And then, they should be sure to be using a valid login password (not guess@nowhere.com, or whatever they used), so that they are circumventing the ftp admin's wishes. They are public ftps, but you are supposed to supply valid credentials: Public != free to abuse.
Bizarre. The majority of the threads in this story seem to be either: America Rulez!!! Indians [Japanese/Koreans] are just using American parts!!! We Americans are the Best!!!
Or,
America Suckz!!!! The rest of the world is outperforming America!!! India [Japan/Korea/Canada/etc. ..] is quickly surpassing the U.S. in technology [schools/economically/etc. ..]
Both of these positions are stupid, and extremely reductionist. India is developing indigeious technology using foreign components. Why aren't they using Indian processors? Because they aren't just trying to build supercomputers, they are trying to market supercomputers and build the highest capacity system for the purpose of testing nuclear weapons. Good for them, to manage such operations they must be developing fairly modern IT organizations. They managed to beat fairly backwards American legislation designed to restrict exactly that. But this isn't an Indian coup, or a greater trend towards the collapse of the Pax Americana. There are many other factors at play here, folks.
Personally, if I was asked to give a quick, reductionist synopsis of the situation, I would say: India is slowing crossing the line between developing and developed nation, whereas it will have access to the same international and domestic resources that modern industrialized states have access to, including a full franchise within the world capitalist economic system. The modern world really has two economic systems, 1st and 3rd world. I, personally, would like to welcome more members of the 3rd into the 1st (and hopefully, someday, all of the 3rd).
Forgive the bad grammer/spelling, I just rolled out of bed.
But perhaps, instead of seeing consoles beating out P.C.s, we are saying two separate things:
A. The P.C. Market is growning, and a nice, even steady pace. Computer games are becoming more popular, just a 3 to 4 percent a year. Consoles, on the other hand, are constantly expanding to new markets that they had not be able to acquire before. Sports fans love the new sports games. Old Snes, and even PSX games weren't good enough, because they were ugly. Hell, even my dad, who had never been a gamer ('cept chess), bought an xbox. It just looks good. And there are other markets that consoles are expanding into, and these markets are probably readjusting the demographics of the 'gamer' sub-type. Gaming is going to the masses, finally, and in doing so, will (and has been, for a while) changing.
B. (Here is the dirty word:) Perhaps we are seeing the beginings of digital converagance. It's not going to be too long before we see gaming consoles with Tivo like capacities. Throw in a little bit of linux/windows ce, and we have a digital-everything box plugged into our TVs. I think the final problem, of user interfaces on low resolution displays, has been solved by the oncoming rush of HDTV.
Not to say that everyone will upgrade to HDTV, but slowly, all new production of televisions will be HDTV, and if the prices come down fast enough, its not hard to picture the vast majority of homes(that would consider buying either a console, tivo or pc) having at least one hdtv capable device.(Anyone willing to spend $299 console will spend $400 to get the latest and greatest 40" low cost plasma(or even projection) display.)
Of course, my preference would be if everyone just started hooking their computers into their high resolution displays, in order to ensure that our set-top boxes would remain fairly commodified (Go xBox hackers!!!We want xBox executables on our P.C.s!!), but if the current trend in DRM technologies continues, I anticipate that the major manufactures would rather ship us set-top boxes that did a little word processing and light office work, reducing P.C.s to a withered subset of their current market, performing specialized operation on specialized software, though, I guess, to have a smaller, less directly 'consumerist' computing community. (We'd no longer have to worry about AOL, though) Keep in mind, I have outlined this as my worst case scenario, and what we will probably see is something between the two.
Wow---This makes me think I should be buying stock in the cable companies. Imagine all the adds they could run: Don't want to buy a new TV? Switch to AT&T/Cox/Charter . ..Get all your old channels, and more. . ..without that expensive upgrade.
My guess is people who watch broadcast television would prefer the lesser (but constant expense) of cable to the much larger expense of a new tv without vcr, while the larger budgeted 'tech addicts' will stick with their tivo's and old-school non-drm hdtvs and non-drm dolby digital 5.1. Perhaps if the FCC is really draconian about it this will turn the networks into cable broadcasters.
The students can easily explore that, while the comment submitter (if up to the task) can pull together the necessary code and/or lab equipment to have a custom-made presentation that could be extremely informative.
Suppose MS disappeared tomorrow and everyone moved en masse to Linux? Bingo, a new monopoly.
