‘Palladium’, Microsoft’s name for what was also known as the “Next Generation Secure Computing Base” (NGSCB), a new security architecture for Windows, will still be in Longhorn, according to Microsoft, but with a few modifications from its original plan.
Microsoft ‘Palladium’ plans proceed, albeit in modified form
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The closer Longhorn comes to being released, the less impressive it looks. Microsoft is now constantly removing or at least downgrading long hyped and expected features, and with everybody else in the OS business still working towards their own greater goals and making excellent progress, what really will be the point of buying into Windows around the time that this is (today) expected to be released?
Honestly, Longhorn was looking like it was going to be a very cool, until Microsoft started it’s feature hackfest when they decided that it would be a date based release rather than a technology based one. It’s baffling how the largest OS maker in the world, with billions of dollars in the bank, and some of the brightest minds in the industry can be so absolutely useless when it comes to competing with upstarts and other longstanding competitors.
Just when I was starting to find some small measure of faith in them and their abilities… truely shameful.
That’s true anonymous, I agree. I was looking forward to Longhorn but Microsoft is really cutting down all the features they “promised”. I guess you can put some “blame” to Linux here because Microsoft is obviously aware that if they don’t make any major upgrade in 5 or 6 years (WinXP was released in 2001) you can expect competition to try something big in that timeframe. I guess it’s allways like that with Microsoft products – they have a brilliant idea but then ruin it with to soon releases and need some years to catch on.
I was really hoping Longhorn would be the next big thing in PC OS’s but i guess I was not the only one. I hope they prove me wrong.
Looks like they are downgrading the DRM, just like they did the features. It’s kind of funny that people expect that MS will downgrade the features like they always do, and then you have these people with their paranoia meters on overdrive who expected that the DRM in Longhorn was going to be exactly as MS described it. You should know better than than that by now
I think microsoft has goofed pretty big this time.
They announced planned features for longhorn a long time in advance, giving their competitors time to plan their own competing features.
Now those competitors have products being/almost being released (reiserfs/xorg 6.8 for linux – tiger and spotlight for mac) with these features while microsoft has to cut back on their own features.
Add to this the fact that competitors has surpassed microsoft in several areas (the linux 2.6 kernel itself is really impressive for so many reasons), ironically microsoft might be the one playing catchup by the time longhorn comes out.
This reminds me of a famous quote:
“What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water.”
Except with Microsoft things always seem to work the other way around, or failing that in a completely random fashion. The marketing machine there is alive and well, they know what people want as demonstrated by all the hype they themselves created around Longhorn. They already identified the main problem with the current incarnation of Windows (namely security) and Longhorn is meant in part to address this gaping hole that no amount of service packs will fix. But as soon as they start filtering this concept through the development filters everything falls apart.
Palladium? This idea has already been met with heavy resistance from the majority of users, clearly it’s not desirable in its current form. So what do they do? They go ahead and include parts of it anyway. All the features that made Longhorn worth looking into as an innovative OS are slowly being stripped away or back ported into existing versions of Windows by Microsoft’s own admission, and at the same time they’re pushing other features into it that most people consider misconceived.
Longhorn seems to be turning away from a fresh approach and a clean slate for Microsoft into something not unlike hot water.
I agree with the first poster, with more money and resources than God this is the best they can do from a technological point of view?
Palladium is being scaled back in the same way other parts of Longhorn are; but in this case it’s probably a good thing.
Palladium isn’t about security as much as it is DRM. Users don’t want it, and Microsoft would have a hard time selling the OS if it was effective.
NGSCB will bring more wonderful incompatibilities just like SP2’s DEP did.
Excellent!
They are doing a good job then.
“I agree with the first poster, with more money and resources than God this is the best they can do from a technological point of view?”
Does make one wonder why the world dances to such mediocre O/S.
I’ve decided that Microsoft has simply grown to large and is trying to do too much. I’ve noticed that some of the best work is done by small groups, such as Id for an example. Bright minds tend to dim when they are forced to listen to bad management, or wait on dimmer minds, or have their work thrown together with some very dim candles.
I wonder if maybe their stuff is highly monolithic in nature and they are constantly dependant on Joe small function maker to finish his work. Cause yes, their development rate seems very slow considering the sheer number of programmers they employ.
And yet they still maintain a massive profit margin!
Some of the things in Longhorn were very big, like WinFS is probably a massive thing just to integrate into their working base. I can see Avalon being a bit, but I think they are adding work into it to update their current 2d graphics api.
