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Intel To Drop CPU ID Number
slashdoter writes: "Looks like Intel is giving up the ID number thing on the CPU. They will still have it on the PIII but the Willamette will be
like the older PII. " Guess the
boycott
over the fiasco is at an end. Cool that Intel listens to consumers.
Dammit, I was enjoying all those benefits that you got by using the Processor ID while online :)
kwsNI
We can now continue to download porno and mp3's w/o being tracked! All hail the internet!
Ya know what, I don't believe Intel for a second. I think the CPU ID will still be there. They've just declared it gone for PR reasons. Someone will discover it way down the line and ther'll be a big stink about it. Anyone want to wager against me on this one?
This looks a little familiar :) Why not just mirror this one on the front page? or educate people a little more on the various sections. This article can be found in the Your Rights Online section. I suggest that all slashdot readers regularly check the other sections, before bitching about how news didn't make the front page.
Of course now if they'd just run the damn story about Napster and Limp Bizkit teaming up...
I am a free CPU
I had a Mobile PII that had the ID # (yes, intel was putting them in the PIIs for laptops since they were being manufactured at the same time as the first PIIIs) but I returned it for an older PII.
Now I can start grabbing all that pr0n and mp3z at work again!
Get it?
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
They got lots o' negative publicity over this. Because of this, there wasn't nearly as many online sites that chose to use the technology (I can only think of Intel's Web Outfitters). Then they were faced with the question of what good is a technology that nobody adopts or uses?
Basically, I think they had an idea (not a great one but it made a little sense) and they completely marketed it wrong. When it blew up in their face, I think they finally decided that it wasn't worth it and dropped it.
kwsNI
It would be interesting to see which put more pressure on INTEL the boycott or the House Democrat denoucing the chip and the Chinese goverment telling people not to use it. This would be a good way to judge the effect of /.'s boycotts on MPAA and DVDCAA and eToys.
Still I am glad by the move - even though I prefer AMD
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
Worry anytime a company or the government has any tracking plans designed to:
- to stop crime, information piracy or terrorists.
- streamline processes which will allegedly result in lower costs to the consumer/taxpayer but requires less accountability or bypasses standard protections.
- cater to fearmongering in any sort, i.e. protecting your children, the Commies are coming to get us!, etc.
Privacy, personal responsibility and accountability are the most important rights all persons in this world should fight for.
(1) The unique MAC address on their ethernet card.
(2) The serial number in their modem ROM (See the ATIx series of commands)
(3) The unique serial number embedded in their BIOS ROM.
Any of these can uniquely identify YOUR pc to the net.
The other thing is, why not just create two versions of the chip? For home users, we can get the version of the chip that does not have the serial number, and for those that want/need the serial number feature, they can create a version that has it. Better yet, make it a separate module that can be added to the CPU, so that while each CPU has a serial number, it cannot be accessed unless this module is added. If corporate/government users want this feature, I don't see why they shouldn't have it. For personal use, I'd say we have to have at least a choice or it should not be there at all.
As far as I know, Microsoft was embedding the MAC Address in documents created by their products... Which is how the guy that wrote the Melissa virus was caught. Not that that's a good thing!
:improved: one that actually obeyed your commands, and another that removed the embedded hardware info in Office docuents.
In a completely separate incedent, it was found that the Windows Registration Wizard was sending all the data about your configuration back to Microsoft, regardless as to whether or not a user said it was okay when they were presented with a dialog asking permission.
Two completely separate incidents, which took place a while back... After the fallout, Microsoft released 2 utilities... One that would replace the standard Windows registration wizard with an
Yes, a wonderful victory for consumers. But what about going after the root of the problem - marketing and insufficient legal protections?
The CPU id was important to me that I wasn't even looking at Intels new recent offerings and paying more attention to the Athlon and all of its incarnations.
Guess I'll look closely at Intel(non-id chips) for now on.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is truly a day to remember. Why? Not because Intel stopped a controversial practice in the fact of intense grassroots opposition. Because Intel is actually removing a feature from one of it's chips! That brings the number of instructions down to... letsee... 7,045. Basically a RISC machine, right?
I have this straight from one of Intel's senior researchers. The original concept was that the CPU ID would be used for tracking assets in an organization. Inventory type stuff. This was actually asked for by major IT departments.
