Hi 4321,
That was information we knew already. The use of TCG hardware in Windows 8 is on their website and in their presentations. So saying it again doesn't really count. It wasn't like they bluelighted the news. Indeed, it isn't news from an MS viewpoint. It was a Wave-specific release for Wave's purposes.
I know the history. Lived through it. Documented what was happening. Described what I called a constitution for cyberspace in 2001 - which matched up pretty well with the TCG model when it arrived - and coined the name the trust matrix of all devices (including phones) on all networks back in 2002 when nearly all of Wave's investors were still talking about keyboards, smart card readers and the banking industry. I wasn't always in tune with the company. At some point SKS said Wave owned Europe. And I groaned. My dream was about a neutral platform with which Wave participated, not of a new imperial hegemony. The world, fortunately, rejected Wave's claim upon it. Meanwhile, I identified phones as the key trusted device back then because it occurred to me that portability is an intrinsic issue. But I also realised that the phone standards industry was a mess of competing interests and that Wave would struggle to get anywhere. Most folks treated what I was saying then as one treats the mad aunt at a birthday party. But I remember - gratefully - when awk got excited because I described the interaction between a person on a train using a trusted mobile phone and their home television recording device, and saw him have his Damascene moment with much the same set of ideas in 2004, when he articulated his vision of the future - one that sounded a lot like a technology Venn diagram sort of description of the matrix, with ARM's Trustzone (then a phone chip) at its heart.
For myself, was calling the trust matrix a common architecture for the use, storage and exchange of valuable information from 2003, when the Wave community was thinking about first proprietary E2 and then TPMs in PCs - and TNC and OPAL were no more than a pipedream. Saw a hundred Wave PRs for which, on many occasions, Wave investors said - this is it, this is the big one - and then read things into the document which were not there. For years told folks that the game was about navigating obstructions. Obstructions which folks relentlessly denied existed. Not too popular. Others took the populist route: it's coming, it's here, huge money, keep the faith, next quarter etc. Great for intragroup primacy, less for intellectual integrity. Argued against a partnership with HP when many Bargoids were convinced a deal was in the offing - and actually suggested Dell was a better and more likely fit long before it became a reality. Took some grief from that community, but the HP Bargoids vaporised in dissatisfaction at the non-appearance of their incarlinate vision. Was the first Wave investor to use the numbers to demonstrate the lack of traction with TPMs and had to argue the point for months - seemed like to every Wavoid individually - to have folks submit to reality rather than what they wished to believe. doma may remember that one. Fried fish - aka Many Monikers - was one of the last to insist I recant: I called him a Wavoid tin soldier. Couldn't believe people still thought TPM traction had arrived when there was no sign of it in the revenues. Got mad periodically at the waste of money on WXP and the dilution it was causing. Not too popular amongst those who believe in the ineffable genius of the Spragues, but even the Spragues gave up on it finally when it turned out they couldn't get any decent high quality content and certainly couldn't build a revenue stream. Also documented the discrepancies between the numbers in the financial statements and the ones SKS was claiming from the unsafe harbour, which really undermined my confidence in the company's non-legally-binding information. SKS dangled his carrots. The believers reliably believed in them and insisted the world conform. Won an unpaid bet with Ramsey over one of them - after SKS suggested a 20,000 or so TPM unit order was on the verge of a signature and I reckoned he was full of it. Fell into the same hole myself re SEDs, thinking that I sniffed demand on the wind. But the numbers eventually revealed that it was a less powerful scent than I originally supposed. And when the first major end user SED order finally appeared - the GM deal - I said don't presume the avalanche, this may be an isolated instance. Excoriated, as usual, by fried fish who seemed very interested in the stock price around that time. Counselled folks to get out of the business of funnelling information through the crack pipe: it appeared to be being manipulated to suit the company's wants at shareholder expense. And folks so like to think they've got the scoop and can pretend to be visionary.
Which brings me back to the present.
MS has been building TPM-related functionality into BitLocker for years and Wave has aligned with their software. So MS' involvement isn't new. But it appears to have extended some. They didn't say they were committing to it for their own purposes, but they are supporting it as "one of the best" solutions available. That's useful, but it is less than an endorsement and adoption. If they say that they are adopting it and making it central, I will be the first to acknowledge it. I think they will in time. Just not today.
You are right that there's a tectonic shift in the industry in Wave's favour. But that's the story they don't tell in these PRs. It's mind-numbingly slow. But it is happening. Meanwhile, Wave releases PRs with MS' quotes that say nothing much.
That's okay. But let's not pretend it is more than it is. I was stomping on the hype that was stretching the meaning of the text beyond what it said. That is what I do. It is best not to let it get out of control. It metastasizes in embarrassing and harmful ways when it is allowed to do so. And I don't like to be associated with that - where silence appears to be a form of acquiescence.
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