Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Well WHO would have GUESSED?

The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output paths--audio and video--are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. [That's the interestingly named mfpmp.exe.] If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. We still don't know the exact details of all this, and how far-reaching it is, but it doesn't look good.

Microsoft put all those functionality-crippling features into Vista because it wants to own the entertainment industry.

You mean ruling twenty-seven universes isn't enough for Bugmeister? We've got to RUSH out and UPGRADE -- NOW!!!!!

P. S. We suspect Little Malcolm will be hearing from Bug after this and Stephen Manes's rave review of XP-DRM -- er, VISTA. Now will Little Malcolm hold his own -- or will he just make another LIST?

P. P. S.

Microsoft is preparing to launch the next generation of its operating system by 2009.

Microsoft's corporate vice president of development Ben Fathi last week at the RSA Security conference in San Francisco suggested said that the next operating system would take about two to two-and-a-half years to build. That would put the final release at the end of 2009.

Which would be scant months after the end of "mainstream" support for XP. I say, go for it!