[IWE] 'A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection'

[Wade Bowmer]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:13:06 +1100, Ashton Brown <ashton@vom.com> wrote:

> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
>
> What's the street cred of Peter Gutmann of nz?
> His name + bio gets 87K hits and WikiP does not impute nutter status
> (even if some here will find tainted: a one who discussed Anything with  
> Steve Gibson, as recently as 1/11/7.) er,8^D
> Probably I'm just the last to see it.

Peter Gutman has been around for a long time, knows his stuff and is  
always a good read. For those downloaded and read the PGP documentation  
way before Internet connectivity was as good as it is now, you may  
remember him as volunteering to translate the PGP documentation into New  
Zealandish.

> Once you turn over this Vista rock <d simile/dt>
> it's like peeling an onion.. <d²/dt>
> gold-plating an already shellacked turd..
> drinking the carbolic acid when you thought you bought carbonic.
> Fascinating.. how deep into lunacy a monopoly can instantly go; no  
> checks/balances ever - "computer Science??" My Ass.

Vista is both a curse and a blessing. I work almost exclusively with Linux  
and even have a Linux desktop. Some of my colleages are not so blessed.  
One of the desktop engineers is heard at least once a week to be cursing  
Microsoft and their way of doing things. Yet he's adding to his Microsoft  
learning and whilst we could do with more Linux expertise in our little IT  
group, we need his Microsoft expertise more.

Our CEO has been playing with a Vista desktop. Fortunately, he is capable  
of supporting himself, more or less, and usually presents little or no  
trouble when he needs IT's assistance. I understand this is rare amongst  
CEOs. I wish other managers were so aware. So far he has found a cople of  
quite specific problems having a Vista desktop and - to his credit, I must  
add - has done the research into exactly how the problem is to be fixed.  
We would prefer Vista not be on our network, but if it has to be and  
outside of IT, our first choice would actually be our CEO.

But there is another reason he is doing this. We are a software house and  
customer *will* be trying to use our products on Vista, with or without  
our blessing. We *must* find a way to support this or our sales (and  
renewals!) will suffer. 'Tis unfortunate, but it makes us money.

So the head of IT has set a date to look at rolling Vista out to the  
desktops. January 2008. I strongly suspect a date was chosen to forestall  
questions and early jumpers. It also lets us tell others who have no need  
to upgrade that they need only wait. But new, general purpose PCs in the  
meantime will be XP. Not Vista. We know how to do XP.

Meanwhile, most of those who would ask me about computer help already know  
I Don't Do Windows. If they forget and ask anyway, my answer will be to  
avoid Vista unless they have something *now* that definitely requires it.  
OSX or Linux can be good upgrade paths from XP, incidentally. Reason? Most  
will be stopped with 'It's too expensive.'

Wade.