What is a cypherpunk?

[Shawn K. Quinn]

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 at speakeasy.net>