More stuff about Palladium, Microsofts “Security Initiative” can be found here. (My first comment on this is here.)

Excerpt:

Under Palladium as I understand it, the Internet goes from being ours to being theirs. The very data on your hard drive ceases to be yours because it could self-destruct at any time. We’ll end up paying rent to use our own data

But how will this stop the “I just e-mailed you a virus” problem? How does this stop my personal information being sucked out of my PC using cookies? It won’t. Solving those particular problems is not Palladium’s real purpose, which is to increase Microsoft’s market share. It is a marketing concept that will be sold as the solution to a problem. It won’t really work.

I’ve seen the new pay-structures that have been sent out to Microsoft Solutions Providers, and I’ll tell you that what MS is aiming for is a situation where you pay what is essentially a leasing fee in order to use your OS every year or two — updates are mandatory, and a fee will be charged. With this hardware initiative, they can make you do the same thing for your hardware, and you don’t own anything.

Think of it in terms of books — in this scenario, every book you own is technically accessible only via the system presented by the “National Library” — if the “National Library’s” system goes down, you can’t access your books… and you have to pay to use the system.

Oh, and the “National Library” is the only publisher left in the country, so they decide not only what gets printed, but what the production quality is.

Screw this. 2000 was my last Microsoft OS. I don’t care what cool games I won’t be able to run, be damn it if I don’t have all my machines on Linux by this time next year.

Problem is, if the services we've come to know and love -- from Amazon to bill paying to visiting the IRS site -- all buy into (are bought into) this Palladium concept, it's going to increasingly be a matter of shunning those damned soul-stealing cameras and fancy paved streets.

Bleah.

I'd feel a lot better about selling my soul if I'd at least get a decent three wishes out of it.

How about a non-isolationist thought for a moment: what the Hell are the rest of the nations in the world going to do if they don't want to have their governmental systems held by the whim of a US corporation?

Whatever they do, I want to do that, too.

Seriously. I'll by the "made-for-Sweden" hardware and software stuff if it's free of this crap.