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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'."
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?
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?
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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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