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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Welcome to the 21st Century

Welcome to the 21st Century

by John Cole|  January 5, 20089:56 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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About time:

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

Now the question remains- will crap like Windows Vista get better?

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42Comments

  1. 1.

    myiq2xu

    January 5, 2008 at 10:22 am

    Watt?

  2. 2.

    rachel

    January 5, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Vista should be better around the second or third service pack, if you want to wait that long. My husband’s boss got so fed up with it after six weeks that he bought a copy of XP and had it installed after wiping Vista.

  3. 3.

    D. Mason

    January 5, 2008 at 10:38 am

    So the music industry is starting to realize they can’t guilt people into paying for something less good than what they can get elsewhere for free. I’m impressed, I was guessing 2010 at the earliest.

  4. 4.

    Linda

    January 5, 2008 at 10:45 am

    I work for a county here in Ohio, and the IT department REFUSES to install Vista. This Christmas break, my daughter’s computer broke down and she opted to by a Mac, rather than use Vista. I have to think that eventually even Microsoft will be forced to realize that they can only force this new system on so many people and that having XP remain an option will be necessary. I certainly will probably go with a Mac the next time I have to replace my computer just to avoid Vista.

  5. 5.

    wasabi gasp

    January 5, 2008 at 10:46 am

    While I’ll never be found defending Windows from suck, I spent about 12 hours yesterday rescuing a Mac video workstation from the disastrous monstrosity that goes by the name Quicktime 7.3 Update. Big fukyoos to Apple.

  6. 6.

    Carol

    January 5, 2008 at 10:47 am

    I think the record companies began to realize they were sold a false bill of goods on DRM. People still were able to get analog copies and bypass all of the DRM anyway. so just what were they getting for their money anyway? If DRM worked so well, why are they still having to sue people because of downloading? The company decided that there was nothing that justified the additional cost, and acted accordingly.

  7. 7.

    Carol

    January 5, 2008 at 10:50 am

    And why do we have to change our operating system every few years anyway? Why can’t I find something and stick with it with upgrades until it’s clear that the system is obsolete anyway and then change?

  8. 8.

    metalgrid

    January 5, 2008 at 10:51 am

    And movies have to be the next frontier.

    Read this: http://davisfreeberg.com/2008/01/03/bad-copp-no-netflix/

    The poor guy buys a new HD monitor and vista tries to revoke his current DRM licenses on his already downloaded media in order to play netflix movies.

  9. 9.

    T. Scheisskopf

    January 5, 2008 at 10:59 am

    You can still buy XP and either install it yourself or have someone do it for you. Some computers even come with “downgrade” options and/or coupons.

    Until the MPAA decides to get rid of DRM, Microsoft is gonna leave it in there. They are sucking up to the movie industry like a Lincoln Tunnel streetwalker ar rush hour.

    I suppose I could mention the Linux desktop option here, but I really don’t want you guys thinking I wear a propeller beenie and a penguin t-shirt. Even though I guess I do.

  10. 10.

    rachel

    January 5, 2008 at 11:05 am

    Well, Linux suits me fine.

  11. 11.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Sony and DRM: Yes, a sign of the future. The old business model is dead. Long live the new model, whatever it turns out to be.

    Vista crap: No, this won’t get better soon. And it isn’t about Vista, or Microsoft. It’s about the entire model of software design and development. This model is dysfuctional in the most profound ways. The processes that are followed to produce the products is dysfunctional. The products aren’t going to get better any time soon.

    If you try to imagine a car that, when you try to turn it off, tells you that you must leave it running until it decides to stop, and that you shouldnt touch anything until it’s done, you will get an idea how truly bad today’s tech products can be. These products are designed by programmers who make the fiendish artifacts do what they, the programmers, want them to do. Whether they serve the interests of the user and customer or not …. meh. When you have a monopoly or close to it, or a customer base that passively accepts crap and poor design and doesn’t complain, or won’t or can’t just go to another product, there’s no incentive to really improve the product.

    As I sit here at my desk, I have in front of me two PCs, one Vista and one XP. All things being equal, I would buy another XP machine before I’d buy a Vista machine. And just recently, I did, as a matter of fact, buy an XP machine from Dell over the same model with Vista.

    But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is about Microsoft, or Windows. It’s about an industry that has built itself on thinking of programmers, that’s where the problem lies. It would be like building the car industry on the thinking of lathe operators. You’d end up with a car that made you adjust a micrometer before you could drive it.

  12. 12.

    myiq2xu

    January 5, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Well, Linux suits me fine.

