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Will Microsoft Code-Checking Plans Cripple the GPL?
Infonaut was one of many readers to point out that "Thomas C. Green at The Register seems to think Microsoft is after far more than the 'ubiquitous security' they're pitching to the mainstream press. In this lengthy article, he contends that Microsoft's latest plans are in many ways an attempt to kill Linux by rendering GPL'ed software unusable. Yep, that's freedom to innovate, I'd say."
Sorry, you can't get there from here.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Thomas, if so, can you reply to this so that we may ask you questions in this forum ?
Don't worry about Microsoft. They're on their way to being a footnote. I chuckle that they think that when forced to choose between MS and GPL, people will go with MS. That's not a safe assumption to make... not a safe one at all.
Just keep coding. Millions of happy hackers > politics and license agreements.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
The general thrust of the article is that under the new security system, GPL programs will not be able to be "trusted" by MS' hardware/software security system, so GPL based systems (like Apache web servers) will become unusable with mainstream computers.
I doubt this will happen.
Because, frankly, the invisible success of opensource is too widespread. I haven't looked at server statistics recently, but a significant percentage of webservers run on some manner of opensource program. Microsoft isn't going to be able to force half of the web servers in the world to switch over, and if people know that buying this new board from MS/Intel (which has few tangible benefits) will render half of the internet unusable, nobody is going to go for it. I'm not even beginning to think about the various governments that have begun to standardize around Linux, the opensource core of Apple's OS X, etc. etc.
Frankly opensource is too big. If Microsoft renders its systems incompatible with the GPL, then it will be Microsoft, and not the OS community, that suffers.
I say, let 'em try.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
People, ie my Dad, will use whatever comes on their pc which will be sold with a sticker saying 'more secure web security in this box'.
He will use online vendors that support the new web security etc in this box.
The vendors will use windows servers because they help deliver that security.
Vendors will only use linux boxes if they can do the same thing as the market leader. This has always been true with linux, even in markets where ms was not the leader.
Those that "know" wont use longhorn, and will still be able to use the software.
Those that dont, probably wouldnt use the software in the firstplace.
Me? Im sticking with 98se and w2k.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
However this time they really win the game if they're succesfull. This is because if they can really implement this, they actually don't have to do the work of bastardizing the standard interfaces, they've inherintly done it.
What they're trying to do is make it so that a common interface is a MicroSoft interface from the start.
How many antitrust lawsuites do they want brought against them? I guess $30B can buy a lot of lawyers.
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
This means that they have weighed in all the involved costs (migration, maintenance, training and so on), and they are not likely to go backwards to a proprietary M$ solution in 5 years (which would involve another heap of money for training, data migration, etc.)
Since M$ is not going to release any major rework of its flagship OS for the next 5 years or so, I see a chance for Linux and other free software OSes to dramatically increase their respective user bases in the meantime. And if the users turn out to be major organizations / administrations / companies, they will be in a position to negociate an open-source (or at least, much less restrictive) alternative to M$ Palladium from the contents providers / secured businesses they might have to deal with.
Just my 0.02 euros anyway...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
In other news MS has decided to get into the meat packing business. Their first products will be Gnu and Penguin burgers. Rumor has Bill Gates himself helps butchers the animals and is under investigation by the ASPCA.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I really hope that this doesn't happen, but I can see them trying. My hope is that the chipmakers balk at some point, or at least one of them does for each of the necessary parts.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Then, people just don't want this. They did not ask for it, they will not pay for it and they will not buy it. It does not add any value to the product.
Then, Linux will adapt fast enough. If this really affects internet-applications, then it wouldn't be viable without Linux, Linux runs the majority of Webservers, remember?
I dismiss this thing as "Microsoft strategy of the week". It's the next Hailstorm.
I think its a chicken or egg problem.
If there were no PC's, this scheme might work because there is no "untrusted" installed base.
But since there are already billions of PCs out there already that can't or won't work with this scheme, they it can't be adopted because a merchant or web site owner would risk locking out huge portions of their customers.
This reminds me of the whole Passport authentication scheme that had everyone in an uproar last year. In the end it amounted to NOTHING because it never had critical mass.
I agree with most of the analysis, I just don't think anyone has enough control over the computing ecosphere to make this work.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Why does everyone always assume that all of Microsoft's actions have a sinister undertone in them? I admit, I will look at these new security measures by MS with scrutiny, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
This will not kill Linux. This will Linux on x86 (or whatever platform Windows runs on). I can't imagine that Apple will go along with this. So if all the die-hard Linux users start buying Apple computers instead, the hardware vendors and retailers will feel it (they may only feel it slightly, but slightly is still money).
Bonus: If we're all using Apple hardware, we're dealing with a MUCH smaller set of hardware; less driver searching. Maybe Apple would even be helpful in writing the drivers?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Here is an idea... make a business out of fighting Microsoft. Grab all the Free Software you can... pay developers to improve it... package it and sell it. Then, you can charge for service/training etc. Show folks how much they will really save. Don't rely on other's opinions, sit down and do the numbers yourself. Then, show how well you'll be able to communicate with all that other Free Software that everyone will use. Show them that Big Brother is watching, and that they own your life if you choose to use their software. There is a market folks... I know I'm going to get in the game, you should too!
The reason I say this, is that I do technical support for a local ISP, we have both Unix and W2K webservers on our system and a couple thousand customers that don't know the difference. I would say that most people wont even know they are getting these boards whent they purchase a new machine. Then they will be calling me up to find out why they cant view their favorite webpages. The answer, "Your hardware is restricting your access to the site" is just going to blow right over their head, they are not going to understand why. They are just going to be pissed at us for not being able to help them, probably switch to AOL or something before they find out the real problem, but by then it is way to late. They will just deal with it. Complacency is the name of the game, this is the same reason why companies offer rebates, because a good portion of the customers are not going to bother doing anything about it. Sure some will, or try to return their hardware, but most will not, they will assume it is the new standard and everyone else will have to change to meet it. After all, their stuff is brand new, how could it be wrong?
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
you have a chip ON THE mobo that tells you if you can run an application. what if you're disconnected from any network? the chip must have some key that, applied to the application, will make it usable. Or will decrypt the application. Or will act as a general key to allow the cpu to run some code.
.NET thing. Just marketing hypes, nothing else. We've all seen what .NET has become... bugs even before it was launched. Palladium is just a way to scare vendors which would like to try linux.
;)
Still, it is something you have ON YOUR MOTHERBOARD. Like the CSS key... it's there, it will be just a matter of time before those evil linux users will find a way to bypass it, fake it, and run whatever they want. Bringing havoc on the pristine, certified, public-key signed microsoft world. Like a cancer...
....or at least I hope so. I have much more trust in a 15-years old linux north-european user, than in any chunk of Microsoft Engineers that live in their golden world, without Windows (hah! pun!) on the outside world.
However, this palladium-thing looks like the whole
Those guys at Microsoft are just playing the scary-announcement thing: to scare people before they make the next move. Then make them wait, then provide them a lot of useless marketing, then -before they will realize it- they have been embraced. And the empire extends itself.
