Unfortunately there are several DIFFERENT, INCOMPATIBLE concepts being bandied about under the name Trusted Computing. This new "Trusted Computing Project" took on that name seemingly without being aware that there was substantial work already under way on a different concept with the same name.
Perhaps to try to remedy the confusion, we can distinguish between TC as proposed by the Trusted Computing Group and other forms of TC. The TCG is an industry consortium with Microsoft, Intel, HP etc., dating back several years, originally called TCPA. Their proposal has always been controversial but IMO misunderstood.
TCG's flavor of TC is fundamentally open. I would call it Open Trusted Computing, OTC. It does not lock down your computer or try to prevent anything from running. It most emphatically does NOT "only run signed code" despite what has been falsely claimed for years. What it does do is allow the computer to provide trustworthy, reliable reports about the software that is running. These reports (called "attestations") might indicate a hash of the software, or perhaps a key that signed the software, or perhaps other properties or characteristics of the software, such as that it is sandboxed. All these details are left up to the OS, and that part of the technology is still in development.
Open Trusted Computing runs any software you like, but gives the software the ability to make these attestations that are cryptographically signed by a hardware-protected key and which cannot be forged. Bogus software can't masquerade as something other than it is. Virus-infected software can't claim to be clean. Hacked software can't claim to be the original. You have trustworthy identification of software and/or its properties. This allows you to do many things that readers might consider either good or bad. You could vote online and the vote server could make sure your voting client wasn't infected. You can play online games and make sure the peers are not running cheat programs. And yes, the iTunes Music Store could make sure it was only downloading to a legitimate iTunes client that would follow the DRM rules. It's good and bad, but the point is that it is open and you can still use your computer for whatever you want.
This is in contrast to some other projects which may or may not call themselves TC but which are focused on locking down the computer and limiting what you can run. The most familiar example is cell phones. They're actually computers but you generally can't run whatever you want. The iPhone is the most recent controversial example. Now they are going to relax the rules but apparently it will still only run signed software. This new "Trusted Computing Project" is the same idea, it will limit what software can run. Rumors claim that the next version of Apple's OS X will also have some features along these lines, that code which is not signed may have to run in sandboxes and have restrictions.
This general approach I would call Closed Trusted Computing, CTC. It has many problematic aspects, most generally that the manufacturer and not the user decides which software to trust. Your system comes with a list of built-in keys that limit what software can be installed and run with full privileges. At best you can install more software but it is not a first-class citizen of your computer and runs with limitations. Closed Trusted Computing takes decisions out of your hands.
But Open Trusted Computing as defined by the TCG is different. It lets you run any software you want and makes all of its functionality equally available to anyone. P2P software, open-source software, anything can take full advantage of its functionality. You could even have a fully open-source DRM implementation that used OTC technology: DRM code that you could even compile and build yourself and use to download high-value content. You would not be able to steal content downloaded by software you had built yourself. And you could be sure there were no back doors,
There's another section of the DMCA that offers a different "safe harbor":
(a) TRANSITORY DIGITAL NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS- A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if--
(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;
(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
(3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;
(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.
This "transitory communication" safe harbor is aimed at networks that just pass the data through. The article mentions that AOL tried to take advantage of this one because they only retained data for 14 days and the judge in an earlier case thought that was "transitory" enough.
Note that this safe harbor does not require any compliance with notifications! However the article is confused and indicates that AOL's failure to comply with notifications caused it to lose this safe harbor.
A couple of weekends ago I participated in a local triathlon, and afterwards in the park they had stands set up with refreshments, gear, etc, where people gathered to wait for the results. I saw this giant mechanical-looking bug go zooming over the crowd, high in the air, maybe 20 feet up. It looked something like a dragonfly but was enormous, maybe six or eight inches long. The weird thing is that we don't have dragonflies around here, at least I've never seen one. At the time I wasn't sure if it was a real dragonfly or some kind of RC plane/copter. I looked around for someone controlling it but didn't see anything. It just made one pass over the crowd and was gone.
This was not any kind of political gathering, it was just a race like hundreds of others that occur across the country every weekend. But it really struck me as odd and I pointed it out to my wife. Then today I read this article about mechanical dragonflies, and I thought wow, that might have been what I saw.
There would still be time after the change. However the metric would be different so that what used to be time would now be space-like. It still makes sense to imagine a block universe where there is a boundary, and on one side there is time as we know it, and on the other side there is a 4 dimensional Euclidean space.
It's hard to imagine Euclidean space with no timelike dimension. You might think nothing would "happen" with no flow of time. But this may be an oversimplification.
Ultimately, the reason things "happen" in our universe is not just because we have a timelike dimension; we also have an asymmetry in time that acts as an engine to make things change. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth in the Big Bang, he created a low entropy state. Ever since then the universe has been "running downhill" as entropy increases. This is why we perceive change and a flow of time.
From the block universe perspective, what we see is a universe with simple conditions at one end and complex ones in the middle, where we are. Differential equations, the laws of physics, govern how much change there can be from one time coordinate to the next. This ensures that the change is gradual and spreads out over the whole block.
Once we go past the boundary in the block into the Euclidean universe, the question is, what differential equations will control things? Different equations will produce different results.
One way to start is to think about particles. Understand that in the block universe, particles are not points, they are lines. And the simplest rule is that these lines follow geodesic curves, which are the curves of extremal length. This is what gives us gravitation. Well, if we go past the boundary, maybe that law will still hold. Particles will still be lines and will still follow geodesic curves. Those would be simple straight lines if the universe were flat, but it won't be, it will still be curved by matter in some way. This would lead to a different form of gravitation, perhaps repulsive rather than attractive (I haven't studied this part).
