Microsoft acknowledges Volish status

Subject: "Volish Vista virtualisation battered"

I am a media relations contact on the Microsoft Infrastructure Team. In response to your ealier article titled Volish Vista virtualisation battered, I would like to provide you with a formal reponse from Mike Neil, General Manager of Virtualization Strategy.

"Virtualization has long been a core part of server operating systems and this dynamic market is enjoying a fresh round of innovation. These new technologies will help customers reduce costs, make IT more flexible, and enable vendors to offer more services. Microsoft believes the best approach for customers lies in establishing a foundation of cooperation between vendors, which is why we strive to regard virtual machines and virtualization technology the same way.

"Windows server licensing offers a level playing field to all. To encourage interoperability, we openly share technology and have published a set of APIs for all our commercially available virtualization products today and provided documentation on APIs for the hypervisor that will be part of the next version of Windows Server, codenamed Longhorn.

"We desire open dialog among industry vendors and will talk with any company wishing to discuss licensing for future products.

"More information on Microsoft's virtualization strategy can be found on the Windows Server bog at http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2007/02/25/Where-we_2700_re-headed-with-virtualization.aspx "

S. Hawkins

Subject: Nero bloatware

Hi,

I so much agree with you on the Nero bloatware topic. I too wish they had a simple burner only package. It should be reflected in the price as well, because I am not willing to pay 60 euros for the entire bloatsuite.

I received with my notebook (I purchased it in January) Nero Express 6. It is just the burner, an OEM version. Maybe a little too simple, but still, it is not the entire suite. It is good until you upgrade to Vista, where you need Nero 7. But you cannot buy or upgrade only Nero Express: if I want to upgrade my Nero Express 6 I need to update to the entire bloatware suite.

I actually wrote about this to Nero, and received no response. Nice.

Lenard

Subject: Hector Ruiz sings the AMD blues

CRN article? Both Ruiz and Richards say they're "not blinking". They grudgingly admit to SCREWING the channel and OEMS. Not even a mention of the loyalist enthusiasts.

They admit they are listening very carefully to "Michael" DELL. In other words, 'see we are on a first name basis!' and we're "rooting" for DELL. In other words, 'they're in the toilet, too', and 'we can get though this together' Sounds like some serious sucking up to me. Further, DELL/AMD machines just ain't selling; even at givaway prices!

Misery sure loves company. NO mention of SUN, HP. In fact, curiously absent. Sounds like the 'kidd glove' interview treatment to me.

They admit to some cash flow problems. 3.5B in the hole ain't choke change, baby. 99 cent per share increase 2/26/07 buyout speculations. HELLOOOO! "Hype and Hoopla"? They're getting their teeth kicked in!

"Performance per watt"? How the HELL to you explain FX-74 times two?!?!??

Who are these CRN SHILLS, and why didn't they give this interview to the INQ?????? (I thought you guys were buddies.) I'll tell you why. FEAR.

IF THIS IS NOT BLINKING, WTF IS?

SPARKS

Subject: PCI Express rules PC roost

I remember how PCI video cards were marked for dead when AGP cards came on strong. Some time later new versions of PCI video cards returned to the market.

PCI Express is less a choice as it's being made the only choice at the retail level. There is a huge installed base of very capable AGP systems out there that are better upgraded vs. being replaced. I expect a resurgence in AGP just the same.

Rich

Subject: Good Riddance Fuad

I for one am really not sorry to see Fuad go. It wouldn't be so bad if he just was a bad journalist, but he just plain made alot of his stories up.

That goes a long way for describing the editors of this site, letting them onto the front page, when you didn't even need to look some of them up to know they were bogus.

Bye Fuad, Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Randomnut

Subject: I love the gibberish!

To all the people that moan about the unique reporting style the Inq has - If it annoys you, go read another site. I love the weird and wonderful words you use. Never stop!

The confusion it creates for the American's is a bonus!

Martin

Subject: Sony Euro Debacle

...and Nintendo Wii'd on the FireStorm and put Sony out of it's Misery. Film @ 11

Aronat

Subject: Why the RIIA is losing the war on piracy

So, I was at a nameless PC parts store the other day, and talking to the tech there about a couple of different MP3 players. He mentioned that the Zune was attractive because of it's 30GB of space, and my immediate response was that I didn't have nearly that much music, so that didn't matter to me.

And then he hit me with it: "Well, I have 320 GB of music, so I need the largest one I can get."

It absolutely floored me. Let's assume, for the moment, that he had all of these songs sampled at extremely high quality, taking up about 10MB per song (the average for a 128kb MP3 is 2-3 MB). That would mean he had 32,000 songs. If he bought them all as albums, that would roughly correspond to 2,000 albums.

Now, comes the tricky part. I'd be willing to bet that most of his music is pirated (the rest of this article assumes he did, though he never mentioned whether or not this is the case). Assuming the RIAA wanted to give him a legitimate method of leaving piracy behind, and legally purchasing the right to listen to all of the music he already has, he would have to purchase 2,000 albums. Let's say he gets each one for the low, low price of $10 US. That would be $20,000 just to listen to music he already has, on the low end! Assuming he only actually wants one or two songs from each album (so he has to purchase them individually), and that they're actually a lower quality (say, standard 128 kb), he might have to pay up to $96,000 US.