Whops! sorry folks, I don't believe a word of this palladium thing until I see a working chip, and I see that it works better than current systems. THEN we can start talking about that, and hacking it. Unless the new DMCA won't make it illegal and punisheable by death
cheers.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
This is the Steven Levy who has been writing about computers for two decades now, whose books include:
Obviously, with titles like these, he must be an ignorant Microsoft toady. On the other hand, Thomas C Greene, who has never spoken with anybody involved with the project, knows everything about it and what it is really about.
You are right - this is NO surprise. So what can we do about it? Well, first of all, we need to get some hackers trained in the letters of the law. I'm a open source developer, and I'm hoping to go to law school next year. Our cause has less of a chance if we don't have well trained technologists who can analyze issues from a JDs perspective. MS has a ton of money to hire lawyers to attack us directly or indirectly, and we need smart people trained to counter that.
smd4985
.....its just that everyone is out to get them.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Given Apache's penetration, and Linux's adoption, what is to say that Linux can't provide all that Microsoft can. I mean, what Microsoft would get is a "Microsoft Network" of computers (incedentally all running .NET) What this OS would tell you is: "No, you can't burn these MP3s, No you can't view that content." Meanwhile the opensource half of the world will have *SOME* DRM capability, which will probably be something like "allow all." Now which OS are you going to pick? The one where the Media Mongers and Monolists control, or the free and open one?
This is just another nail in the coffin for Micrsoft, by Microsoft.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I think we would all agree this could potentially be a very dirty trick. I may disagree through and through with their plan and approach, but I can't totally blame them. Think about their perspective--
-Linux market share is gaining in every direction which means their market share is at extreme risk of dwindling.
-There is no one company to compete with and/or buy out to remove the threat.
-Even if they were able to keep Linux OS market share at bay, it will still continue to improve because the core development team can and will always exist.
When faced with an enemy they can't beat with their usual tactics, their last resort might just be to try something like this. Attacking from the back door could be their last hope at maintaining their dominance. Make no mistake about it, that is what they have to do in order to keep their identity.
It seems to me that Microsoft has realized the inevitability of software--it eventually reaches a point of commodity and finality. There is only so much you can do with a word processor to make it better. After that you are only complicating it. As the OSS alternatives quickly approach this state, there is no need to use the expensive version anymore.
Regardless of their initial intentions, it might be safe to say that if MS sees GPL and Linux suffering from this endeavor, they will try all the harder to push it. Be wary of any company that has everything to lose and plenty of resources to try and keep it.
Let's be honest here - Microsoft has trouble on it's horizon.
Microsoft has sold a lot of Windows 95 and Windows 98. And sad to say, these so-called "operating systems" are good enough for my mom and dad (and sister and grandfather and girlfriend and boss).
Now what? What is Microsoft releasing that would convince my family to upgrade their PCs? To be honest, nothing but hardware failure will convince them to do that. They're happy with their 5 year old PCs, and such longevity is sure to hit Microsoft's bottom line.
The answer? A new security scheme that makes it impossible to run new programs on old hardware. A scheme that also negatively impacts unauthorized vendors (including "open source"). And a scheme that forces users to upgrade on a period basis just so programs will work.
Let's be honest - microsoft has some of the best business people in the world. And they're smart. They recognize this issue and plan to leverage it for profit.... not for innovation or customer experience.
The answer? Disable Outlook - in my opinion, Outlook is the biggest computer security issue ever. It's a nice email client (in general terms), but the security issues have been out of control.
The only value to this anouncement that I see is that it will slow down the adoption of open source. People will question the logic of converting existing systems from Window$ due to fear that they would have to switch back when this is finally implemented.
Stop adding to this fear!!! Only stupid people would adopt/buy this technology. Granted that there are many that are stupid but quite frankly I'd say that that would be under 10%
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Tomas Greene's article is as much FUD as anything else.
Microsoft has to get their technology onto the chip before anything else happens. Do you really think Intel and AMD are looking to get rid of the Linux market? Do you think IBM is going to let Microsoft kill the Linux market?
Second, any DRM support would be built into the kernel (probably as a module) or a library. Applications would call the kernel or library functions to perform rights verification. So, only the kernel (or kernel module, or library) would need "certification", not each application.
Third, there is and always will be a huge need for custom software for in-house applications. There's no way anyone is going to be able to require every company in the world to certify every one of their in-house applications. Therefore, there will still have to be non-certified, unprotected (or differently protected) channels.
Digital rights management will primarily affect applications that specifically request rights verification from the OS. Applications that don't request verification won't use it and won't be affected by it. Plenty of applications and network services will be happy to communicate with each other without DRM.
If anything, strict (cumbersome) DRM may actually drive more people to open source software. When people are getting nickled-and-dimed by every piece of software they use and every piece of media they review, they'll look for other options.
It's more the other way around, 1/3 are NOT running Apache:
May 2002 stats
Ya know, the more big media (and big biz in general) talk about DRM (essentially copy prevention), the less interested I become.
Occasionally, big media has come out with some real gems (like LotR:FotR), but frankly, most of it is crap. I used to listen to the radio for music, but I'm not too impressed by most of that either. Now all I listen to is NPR and an independent dance music station.
They can go and use all the technological means to protect their product (as opposed to art). As long as a few of us can still communicate together, I can keep using free software. As long as people still know how to sing and play, I'll still have music to listen to.
Maybe I'll still go to a movie in a theater once in a while, but I'm just about finished with big media. The more effort they spend to protect their products, the less significant it becomes as art.
Im not the slightest bit worried about it. It wont happen in that way. Its just paranoia. Remember back long before XP came out, and everyone was talking about how horrible XP was going to be because it was going to only allow you to run digitally signed applications? Didnt happen, and it wont. The average joe user wants to run fun little $5 and $10 games and apps that they download (think card games, personal diaries, system utilities, etc). They want to run these cute little freeware screen savers that friends email to them. Its not going to fly.
The article talks about digitally signing everything, all purchase transactions, etc. Again, it wont happen. People want to provide as little identification as possible when they are browsing porn sites, and face it...porn is pretty darn popular. So at the very least, you are going to have to leave open some holes for certain things to happen. But once you leave a hole open in your ship, there isnt much you can do to stop if from sinking. One hole is all virus writers and spammers need to get the nasty stuff through.
And doesn't anyone at Microsoft remember what happened when Intel put a simple processor serial number in their CPUs? People bitched up a storm about it. And that wasnt even a personal identifier (it identified your CPU...and if you changed CPUs nobody would know). Now they are talking about something that would identify you personally? Not gonna happen.
And another thing, did Microsoft even collaborate with anyone on this? I know they have agreements from Intel and AMD to manfacture chips, but as far as I can tell from everything I read, Microsoft has masterminded this whole thing on their own. Ignoring for the moment the fact that I dont think consumers will adopt the idea, I dont think Microsoft could be successful in addressing all the necessary issues on their own. Even if 50 of the top companies got together and tried to come up with something like this, it would still be extremely difficult for them to come up with something robust, secure, and that addresses all future possibilities. If Microsoft is masterminding this on their own, its going to be a million times more difficult to do so.
A quote from the GPL:
:)
"6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License." (emphasis added)
As there is no specific mention that the GPL applies only to source (it applies to computer programs, including binaries and object code, as specified in section 3), one can only take this to mean that forcing it to comply with Palladium would be imposing further restriction on the users ability to excercise the rights given to them by the GPL. This is itself breaking the GPL.