The point is that even with a Euclidean space, there might still be a form of time. When we make the transition into the Euclidean state, our initial conditions will be far from smooth (if it happens "soon"). The laws of physics which govern matter in the Euclidean part of the block may be such that there would still be a gradient in conditions from near the boundary to far from it. Then this might allow a sense in which time could still be perceived as passing. Perhaps life forms attuned to previous conditions would not survive in the new universe, but new ones might evolve adapted to the new versions of physical laws.
Even though the time dimension would not be physically different from the others, the initial conditions at the boundary would be different for this dimension than the others, so there still might be special physics related to that dimension, and in that sense a direction of time.
It's hard to visualize the interior of cells, because particles are smaller than light waves, it's all in a liquid medium, and everything is crowded. Scripps Institute researcher David Goodsell paints cell interiors in a sort of "two and half dimensional" view, showing the proteins and other macromolecules but leaving out water and small ions. You see a cross section plus a little more, and it is actually very helpful in terms of understanding how things fit together in a cell. The first painting here is E. Coli and shows the center, full of DNA all crowded and twisted onto spools (nucleosomes), surrounded mostly by ribosomes which create proteins. Then there is the cell membrane and in this view, a flagellum (which acts as a propeller).
This helps to understand the magnitude of Venter's project. DNA really does take up the majority of space in a cell like this. It's true that he's using the ribosomes and such that were already there, but replacing the DNA will totally change how the cell works and functions.
It will be interesting to see what happens if they add DNA for a structure like a flagellum which does not exist in the "donor" cell, or for a cell that is shaped very differently than the donor. The new cell should start to grow the appendages or change its shape appropriately. Some pretty freaky experiments will be possible.
An eBay member saved the account information that was posted before it got deleted. They have posted only the eBay account names, not any of the other data. You can look there to see if your account was one posted:
There's something I've never understood about GPLv3 and its anti-Tivoisation clause which maybe some expert here can answer. Section 6 contains the relevant language, which says that keys, etc. have to be provided so that users can modify their software and still have it work. But it only applies to a "user product". Let me quote the definition:
A "User Product" is either (1) a "consumer product", which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling.
Now it occurs to me that maybe, strange as it seems, this part of the license does not apply to software(!). The terms I quoted only apply if one of two tests are met. Either the product has to be "tangible personal property" or it has to be something for "incorporation into a dwelling". Well, "tangible" means something that can be felt with the sense of touch, which software obviously cannot. As for "incorporation into a dwelling", "incorporation" usually means a kind of mixing of substances, so this would suggest something which gets built into the walls or flooring of housing. Again, this would hardly describe a pure software product.
It might be, then, that this language only applies to things like physical appliances that you buy and bring home, or which get built into your house like plumbing. Any software which is part of these devices, as we see more and more commonly, would be affected by this language. It would only apply to devices which are designed to have their software updated periodically, but if that is the case, under GPLv3 the manufacturers would have to supply any keys necessary to make sure the device works as well with user modifications as with manufacturer-approved ones.
However, it would seem that pure software products, including in particular software designed to implement Trusted Computing or make use of the TPM chip in many PCs to condition access to network resources to only certain versions, would not be affected by this. In fact it does not seem that GPLv3 touches Trusted Computing at all, at least if the software to enable the TC features were delivered separately, in intangible form.
Has anyone ever seen discussion of this point? Thanks!
There is a great quote by physicist Max Tegmark: "The critique of many worlds is shifting from 'it makes no sense and I hate it' to simply 'I hate it'."
As far as the meat of it, traditionally the Many-Worlds Interpretation has had two technical objections raised. The first is called the basis problem, and the second is deriving correct probabilities. The basis problem is that when the universe "splits" it's not clear how it should split. The math allows for infinite different ways to split, but we only see one way. This has been solved in recent years by the study of decoherence, which in MWI terms is like looking at the splitting process up close. Turns out it can only happen one way in practice. So that one's done.
The article is more about the other one, deriving probabilities. Actually it's easy to derive probabilities in the MWI, but they're wrong. The right probabilities are what is called the Born rule, and it's been hard to get those. David Deutsch came up with a new idea in 1999 where he proposed tying it in to decision theory. He said that we really care about probabilities because they influence how we make decisions about what to do. If we can derive a reasonable decision theory within the MWI, then we've essentially explained probabilities. His work had some shortcomings but subsequent efforts have largely resolved those.
So now for the first time, the two traditional technical problems with the MWI have reasonably good solutions. Hence we are back to, as Tegmark says, "I hate it" as the main objection to the theory. Since that's not really a good argument, it can be said that the MWI should be considered the most compelling candidate for an interpretation of QM.
One final link, here is one of the papers that extends Deutsch's idea about decision theory and pretty much closes the holes: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312157. It's pretty technical but still a lot more readable than most physics papers.
The 21st century will be China's turn to be the world leader. All the talk and excuses we see here from Americans about how they don't care if China does beat us back to the moon is very much like what other countries said as they changed from being 1st rate to 2nd rate. Spain has had its turn, England, and now the U.S. is moving into China's eclipse. And of course we Americans will be able to lie to ourselves for quite a while that we're still the best "where it counts", just like the English and French and Spanish and all the others that were once great.
