Yes, perhaps it was inevitable anyway. Consider the fact that the browser is set to swallow the PC Google-style anyway, maybe the PC will be relegated to a souped-up entertainment device. Waitaminute: It already is, in the form of the X-Box. Maybe that's also why Gates backed out when he did: He knows the era of the PC as we knew it is drawing to a close...Microsoft will become a media company, making game & movie consoles along with some of the software that runs on it. The PC as we know it will evaporate, and in its place will come a variety of different devices, running a variety of OSs. In fact, 5 years from now most computer-owners won't even know what OS their machine is running, or at best if you ask them they'll answer: "Uh, I think it's Firefox." The leaves an interesting question: Does a networked computer even NEED an OS? With a nice big, fat pipe it might suffice for it to have the BIOS & Firmware, and then boot a TCP/IP stack to go get the OS. -TD

From: "J.A. Terranson" To: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net" Subject: CP Sighting: Vista security spec 'longest suicide note in history' Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 20:00:21 -0600 (CST)

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36570

By Andrew Thomas: Sunday 24 December 2006, 16:43 VISTA'S CONTENT PROTECTION specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history, claims a new and detailed report from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

"Peter Gutmann's report describes the pernicious DRM built into Vista and required by MS for approval of hardware and drivers," said INQ reader Brad Steffler, MD, who brought the report to our attention. "As a physician who uses PCs for image review before I perform surgery, this situation is intolerable. It is also intolerable for me as a medical school professor as I will have to switch to a MAC or a Linux PC. These draconian dicta just might kill the PC as we know it."

But this isn't just a typical anti-Microsoft rant. Gutmann's report runs to 6,000 words and contains hardly any FSF-style juvenile invective.

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost," says Gutmann on his homepage.

"These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry."

He also claims that Vista's content protection will 'have to violate the laws of physics if it is to work'.

I'm not going to comment on the details of the report and its implications but merely suggest that you read it for yourselves and come to your own conclusions. I'd also venture to suggest that Microsoft might want to comment on Gutmann's work.

L'INQ A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

-- Yours,

J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF

"Surely the larger lesson learned from that day is that other men, all over the world, took inspiration not from the heroism of the rescuers in New York or the passengers flying over Pennsylvania, but from the 19 hijackers - the twisted brilliance of their scheme and their willingness to sacrifice their lives to make a political and, as they saw it, religious statement."

Richard Corliss/Time Magazine 11 Aug 2006

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No, actually, it doesn't. Sun tried this with java terminals and the like. Not too many bought into them. WebTV tried this, not too many bought into it. (Yes, I know the beast of redmond bought them.) Many other companies got behind the various thin clients, it didn't take off. Odds are it won't as it's the same rehashed idea. In the end people vote with their wallets, and very very few showed any interest in just another terminal. Roy M. Silvernail wrote:

What OS? Think X terminals, with HTTP substituting for the X protocol. It's an ideal consumer medium, too. All that's available is what the servers offer, with no chance for local wizard-wannabees to install software that doesn't follow the rules. Hmm... sounds like a set-top box, doesn't it?