SE4, SE5 and Vista?

[Baron Munchausen]

Imperator Fyron said:
Vista Home Basic is the equivalent to crippleware XP Home. Vista Business editions have features that are generally useless to home users (like joining domains and other corporate server infrastructure), while lacking some of the media-oriented features. Ultimate has all of the features of Home Premium and the higher level Business one. Home Premium has all that most home users need. MS has a comparison chart of all of the versions on their vista site.

Instead of having just the basic crippleware and the "all in one" versions as with XP, MS made several versions in-between for Vista.

Please explain what is 'missing' in XP Home? As I recall, you can't run it on multi-processor machines and a few obscure widgets needed for network administration are missing. Anything else?

Imperator Fyron said:
Dogscoff:
So much misinformation... The DRM stuff only applies to copy-protected files (like blu-ray and HD-DVD, and DRM-protected music), and was required to get any support to be able to play them in anything but low-res cripple-mode. Thank the MPAA. Other than the built-in HDCP stuff, which you can add on to XP to play copy-protected HD discs and such anyways, Vista's media DRM isn't really much different from what you have to add to XP to play DRM-protected files. It just happens to be installed already in Vista.

Note that the DRM features have no effect whatsoever on playing unprotected media files, and they certainly do not serve to make your machine run as slowly as a Pentium II.

Also note that OS X has similar DRM stuff included in it to play copy-protected files...

Uh uh... and the Social Security number is only for tax purposes, not identification. (And yet that everyone who does any business at all needs to give their SS number out all the time.) And the RFID chips in our tires are just for the vendor to track inventory. (And yet they are not deactivated when the tires are sold, so you can be tracked using the vendor's customer records.) And the power of warrantless information requests given to the FBI is only for investigating terrorists. (And yet it was used to spy on anyone and everyone the FBI agents had a whim to snoop on.)

Do you really believe that DRM is going to stop at control of officially distributed media files? This is about getting control of our general purpose computers. Millions of uncontrolled general purpose computers are just too dangerous for the 'powers that be' to leave uncontrolled. Use LINUX (or at least FreeBSD) and don't support Big Brotherware!