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AMI Introduces 'Trusted Computing' BIOS

Posted by michael on from the here-it-comes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "American Megatrends announced its 'trusted computing' Palladium BIOS on Jan 6. It seems that the encrypted BIOS' integrity will be verified by a special chip or flash ROM, and will in turn verify the 'authenticity, integrity and privacy' of the boot loader and the operating system. Does that mean such machines may refuse to boot any other non-'trusted' OS? After all, the list of supporting corporations include AMD, Intel, IBM, and HP, of whom we heard quite favourable statements about Linux (just for example -- *BSDs will be equally affected) so far."

6 of 617 comments (clear)

  1. War on terror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This will go a long way towards the war on terror. Terrorists wont be able to install and use unauthorized OS's. This could potentially save thousands of lives.

  2. Yeah, so I'm offtopic by Chocolate+Teapot · · Score: 5, Funny

    "American Megatrends" appears to be an anagram of "reincarnated smegma". Just felt the urge to share that,

    --
    Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
  3. Re:What isnt stated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of the key benefits of Palladium, of course, being a PC that boots up! People will really embrace Palladium's "booting PC" feature when compared to the "non-booting PC" features of the competition!

  4. Black boxes by vidnet · · Score: 5, Funny
    These new "features" scare me. From what I gather, it's a roll of duct tape to further seal the black box computer. I've never liked devices that function according to ye olde proprietary model:

    1. Input
    2...499. None of your your damn business
    500. Output

    "Trusted computing", hah! Sure, the apps might trust each other and the system, but I won't!

  5. Re:digital signature? by MikeDX · · Score: 4, Funny

    The promise has been made that the user, or at least the OEM, can add trusted signers.

    So does this mean I can remove the microsoft signatures to prevent any microsoft code being run at all? :) Gimme!

  6. Re:BUT FOR HOW LONG!?!?!?!?! by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hold on ... If it boots windows, why would anyone trust it?

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII