Palladium and classic computing

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Thu Jun 27 12:54:33 2002

> This Palladium stupidity won't fly. Remember how people
> howled when Intel put unique IDs into their processors?

Yes, but now we're fighting terrorism. Polls show that more than
55% of US citizens surveyed now want to give up their civil liberties
to be protected from terrorism. :-(

This Palladium stuff is the result of something I've been ranting
about for years, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. On the
surface, "Trusted Computing" sounds good. Until you realize that
the buyer of the computer isn't the party that will be able to
trust the TPCA equipped machine.

Others have pointed out that if this stuff all goes through, people
who don't run Windows will lose access to most of the Internet (best
case), or possibly have to create another parallel Internet (if it
remains legal to do so). But another effect is that non-Palladium
hardware will become very expensive.

Early Palladium hardware might just involve add-on chips that can
easily be disabled (if you don't need to interoperate with other
Palladium systems), but the agenda is to build it into the processor,
and Intel and AMD both seem willing to do it. Once that happens,
you won't even be able to buy a microprocessor without Palladium
and still get competitive performance. Non-Palladium processors
will exist for embedded applications, but they'll be older, slower
technology, just as processors targeting embedded applications
generally are now.

Fight the Future!

performance to the latest Intel and AMD parts
Received on Thu Jun 27 2002 - 12:54:33 BST