine Crapvantage onto the world. Now all of a sudden, you couldn’t download certain software (updates) anymore unless you validated your copy of Windows XP. And during that process, they could actually check if the key that was used for a Windows XP installation was one that existed in their database of released keys. This means that volume license keys which were generated by others would not validate.

Windows Genuine Crapvantage has since been hacked countless times, and has since been updated by Microsoft countless times in response as well. I totally lost track of how many times, and it’s probably still ongoing.

With Windows Vista Microsoft is going to introduce a whole new set of validation software which they have collectively called “Software Protection Platform,” and which I will further refer to as “Software Craptection Platform.” This new software platform, used to craptect (very technical term) other software, is basically Product Craptivation and Genuine Crapvantage thrown together, with some extra salt and pepper and possibly some other code which was just lying around on some developer’s PC at Microsoft. Some experts are speculating that they needed this extra code, which is of no value to the user, to help fill the DVD image to a certain size for unknown reasons.

Anyway, here’s what Software Craptection Platform is supposed to do:

Under the new plan, counterfeit copies of Vista will not run the Aero interface, the OS’s much-touted updated graphics look; will disable ReadyBoost, a feature that lets users add memory to systems by plugging in a USB flash drive; and will cripple Windows Defender, the anti-spyware protection tucked inside Vista. Previously, Microsoft had said it would strip some features, including Aero, from non-genuine Vista, although Defender was not among those mentioned.

Product activation, which debuted in 2001 with Windows XP, but is now part of Software Protection, will also be dramatically revamped. If a copy of Vista is not activated within 30 days, the operating system will only let the user run the default browser, and then only for an hour at a time before logging off. Legitimate copies that for some reason later fail the ongoing validation tests will have another 30 days to re-activate or purchase a new license before the PC slips into what Microsoft dubbed “reduced functionality,” while copies detected as fake during the validation process will also be downgraded after 30 days. In addition, users of genuine Vista must reactivate within three days of “a major hardware replacement,” said Microsoft, or face a crippled computer.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful. And this time, they’re making sure Devils0wn can’t do what they did with Windows XP again:

Microsoft will also extend activation and validation to enterprise volume license users for the first time with Vista, said Hartje, and require them with Windows Server “Longhorn,” the server software follow-on. “One of the big holes we’ve had [in our anti-piracy efforts] is in our volume keys. It’s a very open process, with the keys in clear text and easily stolen and misused,” Hartje said.

Volume licensees will be required to manage keys and run activation using one of two services, KMS (Key Management Service) or MAK (Multiple Activation Key), with the former targeting shops with more than 25 machines that are always connected to the organization’s network. MAK, on the other hand, is similar to the retail product activation keys, and lets one Windows PC connected to Microsoft to vouch for multiple machines.

It just gets better and better. The things users aren’t going to have to put up with. And then they go on to say:

The crackdown, she said, is necessary to protect users and Microsoft’s OEMs. “We need this to protect consumers and partners. Consumers want to make sure they get what they’ve paid for.”

That’s a big lie, and they know it. Consumers could care less about Software Craptection Platform. This is not about protecting users, it’s about having more control over users, and ultimately about making more money. How else will they reach the 20% in the first year adaption rate they want for Windows Vista, of which analysts say that’s “almost impossible”?

Windows Vista is Microsoft’s product, and they can ofcourse do whatever they want with it. However, I do think that they’re making things more difficult in the end for the users, and this time, including the corporate users who will now have to deal with setting up “key management.” They’re going to really enjoy that, I’m sure. On top of that, the prices for Windows Vista are also absurdly high, and there is no compelling reason to upgrade to it. Perhaps if Vista became what Gates promised us during PDC 2003, I’d want to pay $400 for an Ultimate license. But not as it is now. Maybe that’s why they need Software Craptection Platform. To ensure they can get more people to actually buy a license, because they fear selling less than Windows XP.

In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see what the pirates and hackers are going to come up with. Can anyone achieve the status with Windows Vista that Devils0wn achieved in 2001 with Windows XP? Any group able to do that, would no doubt be worshipped and achieve some kind of super 1337 status and be made immortal. I hope to write a post called “Software Craptection Platform: The Empire’s Strike Hacked” before January 2007. Or maybe even before December 2006.

These are exciting times.

Update October 6, 2006: It seems legitimate volume license customers of Windows XP are being locked out by Windows Genuine Crapvantage this week because of an issue at Microsoft. Imagine what Software Craptection Platform will be capable of. And to quote Microsoft:

“We need this to protect consumers and partners. Consumers want to make sure they get what they’ve paid for.”

