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Palladium, 'Trusted PCs' in the News
Reuters is carrying a fairly lengthy article on Palladium and 'Trusted Computing'. Worth reading - remember that what the Reuters/AP wires carry is all that most people will ever know about any particular issue.
Since when was a two page research paper fairly lengthy? Most English Comp 101 classes require 2+ pages on the first assignment...
I'm not sure if this is a sign of the sad state of popular media, or the sad state of all populus.
I live in a giant bucket.
And a nice big ad for MS Visual Studio in the story too, how ironic.
As proof, Anderson points to a patent called "Digital Rights Management Operating System," for which Microsoft has rights
One of the first times a software patent might actually be a good thing. At least stifling competition and innovation in this area will give us a chance to focus our efforts on what is inevitably going to be a fundamentally flawed MS implementation of DRM.
Biddle and a TCPA spokesman deny the assertions, saying that no monitoring, reporting or censoring capabilities are designed into the systems, and people will be able to choose whether they want to use the security features, or not.
Talk about bullshit. DRM is useless if the user can turn it off.
To some, the TCPA plan is reminiscent of Intel's proposal in the mid-1990s to put a serial number on its Pentium chips. Public backlash caused Intel to abandon the plan.
Last I checked, the serial numbers are still there, and even though you can turn them off in the CMOS on some motherboards, software can turn them back on, so I hear.
By contrast, in trusted computing, special security chips and other hardware will work with software to verify the source of data and that it has not been changed, and to create safe zones within the computer for storing information.
Talk about a stupid solution to a simple problem. It doesn't require special hardware to protect the integrity of files, just proper software design. The earlier story on microBSD showed an implementation of software based integrity verification.
Technology companies must carefully balance individual rights and corporate interests, says Bruce Schneier, cryptography expert and chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, a network monitoring firm.
Consumers used to vote with their dollars, no "balancing" was necessary. MS is betting on using monopoly power, and ignorant consumers to pull this one over on the public. Educated consumers are a necessary part of the free market, with technology becoming so complex, and specialization at an all time high, this may point to a larger problem, a complete breakdown of the free market, due to the lack of educated consumers.
"Microsoft wants the Chinese to pay for software," said Ross Anderson, head of computer security at the University of Cambridge in England and a renowned software expert.
Yeah, cause we all know those fucking chinks just leech off westerners. That is a pretty controversial thing to tell an AP reporter. To be fair, it was probably taken out of context.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Is that such a bad thing? You wouldn't see a story that well balanced on TV. TV news offers nothing except one sided stories. Then of course you have specialty news sites like Slashdot or The Register. Can you tell me with a straight face that The Register offers fairly balanced articles?
Reuters, the Associated Press, and local newspaper staff writers are the last bastion of fair reporting. You have to admit that this article was very fairly written. It offered no opinions of it's own, and reported both sides of the argument without trying to say which one was "right". If Joe Sixpack were to read this, he would be free to make his own opinion based on the facts, not have one shoved down his throat. I think we should be thankful that fair reporting still exists in this corporation dominated society.
The author of the above comment shows his technical prowess with his "It also seemed to give a bit more column space to the critics and talked more about control of your computer and restriction of fair use than the 'advantages' of virus control." You cannot prevent a virus from attacking your computer, in the software, due to the nature of the beast. If a legitimate program can run then so can a virus. Antivirus programs work by their ability to detect known virii. In short, if its new and can jump through the proverbial hoops that a legitimate program does, you still have a virus.
Now take BIOS level antiviral software. It prevents a virus from writing itself to the boot sector. Sound like it might halt a boot virus in its tracks, right? Well, you can flash that BIOS with a boot disk. Since you can flash that BIOS a virus can do the same. It will infect your BIOS and from that point forward, whenever a second virus attempts to write itself to the boot sector it can just nod and smile and tell you everything is ok. The same goes with your antiviral software. However if I designed a virus as such, I would continue to prevent a write from a foreign virus. You don't want virus X coming around and starting a boot issue. Then you couldn't use the clueless user's machine to propagate your little pet.
Not that I have any love for virii. They have bit me in the arse many times since I started in 1982. Few people can grasp that there is nothing you can do to prevent hackers and virii from attacking your system. Save building your PC from scratch (or just new and uncorrupted), loading software straight from the uninfected install disks (disks have come from company X with a virus) and most importantly isolating it from a network where it could find a virus or be assaulted by someone that knows more about your computer then you ever will. "Trusted Computing" and "Secure Computing" are nothing more then hogwash to me. Accept the risks of networked computing or just watch the boob tube and leave computing to the people who have the time to do it properly. Sadly something rare in this e-tard saturated computing environment.
