Just finished reading the posted Gartner article on Trustable Computing and thought I would throw a few thoughts out for disintegration by the experts here.
Gartner holds that the market forces (ie users) will decide how well this goes. I wish this was so, but greatly fear the big corporations will remove user ability by making the hardware and software options automatic.
My biggest concerns with the Palladium concept, and its brothers, is that all the experts concentrate on the corporate/government user market. They ALWAYS assume that everyone will be updating their PCs every 3 – 5 years and thus everyone will have this hardware and software within a few years. This assumption is so false it is frightening.
The majority of my work is maintaining computers for private individuals and most of the equipment is 4 – 8 years old. With a few exceptions (games and rich people) most private individuals, ie the majority of the home Internet users, do NOT replace their home computers until they no longer provide the capability for which they use them; in most cases this is basic word processing and Internet access.
Thus any changes to institute Trusted or Trustable Computing environments outside of the work network MUST, in my opinion, allow for access and use by people without the hardware and software capability and also for those who choose not to activate it.
How do you people feel about this and do you think the industry giants will allow the establishment of a dual operation system? Call me paranoid but I expect Intel, Microsoft, RIAA and co to push for mandatory use of this hardware and software.
If they do I hope there is a major loss of share market by them.