Slashdot Mirror
MS Palladium Patent
Concerned Citizen writes "cryptome has Microsoft's patent for Palladium. Including such gems as: 2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises:
refusing to load the untrusted program into memory. 14. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising:
restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data.
And I'm sure we'll all be coerced to agree to Palliadium during a future security patch agreement."
No modifications to the EULA were made in the latest build of XP SP1... maybe the next?
I think I'm hearing "The Imperial March" in the background. Weird.
The only reason why I'm using windows is because MS office is still superior and there is no substitute for Director, Dreamweaver or QuarkXPress on Linux.
So if palladium does become reality I'll have to swap over to Mac.
But wait: doesn't M$ 0wn apple? (25% stock?) Does anyone know about DRM plans on mac?
If nobody trusts this system, it will not get into widespread use. Amazingly, Micro$oft does not succeed at everything.
The only reason why I'm using windows is because MS office is still superior
MS office for Mac is superior to MS office for Windows. Go figure.
So if palladium does become reality I'll have to swap over to Mac.
Why wait?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't Java's sandbox model refuses to load untrusted program into memory (if set up o only run signed applets) and restricta a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating rights-managed data?
Lots of people here don't seem to get it. If Palladium is to work, it must be incorporated in all CPUs, including those running MacOS, linux, BSD or FrobOS. Can't imagine how big business and the State could slip that through so it becomes illegal to use a "pirating operating system"? Think again...
Be very afraid.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
To juxtapose the Patent against:
The Declaration of Software Freedom
(read the whole thing!) of which a subpart is:
"Current Software Commercial Organizations
hide source code to keep developers divided, disenfranchised and
dependent; tie inferior products to dominant ones; defiantly violate and
avoid court orders; quash promising competitive start-ups; leverage
dominant products into other, unrelated businesses; carve up markets to
eliminate real competition; utilize predatory pricing practices to
foreclose competition; commoditize and objectify their customers by making
them captive; cause developers to constantly re-invent the wheel by hiding
the source code; exercise general thuggish behavior in business dealings;
compel weak competitors to destroy their own innovative products to
protect established profitable ones; fail to respond to customer requests
and needs in a timely fashion; exploit natural "choke-holds" in the
economy for their own advantages; manipulate and delay technological
progress to maintain supremacy; hide coding bugs thereby jeopardizing
stability and security; de-humanize software developers by considering
them as "inputs" or "assets"; stifle innovation; "embrace and extend" or
otherwise pollute open standards in order to break and appropriate them;
use exclusionary contract provisions to enforce censorship over disclosure
of bugs and defects; shut-off or block channels of distribution to
legitimate competitors; announce vaporware to foreclose adoption of real
competitive products; frustrate, taunt and antagonize governmental
officials protecting the public interest; truncate choices; create
confusion and frustration in users by selling inferior code; take the
innovations developed by others as their own; practice differential
pricing to punish those that oppose them; misinform and exploit users;
use undocumented features as an anti-competitive device; suppress the
open, efficient and free nature of the scientific method by keeping the
code secret; purposefully break the code of competitors so that there are
code inoperabilities across products; prohibit friends from sharing
software with friends; coerce their users to fore-go promising competitive
technologies; use overly restrictive and exclusionary contracts against
weaker competitors; and perform other anti-social, anti-competitive and
improper acts to establish, maintain and extend their software
monopolies."
Patent, being a public accessiable document, can be turn into evidence
against MS, for which they cannot remove from public access?
At least it's a substantive patent; lots of diagrams and references and stuff... Some things get past the examiners that are little more than a napkin with "A method for doing the obvious" written on one side.
Hey, I'm trying to think positive here...
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
void karma_burning_philosophical_schpeel()
//end karma_burning_philosophical_schpeel
{
I can't possibly know with 100% certainty what Microsoft's intentions are, but there stands a reasonable chance they are intended for their benefit and any consumer benefits are purely coincidental.
So what can we do about all of this? Pay attention and educate ourselves on this initiative and then pass on the news good or bad to the masses that aren't up to date on the geek speak. It is probably not a good idea to leave thsi job up to mass media.
It is possible for us to either make or break this technology. Look at the old Divx from Circuit City. Bad idea. It was DOA because many people (myself included) advised everyone not to buy it.
This is a controversial technology from a controversial company. This doesn't mean it is destined to be evil. It does mean it is the job of those in the know to keep those out of the loop informed.
}
"DRM will not make it on to desktop PC's. Try telling a user that the
new computer they are thinking of purchasing has less features than
their current one."
It might just be possible that Microsoft, Intel and AMD have already thought of that. It might just be that they will market it as a new feature. Indeed, in the original NYTimes Steven Levy piece it was interesting to see Gates saying (words to the effect of) "we started thinking about this technology in connection with music and video, but then we realised we could position it as a general purpose security feature." Apart from killing one of the last remaining sectors where ISVs still make money writing for the Windows environment (a/v, security, personal firewalls and so forth), you can bet that they'll be trumpeting Palladium as the pay-off from the much hyped "trustworthy computing" hype. Come to think of it, that abuse of the word "trust" - a term with a specific meaning in info-sec, crypto and other areas - as a marketing term is classic Microsoft double-speak. Or do I mean newspeak? "Palladium is watching YOU!"
Oh, and what's in it for Microsoft? Control. The same thing they've always been about. It's the same reason the MPAA are attempting to suppress deCSS: nothing to do with copy protection, everything to do with control of the distribution channel.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Why?
It's their site. They can post what they want. They're not here to keep your sheletered little MS-good, choice-bad worldview intact.
