1stnflight--MS Vista & the Embassy TAN Server: I believe that MS Vista will license Embassy TAN Server software (The Embassy TAN Server is really software and NOT hardware). Logically, it must already be a done deal. And the key in understanding WHY has little do with technology, but rather everything to do with, as you very nicely put it:
"....the human elements of power and trust still exist in trusted computing."
Let's begin with the fact that The Trusted Computing Group has certified only one TAN Server architecture: Wave's Embassy TAN Server.
Why ONLY WAVE's Server?
Isn't that odd? Obviously, Microsoft, IBM, HP, SUN....any of the Gorillas of the TCG have the resources to have developed a TAN Server architecture that would have satisfied the architectural requirements of the TCG. But that hasn't happened. Why?
Let's ratchet up a few notches the level of abstraction of your "human element" line so that it betters conforms to the POLITICAL context of the Trusted Computing Group.
The TAN Server architecture is a political hot potato! The TAN serves many infrastructure roles, including the role of a Gateway to Trusted Computing(ie the TCG Grid). It is a Gateway because ALL users are REQUIRED to first REGISTER with a TAN Server in order to ACTIVATE the TPM.
If MICROSOFT developed for VISTA a proprietary TAN Server architecture, it would a blatant effort to usurp the role of Gateway to Trusted Computing. Will MS try? NO. The TCG has the VOTING POWER to prevent that scenario from happening.
The TCG is a Standards Group. The TCG decides on which pieces of the Trust Infrastructure that its members will use, and NOT individual companies. Does anyone really think that the voting members smile benignly at the prospect of Microsoft become the defacto Gateway to Trusted Computing? Not in a million plus years!
The Trusted Computing Group voting members decide whose IP will be used in the TAN architecture, NOT MICROSFT! Trusted Computing is STANDARDS DRIVEN! And that is why when Ramsey and Sheldon bravely plunge daily into the bowels of the Vista tech specs trying to untangle the many overlapping, intertwined and knotted intestines of MS Vista they will always come up empty handed. This is NO LONGER a technological mystery; it has become a POLITICAL MYSTERY NOVEL. That's why the techies frequently cannot make heads or tails of WAVE.
Of course, if Microsoft wants to create a proprietary TAN Infrastructure, they can do so. BUT, if MS makes that choice, they will need to QUIT the Trusting Computing Group, and start their own Trusted Standards Group!
TCG HAS CERTIFIED ONLY ONE TRUST SERVER ARCHITECTURE TO PROVIDE the TCG members with Key Transfer Manager (KTM) and Attestation Credential Manager (ACM)! And that Server is called the EMBASSY.
And MS VISTA is starting NOW!
Where is the competition to the Embassy TAN! There is none. Simple as that!
Am I arguing that WAVE will be the official TCG Gateway(and Gatekeeper to the TPM)? No. I believe WAVE will license the essential proprietary components of the Embassy TAN to Microsoft Vista. And MS Vista will then certainly call this TAN the MS Vista TAN. Logically, WAVE will license the proprietary TAN components to ALL other members of the TCG, and those members can and will name the TAN whatever they choose.
WAVE managed to successfully work around the HUMAN ELEMENTS OF POWER AND (mis)TRUST endemic in any Standards Group to win the dual role of TCG Gateway(to the TAN) and Gatekeeper(to the TPM). WAVE has conquered Intel, Dell, Atmel, Seagate, STM and others because WAVE has won the dual role as the unofficial Gateway/Gatekeeper to Trusted Computing.
WAVE as an investment is going to be more MASSIVE and AWESOME than anyone here can imagine!
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