Very Good Article on MS Palladium

[Sir Krustin]

Originally posted by Wurm: Neb I am a full supporter of a MS led world, if it wasn't for MS we wouldn't be writing to each other across thousand of miles or enjoying the many games that we do. But if you think I trust MS... well then I have some land near Live Oak Florida to sell you [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Untrue, the internet and it's standards are totally o/s independant. In fact, most of the standards used today were conceived well before winblows was commercially successful.

I was networking with OS/2 long before winblows had reliable PPP software, and while win3.1 sufferers rebooted to dos to get reliable comms I was able to multitask and play games in a dos window while I was downloading in another.

As for games, until the late 90s OS/2 was a much better platform for games than winblows, and there were companies generating 7 digit returns at that time. Unfortunately, micro$hafts underhanded business practices and IBM's lackluster customer support eroded OS/2s customer base to the point where it was not commercially viable to do so, and eventually killed OS/2. Today, even with a 10 year technology edge, winblows still hasn't displaced OS/2 as my main o/s. In fact there are a few things I simply cannot do with 98se that OS/2 handles with ease. {such as recognizing both my scanner and my cd-burner at the same time}

The worst thing about micro$haft dominance today is the insistance of newbies of using the latest office software to send simple text documents, or using frontpage - with it's broken html output - to generate webpages, that only micro$hafts software can reliably read.

In micro$hafts eyes, standards were made to be broken...unless they developed them, in that case they come down like a ton of bricks on offenders.

[ 11-07-2002, 06:10 PM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

[Vaskez]

This may sound stupid, and I know business is business, but if there are truly evil companies out there, MS is one of the worst. They will do anything to fill their pockets and crush their competitors.

[andrewas]

Originally posted by Sir Krustin: Frankly, I don't see hardware issues entering into it. This is an o/s issue, and I can't see how an extra feature in the hardware can force an o/s to deny access to specific data on your system, especially if that o/s is designed to ignore said security

By denying the OS access to the hardware unless it can supply a palladium key.
They could charge a monthly license fee on your bloody *hardware* with this thing. Now Im freaked.

In fact, if an application is palladium-compliant, the OS has zero say in it, you cant decrypt the application to run it without a palladium chip and a license.

So Linux itself probably wont do it - it would be hard to implement in open source, and is against the general linux philosophy. But individual applications are another matter. Not everything under Linux is open-source.

Palladium is a serious threat. I hope the US government is competent enough to see what power it will give to M$ (And lets face it, M$ are the ones behind this. Intel and AMD are cooperating, but M$ are the ones making megabucks from it) and stop it.

[Sir Krustin]

I still don't think hardware is an issue. All it takes is a large percentage of users to refuse to buy the hardware to make it bomb. Yes, you can force hardware manufacturers to not support Palladium with your wallet.

When you buy hardware, make sure you ask "is it palladium compliant?" if the answer is "yes" then refuse to buy it. Tell your friends to do the same. Let them know the dangers of Palladium. Palladium will be a dead cow.

One of my main requirements when buying mobos is still OS/2 and Linux compatibility; if it won't work with either I don't buy it.

As to Palladium compliant apps, again refuse to buy them.

[andrewas]

Originally posted by Sir Krustin: I still don't think hardware is an issue. All it takes is a large percentage of users to refuse to buy the hardware to make it bomb. Yes, you can force hardware manufacturers to not support Palladium with your wallet.

Consumers wield significant power, but I dont think its enough. There will be a proportion who dont realise or dont care about the threat. Then there will be those who require more power. Remember, the next generation CPUs are not far away, if M$ have any brains palladium will be introduced with that generation. How many gamers are going to ignore a tenfold increase in clock rate (last figures I saw) just because of palladium?

With both the major intel-architecture CPU manufacturers cooperating with this, it may soon be *impossible* to avoid getting the Palladium hardware if you want to stay half-current.

I dont know enough to say whether or not this can affect Linux. In theory the chip could lock out access to hardware unless the OS was palladium compliant, but doing that would get M$ sued, and even their fancy lawyers can only twist the law so far. On balance, I think Linux will operate, although commercial application development would suffer if Linux didnt allow palladium to operate through it.

[Sir Krustin]

[quote]Originally posted by andrewas:

Consumers wield significant power, but I dont think its enough. There will be a proportion who dont realise or dont care about the threat. Then there will be those who require more power. Remember, the next generation CPUs are not far away, if M$ have any brains palladium will be introduced with that generation. How many gamers are going to ignore a tenfold increase in clock rate (last figures I saw) just because of palladium? With both the major intel-architecture CPU manufacturers cooperating with this, it may soon be *impossible* to avoid getting the Palladium hardware if you want to stay half-current.

AMD got it's start in satisfying customers who didn't want to buy Intel products. All it takes in one guy with a lot of money and guts who's willing to do another offshore startup to develop compatible CPUs that do not support Palladium. If enough pressure is brought to bear (eg, emails telling them in no uncertain terms that no CPU supporting Palladium will be purchased) existing CPU manufacturers may decline to fully support Palladium, producing non-Palladium versions of their CPU line.

I dont know enough to say whether or not this can affect Linux. In theory the chip could lock out access to hardware unless the OS was palladium compliant, but doing that would get M$ sued, and even their fancy lawyers can only twist the law so far. On balance, I think Linux will operate, although commercial application development would suffer if Linux didnt allow palladium to operate through it.

I don't think commercial software development will suffer at all, if anything this would spur development of compatible software. I have freeware opensource copies of several major types of office and productivity linux software that either replace or are totally compatible with winblows offerings. And they're every bit as good! One good example is gimp which is a form of photoshop. It's a lot different to use with a different interface paradigm but it does exactly the same job, every bit as powerful as photoshop - and it's FREE.