Actually, FireFox security probably isn’t getting worse, but what may be happening is that people are now beginning to wake up to, and find, the security vulnerabilities in the software. When FireFox first became available, everyone seemed to believe the hype that it was the most secure browser available. As a result, many people started using it, thinking all of a sudden they were much safer while surfing the web. A false sense of security.

However, slowly but surely, people began to notice the weaknesses of FireFox, and it became clear that even FireFox suffered from many security vulnerabilities. And it only seems to get worse, even to the point that it now often seems FireFox even has more vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer.

As I said in December 2005:

The point I’m trying to make is that people still don’t get that security issues on the Internet and with software in general, are a common problem that everyone and every product is dealing with, or is going to have to deal with. It’s not just Internet Explorer, people. As soon as FireFox gets popular, you’re going to see more exploits being published for it. Heck, the vulnerabilities ARE present, people just don’t feel like using them. Yet.

I had discussed FireFox as far back as April 2005, in my article titled “Why Microsoft is winning.” And there I basically warned about the same problems with FireFox.

Symantec has recently been warning about vulnerabilities in Mozilla browsers (including FireFox), and even says they contain more vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer:

Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report Volume VIII contains data for the first six months of this year that may contradict this perception.

According to the report, 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for the Mozilla browsers during the first half of 2005, “the most of any browser studied,” the report’s authors stated. Eighteen of these flaws were classified as high severity.

“During the same period, 13 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for IE, eight of which were high severity,” the report noted.

The average severity rating of the vulnerabilities associated with both IE and Mozilla browsers in this period was classified as “high”, which Symantec defined as “resulting in a compromise of the entire system if exploited.”

The same article also mentions:

There is one caveat: Symantec counts only those security flaws that have been confirmed by the vendor. According to security monitoring company Secunia, there are 19 security issues that Microsoft still has to deal with for Internet Explorer, while there are only three for Firefox.

That’s ofcourse the known issues. This doesn’t say anything about the total number of vulnerabilities that actually exist in the software, of which probably most have not been noticed yet by the right people (you can be sure hackers know of them).

As has recently been shown, two hackers claim to know of at least 30 unpatched FireFox flaws:

SAN DIEGO–The open-source Firefox Web browser is critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript, two hackers said Saturday afternoon.

An attacker could commandeer a computer running the browser simply by crafting a Web page that contains some malicious JavaScript code, Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi said in a presentation at the ToorCon hacker conference here. The flaw affects Firefox on Windows, Apple Computer’s Mac OS X and Linux, they said.

“Internet Explorer, everybody knows, is not very secure. But Firefox is also fairly insecure,” said Spiegelmock, who in everyday life works at blog company SixApart. He detailed the flaw, showing a slide that displayed key parts of the attack code needed to exploit it.

…

The hackers claim they know of about 30 unpatched Firefox flaws. They don’t plan to disclose them, instead holding on to the bugs.

And it would be naive for anyone to think there couldn’t be more. In fact, I’d bet there are MANY more.

It seems people are beginning to understand now that software security is a general problem. It makes no sense to bash specific companies for the lack of security in their software while you hype up other software with baseless arguments. Gone are the days where Microsoft was the only one taking the heat for their “bad quality software.” In fact, Microsoft has really improved their software products with regards to security and reliability, and have the infrastructure in place to respond to security issues unlike any other company, just like I said would happen. They’ve done such a good job, that Symantec is now complaining to the EU, essentially demanding that Microsoft make Windows Vista less secure, because they fear selling less of their security software:

Symantec has also complained about a new security feature called Kernel PatchGuard that prevents software–malicious or otherwise–from altering the Windows kernel at runtime. In the past, security companies have been forced to patch the Windows kernel because so much malicious software does so as well. That process will not be possible in Windows Vista, which should make the system more secure. Symantec wants it removed.

Seriously, can you imagine this? This is a clear example of the crazy world we live in. First people complain about the bad security in Microsoft’s software for years, and when they finally do something about it, they start complaining that it is too secure. When I see this kind of stuff, it just feels like I hit my head a few times with enormous force against a brick wall.

Ofcourse, Symantec is also afraid of Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare antivirus software, which has been doing VERY good ever since it got released and managed to get quite a lot of marketshare for a new product:

The antivirus and PC care package nabbed 15.4 percent of security suite sales at retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon.com, according to NPD’s data. The average price was $29.67, well below Microsoft’s list price of $49.95. Online at Amazon.com, OneCare is available for only $19.99.

