FW: LCS/CIS Talk, OCT 18, TOMORROW

[mgorse at mgorse.dhs.org (Mike Gorse)]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, David Kramer wrote:

> 1) Does anyone but me think this will be used for digital media copy
> protection more than anything else?  I could be off with this one, but it
> sure smells like it to me.
>
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.  I've started working on a program to
play .wav files in a way that will be useful to me if I do any more
transcribing, and I can use vsound to convert Real Audio streams into .wav
files.  But I strongly suspect that RealNetworks would prefer that I not
be able to do this, that I have no choice but to use their player to play
RealAudio content.

> 2) It humors me to see them take such esoteric measures when the design of
> almost every piece of software they've written to date has thown security out
> the door in the name of ease of use, and thorough software infrastructure in
> the name of virtual paper clips.
>
My boss has joked that, once Longhorn gets released, probably no one will
be able to use Windows computers except the hackers.  And I really have to
wonder if it will be as secure as Microsoft says it will be.  Protecting
software against software strikes me as theoretically difficult, but then
I can't understand how most of the security they describe will be
implemented.  I might go to the presentation and take some notes, in any
case.