Or maybe for every 3 news stories saying that Al-Queda are up to no good, the news channels should cover the positive work for farmland renewal that Al-Queda are doing?
Oh, they're not? - See how absurd you are being?
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I still think Paladins should be lawful good.
Not neutral evil.
Actually to a point, yes exactly. The less dehumanizing prejudice that goes on in the world the better.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If Palladium is to work, it must be incorporated in all CPUs
Nope.
Unfortunately Microsoft has a plausible route to getting Palladium out there. "Palladium Enhanced" computers will be able to do everything non-Palladium computers can do, plus they will be able to view DRM movies, DRM music, and whatever else. The content industries will jump on board. The only reason not to get a computer with Palladium in it would be extra cost, but Microsoft could subsidize that cost down to zero if they want.
Microsoft programs will start including extra options that only work if Palladium is present. Once Palladium is on a certain percentage of computers Microsoft can start requiring Palladium for basic functionality. They could even start requiring Palladium for all patches and installs. It's "for your own protection", Palladium will ensure the patch is legitimate and not a virus/trojan. They just won't offer bug fixes / security patches for non-Palladium. Once Palladium is in a certain percentage of computers they can start making people suffer if they don't have it.
Cracking the system is going to require cracking the hardware. It's not going to be easy, but someone WILL do it before Palladium hits that critical percentage of desktops.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So Palladium won't load an untrusted program into memory... How would it accomplish that? In order to determine whether a program was properly signed, one would need to get its checksum. In order to do that, you would have no choice but to load it into memory of some form. I suppose you could bypass the RAM, DMA it through a dedicated calculator... But that would be inefficient; you'd need to scan it once, and then load it for execution. And you'd need to do it every time you ran the code, or someone could have compromised the data on the system's drive by editing it on a non-Palladium system.
And what's the big deal about having "non-trusted" code loaded into RAM anyway? Actually, it's very easy to put one's own binary code into the system's memory; load it as raw data. An OOB-type exploit can pass control to that nearly as easily as it can execute a program that's been loaded but not yet determined to be trustworthy.
I'd love nothing better than to see the geek revolution stop this shit from making it into the hardware, but lots of luck. EULAs are every bit as bad in the legal sense but if there was an overwhelming hue and cry from the masses that convinced the software companies to quit screwing us with them, I must have slept through it. This site will pump the hardware to our crowd as happily as it did Warcraft III; nevermind the fact that they just informed us about how the publisher wants to give the open source community a good legal rogering; and the Slashdot crowd will swallow every bit like a double frappichino. Oh, they'll be bitching about the evil corporate overlords all the way through the checkout line, but we all know what's gonna be in the shopping cart anyway.
If we don't see (or grudgingly tolerate) the problem, what chance does Joe Sixpack have?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I refer the honorable poster to the most accurate comment on this view currently available.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It seems the link is /.ed, so I can't check the details... Does anyone know whether the patent would be claiming established anti-virus techniques as well?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
- Everybody can install new hardware.
- Everybody can install new software, and, even worse, create new software that has access to all hardware devices.
- Everybody can exchange arbitrary data over the net.
So, the Palladium hardware won't have many relations to the PC any more, but become something like a mobile phone or a gaming console: a closed system. Probably, customers will be attracted with the argument that this new device will be easier to use and less complex. Maybe, Microsoft's XBox is even the first foundation of this new system architecture!By the way, this won't be anything new. It's only the continuation of a longer trend: Taking the user further and further away from the hardware. On Windows 95, you weren't able any more to write programs that controlled the hardware directly. You had to use Microsoft's API.
Now, you will have to use Microsoft's API for everything that happens on the computer. So:
Don't drink and su! antidisestablishmentariazationally
Palladium is just ActiveX revisited. Security is confusing because it covers two entirely different problems: 1) protecting the machine from rogue users, 2) protecting the machine from rogue software.
The second point bifurcates into two opposing camps: 1) most rogue software comes from unemployed college dropouts, 2) most rogue software comes from Fortune 500 companies.
Palladium is the approach of keeping the foxes away from the chickens by building a coop for the foxes.
C'mon, Judge Kollar-Kotelly, make me proud. :)
A) Find something good to say about them and post it to the front page WITHOUT SARCASM
B) Post an anti-linux, anti-free software article."
Why?
Slashdot dosen't PRETEND to be an unbiased news source, they put their Bias right up front where everyone is aware of it and can take that into account when reading it.
If you want a news source that pretend to be unbiased while spewing out drivel that is little more than a rehash of Microsoft's latest PR release I suggest that you try ZDnet for your "news".
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
"The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory."
;-) For instance, with Unices I can restrict the user to reading the data, writing the data, executing the data or some combination thereof... Thus Unix has been able to restrict 'a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data'.
Hmmm. Seems to me that this 'art' has been around since the beginning of Unix. Hell, Microsoft has been providing a form of this 'art' with NT and 2000 for quite sometime. It's called permissions! And what would you call the recent advent of the NSA's Secure Linux? Administrators have been 'refusing to load the untrusted program into memory' for quite sometime to protect data... The only thing different about this scheme is Microsoft will be instituting a system where the company itself is root/administrator and the previous system admins are relegated to subordinate positions.
"The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data."
Ahh, this has also has seemingly been done since time began
Cheers!
