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MS Palladium Technical Talk at Harvard

Posted by timothy on from the you-have-30-seconds-of-prep-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "On December 4, John DeTreville from Microsoft Research will give a technical presentation about Palladium, Microsoft's Digital Rights Management effort. The talk is open to the public and is a good chance to ask questions."

13 comments

  1. Versus MIT? by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I went to Harvard, simultaneously my best friend to MIT; they are very different places. How will this talk differ from the MIT presentation previously discussed? (Predictions, stated agenda, etc.)

    (And has Microsoft recovered from the MIT presentation yet? :)

    1. Re:Versus MIT? by augros · · Score: 2

      Why don't you talk with your friend and tell us? Most of us aren't at either of these places, aren't you best suited to answer your own questions? This is interesting, let us know!

    2. Re:Versus MIT? by MacAndrew · · Score: 1

      Wish I could be there! He and I used to talk about how the institutions are different, I guess you'd call it "culture." Both have very smart people, but their outlook and the school's attitude are a light-year apart, though the schools are physically only a mile or so apart.

      Also, I've wondered how the CS depts might be different.

  2. What I would ask... by jmd! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...If I weren't hundreds of miles from Harvard.

    1. How does Microsoft plan to allow non-proprietary Operating Systems access to Paladium media?

    (Assuming "we don't" is the first answer:)

    2. Why would consumers want to purchase your product that removes rights they have over their own media?

    (Correct answer: We're a monopoly and they have no choice in the matter. We're serving our own market interests and not those of our customers. We're using our desktop monopoly to gain a stranglehold on all digital media as well, just as we're not supposed to under antitrust law.)

    1. Re:What I would ask... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      do wonder what it would be like to get laid?

    2. Re:What I would ask... by SiliconEntity · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. How does Microsoft plan to allow non-proprietary Operating Systems access to Paladium media?

      It's not clear what you mean by Palladium media. If you read the linked article, you see that Palladium has four components. None of them refer to Palladium media per se.

      What they do have is attestation, which lets a remote server reliably determine that you are running WMP or some other DRM compliant software before you download. Then WMP can enforce whatever restrictions are specified in the data file. So you could call the media supplied by such a server "Palladium media", and chances are that no, the server won't give you the data if you're not running Palladium - but that's entirely up to the server operator. You can't force him to do what you want, and you can't fool him, thanks to Palladium.

      2. Why would consumers want to purchase your product that removes rights they have over their own media?

      Now, this doesn't make sense. It's not their own media! The data is on a server belonging to someone else. Palladium gives that server owner more information in deciding whether to let you download it. It allows the server to make sure you're running some software that will follow certain rules. If not, it won't give you the data.

      So nobody is taking away rights over your own media. Anything you have today, you can continue to use. What Palladium does is let people decide whether to give you their media, and to do so only if you in effect agree to follow their rules.

      In answer to your question about why consumers would want to purchase Palladium computers, the answer is obvious. Server operators won't give the data to people who don't have Palladium. So owning a Palladium computer will be the only way to get entertainment media in the future. Nobody's going to force you to buy one. But some (not all) content creators will refuse to give their content away unless you are running Palladium so that they can be confident that you won't steal their data.

  3. Security improvement ? by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How does encrypting a user's files with a key, and then denying the key to the user improve security ?

    The user can no longer independently access his own files, thereby considerably DECREASING security, most defineately not increasing.

    1. Re:Security improvement ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is this, a Slashdot Interview?

    2. Re:Security improvement ? by SiliconEntity · · Score: 2

      How does encrypting a user's files with a key, and then denying the key to the user improve security ?

      The idea is that only the program which encrypted the file can decrypt it. The file is somehow "locked" to the hash of the program that was running when it was encrypted.

      The reason this increases security is two-fold. First, if some malicious program is run, a trojan or a virus infected program, it can't access the data. Imagine that the data is your bank account PIN or credit card number. Right now an Outlook virus could look through your files and find the data. With Palladium this can't happen, because only the banking program can unlock those files.

      Second, if the banking program itself gets infected with a virus, its hash will change, and it won't be able to unlock its own files any more! So even a virus which targets the financial software won't be able to steal its sensitive data. In this way, Palladium provides security against a much wider range of malware infections than is possible in computers today.

      Another example of improving security would be a multi-player game or P2P system where keeping people from cheating is desirable. In that case it's to everyone's advantage that they can't run a rogue game client or change their data files. By giving up the ability to cheat in this way, the user ultimately gains security because he can participate in the system free from other people cheating as well.

      Usually you have to give up something to get something. Giving up the ability to cheat and to break your promises can lead to real gains. If you are offered a download of some data only in exchange for promising not to share it with anyone else, Palladium allows you to make that promise in such a way that you can't go back on your word. This will eventually lead to more valuable data being made available than would be possible in world where cheating is easy and unpreventable.

  4. DRM for new media types by SiliconEntity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ask him if Palladium will provide a way to support DRM for new media types like DVD Audio or some kind of future enhancement of DVD.

  5. I'll go by hrieke · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and try to make a recoding of the event.
    Does anyone have any questions they'd like to have asked?

    --
    III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIIIV IIVIIIIIIVIII...
  6. linux tco by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's have a close look at the costs involved when running a Linux system.

    An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - through an expensive and time consuming certification process. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.

    Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.

    According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).

    The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward

    compatibility'. This is interesting, considering that the DOS heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was considered a very bad thing by the Linux community, even though it provided what could be called one of the best examples of compatibility, ever. When it's about Linux, compatibility constraints don't seem to be that much of a problem for Linux advocates.

    Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".

    The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.

    I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.