Limits on Vista...

[Newby]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/2240214&from=rss

That's fucking stupid as hell.

[iago]

To quote a guy from Slashdot, "Now everyone knows we only have to bother with pirating Vista Ultimate and Vista Business."

[MyndFyre]

You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system

Seems to me that means you can't virtualize it on itself.  That makes pretty damn good sense to me.

[Newby]

At least you can transfer the license once, without having to bug people. I wonder if you can call and change it after that....

And not being able to rip ISOs in the Home Basic = load of shit.

[Towelie]

At least you can transfer the license once, without having to bug people. I wonder if you can call and change it after that....

And not being able to rip ISOs in the Home Basic = load of shit.

God damnit, this is discouraging me from getting vista.

[MyndFyre]

At least you can transfer the license once, without having to bug people. I wonder if you can call and change it after that....

And not being able to rip ISOs in the Home Basic = load of shit.

God damnit, this is discouraging me from getting vista.

Whatever man, you wouldn't even get Home Basic. 

[Joe]

Now maybe I'm confused here, but aren't Basic version supposed to have Basic features with the Pro versions building on them, nor the Pro having Basic features and Basic lacking them?

[iago]

So, I was doing a lot of thinking (drinking? close enough). And I figured out why the VM thing really sucks. 

Developers generally test their software on all the major (supported) versions of the OS, like XP SP1, XPSP2, home, pro, 2k, 2k3, etc.   The more they test it on, the less chance of it failing on some specific version. 

With Vista, nevermind having 6 different versions to test on to begin with, now some of the versions can't be installed on a VM?  So, to test my software, I have to own a number of different computers to run different versions of Vista on?  That's retarded. 

And what else have they done?  Lock out access to the kernel except to signed drivers.  And it costs good money to sign them.  (And to anybody who says it's to keep out hackers -- I'd bet that they could afford to pay just like anybody else)

What's it sound like they're doing?  Screwing small developers who can't afford a bunch of test systems and can't afford to sign drivers they write. 

[MyndFyre]

How often do you write software and test on Windows, iago? 

I do all my testing on XP Professional SP1a and SP2.  I don't bother with Home, because the features that the OS is lacking rarely compromise my application.  Encrypting file system, internet information services, pfft.  Media Center?  Pffft.  Nothing of these should have any impact on my application.

[iago]

How often do you write software and test on Windows, iago? 

At work, I test everything I write on Windows XP / 2k. 

I do all my testing on XP Professional SP1a and SP2.  I don't bother with Home, because the features that the OS is lacking rarely compromise my application.  Encrypting file system, internet information services, pfft.  Media Center?  Pffft.  Nothing of these should have any impact on my application.

Yeah, but they DO impact certain application.  What if you're writing, say, a screensaver?  Or a filesystem driver?

[AntiVirus]

What's it sound like they're doing?  Screwing small developers who can't afford a bunch of test systems and can't afford to sign drivers they write. 

Eliminating competition?  Very sneaky monopoly tactic?

[MyndFyre]

Yeah, but they DO impact certain application.  What if you're writing, say, a screensaver?  Or a filesystem driver?

I still don't see how it would impact either application.

If you're writing a screensaver... so what?  The screensaver is initialized by GINA - whether you're running on a domain or a workgroup, and whether you've got fast user switching enabled, the screensaver application works the same.

If you're writing a file system driver... so what?  Either you're going to be writing a filter driver to run on top of NTFS, or a standalone driver that will have nothing to do with NTFS and therefore the NTFS feature that's missing from Home Edition - EFS.  But either way, the EFS filter makes the encryption transparent to any filters as the IRP moves up the chain.

[iago]

Yeah, but they DO impact certain application.  What if you're writing, say, a screensaver?  Or a filesystem driver?

I still don't see how it would impact either application.

If you're writing a screensaver... so what?  The screensaver is initialized by GINA - whether you're running on a domain or a workgroup, and whether you've got fast user switching enabled, the screensaver application works the same.

