AMD may not be supporting Palladium yet; http://www.theinquirer.net/
has posted an update from AMD that claims a misquote.
At any rate, Palladium sounds like it will be optional (
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,274516,00.asp ). Disable it
in the BIOS, and Linux or any other OS will run like they used to.
Oddly enough, this seems to be a Microsoft initiative, without the
backing of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an industry group
with similar goals.
Some of Palladium's features also bug me. Microsoft claims the
initiative is mostly about virii and spam. But you can cut spam down to
nothing by using an email address white-list, or take a huge chunk out
of it with tools like Spamassasin and SpamBouncer. Virii would have a
much tougher time if some email clients would drop the use of JavaScript
and ActiveX controls, and system files wouldn't be at risk if Microsoft
explained their user permission system better. Embedded encryption
hardware is overkill, really.
Palladium could also have an effect even when turned off. Files that
have been encrypted with it would be almost impossible to decrypt
without Palladium. Some programs or components of Windows would refuse
to run without it. VMWare and WINE suddenly become much less useful.
Finally, the use of dedicated hardware is a blessing and a curse. If
Palladium's well designed, nothing short of serious hardware
modification would be able to break it. If a flaw is found, however, you
can't recompile or patch your CPU. Even if a patch were possible, how
could the system decide if that patch is valid? It's flawed enough to
require a patch, remember?
HJ Hornbeck
