Book review: “The Future of the Internet (And How to Stop It)”

Posted by Ken Y-N on April 15th, 2008 at 01:34pm

This in-depth review of the above-mentioned book is interesting and detailed, but there was one glaring mistake I noticed:

Appliances are not bad. The Xbox, TiVo, and iPhone have their place, and Zittrain points out that even the trenchantly open One Laptop Per Child system embeds a trusted computing substrate called Bitfrost that combines digital signatures, sandboxing, and mandatory access controls to prevent downloads from harming the system. Unlike trusted computing platforms in proprietary products, Bitfrost can be overridden by a sophisticated user, but requires a BIOS reflash.

Once could argue as to whether or not a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a proprietary product (the specifications are open, although they may contain patented technology), but the TPM supports functionality to disable itself, and most computers with them also feature BIOS settings that allow the chip to be disbaled without the reflashing requirements that the OLPC seems to have.

I often wonder if many of the people making anti-TPM statements have actually read the specifications or the white papers, or are, as I suspect, just parroting the party line.

See the full review here.

Tags: bitfrost, the future of the internet

Under Advocacy Tags: bitfrost, the future of the internet