For that matter why wouldn't virus writers pay to get whitelisted? Running a botnet is a money making activity and it's likely to be even more lucrative in the future. Stolen financial records, extortion of gambling sites based on threatening DDOS, there are all kinds of ways to make money with a virus. That's what the article is about, how much more of a threat it's getting to be now that internet crime pays off. The point they seem to be overlooking is that with so much money on the line, virus writers are going to get their trojaned software approved, and there's no way to filter out malicious software in the approval process (it's theoretically impossible).
BTW I hope that whoever moderated the parent post "funny" realizes that it was a serious comment about how this new technology could improve privacy on the net, something that ought to be of interest to every user. I don't know if the moderators thought it was funny because it had never occured to them that Trusted Computing had good uses, or if they were being sarcastic and moderated it funny because they disagreed with the point. Either way, it is not actually funny and perhaps meta-moderators can help make that clear.
I'm not sure how Trusted Computing reintroduces trust to computing. Being able to prove that a file came from a particular computer doesn't prove much to me. Surely, we can do most of the nice things that is planned for TC with public key encryption - albeit without the dubious DRM benefits that the TC platform could potentially inflict upon us?
Those are great questions and I appreciate your open-minded spirit.
TC does far more than prove that a file came from a particular computer. It lets you securely verify that you are communicating with a particular program; potentially, one that you know the source code for. And it lets you know that the program runs in its own "jail" or partition, isolated from other programs and also from user actions. The program can store data such that no one else, no other program, no other user, no other operating system, can read it.
TC gives distributed software an unprecedented degree of autonomy and independence. It lets peer to peer software operate across a network with almost the same security as if each piece were running on a separate computer that no one could control. This is going to enable a whole new world of software development opportunities of which we can barely imagine the full implications.
A few obvious possibilities are distributed games, grid computing, internet voting, as well as privacy networks like Tor, anonymous remailers, anonymous chat, and many others. The ability to write software that can actually trust in the integrity and identity of its remote pieces will enable these and many more new developments.
IMO the reflexive opposition to Trusted Computing has been the biggest mistake the online community has ever made. It has turned this marvelous invention with all of its potential into a twisted caricature of itself, focusing on just one of its many possible uses.
Why did this happen? Ultimately, I am sorry to say, it was due to greed. Greed on the part of Internet users who fear only one thing above all else: that they may no longer be able to download music, movies and other content for free. The ironic thing is that TC probably wouldn't even do that much to stop content sharing, because these types of content can always be copied, at worst by putting microphones in front of speakers and video cameras in front of monitors. You'll always be able to take content. But fear of possible improvements in security technology enabled by Trusted Computing that could make content sharing somewhat more difficult has overridden all other responses.
The good thing is that Trusted Computing does not yet exist. I am doing my best to build Trusted Computer systems which will be used for "good" purposes and in that way to demonstrate that the common view of the technology is far too limited. I hope to have some demonstrations running within a few months.
Okay, can I read your bank statements? Or maybe the passwords for your porn site memberships? The truth isn't a threat, remember. So why not tell us?
There is a difference between being able to tell the truth and protecting privacy. It is in fact useful to be able to truthfully give out some of this kind of information. For example, being able to truthfully and reliably provide bank statements will be helpful in getting a loan or entering various kinds of business transactions. Imagine a world where it was somehow impossible to provide verifiable and trustworthy information; would that be a better place? It would destroy many efficient economic arrangements that we take for granted, and make us all poorer.
So I am grateful that it is possible to tell the truth about things in a way that is believable. All too often on the net we have the opposite problem, there is no way to know what is true and what is not. Trusted Computing can provide a small piece of truth which is useful for certain applications, some of which as I demonstrated in the grandparent posting would be extremely valuable for protecting privacy.
The problem is that Trusted Computers will have keys built in that the owner of the machine doesn't control.
Right, but keep in mind that nobody controls those keys. Only the TPM chip owns and controls them. And they are used exclusively to let the TPM chip say (and sign) information about the software configuration.
In the Tor case, if the Tor operator controlled his TPM keys, then he could be coerced into producing false information about his system. He could say that there was no Tor backdoor when actually he had been forced to install a backdoored version of Tor. This undercuts the whole point of Trusted Computing for secure networking. It would make the statements by the TPM useless.
So you've got to have those keys being owned and controlled solely by the TPM chip. It's not that big a threat, it's just a little chip and you can shut it down any time you like. But you can't make it lie, so if you use it, it's going to tell the truth.
I have faith and confidence that being able to reliably tell the truth won't be the end of the world. This is the fundamental point where I seem to differ from Trusted Computing opponents. To me, the truth is not a threat.
Tor users should run Trusted Computers. This is a technology that lets remote observers check the software configuration of the system they are connecting to. Most people think it is only for DRM but actually it has many privacy-protecting uses. If a Tor system were a TC, remote Tor clients could check that the Tor server was not logging connections, running a version of Tor with a back door, or doing other things to infringe privacy. Then if you were asked by a court why you didn't add features to your Tor software to log users and such, you could explain that if you did so, remote clients would be able to tell (due to Trusted Computing features) and so they would refuse to connect to your system and refuse to use it. Likewise if you were ordered to run a backdoored version of Tor it would not be effective, because people could see what you were doing.
Ironically, Trusted Computing, hated by the larger Internet community, can actually play an important part in protecting privacy. It is unfortunate that uninformed opposition has slowed the adoption of this potentially very useful and helpful technology. I am working hard to advance Trusted Computing and I can't wait for the day when I can run transparent servers which remote clients will be able to validate and trust. Someday I expect that all Tor servers, anonymous remailers and other privacy protecting technologies will run on Trusted Computers.