/sbin/ifconfig
Then: The marketing dept. got hold of the ID number and started asking around about what it could be used for and someone said oooh, e-commerce! It was then that things got out of control and everyone got onto Intel for tracking them, etc.
The sad thing is that you don't need a CPU id if you allow your adversary to execute arbitrary code on your machine.(which you would have to do to allow someone to read your ID #) I mean a nice unique ID number is available by running
...they already finished cataloging every computer user on the planet. Tcd004
At least not on any decent OS. If you're a Linux user, put this is /etc/cron.daily:
.= sprintf "%lX", (rand 256); .= ":";
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$if = "eth0";
$hwaddr = "";
# From Programming Perl, 2nd ed, p 224
srand(time ^ $$ ^ unpack "%32L*", `ps axww | gzip`);
for($i = 0; $i != 6; $i++) {
$hwaddr
$hwaddr
}
chop($hwaddr);
`ifconfig $if hw ether $hwaddr`;
It will change your supposed 'hardware' address to a random value (of course you can choose one specifically to frame someone...)
or just reimplemented in an undocumented way?
Even paranoids have enemies
Until you go to [insert "evil" site here] and they associate your serial# with your sitelogin/realname/whateveridentifyinginfoyouwantt otalkabout.
The Daily Build
If you don't know what Signal11 is talking about, take a look at the contract you signed when you signed up for service. I don't know what % of ISPs do it, but MediaOne/RR explicitly states in their service contract "we will monitor and sell info on your browsing habits" [paraphrased]. If you want the service, you've got to agree to it... and since I can't get DSL, there's no competition. (Dialup is out of the question -- I've been spoiled ;)
The Daily Build
How does buying used make a difference? It's not like your name was associated with the CPU ID from the start -- it becomes associated by what you do with it. The main problem is that these ID's can leave a trail, not that they might reveal your name. Once somebody has decided to snoop on you, the trail can be found. This could potentially be like someone going through your files (i.e. depending on what you use the net for, they could find some of the same info they would on receipts and invoices, etc.)
========
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
That, along with an ethernet port on the motherboard, means that someone can wiretap your system if they set things up right.
Mostly likely all it takes is some programming of the PAL or SAL API.
You might pooh-pooh this; but consider the implications. It means that if it hasn't been exploited yet by the CIA/NSA, then there is someone who ought to be held up for treason.
Consider that this is the best opportunity for the U.S. Government to have extremely considerable influence over the entire world's computer infrastructure - at will.
If someone in the NSA/CIA hasn't worked with Intel to put wiretapping into the Itanium, this is an extremely serious oversight. It's hard to think of a better opportunity to expand U.S. dominance.
Of course, if the Chinese have penetrated Intel's security, or the Israel's, well, hey, we're screwed. :)
The Intel boycott is still on.
Did they do it because of pressure, or because a unique feature in each CPU adds significantly to the cost, and they need to compete with AMD?
No, I think this is just a cost savings or a step to remove unnecessary complexity from the fab mfg process.
Humpf... With the advent of IPv6 and its super duper security model we can all look forward to big brother knowing where we are... but at least we can encrypt the packets.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Yeah right. They didn't drop the serial number because of consumer pressure. They dropped the number because it was a complete failure. I buy stuff online alot, and never once have I seen the topic of the serial number. If companies are collecting them, they do it in secret. I have mine turned off anyway. I thought it was a stupid idea to begin with.
Remember, the day when you found out about Intel PSN? It was devastating. I remember going to their newsgroups and publishing questions
-1 -, -2 -, -3 - maybe those were not very well articulated questions but, jeez, couldn't they try to answer?
The only responses from Intel rep's that me and other hundreds of people received was to move our questions away from Intel's newsgroup into other newsgroups.
They specifically did not like questions that mentioned overclocking their CPU's, even though they overclock their own CPU's all the time and sell them at higher prices (PII, PIII same core; Pentium 166 was an overclocked Pentium 150 - but only intel is allowed to do this.)
I am happy that AMD did not catch this desease of marking their processors with PINs, it would be a worse blow yet.
Now at least, I can go back the Intel's newsgroups and say: "told you so, suckers!"
You can't handle the truth.
As far as I know, MAC Addresses make up part of GUID's which are used far and wide in Windows.
