Over the past few weeks I've been reading about Palladium (also called Next Generation Secure Computing Base system). NGSCB is an encryption and permission management system that will be included in the new Windows release, currently referred to as Longhorn. I'm sure you're all aware of that though.

The thing that's causing me some concern is that digital rights management will be built in. See this article for more info. If Palladium is able to stop a user from ripping a particular CD, then all current protection schemes become obselete and it becomes very difficult if not impossible to rip a CD because Windows itself will enforce copy protection. Is this me being paranoid, or is it a real possibility that Palladium will support this?

Microsoft are accusing people of using scare tactics and that it is not their aim to restrict people in what they do. However, given the open nature of Linux, it's starting to look increasingly attractive as an alternative OS which does not try and "control" how I use my PC. Although maybe I should wait until all the problems with SCO are cleared up...

Does anyone else have any thoughts on all this?

I think you meant this article.

And it is quite a scary read.

Yes, it could become a big problem, but Linux is no alternative for me yet. Currently there seem to be even more obstacles than Palladium will have. For instance, in c't magazine, they tested Linux software DVD players. Even the best one (Xine) is only on a level where Windows players were 4 to 5 years ago. That's not acceptable to me, but let's hope they get their act together; it's a long time till Windows Longhorn, and it's said to be only the "first test" of a Palladium implementation.

People can always boycott it and not purchase it.

i actually found windows xp to be an excellent os.

it crashed only one time in several months, even with continuous computing (with an athlonxp system!!!) and/or heavy multitasking.

i simply don't need any other os.

the only thing i would be interested in is Mount Rainer format. But i think in the future M$ will make a patch for winxp.

byebye
saverio m.

There's nothing that can't be hacked. (I mean legally hacked. I refuse to let them bar me from legally playing music I bought on my own devices. Whatever I have to do to enable that will, by default, be legal.)

I estimate within 30 days from release that someone will find a chink in Palladium's armor, and after that less than one hour for the "fix" to permeate the internet. If M$ can't stop a kid in Minnesota from exploiting a breach in their "latest bulletproof" operating system (worldwide I might add), then how could they mysteriously and magically create something that can't be broken.

As smart as 100,000 of Billy's Boys may fashion themselves, 100 million worldwide are smarter. Can't fight the odds. The more incentive people have to find a breach, the greater the chances of them doing so. It's just a matter of time. 30 days are all that's needed.

So tempted to pull out my Pre-Packaged Anti-Microsoft Anti-RIAA Rant To Forward The Revolution, but I'll fight the urge...

I'm not sure it will be that simple. Windows is moving closer and closer to being an "auto-upgrading" OS, so who says Palladium (in some form) isn't in the process of gradually being installed on people's XP systems already? Do you really know exactly what the latest "Windows Update" has changed?

Also, the full blown version will be hardware based (if I remember right), and I'd like to see someone hack ROM chips without actually selling physical replacements that have to be soldered onto a motherboard. It may be next to impossible to get rid of a combined hardware/software based protection -- particularly if numerous Windows components are making constant calls to the software routines on a few motherboard chips.

Valid points. But in my particular situation, in my house at any given time, there is at least one PC that I have built myself. So ten years from now, if M$ has this new stranglehold on the world (and assuming they are still surviving the Revolution), then I will still have at least one PC that will be running some Linux variant, with clean BIOS (not infected by M$) and a 256x CD-RW drive, that will be my "ripping center". Once all of my music is encoded in Ogg Vorbis v4.8 it will be playable on any of my machines. Since in ten years it probably won't be that far-fetched that most people will have multiple PCs in their homes, this may be the solution that ends up being the most prevalent.

In that era, we still can use M$ for ease-of-use and to "act like you're fitting into the norm", you know, to prevent someone from pointing at you and screaming like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And we can use an open-source, license-free, patent-free platform for getting the stuff done that offends M$, you know, like anything involving benign freedom and goodwill towards mankind.

Then, in my own case, the only recourse M$ will have against me in 2013 will be to figure out a way to prevent Vorbis files from just being played back on all my PCs. After all, I won't be using Windows Media Mangler, but rather foobar2000 v0.99997 build8461superfinalbeta (with it's own DirectSound replacement API layer to keep M$'s greasy fingers entirely out of my frikkin' music)...