Q: Won't the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. want a back door?
 
A: Microsoft will never voluntarily place a back door in any of its products and would fiercely resist any government attempt to require back doors in products. From a security perspective, such back doors are an unacceptable security risk because they would permit unscrupulous individuals to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our customers' data and systems. From a business perspective, such products would not be marketable, either domestically or internationally. Equally important, deliberately inserting such vulnerabilities would undermine Microsoft's reputation in the marketplace as a trusted vendor. For these reasons and others, we would oppose any such government efforts, as we did during the encryption debate.

Q: Will I still be able to play MP3s on my PC?
 
A: You will. NGSCB will bring additional capabilities to the PC but will not interfere with the operation of any program that runs on current PCs. The nexus and nexus computing agents are designed never to impose themselves on processes that do not request their services; nexus-related features must be explicitly requested by a program. So the MP3 player you have today should still work on a next-generation PC tomorrow.

Q: Can Linux, FreeBSD, or another open source OS run on hardware developed for the NGSCB architecture?
 
A: Virtually anything that runs on a Windows-based machine today will still run on a NGSCB machine (there are some esoteric exceptions*; if you currently have a machine that runs both Linux and Windows, you would be able to have that same functionality on an NGSCB machine).

Q: Some people have claimed that running the Windows OS with the nexus will enable Microsoft or other parties to detect and remotely delete unlicensed software from my PC. Is this true?
 
A: This is not true. Running the Windows OS with the nexus will not include mechanisms that delete or disable any content or file that currently runs. In fact, the NGSCB architecture is built on the premise that no policy will be imposed that is not approved by the user. Microsoft is firmly opposed to putting "policing functions" into nexus-aware PCs and we do not intend to do so. A machine?s owner?whether an individual or enterprise?has sole discretion to determine what programs run on the nexus-aware system. Programs that run under nexus-aware systems, just like programs that run under Windows, will do whatever they are allowed to do, based on the security settings on the user's machine. NGSCB not only respects existing user controls, it strengthens them.