This is why Microsoft guarentees GUID's to be unique if they are generated on a computer with a network card. They are only "mathematically likely" to be unique if they are generated on a computer without a network card.
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E2 IN2 IE?
If AMD wasn't doing so well, would Intel have kept CPU-ID?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Most home pcs don't have ethernet cards.
It was a little tough, but with my rotary tool and a fine carborundum bit, I was able to grind it right out.
I'll do it for you, too, just send me your Pentiums.
George
Folks,
I think the CPU ID idea used on the Pentium III CPU died real quickly because Microsoft never really supported the idea in Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows 2000. Given that's 85% of the operating system market, when Microsoft doesn't support the CPU ID#, nobody else is going to support it.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Prove that the Pentium III processor really does make the Internet more fun
You can run more pr0n movies simultaneously?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
But that's all still really besides the point. :)
Digital identity in the right hands can give you the kind of freedom you've never imagined possible. Fully authorized digital identity or certificate in the hands of a third party you trust can be used to arbitrate your business and thus shield you from the more tiring elements of free capitalism such as direct mail marketing. Other elements of your identity, like all contact information, in the right hands can give you powerful roaming freedom, and in the wrong hands an endless nightmare of commercial bombardment.
In the Real World, we leave this sort of trust to the government, the community and society that we are a part of. We have enough trust in our own community to allow them to do things like keeping an elaborate registry on everyone; where they live, where they work and how much they earn. Our identity can be verified at every door and most financial transactions. We have a common agreement that this information will not be abused, and a legal system to enforce it where violations may occur.
Now, since the virtual world does not possess this kind of global authority, the need for verification and identification of an individual has driven us to temporary choices like ID numbers on processors. Quite laughable, actually, both the concept of associating a machine with a person and the worry of someone tracking these cyptic numbers over the Wild, Wild Web. Laughable, maybe, but hitting frighteningly close to home. A piece of our identity in the hands of someone we do not trust to treat us justly.
This will continue to be an issue when we learn to flash the badge of our strong digital identify in the online world. Who will you really let know who you really are? What will they do with this information, where will it be stored?
In God we trust, and God is dead. Now who will hold your number?
--
Jouni Mannonen
3D Evangelist
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that all the bad press from the id numbers fracas affected their sales at precisely the time when AMD was really beginning to make a run on Intel's market share.
"Hmmmm, should I buy a slower processor from intel that can also help Big Brother track my every move on the Internet, or should I buy the faster, no-serial-number-having AMD Athlon?"
Easy answer, and I'll bet Intel realized the same thing.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Did you know that your car has a unique licence no?
Did you know that your DNA or evven crude fingerprints are tracable to you?
Did you know that you are levaving fingerprints and DNA traces everywhere you go?
And even your "anonymous" snail mail might be traced to where it was posted.
Let's all cover our faces, always use gloves, never use any product with serial no, communicate through secret spy style boxes. Then we might at last enjoy the privacy wich we have the right to...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Three Letters: AMD. AMD chose not to go that path. AMD's share is up. I'm not saying they are related but, just in case ...
It wouldn't suprise me. They do that I'll never buy another intel anything.
Ahaha, this first poster is probably the slowest on the draw i've ever seen. A first first claim thats number #57?? comeon, you can do better than that.
The serial number was accessed through the CPUID instruction by sending it a particular parameter (eax=3). That instruction will exist still (as it has since the 486), but will be undefined for eax=3. So the instruction count will not be reduced. Intel HAS retired instructions before, some of the old, old 16 bit stuff.
alt.binaries.hot.grits.on.natalie.portman here I come!!!
Yeeeeeeee-haaaaawwwwwwwwwwww!!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
all my computers' nics have the same hwaddr as their IP address (private ip)
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
It is all economics. Intel is getting their buts kicked by AMD. They're desperate to reclaim sales, and this is one thing stopping sales. I know I wouldn't buy a p///.
The linux community needs to face the fact that corporations decisions about what to support and what not to support are all based on economics. If we want to create our own software and our own world, that's fine, and we can do it without any help from wall street. But if we want commercial products, we are going to have to show companies that they can gain financially from investing time in linux.
But then again, who wants crappy closed source bug ridden commercial software anyway!? I'm happy sticking to gnu software...
