If MS were willing to sue over this (I don't know if they would be, or if they would take other avenues) I doubt a little matter such as not knowing who did it would deter them.
But not being able to find out who to sue would. Sure they can file a "John Doe" -lawsuit but if you're using anonymous remailers, usenet dead drops or the Tor network and don't shoot your mouth off they'll never find you.
What about manufacturers colluding not to produce modifiable hardware? Sure, someone might still make it but without volume it's going to be expensive. Or if the government makes modifiable hardware illegal? Remember, the **AA and MS are lobbying for exactly that.
And when the corporation that makes the product has discontinued it or gone out of business and can no longer sign binaries, how exactly are you going to do that?
Yet highly destructive viruses can't spread easily if they kill their host machine before spreading!
That's where you're wrong, see for example How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time. Someone could write a virus that infects all vulnerable hosts within MINUTES. If the virus could spread that rapidly, you could simply have it wipe the hard drives after x minutes. It would be fast, deadly and damn near impossible to prevent. When (not if, when) someone goes ahead and does something like this, we're all going to be fucked.
Yes, you should be able to use your software in any linux distribution. But how long will it actually take from the distribution makers to accept and comply with this standard?
Try Bastille Linux. It does a very nice job on securing Red Hat distributions and even some others, perhaps Mandrake. I haven't personally tried it because I use Debian, but I've heard very positive comments. However Debian asks you during the install if you want to enable services, something the other distros seem to somehow forget.
There's testing aka Woody. A new package has to be two weeks in unstable before it gets in testing. It works very nicely, being "bleeding edge" but with very few broken packages.
If they can use SDMI and other such techniques now and get 99.99% market share, who will be there in the long run to take them out of business? We do have examples of this (*cough*Microsoft*cough*), and after they have a monopoly there's little the government can do about it.
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What about salt buildup when the water evaporates?
If MS were willing to sue over this (I don't know if they would be, or if they would take other avenues) I doubt a little matter such as not knowing who did it would deter them.
But not being able to find out who to sue would. Sure they can file a "John Doe" -lawsuit but if you're using anonymous remailers, usenet dead drops or the Tor network and don't shoot your mouth off they'll never find you.
That is not DRM, just plain old crypto. You lose.
What about manufacturers colluding not to produce modifiable hardware? Sure, someone might still make it but without volume it's going to be expensive. Or if the government makes modifiable hardware illegal? Remember, the **AA and MS are lobbying for exactly that.
And when the corporation that makes the product has discontinued it or gone out of business and can no longer sign binaries, how exactly are you going to do that?
That's where you're wrong, see for example How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time. Someone could write a virus that infects all vulnerable hosts within MINUTES. If the virus could spread that rapidly, you could simply have it wipe the hard drives after x minutes. It would be fast, deadly and damn near impossible to prevent. When (not if, when) someone goes ahead and does something like this, we're all going to be fucked.
Yes, you should be able to use your software in any linux distribution. But how long will it actually take from the distribution makers to accept and comply with this standard?
Try Bastille Linux. It does a very nice job on securing Red Hat distributions and even some others, perhaps Mandrake. I haven't personally tried it because I use Debian, but I've heard very positive comments. However Debian asks you during the install if you want to enable services, something the other distros seem to somehow forget.
There's testing aka Woody. A new package has to be two weeks in unstable before it gets in testing. It works very nicely, being "bleeding edge" but with very few broken packages.
If they can use SDMI and other such techniques now and get 99.99% market share, who will be there in the long run to take them out of business? We do have examples of this (*cough*Microsoft*cough*), and after they have a monopoly there's little the government can do about it.