Have you checked the latest specs for DVI. Here is a link to a site where a DVI output does not even work with a DVI monitor. The signal is encrypted all the way to the monitor and even sometimes the handshaking doesn't work.
e s/top6.htm
http://www.riva3d.com/dvi.html
I fuund this gem regarding DVI
With capabilities for copy protection, bidirectional communication, and selective refresh, DVI is projected to have a minimum life of 10 years.
at http://www.intel.com/update/archive/issue22/stori
Somehow I see new content being released only to "trusted" hardware that are quite hack and copy resistant. Even the link to the monitor and speakers will be encrypted. A copy played back will lack the proper response to a random challange and the playback device will not unencrypt and play a recorded copy on untrusted hardware because it will not handshake.
The truth shall set you free!
As long as you don't have to pay significant amounts of money to get that authorized signature/certificate, you're right.
This ought to be a condition of public funding for public media. Anyone pushing DRM is probably up to no good, but DRM or no, a commons of high-quality independent media is an essential pillar of a free society and we ought to be demanding it.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
That'd place your video and sound hardware in violation of the DMCA. You wouldn't be able to market cards with these modifications.
:-P
Of course, it would only take one person with modified display and sound hardware to create non-masked versions of DRM-protected material; once those copies were made, they could spread like wildfire.
Then all that might remain a challenge would be digital watermarks. The practicality of a watermarking system that isn't bypassable but can still automatically prevent material from being played is problematic. A watermark that only shows the origin of the material and wasn't designed for automatic discovery would be another matter, though.
So when you buy that video, intending to pirate it with your special ripping hardware, make sure you use a stolen credit card number and a spoofed IP.
Or they could just hire a bouncer to come along with every Windows computer, and order them to bash you into the wall every time you try to load disapproved content.
Perhaps it won't happen. Perhaps the idea is just yet another diabolical plan for world domination that popped into William H. Gates III's twisted imagination. But we must not be complacent unless we want to live in a world where Free Software is a crime.
We need to think about Palladium like we think about asteroids colliding with earth. The risk is small (maybe even tiny) but the possible consequences are catastrophic. Our actions should be made accordingly.
Of course Palladium won't mean the end of the world. But it will mean that Microsoft will finally become completely entrenched into global civilisation, a scourge which will be impossible to remove. It will make it only a matter of degrees for Free Software to be outlawed. And it will tether our technological society to outdated ideas from the 19th century.
At a time like this nothing is more dangerous than complacency.
Microsoft does not own my RAM.
Microsoft does not own my hard-drive.
I will put on it whatever I want to put on it. Understand?
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
I'm a former intelligence officer and I started using Linux in 1993. It's my office desktop and my home desktop and I'm not interested in MS helping make my life more secure.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
"Palladium Enhanced" computers will be able to do everything non-Palladium computers can do, plus they will be able to view DRM movies, DRM music, and whatever else. The content industries will jump on board.
This is essentially what the Circuit City / DIVX people tried. They wanted to create a deviant standard for DVD movies that required special hardware and pay-per-view accounting of titles. For awhile, there was talk that some movie studios would only be releasing on DIVX, supposedly because it was more secure and profitable. But it failed miserably. Why? Because #1. Millions of people already had "standard" DVD players. and #2. There was a rather large popular campaign to stop / boycott the DIVX standard. Several people along the way asked me what was the difference and why they shouldn't just buy a DIVX-capable DVD player in case the standard caught on. I then explained why DIVX was harmful for the consumer and reminded them that if they didn't want this garbage, they should not vote with it with their dollars. And none of them did. We can do the same thing with Palladium: start a popular campaign to boycott it before it's even on the shelves. It's just a matter of spreading the word. Tell people that M$ wants to take away control of their computers and make it illegal to run anything but Windows on all new computer hardware. Tell them how much DRM is a bad idea. Tell them that the answer to viruses and computer security is secure software to begin with, not this pathetic attempt to plug up the holes in their flaky software.
Palladin is complex enough to identify both non-trusted 'code' and 'data.' It's in their patent. Their patent is actually quite thurough.
"And what's the big deal about having "non-trusted" code loaded into RAM anyway? Actually, it's very easy to put one's own binary code into the system's memory; load it as raw data. An OOB-type exploit can pass control to that nearly as easily as it can execute a program that's been loaded but not yet determined to be trustworthy."
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I see other vets turning to Linux too.
photosMy Photostream
The more you expose the consumer to strict DRM rules the more they will come to reject it. I honestly don't believe people will keep investing in computer hardware when it doesn't let them play their favorite burned CDs or permit them to hear their own MP3 collection. The quicker it is implemented on a large scale, the quicker it will be destroyed.
"The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory."
The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data
The key terms here are "rights-managed data". AFAIK no OS out there has built in protection for rights managed dataI felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of server processes suddenly cried out in terror, and suddenly silenced.
...*** TO BE CONTINUED ***
I feel something terrible has happened.
*** SOME TIME LATER ***
KONQUEROR: Our position's correct except... no cryptome.org.
ME: What do you mean? Where is it?
KONQUEROR: That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid, it ain't there. It's been totally blown away.
ME: How?
It's been destroyed... by the Slashdot.
KONQUEROR: The Slashdot crowd couldn't take down the whole site! It would take ten thousand people with more free time than I've...
*Alarm bell goes off*
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
A patent is effectively valid until it's been officially declared invalid. Do *you* have enough cash to challenge MS in court? And to pay for the appeals, etc.?
