Microsoft's bid to sieze control of all PC use

[Enlightenment]

Everyone's favorite snake oil salesmen are at it again. Microsoft is currently working with Intel to make future PCs incapable of running applications that haven't been blessed with Microsoft's stamp of approval. The authentication process will be a component of Windows and as such, Linux will literally be a non starter.

Furthermore, since application approval is unlikely to be free, this move will kill mySQL, Apache, StarOffice, Mozilla and indeed all open source, zero-cost, and individual software development on the PC platform.

It is also worth noting that the PC security system will render unusable all legacy applications that aren't issued retroactive rights to exist. Forget about not upgrading your software when Microsoft tells you to.

http://212.58.240.130/hi/english/sc...000/2094167.stm

[Einhander Snoman]

Examples of where I saw it (and where I hang out )
www.slashdot.org
www.spywareinfo.com
theregister.co.uk
www.cexx.org
and.doxdesk.com
www.wilders.org
and I'm sure all the 31337 H4x0r sites have it somewhere.. Just Say NO to Palladium! Lata and Happy Fragging!

[Zoink]

Solution?: buy AMD

[His Divine Shadow]

The solution lies in visiting arstechnica.com's battlefront and get the lowdown on whats happening.

[Durandal]

The solution is to elect (yes, elect, not appoint) a president who isn't really chummy with big corporations and whose administration won't let The Beast off with little slaps on the wrist. Microsoft should be broken up and should be forced to support open standards rather than developing closed, inferior "standards" of their own.

With Palladium looming over the horizon, I find it utterly laughable that Microsoft can claim not to be a monopoly whose chief concern is complete digital domination and using their illegally acquired market leverage to undercut and crush any competition.

[Rob Wilson]

Well if that doesn't boost sales of AMD, nothing will.

BTW do you guys want to post those links in the Useful URLS[links only] thread? As I'm sure they will be helpful to most of us and any related subjct links as well.
Cheers

[Icehawk]

I never thought Microsoft would actually try something as stupid as this...

Oh well AMD, here I come

[SPOOFE]

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!!

[Rob Wilson]

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!!

Nah, that's just your Windows Desktop crashing.

[His Divine Shadow]

As I said on SB, this is either:
a) bullshit
b) Blown out of proportion

[SPOOFE]

Nah, that's just your Windows Desktop crashing.

Yeah, both incidents do occur with about the same amount of frequency...

[Nick]

As I said on SB, this is either:
a) bullshit
b) Blown out of proportion

c) You have entirely too much faith in Microsoft to do anything which is not in their own corporate interest.

As follows:

"Hi, use Palladium and you get access to all of this high quality music and movies from the RIAA and the MPAA. No need to worry that you might be doing anything illegal - just click your mouse and all of this can be yours"

If you use AMD or Mac, then it won't be possible to access the things Palladium lets you get at. The question will be whether even the non-technical populace will swallow that one (although, there's also that bill in the American house of reps which is aimed at making your PC illegal. . .)

[Rob Wilson]

(although, there's also that bill in the American house of reps which is aimed at making your PC illegal. . .)

Huh?

[Durandal]

The RIAA and MPAA have their monkey in Congress (can't remember his name, I think it's "Bobo") pushing a bill that would require all computer hardware to be built so that it would not support MP3 or similar media files without special permission from the two asinine entertainment giants. So, all hard drives would be unable to store MP3 and AVI files and the like unless you bought permission for that. Something like that. It's plainly ludicrous.

[Rob Wilson]

The RIAA and MPAA have their monkey in Congress (can't remember his name, I think it's "Bobo") pushing a bill that would require all computer hardware to be built so that it would not support MP3 or similar media files without special permission from the two asinine entertainment giants. So, all hard drives would be unable to store MP3 and AVI files and the like unless you bought permission for that. Something like that. It's plainly ludicrous.

How the hell can it be done physically? I could understand if they were after a software patch, but this is stupid beyond belief. Anyway, snce when do Corporate committee's get to make law? And if they do pass this then watch as every other country in the world suddenly gets a boost to it's Computer Hardware building industries as people leave the American ones in droves as they restrict consumer use. Are they trying to shutdown the American Computer trade altogether?

[Darth Wong]

The RIAA and MPAA have their monkey in Congress (can't remember his name, I think it's "Bobo")

Senator Fritz Hollings. Mindless puppet of the big evil media conglomerates who are trying to take over the country. I hear that he changed his name. It used to be "Nute Gunray".

pushing a bill that would require all computer hardware to be built so that it would not support MP3 or similar media files without special permission from the two asinine entertainment giants. So, all hard drives would be unable to store MP3 and AVI files and the like unless you bought permission for that. Something like that. It's plainly ludicrous.

Here's the basic problem: media companies want to control the movement of their intellectual property all over the world. They once thought this could be done by copy-protecting it. However, it's becoming obvious that the hackers will always be one step ahead of them. So they decided that if they can't copy-protect it, they have to neuter the entire computer industry so that computers won't play copyrighted material.

But here's the problem: how does the computer know if it's copyrighted? The first thing a hacker will do is remove any copyright flags, right? So the computers must use a "default deny" policy, whereby their refuse to play anything unless given specific permission to do so, which they must obtain on a file-by-file basis from the media companies. In other words, the big media companies get to control what you can see, hear, or read on your home computer (think of it as replacing your VCR with a pay-per-view box). This could never fly in an open environment where people will simply disable the offending code, so they need to get in cahoots with Microsoft and convince them to help them in their quest for global domination, by building this software into the next version of Windows, code-named "Windows Palladium" (or perhaps more aptly, "Windows Surveillium").

In order to do this, they need to install a "Big Brother" chip on every machine, which steps in and pronounces "Thought Crime" if you try to view, read, or hear something which is not approved by the Ministries of Truth at Time-Warner, Disney, et al. And of course, since hackers will try to remove this chip, they need to make it illegal to reverse-engineer computer technology or tamper with copy protection in any way (which they have already done, with the DMCA).

The plan is already well underway, and only us "geeks" seem to be aware of it. Everyone else will blissfully stand by and quietly allow the total elimination of all electronic freedom of communication rights, because corporate intellectual property rights are deemed more important than individual human rights.

[Iceberg]

*Ice fantasizes about dropping a nuclear bomb on Redmond, WA*

Ahhhhhh... That felt good. Not quite as good as lightsabering Darth Bill's ass into a billion pieces, but good nevertheless. And now for an encore presentation, maybe I'll go shoot up Renton, WA with a blaster rifle...

[Robert Treder]

Hey...not to ruin your fun or anything, but non-Microsoft employees live in those places, too.

[Iceberg]

That's why I'm fantasizing about it, instead of taking a cross-country trip to Minot, ND to stea^H^H^H^Hborrow a B-52.

Ahhhh, memories. I once got the chance to take a tour of a B-52, while on the way to Richardton, ND to visit my great-grandparents.

[Robert Treder]

hehe, all right, but just be careful that Microsoft's mind police don't catch on, or you'll be in big trouble.

[Enlightenment]

Hey...not to ruin your fun or anything, but non-Microsoft employees live in those places, too.

If given the opportunity to launch an armed SS-18 at late 1930s Berlin, I doubt there are very many people in the civilized world who would choose not to do so. Expending the entire population of Berlin for the sake of killing Hitler is a tradeoff most people in the west could accept.

The threat posed by Microsoft's ever increasing domination of information is such that they may very well become the Nazi party of the 21st century. Unlike the Nazis they will not exert control by killing people, rather, they will exert control by making it impossible to express information--think--in ways that they do not like. In fifty years time I have very little doubt that everyone will look back and agree that--like exchanging Berlin for the early ellimination of Hitler--exchanging Redmond for the destruction of Microsoft would have been an extremely fair trade.

[Robert Treder]

Hey...not to ruin your fun or anything, but non-Microsoft employees live in those places, too.

If given the opportunity to launch an armed SS-18 at late 1930s Berlin, I doubt there are very many people in the civilized world who would choose not to do so. Expending the entire population of Berlin for the sake of killing Hitler is a tradeoff most people in the west could accept.

The threat posed by Microsoft's ever increasing domination of information is such that they may very well become the Nazi party of the 21st century. Unlike the Nazis they will not exert control by killing people, rather, they will exert control by making it impossible to express information--think--in ways that they do not like. In fifty years time I have very little doubt that everyone will look back and agree that--like exchanging Berlin for the early ellimination of Hitler--exchanging Redmond for the destruction of Microsoft would have been an extremely fair trade.

Uhhh...ok. But let's cool it, Minority Report...we'll kill people when they've gone and done something worthy of being killed. Microsoft is bad now, but they're not nuke bad. And if there's some sort of future Micronazisoft in store for us, we'll just have to wait and firebomb their citizens when they come along...pre-emptive strikes are acceptable, but it's usually understood that what they pre-empt is going to happen within a year or so, right?

[Rob Wilson]

Hey...not to ruin your fun or anything, but non-Microsoft employees live in those places, too.

If given the opportunity to launch an armed SS-18 at late 1930s Berlin, I doubt there are very many people in the civilized world who would choose not to do so. Expending the entire population of Berlin for the sake of killing Hitler is a tradeoff most people in the west could accept.

The threat posed by Microsoft's ever increasing domination of information is such that they may very well become the Nazi party of the 21st century. Unlike the Nazis they will not exert control by killing people, rather, they will exert control by making it impossible to express information--think--in ways that they do not like. In fifty years time I have very little doubt that everyone will look back and agree that--like exchanging Berlin for the early ellimination of Hitler--exchanging Redmond for the destruction of Microsoft would have been an extremely fair trade.

What's needed is skill not brute force. Why kill all those people unnecessarily when one trained man and an L-96 could stop the board of Microsoft from ever being a nuisance.

[Lord MJ]

I posted a topic about this in the Trekbbs and pretty much all the arguments were supporting M$ right to do this.


Arguments ranged from:

"It's thier hardware/Operating System, so if they want to change it so that competing software cant run on it, they have a right to do it."

"If consumers don't like Paladium they can use another product"

"The RIAA has a right to protect it's IP"

"You do not have the right to choose what software can and can not run on your computer"

"Paladium is no different than Playstations not being able to run Gamecube games, X-Boxes not being able to run N64 games."


Arguments 1 and 2 are wrong because of Microsofts monopoly status. A smaller company could make something like Palladium legally, but larger companies with the market control in Microsoft cant. And Microsoft will use it's monopoly power to prevent consumer choice.

Argument 3 is invalid because in doing so they are punishing law abiding citizens as well.

Argument 4 is up for debate. And argument 5 is so stupid I won't even bother discussing it.

[Darth Wong]

I posted a topic about this in the Trekbbs and pretty much all the arguments were supporting M$ right to do this.
...

I have personally encountered quite a few Trekkies who defend Micro$oft, sometimes vehemently. Could it be that there is something intrinsic to the Star Trek experience that predisposes one to forgive Micro$oft for its unrepentant efforts to eliminate freedom of choice and freedom of communication? Could it be that years of exposure to the monotony of the omnipresent LCARS interface and single-vendor computing environment of Star Trek lowers the psychological barriers to something as intrusive as Windows Surveillium?

Perhaps Star Trek's intrusive, inflexible, conformist, homogeneous, omni-present, insecure, zero-privacy, single-vendor computing environment tends to condition viewers to accept (and perhaps even desire) the same thing in real life.