Palladium and classic computing

Lest this degenerate into another anti-Microsoft panegyric, here's the MSNBC gushy bit on Palladium, Microsoft's new hardware certification and encryption device: http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp?cp1=1 Here's the Gurus (Register USA) article that got me thinking: http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.html My question is this. It looks like, even by the bright soft sweetness in the MSNBC article, that everything that comes in and out, as well as gets executed and touched by, a Palladium-based system needs to be certified. If that's so, since many classic servers or systems may not have the oomph or capability to exchange data with a Palladium because they can't build the certificate, or if a licensing fee were needed from MS, what would this mean to us running old servers or OSes that won't speak in Microsoft's blessed credentials? Even E-mail or web pages served up might have to be signed. I'm not upgrading stockholm or my Solbourne just to speak in certificates. (The other issues, such as everything you run on a Palladium system having to be signed, even freeware at a potential cost to the author for a license key, as well as the death of open source, are probably OT but definitely scary.) -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- A different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. -- G. Eliot