    I’m using DOS on my 286, but I’m thinking of upgrading to Windows 3.1

    Does anybody have the floppy installation disks I can borrow?

  13. 13.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 11:52 am

    I’m thinking of upgrading to Windows 3.1

    Oh, go for the gusto. Use windows 3.11, aka Windows For Workgroups, aka the Blue Screen of Death. The most unstable operating system I ever saw, and I have seen some pretty amzingly awful shit in my day.

  14. 14.

    grumpy realist

    January 5, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    And then the aviation industry wonders why we pilots distrust glass cockpits….

    There’s something to be said for the clunky six-pack operating off differences in air pressure, gyroscopes, and little balls moving around in fluid-filled glass tubes.

  15. 15.

    Dreggas

    January 5, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is about Microsoft, or Windows. It’s about an industry that has built itself on thinking of programmers, that’s where the problem lies. It would be like building the car industry on the thinking of lathe operators. You’d end up with a car that made you adjust a micrometer before you could drive it.

    I take exception to that being a programmer. I do custom software and while there are times I want to do it one way and make it so people have to follow a set path that I know works I have to check that and design it in a user friendly way that solves the customers problem.

    Microsoft doesn’t do that, they mass produce a product that is rushed to market to meet their investors demands to maintain a profit. Their core business is, and has been, the Windows Operating System. As such they produce another one every few years to sell more products and sign OEM licensing agreements with PC manufacturers specifying that all new PC’s come with the latest greatest (ha ha) version of windows whether you, the customer, want it or not.

    The ones getting screwed the most over vista are gamers. Most new games coming out work only on Vista and many of the more popular ones require you to have the PC version of an XBox live acct which you have to pay for. Yet another trap. Fortunately it’s only a few titles such as Halo 2/3 and Gears of War. However it’s still not your choice.

  16. 16.

    Billy K

    January 5, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    I can’t remember the last time I was really unhappy with either DRM or my OS. But then, I don’t buy DRMed products, and I’ve exclusively owned Apples since 1980. It is quite possible to avoid teh suck.

  17. 17.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    I take exception to that being a programmer. I do custom software and while there are times I want to do it one way and make it so people have to follow a set path that I know works I have to check that and design it in a user friendly way that solves the customers problem.

    No disrespect, but I have slung code for over 25 years, and taught the practice. I can tell you this with great confidence: Most software is lousy, and all software is the result of the processes that produced it. Most of these processes are dysfunctional.

    I don’t doubt that you do good work. But it’s like saying that a bridge is sound because the ironworkers did good work. It takes a lot more than good ironwork to make a good bridge.

    And of course there are exceptions that prove rules. There’s occasional good stuff out there, but not much, and very very little of it is large scale. The more lines of code there are, the more junk there is. And the more likely it is that the overall design imperatives have tilted the monstrosity in one direction or another.

    You can’t take the practices that might produce decent small, custom software and scale them up to building an operating system or an enterprise financial system or any really large system. Practices don’t scale well, either up or down.

    But I digress. For more on this, start here and take the next couple years and read into it.

  18. 18.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Sorry, old link above, you need this one.

  19. 19.

    HeartlandLiberal

    January 5, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    1. I refuse to buy Sony products of any sort since their flirtation with installing what was essential rootkits on computers with Windows operating systems.

    2. I will not be installing Vista soon if at ever at home, and I run a total of six PCs and Windows laptops networked for my family. Vista is a memory hungry, poor performing, unnecessary version of Windows. But worst, it has a least a couple dozen well documented ways in which it insists on calling home to Microsoft every day, just to let them know how your are doing, and if it or M$ decides you are fudging on something, M$ will plans eventually to just shut your computer operating system down remotely. That alone will insure I do not upgrade, as long as those features are there. Businesses worldwide have resisted Vista so hard that M$ had to issue a special late OEM and retail shipping release of XP bundled with SP2 and additional license numbers, because of the refusal to migrate, and the continuing hard demand for XP.

  20. 20.

    tBone

    January 5, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    And movies have to be the next frontier.

    Sadly, that industry hasn’t shown any signs that it’s going to learn the lesson any faster than the recording industry did. “Let’s treat all of our customers like criminals!” is just such a tempting business model.

    The most unstable operating system I ever saw, and I have seen some pretty amzingly awful shit in my day.

    WTF? Windows 3.11 was many things, but more unstable than 98 (1st ed) or ME? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

    I’m still struggling along with Vista on my work machine, although I’m not sure why. It has some features I like, and it works OK most of the time. It’s just the unfortunate tendency to randomly blow up that infuriates me to the point of apoplexy. At this point the only way I can seeing bringing a Vista machine home is for use solely as a media center.