“Microsoft’s penetration pricing strategy is clearly working and they are capturing significant unit share,” NPD analyst Chris Swenson told CNET News.com. “I think many in the industry were surprised with how well Windows Live OneCare did in its first month on the market.”

OneCare hit U.S. store shelves in late May, three years after Microsoft announced its intent to move into the antivirus realm. The product combines antivirus, anti-spyware and firewall software with backup features and several tune-up tools for Windows PCs. Symantec and McAfee have both announced new products to rival OneCare.

…

Microsoft took market share from all incumbents in June, according to NPD’s data. It particularly gained on market leader Symantec, which saw its unit share drop 10.1 percentage points from May. At the same time, McAfee lost 3.3 points and Trend Micro dropped 1.3 points.

And it’s no surprise, because it is really lightweight and easy to use and requires little interaction while also being relatively cheap. Compare that to Symantec’s Norton Antivirus software, which is just slow and bloated. And I know, because I used it for many years. So I saw this coming way in advance:

It?s going to be interesting to see what Microsoft comes up with regarding their antivirus solution. They have already proven to be quite capable of delivering an antispyware solution. Microsoft?s antispyware solution currently is the best solution available for Windows.

I think they’ll do a good job with antivirus as well. Their biggest competitors right now are Symantec and McAfee. I’ve been using Symantec’s Norton Antivirus and Firewall for years now. But I’ve been using it because there is nothing better available for a standalone Windows client. As many of you already know, Norton Antivirus is slow and bloated. Even on the fast computers that I work on it takes a long while just to load the main Norton Internet Security window and to navigate certain dialogs. Not to mention the issues you sometimes have to deal with, if you’re not so lucky, of antivirus not wanting to start and receiving all kinds of weird errors, after which you have to check Symantec’s knowledgebase and follow procedures of how to fix it. But I still use it because, like I said, it’s the best option right now for a standalone PC. It works and it updates itself without me having to worry about it.

McAfee’s solutions for standalone PC’s are lightweight and faster, but you have to jump through all kinds of hoops just to get your software updated. It’s just too much work and very inconvenient. For the enterprise McAfee’s solutions are currently the best available though. Nothing comes even close to ePolicy Orchestrator.

So when we look at the standalone PC, there’s certainly room for improvement and I think Microsoft is going to use the weaknesses I described in Symantec’s and McAfee’s products to their advantage. If they can deliver a nice, simple, fast and userfriendly interface and an update feature similar to Windows Update in XP SP2, and ofcourse quality protection, they’ll give their competitors a lot of problems in the near future. It seems even their pricing is going to be much lower than the current prices for antivirus solutions.

I have to admit, it feels good to see old analysis come true in the future. It kindof confirms you weren’t just smoking (too much) crack back then.

Anyway, knowing what we know today, that security issues are going to be with us for a long time to come and that it will affect all software, we have to become smart about it and not be naive. Like I wrote before, instead of having a false sense of security, we have to realize the software we’re using is most likely vulnerable, and as a result we have to be constantly suspicious about things going on on our PC, about websites we visit, emails we receive etc. There should be a large effort to educate users about these things, make them smarter and have them realize the risks. No matter how secure the software is, the uninformed user is always the weakest link. Security software has to become more intelligent, more sophisticated and more userfriendly at the same time, being able to detect potentially malicious activity very early on, and informing the user in simple and clear ways of what’s going on and what they can do about it. There is still LOTS of work to do in those areas, and the companies that can get those things right in the future, will be the ones with very successful security software.

So instead of whining to the EU, Symantec should be doing something more productive and work on their products.

Update October 4, 2006: It looks like the claim made by the hackers about the 30 vulnerabilities in FireFox was made up. This does not mean, however, that there aren’t vulnerabilities at this moment in FireFox. There are. And you’ll see them fixed in the future. Everything I said above about FireFox still stands.

Microsoft also responded to complaints from Symantec and McAfee:

Ben Fathi, a Vole VP, told Eweek that Symantec and McAfee need to improve their products. Symantec and McAfee were asking Microsoft to keep patients sick so they can doling out life saving drugs.

I have to agree. Also:

Microsoft has listened to Symantec and McAfee for nearly two years and features like Windows Security Center and PatchGuard are not new to Vista. Fathi questioned McAfees and Symantec’s motives for hitting out against Microsoft.

