Some of you may already have heard about it. "Trusted Computing". Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD have formed an alliance to create/promote a new standard for a more secure digital environment.
What it essentially holds is that it will become almost impossible to run unlicensed software, that it will become very easy to create content with a limited functionality (e.g. vids that play for 5 times then auto-destruct), that spam will become a lot easier to block (at least, that's what m$ says), and a whole bunch of other stuff.
On the flipside, it will form a huge problem for the open source community and it will give these companies a LOT of control over your PC - and with them governmental organizations.
Now, please note that this isn't just a vague future prediction. They're working on it right now. It's in the planning that a large part of the functionality will be implemented in the next version of Windows, Longhorn.
So what are your opinions on this?
It will make it a lot easier to protect your copyrights, and will provide easier and more secure methods of payment for the consumer. On the other hand, your digital freedom will be greatly diminished.
For more info, look here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
(and for those of you that don't get it yet: this is potentially a LOT bigger than Acacia)