[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Scarpa:
Palladium as Drizzt is describing it will never make it as a consumer product. People WON'T buy it.

It may make inroads into the corporate environment because of their ball&chain licensing scheme. Besides, corporations love control so it will sell well.

What WILL happen is that Microsoft will partner with the MPAA/RIAA so that digital media produced by them will require Palladium to run. Microsoft provides the bit so big media can hold the reins.

This is all dependent on the general public not buying said Palladium-only digital media content. Unfortunately, as most Mac zealots know and cry about at night, the majority of people will be too ignorant or apathetic of all this and buy into it anyway.

But maybe they won't.

Yes.. this is our job to tell everyone that M$ wants to get all the knifes out of the kitchen because there was some murder with butcher knifes..

We just can't wait and see.. but still it can become a reality quite fast (think about it.. it's virus-free Windows!)

[stew]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
Do your own homework and have a look at slashdot and google..

Slashdot - your neutral source of information about Microsoft software
I know how to use google, and that's where I find information like this:

12. Scary stuff. But can't you just turn it off?

Sure - unless your system administrator configures your machine in such a way that TCPA is mandatory, you can always turn it off. You can then run your PC with administrator privileges, and use insecure applications.

from the FAQ on http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html,
second hit from google on palladium and Microsoft.

What is it all aobut: Anti-Piracy? I have no problem with that, all the software I use is legal and I pay my rent from writing software.
DRM for DVDs and CDs? As long as CD players have digital outputs there is not way to stop people from copying them, and any DVD that will play in a current DVD player can be copied to. In order to invent somewhat effective measures they'd need to be incompatible to previous players, which is something that won't happen. No one will buy a new CD player just to play a new protected CD. And even if - where does that leave the Mac? Either we won't be able to watch those DVDs play those CDs on our Macs or MacOS X.x will come with RIAA sanctioned DRM enabled playing software.

The major problem I see is not Palladium or trusted computing but the DMCA - and that is someting that was not invented at Microsoft and will affect both Windows and MacOS.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by stew:

Slashdot - your neutral source of information about Microsoft software
I know how to use google, and that's where I find information like this:

Maybe not neutral, but usually truthful.

from the FAQ on http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html,
second hit from google on palladium and Microsoft.

What is it all aobut: Anti-Piracy? I have no problem with that, all the software I use is legal and I pay my rent from writing software.
DRM for DVDs and CDs? As long as CD players have digital outputs there is not way to stop people from copying them, and any DVD that will play in a current DVD player can be copied to. In order to invent somewhat effective measures they'd need to be incompatible to previous players, which is something that won't happen. No one will buy a new CD player just to play a new protected CD.

tThere is more to it than that, read furthure. MS will also have the ability to control what gets installed and what doesn't. Also basically killing GPL software.

And even if - where does that leave the Mac? Either we won't be able to watch those DVDs play those CDs on our Macs or MacOS X.x will come with RIAA sanctioned DRM enabled playing software.

The major problem I see is not Palladium or trusted computing but the DMCA - and that is someting that was not invented at Microsoft and will affect both Windows and MacOS.

Not if Apple doesn't make thier computers with a built in DRM scheme that inhibits such a thing. And so far Steve is against stopping fair use.

[ginoledesma]

Here's one gripe I have: sharing files with MS Windows computers. Apple prides itself with the ease of use and high-level of integration and compatibility of Mac OS X, but why is it so difficult to share files with MS Windows computers?

When enabling Windows sharing, the folder that's shared by default is the user's home folder. Its password protected, which the OS asks when you first set it up. But what if you want to change the password? What if you want to share another folder? Out of the box, there is no other solution except to edit manually the configuration files using a text editor. While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the configuration file, it shouldn't be THAT difficult to share a folder.

Where are the days when you could simply click a folder, select File, then say "share THIS folder." Windows imitated that when Macs had LocalTalk in the old days, and now its nowhere to be seen in Mac OS X. There are 2 good apps that help make it easier: Diablotin and Samba Sharing Package, but that should have been integrated by now by Apple.

Once a dormmate of mine used my computer to surf the net. He downloaded a simple document which he wanted to share so that he could read it from his computer. He spent almost 30 minutes trying to figure things out until he eventually gave up in frustration. When I stepped in the room, he simply remarked at how difficult it was to do such a simple thing. He tried the Help program, but it didn't do much. And I personally knew that no matter how well or how easy I try to make it look, it simply is NOT as easy as doing it in either MacOS 9.x or MS Windows.