___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux
hyperpoem.net
I know this is offtopic but hardware identifiers are old news here on slashdot. What I want to know is can I trust that my grits will be stirred adequately with the intel random number generator chip?
How will these get traced back to me?
But this only identifies my card to other machines on the local network (on the same wire). Packets coming to me from the Internet just contain my IP address, which in my case is dynamic (although it doesn't seem to change day-to-day very often). Some cards allow you to change their MAC, if you're paranoid or running IPV6 (which is supposed to include the MAC in your IP address).
Sorry, I don't have a modem so I can't comment. If you are dialed up, can the remote machine command your modem to return the serial number? I'm not familiar with the issue here.
How, pray tell, are you going to get this from across the Internet? This is more-or-less equivalent to the PIII CPU ID - somehow software has to get this ID number off of your machine and send it out. As long as you run an OS that you trust not to do that, and there are no hidden hardware interfaces that can pass the ID directly from CPU or BIOS to the network card or modem, then you're safe even if you have a unique ID on your machine.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Maybe next quarter they will announce the same for Merced/Titanicium.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I totally believed you were serious and sincere and then I got to the punchline "Stop anonymity now!" Classic!
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
If all of us were to run something like this as a background task and/or while we sleep (think of it as a practical alternative to SETI-at-home), all ISP log demographics would quickly become useless.
I wonder if anybody has already hacked together a script like this... perhaps to take advantage of those "we pay you to browse" ad-based services. If not, it might be a fun project for me to set up.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The ideas of ecommerce and user tracking are incompatible. It's the same as tracking users through their supplied credit card numbers, and nobody's having a hissy fit that their credit cards have a unique number.
I was actually looking forward to picking up the ID of anyone who visited my site and using it instead of my own. :-)
sig fault
Of which Coppermine is NOT! ... two years ago? What are they doing in Santa Clara?
Now whren did IBM hit the street with a copper process? Hmm
Why not use MAC address for inventory tracking uniqueness like the rest of the world?
Sun CPUs have ID numbers of the same type...no one went after them. Though, this is probably because most home users (yes, I know the 11 people that are the exception will all reply to this post!) don't use Sun hardware
Also, Intel CPUs have had Processor IDs ever since they went to
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Yeah, no more KNOWN IDs but now we will have to audit our CPUs to be sure they didnt hide it near that bill sux circuit ;-)
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Why are people so freaked about the CPU ID, yet not worried about: (1) The unique MAC address on their ethernet card. No need to worry about a MAC ID, they are about as uniqe as a first and last name. sure in some areas there might only be one, but the larger the area the more the chance of duplicates. I ordered 3 Nic form a company and two of them had the same MAC address!
I sig therefore I am...
when you have BeOS instead? It sure costs a lot less...
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E2 IN2 IE?
I've never heard of any site making use of the processor ID. I use a K6-2, though. If the ID was never used at all, then the wired article is just PR crap.
I think Intel just pulled a useless feature that nobody cared about and reduced costs (I blindly assume). They're just making themselves look good by claiming to bend to the peoples' desires.
Does anyone know of anything these processor IDs were actually used for?
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Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
If Intel had listened to consumers they would never have put the serial number there in the first place. The fact that Intel went ahead and marketed the P-III with the serial number feature intact means that they were just hoping to be able to bully consumers into accepting the 'feature', and they are only giving up on it becaue it has become clear that the market won't swallow it.
The boycott may have worked, but the fact that a boycott was even necessary underscores the fact that Intel is not a consumer friendly company.
Okay...who's CPUID is 666? I'll buy it off them.
-
Ekapshi
CPU serial numbers are useful mostly for networking, inventory control, and copy protection. If you've had to deal with dongles, or FLEXLM, the License Manager from Hell, CPU serial numbers look like a big improvement. Dongles are notorious for having problems when you have more than one. They usually plug into the printer port (although USB dongles are appearing) and try, not too successfully, to be transparent. On my system, if the printer runs out of paper, the dongle can't respond to the license manager, and the licensed software stops running.
It would seem to have the potential of being misused by commercial and governmental interests to indeed track what someone is doing on-line. Making sure that there is input opposing these uses to TCPA wouldn't hurt.
