Slashdot Mirror
AMI Introduces 'Trusted Computing' BIOS
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."
Does this mean that *BSD is dying?
It is supposed to be funny jackass. Notice the funny flag? You know, haha funny?
I think the slashdot moderators misunderstand the mechanics of slashdot meme creation. It all starts out with some inane, yet generally applicable, statement getting modded up to 5. It's read by tens thousands of slashdoters who imprint the idea on their psyche. From then on, there is usually at least one, but possibly several, posters who feel the need to update the comment for each new article--really the comment has gone beyond a simple joke for these poor souls, it becomes almost a mystical experience each time they post. I imagine it's almost like they are communing with their god. Simply the way the brain works. Christianity and Islam and Judaism all started out the same way. You start off with some nut with an seemingly inexplicable ability to influence large groups of people to do idiotic things, and suddenly you have a beowulf cluster of hot grits getting poured all over a dead BSD system. In soviet Russia, of course, it's the other way around.
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that memes are powerful things. So use your mod points for interesting and thought provoking posts relevant to the subject at hand. You don't have to mod a lot of stuff down, but show some restraint in modding junk up.
I mean, do we really want the second coming to occur during in some long post about Natalie Portman and the basalt content of her nude body?
Oh, wait, that's not Soviet Russia, that's the status quo. So it must read "IN SOVIET RUSSIA you have to trust the computer". But that's exactly what M$'s "Trusted Computing" means ...
Who's that stupid moro^H^Hderator who modded that `troll'?
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.