Just something for the GNU friendly legal types to chew on
This longhorned stuff isn't scheduled to come out in a few years. In todays market M$ might be able to pull off a trick like this, but if OS systems gain a decent market share on the desktop, M$ will have a much harder time forcing them all to switch. Even more so if some governments around the world get around passing laws that require OS stuff to be used in their administrations and/or multinational corporations realize that M$ is competing with them, and forbid the use of its products..
In Murphy We Turst
Now sound or video hardware that looks for signatures, that's another, harder problem
-- ac at work
How the heck are you going to validate (thru 'Da Man') when you can't talk to da man?
besides, if people are foolish enough to spend more money to get a crippled version of what they have now, they deserve it. me, i still have my old trusty 640x480 monochrome display laptop for just such times.
and worst of all, people bitch about bitching.
The question is whether the customers will buy this. As far as companies go, what would such a move imply? Provisions must certainly be made to allow companies to keep running their own in-house code. And as for small independent development companies, they must sign their code as well. Who defines what can run on the computer? Who issues the signing certificates?
If this system does not allow companies to write and run their own scripts and programs, it's never going to fly. Remember, most of the world's software is still custom development...
free the mallocs!
I still agree with the parent comment-
there will be enough on line sellers who don't trust what MSFT is shovelling. They will not move to palladium systems. In addition, larger on line sellers will have a palladium and a non-palladium site. Given that there are corners of the population that aren't Open Source advocates who are simply content to use what computer they have while it still works (i.e. my parents) they wouldn't dare alienate potential customers.
Also, this gives more work for internet programmers! We/they now have to develop sites that will seamlessly test what you have and send you to the appropriate site!
Or palladium may just be the next microsoft Bob.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This sort of technology is very interesting, conceptually, though given Microsoft's track record, it is questionable if they will come out with a decent implementation.
There does not seem to be much difference between being able to say "Only this certain person can play this music file in certain circumstances and not share it with anyone else" and "Only this organization can use this personal information I gave them in certain circumstances and not share this information with any other organization." The problems with DRM as currently proposed is that it is too one-sided, biased towards businesses, and a bit too specific.
In an ideal world, something like Palladium would be a step towards information management -- making sure a certain piece of information only goes to the people it is supposed to go to and no one else, that it is only valid for the length of time it is valid (either by life span or the ability to revoke), and that is trackable (just how many organizations out there do have copies of your credit information or home address, etc.) Right now, our information management capabilities compared to ability to acquire information seem pretty primitive. A real information management solution is probably a decade or so away at least, as it would require people to rethink how they handle their information and develop new processes/habits to do so.
Unfortunately, most people will probably look at this as a DRM attempt (which in Microsoft's case, this may very well be) and reject the entire concept of such technologies. This could very well be a problem in the longer run -- if we are in the information age, where information is our tools and our reality, then having the ability to manage and track our tools and reality will be a crucial technology.
This is not to say such a system would ever be perfect or uncrackable, but even though a firewall is not a perfect solution, it is still useful to have. Oddly, such a technology would probably completely fail in a DRM situation in the future because for most people they probably would not care if a music file was authentically signed/certified or not -- but it gets much more interesting for issues of business email/contracts, financial transactions, medical records, etc. If you could apply DRM-type technologies to the personal information you submit to other parties such that it would limit that information to only being read by those parties, then that could, potentially, be an interesting issue. (i.e. A person gets denied a loan/medical insurance -- demands to see why. The business claims that the information on the person indicates he's a bad risk. Person asks to see the certification on the information, since he never gave that information to the business. The business only has uncertified information on the person -- all the DRM-style information stripped out. Scenario: Either another organization stripped off the privacy/DRM on the information and passed it to the company, or the information is invalid. Being able to track/challenge such information could make things more interesting.) Again, such a system would never be bullet-proof, but it could add some value if done properly.
If information is the next economy, then information management tools will be the next banking technology, so to speak. They will undoubtedly arrive in some form.
Just because 'GPL BAD!' has been high on the company's (im-)propaganda hymn-sheet for the last few months doesn't mean that everything announced during that time has been constructed specifically to advance that agenda.
And whether or not this scheme will fly is another matter entirely: the resistance from other large businesses to Passport's original intent of giving MS the lion's share of authenticated e-commerce gives grounds for hope.
Microsoft has enough money and enough clout that something like this getting implemented is a real possiblity. Switching over to a different OS might be feasable for some people, but for the vast majority of users, it is not. If palladium is implemented and microsoft does succeed with it, what will happen?
Since we will lose alot of interoperability, the computing world will be split into microsoft and non-microsoft which end up roughly indipendent from eachother. As I see it, there are three possibilities depending upon how deeply the hardware manufacturers and government get invoved. Either those who use microsoft are cut off from those who don't use microsoft, those who use x86 are forced to use microsoft (or at least their authentication system), or it becomes illegal not to use the system and everybody is forced into microsoft's death grip. None of these possibilities are very appealing.
The only way things won't completely suck is if this is never implemented, but if they have as much industry support (and presure from the bill formerly known as SSSCA) as I think they do, then the outlook doesn't look good. That is why microsoft's power should be limited, why they should be punished, and why they need to be monitored to prevent them from doing things that are anti-competitive (even if not overtly so). That is why I hope that, in the end, MS recieves at least a slap on the wrist from the antitrust suit, if not something slightly more meaningful. Of course, with Bush in the white house, I have serious doubts...if only more people realized that just because something is good for a big company doesn't mean that it is neccesarily the best thing for the economy or the citizens of the country...*sigh*
The author of the linked article states that even with GPL'd source code, the binaries you build would not work because they aren't certified. How, then, would a developer develop anything if they can't run binaries? Or would all binaries run under the same cert on a particular machine? This whole scheme seems to be simply unworkable.
This could also cause problems with Windows Shareware and Freeware programs. How much is it going to cost to get a binary certified ? How many Shareware programers will be able to afford it ? Why would a Freeware programer pay for certification when he gives the program away for free ? Who will be in charge of certification ? Microsoft ? Wouldn't that be conflict of interest, in that they would have the ablity to deny a competitor, say Eudora, entry into the market, by denying them certification or pricing certification out of reach.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
The resulting hue and cry wouldn't be good for ol' Mr. Softy.
This scenario would be such a blatant anti-trust violation that even the Justice Department couldn't sit idly by. You would
See a legal onslaught against it in the courts.
See an illegal, group hackfest to reverse engineer it. Faced with such unethical Big-Brother-ism, otherwise ethical IT people would feel perfectly happy about slinging a pebble or twa at the forehead of Goliath.
One hopes that cooler heads prevail in Redmond, and a stable operating point is reached between the Open- and Close- Source worlds. Both thoughts have merit, and a place in the economy (no apologies to RMS), and extreme 'solutions' help no one.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's struck me before that what we need is a "rootless" Linux distro.
One of the main obstacles toward using Linux is installing software. Whenever I try to get my friends to switch over to Linux, and I'm talking about experienced computer users with Unix experience, the inevitable huge stumbling block is "well how do I install anything?"
What Desktop Linux needs is a semi-protected mode (no login) similar to the priveledges of the default Windows user, you can change settings, install software, view the whole directory structure, but you can't change anything that would cripple the system to the point where "click here to restore default settings" (another option we need) wouldn't fix everything.