A larger issue to the open and/or free OS communities is making sure that they are not locked out. The BIOS, loader, and OS all interact in the TCPA model; if that model is based on the way a certain large software house does things, and then gets wrapped up in non-disclosure agreements to "protect its security", newer x86 PCs may not boot your favorite OS. Seeing as Apple doesn't seem to be a member of TCPA (yet), this might be a good thing for their sales...
I'd worry more about CALEA, so far as having someone watching what I was doing ...go to
http://www.eff.org/
and search for CALEA
You're right. In the physical world, we do have these elaborate "registries" as you call them. But there's a difference between that and strong digital identity. With physical identity, we can always choose not to "flash the badge." With digital identity, you can't do that because you have no control whatsoever over what of your identity people see (you don't have much control in the physical world either, but you can still take precautions to completely hide your identity).
Now, if this "identity" could be stored on my machine and only my machine, and I could at my own discretion choose to hide it or not, that would be one thing. Perhaps CPU ID's would make a starting point, though MAC addresses would be better (they're cross-platform). But that's not how it works now, and businesses will never allow that (since then they have no control, and in business it's all about who controls what).
By the way, I notice people here saying MAC addresses are totally private. Not strictly true. Every Ethernet packet you send out is tagged with both your MAC and the MAC of the machine you're sending to; it's part of the Ethernet protocol. Now, these are both stripped out as soon as the packet passes through a non-Ethernet device (cable modem, DSL modem, T1, etc). But as long as there's only Ethernet between you and The Bad Guy (tm), he can still track that part of where you're going. Guess it's a Good Thing that the Net isn't Ethernet-only...
Since MAC addresses can be used instead, and since virtually all corporate PC's have them, this excuse is for a redundant id code. (This argument is weakened slightly by the fact that you might replace your network card, thereby changing the MAC address.)
And, of course, it's use for tracking people remotely would require the "victim" to execute code to identify himself.
No, the real use of such code would have to be for copy protection schemes. Mainframe users have long lived with programs that are installed with a key specific to a particular machine's CPU ID. Software I have installed on a Sun 10000 attempted to do the same thing -- but using a network adapter's MAC address -- but became terribly confused when I added a fifth or sixth adapter. The boneheaded scheme then disabled our *backup* software.
A universal CPU ID would be a copy-protection/software licensing dream come true.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Chip ID numbers are nothing new. Everyone has (had) them. Its because thats the way it works. Like your car, or your MAC address, everything has its own unique number, because thats the way it works! Sun, SGI, etc, they all use (used?) chip ID numbers!
Only when Intel started saying, we have this identification system, lets start using it, did it become a problem.. and only because the safegaurds were not used well. It has been a great blunder for the under-informed among us.
So id bet the "boycott" did nothing. Teh amount of consumer flack, did.
--jay
OMG! My ethernet card has a unique address too! Let's all boycott ethernet! This is insane!! Our privacy is being violated! Call the ACLU, FBI, and all the ignorant privacy groups to make sure that they know. Death to ethernet!!
You miss the point. The intel cpu id isn't in every ip packet that you send either. It's the software that accesses this number and does something with it. Like putting it in one of the umpteen redundant hidden fields in your Word documents ;)
Pi
There is the possibility that certain software concerns would be told about the CPU ID, and made to keep it secret. But this would also restrict its use, making it less effective.
In short, the CPU ID will only work if it's public knowledge. A bit like the Doomsday Machine :)
I believe that Intel begin putting CPU IDs in when (literal) highway robbery of processors was running rampant. It was noted at the time that gram for gram these things were more valuable than gold and less contraband than cocaine. When a greymarket vendor starts selling Intel CPUs real cheap it really helps the constables to be able to track them back to a "vanished" shipment. Thus, Intel would have added serial numbers for the much more mundane purpose of protecting their own shipments. Dell has now begun shipping "stealh" boxes that don't say DELL all over them (translation: steal me, I'm a computer) for much the same reason that my daughter just received a non-descript shipment from "TRU" which contained a gift from a well know national toy vendor.
As people have noted, the export of the CPU ID might make enterprise asset tracking easier, but I think the more parsimonious explanation fits better. Of course I could research the relevant history, but it's much more fun to pull it out of memory.
