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Hollywood And Tech Make A Suspicious Pairing
from the indeed,-they-do dept
The latest Dan Gillmor column takes a closer look at Microsoft's Palladium and warns that, while the goal of trustworthy computing sounds good, this technology can be used for "bad" things as well, such as digital rights management to remove our fair use rights and to kill off open source software. Of course, these points have been discussed to death since Palladium was first announced. It's certainly good to be suspicious, but I'm starting to get suspicious of all the suspicion as well. I agree that these are points that should be watched carefully - and made clear to Microsoft (and others). However, a lot of people seem to be jumping to conclusions about these technologies that aren't definitely true.
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take the wind out of Hollings
(BTW the word palladium is related to "pallbearer" and "obscured by a pall of smoke" the common theme being "pale")
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Re: take the wind out of Hollings
It is named for the Goddess Pallas and for her statue that stood outside of Troy in its defense.
It's also a metal that is normally found near platinum.
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"Trusted Computing"
Trusted Computing means that _they_ can trust your computer more.
Definitely not the same thing.
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Re: take the wind out of Hollings
Palladium (Lt.) comes from the greek word Palladion, which if I remember correctly means "likeness of Pallas," or statue of Pallas. It's common meaning is "a sacred object which protects the city or state from harm." The Constitution of the United States is considered a Palladium in the common sense, as was the Ark of the Covenant to the Jews (although they didn't call it that at the time...) Of course, Palladium has other meanings...such as the element...
Pallbearer comes from pall which has a number of roots and meanings, only one having to do with pale (which is probably one of the most recent origins, from French.) The Pall more appropriate to pallbearer comes from Latin, pallium, which means cover or cloak, Mid English it became pal, or cover (coffin). There are no roots in Greek, which suggests this word has no actual origin in Greek, hence it can not be related to Palladium.
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Re: take the wind out of Hollings
Uhhh, good use of dictionary, LittleWOlf.
It was a joke ... pall-idiom ... to knock Microsoft's pomposity that it should be the "protector of the city".
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