New Version of Windows

[Kracus]

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

What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?

It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.

TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: Palladium could be the answer to his prayer.

There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.

There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor.

[FATTY_VM]

wow .. that awful .. i sure as hell hope we all dont get stuck using crap like that.

[El Banana]

This is more or less the same thing in a more militant, "anti-microsoft" tone. Still makes an interesting read.

Here

[Chao]

Paladium does seem a very scary development in computer technology however I can see it coming under some serious problems in the courts under any number of reasons from civil rights to anti-monopoly suits. Also Paladium is planned to be put into new Pentium chips aswell, implying it could be something that only works as a combination between CPU and OS meaning that if you stick to AMD or keep a copy of Windows XP lying around you'll be fine. Even if it still works with just one of them including Paladium it would be easy to bypass a single implementation of it, the hackers would be all over the new Windows to bypass it, lets all remember about activation being bypassed quite quickly.

[hackerzc]

THIS SOUNDS LIKE HELL!!!!!! What do you mean there is a down side also!?!?!? It all sounds like a fucing down side to me.

You had me very worried till I saw this:
12. Scary stuff. But can't you just turn it off?

Sure - unless your system administrator configures your machine in such a way that TCPA is mandatory, you can always turn it off. You can then run your PC with administrator privileges, and use insecure applications


If this is the case I have nothing to worry about because I have administrative privileges over any PC I use.

[Kracus]

Paladium does seem a very scary development in computer technology however I can see it coming under some serious problems in the courts under any number of reasons from civil rights to anti-monopoly suits. Also Paladium is planned to be put into new Pentium chips aswell, implying it could be something that only works as a combination between CPU and OS meaning that if you stick to AMD or keep a copy of Windows XP lying around you'll be fine. Even if it still works with just one of them including Paladium it would be easy to bypass a single implementation of it, the hackers would be all over the new Windows to bypass it, lets all remember about activation being bypassed quite quickly.

AMD is in on it as well.

[Kracus]

Sure - unless your system administrator configures your machine in such a way that TCPA is mandatory, you can always turn it off. You can then run your PC with administrator privileges, and use insecure applications


If this is the case I have nothing to worry about because I have administrative privileges over any PC I use.

yea that is true, then it really only bothers those who use pirated software, music and I would say someone who might try to create a virus.

[El Banana]

The thing is that, according to my article, even if you do not buy or upgrade to palladium, once the number of users goes critical, you'd essentially be unable to use the internet.

....Microsoft will own the internet?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOoooooOOOO!!!!

[Kracus]

I still couldn't believe the story about Microsoft putting updates in Windows that would corrupt Netscape so people wouldn't use it. or I should say couldn't. Such a honest business.

[RadicalEd0]

I somehow doubt that the world would allow Palladium to cause the internet to be unusable to anyone else. The simple solution to this bs is linux. Now, obviously if something as rash and bullheaded as this were to happen via m$, the linux and mac world would see a whole new side of business as smart people like us shove microsoft's products back in its face. Sure every granny and mom who dosent know what theyre doing will buy a PC with palladium, but I'm not sure what those users have over linux supporters, or just people with half a brain like us.
Other than the allegiance of alternate OSes which (unless M$ somehow works to have them taken off the globe, which wouldn't be legal in any way), it will also open up a hacker and cracker dreamland. The stuff would be eaten into fiercely by them types and may even cause their numbers and strength to grow. Basically, the more control microsoft tries to enforce the more people will support alternate OSes and the more people will fuck around with the controllers more hardcore than they do now.

I'm not worried, of course, maybe its cuz THERE IS A REAL WORLD OUT THERE THAT IM JUST SO NOT IN TOUCH WITH UNCLEMILO