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Short version - Vista DRM is viral and for moral reasons we refuse to contribute to the support of Vista. If you want the long story read on, and read the links at the bottom! It's in your
best interest to know what you're getting into by supporting and using Windows Vista.
Vista is such an immoral piece of software in a "Free Country" that I'm afraid we will not work on Windows Vista systems! We will configure networking to get Vista to connect to a network, and internet, but will not provide troubleshooting support for the operating system. I realize that this puts us in a precarious position of possibly alienating ourselves from customers in the future, but quite simply - our morals are not for sale. There is a line we won't cross; I compare helping spread, and keeping Vista running, to aiding terrorism, and it's something we just aren't willing to do.
Windows Vista is Microsoft's newest entry into the Windows family of operating systems. There were a lot of promises
for Vista features that never made it to the final cut, after too many delays. As it's offered now there seems to be
very few features that XP doesn't already have. Windows Vista appears to have some worthwhile improvements in security that were
promised [and possibly delivered], but there's another feature of Vista which wasn't touted initially. That "feature", DRM (Digital Rights Management), certainly seems to have
been more important to Microsoft than the useful features they promised their customers, and never delivered.
The feature that they DID make time to finish is Vista's DRM. DRM isn't a feature for you
or me, it's a feature disguised as being copyright protection to keep you from copying movies and music, which the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists of America) or MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) will like. There's a far more
sinister evil here, which is to give Microsoft total control over the PC hardware market, thereby making it impossible for
any competition against Microsoft to succeed.
Currently for someone to make any headway against Microsoft, they have to make operating system software which will run on current PC hardware like you and I run right now, at least that's the first step among many. For this to be possible it means
that the architecture of PC hardware is open for other people to develop on, like it mostly is now, and is getting better.
Vista's DRM implementation is poised to create a PC world where only Microsoft Vista will have access to the specs and drivers needed for the newest multimedia devices such as DVD and CD drives, video and audio cards. Vista's DRM will disable certain video and audio ports on devices to make sure they are not being used to pipe content to a recording device, mostly this means new hardware is going to be needed. But not just new hardware, hardware that's made just for Vista's DRM! And this hardware has to be "secure" so that it can't be tampered with. Which means no open source, no open specs, no other operating systems, unless the manufacturers of those devices go out of their way to spend time developing for other operating systems!
It's very unlikely that hardware manufacturers are going to provide drivers for other operating systems because the numbers are too small to warrant spending time and money on them, however those numbers of Mac and Linux users are growing rapidly. This growth [likely] is why Microsoft would want to put a stop to it now. So if Vista's DRM is highly adopted (and it may be too late to stop) it means Microsoft doesn't dominate the PC market any more, they own it! It's theirs to do with as they wish.
DRM is not good for you, it's not good for the market, it's not good for Linux, or Mac, it's certainly not good for freedom! You no longer get to choose your operating system, or what your computer does, or doesn't do.
Vista's DRM has the ability to disable hardware on your system if it thinks your DRM device isn't behaving correctly and might be used to copy media. And if their track record with WGA is any precursor we can bet on 40% of PC hardware being disabled at Microsoft's whim.
Vista's DRM runs 30 checks per second! That's right, your computer will be busy constantly running checks to see if you might be doing something Microsoft doesn't want you to do, they are policing you! And those extra chores your computer will be busy doing means it's going to be running slower than if it didn't have those checks. Your performance will suffer, especially in gaming.
"If users accept the domination of centrally-controlled data, free software faces two dangers, each worse than the other: [our emphasis] that users will reject GNU/Linux because it doesn't support the central control over access to these data, or that they will reject free versions of GNU/Linux for versions "enhanced" with proprietary software that support it. Either outcome will be a grave loss for our freedom." - Richard M Stallman
Vista's Suicide Bomb: who gets hurt?
Microsoft Vista creates DRM insanity
A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
Vista DRM is bad for Microsoft
Vista DRM to slow down high-end graphics?
Analysis of Microsoft's Suicide Note (part 1)
The first Vista ONLY graphics card - this is only the beginning
Carmack questions games for Vista initiative
Vista VS XP speeds - (spoiler: Vista is SLOWER - albeit marginal)
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