Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Is Named Palladium
from the an-inside-look dept
People have been snickering about Microsoft’s whole “Trustworthy Computing” focus since it was announced a few months back. Newsweek, though, has come out with the first really detailed article about Microsoft’s plans for secure computing systems, which they’ve nicknamed Palladium. It sounds complex and just a little bit scary. They’re working with both Intel and AMD to build some secure features into computer chips, and then have a whole bunch of “features” that will begin showing up within Windows. Some of them sound cool (if they worked properly, and didn’t invovle Microsoft having access to them) such as preventing viruses from running, making it significantly harder to hack into a machine, preventing spam, and having more control over what info you give out. Some of it sounds a bit scarier, such as built in digital rights management. The big question, as always, is how much do you trust Microsoft? Overall, a lot of the ideas sound like they could be useful, but you’re putting all your eggs into Microsoft’s basket, and they have a history that involves quite a few cracked eggs.