That's why some people call the US a plutocracy. Because the judicial system is more strongly tilted in favor of those with more cash than in several other countries. (But they generally have their own favored groups. So select the evil that you choose wisely.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
since the 26th of June Slashdot has had five stories concerning palladium:
/ 16 41205&mode=thread&tid=109
2 27 &mode=thread&tid=109
7 21 8&mode=thread&tid=109
/ 13 14229&mode=thread&tid=109
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/23
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/27/125
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/02/161
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/04
and now this one... shouldnt the paranoia level be turned down a notch till we have something a little more concrete?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
" I see other vets turning to Linux too. "
Yeah, gnumeric is great for keeping track of those vaccination and neutering appointments...
graspee
So while all you dorks think the scope of the invention is very broad, it's really very narrow because it further limts claim 1. The real issue is this: did claim 1 meet the requirements of patentability. For those that don't know there are two requirements - 1) is it novel and 2) is it not obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. To show that it fails to meet requirement 1 you have to show that the invention was published or displayed in public one year prior to the filing of the patent applications. It's very difficult to prove that it doesn't meet the second requirement because what is "obivous to one of ordinary skill in the art" can be subjective. What's obvious to programmer without a degree may not be obvious to one with a Ph.D. or visa versa.
Since DOS has been dropped, they have to do something.
photosMy Photostream
OK, I just have to bite when the thread is d&d related...
It all depends on your point of view. Microsoft view themselves as lawful good, free OS zealots as lawful evil, and napster-happy consumers as chaotic evil.
For the free OS point of view swap evil for good and vice versa.
The whole AD&D alignment system doesn't hold up in the real world; the chaotic, neutral, lawful bit is fair enough, but as for good, evil and neutral you need to have an objective, externalized viewpoint to say what is good or what is evil.
This is basically the same "Is there such a thing as objective good and objective evil ?" question you might get on a philosophy exam.
My own opinion is "no", but most people fall into the "yes" category, either because they belive in some deity, are totally stupid or c) both of the above.
To properly frame the viewpoints of MS vs free OSs you need to replace good and evil with commercial and free.
So MS is Chaotic Commercial, free OS zealots are Lawful Free. Show me a company that is Lawful Commercial and I'll show you a company that covers its tracks well...
graspee
First, this guy thinks a lot of himself: FUD Notice the bold FUD. Oh my, that sounds horrible. We could have a market finally for digital releases, one where I get my media, and the seller gets his money. Sounds fair. Keeps me from making 10 copies of this new movie and giving them to my friends. And thus more speculation and FUD. OK, so now the open-source movement is AGAINST encryption/privacy? Does this mean PGP is bad now too? This sounds like technology I always assume US military intelligence organizations already use. I don't want a whistle-blower leaking confidential battlefield plans (we've seen it happen a lot in the last year). As for corporations, if a whistle-blower can't print, email, fax, save to disk some document, they'll find some other way to blow the whistle. This is a stupid argument as for why Palladium as a whole is bad. I'm sure the FBI would love it if the Mafia started using DRM certs on their data. It'd be much easier to ask a judge for the rights to sieze and open documents certified by this certificate, then say to ad-hoc monitor possibly private data in an attempt to get to Mafia data.
Note, it will never happen. Criminal elements will stay away from technology like DRM and pallidum. Elmer FUD would be proud. I went and pulled the membership on the EUROSMART list, and I see a lot of overlap with TPCA. I guess they don't hate it that much. First, that's not censorship, that's search (and possibly seizure) and it's pure FUD to presume the government will push a button and search you hard-drives and then drag you down to the police station, for your dirty little picture. However, even if they did... this picture would have to be signed somehow, and under DRM protection. Not sure why a child pr0n peddler would take the time to DRM his pictures. And if you want to view that sick stuff, turn off the DRM system before you do it. Yes, it does have an off switch. While off, you can't use the apps in DRM mode, meaning you can't open DRM certified media. Oh my god. It's at this point I have to stop reading this horrible FUD..er FAQ. Disable DRM, and the DRM enabled functionality in DRM enabled apps will cease to work, the apps will continue to work. Sure, you can't open your ULTRA-7 security level report, that the NSA sent to you, but theres good reason for that. Turn back on the trust management, and then open that report. And what's with saying it's like switching from Windows to Linux? First, what the fook is wrong with linux bitch? and second, that makes no sense!
I honestly went to this FAQ to try and see both sides of the Palladium debate. But this FAQ is a borderline paranoia conspiracy rant. It hurts the anti-palladium side more than helps. Stick to the facts, dissect it like a Vulcan would. Show me logical arguments, and keep your emotion and fear out of it.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
It's not COMPLETELY infallible, thankfully, depending on the hardware being used. A CRT monitor has to generate analog signals internally, simply to drive the horizontal and vertical syncs and to vary the intensity of the CRT guns. A LCD display will also have analog drive circuitry, and one could demultiplex the pixel drivers to determine which pixel was being changed. Audio is simple; yank the speakers and plug them into an input.
This will of course prevent people from making "perfect" digital copies. But making a slightly imperfect analog copy, then reproducing it digitally ad infinitum, is entirely doable. 'Course the next step is to place controls on all analog-to-digital converters. I'd love to see them bell THAT cat.
Considering that no details have been released about Palladium besides the fact that there is a burgeoning project at Microsoft that will use that as a codename I can't see how anyone can explain Palladium when no one (not even average Microsoft employees like myself) know what the details are. I read it and seemed to simply care about one thing and that was spreading FUD. In fact let's dissect this logical explanation Looks like someone has no idea what it does for sure but tells us what it obviously must do. There is a saying about assumption which fits right in here. Again, instead of concrete details we get speculation and assumptions. Maybe that's because there are no details so all one can do is leap to conclusions? This section is disgustingly similar to the "encryption is bad because terrorists can use it" argument. I guess its OK for such a narrow minded and ignorant viewpoint which has been derided several times to be espoused if one is bashing Microsoft (sorry I meant M$).
