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Microsoft To Demo 'Palladium' At WinHEC

Posted by timothy on from the yet dept.

1010011010 writes "According to Microsoft Watch, Microsoft will be demonstrating Palladium (also known as 'Next-Generation Secure Computing Base') at WinHEC in May in New Orleans. The 'trusted root' is now called the 'Nexus' by Microsoft. Developers wishing to write 'Nexus-aware' applications will apparently have to pay a licensing fee to do so. The product manager for Palladium, Mario Juarez, says, 'It's important to note that nexus-aware applications will not hinder any apps or anything else running in the regular Windows environment.' I'm sure you can all hear the word 'yet' at the end of that sentence. There's talk of phasing in Palladium, starting with Longhorn Server in 2005. I wonder how Microsoft will convince consumers that loss of control is a good thing, and how long the convincing will take. I, for one, am already planning to transition my company away from Microsoft software. Hopefully that won't get messed up by and dumb mandatory-palladium legislation from the Fritz types."

4 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Re:BUSH! NO! PEACE! YES! by LibertineR · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Shut up ya fuckin hippie. Stay on topic or get the fuck out.

  2. Mandatory access control for all! by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    wow, this is the second post on Slashdot today where I'm mentioned mandatory access control. For those not in the know, consider a mainframe computer in a military installation. Clearly it makes no sense to go about classifying documents as "Restricted", "Secret" and "Top Secret" if the people with the clearance to read those documents have the discressional control to go and reclassify them at some lower level. The shared computer's operating system has the job of making sure only those who are authorized can access these documents.

    Microsoft is taking the control out of users hands for just the same reason (and for anyone in denial, try to log in as "Administrator" on a WinXP machine). It wouldn't make sense for anyone to be able to bypass the mandatory access controls on a military mainframe, and if they can they have to be very very trusted.

    I hear you out there! Screaming that your home computer isn't a shared, let alone military, machine. Well, here's a message for you: it's shared with all the people who write software for your computer. That's right, software has owners and when their software is on your computer they think they should have a say over how it is controlled. For better or worse, your choice to share your computer with the owners of this software is what is driving this effort.

    Not that sharing is bad. It makes sense to share. You have the choice of who you share your computer with. I've chosen to share my computer with people who have similar views to me on what is a fair. These people write software that they license under so called "liberal" licenses -- the GPL and the BSD licenses for starters.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Re:Did somebody say warez? by 0x1337 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Its a fucking joke you idiot... why don't you go bitch about it to someone else.

  4. Re:BSOD Frequency by fitten · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I have a number of boxes that run Windows that run 24/7 (except for the patch reboots) used for development, SQLServer, etc. and I haven't seen a BSOD in around 2 years.

    Very important rule for Windows: Buy and use only name-brand, quality hardware. If you buy cheap crap hardware that you've never heard of then you get what you deserve.