Linux software should be as easy as download to the desktop -> click to install. Right now the learning curve of linux has been pushed back only a few steps, it's easy to setup a default config, and use the web and email and anything setup by the distro, but you still have to learn all sorts of crazy convoluted things to do anything beyond that. The difficulty of a task shouldn't be greater than the task's complexity.
Once that is done, someone needs to write a book/series of visible articles entitled "So, you're tired of paying Microsoft $100 per year"
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
That's gotta be the most polite request to cease and desist that I've ever read.
- Given the reliance on hardware encryption, Palladium requires everybody to buy a new computer to use it.
- Given that an encryption system that can stand up against attack through time has never been accomplished in history, the MS plan has little chance for truly ensuring "private data".
- Given that the United States government want to be able to look at your data because you might be a terrorist (or just an enemy of the state), "private data" opposes Big Brother, and is therefore not likely to give any *real* privacy at all (unless you just have blind trust in the govenment
;P).
The good news is, I don't think the 'commons' are buying into Palladium, at least not yet. Besides, real paranoids don't use Windoze.If no binary can run without certification by some outside agent, it follows that users can't write programs and run them without getting them certified (If they could, there'd be no worries about Open Source). Good god. Can you imagine what that is going to do to my debugging efforts?
This scenario is not going to happen. Because even mostly clueless M$-running people will listen if you say, "Hey, you realize that if you run Palladium-based architecture, your darling children won't be able to use their computer for some very important learning purposes."
Read Bujold. Free (as in
Think about this in conjuction with their plans to make Longhorn debut in 2006 as a radically new OS. Do you know what "radically" new says to me? It says completely incompatible. And not simply with Unix/Linux/et al, but with former Microsoft products as well.
Bear with me for a minute.... let's say for a minute that Longhorn is to Windows XP what Mac OS X is to OS 9 - a complete rewrite, completely incompatible, and arguably 100 times better. But adoption is slow. People are entrenched in thier current OS of choice, OS 9 or even 8 for some. So when Microsoft prepares to move the masses to their radically new OS in late 2006, a great deal of segmentation will occur.
Now let's pretend that Linux is ready for the masses (on the desktop) by 2006, and it has a stronghold in the server market. Now you're looking at two paths (at least for corporate types): 1. Continue to allow MS to shove upgrades down your throat and keep following the Windows donkey cart. Further, subject yourself to the new DRM of Longhorn and face issues of your free software and possbily other commercial software (IE Oracle and other DBMS) not working correctly. 2. Switch to Linux or maybe Macs. When companies are forced off Win 2k/XP and forced onto Longhorn via MSFT, we'll see how many are willing to comply. Continuing to use XP/2k may not be an option, but ditching MS entirely may be a reality in 4 years.
I know it took a long time to get to my point but it's a complex issue. Far more complex even than I have portrayed above. But seriously, I think MS is going down a road to making themselves irrelevant. However, never count out the power or marketing! What MS lacks in software reliablity they make up for with a powerful marketing department and an unfortunate following of corporate weenies.
At least that's what I've heard said every time that "If only Windows made a 100% pirate-proof OS, the users would flock to Linux en masse". Well here it is. Tied in with M$ big database of what data you're allowed to see (trust me, it's about their control over you, not your control over the computer),
I'm sure pirating it won't do much good because you need to connect to the big database(tm) to do/see/hear anything useful, and with hardware crypto maybe the crackers will have some trouble too.
IMO it'll go one of two ways, either there'll be free (as in stolen beer) content and noone will bother with the crlpplecontent (alot like today), or there'll be just cripplecontent and people will basicly say "screw you", stick wiht their old windows or change to linux.
Either way I don't think it'll be a hit.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If MS starts this scheme in 2 years, it will take another 7 years until 90% of their users have it (and that's still not enough because 10% is still too much to lose).
Microsoft can afford to take the long view. The biggest driving force of Palladium/Longhorn will be the DRM technology. People want to consume media and the media companies will require rights management. The media companies can also afford to take the long view. They only need to keep crushing P2P upstarts through sheer weight until the laws and technology to support DRM are widespread.
If only "trusted" apps running on a "trusted" operating system can play music and video, then people will buy those. Remember the vast majority of people aren't interested in their rights - and before anyone starts, I didn't see any groundswell of ordinary people defeating the DMCA.
There is no "Linux" to defeat this. There are only distributions. The big commercial distros are the ones that will end up on ordinary people's desktops and they can either play along or not play - it'll be that simple. When it comes to pleasing shareholders I can guarantee that they will chose to play along.
You just can't afford to be complacent on this issue. This is the biggest failing of the Open Source movement - there is no movement, just a bunch of people writing open source software. This works fine when there's no threat to the freedom, but when there is there's no organisation.
The closest thing free software has ever had to a movement with principles and goals is the Free Software Foundation - and look at how ridiculed RMS has become.
People like sitting on their butts and whining a lot more than they like actively campaigning.
you didn't read the article, did you?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
you know what...? yes, it might be a real issue. And somehow it can be a good thing if that happens. By the time palladium will become established, gnu/linux and the other 'free' (as in speech) operating systems will be at the same time rock stable and full of applications to suit almost all needs. It will never be eradicated away.
Probably, IF the whole palladium thing is real, the IT world will become like "users who USE their computer" and "users who don't know what a computer is (and use palladium)". Which would be a great way to avoid all those clueless boring users out there, begging for more colorful icons on their GNU/linux desktop.
the open source will never be completely eradicated. Even in the worst case scenario, if the US government will make open source illegal because it won't comply with DRM, there will be plenty of places on Earth that will support it.
So I'm not that worried about that - yes, it may be a risk, but I think there are bigger risks around right now (talking about the Patriot Act, or if you want to stay in the software world the patenting issues....)
cheers.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Embedded security into a hardware device to restrict its use? Sounds similar to me.
:)
I wonder how many firmware/BIOS patches will show up that disable or fool the hardware device like how you can disable region locking in your DVD drive -- not that I would ever condone such behavior
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
There's a computer available, that doesn't use AMD or Intel products, so it's immune from Palladium.
:D
It's got a 500MHz processor, PGX64 graphics accelerator, 128MB of memory, a 20 GB 7200 HD, Ethernet, floppy, 48X CD, smart card reader, and... Solaris 8 Pre-loaded? All for $995. (Yes, that's a SPARC processor).
To me, it looks perfect. We get a high-speed 64-bit RISC processor, really the only RISC architecture that hasn't morphed into Itanium (poor Alpha); we get reasonable basic specs, and just about everything short of the proc/mobo can be upgraded with standard parts from Pricewatch; and finally, because Freedom is of the utmost concern, any version of Debian that you can run on x86, you can run just as well on Sparc.
And if that isn't enough, if you absolutely *need* to run Windows applications for some reason, in addition to using Bochs, there's another option. If you don't mind keeping Solaris on your computer alongside Linux, you can even buy a $500 PC-within-a-PC card, with a 733-MHz non-Intel x86 processor; because it lets you run Windows and Solaris apps side-by-side, it's essentially a perfect cross between VMware and Wine.
Don't know about you, but my next computer's a Sun.
