MS recruits for Palladium microkernel and/or DRM platform

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Digital Bearer Settlement List)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: MS recruits for Palladium microkernel and/or DRM
platform
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 08:13:48 -0400
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs at philodox.com>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26651.html

MS recruits for Palladium microkernel and/or DRM platform
By John Lettice
Posted: 13/08/2002 at 10:23 GMT

Microsoft's efforts to disassociate Palladium from DRM seem
to have hit their first speed bump. Some voices within the
company (and we currently believe these voices to be right
and sensible) hold the view that Palladium has to be about
users' security if it's to stand any chance of winning
hearts and minds, and that associating it with protecting
the music business' IP will be the kiss of death. So they'll
probably not be best pleased by the Microsoft job ad that
seeks a group program manager "interested in being part of
Microsoft's effort to build the Digital Rights Management
(DRM) and trusted platforms of the future (Palladium)."

Oh dear. It's one of a clutch of Palladium job ads currently
up on the site, and is the most blatantly off-message one.
While the authors of Microsoft's discussion white paper on
Palladium say, "Palladium will not require Digital Rights
Management (DRM) technology, and DRM will not require
Palladium... They are separate technologies," the author of
this ad continues: "Our technology allows content providers,
enterprises and consumers to control what others can do with
their digital information, such as documents, music, video,
ebooks, and software. Become a key leader, providing vision
and industry leadership in developing DRM, Palladium and
Software Licensing products and Trust Infrastructure
Services. If you are looking for an opportunity to get in on
the ground floor of a critical new area for MS and a
position with autonomy and growth, then this is an ideal
position."

Content providers controlling their documents, music, video,
ebooks, a critical new area for MS, oh dear oh dear. And we
quite liked: "Additional responsibilities include defining
the industry..." Gosh, the whole industry? That's a
responsible job, but we thought Microsoft was supposed to
have given this sort of thing up. The post will also
"include collaboration and technology sharing across CSBU
[Content Security Business Unit, whose bag Palladium is] and
with other MS teams, such as Office, STS, Avalon, CLR,
Windows Media Foundation, eHome, Pocket PC, Mira, MSXML,
GXA, and .Net Framework."

There's a handy list of current MS teams for you, people. So
Windows Media is a Foundation now, and what's an Avalon when
it's at home, anyone?

Job two, SDE lead, is much more on message and quite
interesting, as it provides some clues about the way
Palladium will be built. "What is Palladium? We are a
windows team working on new, trust-oriented Windows
features, re-architecting and re-developing the Windows PC
platform from the hardware up. We will dramatically enhance
the level of Security available to any customer who wishes
to enhance the Privacy, Security, and Data/Content
Protection aspects of their applications. We will offer
customers a very high level of data protection, no matter
where they live, who they are, or what they are trying to
protect." Aside from that Data/Content Protection, it's
almost unworrying. Here's the techie bit:

"Own lean and mean team of 4 senior developers building the
very guts of this new security software. This is one of the
very few opportunities to build a micro-kernel from scratch.
We're keeping everything that's cool about a micro-kernel
and nothing that's not. Responsibilities include:
abstraction of hardware from the security modes of the new
CPUs to cryptographic input devices, process control, from
laying out the image in memory, to providing system
services, from providing memory management to interrupt
handling, from a debugger to the fundamentals of structured
exception handling. No file system, no networking, nothing
complicated, only elegant. This is a dream job."

Indeed it is. The approach sounds similar to the one the
early NT development team took, before marketing started
maiming the thing.

Also wanted is a secure application architect, who "will be
responsible for application strategy and design. The Secure
Application Architect will work with development, marketing
and internal and external customers to identify trusted
application scenarios that will be supported. He/she will
then be responsible for executing the strategy: providing
support and guidance for application developers, and working
with the internal Palladium team to ensure that the
necessary system services and infrastructure are in place."
So this one could be the nark. Apply here, here or here.

-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
<http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and
antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been
found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire'


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