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Trust or treachery? (News.com)
News.com warns us
about some potentially treacherous uses of Microsoft's Palladium
architecture. " Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software
Foundation and co-founder of the GNU project for creating free versions of
key Unix programs, lampooned the technology in a recent column as
"treacherous computing.""
(Log in to post comments)
Trust in Micro$oft's treachery. Posted Nov 7, 2002 22:09 UTC (Thu) by tres (guest, #352) [Link] The illustration that is used to describe the technology has a caption that reads "The music player on the PC -- Realplayer, for example...". Do any of the readers in this audience actually think that M$ is going to disclose the appropriate APIs needed to allow Real to work with their Palladium system? You might be thinking of the recent M$/DOJ settlement as requiring M$ to reveal the necessary APIs to Real to make it work. The two problems with that are that the APIs are for security features and thus are not required to be disclosed by Microshaft and second, since M$ only has to reveal info to companies that have a viable business plan in M$' opinion, does anyone think that M$ is going to determine a company's business plan is viable if it targets one of Billy's key technologies? Just ask Netscape how viable such a plan is!Get Real!!! (pun intended) Does this also mean that we will have to replace our music collection with each PC upgrade? No wonder the media giants are all for it! How are we to back up our data with this system? This does solve the problem of migrating data from an old PC though -- simply migrate it to the trash can. Next, the side box that says "Protect Corporate Information": does anyone here think that the goal of this is to finally put an end to ESR receiving anymore Halloween Documents? I guess we'll have to resort to using screen capture and OCR software! The next box: "Restrict Applications" is this code for increase the barrier to entry, aka the M$ lock-in. The author specifically states that changing applications will force you to lose access to all of your previously saved data. Who would want that kind of an upgrade? Somewhere along the line M$ orifice is going to have an incompatibility between versions that will cause data loss and extrapolating from their record you won't find out until after you install the service pack. "Corporate executives, concerned that embarrassing e-mail messages might end up appearing in court..." wouldn't failing to comply with a SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM, or a request for documents, be considered illegal. How will this mesh with the new laws in the UK that demand that you produce encryption keys when ask by the police? The author repeatedly cites 9/11 as some sort of basis for this even though computer insecurity played no role in 9/11. It is just a hot button the author uses to evoke an emotional response from the reader. "Trojan horses and applications for pirating software, meanwhile, won't be able to change data processed in the trusted parts of the PC." And we have M$' record when it comes to security to instill this trust in us? It is my fear that consumer reaction to this will be discovered when nobody buys the new computers after learning of these new 'features' thus further stagnating the technology sector of the economy. Tres
Trust in Micro$oft's treachery. Posted Nov 8, 2002 9:01 UTC (Fri) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] " "Trojan horses and applications for pirating software, meanwhile, won't be able to change data processed in the trusted parts of the PC." And we have M$' record when it comes to security to instill this trust in us?"Excellent point. But the point about Palladium being a trojan horse to drain the entire world's pockets into a very few already very rich companies (M$, the major record & film companies) is even better. "It is my fear that consumer reaction to this will be discovered when nobody buys the new computers after learning of these new 'features'" I don't fear that, I _hope_. (Against my better judgement - Joe Public is pretty bad at understanding why some technologies are inappropriate.) "thus further stagnating the technology sector of the economy." No. There will be no revolution; the market will simply be redefined. General purpose PCs may die, or become an esoteric speciality. This bothers me, but doesn't represent the end of the world.
Trust or treachery? (News.com) Posted Nov 8, 2002 1:58 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Why do you think you'll be able to use screen capture software? That would of course be prevented when a protected document is on display. You could perhaps take a picture of the screen with a camera, but if it is new a digital camera it might refuse to operate, because the screen would be displaying a special "don't copy me" watermark. After all, Jack Valenti says that we must close the "analog hole".
Trust or treachery? (News.com) Posted Nov 8, 2002 8:28 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] > ...You could perhaps take a picture of the screen with a camera, but if it> is new a digital camera it might refuse to operate, because the screen > would be displaying a special "don't copy me" watermark. After all, Jack > Valenti says that we must close the "analog hole". Well, then photograph it with a traditional photo-chemical camera.
Trust or treachery? (News.com) Posted Nov 8, 2002 13:15 UTC (Fri) by mwh (subscriber, #582) [Link] If you want to read about Palladium, Seth Schoen's diary (in particularhttp://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-10-25.html and http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-11-06.html and some others) is mandatory reading.
Trust or treachery? (News.com) Posted Nov 8, 2002 13:30 UTC (Fri) by penguinista (guest, #308) [Link] I think that it is time for supporters of the free/open source movement to develop certification standards for hardware in the context of Paladium and similiar initiatives. For example, a motherboard is certified to be free of any Palladium type component. I think this will happen anyway by word of mouth ("Manufacturer A in Germany is friendly to free/open source philosophy, while B in Mexico is not...) but a more formalized approach will tell the world that there will be economic consequences for those who pander to the powers that would try to control our systems and information.
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