Not true. No one owns linux, and there is no "one true" linux distributor. Linux is certainly some sort of entity, but not a monolithic commercial one, and not even a monolithic one. The beauty of the GPL (even though I believe that non-GPL software is fine too), is that you can't really control what you sell after the completetion of the sale.
The problem is DirectX. The vast majority of games now seem to make extensive use of DirectX, and releasing unsupported linux binaries requires making everything work with SDL and OpenGl, which, as I understand it, is quite a problem, starting from an entirely DirectX project.
Has transgaming released a WineXlib? If so, that could make porting much easier.
I think it is a lingustic problem with English. You constantly here about us this, and us that. Damn British must have had their mind on the future America when they invented the language.
No offense, but you've obviously never had to deal with flaky hardware drivers on Windows 9x. Really. Its bad.
Savage 2000? Umax scanners? SB Live!?(That one is really bad). Older ATI cards? Older Via chipsets? Bizarre networking problems? I've got a hundred other things that all cause problems together. And it is the hardware driver/os combination, since I have tested most of this stuff on 2000 and XP, and have a lot fewer problems.(ANd this is on just one system, this is on several, sometimes up to five different systems.
The number of times that I have had to reboot, reformat, and reinstall 9x, are absolutely appalling, especially compared to my debian box. In fact, at one point, I got sick of 9x, and refused to ever run it again. Luckly for my gaming, 2000 was out, and I was able to upgrade.
This is not blind MS bashing, this is living through an utterly frustrating cycle of weird, unexplaining problems, when things should just work. And you know what, they started to just sorta work on 2000, and they state has improved somewhat a little on XP (though right now I have a problem with an errant DWL-120a from d-link).
So don't lecture me on 'blind MS bashing'. I have none of these problems with Linux.(I may not have all the functionality all the time, but I have far fewer problems). Yes, this kind of sentiment 'may not help the cause', but these things did happen to me, and I am sure they happened to many others, as I watched it happen to nerds around me as well.
And if you're going to post something about how we are just not bright enough to get this stuff working properly, don't bother. Primary linux complaint is it is too hard to use. If 9x required just the 'right touch', then it is too hard to use. I feel that we are pretty well experienced+educated.
Well, I dunno, I can imagine several distracting things in non-essential car systems. . .
For example, I would be slightly distracted, if any combination of the following occured: Car alarm going off, Radio blasting, Radio randomly switching stations, Cellphone dialing random numbers on speaker phone, Random noise eminating from car speakers, Continous light fluctuations, etc. . .
So called non-essential systems can be very distracting.
hmm--I can't remember the site for it right now--But I remember there was some guy who put together a Flash and Java xpInstaller for mozilla, which actually worked pretty well on both the linux and windows builds.
Strangely enough, I think that weird DHTML menus work better on konqeror.
Yeah, its usually cause of web designers negligence, though, not Mozilla
Sadly, Apple hardware has grown more expensive than comparable Wintel hardware in recent years. Apple/Motorola/Ibm simply haven't kept up with the rate of AMD/Intel, and now the competition really isn't close. Sure, you can talk about how Apple systems have higher floating performance per a clock than an AMD system, but their integer performance isn't much better at all, and memory benchmarks are much worse on Apples. Furthermore, the clock speed gap has grown to the point where it is simple to get AMD system which outperform Apple systems for nothing. My own Athlon 1800+ system cost me about $400, and it'll beat the pants of any iMac. Go to an independant manufacturer, and you can purchase a system equivalent to mine for about $600-$700.
Also, BTW: Hammer (or Opetron) is on the horizon, which will be faster than any Apple, cross the board, clock for clock, and probably start at higher frequencies.
Apple will survive in the market, but soley on the virtues of its wonderful OS, which I can't afford to purchase, surviving on my $400 cheapo homebuilt box.
My point wasn't that you should replace NT4 with Vmware'd NT4---my point was that instead of maintaining a broad, MS relationship with Licensing 6.0, it might make more sense to purchase/maintain a couple NT licenses capable of being run Vmware for apps that just absolutely need NT, and do everything else on a linux/unix-something deriverative. Obviously, if this is most of the work you do, than thats not a very good solution--but if you can do most everything else in linux, it could work out, and would be as much(or less) of a p.i.t.a as switching to XP, with the advantage of not being forced to switch to longhorn, and whatever other putrid crap microsoft decides to force at us in the next few years.
