Quote Originally Posted by ARosendal
Sure, so I buy this new windows Palladium and all of a sudden I can't play my games anymore, run Delphi or every other program I used to run, because they lack the needed serial numbers? Sure...
No it will be a slow shift... in the beginning you can decide if you're in trusted mode or not. But the more applications require the trusted mode and the older the not-trused old software becomes the less problems you have with running trusted mode. And some years later you won't care if m$ says not-trusted software isn't supported anymore... It's died out anyways, along with a lot of free and shareware.

But the problem is that you've lost the controll over you pc in that process

Quote Originally Posted by ARosendal
Not very likely. There are how many developers? Does microsoft really expect us to buy a $100k license? What about software companies? They can close their doors if they have to buy licenses for every employee.
not for every employee! for every product they want to release... no problems for big software-companys. Their gain is much bigger because it prevents piracy.
At the beginning the licensing might even be free (like veri-sign was in the beginning) to establish the procedure. M$ war-funds are almost without limits... they can do such things. Sometimes later they will say: "The service is costly, you understand that WE don't pay it anymore?" But than it's to late for you to decide that you don't like it...
As a freeware developer you have to stop develloping....

Quote Originally Posted by ARosendal
All this might work in a world where communism rules, but there are certain rules even microsoft has to obey to.
Don't expect your govermant to say this is illegal. As long as they get a general-key to your encrypted data (which mA§ will grant tham for sure) they are perfectly happy because they benefit! The american governmant even tried to make a law which permits using non trusted systems in the future. Just like they tried to permit using pgp because they have no chance to decrypt it. (I'm not perfectly sure on that... i just think i've read something like that.)

I agree I'm very pessimistic here.... but if we don't fight against it it might happen!