I do wonder what Microsoft would think if large numbers of people did this. On the one hand, they might love it; if all the Linux users bolt to SPARC, then Microsoft is left with 99.999% control of their platform, complete control for computer built in the last 3 years, and the power to make hardware manufacturers do whatever they say. On the other hand, it means that their Windows-is-better-than-Linux arguments now have to account for the fact that Linux is running Sparc, and it becomes that much harder to get Linux users to switch back.
And for us, it means that the ugliest and slowest port of Linux, that for x86, is all but gone; and most time will be spent developing one of the cleanest, SPARC.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
You don't impose anything on the user. "requires Palladium-enabled PC" would be right up there with "requires Windows(c)(r)(tm)". It's a system requirement, not a licence requirement. You're required to provide a compatible environment yourself.
Don't think it'll fly. However, you can demand the source (unless supplied), disable the Palladium crap and compile it yourself. Which presumably means you won't get it signed, and it won't run. But you're still free to copy, distribute and modify it, which is all the licence requires.
It's very much like your right to fair use. You got them, but there's no law saying it must be easy. Or should I say used to be? DMCA makes it a crime to actually exercise that right, not to mention expanding copyright to infinity (No, you can't break a DRM scheme legally even after the copyright has expired because it'll be protecting other, newer works still under copyright.)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Here's why:
Paladium is pure speculation by Microsoft. They cannot afford to release this to the public, because they would lose their monopoly on desktop operating systems if they did.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
What is the free equivalent to this? I propose the following:
Microsoft is banking on the fact that companies will trust it to authenticate good software because they trust the Microsoft reputation. Historically, Open Source has developed its trustworthy reputation by banking on actual users who state that the software is trustworthy.
So here is a Free alternative to Palladium - a public trust clearinghouse. Much as DCC authenticates spam, and the GPG repositories authenticate public keys, a public trust clearinghouse could be an expression of the corporate trust of software.
As an example, imagine giving each member of the Wilshire 5000 a number of votes equal to 10000 minus their position in the Wilshire 5000 (IE, the biggest company gets the most votes). Each can submit any mix of those votes to the "trust this software" and "don't trust this software" bins, and can move them as the wish. New software would have very few votes. Established software would have many votes. The decision to trust could be based on both the number of votes and the percentage of positive votes.
Yes, I think using the Wilshire 5000 is a requirement, because corporations don't trust the general public with business decisions any more than you and I trust Joe Six-pack with firewall settings.
The question then is how to incentivize corporations to participate. Perhaps a license requiring that those 5000 companies submit a certain number of votes per month to be allowed to access the trust repository... just spitballing.
Regardless of how it is done, I think Microsoft has hit on a genuine chink in the O/S armour - it does not have any officially responsible party. Coming up with a way to state authoritatively to business that version 3.142 of SuperDaemon is trustworthy would go a long way to countering Palladium if it catches on. And frankly, I would be far more likely to trust 5000 parties who are objective on average than to trust the manufacturer of the software.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Until then, the solution is NOT to have a "rootless" box. There's nothing inherantly difficult about switching to root to install software, especially if it's just a cute little dialog box that asks for the root password. The problems from software management come from a lack of standards and decent packaging software - not unix security.
Correct me if I'm wrong - but dont all the arguments about the impossibility of working with GPL'd software on DRM systems also apply to anyone developing *any* code on such systems?
ie - if you want to test the code you just compiled because you are a legitimate developer, you must have some way to do so? (Arguments that it will only run on your own machine are weak. That won't stop distros like gentoo from working, nor is it good enough to work in dev shops where you be compile for a test team). This may suggest that M$ will charge more for developer licenses, on unrestricted platforms?
Secondly - if you can build a VM that runs on a DRM system, but doesnt require signed bytecode, then you can run anything you want anyway? And is Linux not just a big VM when it comes down to it (for everyone except the kernel developers)
My point is, if there is no way to develop code in small cycles, MS will find this a very hard sell to software houses and IT depts of corporates.
It seems to me that the only way this can work is if the system 'can' run untrusted or self-signed code, but will not run signed code unless DRM lets it. None of this prevents GPLd code working.
-Baz
And, to top it all off, in the past 30 years or so, incidences of stress-related mental illness has increased by something like 500% (I forget which study I read that in, but anyway).
And what do we have to show for it? Do we have more time to spend with our friends and families? No, all we have is a few new toys (although, as a geek myself, I have to admit that they are fun toys). If we see an average person working one day a week and making enough money to support themselves and their families, then that would be a massive improvement in quality of life.
In fact, we have seen the opposite; the two-income family is so common that it has become difficult to be one-income anymore. The quality of life has decreased enough that the average two-income family now lives about the same as an average one-income family in the 1920's.
Remember, those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
the other issue i see is installing from source. unless you can make this a double click graphical process, people wont do it. its as simple as that.
i think what linux needs is something to complete this equation...
Aqua enables Unix like...
XXXX enables Linux.
just look at what Aqua and OSX are doing for Unix, theyre getting real people(pun intended) to use it, after it being around for decades.
that and users dont want to hear about kernals or CLIs or anything remotely tech related. they want to poke at pretty buttons and make things 'magicly' happen.
I want 2D games back.
Look, lets not get our knickers in a knot. It may happen, but it's never going to be the only, or even a high-level verification method. Obviously not, it's embedded in hardware.
Anyone with half a brain can tell you that an identification code embedded in hardware is going to be cracked, and in short order. What happens to Charlie consumer when he finds that his version of Word no longer works because some cracker has a hold of his unique identifier? Or that his personal information is subject to manipulation by a cracker, or that microsoft is giving away his credit card number to anyone who can spoof his identity?
It's a common failing of software manufacurers to think that new hardware can solve problems that software cannot (CF pretty much every dongle ever made) Just let MS run with the ball until they realise that the same thing can be done in software at a fraction of the cost.
In addition, I think it would die in Anitrust. Imagine buying a car, that could only be refuelled at with BP petrol, but not being told about it at point of sale. Just wait until those computers start being returned, because they won't play nice with my operating system of choice, and watch Intel turn on a dime.
You should take a look at the way Apple has done the permission setup in MacOS X. The root user is disabled by default, and on top of that there are "Admin" users - which have permissions to install applications, apply system upgrades, and change hardware configurations/preferences (including network and anything else you'd want to be able to do).
One of the main obstacles toward using Linux is installing software. Whenever I try to get my friends to switch over to Linux, and I'm talking about experienced computer users with Unix experience, the inevitable huge stumbling block is "well how do I install anything?"
What Desktop Linux needs is a semi-protected mode (no login) similar to the priveledges of the default Windows
Umm, check out the Lindows machines WalMart is selling. Check out the DL/autoinstall website with the one click install of programs.
It's here, however, I don't want any machine that my kid can one click install a root kit on my machine. Some of us run a more secure distro for a reason.
Ask around.. Who do you know that runs linux and managed to click on something that infected their machine? Windows macro viruses don't run on Linux. It's incompatible and I like it that way.
The truth shall set you free!
A couple of more ominous things.
Sure open source would go on but I would like to have the operating system on my machine be legal. I'm already pissed about having to use and "illegal" DVD player on my Linux PC to legally view _my_ DVD's.
Also Microsoft had patented DRM-OS, which means that if not-DRM-OS's are against the law, anyone who wants to sell Linux, and probably Linus and other kernel developers would have to pay roalties to MS. This would be super-evil.
I agree with your point about software patentents, it just happens to be tied in fairly directly with Microsoft's current diabolical plans for palladium.
