Let's be very clear There's a typically confused Salon piece on Microsoft's Palladium announcement, but MSFTs worked hard to keep the issue confused. It's easy to cut through the Palladium FUD if you think hard about how the technology works. 1) Palladium does not stop viruses. Microsoft is not going to veto code executing on your computer. A virus is code executing on your computer, so this will have no effect. 2) Palladium will not protect privacy. Yes, PGP tokens get exchanged, not form information, but this really doesn't matter -- privacy in the sense people care about the concept (are people reading my email? why do I keep getting spammed?) has nothing to do with Palladium. 3) Palladium is about DRM. Signed content is DRM content, and only that will care whether Palladium is there or not. This will support the content cartels and their Congressional employees.4) Palladium does not help consumers. Consumers don't care whether content is signed or not. Virii and spam will continue unabated. 5) Palladium will not kill open source. Let's be honest here, the only thing that'll kill open source is the US Government, either through some idiot patent policy, or idiot law.