Windows Security GM Talks NGSCB (Palladium)

An article at IT Manager's Journal (along with Slashdot, part of OSDN) reports on John Manferdelli's recent talk at Stanford on what Microsoft is calling for now its "Next Generation Secure Computing Base," or NGSCB (formerly Palladium). Manferdelli is the general manager for Windows security at Microsoft, and his presentation was mostly about the technical, not ethical or other considerations involved in this system. His position is understandably different from those of privacy and free software advocates who assert that Microsoft's elaborate security is designed to lock users into Microsoft software at the expense of privacy and choice.

Comments

Re:Heh

[Narphorium]

Well actually, his job originally consisted of sitting behind a desk and making sure burglars don't come in through the windows at Redmond, but he learnt some C in his spare time so he's been tinkering around in Longhorn as well now :P

Who?

[Channard]

The title is also called 'The guy who sits round doing nothing' at Microsoft HQ.

Surely that'd be the job of one William Gates?

Re:At least some people do understand what's at st

[ad0gg]

Wow that was one of the most biased FAQs, I've ever read. TC has very little to do with DRM. DRM for computers is worthless and everyone knows it, video still has to be output to either analog monitor output or digital to the DVI output, same goes with audio, analog or digital outputs. What TC will do for the enterprise is increase security. I can now have my webservers only run signed applications with my companies signature. I don't have to worry about someone running a hack version of my application, I don't have to worry about viruses and this protection goes down to the chip level. Every bios maker thats aggreed to produce these chips are allowing people to turn it off. If you don't want it, leave the setting off. But if i was IT manager I would make sure it is on, I don't want my employees running unsigned software. Thats a big liability.

DRM is never going be as extreme as FAQ says, consumers won't take it. Look at DIVX. And it also won't work. I remember when disney would only release movies on DIVX and said they would not release movies DVDs. Look what happened. Consumer choice prevails. Only time i would start worrying is when the industries start putting DRM chips into speakers and monitors, and so far i have not seen any of that happening.

Re:Upgrade or "Surreptitiously Copy"?

[Tim C]

Also what happens if you upgrade to longhorn 2010 do you lose access to those files. it is a standard microsoft tatic.

Yeah, I lost all my files each and every time I upgraded Windows or Word... </sarcasm>

If that was the case, then no-one would upgrade, would they? What generally happens is that new versions of Office default to saving documents in the latest version of the format (of course!), which is not always readable by previous versions. Thus, those who have not upgraded need to, or have hassles opening documents authored by those who have.

My software upgrade causing you problems, giving you another reason to upgrade, is a good thing for MS, as it encourages sales. My software upgrade giving me problems is a bad thing, as it discourages them.

In soviet Russia

[Begemot]

we call it .Niet