Microsoft, TCPA, your wallet and the real ending of the story.

[Adam Shostack]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| Indeed.  
| 
| If it's coming from Redmond, and as usual if it smells of evil, there is
| an utterly simple solution in dealing with it:  don't buy it.  Don't buy
| Microsoft software, don't buy motherboards that include TCPA capabilities.  
| When you're up for getting yourself a new PC, get a generic one without
| such options, or if you insist, call the vendor and tell them you want a
| box without evil-inside and without a Redmond OS pre-installed.

Which CPU vendor will sell me a CPU without TCPA?

And besides, I WANT a TCPA machine.  I just don't want remote
attestation, or keys that I can't back-up and relocate.

| Buy a generic intel/amd machine without the "Secure" processor, or give
| Steve Jobs some of your cash for a nice G4/G5 machine, or you can go to a

IBM is starting to add TCPA to the powerpc line.  And much as I enjoy
my Mac, the DVD player still has this bug where fast-forward doesn't
work sometimes.  Really annoying when you need to yank a DVD for
cleaning, and watch the previews 3 or 4 times.

http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/newsletter/mar2003/ppc_process_at_work.html

Sparc may be an option if Sun stays in business, but again, I want a
TCPA chip that I can control.

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume