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> DRM/Palladium means that trusted code has to verified by the OS. This places sole
> and complete control of what code your computer can run in the hands of
> intel/microsoft.

No, it places control in the hands of the software vendors and content providers.

> DRM/palladium isn't neccassary.

What about renting movies online, or a bunch of other new services that Palladium will enable? Vendors need to have secure storage on your computer fo this to work; otherwise, people would just copy the media and give it to all their friends. How does one make money that way?

I see absolutely no problem with DRM/Palladium; it's voluntary, and if you do not like it, then you do not need to buy software that uses it.

> Decent code and some simple changes on the OS side would fix 99% of the problems
> in the wintel world.

Uh, sure.

> How many viruses do you see for *nix systems?

None, but then again I do not know of any script kiddies with grudges against SGI, HP, or IBM.

> As for DRM management.. it's not my fault the record/movie companies still haven't
> developed a decent online purchasing system or adopted to the times. Sorry, touch
> luck RIAA/mpAA

I think that you are shooting yourself in the foot here. Palladium would enable a huge range of new pricing structures that digital media producers might actually consider adopting. They are not total idiots, after all. With the current DRM media, circumvention is fairly easy because it can be done in software; Palladium would prevent software from ever being able to use the media in a way that you did not agree on at the time of purchase.

> You are trusting your computer to a company with a huge record for security holes in
> its products.

The same could be said for anyone who runs Windows XP - or 95 for that matter - and I do not see how Palladium changes any of that.

> Microsoft's security track record isn't exactly sterling and you want to trust them
> to develop a method for implemnting secure code services?

(You are contradicting yourself here. First you fear the complete control that you claim Microsoft would have, and then you are saying that they could never have complete control. Which is it?)

It was my understanding that Palladium was being constructed by many different companies with Microsoft leading the initiative. Furthermore, most of the work would obviously have to be done in hardware (read: on the CPU) for it to have even reasonable speed, and the only thing that Microsoft would actually be doing at the OS level is providing an API for the hardware functions.

For example, a game would use the API to mark its movie files as readable only by the game itself; the hardware would handle the encryption/decryption and protection, and Windows would just provide the C functions that allow applications to easily communicate with the protection hardware. Whether those files are on disk or in memory, only the game itself could actually access them.

Game developers could provide media in standard formats and just use the Palladium hardware to protect; currently, they all have their own formats and they have to worry about the content getting ripped.

MMORPGs would be much better because the data could be stored locally instead of on the company's servers. You could have as many characters as you have disk space, instead of being limited to a fixed amount (to save server space). Why? Game developers could freely store your game data locally and mark it as inaccessible by the end user. This would make it impossible to modify your data outside the game (read: cheating) without actually buying hardware to circumvent Palladium. No more map hacks, no more trainers, no more cheat utilities. Of course, there would still be the transmission of game data over public networks (such as the Internet), but even then you would have to have some kind of computer sitting between the client and server to intercept and modify the packets.

> Advertising slogan? Rip.Mix.Burn. Not on your pc you won't be able to. Simple enough
> for you?

Only if you buy DRM media. And frankly, with the proliferation of MP3 players and media hubs, I do not see limiting CD burning as a way of eliminating freedom. My CD burner sits idle most of the time because burning CD's just to make music collections is too much of a hassle; I would much rather have a central repository for the house and store only the playlists on the individual computers.

> Obviously Palladium will only result in crackers digging a bit deeper to remove the
> "copy protection". Nothing has ever stopped a pirate that really wants to copy something.

Except that they cannot even run software to examine the encrypted content, much less figure out how to decode it? I am sure that someone will build a hardware solution that will provide a way of accessing the encrypted content, but that is far out of Average Joe Hacker's league.

> Freeware and OSS programs could get a boost from Palladium simply because it
> forces people to look for alternatives.

Given the media's ludicrous, sensationalistic overreaction against WPA - the cataclysm that wasn't - I would say that you are probably right.

> Copy protection is one thing, infringing on people's rights is another and quite
> frankly Palladium is way over the line already.

Whoa! Well, the next time I agree to rent a movie online, I will remember to chew the site out for only letting me play the movie I rented for three days for three days. (<- not a typo)