McAfee and Symantec have only one motive. It’s called Windows Live OneCare.

Microsoft seems to be taking their DRM crap a bit further with Windows Media Player 11. The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian reports that in WMP11 you will no longer be able to back up your licenses because they are tied to a single device. And if that device breaks, you loose your content as well.

The most evil team at Microsoft have really outdone themselves this time, it seems. But I have a feeling they’re going to show us all more of what they are capable of in the near future. Those of you who are stupid enough to buy DRM ‘protected’ content, are going to wake up from a very bad dream in the future. Like Demerjian also reported, even Microsoft’s own future product, called Zune, will not play older DRM ‘protected’ content because it does not support it. This is exactly what you were all warned about. When I buy music, I want to be able to play it on every device, whenever and where ever I want. Even if it’s after 10 years. And that goes for all other content like movies as well.

I wonder if the most evil team at Microsoft are proud of their work. How about it guys? Are you happy with all of this? Or do you still believe the crap upper management keeps telling you? Are you too naive to see what the real agenda is? You do realize that your “we just provide the tools and technologies to the companies and they choose how to protect their content, so we’re innocent…. those companies are our customers too you know?” argument won’t fly anymore, right? Your own Zune player refuses to play content with older DRM!! How about that?

Fortunately, we have the people behind the FairUse4WM program who ensure us that we will have access to our content in the future. The FairUse4WM program was developed by a hacker and strips the copy protection from Windows Media DRM 10 and 11 files. Microsoft released a patch for the hack, but the hackers released a newer version of FairUse4WM within about 8 hours after Microsoft released its patch. They just can’t seem to realize that they can never win this battle. Apple, by the way, faces similar issues as well with their DRM.

If you have content that is protected with Microsoft’s DRM, you might want to start using the FairUse4WM program to remove the protection before it is too late. And for the future, you might also want to watch out for buying any DRM protected content.

I’ve seen the future of the Internet, and it does not involve centralized services like Live.com and Google.

Why not? One of the biggest and most important reasons for this is that these kinds of huge centralized services take control away from the user. Control over various things, such as property, content and privacy, just to name a few. It’s been proven again and again that users cannot possibly trust organizations offering such centralized services with their information.

Even if these organizations have good intentions, there are many ways in which they can be forced to eventually “break their promises” towards their users. And when you realize that these organizations are mostly just corporations, and when you also realize that corporations just look at their own financial/business interests and that of their shareholders, you have no choice but to realize that the users will always suffer the consequences of those priorities.

For example, these organizations can be forced to disclose user information by governments around the world, even though they all say they value the privacy of their users. We’ve recently seen how Google was forced to give data to the Brazilian court. And even the US government and China have demanded private user information in the past. Not long ago, the US government demanded search information from Google, MSN and Yahoo.

You have to realize that one day, among the data that these organizations are disclosing, your private data might also be included. That data might include all searches you ever did including keywords of what you were looking for, the search results you visited, your private user information, financial transactions you did, your email, records of your instant messaging sessions etc. etc.

And you never know what the people getting all this data might do with it. You cannot possibly begin to imagine how much they can get to know about you when they get this kind of data into their hands. With the very sophisticated data mining technologies they have available right now, they could use this data for a variety of things.

Notice for example, how Live.com and Google now encourage users to sign in before they use Search and any other services on those networks. Yesterday I tried doing a simple search on Live.com, and was presented with a Sign-In page before I actually could view any results. Why was that necessary? It is necessary when you want to track and save the behavior of the user over a long period of time.

Apart from the big privacy risks, these organizations can also control what gets published on their news websites and blogging websites and what doesn’t. I wrote before about Microsoft admitting that they censor information, and perhaps you can still remember Google censoring information on it’s blogging network. Even Yahoo has done these things already in the past. It even seemed at one time that Google was even blacking out certain information from it’s cache of webpages.

In a similar way, services like Google Video and YouTube encourage users to give all their content to them. But once the user’s content gets on these services, they effectively own it. They can do with it whatever they want, and they can decide what gets published and what gets taken down. If the Chinese government one day doesn’t like a video on YouTube containing certain information, you can bet that YouTube is going to have to take it down AND provide the Chinese government with full details of who published it and who watched it.

Don’t you find it annoying that you can’t save the videos you download on Google Video and YouTube to your harddisk, and watch them offline? I keep asking myself, are these companies so glad to keep wasting their bandwidth? Why can I not save a video I downloaded and share it on my home network for others to watch? Why must I send others in my own home or organization a link to the video, and have them download the entire video all over again, wasting not only my bandwidth, but also that of the service provider and my ISP? Again, the idea here is that you should not be able to do it. It’s THEIR content now, and the purpose is to force you to go to their website and get it from them when you want to watch it. When they want to take down certain content, it’s also a lot easier this way.

And soon, these guys are going to be introducing online storage. Microsoft’s version is called LiveDrive, and Google’s is called GDrive. The idea here, again, is to give them and trust them with all your data. You should be seriously concerned with your privacy if you ever decide to make use of these services. Like I said before, once your data is in their hands, they are free to do whatever they want with it, no matter what they promise you. They can be “forced” to break their promises to you. Perhaps most of the time, you’ll not even know what they are doing with it, and who they are giving access to it, until it is already too late.

A good example of this is the US government and the CIA using Swift data to spy on people. As you may know, all global financial transactions go through a central location called Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications). For a long while now, the CIA, FBI and perhaps many other organizations in other countries had access to all this data. And you can see what they are using it for as well: Spying on people. Remember that all this data is supposed to be confidential and private.

Let me also remind you of the fact that the NSA in cooperation with AT&T has been getting full access to phone conversations in real time, and were using that to spy on people. Did you know about this before it took place? No, you got to know about it after months when it was already too late. And who tells you they stopped doing it? Answer: They didn’t. And you can bet they are doing a lot more with your data that you don’t know about. They’re even using this to spy on all Internet traffic. It would not surprise me one bit if Microsoft, Yahoo and Google were secretly working with organizations like the CIA or other governmental organizations and giving them access to private data. Just read my interview with Professor Ross Anderson where he mentions how Microsoft, among other companies, has a special unit assisting the government to take advantage of security vulnerabilities in their software.

Now, I could go on and on telling you about the disadvantages of using these services, and naming examples. There is so much more to tell and talk about. But most of this you can find yourself if you do your own research and start looking for and paying attention to the right information. What it looks like to me, is that there is a global trend of centralizing these kinds of services where managing user data (private, behavioral, content etc.) is involved. The reason for them to want this, is that it will make it so much easier to gain access to all this data once it is centralized, so they can use it to monitor and spy on people around the world. Not only that, but they will also be able to control what gets published and which information is available to the users around the world. They could effectively erase certain events from history, or completely rewrite it if they wanted to.

All of the above, and more, is why I believe that the future of the Internet will be decided by Peer to Peer (P2P) systems. They are a LOT more efficient, and have many more advantages, one important one being that it puts the users in control. When you see the stories in the news everyday about the RIAA and the MPAA attacking P2P services, there is a lot more at stake than you possibly realize. This is not just about piracy, even though that’s what they put the emphasis on. The real reasons for attacking P2P have more to do with the distributed and decentralized nature of it (making it impossible to control), and the inherent freedom because of its design. Having read all of the above, it should be easy to understand why the people in control don’t like it.

I don’t see a future where my email arrives and is being stored at an email server at my ISP, or at some email provider such as Hotmail or Gmail. I see a future where my email gets delivered directly to my computer before it is in readable form. Every step along the way to my computer, it is encrypted and basically useless to others. The same goes for instant messaging.

I don’t see a future where people publish their movies to a website like Google Video or YouTube for others to watch. I see a future where users publish their movies on their own computer, harness the power of the P2P network, and make it available to millions of others to watch. The same goes for blogging. I’ll be publishing my blog on my own computer and serve my posts to millions of others through the P2P network in a very efficient way. The same goes for news and any other information. Censorship will not be possible.

I don’t see a future where I need services like LiveDrive and GDrive to store my documents so that I can access them from another country when I am on vacation. I see a future where I can privately store my data on the P2P network and be able to access my documents, my email and any other data from anywhere, whenever I want, without having to worry about security issues.

The system will enable me to have complete control over my own content at all times, having it right on my own computer if I want to. The system will make sure nobody can possibly find out who I am on the network, or which information I published, unless I want them to know. The system will give every user complete freedom over what he wants to publish and make available to others. It will have no central point of failure. And it will not be possible to block/censor certain content, without effectively shutting down access to all of it. This will all be by design.

I don’t see a future where you will have a lot of distinction between client and server software. I see a future where the client software will also be the server software. The same software I’ll use to get content, will be the software I use to publish my own content. And they will mostly run on the same computer(s).

The Internet of the future is going to be much more distributed, much more powerful, and it will serve the user even more than it does today.