Didn’t they have some other feature?
done some of the same shit with copland? (or whatever it was called?)
didnt they go for some massive rewrite that never surfaced?
hell, osx is basicly a BSD with a apple gui bolted on top, mutch like takeing a stock engine and changeing the design of the bodyworks.
this will continue to happen as long as a corporation is going to ride the hype engine but dont have the development and economy to back up what hype the marketing department happens to dream up.
longhorn is a major rewrite of core systems. doing stuff like this takes time. just look at how long version 2.6 of the linux kernel was in the works, and that was just the kernel. think about how long it would take if they where to wait for a major rewrite of gnome or kde on top of that?
The guy at MS have an entity to deal with that most OS engineering companies don’t:
How do you steadily increase profit in the OS arena when you already have the most popular OS? Hmm…let’s create an updated version of the OS with some less than mindblowing advanced features and sell it in 3 years.
Fortunately, this is 2004, not 1995. There is that ominous looking behemoth called Linux that is putting the pressure on MS to create a superior and secure OS. Apple is not a direct competitor, commodity x86 hardware has already proven it’s worth and the world will ride it until the wheels fall off. Until Steve Jobs releases the x86 version of OSX, I don’t see a huge Apple uprising. Sun?? Gimme a break, they hardly exist on the desktop. RedHat, Novell, IBM, and others all know that the Linux movement has created a tight bind for MS to deal with.
Let’s look at it in logical terms though: MS wanted to go in a whole different direction in regards to architecture and usability. The task at hand is huge. They set out to create the ultimate OS. Sounded good at the time but that will NEVER happen. Know why? B/c MS, as huge and profitable as it is, is still encumbered by shareholders, partnering companies, consumer demand, and stiff competition. Economics 101.
The partnering companies do not want MS to wait until 2008 to deliver an ultimate OS b/c the wait is too long w/o a major release. (AMD, Intel, etc.)
The shareholders don’t want MS to take years to create an OS b/c the companies cash cow will not produce any returns on investment, it’s stock would take a nosedive in the meantime.
Consumers want the ultimate OS features but will not wait years for a better OS when there are PLENTY of alternatives out there.
Competition is too tight for MS to engineer a new OS that leaves compatibility behind. Could you imagine if MS had gone ahead with the plan of developing Longhorn and breaking compatibility with older Windows machines? It would leave MS with a smaller installed base than Linux. The reason why the world keeps buying MS is b/c most of the world HAS MS. It’s become a standard. Imagine if MS had to build it’s user base from the ground up again while being encumbered by shareholders and the like. That would spell D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R. Other OS companies would gladly pick up the pieces. So MS in it’s infinite wisdom has decided to take new features and retrofit them with the existing OS….XP reloaded? Unfortunately, they have hurt themselves in so many ways. MS over-specified the project which happens all the time but then they announce it to the world (shareholders…dammit!!). Now the world knows your roadmap and has the technology and the know-how to reach your goals and surpass them. This, my friends, is not the speed of technology. MS has gotten too big to realize any major additional potential growth in the OS market. In less than a decade from now it’s not going to be profitable for them to be in the desktop OS game any longer if their pace continues.
IBM already knows how that story ends.
Just my $1.98. Keep the change.
First they wooed us with all the new fangled gadgets that would gussy up longhorn. For months that’s all one heard about. longhorn this. longhorn that. ooooo. aaaaa. mmmmpppff. uhhuh. Now, longhorn is getting undressed a little more each day and all we hear is sigh. lament. ho hum. yadda yadda. But the funny thing is, MS is still getting tonnes of press and everybody is still talking about them. So perhaps what Longhorn may or may not be capable of performing on its actual release date is of little importance now. Maybe?
So are you Saying Longhorn will disappear, MS will buy Sun, bolt avalon and some win api’s on top of it and the iron out the bugs????
KDE 3 was a rewrite of KDE 2 I think gnome did the same thing.
In simple support for OSX Apple took a BSD sub system, pulled the kernel, dropped their own heavily modified mixed kernel in, and then bolted on Quartz. Apple has a unique mix of micro and Macro kernel.
It is a very long time before the final release of Longhorn. Speculation of what the end results will be are more or less a waste of time.
I couldn’t careless how long they take to get this to market; all I want is high quality as the result. If it take them until 2009 thats perfectly fine with me.
Why can’t MS take it peicemeal. Get the base code developed and out there in the publics hands and then introduce the cruft as addons and the likes as they are finished?
I would love to run a stripped down modular userland version of Windows without the crap and then as things get released just pick and choose the apps/features I want. Gee kinda reminds me why I’m going Linux instead (app wise not kernel although that’s a work in progress and a good one at that).
Just sick of waiting for the world to catch-up (-;
switch to PPC hardware!
