New Chips Keep Tight Rein on Consumers

banannaslug writes "NYTimes (subscription, etc.) talks about Microsofts Palladium. The article addresses how applications of controlling technology affect competition as well as the consumer, can be used to extend monopolies to new markets and has very serious implications for what happens to user driven innovation. We'd have the people's operating system, the people's web browser and the people's media player, and 'computers' would be as useful to innovation as a bicycle to a fish. This is the kind of behavior you expect in a mature industry that tries to add 'law' to preserve failing market models dependent on a lack of competition. Next thing you know they'll want to force customers to upgrade periodically." Point it out to your boss.

Comments

Paranoia

[SpatchMonkey]

This article is the usual paranoid rhetoric about how Microsoft is evil and going to take over the world, disguised under some serious journalism.

This is the same thing people were whinging on about four years ago, and it still hasn't happened yet.

And DRM technology makes sense in many ways - sometimes I get the impression that a lot of people who post to these discussions don't quite get the fact that if someone has something for sale, and you want it, then you should pay for it and not bootleg or steal it.

You could call it a lack of moral common sense, perhaps.