THe real reason why Microsoft is doing this is they want to be the DRM gatekeeper. All digital media will end up going through them, and they will come up with new standards and schemes to get a percentage on all of this information. Look at the new Mpeg 4 standard - they are planning to charge for the data stream. It's where MS wants to go today.
Killing Linux and the GPL is an added benefit.
-asb
Not yet, but give them time to fuck this up and their stock will be a lot cheaper.
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Linux will replace Windows just like the open PC-platform replaced Apple and Amiga.
...
I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. Especially since Apple has a substantially higher percentage of the desktop market than Linux and Apple has apparently been "replaced".
Wait, there is no "and" in this sentence. People want to consume media, their interest end after that. They don't want to pay ridiculous amounts for subscriptions and fees.
This is foolish in the extreme. People pay ridiculous subscriptions and fees everytime they buy a CD, a DVD, or a player for either of those media. It is because of this that P2P scares the media industry so badly. They currently make vast profits out of people who don't realise that they are being ripped off. They will do - and already are doing - anything to protect that.
The media companies have already managed to come up with a film format that only their approved players can play (DVD) and make it illegal for you to reverse engineer your own (DMCA). Just how stupid do you have to be to think that they won't do the same for music and broadcast video.
Well, and I demand a million $ from you.
The difference is that you clearly don't have a monopoly over anything of value to me, nor the ability to buy a law to compel me to give you anything. This is not the case for the MPAA or the RIAA.
Microsoft will win because they know which side their bread is buttered on. If they help the MPAA and the RIAA then they'll get their massive financial and political support. That's why Microsoft care about digital rights management. If Microsoft can deliver 90% of the desktop market to the MPAA and the RIAA then they will happily hand Microsoft a monopoly right to the media.
Sometimes you don't get what you demand. Especially when you make unrealistic requirements.
My point is that to most people the demands don't appear unrealistic. Like I say, most people don't give a damn that they're getting screwed. And of the few that do give a damn, the majority of them can't think of anything to do but whine on Slashdot.
So far I haven't seen anything to suggest that the future I suggest here won't come to pass. The DMCA became law and no legal challenges to it have succeeded yet, the RIAA just killed independant Internet radio, the MPAA have pretty much successfully killed the open source DVD player, the MPLA are suggesting a fee structure for MPEG4 that will kill independant video streaming, Sony are bringing out computer-proof CDs, various attempts by the Senator for Disney to install DRM into hard drives and onto motherboards,
Sorry, exactly when is Linux or the open source movement going to change anything?
One step is too many. If I saw any way I'd give Microsoft the corporate death penalty right now.
That said, this is probably a trial balloon. They're probably just floating it to see what kind of reaction they get. Expect them to keep this up until they've desensitized people. Then they'll try it for real.
Think of this as son-of-hailstorm. Or perhaps the Bride of Hailstorm. To which I can say "They deserve to be dead. All of them in that house."
This is unfair, of course. Frankenstein's monster was well meaning.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, in Europe Linux already overtook Apple by a large margin. On many German sites, people browsing with Linux already make up 10% or more.
I still don't get it why Walmart is selling their Linux-PCs exclusively in the weakest Linux-market on the planet (USA)
This is foolish in the extreme. People pay ridiculous subscriptions and fees everytime they buy a CD, a DVD, or a player for either of those media.
What? DVDs and CDs are popular because there is absolutely NO subscription involved. Because you "OWN" the movie/music (yes I do know that it's just a license in court).
Every scheme that takes away ownership from the user has failed so far, I don't think that a scheme that takes away ownership of the PC (which is even more severe) will succeed. Yes ownership includes the "doing what the hell I want with it" - factor.
It is because of this that P2P scares the media industry so badly. They currently make vast profits out of people who don't realise that they are being ripped off. They will do - and already are doing - anything to protect that.
The media companies have already managed to come up with a film format that only their approved players can play (DVD) and make it illegal for you to reverse engineer your own (DMCA). Just how stupid do you have to be to think that they won't do the same for music and broadcast video.
How stupid do you have to be to think people care about what's illegal?
You can get almost any movie on the net you can get in stores. Correction: You can get A LOT MORE movies on the net than you can get in stores. That's a fact.
Sorry, exactly when is Linux or the open source movement going to change anything?
Well, Opensource made it possible that you can spread your "Microsoft will win - FUD" here. Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages. (Big corps don't like discussion, so there would simply be no such thing as slashdot.)
Opensource has already destroyed Microsoft's plans. Microsoft is fighting a losing battle.
A message to all open source, or any, developers out there, "Do not make this work. Do not try and hack a Linux solution to make this work. Make sure your stuff doesn't work with this new system. Make sure your site doesn't work with these whacked mobos. Do not allow Microsoft to succeed."
If we hack out a solution that will kinda sorta allow Linux to function in this system of stupidity, we will be forced to deal with it for ever. The best way to fight this latest attack is to make users uncomfortable. Don't allow your apps to run on systems that MS has locked down. People will quickly get pissed when they can't get to their favorite pron site or whatever.
"First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Ghandi
We're coming to the climax of phase three.
This whole thing just points out the absolute urgency to get "Desktop Linux" to a point where your mother would use it.
It will take MS a long time to implement Palladium because it is so ambitious. Minimum of three years: 1 for hardware to be available, another for MS to have shippable software, another for large scale deployment. In the time that it takes for them to get to that level, Linux MUST achieve at least 25% market share of new desktop OS sales. If this can be achieved, then Palladium won't matter because the monopoly will be broken enough to assure that other solutions survive.
I believe this is an achievable goal in an achievable timeframe. Some of the key gaps that have to be close to get there are:
1) OpenOffice has to improve and offer comparable MS Office compatibility to what Microsoft offers when they upgrade. (current progress: B+)
2) There has to be a robust set of games available on Linux (current progress: D)
3) Mozilla has to be clearly superiour to IE (current progress: B)
4) The LSB standard has to be widely and uniformly implemented so that software installations are turnkey for compelte boneheads (current progress: B)
5) MS Outlook has to have an equal among open source competitors (current progress: C)
6) More vendors need to offer Linux pre-installed machines. (current progress: C-)
Another thing that would help is that proprietary software vendors have to steer towards cross platform languages (java, delphi, etc) so that their niche market products run on Linux as soon as they run on windows.
How stupid do you have to be to think people care about what's illegal?
...).
You can get almost any movie on the net you can get in stores. Correction: You can get A LOT MORE movies on the net than you can get in stores. That's a fact.
As with most Slashdot weenies, you're confusing yourself with "people". Most people buy CDs and DVDs. Any system that has looked like it might reach too many people has been ruthlessly destroyed (Napster, AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, DeCSS, net radio,
Well, Opensource made it possible that you can spread your "Microsoft will win - FUD" here. Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
No, you're confusing "free beer" with "free speech". The value in open source is in the fact that the source is open, not that it's cheap. OSDN could easily purchase Sun, IBM, or HP boxen bundled with free application servers. The cost of the bandwidth, hardware, and support easily dwarfs the proprietry software costs anyway.
Open source does not enable Slashdot. Slashdot enables open source. It would be hypocritical if Slashdot ran on Microsoft software, but it wouldn't stop it being a forum for the free software community.