I had no idea that CL/DM was selling for so much. I just checked my shelf, I bought a copy for $18.95 in 1992 at the local university bookstore - the sticker's still on it.
I wonder why it's so expensive? The book is terrible, virtually unreadable. Ted Nelson is a nutcase by all reports. Look at the repeated failures of his Xanadu idea.
I guess I should probably sell it; it has no value to me and $150-200 would be pretty nice.
This doesn't break "public-key cryptography". Even if you could build a Shor-factorization machine big enough to use against real-world keys (and that's a *big* if), it's only good against RSA. Elliptic-curve cryptosystems, for example, would be entirely unaffected...
WRONG!!!!!
Actually I'll be polite because you're a girl.
You are misinformed. Shor's algorithm finds group orders, which suffices both to factor RSA keys and break discrete log systems, which include elliptic curves. Other posts here have explained this in more detail.
Anyway, it's a long way from running Shor's algorithm to factor 15 to being able to factor a 4096-bit RSA key. Remember that because of the no-cloning theorem you can't build a flip-flop for qubits, so quantum circuits are all combinatorial logic. Applying Shor's algorithm to real-world RSA keys would require building a complete modular exponentiator combinatorially out of quantum logic gates... blah, blah, blah.
Again you are misinformed. You don't build a combinatorial circuit. You have a bunch of qubits which stay put, and you use external influences like electromagnetic pulses to change their state. In this way you can lead the whole qubit "register" through a series of transformations that implement whatever quantum or non-quantum transformation you desire, including modular exponentiation. The specific circuit implemented is not hard-wired as with a combinatorial approach, it is programmed via the particular series of transformation applied to the array of qubits.
Thus the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
I always liked that quote but I think it would be better to say "the last invention that man will ever make." From that point on the future is out of our hands.
However, this is being done for the sole purpose of bypassing a clause in the GPLv3 that would require the manufacturer to essentially open the specifications of the device. There is no such clause. Mod parent up.
What is really happening here is that people were hoping to use GPLv3 as a bludgeon to overcome DRM. All that verbiage about wanting to update and improve their software was just cover for being able to get content they hadn't paid for.
This article shows how the security functionality can be removed from the main body of the OS and an isolation layer used to keep it separate and safe. You can update your GPL software to your heart's content, add features and functionality just like you claimed to want. Only one tiny detail, you can't break the security of the system and defeat the DRM. Awwww, too bad.
You will see that solar panel prices bottomed out back in 2003 and have been rising ever since. Demand is exceeding supply thanks to ever more generous subsidies, especially in Germany, which have driven up worldwide price. The truth is that solar costs more today than it has for several years, and costs are still rising slowly. It is a myth that solar prices are constantly coming down.
After all, all this system does is track things people do in PUBLIC - nobody should have any expectation of privacy from anything they do in PUBLIC!!! I fully agree with the above, even though I know you're being sarcastic. It is inevitable, with the proliferation of cameras in our society, that everything that happens in public will be available online. Even today, police can usually track vehicles through cities pretty well just via existing surveillance cameras on ATMs, commercial buildings, etc. It's a lot of work now, but with the continual increase in information accessibility it is just a matter of time before anyone can do it. David Brin's novel Earth foresaw exactly this outcome.
And really, how bad is that going to be? Already you have no real expectation of privacy when you do things in public. Suppose you visit a porn shop or go out with someone you're not supposed to be with. You can never be sure that you won't be seen. Even going to the next town or guiltily looking over your shoulder is no guarantee of privacy. There is no real privacy for public movements, and there never has been.
Making all this stuff available online is only a matter of degree and not a qualitative change. Already there are people who adopt this lifestyle voluntarily, of public openness and visibility. Most people's lives are boring and you could track their movements all day with nothing more than a yawn to show for it. Soon all of us will be in this situation. The sooner we begin to get used to the idea, the better.
Fight for privacy where it counts, in the home and on the net. But there never has been privacy on the streets. That is a lost cause.
Most people are unaware of the work going on as part of Xen for support of Trusted Computing. The Security Enhancements for Xen project is working on integrating the TPM into Xen so that virtual machines will get "measured" (hashed into the TPM) and Xen can report which VM is running using Remote Attestation. This way if someone hacks their VM, remote parties will know about it. Other technologies related to this include Intel's Trusted Execution Technology (aka LaGrande Technology) which adds security beyond the TPM to really lock down the machine. See this mailing list thread for discussion of the recent patch adding TXT support to Xen.
Personally I think this is fine and can really increase the security and utility of virtualization. But particularly with the recent release of GPLv3 and controversy over trusted computing it is interesting to see Xen moving in this direction. I imagine that it means that Xen will stick to GPLv2.
Let's not use any Energy that is not GPL'ed!!! Closed sources Energies are the cause of all evil!!!
No, no, GPL energy is dangerous! It infects other energy it comes into contact with and makes it GPL too. We can't have any GPL energy in our enterprise or the whole place will turn into GPL!
How can you object to people attesting to things? People attest to things all the time.
Because in this case, attestation means requiring a specific set of applications. If you are not using exactly the applications required by a particular service, you'll be locked out of that service. Bad for free software, bad for the free market, bad for the customer, but great for application vendors who can win themselves "trusted" status!
No, that's not what it means. Attestation does not mean requiring a specific set of applications. It means having the ability to believably report what software you are running.
