Trusted execution is marketing speak for noexecute bits. What this means is clever h4x0rs have a harder time running arbitrary code on your machine through exploiting buffer overrun bugs in various software. Of course these days buffer overruns are getting rarer and rarer, so it's not that big of a deal.
No it's not.
Trusted Execution Technology is trusted computing. The basic idea is this: I have something I want to rent to you, but don't trust you not to steal it. With trusted computing, I can ask your computer what software (and drivers, etc) you're using, and verify that I can trust it (e.g. verify that you're using Vista and drivers that don't allow you to record the video you're currently playing), and I can be sure that you haven't gotten your computer to lie to me. It would also be useful if you were in an internet cafe: you could ask the computer what programs are running, and be sure that there is no key-logger running to steal your passwords. You could ensure that there isn't a
malicious hypervisor on your computer. It basically puts something into the system that the end user (or any software on the system) can't control.
Many people who understand what's going on have concerns about this technology because there are risks - specifically, abuse of consumers (fair use rights, vendor lock-in, etc). In and of itself, the technology isn't really evil and it allows for some cool things (just like nuclear technology).
As far as I know, the technology isn't really being used today, but I think once it hits some critical market penetration, the
MAFIAA and others will start using it.
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