Let's talk about Windows Vista

It's a mystery to me why everybody wants to have Windows Vista now. I don't see any reason to switch my MS operating system, and I'm still using Windows 2000. Only difference to XP is the eye candy value and I really don't need that.

Kernel is nearly the same and you can run almost every software for XP on 2K. The only reason why some software doesn't install on 2K is because of a restriction in the installation script. See e.g. Civilization 4 - remove a simple check in the script and you're free to install it. And it works.

Only feature that I miss from W2K (pro) is the NIC bridging feature (to connect two networks when you have >= 2 NICs in your computer).

Looking at Vista I get this:
- even more eye candy (to hell with that!)
- DRM everywhere (kernel-space, user-space)
- only digitally signed drivers are allowed (wtf?!)

That's like paying money to imprison yourself...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I won't comment on this. But there are obviously some people who are only interested how bright and colorful the desktop is and don't give a damn about something like privacy and control about the machine they're working with.

At least I don't want to give up this control. It's my machine and if I want to screw it up I should be able to do so (as admin of course).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Any hard facts why Fedora core sucks?

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by evilboris

The thing is that between XP and 2k, the eye candy bonus was minimal at best, and highly dependant on the users taste (personally I think the Luna theme of XP is disgustingly ugly). The difference between 2k/XP and Vista however, is quite huge - other then the basic concept, the UI is completely different.

Are you a programmer? Have you in-depth knowledge about the system internals of 2K and XP? If not then I regard your post as pure spam. There are no fundamental changes under the hood between 2K and XP, the kernel is almost identical.

The only difference between those two is that XP is somehow 'consumer-friendly' because the administrative tools are better hidden from the dumb user.

These is no such thing as change in the driver model or API changes. Everytime someone tells you that their software runs on XP, BUT not on 2K it's complete bullshit. The reason is that they don't want you to run their software on 2K. Especially MS wants user to migrate from older versions of the OS to the new one, reason: money, market control, etc.

All the new DirectX, .NET, etc. stuff also works on 2K. The only thing both 2K and XP lack is the DRM-ed system components. There lies also the difference between the change from Win98 to 2K, and XP to Vista.

Everything that changed from 98 to 2K was a benefit for the user. Better driver model, more stable core architecture (adopted from NT), etc.

The changes from XP to Vista are only beneficial for the hardware vendors and the music/video industry. Palladium, TPM and such are on their way.

'OK, software and stuff will be cracked anyway' some will say, but if the whole DRM-story becomes true and is implemented in hardware we'll have a hard time doing things that we used to do.

Small and up to date example. The breaking/cracking of the HDDVD, Blu-Ray encryption AACS. We know that there is a tool out there that does the decoding, IF we provide a key (or multiple keys, check the AACS docs) for the content. The problem is not the decryption because the standard is open. The encryption can't be broken, this is because of the use of the AES encryption algo (which is proven to be strong by all means). Hope relies on finding a hole in the AACS system to get the keys.

Now decryption of the content happens on the CPU, so the key used has to appear at least once in one of the processer registers. Fire up your debugger and find it. Even if you don't have software access to the system you can sniff on the processor bus (this is a complicated process, and you need special equipment). The data transferred there is not encryted (maybe interleaved and such, but not crypted in the sense of an asymmetric encryption).

This sniffing process is the last possibility to get your data if anything else fails. Now the problem: If DRM comes and hardware is designed the way the DRM-people want it, also this transfer over bus and all other signals on cables, etc. is encrypted.
You won't have the possibility to sniff on the data.period.

What does that mean for the AACS example:
- Use of debuggers will be forbidden by the OS when a Blu-Ray/HDDVD software is running
- Modified OS won't run on your hardware (so you can't remove the debugger check)
- hardware sniffing isn't possible either

So?

cya
liquid

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The hardware is high quality, the only problem are the drivers.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by garthvadr3

Well Creative is the only company to have made a card that lets me craft my own set of soundfonts that dwarf thousand dollar keyboard's sounds. So as a composer and performing musician I would be pretty angry to lose that functionality.

That has nothing to do with the card. You can also write a driver for some integrated HDA card that does that.

Originally Posted by garthvadr3

My reason for switching is as follows: In XP you are limmited to using 385 or so mb of ram for sound, you can further hack it to make I think near a gig available.

That's no limitation of XP, but of the Creative driver. Any process in (32bit) XP can use as much memory as the virtual address space can give.

Originally Posted by garthvadr3

So when I load in my enormous banks I am limited to sizes of 380ish mb of ram even though I have far more than that in my computer. I want to expand the size of my soundfont banks beyond a gig but in order to do that I need an operating system that will let me utilize more ram. Plus, the true utilization of dual core CPU's in windows wont hurt either. That is why I was interested in switching, however since the recent anouncment I will hold my judgement till I know soundfonts will work.

The kX Project driver also does soundfont loading, and AFAIK is not limited in size.

Originally Posted by garthvadr3

Is there another OS that will let me didicate up to 2 gigs of my ram to midi function? I don't even know for sure if Vista will let me dedicate that much but I know it will at least be better than the meager 385.

To get your 2gig of address space you'll need 64bit OS.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I know of the discussion between MS and Creative blaming each other for the problem. It's a problem on both sides but Creative is too lazy to refactor their drivers to avoid the problem (like using multiple memory pools and swapping them). The limitation of the pool for hw soundfont engines is a problem, but if Creative wanted they could easily work around it (doing some more stuff in user space).

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by garthvadr3

Oh and on a side note, I read that KX is limited by the same windows issue that limits the creative soundfonts.

Does this also apply to the bleeding-edge beta version? (you can find in the driverheaven forums) The latest stable version is VERY old, maybe thy fixed the problem in the beta?
I really don't know because the largest SF I used was around 200MiBi in size.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I doubt that. The core DRM-components are not separated from the kernel, so the team providing this Vista version would have reverse engineered the entire Vista kernel. This is no easy task even for a large team of experienced programmers - not comparable to something like the SafeDisc/SecuROM hacking.

How ya doing, buddy?