Sounds to me, however, that its a damn shame all that stuff left the Solaris world----If the transition away from Solaris had happened a few years later, you might have been able to avoid VB (ick), Windows (bigger ick), and moved to a different Unix. BTW: Whats wrong with Solaris? Why is everyone switching? Is it really politics? Because THAT sucks [grimace].
The only reason I make these suggestions is because I find the damn upgrade tredmill to be offensive. I already have all these other problems to deal with, and I'm tired of dealing with Microsoft's political crap (NT is fine, 2k is fine, XP is almost fine, but why in "$deities" name do I have to keep switching?), and I just hope that if there were enough like minded individuals out there, we could just break free. (Non-windows software production reaches the critical mass to promote multiple platform software for most any task.)
So, let me get this right. We have somethign that works. But there is something new that comes out. You sound like some kids I know (I don't have kids yet). "I need this, it's (insert adjective here[shiny/pretty/flashy/makes beeping sounds/etc. ..], I NEED IT NOW!!!". I know I don't like XP, because it is time out of my day, and as the old adage says, Time=Money. Upgrading is a PAIN in the ASS, and is not productive. XP has no killer feature, or indeed, any XP particular 'killer app', especially for the Office user. Additionally, XP requires more resources, which is waste of money. (Remember, we are in business. We want to make money, not spend it). I don't want to learn XP. I don't want to learn to deal with its quirks. I have already learned 2000s quirks. I'm tired of learning new quirks, and forgetting old quirks. With a linux, the quirks tend to remain the same, or just go away.(And either way, its your choice as to what happens with the quirks. Don't like this kernel? Change it. Don't like this KDE? Change it. Don't like [XXXX/YYYY]? Change it. Either roll your own, or download a new one. Then create standardized distribution. Finished). Linux=>Same amount of effort as the M$ treadmill, much less delta in quirks.
And as to needing smart users for desktop Linux? Bollucks. Setup the desktop in the right way, set user permissions correctly, installing openoffice, install Mozilla, setup the printer correctly, and voila, your done.... Your users will have noticed that something has changed, but after a brief acclimation period, they'll still talk about this or that on their windows. ..Lookup all the surrounding evidence regarding (what the hell was that city that converted totally to linux---I can't remember the name)---All of their secretaries and random functionaries had no problems, except they couldn't get over the fact that constant backups of all their work to floppy was now unnecessary, since their systems were so much more stable. Its not really about a fancy user interface. Its about putting a few icons on the desktop in the right place, about stability, and about setting the printer up correctly. If this can be managed with floating desktops, and good performance, linux with stupid users really isn't a problem.
You just have to realize they are just as stupid with their current O.S.--->make the commonly used applications simple to use, and you'll have no problems.
I guess I am really kind of confused. Perhaps if you have had some Win32s applications customed developed for you, you have to stick to the Windows platform, but now that the upgrade tredmill is in full force, won't it really take the same amount of effort to put Redhat/Suse/Mandrake/Slackware/Debian on all your machines? I mean, really? If absolutely necessary, Vmware or Wine some windows apps(In which cases, you can go back to NT, or whatever you want for the few instances you need it. Hell, you can probably reduce the number of Windows licenses you need by VmWareing everything (of course, then you need Vmware licenses:)), but, why not just bite the bullet. I don't know what GIS is, but I do know that for applications that demand stability, you 2000/XP is the shallow end of the pool, while a nicely setup late 2.4 linux kernel box is a pretty deep end of the stability pool. I mean, all the disadvantes to moving to linux have been rendered null by Microsoft: You have to do a painful migration with Microsoft Products, you are forced to tweak and invididual install to all high hell, and you are going to have driver problems with older hardware. Sure, I have never done a big installation (after all, I AM an idiot), but in my experience of doing smaller conversions to linux, with not bleeding edge hardware, I haven't really had any major problems.
VmWare your apps. You'll be much happier, trust me. (Unless, there is something about GIS that requires a specific kind of direct hardware access that VmWare can't do. If so, please tell what it is, i'm curious).
Well, this is not entirely true. There are two minor technicalities: 1. Each Xbox costs more to build than its $200 price tag justifies, especially including research and development costs for all the custom software and testing that went into it. There is the small caveat that in buying each system, we are actually helping Microsoft make back $200 of the initial cost, since it would cost them MORE to have the xboxes rot on the shelves, but if we can sort of hit the right happy medium where sales justify continued production due to anticipated game sales/rentals there is a worst case scenario:), and based on current xbox sales figures, it seems like it is going that way:). Thus, I might buy an xbox, because it would be damn cool to have a nice console PC with good HDTV out, (and hopefully) linux support soon.