If you're writing a file system driver... so what?  Either you're going to be writing a filter driver to run on top of NTFS, or a standalone driver that will have nothing to do with NTFS and therefore the NTFS feature that's missing from Home Edition - EFS.  But either way, the EFS filter makes the encryption transparent to any filters as the IRP moves up the chain.

Those were my quick thoughts to come up with one thing that might differ across versions, and another that requires a driver. 

In the first case, the screensaver was a bad example.  But any kind of software that makes use of more obscure libraries that may be included on one or not the other.  I don't know the differences well enough to say, but I'm sure there are some libraries/functions that one version includes that the others don't. 

In the second case, the problem is that the developer has to pay to sign their driver, otherwise the user is not allowed to use it, period.  I think that's totally lame.  How are not-for-profit people, like hobbiests, supposed to learn or do driver development when they aren't allowed to load their drivers at all?

Eliminating competition?  Very sneaky monopoly tactic?

Not really, hobbiests aren't their real competition.  I'm not sure what they're doing, although this Slashdot response sums it up pretty well. 

[AntiVirus]

Yeah, but they DO impact certain application.  What if you're writing, say, a screensaver?  Or a filesystem driver?

Eliminating competition?  Very sneaky monopoly tactic?

Not really, hobbiests aren't their real competition.  I'm not sure what they're doing, although this Slashdot response sums it up pretty well. 

It isn't just hobbyist that test their code on other operating systems.  I am sure there are other third party companies that have to try and make their product compatibles with more than just one OS.  Those third party companies are the ones I was referring too.  The things they make the Microsoft also tries to make.  You said it yourself, you test your stuff at work.  I bet you aren't the only person that works for a company that does that.

[iago]

You suck at quoting, but I'll forgive you

It isn't just hobbyist that test their code on other operating systems.  I am sure there are other third party companies that have to try and make their product compatibles with more than just one OS.  Those third party companies are the ones I was referring too.  The things they make the Microsoft also tries to make.  You said it yourself, you test your stuff at work.  I bet you aren't the only person that works for a company that does that.

True enough, though most companies can afford to buy a few test systems (although REALLY small companies, like mine, can't).  Even then, it's just really annoying.  It's mostly just the hobbiests who can't tests properly anymore. 

[AntiVirus]

It's so true.  Wtf was that?  Let me fix.

[nslay]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/2240214&from=rss

That's fucking stupid as hell.

So I was examining this slashdot post ... it had a link to Vista's EULA changes.
http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive/2006/10/11/Important-Windows-Vista-Licensing-Changes.aspx

I must say, I'm speechless ... and I thought Microsoft was a little harsh on the 20 concurrent connections limit in XP SP2.

Home Basic
Can't copy ISO to your hard drive
Can't install to a network server
You may share files, printers, etc with a maximum of 5 network devices
You MAY NOT use Remote Desktop, only Remote Assistance
You MAY NOT use in Virtual PC | Virtual Server |VMWare

Home Premium
Still can't copy ISO to your hard drive
Still can't install to a network server
Sharing for 10 network devices
Still no Remote Desktop
Still no virtual hardware
5 simultaneous Media Center Extender sessions (up from 3 in MCE 2005)

Ultimate
Can copy ISO to your hard drive
Can install to a network server (I'm assuming for Terminal Server scenarios)
Sharing for 10 network devices
Can use Remote Desktop
Can use in a virtualized environment, BUT
Can't use DRM-protected content if Vista Ultimate is the "guest" OS
Can't use BitLocker if Vista Ultimate is the "guest" OS
5 Media Center Extender sessions

While I think these restrictions are stupid ... I did highlight the ones I thought were unreasonable.
ISO files
As a home user, I find myself downloading ISO files, or ripping ISOs from badly damaged CDs.  I don't see why ISO files should be restricted at all.