There is no such thing as vendors who win "trusted" status. There is no such thing as "trusted" vendors. Special or "trusted" vendors are not a TCG concept. No group has more or better access to the TPM than anyone else.
I think I should be able to use whatever applications I want on my own machine.
You can!
I think I should be able to modify them.
You can!
But TCPA stops me doing that, by forcing me to adopt applications that are considered to be "trusted".
No, it doesn't. You can run whatever applications you want.
What it does do is allow you to report your software configuration reliably and believably. Maybe someone else won't talk to you unless you are running a certain software config. That's their prerogative. You can always tell them to get lost. They can't make you do anything you don't want to do. You can run whatever software you want and do whatever you want.
What you can't do is to force other people to behave as you would like them to. They have freedoms too.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately there are several DIFFERENT, INCOMPATIBLE concepts being bandied about under the name Trusted Computing. This new "Trusted Computing Project" took on that name seemingly without being aware that there was substantial work already under way on a different concept with the same name.
Perhaps to try to remedy the confusion, we can distinguish between TC as proposed by the Trusted Computing Group and other forms of TC. The TCG is an industry consortium with Microsoft, Intel, HP etc., dating back several years, originally called TCPA. Their proposal has always been controversial but IMO misunderstood.
TCG's flavor of TC is fundamentally open. I would call it Open Trusted Computing, OTC. It does not lock down your computer or try to prevent anything from running. It most emphatically does NOT "only run signed code" despite what has been falsely claimed for years. What it does do is allow the computer to provide trustworthy, reliable reports about the software that is running. These reports (called "attestations") might indicate a hash of the software, or perhaps a key that signed the software, or perhaps other properties or characteristics of the software, such as that it is sandboxed. All these details are left up to the OS, and that part of the technology is still in development.
Open Trusted Computing runs any software you like, but gives the software the ability to make these attestations that are cryptographically signed by a hardware-protected key and which cannot be forged. Bogus software can't masquerade as something other than it is. Virus-infected software can't claim to be clean. Hacked software can't claim to be the original. You have trustworthy identification of software and/or its properties. This allows you to do many things that readers might consider either good or bad. You could vote online and the vote server could make sure your voting client wasn't infected. You can play online games and make sure the peers are not running cheat programs. And yes, the iTunes Music Store could make sure it was only downloading to a legitimate iTunes client that would follow the DRM rules. It's good and bad, but the point is that it is open and you can still use your computer for whatever you want.
This is in contrast to some other projects which may or may not call themselves TC but which are focused on locking down the computer and limiting what you can run. The most familiar example is cell phones. They're actually computers but you generally can't run whatever you want. The iPhone is the most recent controversial example. Now they are going to relax the rules but apparently it will still only run signed software. This new "Trusted Computing Project" is the same idea, it will limit what software can run. Rumors claim that the next version of Apple's OS X will also have some features along these lines, that code which is not signed may have to run in sandboxes and have restrictions.
This general approach I would call Closed Trusted Computing, CTC. It has many problematic aspects, most generally that the manufacturer and not the user decides which software to trust. Your system comes with a list of built-in keys that limit what software can be installed and run with full privileges. At best you can install more software but it is not a first-class citizen of your computer and runs with limitations. Closed Trusted Computing takes decisions out of your hands.
But Open Trusted Computing as defined by the TCG is different. It lets you run any software you want and makes all of its functionality equally available to anyone. P2P software, open-source software, anything can take full advantage of its functionality. You could even have a fully open-source DRM implementation that used OTC technology: DRM code that you could even compile and build yourself and use to download high-value content. You would not be able to steal content downloaded by software you had built yourself. And you could be sure there were no back doors,
Note that this safe harbor does not require any compliance with notifications! However the article is confused and indicates that AOL's failure to comply with notifications caused it to lose this safe harbor.
A couple of weekends ago I participated in a local triathlon, and afterwards in the park they had stands set up with refreshments, gear, etc, where people gathered to wait for the results. I saw this giant mechanical-looking bug go zooming over the crowd, high in the air, maybe 20 feet up. It looked something like a dragonfly but was enormous, maybe six or eight inches long. The weird thing is that we don't have dragonflies around here, at least I've never seen one. At the time I wasn't sure if it was a real dragonfly or some kind of RC plane/copter. I looked around for someone controlling it but didn't see anything. It just made one pass over the crowd and was gone.
This was not any kind of political gathering, it was just a race like hundreds of others that occur across the country every weekend. But it really struck me as odd and I pointed it out to my wife. Then today I read this article about mechanical dragonflies, and I thought wow, that might have been what I saw.
Change requires time.
There would still be time after the change. However the metric would be different so that what used to be time would now be space-like. It still makes sense to imagine a block universe where there is a boundary, and on one side there is time as we know it, and on the other side there is a 4 dimensional Euclidean space.
It's hard to imagine Euclidean space with no timelike dimension. You might think nothing would "happen" with no flow of time. But this may be an oversimplification.
Ultimately, the reason things "happen" in our universe is not just because we have a timelike dimension; we also have an asymmetry in time that acts as an engine to make things change. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth in the Big Bang, he created a low entropy state. Ever since then the universe has been "running downhill" as entropy increases. This is why we perceive change and a flow of time.
From the block universe perspective, what we see is a universe with simple conditions at one end and complex ones in the middle, where we are. Differential equations, the laws of physics, govern how much change there can be from one time coordinate to the next. This ensures that the change is gradual and spreads out over the whole block.
