[Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

[Michael Will]

I care about multimedia systems, and I want them to work with whatever
I throw at it and not tell me what I am allowed to run. 

Automated freedom-restriction devices are a real nuisance because they
are
bound to decide wrong most likely anyways, enforcing that I should have
to pay 
for the same song or movie twice, just because the two systems I want to
play it 
on are not compatible in terms of their DRM, or my current dvd player
was purchased
in a different country than the DVD I own and want to play on it. 

No idea how region codes enforcement is legal.

Avoiding itunes and vista may be first step - but the software patents
and DMCA are making
us stumble even then - try to find an officially supported Linux version
that comes with
all the mplayer/mp3 pieces. Not because the software does not exist, but
because of the
obscure legal situation only.

Anybody have a transcode cluster package? ;-)

Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org]
On Behalf Of Geoff Galitz
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 1:07 PM
To: Robert G. Brown
Cc: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

>
> This is where Vista is a major screw up.  Nobody cares about DRM 
> compliance but the DRM police.  Nobody cares about multimedia systems,

> and since functioning multimedia now fits in $500 telephones people 
> are understandably cynical about needing multicore multi GB systems to

> make it work.  What people DO care about, very much, is having a 
> system that happens NOW, click to keyboard, at their actual UI.  
> Microsoft is in deep trouble...
>
>      rgb
>

I do have to interject on the "nobody cares about multimedia systems"
front.  I, for one, certainly do.  In fact I just spent this year's
personal system budget  (as provided by my current employer) on a
multmedia system.  We  do virtual environments  and our stuff is too
heavy weight to run on  smaller or embedded devices.  I went with a
desktop system as it gives me the ability to perform detailed testing
and also the flexibility in hardware and software to experiment with
under-the-hood designs.

Our users also mostly use multimedia systems or gaming oriented systems.

The system I just picked up (a Fujistu Siemens Scaleo P system)  came
with Vista.  It works fairly well for the most part, but when I started
adding peripherals it exposed some of Vista's shortcomings.  The lack of
device drivers being the main issue.  Oddly, I considered the system to
be quite slow, but now it seems it very responsive.  I assume there are
still a lot mysterious under the hood processes going on... and the lack
of transparency is my biggest concern.  And that damn virtualization
EULA clause.  And... well...  I have some issues, but it works well
enough.

-geoff





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