You have to snap out of your complacency. Freedom isn't something that you can sit around and wait for, it's something you have to fight for.
No, you're confusing "free beer" with "free speech".
Huh? OpenSource enabled the Internet, it would be impossible without it. That was my point. Maybe you should answer to my point instead of switching topics.
You have to snap out of your complacency. Freedom isn't something that you can sit around and wait for, it's something you have to fight for.
Yes. But helping Microsoft by sprewing FUD ("Microsoft has 40$ in cash and can destroy Sony and Nintendo - whohooo") is a bit counter-productive, don't you think?
Can you show me anything that demonstrates the first technical understanding?
Newsweek is prolefeed. You are an offtopic troll.
Paladium includes DRM chip on board. We can be sure that such a thing will make any machine with it into an appliance. That's fine, but it's not a computer. Hopefully someone will continue to make computers that work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I saw the press release in Newsweek. Oops, I mean article.
They got one thing right, that there was considerable doubt and uncertainty that people would jump at the chance to own a chance to truly be owned.
The thing that occurs to me, however, is that a lot of software is going to take a performance hit has it does PKI work, encrypting data, checking keys over the network, etc.
That, and the complexity of software will needs increase. As if current software is so trivial and simple that two five year olds could debug all the problems in IE within an afternoon.
No, there's a word that describes Palladium.
That word is "Bob".
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If MS makes sure every pre-Palladium windows is buggy and full of security holes, then users will have to upgrade to get a usable system. The shear entropy of all of the viruses out there will make any old version of windows unusable after MS drops support.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
... and every system that included "pay-per-view" or subscription was not accepted by the market. Which was my main point
That depends on who is doing the paying. The demand on pay-per-listen is what just killed independant Internet radio and I didn't see anyone storming the gates with torches and pitchforks. People will just switch to listening to the "approved" streams of the corporations that own the media.
Huh? OpenSource enabled the Internet, it would be impossible without it. That was my point. Maybe you should answer to my point instead of switching topics.
I'm sorry, if that was your point you didn't make it very well since you wrote:
Because if it were not for Linux, Apache and BSD, we would all run proprietary MSN connections and only big corporations could afford going online with webpages.
which appears to clearly indicate that you believe Slashdot uses open source out of monetary concerns.
Yes. But helping Microsoft by sprewing FUD [...] is a bit counter-productive, don't you think?
I don't believe that I am helping Microsoft, but I do believe that people who dismiss concerns about the power they wield with empty statements like "Linux will replace Windows" are helping them. You are encouraging people to sit back and wait. By then it will be too late to repair the damage.
Open source is anathema to control freaks. Therefore they won't ever aid it. The media companies can only control the media with proprietary formats, protocols, encryption, and rights management. There's only one company capable of delivering that scale of proprietary system to them.
Like I said, Microsoft will win because of the MPAA and the RIAA. The only way to stop them winning is to stop the MPAA and the RIAA from controlling the distribution of media. Linux won't beat Windows because it's better or because it's free. Open source can only thrive in a free environment. We need to protect our freedom first. The DMCA exists because not enough people cared about their freedom to stop it.
If they do "play along" and support Palladium they can, pardon my French, go fuck themselves. Who cares? That is the wonderful thing about freedom, you don't need to save them and they don't need to listen to you. They are free to give away their freedoms left and right in exchange for a few shiny gadgets, and we (meaning anyone who values their freedom more than they value the latest pop single) are free to use, modify, develop, and play with open source and its derivatives.
Gah! I don't seem to be getting my point across very clearly. Let me try again:
Consider DVDs and the DMCA. As we have already seen it is now illegal in the US to write an open source program that can decode, and thus play, DVDs (DeCSS). If it is illegal to write a particular program then the noo-sphere (as ESR would call it) has been contracted ever-so-slightly. Yes, you are free to continue to play in the remaining space, but you have lost some freedom. Similarly it will be illegal to write free software that circumvents Palladium and any other DRM madness that the media companies come up with.
In small increments we are slowly giving up freedom. You can say "who cares! I didn't want to listen to the Spiderman soundtrack anyway" (which has been copy-protected by Sony so that it can't be played in a computer and ripped to mp3), but as a community we have lost something. If you don't defend other people's freedom then you will slowly lose your own.
To make my point another, more controversial, way: RJS wants Linux to be called "GNU/Linux" not to boost his own ego, but to recognise the freedom that the Free Software Foundation has fought so long for. Remember the FSF isn't Stallman, it's everyone who has ever contributed to the GNU project. They have collectively increased the space of our noosphere with tools, documentation, licenses, political lobbying, legal action and support, etc.
Complacency is the rot that eats away freedom.
But then again, I've always been too lazy and self-occupied to consider Victory a pre-condition for Freedom.
*sigh*
The basic idea is that you need to be able to run executable code under OS-enforced restrictions that are similar to the restrictions on Java applets. A legitimate Active-X control, for example, needs to talk to its window, its site, and the instance of the rendering engine for the current page. That's a jail-type application. FreeBSD has this now, but browsers don't use it.
The LOMAC system is more general. It's like Perl tainting, for the whole OS. You can download some application from the Internet, but it can't do anything to data that didn't come from the Internet. Games, for example, fit well into this model.
Rather than whining about Microsoft's sign-everything approach, the Linux community needs to develop security technologies like these that provide real security. This is better than what Microsoft is proposing. And most of the hard work is already done. The main task is to get the browser people to use it.
This makes a lot of sense for the Mozilla project to do, making them a superior alternative to IE. But their code base may be too big to try this easily. The process architecture of the browser, at the "who talks to what" level, needs to be redesigned with security in mind. Basically, the rendering engine for each page needs to be in a separate process with limited privileges. This has impacts on many browser features, although the main rendering task isn't impacted much.
Think of it as a firewall inside the browser.
"Some of us run a more secure distro for a reason."
I'm not saying this is what *I* want, but security = hassle for most people, and I think some sort of middle ground could be achieved, where the default user could install things that don't require root privelidges (Quake 3, Mozilla, etc. etc.) and you'd need a separate root password (which the installer would prompt for) for things like kernel, glibc, or KDE upgrades.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I don't know if they'll succeed, but I expect them to try. If they can get Intel and AMD to go along with it, they take Linux out of a large part of the market. I expect at that point the rest of the market would expand in response...but that's another issue.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I still think they'll try it. They might not ever get the chips produced, but they will at least go into backroom negotations with major chipmakers and try to do this. They might even be able to sneak some of this past before people notice it. They probably won't get all of the manufacturers, but they will get some.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
- probabilistic expert systems and user assistance (think "paper clip")
- the file system as a database
- a VM and runtime to unify all programming languages
- all data contained in its own data vault
- etc.
Every idea, however hare brained, that some computer science researcher has come up with, gets put into Windows because it's almost the only place where you can put it.But without being tested, alone and in combination, in the market, nobody knows whether any of these ideas help or hurt. Microsoft is stumbling along like the central committee of the old USSR, trying to plan for the next ten years. They are going to be no more successful in terms of results: their systems are already far from what a free market would produce, and it will only get orders of magnitude worse. The only question is whether, like the USSR, Microsoft will be able to hold on to their power through coercion and eventually fall apart in a great crash, or whether they split up voluntarily and operate in a free market before then.
If only "trusted" apps running on a "trusted" operating system can play music and video, then people will buy those.