I could go on reading the FAQ but it devolves into paranoid conspiracy theories from that point on.
It is meant to be an objective requirement. It is true that it is hard to administer mostly because you are asking someone that already knows about the invention, whether it would have been obvious.
And the person applying for the patent should initially prove that his invention is non obvious.
The non-obviousness requirement has been reduced in importance lately but it is really key for having a sensible patent system.
Unfortunately, it looks like the cheapest Code Signing Certificate that one can get from a CA (one that M$ will trust, anyway) is $200 from Thawte. Verisign is $400.
How difficult would it be to set up a free CA for Open Source Software, or software released under other licenes, such as X or BSD?
IMHO, code signing in itself is not such a bad idea. What is bad is who you have to pay money to in order to get "trusted" status. A Free CA would allow free software to remain free and gain "trusted" privileges.
First: If you've been kidnapped and locked in some basement in chains for the past 6 weeks, ignore my ranting and please accept my apologies. If not, read on...
AMD and Intel have both signed on to palladium. It is a done deal. The motherboard makers have no choice, they will be starved of the latest fastest CPUs, if they refuse to cooperate. Possibly even starved of the older slower CPUs... AMD and Intel will simply refuse to manufacture them (there is precedence, AMD clobbered the 486's that embedded systems engineers liked so much). The chipset manufacturers will either clone the DRM features, or be left out.
There is no escaping this. Laugh all you like, point at Circuit City's DivX if it makes you feel better. I could explain that too, if you cared to know. And when the marketing weight of 1 billion cluelesss idiots buying the computer the Dell dude tells them to crushes you, I'll be laughing at you. Admittedly, only a split second before I'm squished like a bug. *shrug* OS choices? What choice? Linux kicks ass, no argument here. But it simply won't run. "Yet more proof linux is insecure, it won't run with palladium!". We're all sooooo fucked. Does anyone have some lube? This is going to be a big one, and I'm afraid my virgin ass just won't be able to take the punishment...
Conclusion: You are simply a flaming retard, incapable of seeing the nearly immediate, and agonizingly obvious. You're standing there, admonishing us all not to panic, even though those that choose to look can see the 500 ft tall tidal wave getting ready to crash. If ever there was a time for panic, it's now.
*LOL* *Sobbing*
I love how ever time a patent comes out people yell prior art and give obvious examples as to why "it won't possibly hold up".
Fact is most of these "obvious" patents usually end up holding up. Do you really think with the Army of legal geniuses MS employs that they didn't think of what you just said? MS for the most part doesn't enter battles they will outright lose so easily.
So make fun of the patent if you want to, but if DRM OS's in fact do become the wave of the future, its endgame already for both your rights and OpenSource OS's as well.
"Chicken Little ain't got nothing on me"
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Here's a suggestion...go hang on one of the Windows weblogs. Don't have one you say? Perhaps that's because NOBODY is enthusiastic about using/owing Windows. Oh yeah, been wondering about that major pain in your ass? It's M$. Guess they've been fucking you so long you don't hardly notice it any more. I can only imagine a guy like you colluding with the bean counters to move the budget items for the annual Microsoft upkeep out of technology and into operating expenses so your company doesn't even know how much Microsoft costs them.
cat
Would people use software that was known to crash regularly, costing them time and money and making them do the same work over?
Would people buy new versions of software when it was known to be extremely bloated, take much more resources than previous versions, and contain megabytes of dead useless code?
I submit that your expectation of the wisdom of the buying public has no basis in fact.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
(* On Windows 95, you weren't able any more to write programs that controlled the hardware directly. You had to use Microsoft's API. Now, you will have to use Microsoft's API for everything that happens on the computer. So:
.NET. Sun tried to make Windows irrelavent by making Java into a virtual OS.
The user will be even further away from the hardware Microsoft will control even more layers between the user and the hardware and become even more powerful. *)
MS witnessed Sun's Java trying to do the same thing, and so is now trying to out-Java them with
Table-ized A.I.
Bah, how silly! Who better to hate MS than their poor, long-suffering customers? I don't hate MS, but then I haven't used any of their products in nearly three years. For all I know, they actually have made improvements since Win95. LOTS of people feel coerced into running WinDOS and hate it. And (to stay vaguely on-topic) Palladium is obviously, at least in part, an attempt by MS to make it harder for people to escape, which in turn will increase the number of MS users who hate MS. Bashing these people is the kind of clueless "I'm so superior" crap I'd expect from IRC-addicted losers. You should either offer to help them escape from MS's control, or (if you're an MS fan) offer intelligent rebuttals. (I'm dubious whether there are any intelligent rebuttals, but, as I mentioned earlier, I don't know what MS has done lately, so I'm not qualified to comment.)
What, Linux is suddenly going to use Palladium and also start doing MS-style "security patches"?
I think not. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
If MS does shove Palladium in as part of a security update/bugfix, I wonder what the legal status of the agreement you give would be? It would seem coerced, much like if your car got a recall notice due to a brake failure that rendered it unsafe unless repairs were done, and they had to be done by the dealer, and the dealer required you to agree to, say, installing a system so he could control where and when you drove your car as a condition of getting the repairs done. Generally the law doesn't require you to adhere to an agreement you were coerced into, and I think you could make a good case for this being coercion.
http://www.didw.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=N
For some reason people seem to ignored this article and all the content provided therein. The most important bit follows: Again, if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. It's your choice. Only the content creators will be able to force this on you, NEVER microsoft. If SAP, or Sony, or id wants their program/mp3/game to run in this trusted environment, they can require it. But MS can never require it. They cannot prevent you from installing an OS on the machine that does not support this either. Does anyone read these things?