Once we go past the boundary in the block into the Euclidean universe, the question is, what differential equations will control things? Different equations will produce different results.
One way to start is to think about particles. Understand that in the block universe, particles are not points, they are lines. And the simplest rule is that these lines follow geodesic curves, which are the curves of extremal length. This is what gives us gravitation. Well, if we go past the boundary, maybe that law will still hold. Particles will still be lines and will still follow geodesic curves. Those would be simple straight lines if the universe were flat, but it won't be, it will still be curved by matter in some way. This would lead to a different form of gravitation, perhaps repulsive rather than attractive (I haven't studied this part).
The point is that even with a Euclidean space, there might still be a form of time. When we make the transition into the Euclidean state, our initial conditions will be far from smooth (if it happens "soon"). The laws of physics which govern matter in the Euclidean part of the block may be such that there would still be a gradient in conditions from near the boundary to far from it. Then this might allow a sense in which time could still be perceived as passing. Perhaps life forms attuned to previous conditions would not survive in the new universe, but new ones might evolve adapted to the new versions of physical laws.
Even though the time dimension would not be physically different from the others, the initial conditions at the boundary would be different for this dimension than the others, so there still might be special physics related to that dimension, and in that sense a direction of time.
It's hard to visualize the interior of cells, because particles are smaller than light waves, it's all in a liquid medium, and everything is crowded. Scripps Institute researcher David Goodsell paints cell interiors in a sort of "two and half dimensional" view, showing the proteins and other macromolecules but leaving out water and small ions. You see a cross section plus a little more, and it is actually very helpful in terms of understanding how things fit together in a cell. The first painting here is E. Coli and shows the center, full of DNA all crowded and twisted onto spools (nucleosomes), surrounded mostly by ribosomes which create proteins. Then there is the cell membrane and in this view, a flagellum (which acts as a propeller).
This helps to understand the magnitude of Venter's project. DNA really does take up the majority of space in a cell like this. It's true that he's using the ribosomes and such that were already there, but replacing the DNA will totally change how the cell works and functions.
It will be interesting to see what happens if they add DNA for a structure like a flagellum which does not exist in the "donor" cell, or for a cell that is shaped very differently than the donor. The new cell should start to grow the appendages or change its shape appropriately. Some pretty freaky experiments will be possible.
An eBay member saved the account information that was posted before it got deleted. They have posted only the eBay account names, not any of the other data. You can look there to see if your account was one posted:
http://shenemanfamily.com/comp.html
It might be, then, that this language only applies to things like physical appliances that you buy and bring home, or which get built into your house like plumbing. Any software which is part of these devices, as we see more and more commonly, would be affected by this language. It would only apply to devices which are designed to have their software updated periodically, but if that is the case, under GPLv3 the manufacturers would have to supply any keys necessary to make sure the device works as well with user modifications as with manufacturer-approved ones.
However, it would seem that pure software products, including in particular software designed to implement Trusted Computing or make use of the TPM chip in many PCs to condition access to network resources to only certain versions, would not be affected by this. In fact it does not seem that GPLv3 touches Trusted Computing at all, at least if the software to enable the TC features were delivered separately, in intangible form.
Has anyone ever seen discussion of this point? Thanks!
Here is the New Scientist article being cited:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19526223.700-parallel-universes-make-quantum-sense.html
However it is behind a paywall. See Google Groups for the whole thing.
There is a great quote by physicist Max Tegmark: "The critique of many worlds is shifting from 'it makes no sense and I hate it' to simply 'I hate it'."
As far as the meat of it, traditionally the Many-Worlds Interpretation has had two technical objections raised. The first is called the basis problem, and the second is deriving correct probabilities. The basis problem is that when the universe "splits" it's not clear how it should split. The math allows for infinite different ways to split, but we only see one way. This has been solved in recent years by the study of decoherence, which in MWI terms is like looking at the splitting process up close. Turns out it can only happen one way in practice. So that one's done.
The article is more about the other one, deriving probabilities. Actually it's easy to derive probabilities in the MWI, but they're wrong. The right probabilities are what is called the Born rule, and it's been hard to get those. David Deutsch came up with a new idea in 1999 where he proposed tying it in to decision theory. He said that we really care about probabilities because they influence how we make decisions about what to do. If we can derive a reasonable decision theory within the MWI, then we've essentially explained probabilities. His work had some shortcomings but subsequent efforts have largely resolved those.
So now for the first time, the two traditional technical problems with the MWI have reasonably good solutions. Hence we are back to, as Tegmark says, "I hate it" as the main objection to the theory. Since that's not really a good argument, it can be said that the MWI should be considered the most compelling candidate for an interpretation of QM.
One final link, here is one of the papers that extends Deutsch's idea about decision theory and pretty much closes the holes: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312157. It's pretty technical but still a lot more readable than most physics papers.
The 21st century will be China's turn to be the world leader. All the talk and excuses we see here from Americans about how they don't care if China does beat us back to the moon is very much like what other countries said as they changed from being 1st rate to 2nd rate. Spain has had its turn, England, and now the U.S. is moving into China's eclipse. And of course we Americans will be able to lie to ourselves for quite a while that we're still the best "where it counts", just like the English and French and Spanish and all the others that were once great.
For that matter why wouldn't virus writers pay to get whitelisted? Running a botnet is a money making activity and it's likely to be even more lucrative in the future. Stolen financial records, extortion of gambling sites based on threatening DDOS, there are all kinds of ways to make money with a virus. That's what the article is about, how much more of a threat it's getting to be now that internet crime pays off. The point they seem to be overlooking is that with so much money on the line, virus writers are going to get their trojaned software approved, and there's no way to filter out malicious software in the approval process (it's theoretically impossible).