  21. 21.

    Janefinch

    January 5, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    I’m arm wrestling with Vista and so far, advantage Jane. But it’s not easy…but then, what Windows O/S was? Then again, I have two words for the Mac acolytes: Quicktime Pro. But I digress.

    I don’t know which “security” feature I like more: the O/S that makes you an administrator but won’t let you actually log on as one (maybe the cats have more power?), or the “critical security update” that won’t install and won’t let you click on the “more information available” link.

    I knew nothing about this DRM business and Vista (and most of the Google links are to months-old blog posts), but in my two week old computer, I’m not having those issues, at least. Yet.

  22. 22.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    but more unstable than 98 (1st ed) or ME?

    Oh sure, by a long shot. Windows for Workgroups was their foray into networking. So you had all their bad stuff, multipled by several times.

    Windows for Workgroups 3.1
    Windows for Workgroups 3.1 (originally codenamed Kato), released in October 1992, features native networking support. Windows for Workgroups 3.1 is an extended version of Windows 3.1 which comes with SMB file sharing support via the NetBIOS based NBF and/or IPX network transport protocols, includes the Hearts card game, and introduced VSHARE.386, the Virtual Device Driver version of the SHARE.EXE Terminate and Stay Resident program.

    [edit] Windows for Workgroups 3.11

    Advanced network capabilities of Windows for Workgroups 3.11Finally, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (originally codenamed Snowball) was released in December 1993. It supported 32-bit file access, full 32-bit network redirectors, and the VCACHE.386 file cache, shared between them. The standard execution mode of the Windows kernel was discontinued in Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

    A Winsock package was required to support TCP/IP networking in Windows 3.x. Usually third-party packages were used, but in August 1994 Microsoft released an add-on package (codenamed Wolverine) which provided limited TCP/IP support in Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

    Fun times.

  23. 23.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    I’m arm wrestling with Vista and so far, advantage Jane.

    I don’t have any “problems” with Vista in terms of features and user interface.

    What annoys me is that it seems to have increased the cost of the machine needed to run it, over XP, without delivering better performance, and as a price to be paid for things like media features that I don’t care about.

    The PC is a work tool for me, not an entertainment tool. Vista doesn’t do any work that I do better than XP does, it just costs more and runs slower. For me, that’s not an improvement.

  24. 24.

    Tim F.

    January 5, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    The idea that anything could work worse than ME frankly astonishes me. I had one of those abominations hooked up to a digital camera microscope, and it’s a sort of miracle that it isn’t sitting on the bottom of Long Island Sound while I write this.

  25. 25.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    I had one of those abominations

    I had a Win98 first edition and then a WinME machine, at home, and I called them both “crash-o-matics.”

    In those days, at work, we used Windows mainly as a place to put the icon for a terminal emulator, and did our real work on a Unix system.

  26. 26.

    dr. luba

    January 5, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    Now the question remains- will crap like Windows Vista get better?

    No. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

  27. 27.

    Janefinch

    January 5, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Ah Tim, I miss the days of ME crashing 8 times a night.

    TZ, I like the IDEA of the media centre but fail to see how having a 20-foot S-video cable strung from my settop box is an entertainment enhancement. And it’s not like I’m going to be watching my 17.5″ monitor from that far away. And the new Media Player blows…well, the old one wasn’t that great anyway.

    All in all, I’d rather have Vista on my fabulous new fast efficient computer than my 5.5 year old one. And Second Life NEVER lags.

  28. 28.

    tBone

    January 5, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Oh sure, by a long shot. Windows for Workgroups was their foray into networking. So you had all their bad stuff, multipled by several times.

    Which still didn’t make it as bad as ME, which had all of their bad stuff multiplied by several hundred times.

    I remember 3.11 being a pain in the ass at times, but it never made me want to set the building on fire like ME did. God, what an abortion of an OS that was.

  29. 29.

    tBone

    January 5, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    TZ, I like the IDEA of the media centre but fail to see how having a 20-foot S-video cable strung from my settop box is an entertainment enhancement.

    Media Center is great if you have an extender (like the Xbox 360) for streaming to the TV. Otherwise, not so much.

  30. 30.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    remember 3.11 being a pain in the ass at times, but it never made me want to set the building on fire like ME did. God, what an abortion of an OS that was.

    Yes, I get that. My Win 3.11 desktop was hooked to a crummy network and the combination of the network and the desktop made for interesting days. Any day that I could go from breakfast to lunch, or lunch to dinner, without a major crash and recovery, was ….. probably a day I was in meetings a lot. I hated that platform so much I just about got myself fired for bitching about it all the time. If you can imagine, me bitching about something.

