A Few Reasons To Fear Palladium
from the in-case-you-weren't-already dept
The Register has two good articles giving you even more reasons to fear Microsoft's (in association with Intel & AMD) plan for "secure computing", which also backdoors in a nice little digital rights management plan. First the Register points out how how Palladium can kill Linux as a side benefit for Microsoft. Then, they explain how the Intel's contribution is really a rehashing of their sneaky Processor Serial Number plan, where every processor would have a unique identifier - and any sort of privacy you had would be thrown out the window. It turned into a PR nightmare when people pointed out they didn't think that was fair, so this is a way for them to sneak the same plan back in under this whole "secure computing" initiative.
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The proper reaction
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Religious or not...
Revelation 13:17, And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Kind of spooky.
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Re: Religious or not...
Unfortunately you need one of these numbers now-a-days to buy or sell just about anything. Just about anything we currently do can be fit nicely into the Book of Revelations, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world is tomorrow or next week...I wouldn't look into stockpiling just yet.
However, this Microsoft UID on every single machine for Palladium is scaring me a little bit. Will my OpenBSD machine need one of those too?
Also, anyone else think Palladium was just about the worst name Microsoft could have come up with? I've never thought of anything Microsoft has ever produced as being a "safeguard" or a "guarantee of the integrity of social institutions". Then again, Microsoft forming a revolution and taking over the US government would probably explain for the reason they chose it, due to the second definition of Palladium, "A sacred object that was believed to have the power to preserve a city or state possessing it."
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Re: Religious or not...
I hate responding to my own comments like this...but I just had to, it is too rich...
Palladium came from greek, Palladiom, which of course came from the statue of Pallus Athena which was believed to be a sacred statue which protected the City of Troy from conquest by the Greeks...which of course, we all know what happened there (Trojan Horses anyone.)
Of course, just goes to prove the old adage, "Those who do not learn from history are damned to repeat it."
Just waiting for the sweet day when someone writes a Trojan Horse to attack a Palladium "supposidly secure" system.
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