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Gates and Lasser on Palladium
A rather funny juxtaposition this morning - Bill Gates or someone with his signature stamp sent a spam-gram to pretty much everyone who receives any sort of Microsoft email: Bill only mentions Digital Rights Management in one throw-away sentence. And like most other spam, he promises it's a one-time mailing. On the other hand, Jon Lasser of Think Unix fame takes a harsher look at Microsoft's vision of a world where your computer is trusted against you.
I would never would have thought MS would spam, that is something only desperate companies do.
And here I thought that was a personal note to me. I have spent the last three hours writing my personal reply. Guess I will just send it to this nice Nigerian man who just emailed me, he just suffered a personal tragedy and seems to need some support.
Chet
No, not of MS, but of Slashdot.
When someone mentions they gave up Linux for Windows (don't feel like searching for the link, but it was a story last week), everyone on slashdot supported MS, and ran against Linux.
But, a few stories later, we find ourselves reaming MS.
Now MS tries to address subjects YOU WANT THEM TO ADDRESS, and the linux community is in an uproar.
I'd like to suggest what someone suggested in the "give up linux" article.
We need to STOP railing MS, and start boosting Linux. I don't want Linux to be successful if the success is based on dirty marketing against MS.
What's worse is this wasn't even submitted to slashdot, its an editor attempting to push MS into a story so we can all moan about it.
I think it'd be in Linux's best interest if Slashdot didn't write anything negative about MS, just tech updates or whatever. It'd be a lot more mature than the dung-flinging that goes on here.
This hypocracy is just as bad as putting restrictions on users and preaching online rights...
BTW - I'm expecting a being modded down, especially editor moderation (how do you make a broken moderation system, worse? Absolute power, of course!), I'm just venting some steam (and losing some karma).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A nice, and a propos story by RMS, called The Right to Read, can be found here. Definitely worth the read.
Fuck it
Until of course the remote server is comprimised and suddenly explorer.exe is an untrusted binary and every windows machine in the world shits a brick.
I think the community's response to DRM is wrong. I don't think that the analysis of it is wrong -- it's a very negative technology. But I think the response is a little off.
If MS wants to put the interests of the large media companies ahead of the interests of its own customers, the people who actually buy the computers and the software, why not let them take it to the market? Let's let the market decide what it thinks of that. Let's give them enough rope to hang themselves.
The thing that we have to worry about is some sort of legal framework that requires all computers to respect some DRM system.
MS is way ahead on the desktop, and their systems have gotten a lot better than they used to be. The only way they're going to get dislodged from that position is by making a really catastrophic mistake.
This could be that mistake!
I think there's a lesson in the current stock market scandals. The big companies can buy legislators. They've shown that they can derail effective regulation of accounting rules. They can set things up so that a crooked CFO who bilks people out of billions and sends the markets into a spiral that wipes out the savings of millions of people gets a lighter punishment than a punk who robs a liquor store.
But in the end, there's nothing they can do against the force of the market itself. They got cocky -- they thought they could get away with anything. It turns out that they can't.
Neither can the DRM boys.
Did you read the articles at all? It is plainly said that Palladium will not eliminate application layer virii. That means Joe Sixpack *will* be getting more Outlook & Word virii. What he won't be able to do is to watch unlicensed content. It is plain that this has nothing to do with Joe Sixpack's security but only with content protection Hollywood and total control by Microsoft.
The problem with everyone's understanding of TCPA/Palladium is that there won't be a single authority (flying Black Helicopters over your PC at night). Big companies like IBM (and especially the government) may use it for document control, but that's about it. What Palladium will do for the world is:
* End the untrusted binary problem. Viruses will be blacklisted by a remote server - no more email viruses, ever...
You are contradicting yourself in mere two sentences. No black helicopters? They don't need them. THe server you mention later is *way* better. Whoever controls that server - controls your PC.
Cheers,
D.
Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address DRM in the operating system? I'd guess almost nobody.
Who here do you think wanted MicroSoft to address the 'problem' of users having complete control over their own machines? Again, nobody.
I see no change in attitude here at all. The Slashdot crowd has always disliked DRM and giving Bill the keys to your computer--and that's exactly why there is so much anger at Palladium.
And while I agree with you that we'd be better off boosting Linux than trashing MicroSoft all the time, you still have to point out significant dangers when you see them.
- http://www.attrition.org/security/commentary/ms16
. html : Including the Windows Update site -- which I suspect they "pay attention to". - http://www.computeruser.com/news/01/01/25/news9.h
t ml - http://www.vnunet.com/News/1115617
- http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/isn/2001/05/
m sg00028.html
Indeed, that first page includes the interesting fact: So I guess for Microsoft, "never" has the same definition as "always" does for their uptimes: some short duration.The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
One of the ...ahem... interesting things Bill says is: "We're also working with others throughout the industry to improve Internet protocols to stop email that could propagate misleading information or malicious code that falsely appears to be from trusted senders." (emphasis added)
Bob Cringley has written a couple of good articles on eactly this, the second related directly to Palladium. Check them out.
Cringley also has an article on the consequences of Palladium not working.
Sailing over the event horizon
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
I think one of the interesting things about the rise of Microsoft and the IBM clone PC in general is that it proved that an open, extensible system is going to win out. It doesn't matter how good your closed system is, it just won't win out (witness: Mac vs DOS).
And here we are, it's 2002, and Microsoft, the company that most benefited from having the PC architecture open, is now seeking to close it. For "security". As more restrictions are added, fewer interesting things will happen on the system, and people will start to look elsewhere to get what they want and need.