What are you talking about. Most people get all of their media from MS-untrusted apps like kazaa, gnucleus, or limewire. There are damn few trusted media content providers out there now.
As a general rule, the longer a technology is out, the cheaper and more ubiquitous it is, and the more chance of variety. Basic economics. Economic models go towards more variety, not away from it. Reagardless of what MS does.
No one is going to get me to ever buy another MS based OS. I run 98se AND I am never ever buying anything from them again.
Matter of fact, the only reason that I am even on 98se is that I want to play games. After that point changes... I'm getting a distro.
Well, folks, something happened on the 11th of September that changed the rules here. It was on TV so you've probably heard about it.
Hermann Goering said that and I think we can all agree that he had some insight on the issue. It applies to more than "hot" war and to more than just governments' propaganda.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,282114, 00.asp
"However, the AMD-Wave whitepaper also postulates the need for multiple protection schemes, something that Microsoft's limited public statements have not addressed."
looks like AMD had this idea 2 years ago,
Lapey
Yeah, evidence. It's that thing that some people like to have that proves that someone is up to something BEFORE we convict them.
And yes, you're right - the remedy for past criminal behavior probably won't take this into account because they haven't committed done anything wrong as far as Palladium is concerned.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
What? DVDs and CDs are popular because there is absolutely NO subscription involved. Because you "OWN" the movie/music (yes I do know that it's just a license in court).
Just a nitpick - that's not entirely true.
When you buy a physical object like a book or a record, you own it. If I take your book without your permission, it is theft.
However, the material in a book or record is copyrighted and the copyright holder has certain exclusive rights regarding what you can do with that content. For example, making copies of the book and selling those copies on the sidewalk would be copyright infringement.
Also, it is not "just a license" in court. You have not signed a contract that tells you what you can and can't do with the content. It is copyright law - and not a license - that set down the rules regarding how you can make use of the content.
(With software, it is a bit different. Also, with click-through licensing becoming more prevalent for online shopping we're bound to see more copyrighted works 'sold' by license in the future. It is still unclear how the courts will rule regarding how legally binding such non-negotiable contracts are, but I digress.)
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Ha! I'm a control freak -- and I adore Linux. It lets me control my box right down to the level of individual bits!
There are two kinds of control freaks -- those who seek to control others, and those who seek to control themselves. The latter are those people who compulsively arrange their sock drawers. The former are those who compulsively arrange other people's sock drawers.
Is Bill Gates a control freak? Seems pretty likely. Is he the kind who compulsively regulates his own behavior? I don't know. I do know, however, that he (and his company) do seem pretty compulsive about wanting to regulate my behavior, particularly with regard to my computer. And that's scary; a computer is a hell of a lot more personal than a sock drawer. My sock drawer contain bits of cloth that I encase my feet in. My computer contains my financial records, my phone numbers and address, my schoolwork -- in short, all of my most private personal information. Controlling my computer is a short step away from controlling me, and is therefore completely unacceptable.
Even then, there are numerous flaws in the idea, IMHO, simply based on the way Jo Public uses her PC. Check out my more lengthy response to this article here.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
It is intended to protect Microsoft and the members of the MPAA and RIAA.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Personally, I get by just fine without Windows. I don't don't run any version on Windows on my machines, or any Microsoft applications, with the exception of IE 5 which came bundled with MacOS X, and has long since been dumped in favour of Mozilla.
I don't understand why people are so upset over this. It's a free country where i live, and MS should be free to implement whatever stupid scheme they feel like.
It doesn't matter to me because I have chosen to invest the time and effort into finding myself a workable alternative precisely because i don't like the way MS operates.
That doesn't mean they don't have the right to operate, within the boundarys set be law and common decency, as they see fit.
The majority of the posts i see on this topic are bleating about how terrible this is and how motherboard manufacturers will only sell palladium-equipped motherboards, making it impossible to do certain things.
Well, This reminds me of Slot-1 from Intel, widely hailed as the death of AMD, when really it was the move that saved AMD, forcing their adoption of a different architecture, and bringing a real alternative to Intel on the desktop.
Or Rambus, which was widely hailed as the death-knell for the SD-RAM industry, when RDRAM was basically expensive, proprietary rubbish that put a huge dent in Intel's P4 strategy, again allowing AMD a big window leading to further inroads into Intel's desktop CPU domination.
Plus, there is the ridiculous irony that the only reason Microsoft is so successful is because of the minimal-to-non-existant anti-piracy measures implemented in all versions of windows up till XP.
People use Windows because they can happily warez the copy of Office their friend bought with ease and impunity. Take that away, and Windows is not nearly so attractive to Joe User.
In fact, it will likely drastically lower the gap between PC and Mac prices, making the Mac's higher hardware cost insignificant in comparison to the huge wad of dough you have to spend on apps anyway.. And since the Mac doesn't have palladium, well, you get the picture.
Linux exists in it's own little world of free/open source software, has got this far despite M$ and Apple, and doesn't seem to being going away any time soon due to soaring, unprecedented popularity never before seen from a non-commercial OS, and I really don't see how this affects it. You want GPL apps, and you can't get them on Windows - What do you do?
From the posts i've been reading, it seems that most people just go 'waaaaaaahhhhhh bad, bad M$', instead of taking a step off the slippery M$ slope , using one of the several capable alternative OSes, and ignoring this latest floating turd 'Palladium' in the constant stream of raw sewage that has been flowing out of Redmond for over ten years now.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
This sounds like my experience with SuSE Linux 8.0 and KDE 3.0. If I click on a .rpm file in konqueror, krpm pops up and allows me to install the new software. Before allowing the install, it requests the root password. In this way, I do not need to log in as root to install new software.
Of course something along the lines of InstallShield would make installing new software easier and more flexible.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Hailstorm failed for one BIG reason: No one in their right mind trusts Microsoft with security sensitive data. Corporations from AmEx to the average joe consumer didn't buy the claim that Microsoft would protect all this confidential data.
Now, we are to trust Microsoft to develop an all encompasing security platform? How do those bone-heads at Microsoft Marketing/Engineering think anyone at all will buy into this?
It takes a very long time to build security into your products, and an even longer time to build trust with customers. Microsoft has not done either, and this security platform will fail without the support of hardware vendors, software vendors, and people like you and me.
-ted
On the other side of the atlantic ocean, however, "region free" is a *major* sales feature found in many advertisements.
Wow... ok, I'm not at all surprised with the desire for hackable DVD players outside the US/Canada -- by and large everyone else gets the short end of the stick (particularly regions 5 and 6, and 4 to a large extent). I am surprised that it's openly advertised. I guess the MPAA is too busy trying to pass inane laws here to go look at Europe/Asia... or they just don't have the pull there that they do here (much more likely).
Every once in awhile I hear about a region 2 release that I'd be interested in. Usually a TV show -- syndication rights in the US make releasing stuff on DVD a nightmare -- some shows require agreements from up to 4 different studios. But it's not such a big deal to me to bother looking into modding one of my DVD players.
A major point of difference wrt. copy protection in general however, is that the Palladium thing isn't primarily targetted agains copyright violation
Well... if you look at the history of Longhorn the first things MS was saying were copyright oriented. In particular music and video oriented. They're just spinning it now.
Actually AOL had far more to do with the failure of MSN than Linux did.