The Power of Palladium

phriedom writes "Salon has coverage of Palladium which gives first page coverage to the idea that Palladium is designed to kill open source software. My favorite part though is on page two, where the Microsoft apologist says that ones view of Palladium 'depends on what you believe Microsoft's long-term aims are. If you believe it's to stimulate commerce and stimulate security, it's a step in the right direction ...and if you're perhaps given to suspicions that Microsoft always makes decisions with the aim of frustrating competitors of the Windows empire rather than for the good of consumers, you might have a different view of the same architecture.'" Wired also has a story claiming under-the-hood exposure to Palladium, although it doesn't seem to have much information that hasn't come out already. Update by J : Steven Levy's Palladium story, which we linked to in an earlier article, has allegedly been pulled from MSNBC's website. Anyone know if there's a simple explanation of this?

Comments

yup

[bigpat]

"perhaps given to suspicions that Microsoft always makes decisions with the aim of frustrating competitors of the Windows empire rather than for the good of consumers"

Yes, I believe that was the verdict.

Microsoft Customer Service

[wmabey]

For all its faults, Microsoft is not known for kicking its customers in the teeth.

Is there some other Microsoft out there? The one we all know and love is well known for kicking its customers in the teeth.
This guy obviously has not done any research into Microsoft's history.

XBox/Windows

[bigpat]

It should be very clear that Microsoft is very much interested in using experienced gained making a closed system with licensed developers (the X box)and approved software and moving that to the business and consumer desktop OS.

This is the ultimate in hubris. They are in the penalty phase of a federal decision that seeks to punish them for doing the exact same thing with their restrictive licensing. Now they want to have even more restrictive licensing enforced by software and hardware that makes certain nothing unauthorized by them runs on windows.

Or Maybe they are just shooting the moon on this one, so their other business practices look nice in comparison. Either way this stinks.

Re:Welcome to Capitalism!

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Its legal, and its common business sense.

Leveraging your power to artificially raise entry barriers for competitors is not legal. It's called "monopoly" and there exist these things called "anti-trust laws" to prevent it. It'd sure be nice if Microsoft were convicted of violating the anti-trust laws...

Oh, wait. They were. So perhaps it's not unreasonable to be suspicious of their motives.

The Best Quote From The Article

[prisonercx]

"For all its faults, Microsoft is not known for kicking its customers in the teeth."

Are you kidding me? Planned obsolescence? Squeezing consumers dry with each "upgrade"? Bundling an insecure scripting language with almost EVERY product it produces, thus singlehandedly giving the antivirus industry a job? Snuggling closer to content providers every day at the expense of individual users' rights? Further solidifying its monopoly, even after it was supposedly "disciplined" by the DOJ?

Maybe this guy sees something I don't. ;)

PrisonerCX

Re:Palladium's Power: total corporate domination

[Maul]

It maybe a funny post, but it is an extreme view of the way we're going. Just look at the trends.

Media corporations and advertisers are accusing TV viewers of theft if you skip commercials with a PVR, or by going to get a snack or going to the bathroom.

Likewise, media corporations are claiming that if they make $X billion in a year rather than $X*2 billion in a year, they are being threatened by theft (piracy), rather than blaming it on their lack of ability to make anything remotely entertaining.

Disney essentially paid Senator Hollings to write a bill that would require you to have "policeware" features in your computer, TV, stereo, etc. They also apparently made some anti-MP3 propaganda where a rap star's paycheck is reduced to $3 a month because of Napster.

President Bush encourages people to go out and spend their cash rather than save it, despite the fact that many people are having a hard enough time paying off their executive-greed-inflated bills.

Obvious Solutions/ Some Observations

[istartedi]

1. Write an application that runs unsigned applications. Sign that app, never sign anything else again.

2. OK, let's say you have to sign every process. That means you have to sign every version of a DLL. MSFT won't just be alienating OSS developers if that happens.

3. Under this regime, security is only as good as the CA. Sure, some CA's will charge a lot of money because they are "reputable", but how hard/expensive is it to run a certificate server anyway? From what I've heard, not very. It's just that nobody does that now because there isn't a need. Something like this would just cause orgs like the EFF, GNU, perhaps others to run free CAs, or even CAs the are dummies designed to fool the OS into believing the software is signed. Then the orgs and MSFT can sue eachother for a few years, and by the time the case is settled it'll be a 1 inch blurb in the business section and a few lawyers will have new Lexus automobiles. Nothing new here.

I don't know about you guys, but I never even bother reading those little pop-ups that come from signed code, even when it has an error, and I have never been compromised by such code. Why? Because trusting code you get from ibm.com is safe, and trusting code you get from deadalienhacker.org isn't. In other words, security is verified by the reputation, integrity, and character of the authors. My... what a novel concept. :)