It's sad that Microsoft has forgotten what got them where they are in the first place. Look for Apple to do even better once Palladium hits.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I am confident we can and will create a truly Trustworthy Computing environment.
Anyone else notice Bills interesting capitalization at the end of the letter? Perhaps we can expect another generic trademark soon?
So, I guess it has finally happened. People don't use the word trustworthy to describe M$, so M$ just created a way for trustworthy to be used with all M$ activities! I guess that is more profitable than actually becoming trustworthy.
-Sean
The way every talks about TCPA/Palladium, you'd think it was the biblical mark of the beast.
No, it's the Business Plan of the beast.
* End the untrusted binary problem. Viruses will be blacklisted by a remote server - no more email viruses, ever
* End the trojan horse/worm problem
No. Sorry. I don't want Microsoft scanning or reading my mail. I trust them less than I do the virus writers.
Most of the problems with Windows arise from programs that Microsoft *trusts*.
Why not give me a Windows mail client that *cannot* run embedded code of *any* kind?
I can live without JavaScript in my email.
I don't need IFrames in my messages.
I can save attachments to disk before opening them - so can Joe Sixpack. Do that much and you probably don't need Palladium.
These are important features that Joe sixpack the home user really wants. Nobody likes getting a virus and losing all the information on their Hard Drive.
Joe Sixpack really doesn't matter to Microsoft. Business and Government users do. The thing that stops many business from switching to a real operating system is not the availability of commercial software, it's the dozens of little in-house-developed apps that companies use.
Very often these apps have been written by long-gone consultants who left neither the source code nor a forwarding address. So what does the company that uses these apps do? Can they arbitrarily sign the apps and let them run on Palladium-capable machines? If so, can anyone sign any bit of code and make it run? Sort of defeats the purpose, so I guess they won't be doing that...
By jaundicing themselves against the IEEE's implementation of this important standard, the Linux movement is just putting itself behind the curve in computer security.
You're missing a small point about Linux: If you have Linux, you also get the source code. If you make a change to the source and recompile it, it's no longer signed. Patching and recompiling is a necessity that they are not accounting for in this plan.
This attitude is dangerous and irresponsible on their part - Go read that story on the spread of Code Red from yesterday - Within hours of the attack, people were writing fixes and workarounds. What if none of these fixes ran, because they weren't properly signed by the original author?
Also consider the following: IIS at the time could have been signed and still been just as vulnerable. Code Red used 'Out of the Box' virgin copies of the programs as written by Microsoft and still wreaked havoc on the net. Palladium would have done little if anything to stop this.
Two points:
1.) Microsoft is offering a false sense of security.
2.) Microsoft is offering a false sense of security.
If Palladium succeeds, and Linux doesn't follow, then Linux machines will be the only computers that can get viruses. How ironic would that be?
Do you *really* believe that Linux gets so few viruses now merely because of its smaller user base? One big difference between Linux and Windows is the permission scheme - you can only do what you are allowed to do in Linux. You can't read/write/execute files where you don't have rights. Linux programs run as users - if you don't trust the program, run it under a user with few rights. It's not perfect, but better than what Microsoft is offering.
Now go to a Windows Machine (95/98/ME - others too?). Boot it. When the login screen pops up, hit escape. Hit 'start', 'run' and type 'regedit'. Change whatever you like. That is not good. Microsoft decided that a lack of security was what the user wanted, then later decided to fix this with a bunch of cobbed-on hokey 'enhancements' that do not correct the original problems. Maybe XP and 2000 fix this somewhat, but I wouldn't know - we have 4 XP laptops at my office that I spend LITERALLY an hour a day maintaining for the users. (Wireless networking problems.) No matter how good the OS is, if it doesn't do basic things for my users, it's less than useless - it's counterproductive.
Microsoft is again waving around their heavy hand and people are frightened that they are going to screw things up even more - I know that I am...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
(Go ahead, mod me 'overrated' - I no longer care...)
-- My Weblog.
I just attended a private focus group on this subject. All the attendees were Director level IT folk who are constantly hassled by security problems. Some of them came from a management background and some from a technical background. Almost all of them thought this would be a good idea. In fact they thought it was such a good idea that they would be willing to pay $25 to $400 more per server or desktop just for the chance to have this technology.
I think this shows just how far along this idea has gone. None of these people in the room cared a wit about privacy, open source, the ability to compile your own apps, etc. because the vast majority of people don't do even know what they could be missing. All they care about is a golden pill to solve all there security problems.
So we shouldn't all be thinking that somehow this idea will be MS shooting themselves in the foot. That won't happen unless we get the word out.
Peace, or Not?
What about internal business software? Will all businesses have to get their own internal software signed by Microsoft for use on their own machines?
What about hobbiest programmers? I don't know about you, but I got into programming at home messing around with compilers and such... Ummm... Are they trying to extend their monopoly to... programming in general?
I think it's possible that Palladium could end up being either the demise of general computing, or the demise of Microsoft's monopoly, as other competitors such as Apple, Linux, *BSD, etc, step up and offer people their COMPUTERS back to them.
I'm not going to worry. If it comes to it, I'll run Linux on PPC hardware or something. If that gets DRM infected as well, I'm sure there will be other choices, possibly from the other side of the pond. And if it's worse, I'm quitting this industry and going into construction or something. Or maybe politics, it'll get easier and easier to run on a platform of offering people their freedom back!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden