Overall, the Palladium FAQ is interesting, but I think Mr. Anderson is overlooking a major point when he talks about how the TCPA will affect the GPL: what, exactly, constitutes the source code for a binary which has been cryptographically signed?
The GPL is a bit vague on what exactly constitutes the "source code" for a work: it is defined as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". For a program which won't function fully without being signed, a strong case could be made that the "preferred form" for modifying the work is the source code plus the key used to sign the binary; after all, if the "source code" doesn't include enough information to reproduce the binary actually distributed, it's not useful for modifying the work. The GPL also specifies that for an executable program the source includes "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable", which for a signed executable would include the script to sign the binary.
Thus, the danger to the GPL might not be that it will lead to GPL programs that you can't actually modify, but instead be that it will be impossible to get a GPLed program certified. Even if it is certified, it will be illegal to redistribute the resulting binaries without the key, which of course won't be available. If the person or company that produces the program is the sole copyright holder, they can of course distribute it anyways, but it won't be redistributable.
So I'd say that TCPA, Palladium, and other DRM schemes do pose a threat to the GPL, but not for the reason Ross Anderson claims.
Humans have bred lots of species to the point where they couldn't survive on their own. The best example is maize (corn) - without humans to remove kernels from the cob, maize can't reproduce.
Compared to normal chickens, these chickens might even be better-adapted for life in the wild, since no feathers isn't much of a disadvantage to a bird that can't fly well anyways.
MS does remove your software when Media Player installs: the WMP installer looks for hacked versions of the Fraunhofer mp3 codec, and deletes them if found.
I had a similar experience. I got the two phone calls, Saturday and Sunday, so I reinitialized the network interface with DHCP on and everything worked fine. Then, two hours later, I stopped being able to connect. I called the old @home tech support number Sunday night, which seems to now be ATTBI tech support, and actually got through to someone who listened to my problem and said he'd transfer me to tech support (wait, isn't that what I called)? Eventually I got fed up with the eternal phone queue and hung up.
After a bit of poking around with the network, I finally figured out the problem. For some reason DHCP was telling my computer to use a gateway, but the gateway wasn't responding to pings. Fixing the routing tables (using 'route') to not try to use the gateway got me back on the internet.
As for the DNS, the first two servers in their list worked intermittently, and the third always returned lookup failure. I haven't encountered any unreachable hosts, fortunately, and now everything seems to be working right. Hopefully they've got everything figured out and won't break it again.
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Not where I live they won't. The only grass on our property is the tall bushy ornamental type.
Yet another reason to use Ad-aware.
Overall, the Palladium FAQ is interesting, but I think Mr. Anderson is overlooking a major point when he talks about how the TCPA will affect the GPL: what, exactly, constitutes the source code for a binary which has been cryptographically signed?
The GPL is a bit vague on what exactly constitutes the "source code" for a work: it is defined as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". For a program which won't function fully without being signed, a strong case could be made that the "preferred form" for modifying the work is the source code plus the key used to sign the binary; after all, if the "source code" doesn't include enough information to reproduce the binary actually distributed, it's not useful for modifying the work. The GPL also specifies that for an executable program the source includes "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable", which for a signed executable would include the script to sign the binary.
Thus, the danger to the GPL might not be that it will lead to GPL programs that you can't actually modify, but instead be that it will be impossible to get a GPLed program certified. Even if it is certified, it will be illegal to redistribute the resulting binaries without the key, which of course won't be available. If the person or company that produces the program is the sole copyright holder, they can of course distribute it anyways, but it won't be redistributable.
So I'd say that TCPA, Palladium, and other DRM schemes do pose a threat to the GPL, but not for the reason Ross Anderson claims.
Humans have bred lots of species to the point where they couldn't survive on their own. The best example is maize (corn) - without humans to remove kernels from the cob, maize can't reproduce.
Compared to normal chickens, these chickens might even be better-adapted for life in the wild, since no feathers isn't much of a disadvantage to a bird that can't fly well anyways.
MS does remove your software when Media Player installs: the WMP installer looks for hacked versions of the Fraunhofer mp3 codec, and deletes them if found.
"RML"? Robert M. Love stole my initials! Now I have to worry about people confusing me with someone who knows what he's doing.
After a bit of poking around with the network, I finally figured out the problem. For some reason DHCP was telling my computer to use a gateway, but the gateway wasn't responding to pings. Fixing the routing tables (using 'route') to not try to use the gateway got me back on the internet.
As for the DNS, the first two servers in their list worked intermittently, and the third always returned lookup failure. I haven't encountered any unreachable hosts, fortunately, and now everything seems to be working right. Hopefully they've got everything figured out and won't break it again.