By the way, if this sounds nice to you, and you are able to provide funding for such a project, feel absolutely free to contact me. There is a lot more where this came from.

A group of people, friends of those running the popular Bittorrent tracker called The Pirate Bay, have made a movie on filesharing called “Steal This Film“. You can visit the website and download the movie for free (various formats available) using a Bittorrent client.

As you may already know, organizations in the US like the Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) are constantly in the news with new lawsuits against (dead) filesharers and companies with filesharing software who don’t follow their rules. In May 2006 they finally got Swedish officials to raid the ISP where the Pirate Bay is being hosted and brought down the website. Orders came from top levels of the US administration to the Swedish Minister of Justice demanding that they do something about the Pirate Bay. However, that move massively backfired, causing protests in Sweden and the Swedisch government even being sued because of the raid.

Needless to say, the Pirate Bay website was back online in 3 days, and fully functional within a week. All of this and more is discussed in the movie. They’ve now even built in redundancy in their system, with backup systems in other countries ready to go online as soon as one of their locations gets taken down again.

Looks like the MPAA and RIAA are going to have a very difficult time with these guys. They’ve now even taken it a step further, and are internationally offering P2P anonymity on one of their latest filesharing services.

According to the Party, its new network is a ‘dark net’, which means that anyone will be able to use its service without fear of being monitored or logged. Users get an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

In a statement, Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party said there were many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet. He added that if the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.

The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to democratic society, Falkvinge said.

And I have to say, I thoroughly enjoy their attitude and their offensive and very humorous approach to dealing with organizations like the MPAA. It’s much needed. You’d hope consumers in the US and other countries would have more backbone instead of letting organizations like the MPAA do with them whatever they like. These guys are setting an example.

And this is just the beginning. Hopefully other companies and organizations take notice and don’t resort to boneheaded strategies to keep control over users. Sony recently got a serious beating too for their DRM software on certain music CD’s which was effectively a rootkit. And even Microsoft got into this stuff with their Product Craptivation and Genuine Crapvantage software in Windows and Office. Hopefully they’ll realize sometime soon that they can’t possibly hope to win this battle.

So in case you’re looking for something to download, like say… a movie… then visit The Pirate Bay and see if you can find what you’re looking for.

By the way, “Steal this Film” has the BEST INTRO EVER!!!!

I sat down today with my delicious cup of Irish coffee and read Cringely’s latest article, only to confirm once again that he’s probably smoking something highly illegal. Not only that, but this latest article has led me to suspect that he might be injecting something directly into his bloodstream as well. I’m fairly certain that he’ll find CIA agents knocking on his door in the near future (most likely to join in, not to arrest him).

I admit that I’ve enjoyed most of Cringely’s articles up till now. He’s a smart guy and has some interesting insights sometimes. But when he writes about Microsoft, it usually involves some kind of prediction of Microsoft’s doom, and he seems to be consistently wrong. Probably 95% of the time.

What Cringely fails to realize, is that the guys over at Microsoft will gladly admit when they are, or have been, doing something wrong, and will change when it is required. This is one of the reasons I mentioned before why I think Microsoft is winning. They’ve noticed what they lack compared to Google, they’ve admitted it, and they’ve taken action. A few years ago I sent a flame email to Ballmer complaining about various things. And people who know me, know that I can be very direct with my criticism. Some even consider it offensive and harsh sometimes. So you can imagine my surprise when Ballmer actually thanked me for it.

It will ofcourse take a while before they get to be anywhere near as good as Google, but they’ll work hard to achieve that. So I do agree with Cringely when he quotes Einstein at the end of his article: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Microsoft also seems to agree. They’ve even brought on new blood, in the form of Ray Ozzie, to help them come up with new strategies. You can read more about that in this article from Fortune. They’ll be spending a lot of money to build their own data centers as well, similar to Google, and they seem to be taking this new Live strategy pretty serious. Plus, they have a lot more money to spend than Google. No wonder Google is worried. And their approach, once again, seems to be a holistic one. As mentioned here:

To help simplify its message, Microsoft has consolidated its content and tools for Windows Live developers on a single Microsoft Developer Network site.

“We are opening the Windows Live platform to third parties to create a virtuous ecosystem” for users, developers, partners, advertisers and Microsoft, said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president for the MSN Communications Platform with the MSN and Personal Services Division.

