“WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
-Orwell “1984″
This is a pretty lengthy document that goes into how Vista’s DRM services essentially drive up cost of hardware by imposing ridiculous guidelines for manufacturers. It forces companies like Nvidia, who have a plethera of hardware offerings, to write separate drivers for every device they make.
As this analysis points out, it’s mind boggling how much control over technical specs are given to content providers, rather than hardware manufacturers or valid technical sources.
Vista includes various requirements for “robustness” in which the content industry, through “hardware robustness rules”, dictates design requirements to hardware manufacturers. The level of control that the content producers have over technical design details is nothing short of amazing.
I love this excerpt:
So if you design a new security system, you can’t get it supported in Windows Vista until well-known computer security experts like MGM, 20th Century-Fox, and Disney give you the go-ahead…
…It’s absolutely astonishing to find paragraphs like this in what are supposed to be Windows technical documents, since it gives Hollywood studios veto rights over Windows security mechanisms.
Link