BTW I hope that whoever moderated the parent post "funny" realizes that it was a serious comment about how this new technology could improve privacy on the net, something that ought to be of interest to every user. I don't know if the moderators thought it was funny because it had never occured to them that Trusted Computing had good uses, or if they were being sarcastic and moderated it funny because they disagreed with the point. Either way, it is not actually funny and perhaps meta-moderators can help make that clear.
I'm not sure how Trusted Computing reintroduces trust to computing. Being able to prove that a file came from a particular computer doesn't prove much to me. Surely, we can do most of the nice things that is planned for TC with public key encryption - albeit without the dubious DRM benefits that the TC platform could potentially inflict upon us?
Those are great questions and I appreciate your open-minded spirit.
TC does far more than prove that a file came from a particular computer. It lets you securely verify that you are communicating with a particular program; potentially, one that you know the source code for. And it lets you know that the program runs in its own "jail" or partition, isolated from other programs and also from user actions. The program can store data such that no one else, no other program, no other user, no other operating system, can read it.
TC gives distributed software an unprecedented degree of autonomy and independence. It lets peer to peer software operate across a network with almost the same security as if each piece were running on a separate computer that no one could control. This is going to enable a whole new world of software development opportunities of which we can barely imagine the full implications.
A few obvious possibilities are distributed games, grid computing, internet voting, as well as privacy networks like Tor, anonymous remailers, anonymous chat, and many others. The ability to write software that can actually trust in the integrity and identity of its remote pieces will enable these and many more new developments.
IMO the reflexive opposition to Trusted Computing has been the biggest mistake the online community has ever made. It has turned this marvelous invention with all of its potential into a twisted caricature of itself, focusing on just one of its many possible uses.
Why did this happen? Ultimately, I am sorry to say, it was due to greed. Greed on the part of Internet users who fear only one thing above all else: that they may no longer be able to download music, movies and other content for free. The ironic thing is that TC probably wouldn't even do that much to stop content sharing, because these types of content can always be copied, at worst by putting microphones in front of speakers and video cameras in front of monitors. You'll always be able to take content. But fear of possible improvements in security technology enabled by Trusted Computing that could make content sharing somewhat more difficult has overridden all other responses.
The good thing is that Trusted Computing does not yet exist. I am doing my best to build Trusted Computer systems which will be used for "good" purposes and in that way to demonstrate that the common view of the technology is far too limited. I hope to have some demonstrations running within a few months.
Okay, can I read your bank statements? Or maybe the passwords for your porn site memberships? The truth isn't a threat, remember. So why not tell us?
There is a difference between being able to tell the truth and protecting privacy. It is in fact useful to be able to truthfully give out some of this kind of information. For example, being able to truthfully and reliably provide bank statements will be helpful in getting a loan or entering various kinds of business transactions. Imagine a world where it was somehow impossible to provide verifiable and trustworthy information; would that be a better place? It would destroy many efficient economic arrangements that we take for granted, and make us all poorer.
So I am grateful that it is possible to tell the truth about things in a way that is believable. All too often on the net we have the opposite problem, there is no way to know what is true and what is not. Trusted Computing can provide a small piece of truth which is useful for certain applications, some of which as I demonstrated in the grandparent posting would be extremely valuable for protecting privacy.
The problem is that Trusted Computers will have keys built in that the owner of the machine doesn't control.
Right, but keep in mind that nobody controls those keys. Only the TPM chip owns and controls them. And they are used exclusively to let the TPM chip say (and sign) information about the software configuration.
In the Tor case, if the Tor operator controlled his TPM keys, then he could be coerced into producing false information about his system. He could say that there was no Tor backdoor when actually he had been forced to install a backdoored version of Tor. This undercuts the whole point of Trusted Computing for secure networking. It would make the statements by the TPM useless.
So you've got to have those keys being owned and controlled solely by the TPM chip. It's not that big a threat, it's just a little chip and you can shut it down any time you like. But you can't make it lie, so if you use it, it's going to tell the truth.
I have faith and confidence that being able to reliably tell the truth won't be the end of the world. This is the fundamental point where I seem to differ from Trusted Computing opponents. To me, the truth is not a threat.
Sounds like some tough issues. Good thing they have 993 years to get it right.
Tor users should run Trusted Computers. This is a technology that lets remote observers check the software configuration of the system they are connecting to. Most people think it is only for DRM but actually it has many privacy-protecting uses. If a Tor system were a TC, remote Tor clients could check that the Tor server was not logging connections, running a version of Tor with a back door, or doing other things to infringe privacy. Then if you were asked by a court why you didn't add features to your Tor software to log users and such, you could explain that if you did so, remote clients would be able to tell (due to Trusted Computing features) and so they would refuse to connect to your system and refuse to use it. Likewise if you were ordered to run a backdoored version of Tor it would not be effective, because people could see what you were doing.
Ironically, Trusted Computing, hated by the larger Internet community, can actually play an important part in protecting privacy. It is unfortunate that uninformed opposition has slowed the adoption of this potentially very useful and helpful technology. I am working hard to advance Trusted Computing and I can't wait for the day when I can run transparent servers which remote clients will be able to validate and trust. Someday I expect that all Tor servers, anonymous remailers and other privacy protecting technologies will run on Trusted Computers.