So, this pirate has two options: pay anywhere between $20,000 to $100,000 (I like to round), or continue pirating and pay... nothing. Not only that, he has better odds of being struck by lightning then being sued by the RIAA, so he'll probably never get caught.

Only a fool, idealistic or otherwise, would expect him to stop pirating.

Now, the fun part is when you consider the RIAA's reaction to this. They know that people are using technology to obtain music to listen to for practically nothing. So, the official response is to attempt to use technology to limit their own customers, the ones who are already making the sacrifice and paying their fees.

I guarantee that pirates are not hurt AT ALL by DRM. There has NEVER been a DRM system that hasn't been cracked. I remember playing games on my Commodore in the 80s, games that included messages to pirates, saying things like "Please don't crack this game," "Go away", or just "I hate you for stealing from me." While I never pirated those games, apparently SOMEONE did. And they still are.

All it takes is a few minutes sitting at your computer, and you can turn ANY DRM infected file into a non-DRMed one. You can have a file which allows you to do MORE with it, so why not?

There are two things that need to happen in order for the RIAA (and any content industry, really) to triumph over piracy:

1) Offer content worth paying for
2) Offer it at a price that people can accept

Higher quality samplings would help. So would having the separate parts recorded as distinct tracks, and allowing people to do their own mixes.

Guaranteed correct ID3 tags, and album artwork are a big plus (I believe these are already done, but I can't say as I get my music from CDs that I buy). But how about keeping track of which songs you've downloaded, and letting you download them again in the future if you lose the file? Or allowing you a "free upgrade" if a higher quality version of the same song comes out. Imagine if, when you bought a certain movie on DVD, you were promised that when it came out on HD or Blue Ray you would get that, too. I'd buy it. It's even better for the industry, because bandwidth is cheap, and they wouldn't have to create the physical media or ship it to you.

How about discounts on albums? If you already own more than 1/2 of an album, why not let people have the other half for free? What if you bought the music with a guarantee that it would play on the MP3 player of your choice? Wouldn't THAT be worth something to consumers?

What if you just want to download every song a particular artist has ever recorded? These mega-collections could go for $50, and would have the bonus of getting people to listen to some lesser known tracks. They would also be appealing to people who don't want to take out a second mortgage to legitimize their music collection - in the example I used at the beginning, assuming each artist had recorded 10 CDs, the cost to legitimize his whole collection would drop to $4,000 US. Still kind of steep, but at least I could see someone paying that over a couple of years.

Anyway, enough ranting. Offer content that is worth paying for, at a price worth paying. When piracy increases, it's directly due to one of these two things being out of whack. Fix those two principles, and piracy will decrease.

Don't just make it possible to get music legally. Make it desirable. Make it beneficial. Make buying music something that people want to do, and they will.

Ben

Subject: Fudo Leaving?

Argh! Now how are Inq lurkers (er, readers) going to lure booth babes into camera range? I don't know if Charlie on his Segway will have the same attraction as a leering Fudo.

Charles Greene

Subject: RE: wtf is a bogger

Sean,

if jou cant understand unvented interwebs wurds liek bogger then jou are teh internets n00b ololololol!!!!1111one SLASHONE

Ahem. Excuse me.
Chex

Subject: What is so bad about DRM?

Exactly what is so bad about DRM / Vista anyway? Lets say I have an IOGear BOSS router with a 200GB hard drive mostly filled up with a bunch of questionably-obtained media files, will I be unable to access them with Vista because of the DRM?

Will DRM prevent access to programs that run with .torrent extensions or communicate directly with other computer users anonymously? Will DRM notify the police with a list of such media files for them to make a decision of some sort?

My old motherboard fried, so I got a new motherboard and the blasted XP Home EULA told me to go forth and buy a new copy (being as it had been originally installed by an OEM who had only provided me with an image CD, not an installation CD). So I finally got around to paying for Windows XP MCE and it came with a coupon for Vista upgrade for free (actually "free" means to pay $30 Cdn for the $2.50 postage fee). So I sent Microsoft the coupon and the $30 and they e-mailed me today that the new Vista will be coming within 6 weeks or so. Is this something I should be afraid of?

It seems to me DRM could be a problem only if you ever actually pay money for an encrypted digital media file. But so long as you never ever do that, then there should be no problem, right?

Moorman

Subject: Microsoft English Dictionary

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but have you noticed that Microsoft seems to have added to the English language.

In Word 2003 and 2007 if you enter the phrase “The cat sat on the mat” and do a word count, you would expect it to respond with six words and that is correct, but if you add and a few punctuation marks such as comma's followed by spaces i.e. “The cat sat on the mat, , , ,“ it seems the word count jumps to nine? This appears to work when using any punctuation mark followed by a space.

I am not sure if punctuation marks can be classed as words in the English dictionary?

Lee Adams