My computer is primarily intended to serve me, and not to watch me!
I have eliminated Microsoft on my machines for a long time already, but if they are going to produce Palladium with hardware chips, it’s going to be time to leave the inferior istruction set.
“Why can’t MS take it peicemeal. Get the base code developed and out there in the publics hands and then introduce the cruft as addons and the likes as they are finished?”
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Sorry, but as MS continue to tell us, Windows is not a “Modular” operating system. Components are inherently linked to each other, and removing certain parts (e.g. Internet Explorer) will cause “Unnaceptable instability”.
and then when ppc becomes the primary platform the entertainment industry puts the sqeeze on the ppc motherboard makers and presto we have it all over again.
and my point about the apple comment was just an example that ms isnt the only company that have made claims of development that never happend.
and linux flies on the fact that the desktops and the kernel are independent projects that just happens to work together. one dont have to wait for the other before being released. this is one of the problems ms is faceing now, some or most of the base features are in place but other parts are taking longer to get working (winfs) and so have to scale back.
and paladium is being changed based on preasure from the third party development community. basicly the original spec forced them to use a ms developed user interface for the input of passwords or something like that. now instead they make their own and just hook it to the ms system under the hood. problem is that then you dont know what the app is doing before it passes the info on the the ms systems…
and the idea of a verification and signing chip for apps and the computer itself isnt a bad thing pr see. the problem is that it flyes in the face of fair use in that the service provider at the other end can force you to only use their app to access the service. mutch like you can only use itunes to shop songs from apples online store.
linus torvalds in fact said he would allow support for that kind of chip into the linux kernel as it can be used in secure enviroments to check if the computer at the other end is the one it claims to be.
allso palladium/ngscb is related but isnt the same system. the ms system is supposed to complement the chip but can allso work without it being present. atleast that how i have understood it…
I don’t trust Microsoft or Intel and I have not done so in a long time. I don’t trust Palladium, and it’s supposed to be trustworthy computing. Palladium is a hardware virus.
I would trust some type of secure hardware implementation if it was done by Linus Torvald and company. Those people can be trusted to do the job right. Microsoft is the last company to put your trust into because they want to dictate everything, they are anti-capitalist.
linus torvalds in fact said he would allow support for that kind of chip into the linux kernel as it can be used in secure enviroments to check if the computer at the other end is the one it claims to be.
How could that work? I Guess this “secure” chip could be emulated just as easily as cloning a MAC address.
linus torvalds in fact said he would allow support for that kind of chip into the linux kernel as it can be used in secure enviroments to check if the computer at the other end is the one it claims to be.
So, when exactly this is going to happen? In which version of the kernel? When that version will be released? When will it be stable and bug free, ready for end users? When will it be included into major Linux distros that, combined, represent 75% of all Linux users?
Yes, where is Linux kernel roadmap?
So, when exactly this is going to happen?
Sooner than when Longhorn will come out, probably.
When will it be stable and bug free, ready for end users?
About 75,000 years before the first stable and bug free version of Windows comes out, ready for end users.
When will it be included into major Linux distros that, combined, represent 75% of all Linux users?
Shortly after it is stable and bug free, ready for end users.
Where is the need for a Linux kernel roadmap.
“hell, osx is basicly a BSD with a apple gui bolted on top, mutch like takeing a stock engine and changeing the design of the bodyworks.”
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This is somewhat off-topic, but
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/SystemOv…
actually explains what the Darwin kernel looks like. Just in case you’d like to know how it really works… Spoiler: it’s not just FreeBSD
julian:
yes, there chip can be emulated. i didnt say it was secure, what i said (or tryed to say) was that its not compleatly evil when it comes to its uses…
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and to mr. anonymous:
i didnt say it was freebsd i said it was bsd, and it still is stated so in that file you point to (4.4bsd from what i can read). the be more specific, its a bsd with a mach kernel and a apple gui bolted on top and some changes done to make it compatible with existing mac file systems…
only fancy stuff i can see is the driver enviroment and the network enviroment…
it still is a *nix with some body work and some custom rebuilds of the engine, not a ground up design from inside apple.
“How could that work? I Guess this “secure” chip could be emulated just as easily as cloning a MAC address.”
Yeah except that MAC addresses are easy to spoof.
I am doing that right now through a router that is spoofing the MAC of one of the attached computers.
the reason spoofing a mac is simple is that its an ability put there for diagnosic reasons (and a bit for security to, like say you only allow computers with a special mac sequence to connect across a router).
still, its not something a common person will do.
to spoof the chip one would have to use special software and the os would not be buildt to allow that to happen in a easy way…