It also becomes an implementation issue. I don't know anything about signing/encryption (and it shows), but what if someone manages to take advantage of this? Say a program is 'recongnized' as signed code. Whoops--All of a sudden it gets root access, and without user oversight. For godsakes, Microsoft was shipping copies of.Net Visual Studio with viruses in it, Gamespy was shipping Kletz---All Palladium does is take the final verification of what is a secure app and what is not, and gives it to MS. And I don't trust them at all. For all we know, Palladium might be exploited to become the ultimate backdoor. (And if it was, and the black-hat hackers where slick enough, we would never know---Imagine a SubSeven with root access that put itself into the Windows Kernel and wouldn't let you kill it since it was the highest tier of 'secure' code---That would be a pain.)
If AMD and Intel really sign on to this crap, this could promote some alternative chip producers (like Via, and others) to really start pounding out some nice designs.
After all, even if the U.S. and Europe legally require such b.s. drm, I don't think it will take over in Asia. China is really big on opensource (it seems commie, anyways ()), and one can only hope that that section of the world stays sane.
Who knows, these announcements might be the beginning of the end for U.S. technological dominance (which might not be a bad thing. ..U.S. corps need some serious competition to put them back into shape (sure, there is a lot know, but AMD, Intel, and most of IP holders of the world are U.S. megacorps).
Slashdot Mirror
And then, they should be sure to be using a valid login password (not guess@nowhere.com, or whatever they used), so that they are circumventing the ftp admin's wishes. They are public ftps, but you are supposed to supply valid credentials: Public != free to abuse.
Bizarre. The majority of the threads in this story seem to be either:
.] is quickly surpassing the U.S. in technology [schools/economically/etc. . .]
America Rulez!!! Indians [Japanese/Koreans] are just using American parts!!! We Americans are the Best!!!
Or,
America Suckz!!!! The rest of the world is outperforming America!!! India [Japan/Korea/Canada/etc. .
Both of these positions are stupid, and extremely reductionist. India is developing indigeious technology using foreign components. Why aren't they using Indian processors? Because they aren't just trying to build supercomputers, they are trying to market supercomputers and build the highest capacity system for the purpose of testing nuclear weapons. Good for them, to manage such operations they must be developing fairly modern IT organizations. They managed to beat fairly backwards American legislation designed to restrict exactly that. But this isn't an Indian coup, or a greater trend towards the collapse of the Pax Americana. There are many other factors at play here, folks.
Personally, if I was asked to give a quick, reductionist synopsis of the situation, I would say: India is slowing crossing the line between developing and developed nation, whereas it will have access to the same international and domestic resources that modern industrialized states have access to, including a full franchise within the world capitalist economic system. The modern world really has two economic systems, 1st and 3rd world. I, personally, would like to welcome more members of the 3rd into the 1st (and hopefully, someday, all of the 3rd).
Forgive the bad grammer/spelling, I just rolled out of bed.
Pluses:
Good Income
Good Credit History (Payments on time, etc. .
Reliable Investment (Real estate is easier to mortgage, then, say, a sports car)
Large Downpayment
Minuses:
Moderate debt
Depending upon the price of the real estate in question, his argument has merit. It isn't terribly unlikely that this could work.
Shouldn't we similarly develop a slashdot - style web-based system for the purpose of developing any sort of process?
Wait, we could just use monkeys on typewriters.
Nevermind.
- A. The P.C. Market is growning, and a nice, even steady pace. Computer games are becoming more popular, just a 3 to 4 percent a year. Consoles, on the other hand, are constantly expanding to new markets that they had not be able to acquire before. Sports fans love the new sports games. Old Snes, and even PSX games weren't good enough, because they were ugly. Hell, even my dad, who had never been a gamer ('cept chess), bought an xbox. It just looks good. And there are other markets that consoles are expanding into, and these markets are probably readjusting the demographics of the 'gamer' sub-type. Gaming is going to the masses, finally, and in doing so, will (and has been, for a while) changing.