The problem here is the same as it's alway been. Fair use is largely the intent of the person making the copy. Until technology can read minds (fate forfend!) there won't be a DRM that won't abridge fair use in some way. As long as DRM abriges fair use, popular adoption of DRM technology won't happen willingly. This is an attempt to ram it down on an unwilling consumer population.
That said, the backlash that might build will depend largely on how intrusive Joe Six-Pack is going to find this new DRM technology. The second J.S.P. gets pissed off about it is the second elected officials are going to feel the heat. When they feel the heat, no amount of payola from ??AA is going to save it. MS is walking a fine line between control of content and pissing off J.S.P.
Until Joe Six Pack starts screaming not much is going to change. Unfortunatly, this might be after the Fritz chip is in most consumer electronics, and it will be too late to do much about it.
Don't forget that J.S.P. doesn't give a fart in the wind for the best technology. If he did, we'd have Betamax insted of V.H.S. We'd still have a Tucker auto, and not (fill in your most hated car). Zip and Jazz drives would be moldering in the dump, and we'd be using optical disks.
Is this new technology from MS a Open Source Killer? That's going to depend on someone making MoBo's available without the Fritz chip. Sure, those systems won't be able to run XP, but there are an awful lot of people out there running systems that don't run MS products. I can't quite see (at this point, maybe in the future?) a MoBo that flat won't allow a non-DRM OS to run, just that it won't run in the "Fritz here, you can control this system" mode.
That being the case, then I don't see Plaidium being quite the Open Source killer it is being painted. Not to say that it won't hurt Open Source, but it may not kill it. That's for the next evoloution of DRM. Which might be why MS is sending a sacrifice to Linux Expo. Calm down the Open Source zelots enough to get Fritz installed, don't use all of it's control capibillities until you reach market saturation, THEN whack those commie programmers when it's too late for them to save themselves. GAMEOVER.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
"I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, they didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Note that the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft article. So, if you have a failure, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.)
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch gave Microsoft administrator privileges over user's computers. If users want to patch their system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, they must give Microsoft legal control over their machines. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
Corrections and additions to this comment will be posted at http://hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm
Maybe you can do something comparable- sit on the beach and throw rocks into a lake. For every three rocks you throw, when they splash into the lake, say that rocks fall down.
The fourth time, claim that rocks fall up :D
If there isn't anything good about Microsoft, or cancer, or nuclear war, or Enron, or WorldCom, etc etc, then it is honest to say nothing good about them, and to make up good stuff isn't 'balanced', it's just stupid. Might as well say rocks fall up.
Next time you develop repetitive stress injuries from typing pro-Microsoft posts on Slashdot, how about you balance out the advice to slow down and save your wrists, with the counterpoint view, that you should type twice as much until your hands are permanently destroyed and you can no longer use them? Then, not only would you be representing all viewpoints (even the stupid ones), but you wouldn't be posting anymore and we'd all be happier ;)
Sorry, got a little carried away there. ow, my wrists! ;)
You think Apple will save you?
I suggest you think again for the following reasons.
First, this Palladium stuff was leaked -- we weren't suppose to know about until well into the future when Microsoft could put a good spin on all of this. So who's to say that Apple isn't already cooking up their own DRM technology? And they own the hardware *and* the software, they don't need to rely upon other companies to provide the hardware.
Second, DRM is getting mandated by the government. You really think MS is going to develop this stuff while watching all their customers move to other platforms? MS is doing this because they have to and Apple will also do this because they have to. Even if you have absolute trust in Apple and Steve Jobs, they're not going rebel against the government or anything.
Third, you really think you'd be allowed to run Microsoft Office on an untrusted platform?
Historically, Apple has been more secretive and lawyer-biting than Microsoft has. Moving to Apple computers would be like jumping from the skillet into the fire.
Soon, its going to be a decision between trusted computing and untrusted computing. I'll be running free software (where the "free" has always stood for freedom) and I'll do without them applications or find substitutes. Perhaps I can help in developing one...
But then, perhaps they'll have to make free software illegal.
He's entitled to. He's an established expert with credentials in the industry, and it's quite possible that his understanding and information on this subject is ahead of most people's, including the MS guy posting on this thread.
It's nothing of the sort; it's a very real issue. If you provide a means to lock people out of data -- which is essentially all DRM is -- and then appoint MS as the effective custodian of that data, what is to stop them abusing the technology to stop you loading a document you created in MS Word with, say, a translator for OpenOffice? As those crying "FUD" are shouting so loudly here, there is precious little solid information available and even fewer guarantees, and MS has a demonstrated history of abusing any power it gets through its dominant position in the market. A little caution is more than justified here. It's only paranoia if they're not all out to get you.
It's also a market where critics could potentially be stopped from using controlled material in a legitimate way. Worse, that potential is controlled by whoever owns the DRM controls -- MS in our current scenario -- and not by a suitable legal system. This is not in the interests of the common consumer of these products.
This is a bad caveat, because I doubt anyone here would have any sympathy if a child pornographer got screwed to hell; the ability to do this in such cases is a definite plus point of the proposed approach. The problem is that the same technology could be used to prevent the distribution of, for example, information certifying that Microsoft's accounting practices are highly dubious (such as is currently freely available on the web), and once again, the control is in the hands of the DRM guys, not the duly appointed government.
