Not much new

I'd like to say that we have lots to talk about. But we don't. I suppose no news is good news... but it isn't very exciting to blog about. And so here I sit on a Sunday night being grateful for the many blessings I have, and trying to come up with something worthy of telling to all of my fans out there. ;-) And so, whenever I don't have anything to talk about from my life, I have to come up with something from my musings. Please note... unless you are really bored, or are interested in the tech world, read no further... I will be talking about Windows Vista.

It seems to me that Microsoft is the great divider among those in the IT world. IT guys seem to feel in one of three ways... 1) They love Microsoft, 2) They hate Microsoft or 3) They love to hate Microsoft. The coming of Windows Vista will renew the debates among these groups.
There is an article about Windows Vista done by an IT guy that I read parts of the other day. If you are interested, you can read it here: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
Although I didn't read all of it, I read enough to realize that Microsoft has yet again done things I do not like. In the past I haven't had *too* much to complain about regarding their operating system. They have had their quirks, and their problems, etc., but in general, what operating system doesn't? Linux certainly does. Macintosh certainly does. The remaining operating systems are typically small enough and unknown enough that they have niche uses, but aren't very comprehensive. But Microsoft has done things with Vista that will keep me from ever putting it on any computer that I own. It seems Microsoft has decided that they want to stop the pirating of music and videos. A noble cause, to be sure, but in order to do it they have taken some extreme measures. They have developed a layer that goes in between your media player and your hardware that tries to stop illegal music. The problem with this is that Microsoft wants to be sure that whatever it is playing the music on is real hardware, and not virtual hardware (one way that people could illegally copy music). So how do they do this? They make all the hardware vendors pay them to certify their hardware with Microsoft. This increases the cost of hardware, and makes the hardware you and I already have on our computers obsolete (if you decide to buy Vista). What happens if you have obsolete hardware? One of two things happen, and I'm not certain about how they decide what to do, but they either simply will not let you play your music or video, or they will make your music and video sound and look bad so that anybody copying it wouldn't want to distribute it because of the poor quality. And so if you don't have Microsoft approved hardware (including video card, sound card, and monitor) you can say goodbye to your music and videos. Another side effect of this is that because of the regulations Microsoft is putting on its hardware vendors, it is going to be harder to get drivers for your hardware... especially if you aren't using Microsoft. They don't want any of the hardware vendors to put out detailed specs on their products any more, so now the only the companies that make hardware can put out drivers. Oh it is going to be a mess. But the hardware vendors will be fine... they will just pass the price of the increased work on to us. So Microsoft with one sweeping stoke of their brush has increased costs on all of us for many things, and have made listening to music a pain. Not to mention the fact that even when you do have all the right hardware, the extra layer takes a huge chunk of processing time whenever you are listening to music... up to 50% of your cpu time. That's enough to slow down your computer considerably.

So in short, my message to you all is:
Buy a Mac! Our next computer will be a Mac.

Have a good day all!
BJ