At 12:05 10/5/2003 -0500, you wrote: >On 2003.10.05 07:40 John Hebert wrote: > > Great Caesar's ghost! How the heck can you come to that conclusion? > > > > I think I know. Did you misinterpret the following quote? Or maybe a news > > report you read made the misinterpretation? > > > > "With assistance from Microsoft Research, we have a port of Windows XP to > > Xen nearly complete, and are planning a FreeBSD 4.8 port in the near > future > > (volunteers welcome!)." > > > > My interpretation is that Microsoft Research is helping with the WinXP > port > > only. The above quote is from Google's cache of > > www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/, since the original site is down > > at the moment. > > > >How I got there was the performance page which stated: > >" Operating systems running over Xen execute in x86 privilege ring 1 >instead of ring 0, which we reserve for Xen. This prevents guest OSes from >using the normal privileged instructions to turn on/off interrupts, change >page table bases etc. Instead, they must make a 'hypercall' down into Xen >to ask the operation to be performed on their behalf. " > >This is how DRM must work. By using XEN or a XEN derivative for firmware, >the owner of a machine can be put into "ring 1". This enables the >firmaware to block a copy of a "protected" chunk of memory. Microsoft >could use a derivative to of XEN as their next generation BIOS and make >sure nothing but "signed" code runs and that no flaged file is every coppied. > >So, does that make any more sense? Sure, I love the concept of Xen and >can see many good uses for it. That does not keep me from worrying that >the makers of XP, the Xbox and other horror storries won't abuse >it. Microsoft has announced their intentions to "integrate" windoze with >Phonenix BIOS. XEN could be the next step.
Well, dang, you may have something there. But it still seems unlikely that Microsoft would use Xen, which is supposed to be open sourced soon, as opposed to M$ coming up with something on its own. Maybe the Xen crew is looking for more funding? BTW: Xen is the home planet of the aliens in Half Life. I think this is a conspiracy by the G Man to sellout humanity to a Microsoft/Xenomorph invasion. :) John Hebert