Sigh!

Ironically, I sometimes find ME/XP/2000's network neighborhood navigation a bit... slightly more complex as compared to MS Windows's 98 relatively straightforward interface.

DAVE under Mac OS 9 had a nice way of accessing/sharing files with Windows. Sharity on Mac OS X is slightly better than Apple's (standard Finder way of navigating computers/shares), but not that as easy yet.

[El Pre$idente]

Add Palladium to the list of obscure technologies and security measures that were eventually dumped because they were hacked with a few patches.

[Its_me]

I have a 500MHz iBook (Jaguar), an 800MHz Quicksilver (Jaguar as well), a Compaq Evo N400c subnotebook (Win2000 Pro) and a self-built PC (AMD 1800+ CPU, ASUS 333MHz motherboard running Win XP).

Guess what....I use the iBook far more than the other machines combined! Why do I use it more?

- Is it because of portability?...The Compaq notebook is far smaller and lighter
- wireless surfing?.....the Compaq has BUILT-IN wireless LAN as well
- Speed?.....both the PowerMac and (especially) the AMD PC can run circles around my iBook

So why do I use the iBook more?

I find that there is just something intangible with OSX. Both my wife and I love the iBook. The combination of OSX and iBook is just perfect.

The only reasons I use the PowerMac are for home video editing, and using it as my "digital media hub" (i.e. to store and manage my digital photos and music).

The Compaq is from work, so at home I only use it to access our corporate systems. It's certainly not fun to use.

The PC is mainly used for Kazaa

The iBook is for everything else. So which is better, OSX or WinXP? Feature wise, OSX and WinXP are more or less similar but OSX just has a certain quality that can just not be duplicated in WinXP. I just do not know how to quantify it. Suffice to say that OX wins hands down.

[godzookie2k]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
And Spliff XP isn't a designers or printers OS I am afriad.

Pffffffffttt... Like OSX is?!?

[theolein]

I support NT, 2k and XP machines every day. I have my Dell laptop running XP and it's very good(and fast as fu�k I might add). I have almost no problems. XP is definitely a step up in the MS gravy train. NT is a fu�king royal pain in the but and every second day I have some user's machine flying to pieces as NT manages to fu�k something up again. NT is a desaster for complex software installations and especially manges to get some pretty bad screwups with graphics stuff. I have some yoyo's in my company who insist on using Corel Draw and Corel seems to have a special ability to mess with Excel files and eventually cause the system to break. Win2k is better but also seems to suffer at the hands of morons. The only MS OS in our place that actually seems to be able to handle rough treatment is XP. On my system I have over 200'000 files and it has yet to bluescreen on me. Everything runs well, Netware admin tools, Navision financial software client, the whole Adobe palette of software (including Pagemaker which is a POS), Office and all my Java tools which are blindingly fast compared to OSX.

In short I can work. If I had my way of course we'd all be using OSX for the simple fact that it is much more robust that MS stuff in general (although I have yet to try out 10.2), but not having that choice XP is ok. I try to make sure that our licences are ok and then MS has no reason to bug us. As far as our servers go, I'd say Novell is king. Has uptimes of ages and never crashes, and I am still waiting for some other software company to come up with a automatic printer driver installation utility like Novell's NDPS where the driver is automatically fetched from the server and installed on the client when a new printer is attached.

I welcome the day when I will be able to show my boyy an OSX machine being able to run all the little utilities like telephone software and finanial stuff that Windows does. When it does happen I know that Mac OSX and Apple will have arrived in the mainstream of businness computing.

[noisefloor]

On the machines I use, XP is even MORE dog slow than X, believe it or not.

[Nonsuch]

Originally posted by theolein:
If I had my way of course we'd all be using OSX for the simple fact that it is much more robust that MS stuff in general (although I have yet to try out 10.2), but not having that choice XP is ok. ... I welcome the day when I will be able to show my boyy an OSX machine being able to run all the little utilities like telephone software and finanial stuff that Windows does. When it does happen I know that Mac OSX and Apple will have arrived in the mainstream of businness computing.

Maybe I'm behind the times here. Theolein, didn't you switch from Mac to Windows (or Linux) a while back?