What's in a name? Not Palladium
Microsoft has dropped the code name of its controversial security technology, Palladium, in favor of this buzzword-bloated tongue twister: "next-generation secure computing base."
On Friday, the company said that the name Palladium had become tarnished by controversy surrounding some elements of Microsoft's security push. In additional, it faced a potential legal battle with a small firm over the Palladium name.
"The official story--and it's true--is that we intended to change the name for a long time," said Mario Juarez, product manager for Microsoft's Windows Trusted Platform Technologies Group. "The fact that it was something that got a lot of attention and gave rise to a lot of misunderstanding" was also a factor, he said.
[...]
Microsoft's Juarez dismissed any suggestions that the name change implied that the company was trying to dodge criticism.
"That's not the reason that we are doing it," he said. "This is really reflective of the fact that Microsoft is embracing this technology in terms of folding it into Windows for the next decade...more [CNET News]
This is the start of the process to obscure from the public what Microsoft is doing. I'll simply refer to it as the 'bad technology formerly known as Palladium'. Ask yourself this question, do you really want a company with as much power as Microsoft (hey, they were convicted of being an illegal monopoly and dodged being punished for it), owning and controlling the technology that secures your on-line lives? This from a company that has a horrible history for security, and has spent the past year trying to explain how they will create Trustworthy computing. This from a company that once described a bug that would erase your hard drive as simply a 'user error', and something you shouldn't do. I think not...mj
10:41:21 AM 
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