Exactly how are the Chinese pushing Linux? IBM has invested a billion dollars in Linux development in China (In the form of 4 huge college like development centers).
But China has Sourceforge blocked.
China has Sourceforge blocked.
So China is pushing a non GPL Fork of Linux that we will NEVER see the benifit from except as a retail product from IBM.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Ugh, Dave, the majority of people who put content on the 'Net are getting their reward: they're sharing their thougths, dreams, ideas, projects, photos, songs, etc. with the world. And the vast majority of them, virally enough, aren't charging for it. Go figure.
Of course, Palladium has absolutely nothing to do with DRM. Microsoft just patented it by accident. And if DRM happens to be built in to your OS, well it's just 'unfortunate'.
I give my time to 5-7 different projects at once, most of which have my name on the about dialog or -v switch.
What do I get in exchange? I get hundreds of thousands of programs as part of my Linux distrobution on my server.
Is it a good arrangement? I think so.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
IMHO, Microsoft is going to lose with Palladium big time. Consumers, even non-tech savy consumers, don't like crippled products. As soon as Joe User installs a new version of Media Player or what have you, and finds out he can't play his mp3 collection, that software is outta there. Bells and whistles notwithstanding.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
As other people have pointed out, it is loaded in other ways.
An industry push to tighten security on personal computers could be either the salvation of electronic commerce or the bane of consumers, who view the Internet as their digital information playground.
Like the other poster pointed out, this implies that the users do not control the Internet, rather large corporations do.
The "playground" reference seems to discredit users as credible creators of content, they are just kids playing; the corporations are the ones doing the important stuff. By extention of their generally condescending tone, this "fair use" thing is silly too.
What may be perceived as minor intrusions in a Western corporate setting might have Big Brother consequences for computer users in countries with more controlled environments like China and Saudi Arabia.
In other words, "of course our government is benevolent, but in other countries run by evil people, it may be a problem, but not here".
I wouldn't call this article balanced at all.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
What will happen when corporate america convinces the world that Pi equals exactly 3? Well, a lot of shoddy engineering. But they can convince all they want, it won't make it so.
IP is IP. TCP/IP is something else entirely.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
There's an old expression that I can't rember. The jist of it is "if humans can make it, humans can break it".
I don't deny that this makes it harder but rember that most virii exploit bugs and oversights and it would be naive to believe that there would be none in a trusted system. Especially when you consider who is making it.
Orthanc
I'm serious, talk to your less-geeky friends and family. This is not a rant. Spread the word in plain english, then the common folk know they don't need to upgrade to an operating system that will simply restrict what they do.
With all thios effort to constrain creativity and innovation, there needs to be effort and work being done to create laws (plenty of licenses are already available) that protect our right to be creative and innovative with what is the most versatile tool we have yet created, the computer.
The constraints being proposed in DRM and such are a contridiction of such creativity and innovation freedom, not to mention the taking away of far use. But if these constraints are chosen to be applied by such a collective, then as product producers they have every right.
HOWEVER, They DO NOT Have the Right to Suppress Competition for Comsumer Choice. It is wrong to try and shut out open systems which contribute to creativity and innovation, not to mention far use.
I should have a choice, not be forced to buy one or the other but have a choice as to whether I am buying a genuine computer or some constrained to the level of dedicated applicance, device.
These are two different items!!! And it should be made clear, made very clear.
On one hand you have appliances and that which will only run on such appliances. On the other hand, the choice of versatility open for being creative and innovative with, limited only by not being able to access products designed specifically for the constrained appliances.
TWO different general Lines of Products.
One Constrained, the other NOT.
Those pursuing constraints need the hell to stop infringing upon genuine computers system which were here before they came up with a lessor systems. They need to make it clear to the buying public that they are not taking away consumer choice, but making a different product.
The Consumer has a right to have choice!!
Why has this difference not been identified and made clear to the general public?
It seems very clear to me that there is a great deal of consumer deception going on here.
I speculated about this a bit, and realised that it's probably the same kind of thing that the MPAA is trying to do to consumer home entertainment systems. From what I know, it means that if you choose NOT to use DRM features, you either lose the really high-quality (high-quality as in resolution, not high-quality as in content) stuff, or you are denied from viewing certain things.
[insert witty comment here]
By US copywrite law, a fork in a GPL'd application is also GPL'd.
They have passed some intellectual property laws in order to join the world trade organization but have a long history of simply using other people's patents and copywritten works. 4 years of laws do not break 50 years of history.
So they have found another way: They have blocked sourceforge. How do they publish source? Interestingly, IBM's Linux development center is not blocked.
Yes, by copywrite law, any fork of a GPL product is automatically a GPL product. But only by law.
For instance, China is a full democracy by law. But there is only one candidate in any election.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.