It still sounds like a prescription for utter disaster. Huge chunks of that system will be proprietary and therefore loaded with bugs and vulnerabilities.
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Yes, I'm sure there will be many, many problems with implementation. In fact, I expect a lot of 'false positives' by which I mean instances when hardware or software is incorrectly flagged as out of compliance when the customer has paid - along with garden variety (and very telegenic) abuses.
So no, it won't be a flawless system but it will work well enough I expect, like your local Police force: not terribly efficient but just effective enough to make life more difficult if you're on the 'wrong side'. A label whose definition will change over time and change again.
DRR:
Why wouldn't they [Asian/Euro computer manufacturers and users] look to Via for low-cost, cheaper alternatives? Heavy legal heat?
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Legalisms will undoubtedly play a role. My guess though, is that the weight of the American market will act as a powerful incentive for non- American firms to cooperate. International software firms that want to sell here will be compelled to devote significant effort to creating code bases that comply with the 'trusted' platform. Since the 'trust-compliance' hardware will be the standard, it will probably be simpler (and cheaper) to adopt - to at least some extent - the 'trustworthy' system as the development and hardware standard. This way, software and hardware vendors would only have to invest in one set of methodologies and technology.
Japan and South Korea, for example, certainly have the engineering talent and the machine tool infrastructure, to create wholly new - and digital rights management code free - CPUs, peripherals and applications. But this would be a large undertaking to say the least and would cut them off from the re-configured American market.
But having said all that...
As with all hegemonies, this will generate opposition and counter-aggression. I don't expect some seamless, nightmare world of perfect techno repression to be around the corner - our machines are too kludgy and we ourselves too easily distracted for that to work with sci-fi movie-like precision.
Still, it will make our lives more difficult in a number of ways and give the corporate infrastructure yet another tool for absurd billing, constricting innovation, monitoring our habits and generally being a total pain in the ass.
DRM
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