Criticisms of Microsoft's Palladium security initiative are rumors and speculation about technology that won't even be ready to hit the market for years, the company said.
Palladium, formally known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base, is technology that Microsoft says will make computers trustworthy. It will use a security processor attached to a PC motherboard, along with a subsystem of the Windows operating system, called the Nexus, to allow users to create a highly secure virtual space to store sensitive data and run sensitive applications.
That's what Microsoft says. But critics suspect a hidden agenda to prevent PCs from running Linux and other competing operating systems, force application developers to pay fees to Microsoft to write Windows applications, and gain control over users' data.
Ross Anderson, a member of the computer science faculty member at the University of Cambridge, England, said that Palladium is Microsoft's plan to make it expensive for users to switch from Microsoft applications.
|