Hi everyone,

I have been following the whole "trusted" computing issue for sometime now (dead set against it), but I want to know, how would this impact Linux?

Specifically, I know some companies (such as IBM) have already introduced some hardware based "trusted" computing on some of their products.

Is there a way around this, or are we just s.o.l.?

AMD and Intel said they are going to support it, though I hope they will not have their entire product line supporting it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_computing"

Thought provoking. 4+ years later, any new thoughts?

I had never heard of this concept before and I read some of the wikipedia article on it. Scary stuff indeed. Undoubtedly such technology would be used for its restrictive purposes rather than the more positive ones. History is full of examples where technology has evolved before the wisdom required to use it wisely and this seems to be no exception. If anything, I think the last four years have brought us closer to this form of reality a-la things like the iPhone and content wars with the media companies refusing to "publish" content (google tv).

Another aspect to this, raised by the article, is the idea of who owns the keys. PKI appears to have been deliberately designed without a "back door" decoder. On one hand, this prevents the designers and implementers from ever being put in a position of "give us the key or else" from government, law enforcement, or anyone else (3rd party validation being an exception). On the flip side, commercial entities could use this to lock down on the data stored in a machine with an extremely high level of effectiveness.

Ultimately, I think that consumer market forces will play a major role in whether or not this type of technology is able to succeed and the form it will take. As long as there are strong community based systems, like Linux, the consumer will at least have a choice. The problem is that so many people are accepting of and willing to pay for licensed and restricted software and systems, be it for convenience or ignorance of a better way.