There are far fewer applications currently available for Linux, and hence you are limited in what you can do with it. If you can't see the parallels to the DRM scenario, and the problems potentially created, I'm afraid you really aren't looking very hard.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not that any corporation would EVER LIE about how much money it REALLY has! Gee, that would be dishonest :D
I'm with you on the panic and all, but you're in for some very big surprises. To you, they will be pleasant surprises. To others, maybe not-so.
Perceived cost/benefit ratio is a bigger factor in consumer acceptance than you might think. Don't forget that Betamax cost about twice what VHS did at the time, and didn't do anything radically different (watch one type of tape, or watch the same material on another type of tape -- functionally the same task). Jazz and ZIPdisks cost a fraction of what optical disks cost (store data on one or the other, no functional difference).
:(
People will buy what they perceive as being most cost-effective. Make the DRM/Palladium solution sufficiently cheaper to buy up front, and most consumers will not care if it's not the "best" solution, so long as it more or less does the task of the moment.
DIVX died not only because it was a bad idea, but mainly because it cost about as much as the concurrent alternatives, AND the consumer had immediate negative financial feedback ("What? I just paid for this and it's no good already??") If it had been radically cheaper, or if the downside hadn't been so quickly apparent, it may well have succeeded.
If DRM/Palladium were incorporated in a cheap consumer system (frex, the eMachine market) and in workstation-grade OEM machines (frex, Dell), it could succeed and take over very quickly, despite clones' current 40% of marketshare.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Um, are you being sarcastic, or did you just misunderstand my position/predictions?
For everyone out there saying that "this will never fly" or "those bastards are stealing our privacy" etc., this has been a long time in the making.
:)
Anyone remember a few years back when Intel decided to ship a serial number with all of thier P3 chips? A bunch of people got all pissed off about it, and Intel said they would let people turn it off.
Just to refresh those that don't remember this article at cnn.com covers how hackers found a way around the option to turn off the code and still grab the number.
Know how much people cared at that point? Jack shit.
MS will just placate the average user and tell them that their concerns have been addressed, and show some stupid little ways in which changes were made to make things better, people will buy into it and it will ship just like it was supposed to in the first place.
For those who say that mfrs won't buy into it, esp. MB's mfrs, I would disagree. How hard would it be for MS to tell these folks that if they want to produce x86 boards, they damn well better implement their hardware schemes. AMD has already signed on, I'm sure Intel will as well. Who's left in the x86 world? I don't know a single company that would be able to compete and survive if they lost out on 94% of the computer market.
Sure you'll get a fringe player or two, but they'll be the odd ones out. Building your own machine will no longer have those nice low cost benefits, 'cause that non DRM board will cost a fortune to make. This has ugly written all over it.
'Course, OSX on an iBook is a pretty decent substitue. Glad I got WC3 on here too.
oops, link didn't survive. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9905/03/squabble .idg/
that's better
You seem to place great significance upon the term 'rights managed data'. I fail to see the difference between this and every file on any unix system! Every file has a corresponding set of permissions. So the only real leap you must take is to declare that files contain data. Not much of a leap there ;-)
Hey asshole, you really should quit replying to your own post with such surreptitious praise ;-)
The above post was of course a response to the slashdot quote, not the article, but whilst we're here let's take a look at claim 1 shall we:
1. A computerized method for a digital rights management operating system comprising:
assuming a trusted identity;
Hmm, this looks familiar. How about a login authentication process found on any unix system.
executing a trusted application;
Perhaps a nice daemon with root permission upon boot.
loading rights-managed data into memory for access by the trusted application; and
Howabout some 'rights managed data' aka, a regular unix file with some data of use to the daemon.
protecting the rights-managed data from access by an untrusted program while the trusted application is executing. "
Well, the 'rights-managed data' can be locked, whilst it's access is protected by the normal file permission set.
Doesn't this sound familiar? It should to anyone that's used a form of Unix this decade.
You run command.com if you want to use a DOS program that relies on DOS calls to other DOS programs, eg TSR's. command.com is also used to run batches. In terms of DOS support, this may make the prompt show short file names.
You run cmd.exe and .cmd files if you want 32 bit stuff. They will also run in .bat files, but command.com isn't loaded in the process.
All versions of NTVMDOS.EXE have some sort of bug that makes it look like the system is about to crash. It adds an un-needed latency to the processing of keystrokes. Both OS/2 and Win9x process DOS in the same way as NT, but this latency is not there. I mean, it's only the keyboard input. The programs run quite fast, and you can use a DOS program as a cycle-soaker, if you want to: I use UBASIC in this way.
Many of the bugs that I gather are in NT have been in Windows NT 3.1 code. I have not seen a version of Windows that can run a pipe of several commands, and keep the windows command window open. I found documentation on these bugs, and a whole neat range of tricks, under the Microsoft TechNet thingie under NT v 3.1. Windows 2k will run the OS/2 1.3 cmd.exe, complete with rexx support!
I would have thought they would had fixed these bugs up before NT went prime time, but no.
Windows NT has two different command prompts with a different set of bugs. You run the one that has the bug fixed in it, and hope for the best.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Slashdot dosen't PRETEND to be an unbiased news source, they put their Bias right up front where everyone is aware of it and can take that into account when reading it.
Yes, that's exactly why slashdot has absolutely no credibility whatsover. In their zeal to show the horrible, evil deeds of Microsoft, they have been wrong or only have half the story countless times. They show no remorse and continue their rabid anti-MS quest when they continue to use Windows.
