From: Ad 

Don Hills wrote:
> In article , "Rich"  wrote:
>>   You clearly did not read the Microsoft post and appear to be trying
>> to respin one of the flasehoods from the bozo.  Try again.
>
> I did read it, and as I said, it was carefully worded around issues such
> as the example I gave.
>


http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html#response

example:

"Do things such as HFS (Hardware Functionality Scan) affect the
ability of the open-source community to write a driver?

     No. HFS uses additional chip characteristics other than those
needed to write a driver. HFS requirements should not prevent the
disclosure of all the information needed to write drivers.

This claim is directly contradicted by a document by the same author which states:

     Such tests could involve loading a surface with an image, and then
getting the chip to apply various visual effects to the image and reporting
back the resulting pixels.

and then later on:

     The internal workings of the graphics chip must be kept secret,
such that a hacker building an emulator could not find out the required information.

So this document, the primary reference for Vista's content protection,
states exactly the opposite of what's said in Microsoft's response, namely
that standard chip functionality (in this case graphics rendering in a GPU)
is exercised for HFS, and that the device details have to be kept secret to
prevent someone emulating the functionality."


Adam

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