Submitted by “An increasing number of machines are equipped with hardware that can be used to support trustworthy computing. Trustworthy computing enables applications to make strong assurances about their behavior. Existing operating systems do not provide the right execution environment for trustworthy computing, and so are unable to fully exploit this emerging opportunity. The Nexus is a new operating system for trustworthy computing. Its microkernel architecture greatly reduces the size of the trusted computing base (TCB) by moving functionality out of the kernel.”
“The Nexus enables interesting new applications. Applications we have built on top of the Nexus include:
* Media player application that enables rights-holders to define flexible, maintainable access control policies where protected media can be played by any media player that matches a set of properties.
* Spam-free e-mail system that defeats spam by enabling e-mail senders to mark messages as having been typed in by a human, which clearly distinguishes such messages from those that have been generated automatically…”
Very nice for corporate/government environments.
Really? This is what I read:
• Media player with DRM!!!!!111!!
• Spammers definitely will not mark their automatically generated spam as written by hand!!!!!1*
<small> * of course you need to use our software connected to our servers to sign and verify your mails for this to work, but don’t worry, we are Trustworthy™</small>
by whose standards? Mine, or the immortal corporations?
I’m not an expert, but I’m familiar with the L4 capability design for a micro-kernel OS. I’ve looked at some of their documents, but haven’t found a clear enough definition of how exactly their OS works to say it is (or is not) L4-like. Could someone link to the right document?
It’s an academic exercise. It got them a grant. I don’t see it becoming much more than the embedded OS for the new RIAApod.
That DRM media player thing is odd, though — not the way I would encourage free-software enthusiasts to jump on board. Maybe they are shooting for post-grant $$$.
The DRM is probably what got them the *initial* grant.
The RIAA/MPAA/BSA/SPA/similar would love to have something like this as the embedded controller for every music/movie player and CD/DVD burner in existence…
Of course, their (wet) dream would be to force everyone to use something like this as their PC’s (only) OS as well. That would be nirvana for them.
Amazing…6 years after MS announced how such an architecture should look like and research community published their alternative design, this group manages to publish the news all over again without even mentioning related work.
What they describe as new was already subject to several demonstrations in multiple international projects using FOSS-based prototypes. Just google for OpenTC, EMSCB, Turaya, L4.
they do not trust you