Not to say that everyone will upgrade to HDTV, but slowly, all new production of televisions will be HDTV, and if the prices come down fast enough, its not hard to picture the vast majority of homes(that would consider buying either a console, tivo or pc) having at least one hdtv capable device.(Anyone willing to spend $299 console will spend $400 to get the latest and greatest 40" low cost plasma(or even projection) display.)B. (Here is the dirty word:) Perhaps we are seeing the beginings of digital converagance. It's not going to be too long before we see gaming consoles with Tivo like capacities. Throw in a little bit of linux/windows ce, and we have a digital-everything box plugged into our TVs. I think the final problem, of user interfaces on low resolution displays, has been solved by the oncoming rush of HDTV.
Of course, my preference would be if everyone just started hooking their computers into their high resolution displays, in order to ensure that our set-top boxes would remain fairly commodified (Go xBox hackers!!!We want xBox executables on our P.C.s!!), but if the current trend in DRM technologies continues, I anticipate that the major manufactures would rather ship us set-top boxes that did a little word processing and light office work, reducing P.C.s to a withered subset of their current market, performing specialized operation on specialized software, though, I guess, to have a smaller, less directly 'consumerist' computing community. (We'd no longer have to worry about AOL, though) Keep in mind, I have outlined this as my worst case scenario, and what we will probably see is something between the two.
I second the motion!!!
Your sig needs to be put into effect!!! Immediately!!!
Wow---This makes me think I should be buying stock in the cable companies. Imagine all the adds they could run: Don't want to buy a new TV? Switch to AT&T/Cox/Charter . . .Get all your old channels, and more. . . .without that expensive upgrade.
My guess is people who watch broadcast television would prefer the lesser (but constant expense) of cable to the much larger expense of a new tv without vcr, while the larger budgeted 'tech addicts' will stick with their tivo's and old-school non-drm hdtvs and non-drm dolby digital 5.1. Perhaps if the FCC is really draconian about it this will turn the networks into cable broadcasters.
That's totally brillant!!
The students can easily explore that, while the comment submitter (if up to the task) can pull together the necessary code and/or lab equipment to have a custom-made presentation that could be extremely informative.
Some one mod this parent up!!!
Not true. No one owns linux, and there is no "one true" linux distributor. Linux is certainly some sort of entity, but not a monolithic commercial one, and not even a monolithic one. The beauty of the GPL (even though I believe that non-GPL software is fine too), is that you can't really control what you sell after the completetion of the sale.
Of course, when they procreate, they have 100 billion children each, so the individual survial rate is not that important.
Has transgaming released a WineXlib? If so, that could make porting much easier.
I think it is a lingustic problem with English. You constantly here about us this, and us that. Damn British must have had their mind on the future America when they invented the language.
Yipes, my grammar and spelling was bad. This is too early in the morning on my day off.
Savage 2000? Umax scanners? SB Live!?(That one is really bad). Older ATI cards? Older Via chipsets? Bizarre networking problems? I've got a hundred other things that all cause problems together. And it is the hardware driver/os combination, since I have tested most of this stuff on 2000 and XP, and have a lot fewer problems.(ANd this is on just one system, this is on several, sometimes up to five different systems.
The number of times that I have had to reboot, reformat, and reinstall 9x, are absolutely appalling, especially compared to my debian box. In fact, at one point, I got sick of 9x, and refused to ever run it again. Luckly for my gaming, 2000 was out, and I was able to upgrade.
This is not blind MS bashing, this is living through an utterly frustrating cycle of weird, unexplaining problems, when things should just work. And you know what, they started to just sorta work on 2000, and they state has improved somewhat a little on XP (though right now I have a problem with an errant DWL-120a from d-link).
So don't lecture me on 'blind MS bashing'. I have none of these problems with Linux.(I may not have all the functionality all the time, but I have far fewer problems). Yes, this kind of sentiment 'may not help the cause', but these things did happen to me, and I am sure they happened to many others, as I watched it happen to nerds around me as well.
And if you're going to post something about how we are just not bright enough to get this stuff working properly, don't bother. Primary linux complaint is it is too hard to use. If 9x required just the 'right touch', then it is too hard to use. I feel that we are pretty well experienced+educated.
For example, I would be slightly distracted, if any combination of the following occured: Car alarm going off, Radio blasting, Radio randomly switching stations, Cellphone dialing random numbers on speaker phone, Random noise eminating from car speakers, Continous light fluctuations, etc. . .
So called non-essential systems can be very distracting.
So it kind of looses by default.
In the name of innovation, I propose we redefine significant as no more than 30 seconds.
Strangely enough, I think that weird DHTML menus work better on konqeror.
