Do some good for the world; make M$ irrelevant

Stéphane Rollandin hepta at zogotounga.net
Thu Jul 4 13:04:15 UTC 2002


Cees de Groot writes:

 > The problem with DRM inside your CPU is that your CPU will refuse to be part
 > of a non-trusted computing base. Which will mean that it will not load a BIOS
 > that hasn't got the right sig, the BIOS will not load a OS boot block that
 > hasn't got the right sig, etcetera up to the application. So if you don't get
 > Squeak signed by Micro$oft (or whoever will control the signing keys for
 > Palladium), Squeak will simply refuse to run on your Windows platform.
 > Similarly, Linux will not load, until you run the single copy of the kernel
 > that has been Palladium-certified (which, in turn, will only run signed
 > binaries, i.e. - no Squeak). 
 > 

I don't get it. Do you mean that you could simply not program your own computer ? What's the
difference between an external non-certified application and your own non-certified stuff ?
Is Emacs going to be illegal because you can use it to program in Lisp ? 
This does not make any sense. 

So it will be enough to provide the non-certified softs in chunks and let the end-user compile
them...
as long as you are not forbidden to use your computer for computing, there is just no way that you can prevent someone from running any program he wants on its computer.
It's only a matter of working around the fences.

What you're describing is a situation where, to prevent people from stealing cars, all cars are to be sold with no wheels, all tied togethers, and only able to go one way.
These cars exist already, we call them trains...
So I guess we are not talking about computers any more... we are talking about playstations !


Stef




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