Just a thought about my recent rant about the arrival of the various DRM and other lockdown controls on the PC.
Why am I so torqued? Well, actually believe or not from that rant, I actually like my PC. I have had a PC since about 1990, which was an ICL (that's the old UK state run computer maker. It was an ex-stock 8086, 1 Mb RAM, 20 Mb hard disc, colour monitor.) It was fab. (ICL is basically a mainframe manufacturer, and the PC was built by them to this standard. I think my father still has it, and he used it for years to run a version of that amazingly bad word processor that used to be native on the Amstrad...)
Thing is, I have built up about 40+ GB of information that I NEED and WANT, and some of it like the photos of my little boy and my wife, I LOVE. If someone takes the freedom of the unhindered PC away, what the hell am I going to do? Know what I mean? It's more a cry of frustration and fear than just good old "system is out to get me" stuff.
And in case you think I hate MS, actually I don't hate their products. Win XP is fab. Stable, fast enough, and I can switch it back to that Win95 menu system. I use Office 200o at home, which is great, does all I need and nothing more. Stable, useful, etc. I do not like Office XP, as its too helpful, and spends its whole time usefully getting right in my face, but that's because after a decade of Office, I'd like it to do what its told, and not vice versa.
IE I can live without, Firefox is better for me. But in the end, its only a browser. I dislike WMP, and use Winamp, but now that Nullsoft is gone, I suppose I've had that. Mostly that is because WMP is not that effective. I seem to spend ages trying to get it do things that should be really easy, but maybe that's just me.
As for the rest, I use Outlook, which is fine. Needs a bit beefed up on some security aspects, but I patch, and I have the MS anti-spyware, which is an interesting admission, but a useful product. The firewall is McAfee, and I am happy with that.
All of this runs on a top end Dell that I got. Big video card for Half Life, mirrored discs for data security. It works, and I never think about it much.
What I am fearful of, is that in an attempt to satisfy parties that are not its core constituency, i.e. the users, MS is going to attempt to satisfy a lot of other interests that will actually seriously harm its core market. And for me, that is really really bad news. That is the diffference I have with the direction that MS is going in.
In reality, the market is more or less saturated for Intel, MS and the related players, so they have to do something to get us to buy it all again, or go ex-growth. Which is where the problem lies. The play of getting external industries and legislators to create an upgrade need is a very dangerous one. (Hey, need to do on-line banking, whoops, sorry guys, you need Longhorn, Palladium, and a four core Intel Space Heater!)
I would never bother my backside to move to Linux, but if it goes all DRM, then I might have to. And if Sony, IBM, and the people who make the Cell processor make the PS3 Suse adapter kit, for the same price as a controller, what then?
But what I would never forgive is the day that I cannot access the photos of my son as a young child, or my writings in business and for pleasure, because I am a threat to a media monopoly. The wrath of the public under those circumstances would be a terrible thing to behold.
So, why is MS blind to the harm that it, and its partners, can do to themselves with this lockdown proposition? I find that genuinely puzzling. MS are not stupid, never have been. What is it that they see in their future that makes this kind of risk worthwhile?
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