[MLB-WIRELESS] This is scary if it's true

[Robert Tchia]

Don’t know if there is any truth in it, but...


Robert X. Cringely is easily one of the most well-written and 
shockingly intelligent columnists I've ever read. His latest column 
takes on Palladium, and it sure made me do a double-take. Microsoft 
releasing a proprietary version of TCP/IP? Oh my - smells like trouble 
to me! Go check out the article - very interesting stuff. 

"Last August, I wrote of a rumor that Microsoft wanted to replace 
TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- 
that it would tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol 
would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as 
pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you 
remember that product from Banyan Systems. I called it TCP/MS in the 
column. How do you push for the acceptance of such a protocol? First, 
make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP 
stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the 
Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. 
Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install 
it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million 
copies could happen in less than a year. 

This week, Microsoft announced Palladium through an exclusive story in 
Newsweek written by Steven Levy, who ought to have known better. 
Palladium is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all 
Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital 
certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the 
Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. 
Palladium compatible hardware (presumably chipsets and motherboards) 
will come from both AMD and Intel, and the software will, of course, 
come from Microsoft. That software is what I had dubbed TCP/MS. 

The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet 
somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take 
technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology 
owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. 
Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers. 

This is diabolical. If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give 
Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same 
time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn't choose to be 
Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes 
even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh. It's a 
militarized network architecture only Dick Cheney could love." 

<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020627.html>

Taken from... Pocket PC Thoughts  
(http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1899)

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