Strange. I've found Slashdot to be an indispensable resource for supporting Microsoft Windows. Where else can you get breaking news about Melissa, Love Bug, Code Red, Nimda, etc? It took microsoft.com three days for a search on Code Red to show any results. Occasionally some other useful technical information, but they always seems to come from the Microsoft bashers instead of the Microsoft supporters.
I've been using the command prompt on Windows for ages. While it's nothing like Unix shells, it still gets the job done. Fact is, MS doesn't want to develop it further and it shows. However, if it's SOMETIMES slow or dir listings take forever on ONE installation, you really don't have enough data to generalize. I get it to lock up my keyboard once in a while but even then I don't generalize.
Then on to the registry. IMO it's a stupid decision to group all that data in one messy registry. However, I have never had a single corrupted Windows registry. While it's possible that it gets corrupted, it doesn't happen often enough to warrant this outcry.
Lots of what you wrote (or quoted) is full of words like "may" and "seems". That's very convenient as everything may happen. Finally it ends with a lovely if-you-don't-agree-you-are-against-us-conclusion.
I could go on but I suppose this is already enough to burn karma. What the hell were those three moderators thinking who modded that rant up? This is definitely not the way we should fight Microsoft/XP/whatever. This is fanatical FUD and anyone can see through it.
Well, people in the US need to buy DVD, Software (same apps many times a decade really), gadget, go to the movies, etc. Basically, if piracy goes to a high level, it means American will have more money to buy: hamburgers, cars, vacations, etc.
If that ever happens, then you will no longuer be able to:
- Sell those movies, music, soft to everyone else in the world (no critical mass). Ie: no more 100% revenues with no cost. Less capital inflow.
- Buy food, housing, etc. at the same price. As more people buy Real Stuff, you'll start to see prices going up.
Basically, the only way an average American can earn 3x what people earn in others countries is by having a cool way of neutralizing that purchasing power with "Soft Goods".
Meaning you do NEED DRM to keep the american dream alive. They day people stop buying software, music, movies, etc. and that at the same time, the rest of the world stops buying your movies, software, apps (and weapons) is the day the US will decline (economically). Anyway, you will still be able to live through rents (if the rest of the world honors them).
So hidden and buried in an economistic view, DRM will keep your soft industries alive and kicking. And that's good for you (and it's bad for the rest of the world).
For's good for the economy is good for you!
unfinished: (adj.)
In the late 80's I sold and supported AT&T PC graphics products, such as Topas. They all had dongles, the little hardware things screwed into the seriell or parallel ports(can't actually remember) , and without which the software would not run. Autocad also had one. In no time whatsoever, there were hacks floating around (and this was before the internet) that bypassed these things, thereby effectively making them expensive (in development terms) toys.
MS' Palladium will almost assuredly go the same way. Why? Because, given MS's track record in security I simply cannot believe that someone will not find a method to bypass this.
It seems as if security within MS has always been subservient to marketing and planned obsolesance, because I don't believe that MS' coders are that bad, but that they are forced into the regimine of making products that neeed upgrading for no real purpose except to ensure MS profitability.
Palladium is, IMO, nothing more than yet another MS ploy to
1.Turn it's negative image in security around.
2.Work with the RIAA and MPAA in order to control what you play on your computer.
3.Stymy OSS by locking them out of the hardware. (Yes I know that theoretically it's open architecture, but theoretically Hailstorm services could be provided by others as well)
4.Generate an endless stream of revenue by making built in subscription/obsolescence etc.
Like Hailstorm, I think a large part of the industry will be very very skeptical with a company that no one, and I mean no one, trusts. Unlike Hailstorm, hardware manufacturers stand to make money here, by forcing upgrades on customers (You need a new computer to run WindowsPalladium) and some of them will, in light of poor sales in recent times, almost certainly jump on the bandwagon.
It's not the same case i think. Microsoft can upgrade whatever they want from your computer as they see fit. And if people don't like it, they can go to hell. The have the means to make it so that they DON'T care. They never cared and never will.
I was trying to explain to my ex (girlfriend) what DRM and Palladium where, and she couldn't grasp why it they could be bad. After all, she doesn't mind. She just buys DVD, uses a pirated Office to write some articles, and send emails and browses the web.
Truth is she is defenseless, and Microsoft can do anything they want with her (computer) and she wouldn't care/notice.
So well, we lose for now. But it's not the final word. It's just something that we'll have to deal with in the future. If most people don't care, it will become dominant, and we'll be locked of from accessing it legaly.
unfinished: (adj.)
That depends on your area of work. Mainstream applications -- office suites, internet connectivity, development tools -- are fine. I don't want to get into which platform's apps are "better", since it's not really relevant to my comment, but the choice is certainly there.
OTOH, in many speciality industries, Linux simply has no answer to the tools and libraries available for Windows. I know, because I've worked on several developments where the target OS was open to debate, and I've been part of the teams doing the research about what is or is not possible on each, and how hard it is to do. I'm afraid that there is no question about which platform has wider support in many such specialist areas. This is the context for my comments, and in that context, I stand by them.
(BTW, I do like Linux and I do oppose DRM in the proposed form as much as you. I just think the guy had a point in this case.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Tell me, if you think there's justice in blowing up babies and grandmothers over a political disagreement, why don't you tell me where your family is, so I can apply your methods to them?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
What I find interesting is that the British, by and large, accept (and even approve of) Palestinian terror attacks against Israel as "understandable", but find the IRA/Real IRA attacks against England awful. If the Real IRA assassinates Cherie Blair's husband or children, I hope that Ariel Sharon throws her hateful words back in her face.
-jon
Remember Amalek.