Microsoft Scales Down Palladium

bonch writes "Formerly known as Palladium, Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) will not be fully available in Windows Longhorn after all. Instead, Longhorn will offer "the first part of NGSCB: Secure Startup," says Jim Allchin, Microsoft's group vice president for platforms. However, most hardware will not support this technology on release."

Reporting the obvious

[MrMickS]

Given that the majority of PCs out there don't have the necessary hardware to support the feature isn't this just an obvious statement. Reading the article its clear that the hardware isn't in a state to support the feature yet. It does hint that Longhorn will make use of the hardware should it be present.

So rather than this being something pulled from Longhorn it's just being emphasised that having a system with the TPM chip isn't a requirement for running Longhorn.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's two meaning of redundant:

1. the precise meaning, which you were thinking about: which duplicates what has been said elsewhere
2. a colloquial meaning: pointless, devoid of any value, which can indeed be applied to first posts (or for most of other Slashdot posts, for that matter...)

Not IBM, but NOVELL

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell is in the position to rock the house in terms of Linux desktop improvement.

Redhat is great at server stuff. They can tell you how to take their Global File System (GFS) and get it to work with a veritas network attatched storage to drasticly increase the cost effectiveness and performance/response for your end users, however none of those guys have probably used a real desktop OS since Windows 98. First edition.

IBM is a hardware company.. peopel like Linux and IBM combo specificly because IBM has good support and almost no real control over it.

Novell on the other hand has extensive desktop experiance. They have groupwise experiance. They developed NDS, which Microsoft copied to create Active Directory. In fact most of the stuff that MS is praised for in terms of management and deployability is stuff that Novell did first.

And they have a healthy attitude, very loyal customers (those that remain), and they know what it takes to move from Windows to Linux.

They have scripts experiance and the connections with government, industry, and education to pull it off. World wide, if aging, support infrastructure.

One big example: MONO. .NET would end up like ActiveX on steriods in terms of customer lock-in if it wasn't for a very capable and mostly compatable Linux implimentation of it. Notice how MS isn't pimping it as much anymore?

Other examples:
Starting Hula.
Supporting development of OpenGL desktop thru things like hiring the guy that created XGL.
Open sourcing YAST, something that Suse never did on itself.

They don't have the resources that IBM has, but they have the experiance.

Lets all hope their is enough life in them left to become a very capable Linux player in the Linux desktop and desktop infrastructure.

Redhat in the enterprise back rooms with IBM and such, novell and supporting apps in the workspace. All sorts of complimentary technologies are coming out for Linux.

Increase in security, increases in peformance and capabilities, support by big players.

But not a Windows killer, yet. Not by a long shot.

This shit is going to take decades. MS is a very good competitor.

Re:Soo.....

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

IIRC, WinFS will support a file existing in multiple locations or folders.

There's more here [dylangreene.com], but it's not too detailed. It seems they're assigning folders to files rather than storing files in a folder-like hierarchy.

This is similar to the storing your emails in folders (like in Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) vs labeling your emails (Gmail).

Re:And to think I used to worry about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because even a broken clock is right twice a day.

It's a stopped clock that's right twice a day (with exceptions for changing to and from Daylight Saving Time). A broken clock may never be right at all. If it's hands have fallen off it can't even be wrong.

Re:TP-M my ass.

[GIL_Dude]

Not un-recoverable. Just not recoverable by the thief who took your machine. The only folks that will be turning this feature on are enterprises (like the one I work in) where many machines are stolen (yes, even desktops - we had an entire small office in south Africa burglarized recently - took 29 desktops). We lose many notebooks per year and nobody really knows what files were in temp, etc. For us, there will be the ability to do recovery keys, and even re-install windows (using a trusted mechanizm - not something easy to do for the thief on the street). All the IBM notebooks have had TPM modules for a couple of years. The HP 7600 is shipping with one. About time we make use of this stuff.

Re:Secure Startup

[GIL_Dude]

File system level encryption does solve this if you are talking about Pointsec, Mobile Armor or a product in that Genre. However, these products typically have a real problem: their pre-boot environments for authenticating to the encryption system lack the ability to expand the range of authentication methods (for example most of them do not work with Smart Cards today - the ones that do, work only with a limited set and maybe not with PCCard readers only USB. They also tend to not have a network connection in pre-boot so that they cant check CRL's on certificates. Decide to add biometrics and you are just out). So this will subsume the feature into windows such that the pre-boot is a thing of the past and any supported authentication method will work for the encryption as well as the OS. Long overdue.

Re:TP-M my ass.

[John Hasler]

> All nonprofits rely on donations to survive, and
> I can bet that a LOT of donations are going to
> start rolling in to them from certain
> organizations involved in content creation and
> distribution.

"Nonprofit" is not a synonym for "charity". A nonprofit (or not for profit) corporation is simply one whose charter provides that it is not to distribute any profits to anyone: it exists for a purpose other than directly making money. Most charities are nonprofits, but so are trade associations, standards groups, and similar organizations. Groups such as TPM get their money from fees paid by members and are expected to act in the interests of those members.