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AMD Opteron to support Palladium
Jim Norton writes "This article is just a reminder that AMD is just as guilty as Intel in supporting TCPA / Palladium. AMD has announced that Opteron will be compatible with the Palladium Initiative and that AMD is part of the 'Trusted Computing Alliance'."
Sad they do this just to get microsofts support in the next windows for the hammer
AZTEK
/me starts handing out copies of Yellow Dog Linux.
Here, this'll ease the pain.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
But it will also refuse to play certain content if it is not digitally signed by Microsoft or an authorised party.
I'm still very perplex by these assertions, since really, playing an mp3 has no tie to the kernel (you decode in user mode, you send to a wave device).
That implies that a) the chip will restrict access to the wave device, b) it will restrict access to files...
Both sound kinda ludicrous to me... Would that mean games will have to digitally sign their sound fx? If not, will the kernel have some way of knowing *what* a file contains (semantically)? CPUs are simple devices, they don't do stuff like "POUR cupofcoffe in eax IF coffeemaker = full" ... no they do simple stuff like "INC eax".
I really think there will be ways to circumvent this thing pretty fast. What scares me is the fact that they think having such a chip will somehow assert the OS currently running has not been tampered with, and hence it can't be a malicsious OS... and at that point send in work loads from different users (basically making a big trusted network). This is just an invitation for mass viruses and global chaos.
Do you think the CPU has any idea if it's rendering a 3D scene or playing an MP3 or decompressing a JPEG or spell-checking a document? Let alone know if the files are copyrighted or not.
That's up to the OS and individual applications to (try to) determine and enforce.
The only thing that changes in a "secure" CPU is the fact that programs and (especially) the operating system will be able to identify that CPU uniquely (by a serial number), similar to what the Pentium III already does (but you can turn it off on the PIII, and I think also on the P4). Then some programs will probably refuse to play certain files if they're not tagged with that CPU id. Ex., if you buy a "secure" song on-line, or if you rip one of your CD's, it probably won't play on your friend's computer (or on yours if you change the CPU, and that's why MS needs to work with CPU makers, to make sure the CPU id can be managed by the OS).
The rest is just a lot of marketing hype to get money out of the RIAA and similar associations. "See, we are working on this 'secure' hardware that won't play copyrighted music, but it's very expensive to develop and we really don't have enough money, what with this recession and everything, so if you could fork over a couple of million, we'd appreciate it..."
It's a potential gold mine for (some) IT companies, just like the Y2K bug.
RMN
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With any Palladium system, you will be able to disable Palladium in BIOS, so it _doesn't matter_ if a system supports it or not. If you turn it off, you will be unable to use Palladium protected media, just like pre-Palladium systems.
If you turn it on, you will at least have the option--an option I plan not to exercize.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
We can program the FPGA with Intel instruction set compatibility, where Palladium instructions would be ignored, or design an add-on chip (like the old Pentium Turbo snap-on chips) which would detect the Palladium opcodes on the FSB and skirt around them. Whoa, am I violating the DMCA by suggesting this?
Government + Corporations versus Consumers, Saddam is just a distraction
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Shut the fuck up and buy a sparc. Sun has designed the CPU from the ground up to run unix. The cpu has features you would never dream of finding in intel or powerpc environments and solaris is the most advanced unix in the world, period. You can even run linux on your sparc if you feel the need to stick to stick to your GPL software or run OpenBSD if you are ultra-paranoid. The sparc platform is just hands down amazing. Intel and AMD are doing you a favor by driving you away from the x86 platform!
That's complete nonsense.
I disagree. He stated that Palladium can be disabled. It's a technical fact, and it also happens to be correct. Not nonsense.
Like playing Quake 3, or Counter-Strike? Better enjoy them while you can...soon you won't be able to play them without palladium enabled.
a) Learn about Quake. Quake's insane success was mostly because of massive online acceptance which was mostly due to piracy. This increased the value of the game, and sold more copies. id admitted as much. Quake is without a doubt the single *worst* example you could have chosen of a piece of software having incentive to have strong DRM. Almost any other piece of software would be a more valid argument.
b) This is tough for Windows warez-playing gamers. I have a tough time feeling sorry for them. It'll never affect Linux -- to do Palladium, you'd need universal blessed, signed binaries of the kernel. That will happen when hell freezes over, because Linus can't even stand distribution of binary code, much less universalized binary code.
May we never see th
Does anyone else think that the previously reported delay in ClawHammer production is due to this crap?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Even if they keep the opcodes secret, legal precident is set that double-blind blackboxing is a legal method to reverse-engineer a system. The GNU project, if it wanted to, could surely reverse engineer all the opcodes for Palladium.
/*(IANAL)*/
(FYI, double-blind blackboxing is a process of reverse engineering in which one team of engineers "poke at" an existing system to determine how it operates under certain conditions. A second team, which never actually directly interacts with the system they're trying to copy, then uses a report created by the first team to implement the cloned system.)
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