Microsoft No Longer Into Trustworthy Computing By Any Name

from the ummmm... dept

Remember a couple years ago when "Trustworthy Computing" was going to be the major focus of Microsoft going forward? A few months later they officially announced their plans for Palladium - which was designed to be their trustworthy computing platform. The only problem was that the details scared quite a few people. Following all those complaints, Microsoft tried to play down the concept by renaming it to the impossible to remember Next-Generation Secure Computing Base guaranteeing that most average folks would skip over any news article about it, assuming it was way too techie for them to care. However, now, it turns out that they've decided to kill the entire NGSCB program altogether. They'll probably still use some of it in Longhorn, but it's no longer a major initiative. Update: Oh wait, there it is. John writes in to point out that Microsoft is now denying the original story, despite plenty of quotes from a Microsoft exec.
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  1. identicon
    NOBODY, 5 May 2004 @ 12:17pm

    No Subject Given

    Of course they're killing it. It's been hurting sales. Linux advocates also point to some of it's really creepy features as a reason to switch. Many people are.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Mark, 5 May 2004 @ 1:44pm

    trustworthy computing

    Microsoft's only interest in trustworthy computing was as a sales initiative. If they looked at their numbers and saw no sales spike resulting from the slogan, they'd kill it immediately. My guess is that's just what happened: they didn't see a sales benefit from the PR initiative (which so far is all Trustworthy Computing amounted to), and so they've changed their messaging. SOP, and that's the way it will remain in Redmond until the day the company goes under.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 May 2004 @ 4:28pm

    Trustworthy Computing

    I doubt that Microsoft will ever give up on "Trustworthy Computing". I just offers the potential for too much power to resist. If the public protests they may rename it, hide it, or pretend to have no interest in it, but they will never drop it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    thecaptain, 6 May 2004 @ 6:12am

    Re: Trustworthy Computing

    You are right, many of the old Palladium features are planned to be included in longhorn under the NX security architecture...basically more under the radar of the consumer.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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