And then you have our beloved Steve-O saying:

“I do think…that this is really a platform play. We need an ecosystem, as we call it, around our Live platform, just as we needed an ecosystem around Windows, thousands of communications service providers, thousands of content authors, thousands of people who want to provide unique, customized versions and views of the Internet and information. All of that will build in the excitement and interest and audience. And then we also need an ecosystem of advertisers and agencies and search engine marketing companies. And we’re dedicated to that kind of partnership and ecosystem…The only way we will be able to get to critical mass is by literally reaching out.”

See that? That’s also one of the reasons I mentioned before why I think Microsoft is winning. Their Live strategy is not an isolated thing, but they think of it in terms of a much broader and holistic strategy where everything needed is worked out and present, and works with everything else seamlessly. It has become a company-wide effort. And they have a major advantage when it comes to developers and tools; nobody understands this better than Microsoft right now, and nobody has better technology. They have a similar advantage when it comes to the Xbox as well, but I’ll write about that in the future. Google won’t be able to compete.

This is a massive undertaking, and as I mentioned before, it will take a while before Microsoft can get all it’s products ready and can really begin to compete with Google who’s enjoyed at least a 4 year head start. Which brings me to this article by John C. Dvorak. Dvorak seems to complain about the fact that MSN search still has a long way to go compared to Google. Ofcourse he’s right, but he also fails to mention that the MSN guys practically just started, and there are many area’s that still need (lots of) work.

For example, when I do a search for ‘karel donk’ on MSN search, I get the following sponsored ads:

Cheap Donk Prices – www.nextag.com
We Have Millions of Products. Read Donk Reviews!

Donk
Find the Lowest Price on Donk Items!
www.kadazzle.com

Honestly, who expects me to click on those? What the hell are Donk prices and items? In comparison, when I do the same search on Google, I get no ads. Obviously Google is a lot smarter. If I do a search on “DSC-R1″ however, both MSN search and Google know I’m talking about a camera from Sony, and list relevant ads that make sense, with Google still making some more sense than MSN.

In another test example, when I searched for “robert x cringely smoking crack”, both MSN and Google list this website as the first result, which conveniently contains “Robert Cringely”, “John Dvorak” and “smoking crack” all on one page. So I guess it’s a tie.

I’ve also been trying out other Windows Live products. One of them is Windows Live OneCare, which is a pretty good product so far. It’s just too bad that it won’t be available for people outside the US for now. And I was quite disappointed to find out that, as a beta tester, I couldn’t take advantage of the lower prices in April because of that. So I look forward to it’s worldwide availability. That’s going to be when you’ll be hearing more about Symantec and McAfee talking to, or more accurately, complaining to the EU Antitrust Commission.

I’ve also tried Windows Live Messenger and have no complaints so far. And then there’s Windows Live Mail, which I have yet to try. There seemed to have been a delay in converting my account to the new interface, so I’m still waiting for that to happen. But I can already say three things about it: One, if it doesn’t support POP3 access like Gmail, I won’t be using it. And two, if it inserts ads in emails I send to people, even if it’s just a single line, I won’t be using it. I don’t want anything changing my emails. If you want to scan my emails to display ads based on context, by all means, go ahead. But don’t put garbage in my emails. And third, the ad on the right is way too big and distracting, they’re going to have to remove it and come up with something less distracting. Gmail is a good example of how it should be done.

And now, having said all that, I should once again mention that I am very skeptical about ad-supported software and services, mainly because I don’t think online advertising, the way it is usually done, is effective. I wrote about this in more details before. I later came to find out that the main problem I described there is referred to as Banner-Blindness. Most advertisers probably fail to realize this, and I can confidently say that Google and Microsoft aren’t making any money off of me with advertising. In addition, there are other problems they’re facing right now, such as click fraud and spam, and there will no doubt be more in the future.

So with all those big investments in large datacenters and building ad supported software and services, you have to wonder if it’s not too risky. I recently wrote about the need for more power efficient hardware, and it seems managing those large power-hungry datacenters will only get more and more expensive in the future as energy becomes scarce and more expensive. Not to mention the costs for bandwidth.

So I want to end this post by quoting the end of one of my previous articles:

Companies who are jumping on the ad-supported software and services bandwagon these days, as Microsoft seems to be doing, should carefully consider this. In the long term it may prove to be the wrong kind of investment, that is, if your intentions are to really make enough money from it, to support those products and services.

