[pchelpers] on behalf of yamaha_jono@ntlworld.com

Hi everyone, I got this on a newsletter for the blind today, thought
you'd be interested in
reading it.
best wishes,
Jon 


                   The Big Secret

                   An exclusive first look at Microsoft's ambitious-and
                   risky-plan to remake the personal computer to ensure
security, privacy and intellectual property rights. Will you buy it?

                   By Steven Levy

            -  In ancient Troy stood the Palladium, a statue of the
goddess Athena. Legend has
it that the safety of the city
depended on that icon's preservation. Later the term came to mean a more
generic 
safeguard.

         HERE'S SOMETHING THAT cries for a safeguard: the world of
computer bits. An endless roster of security holes allows cyber-thieves
to fill
up their buffers with credit-card numbers and corporate secrets. It's
easier to vandalize a Web site than to program a remote control.
Entertainment moguls boil in
their hot tubs as movies and music are swapped, gratis, on
       the Internet. Consumers fret about the loss of privacy. And
computer viruses proliferate and mutate faster than they can be named.

               Computer security is enough of a worry that the software
colossus Microsoft views it as a threat to its continued success: thus
the apocalyptic Bill Gates memo in January calling for a "Trustworthy
Computing" jihad. What
Gates did not specifically mention was Microsoft's hyperambitious
long-range plan to literally
change the
architecture of PCs in order to address the concerns of security,
privacy and
intellectual property. The plan, revealed for the first time to
NEWSWEEK, is... Palladium, and
it's one of the riskiest ventures the company has ever attempted. Though
Microsoft does not
claim a panacea, the system is designed to dramatically improve our
ability to control and
protect personal and corporate information. Even more important,
Palladium is intended to
become a new platform for a host of yet-unimagined services to enable
privacy, commerce and
entertainment in the coming
decades. "This isn't just about solving problems, but expanding new
realms of
       possibilities in the way people live and work with computers,"
says product manager Mario Juarez.
               Because its ultimate success depends on ubiquity,
Palladium is either going to be a home run or a mortifying whiff. "We
have to
ship 100 million of these before it really makes a difference," says
Microsoft vice
       president Will Poole. That's why the company can't do it without
       heavyweight partners. Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro
Devices have signed on to produce special security chips that are
integral to
the system. "It's a groundswell change," says AMD's Geoffrey Strongin.
"A whole new class of
processors not differentiated by speed, but security." The next step is
getting the likes of
Dell, HP and IBM to remake their PCs to accommodate the system.

"It's one of the most technically complex things ever attempted on the
PC," says Gartner
analyst Martin Reynolds. And the new additions will make your next
computer a little more
expensive. Will the added 
cost-or a potential earlier-than-otherwise upgrade-be worth it? Spend a
day or two with the geeks implementing Palladium-thrilled to be talking
to
a reporter about the project-and you'll hear an enticing litany of
potential uses. Tells you who you're dealing with-and what they're
doing.
Palladium is all about deciding what's trustworthy. It not only lets
your 
computer know that you're you , but also can limit what arrives (and
runs on)
your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it.
Protects information. The
system uses high-level encryption to "seal" data so that snoops and
thieves are thwarted. It
also can protect the integrity of documents so that they can't be
altered without
your knowledge. Stops viruses and worms. Palladium won't run
unauthorized
programs, so viruses can't trash protected parts of your system. Cans
spam. Eventually,
commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can
be stopped before they
hit your
inbox-while unsolicited mail that you might want to see can arrive if it
has credentials that
meet your standards. Safeguards privacy. With Palladium, it's possible
not only to
seal data on your own computer, but also to send it out to "agents" who
can distribute just the discreet pieces you want released to the
proper people. Microsofties have nicknamed these services "My Man." If
you apply for a loan, you'd say to the lender, "Get my details from My
Man," which, upon your authorization, would then provide your bank
information, etc.

Best part: Da Man can't read the information himself, and
neither can a hacker who breaks into his system.
        Controls your information after you send it. Palladium is being
offered to the studios and record labels as a way to distribute music
and film with "digital rights management" (DRM). This could allow users
to exercise "fair use" (like making personal copies of a CD) and
publishers 
could at least start releasing works that cut a compromise between free
and locked-down. But a more interesting possibility is that Palladium
could help introduce DRM
to business and just plain people. "It's a funny thing," says Bill
Gates. "We came at this
thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents
were far more interesting
domains."
       For instance, Palladium might allow you to send out e-mail so
that no one (or only certain people) can copy it or forward it to
others. Or
you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next
week.
In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these
policies.

               Some of these ideas aren't new-they're part of the
promise of public key cryptography, discovered 25 years back. Palladium
is
a dead-serious attempt to finally make it happen, with a secure basis
and critical mass. But it
didn't start that way. In 1997, Peter Biddle, a Microsoft manager who
used to run a paintball
arena, was the
company's liason to the DVD-drive world. Naturally, he began to think of
ways to address Hollywood's fear of digital copying. He hooked up with
'Softie
researchers Paul England and John Manferdelli, and they set up a
       skunkworks operation, stealing time from their regular jobs to
pursue a preposterously ambitious idea-creating virtual vaults in
Windows
to protect information. They quickly understood that the problems of
intellectual property were linked to problems of security and
privacy.


-- 
Regards, John Durham <mailto:modec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
ICQ number 112663246
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