On Sun, 2005-02-06 at 19:18 -0800, D. Popkin wrote:
The true danger of TCPA is not that "free" MP3s and movies will become unavailable, but the de facto loss of privacy as non-TCPA gear becomes unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
Agreed, in part. I don't think it'll fly too well if any hardware manufacturer builds in TCPA such that only a Microsoft-certified OS will run on it, for one, it's a bad idea to piss off the geeks (and certainly there's a higher geek to ordinary user ratio in the free software world), and also this would be a great way for Microsoft to piss off even the current (far-right Republican) administration. I would expect the setting to disable the TCPA chip to be present in new hardware for as long as TCPA lasts, and indeed, there may be cases where even an ordinary user would want to disable the TCPA chip. I personally don't trust Microsoft at all. They had their chance to keep my trust, and they blew it, big time. -- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@speakeasy.net>