Network device limit
I grew up in a house hold that had 8 computers in it as early as 10 years ago.  People (yes, even basic home users) are finding themselves immersing themselves in networking among all different types of devices.  My house hold consisted of me, my 3 sisters and my parents ... that's 6 people.  If we each had a laptop, assuming Home Basic, we could not all share files between our computers.  Keep in mind, I was around 8 computers a decade ago ... its becoming more common today(!) for people to have multiple computers at home plus miscellaneous network devices as cell phones, PDAs, and etc.

Yesterday, I wrote a response to a Windows bigot on LSX (The Linux Sucks forum ... and yes, I dislike Linux!).  His post was basically a collection of comments from the UNIX-Haters handbook, a work by Daniel Weise (a former Microsoft employee) and others.  The book was written for commical purposes ... I recommend it to everyone here (That includes Unix and Linux users).  Anyways, to make my point, a common theme seemed to be flexibility and mechanism.  I'd like to quote some of my responses here:
http://www.linuxsucks.org/read.html?postid=15781&replies=0

Unix power tools don’t fit this mold. Unlike the modest goals of its
designers to have tools that were simple and single-purposed, today’s Unix
tools are over-featured, over-designed, and over-engineered. For example,
ls, a program that once only listed files, now has more than 18 different
options that control everything from sort order to the number of columns in
which the printout appears—all functions that are better handled with other
tools (and once were). The find command writes cpio-formatted output
files in addition to finding files (something easily done by connecting the
two commands with an infamous Unix pipe). Today, the Unix equivalent
of a power drill would have 20 dials and switches, come with a
nonstandard plug, require the user to hand-wind the motor coil, and not
accept 3/8" or 7/8" drill bits (though this would be documented in the
BUGS section of its instruction manual).

While a Windows power drill will have only an On/Off switch and choose for you how you want to drill.

The inventors of Unix had a great idea: make the command processor be
just another user-level program. If users didn’t like the default command
processor, they could write their own. More importantly, shells could
evolve, presumably so that they could become more powerful, flexible, and
easy to use.
It was a great idea, but it backfired. The slow accretion of features caused a
jumble. Because they weren’t designed, but evolved, the curse of all programming
languages, an installed base of programs, hit them extra hard. As
soon as a feature was added to a shell, someone wrote a shell script that
depended on that feature, thereby ensuring its survival. Bad ideas and features
don’t die out.

Mechanism vs Policy. While UNIX might be too much for Mechanism, Windows certainly likes to choose how you should use your computer.

These responses were exaggerated to fit the context of the handbook (they are quotes from the handbook).  That's beside the point.  Windows is becoming more about policy - how one should use their computer - rather than providing generality.  While I can understand that they wish to separate server, workstation and home use, to sell each at their own price ... I do not understand why Microsoft should place any restrictions on concurrent connections, ISO files, or limits on network sharing.

If you want my opinion ... I forsaw this shit storm when DRM became a big topic two or so years ago, especially with the Sony rootkit that used Microsoft's media protection technology to permanently damage XP!  This was the ultimate motivator for me to make a transition to an alternative OS (in this case, a Unix, FreeBSD).  I don't hate all Microsoft products ... but the Windows OS is something I can't stand to use and this new one looks to be worse!

[Hitmen]

ISO files
As a home user, I find myself downloading ISO files, or ripping ISOs from badly damaged CDs.  I don't see why ISO files should be restricted at all.

I think they mean the ISO of Vista.

[iago]

ISO files
As a home user, I find myself downloading ISO files, or ripping ISOs from badly damaged CDs.  I don't see why ISO files should be restricted at all.

I think they mean the ISO of Vista.

I was pretty sure it meant ISO's in general.  But I could be wrong..

[MyndFyre]

I noticed you highlighted the 10 network share connections.  That's also the limit on Windows XP Professional, and 5 on Home.  The default installation of Windows Server 2003 is 5.  In order to have more connections you need to have more CALs for the server.

Note that this is concurrent network connections so it's not that big of a deal.

[Warrior]

http://winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp
It's Paul Thurrot, a well know Apple/Windows zealot so take it with a grain of salt.