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Major PC Makers Adopt Trusted Computing Schema

Posted by Zonk on from the can-I-borrow-a-cup-of-data? dept.

An anonymous reader wrote to let us known about a News.com story regarding so-called trusted computing, and its adoption by the major PC manufacturers. From the article: "The three largest computer makers--Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM--have started selling desktops and notebooks with so-called trusted computing hardware, which allows security-sensitive applications to lock down data to a specific PC." Interestingly, while Microsoft is said to be behind the idea support won't be forthcoming for trusted computing until they release Longhorn next year, making this a hardware-vendor lead initiative.

4 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Before posting any comments... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    ..please read this:

    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

    this: http://www.gentoo.org/news/20050202-trustedgentoo. xml and, linked from there, this:

    http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/tcpa_rebutta l.pdf

  2. rms' writing about trusted computing by latroM · · Score: 4, Informative

    rms on trusted computing

  3. Re:The end is coming and people want it!?!? by tabkey12 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think it is important that you read this document from IBM which points out that the technology they will be introducing will not lock you down to a specific Operating System.

    --
    Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
  4. Re:Your computer won't trust you by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 3, Informative
    Sadly, you are not wrong. From the Stallman article I linked:

    "Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime."