Things I am interested in…

These are my links for October 30th:

• VistaIcons.com – Free Vista Style Icons , Vista Wallpapers, Free Icon Sets and Windows Vista Desktop Icons -
• WinCustomize: Your home for Vista and XP themes, skins, wallpapers, dreamscenes, icons and everything you need to customize your pc. -
• Welcome to Desktopography -
• PayPlay.FM – world’s largest MP3 music download store, get 25 free songs now! -
• Customize.org – Download Themes, Skins, Wallpapers and Icons for Windows from the original skin site! -
• Microsoft TechNet: Windows Sysinternals -
• Raxco Homepage – PerfectDisk defragmentation tool -
• SyncMyCal – Share Outlook Calendar Free, Google Calendar Sync -
• Rainlendar – Home -
• WordPress 101 – The Blog -
• jide.fr » Welcome -
• Calculate your BMI – Standard BMI Calculator -
• neurosci@nature.com : Neuroscience articles, jobs and information -
• DNS tools, reports and Hosting tests, advanced network and domain name tools. -
• WordPress Support -
• 2BrightSparks: File Backup and Utility Software -
• Privacy Protection – Domain -
• Fizzy – Games That Tickle Your Nose -

Just the other day a friend of mine made a comment in an email about how his computer was not running all that well under Windows Vista, to which I replied:

“Windows Vista is the spawn of the devil!”

He responded by asking me what I had “against” Vista.  He had only had a few minor problems with it (italics mine), such as several items of software not working, including video drivers I would imagine.  He is a keen audiophile, and mentioned that for him the most annoying thing was the time when iTunes would not function.

Here is my reply to his question (which I believe he had already answered in part):

I don’t like Vista because it is built on the premise that everyone who uses it is a potential thief (whether they are or not). There are parts of Vista that the person who has bought the computer hardware, and has also bought the computer software (including Vista), has no control over – Microsoft does.

In the future you, and everyone else using Vista, may find yourself locked out of your own computer because Microsoft find something you are doing objectionable (most likely because you haven’t paid them enough to do it, on a repeating basis).  Or another scenario is that the overzealous and oversensitive “protection” system ( e.g., “tilt bits”) produces a false positive and shuts you down even though you are doing something totally legitimate.

For an interesting (and controversial) analysis of this see the article referred to in my April blog post – http://turbott.net/blog/2007/04/22/the-longest-corporate-suicide-note-in-history/ .

Copy protection doesn’t work – it merely makes things harder and more cumbersome for the average honest user.  Pirates have been able to hack past every single copy protection system yet devised, including that for BluRay, HDDVD, and the protection on the iPhone.  The average time that passes between a piece of (DRM protected) music appearing on iTunes, and the same piece of music appearing stripped of copy protection on some peer to peer site is around five minutes.  Once an item has been hacked, anyone with access to the internet and a search engine is able to find a copy (hassle free, that will run on any computer system with ease – except Vista) by entering “{item x} torrent” into the search engine…

I will never deliberately purchase Windows Vista until such time as I have no choice.  This will only be when the majority of games I am interested in playing will not run on anything else.  Even then, I will probably keep a seperate games’ machine, tainted with Vista.  The rest of my network will continue using operating systems that I have legitimately purchased, and therefore can expect to retain control over, instead of Microsoft or any other third party…

Here endeth the rant!

Beware Microsoft… Quake in terror Yahoo… Your ends are nigh!