Microslosh vision of the future

Sun Aug 11 23:10:23 UTC 2002

While I find much to worry about in Palladium, the vast majority of
the information in this post is simply not correct. Even Microsoft is
not delusional enough to think that they could get away with such a
coup. (Not that they would not want to.)

Before going ballistic, read up on Palladium and how it works. Then we
can all have a somewhat intelligent discussion of where it might lead.

Palladium does a number of very good things. It certainly will NOT
block running whatever OS you prefer. It is debatable just whether it
does DRM. Microsoft says it is not a DRM tool, but it sure seems to
have at least mot of the pieces required for full DRM.

Slashdot has had some pointers to a number of excellent (and some not
so excellent) articles on Palladium form a number of sources on both
sides of the issue. I strongly urge that you read them before either
panicing or causing others to do so. Opposition may be justified and
it may not, depending on many small technical points that may not be
completely clear at this time.

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634