  31. 31.

    TheFountainHead

    January 5, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    I tried to read this thread, but I run Leopard. I kept chuckling too hard to read…

  32. 32.

    Evilbeard

    January 5, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    I hear people bitch about ME constantly and still to this day it seems but I had an ME machine gifted to me sans install or backup disks and used it for over two years without once having any kind of glitches. It wasn’t until I installed a brand new video card that ME blew a fuse and I had to upgrade to XP sp2.

    I’ve been using windows since 3.11 (I used to have a revolutionary front end on it called Dashboard) and I have to say that my old ME machine was *the* most stable machine I’ve ever owned. Maybe I am the exception that proves the rule, I dunno.

  33. 33.

    ThymeZone

    January 5, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    hear people bitch about ME constantly and still to this day it seems but I had an ME machine gifted to me

    Oh sure, it’s all about ME, ME, ME.

    (sorry, had to do it.)

  34. 34.

    Chuck Butcher

    January 5, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    I had good luck with 98SE, and XP, so far Vista hasn’t caused me any problems, but I do little complicated with this lap top, the XP desktop does the majority of heavy lifting. I started PCs with an XT (?) and DOS and had the first 286 on this side of the state and nearly the first 486, after that I lost pace. I started with punch cards in 1973 on one of the most advanced IBMs in the world, Fortran, Cobol/Watbol 5 compiler (SAC Logistics/Wright Patterson Propulsion Lab/ Wright State U), Basic threw me completely for awhile – do what?? and I haven’t coded since Hector was a pup. Banging nails for a living…

  35. 35.

    Jake

    January 5, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management [software]

    And that part will be The Best of Teh Suck.

    My music pirating days ended once I stopped taping songs off the radio (not enuf teknikal noledge), but I would cheerfully pay a lot more for music if I didn’t know how little of the cash reached the artist.

    “Let’s treat all of our customers citizens like criminals!” is just such a tempting business governance model.

    Fixed.

  36. 36.

    The Other Steve

    January 5, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    I tried to read this thread, but I run Leopard. I kept chuckling too hard to read…

    Isn’t that the OS that deletes files?

  37. 37.

    The Other Steve

    January 5, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    The poor guy buys a new HD monitor and vista tries to revoke his current DRM licenses on his already downloaded media in order to play netflix movies.

    Buying music or video off the internet is a bit like DivX.

    Don’t do it.

  38. 38.

    bago

    January 5, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    Uhm, The only problem I have with vista is that it occasionally tries to virtualize paths, especially if the app is network aware. Other than that it’s slick as hell. And .net 3.5 is the bees knees if you’re a programmer.

    Win32 backcompat + XAML? And you can integrate tha APIs? Sweet. Host a xaml chunk inside of a win32 control, or vice versa. Dizzam. Also, WCF. Come on people. How sweet is that? Triples productivity. Indigo and Avalon knock it out of the park.

    As for UAC prompts, do you want to know when somebody is trying to do something sneaky or not?

  39. 39.

    bago

    January 5, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    DRM is just old fogies in studios remembering their million dollar salaries for being able to copy who are upset by these young upstarts for whom copy is considered a normal command.

    Copying used to be expensive, requiring the hardware that only the rich studios could provide. Now it costs nothing. The business models that depend on a high entry to the copy business are fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their antique business model, but tech has passed them by and they are dinosaurs raging against the setting of the sun. The days of expensive copies are over. There is no money there any more. Accept your fate. Copy control is obsolete!

  40. 40.

    rachel

    January 5, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    My music pirating days ended once I stopped taping songs off the radio (not enuf teknikal noledge), but I would cheerfully pay a lot more for music if I didn’t know how little of the cash reached the artist.

    Have you checked out Magnatune? 50% of whatever you pay them goes to that artist, and you can listen to the music before you decide whether to buy it. Jamendo may also be worth your time to check out.

  41. 41.

    The Other Steve

    January 6, 2008 at 1:09 am

    And .net 3.5 is the bees knees if you’re a programmer.

    Check out the new asp.net extensions. Particularly the MVC framework.

  42. 42.

    bago

    January 6, 2008 at 11:23 am

    LINQ. You can take the VB crap of SQL and shove it down a hole. Query any dataset, be it metadata, sql data, or xml data. Add this to xml serialization and you have stateless recoverable search options. You can set half of you datacenter on fire and continue to function fine. Just running Linq on Executing Assembly is cool enough. Too bad you have to write your own AL to make quasi-viral properties. Makes writing a buddy build system more annoying.

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