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that the costs of energy are going up, and will only continue to go up in the future. And this is true not only for oil, but also for other types of energy depending on oil and gas, such as electricity. All of this has to do with something most of the media is still in denial about, namely Peak Oil. While demand for oil is only increasing because of the growth of economies around the world and in particular China, oil production around the world seems to have reached its maximum and will be declining in the near future. Oil wells around the world are running out and it turns out that others contain less oil than was expected. And apart from the fact that it now becomes a lot more difficult to get oil from the remaining oil wells, the quality of the oil in those wells is also much lower. Indeed in many countries, oil production has peaked and companies are finding it difficult to maintain the amount of barrels produced daily, let alone increase production.

There are stories appearing everywhere about oil prices going up and energy shortages. And with demand growing, it can only get worse in the future. For a more in-dept analysis and details, you may want to read this article by Michael Ruppert.

We’ve recently also seen that Microsoft installed the largest solar panel system in Silicon valley at it’s Mountain View campus. While they seemed to put the emphasis on the need for being more environment friendly, it seems they’re also looking at alternative ways to satisfy their energy demands:

Rolling blackouts are sometimes mandated in Silicon Valley during the summer months when power consumption is at its highest. The system is designed to deliver maximum output when the local energy grid is under the greatest strain.

Yes, with less energy available and costs going up, solar energy seems to be one of the possible solutions. However, the important thing to note is that solar energy isn’t anywhere capable to completely satisfy the energy demand. They’re only using it to help provide part of the energy they need.

Another possible solution, is ethanol based energy. We’ve recently seen Bill Gates investing in Pacific Ethanol, a producer of corn-based fuel. You have to wonder why he’s doing that, when it is fairly known that you need more energy to produce ethanol than you can get out of it. Even Gates himself has admitted that once:

You know, there’s actually a lot of energy if we have those new techniques. Things like ethanol would actually cost you more energy than you’d get out of them, so you might not want to spend too much of your money on that, you know, that kind of approach.

So right now, it seems there are no alternative sources of energy to replace oil and natural gas. You’d think that based on this fact, companies would start producing more energy efficient hardware and equipment.

Which is one of the reasons why I recently lashed out at nVidia and ATI. While we should be looking at getting more performance out of hardware using less energy, they are manufacturing technology that needs absurd amounts of power to give you the performance you need.

Fortunately companies like AMD seem to be better aware of the need to produce power-efficient hardware. They currently have the lead when it comes to power consumption of CPUs, with their CPUs using less power while performing better than CPUs from Intel. This seems to be why Sun uses Opteron processors in their servers. For some nice detailed analysis between AMD and Intel, check out this article on Tom’s Hardware. And while the difference in costs for powerusage doesn’t seem that much for a single PC at home, remember than those costs are only going to become much more in the future. And for companies with lots of workstations and entire serverfarms, the difference in costs in a year could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And with Windows Vista coming out soon, companies who will want to take advantage of that new OS and the new Aero interface will have to upgrade their workstations with 3D capable videocards which can provide a minimum level of performance in 3D. Here you can see the need once again for videocards that use little power while providing the performance you need. If not, companies upgrading to Windows Vista and wanting to use Aero will see an increase in costs for powerusage which could be significant depending on how many workstations they have.

We also need software that’s more aware of powerconsumption and efficiency. There are a lot of cool powermanagement features coming in Windows Vista, but we’ll need much more. Software will have to be engineered in such a way where it doesn’t unnecessarily consume CPU power with operations that aren’t needed, while it can perform needed operations as quickly and efficiently as possible. We also need software that’s smart enough to turn off hardware and disable software and background services that we don’t need at a given moment, and automatically turn them on when we need them. If you want an example of just how much power can be wasted on poorly written software, take a look at this article about how a bug in a driver from Microsoft was using up more than an hour of battery life.

Remember how in the old days programmers were using all kinds of tricks to make their programs as small as possible, run as fast as possible using less operations and consume little resources? The trend the last few years has been the opposite. There were increasingly more resources available, from CPU power to RAM to disk space and power (electricity). And as a result, software has become less efficient and more bloated, while also needing more resources (CPU power, RAM, diskspace etc.), often to be able to perform the same kind of tasks older software could do with less resources.

Just a few days ago I found a song titled “Satellite One” done by Jonne Valtonen (aka Purple Motion – Thanks Leslie!) back in the old days. You can download it here in S3M format, and you can play it with XMPlay. It’s about 40KB in size, and the music is great. Think of the skill and creativity that went into the creation of such content back in those days of computing. Today games come with megabytes of music data, while requiring much more resources for playback.

It seems to me that we’ll need that kind of skill and creativity again in the future.