Yeah, its usually cause of web designers negligence, though, not Mozilla
Also, BTW: Hammer (or Opetron) is on the horizon, which will be faster than any Apple, cross the board, clock for clock, and probably start at higher frequencies.
Apple will survive in the market, but soley on the virtues of its wonderful OS, which I can't afford to purchase, surviving on my $400 cheapo homebuilt box.
My point wasn't that you should replace NT4 with Vmware'd NT4---my point was that instead of maintaining a broad, MS relationship with Licensing 6.0, it might make more sense to purchase/maintain a couple NT licenses capable of being run Vmware for apps that just absolutely need NT, and do everything else on a linux/unix-something deriverative. Obviously, if this is most of the work you do, than thats not a very good solution--but if you can do most everything else in linux, it could work out, and would be as much(or less) of a p.i.t.a as switching to XP, with the advantage of not being forced to switch to longhorn, and whatever other putrid crap microsoft decides to force at us in the next few years.
Sounds to me, however, that its a damn shame all that stuff left the Solaris world----If the transition away from Solaris had happened a few years later, you might have been able to avoid VB (ick), Windows (bigger ick), and moved to a different Unix. BTW: Whats wrong with Solaris? Why is everyone switching? Is it really politics? Because THAT sucks [grimace].
The only reason I make these suggestions is because I find the damn upgrade tredmill to be offensive. I already have all these other problems to deal with, and I'm tired of dealing with Microsoft's political crap (NT is fine, 2k is fine, XP is almost fine, but why in "$deities" name do I have to keep switching?), and I just hope that if there were enough like minded individuals out there, we could just break free. (Non-windows software production reaches the critical mass to promote multiple platform software for most any task.)
Alas, it is not to be.
And as to needing smart users for desktop Linux? Bollucks. Setup the desktop in the right way, set user permissions correctly, installing openoffice, install Mozilla, setup the printer correctly, and voila, your done.... Your users will have noticed that something has changed, but after a brief acclimation period, they'll still talk about this or that on their windows. . .Lookup all the surrounding evidence regarding (what the hell was that city that converted totally to linux---I can't remember the name)---All of their secretaries and random functionaries had no problems, except they couldn't get over the fact that constant backups of all their work to floppy was now unnecessary, since their systems were so much more stable. Its not really about a fancy user interface. Its about putting a few icons on the desktop in the right place, about stability, and about setting the printer up correctly. If this can be managed with floating desktops, and good performance, linux with stupid users really isn't a problem.
You just have to realize they are just as stupid with their current O.S.--->make the commonly used applications simple to use, and you'll have no problems.
VmWare your apps. You'll be much happier, trust me. (Unless, there is something about GIS that requires a specific kind of direct hardware access that VmWare can't do. If so, please tell what it is, i'm curious).
Well, this is not entirely true. There are two minor technicalities: 1. Each Xbox costs more to build than its $200 price tag justifies, especially including research and development costs for all the custom software and testing that went into it. There is the small caveat that in buying each system, we are actually helping Microsoft make back $200 of the initial cost, since it would cost them MORE to have the xboxes rot on the shelves, but if we can sort of hit the right happy medium where sales justify continued production due to anticipated game sales/rentals there is a worst case scenario :), and based on current xbox sales figures, it seems like it is going that way :). Thus, I might buy an xbox, because it would be damn cool to have a nice console PC with good HDTV out, (and hopefully) linux support soon.
I didn't realize it was that badly misquoted---thats horrendous. I would suggest commenting on this here.
It also becomes an implementation issue. I don't know anything about signing/encryption (and it shows), but what if someone manages to take advantage of this? Say a program is 'recongnized' as signed code. Whoops--All of a sudden it gets root access, and without user oversight. For godsakes, Microsoft was shipping copies of .Net Visual Studio with viruses in it, Gamespy was shipping Kletz---All Palladium does is take the final verification of what is a secure app and what is not, and gives it to MS. And I don't trust them at all. For all we know, Palladium might be exploited to become the ultimate backdoor. (And if it was, and the black-hat hackers where slick enough, we would never know---Imagine a SubSeven with root access that put itself into the Windows Kernel and wouldn't let you kill it since it was the highest tier of 'secure' code---That would be a pain.)
After all, even if the U.S. and Europe legally require such b.s. drm, I don't think it will take over in Asia. China is really big on opensource (it seems commie, anyways ()), and one can only hope that that section of the world stays sane.
Who knows, these announcements might be the beginning of the end for U.S. technological dominance (which might not be a bad thing. .