I had no idea that CL/DM was selling for so much. I just checked my shelf, I bought a copy for $18.95 in 1992 at the local university bookstore - the sticker's still on it.
I wonder why it's so expensive? The book is terrible, virtually unreadable. Ted Nelson is a nutcase by all reports. Look at the repeated failures of his Xanadu idea.
I guess I should probably sell it; it has no value to me and $150-200 would be pretty nice.
This doesn't break "public-key cryptography". Even if you could build a Shor-factorization machine big enough to use against real-world keys (and that's a *big* if), it's only good against RSA. Elliptic-curve cryptosystems, for example, would be entirely unaffected...
WRONG!!!!!
Actually I'll be polite because you're a girl.
You are misinformed. Shor's algorithm finds group orders, which suffices both to factor RSA keys and break discrete log systems, which include elliptic curves. Other posts here have explained this in more detail.
Anyway, it's a long way from running Shor's algorithm to factor 15 to being able to factor a 4096-bit RSA key. Remember that because of the no-cloning theorem you can't build a flip-flop for qubits, so quantum circuits are all combinatorial logic. Applying Shor's algorithm to real-world RSA keys would require building a complete modular exponentiator combinatorially out of quantum logic gates... blah, blah, blah.
Again you are misinformed. You don't build a combinatorial circuit. You have a bunch of qubits which stay put, and you use external influences like electromagnetic pulses to change their state. In this way you can lead the whole qubit "register" through a series of transformations that implement whatever quantum or non-quantum transformation you desire, including modular exponentiation. The specific circuit implemented is not hard-wired as with a combinatorial approach, it is programmed via the particular series of transformation applied to the array of qubits.
Thus the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
I always liked that quote but I think it would be better to say "the last invention that man will ever make." From that point on the future is out of our hands.
What is really happening here is that people were hoping to use GPLv3 as a bludgeon to overcome DRM. All that verbiage about wanting to update and improve their software was just cover for being able to get content they hadn't paid for.
This article shows how the security functionality can be removed from the main body of the OS and an isolation layer used to keep it separate and safe. You can update your GPL software to your heart's content, add features and functionality just like you claimed to want. Only one tiny detail, you can't break the security of the system and defeat the DRM. Awwww, too bad.
Everyone likes to think that solar is getting cheaper every year just like computers and disk drives, but it's not true. Look at this chart:
http://www.solarbuzz.com/
You will see that solar panel prices bottomed out back in 2003 and have been rising ever since. Demand is exceeding supply thanks to ever more generous subsidies, especially in Germany, which have driven up worldwide price. The truth is that solar costs more today than it has for several years, and costs are still rising slowly. It is a myth that solar prices are constantly coming down.
And really, how bad is that going to be? Already you have no real expectation of privacy when you do things in public. Suppose you visit a porn shop or go out with someone you're not supposed to be with. You can never be sure that you won't be seen. Even going to the next town or guiltily looking over your shoulder is no guarantee of privacy. There is no real privacy for public movements, and there never has been.
Making all this stuff available online is only a matter of degree and not a qualitative change. Already there are people who adopt this lifestyle voluntarily, of public openness and visibility. Most people's lives are boring and you could track their movements all day with nothing more than a yawn to show for it. Soon all of us will be in this situation. The sooner we begin to get used to the idea, the better.
Fight for privacy where it counts, in the home and on the net. But there never has been privacy on the streets. That is a lost cause.
Most people are unaware of the work going on as part of Xen for support of Trusted Computing. The Security Enhancements for Xen project is working on integrating the TPM into Xen so that virtual machines will get "measured" (hashed into the TPM) and Xen can report which VM is running using Remote Attestation. This way if someone hacks their VM, remote parties will know about it. Other technologies related to this include Intel's Trusted Execution Technology (aka LaGrande Technology) which adds security beyond the TPM to really lock down the machine. See this mailing list thread for discussion of the recent patch adding TXT support to Xen.
Personally I think this is fine and can really increase the security and utility of virtualization. But particularly with the recent release of GPLv3 and controversy over trusted computing it is interesting to see Xen moving in this direction. I imagine that it means that Xen will stick to GPLv2.
Let's not use any Energy that is not GPL'ed!!! Closed sources Energies are the cause of all evil!!!
No, no, GPL energy is dangerous! It infects other energy it comes into contact with and makes it GPL too. We can't have any GPL energy in our enterprise or the whole place will turn into GPL!
How can you object to people attesting to things? People attest to things all the time.
Because in this case, attestation means requiring a specific set of applications. If you are not using exactly the applications required by a particular service, you'll be locked out of that service. Bad for free software, bad for the free market, bad for the customer, but great for application vendors who can win themselves "trusted" status!
No, that's not what it means. Attestation does not mean requiring a specific set of applications. It means having the ability to believably report what software you are running.
There is no such thing as vendors who win "trusted" status. There is no such thing as "trusted" vendors. Special or "trusted" vendors are not a TCG concept. No group has more or better access to the TPM than anyone else.
I think I should be able to use whatever applications I want on my own machine.
You can!
I think I should be able to modify them.
You can!
But TCPA stops me doing that, by forcing me to adopt applications that are considered to be "trusted".
No, it doesn't. You can run whatever applications you want.
What it does do is allow you to report your software configuration reliably and believably. Maybe someone else won't talk to you unless you are running a certain software config. That's their prerogative. You can always tell them to get lost. They can't make you do anything you don't want to do. You can run whatever software you want and do whatever you want.
What you can't do is to force other people to behave as you would like them to. They have freedoms too.