Fair enough - I can't argue with that. Like I said, you have to trust your hardware and OS not to add ID to your network transmissions and trust your apps not to embed ID in the content you create. Merely having unique ID on your machine isn't immediately a problem, it's really just an issue of who can find out this ID.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
One down, but what about these other UIDs, which have been around for a long time... - the MAC address on your Ethernet card. Unique by design, easy to get to. - The serial number of your hard drive. Very easy to get to. Not guaranteed unique, can be changed, but most are not. - The serial number in your BIOS. - The serial number in Windows. - The serial number of any plug and play device. When people went nuts over the Pentium ID, I LMAO at the knee-jerk morons. You are already tagged! -Donut
Good now if i can only get them to stop tracing my phoneline i could become a good h4x0r..hehe
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quota
Anyone that thinks Intel gives a DAMN about their customers is sadly mistaken. Their dropping of the serial number on their procs is due to the effect that their customers had on their bottom line..... don't confuse that with them "caring about" what their customers think.... if no action had been taken by consumers Intel would still be putting serial numbers on their chips.... If you want to thank someone........thank AMD for putting additional pressure on Intel forcing them to look at things that they could change.
My Ethernet id ensures everybody knows who i am anyways. The hype is just like GM food, with the consumers not really knowing what is going on. Not that I care, I use Motorola exclusively (so many registers, sweet, sweet registers. MMMmmmmm!)
I am a man, not a toy.
Erm, it's 28.1 trillion...
So why isn't everyone up in arms over ethernet addresses too?
If I interpret the purpose of the job correctly, the public relations staff listens to the public. Therefore, if Intel listens to its own public relations staff, they are listening to the public.
Did I miss something?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
What's the big deal about the Processor ID anyway? I'm posting this using a Pentium III. Go ahead, tell me what my Processor ID is. Does Linux blurt the ID all over the web? Does Lynx tell everybody the ID number? Does Netscape? Does ANY software actually TRANSMIT the ID number ANYWHERE???
...
Technically I would have to control the actual server that you could connect to and issue the proper command via say something like javascript, an internal browser command, or java, and possibly activeX.
No, you would have to control the computer I am using to post. You need to run a program on my computer to find out my Processor ID. I like using Lynx as a web browser. Is the Lynx development team going to add code to make Lynx send the Processor ID? I don't think so. And if they did, I can keep using the version I've already got which doesn't transmit the ID. If some operating system that included a browser started transmitting the code, use a different operating system. Write your own! Write a filter that takes the code out of the packets going into your Ethernet card driver.
A processor ID code is actually a good idea. You don't HAVE to use software that tells everybody in the world your ID number, you know. You could control where the code is sent to.
BRING BACK THE PROCESSOR ID!!!
...
the real reason is they want to go back to making single die processors, which I think is a good idea. rather than having this stupid slot thing with multiple chips for the core and cache and processor serial numbers, they'll just have one chip that will run faster, with no high capicitance interconnects between separate chips.
My other first post is car post.
If we want privacy we need laws (aka rights). Too much "privacy intrusive" information has fully legit use. Or do you really believe in privacy through obscurity?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
It's a shame Intel's marketing dept screwed up the ID number and tried to use it for e-commerce.
Informative chip ID's might practically wipe out the fraudulent practice of selling overclocked systems not labeled as such.
Dishonest dealers can mislabel chip cases without much effort, but they can't very well etch fake specification numbers onto the internal silicon.
People claiming the CPU ID# was good for copyright protection schemes and software licensing has just missed the obvious problems with it. You can't easily switch CPUs/PCs without notifying the sellers of all your applications and games (man what a hassle!!!), plus you have to pay more for using multiple PCs (eg. working from home or as a consultant). The public made everybody including Microsoft and Intel aware that this was unacceptable and draconian, which it is. It leaves the companies with far too much control over what you do and when you can do it, by enforcing severe and awkward limitations over the end-user (tieing him/her to a specific CPU/PC). A dongle you can take with you anywhere, and you can only use it on one machine at a time (I think, never tried to split the cable..)
;-) Now then you're REALLY talking about tracking PEOPLE down and not just machines! I can't wait..
It COULD however be a very good option for dongles for corporate use, where the customer and seller have tight communication. It's easier to live with draconian-ness in the corporate world, but not for the masses.
Another problem is that a CPU ID# does make it easier to track people down. Of course wether this is a real problem or not depends on the perspective. When a unique ID hidden in Word was able to put a man to prison, it is a big deal though. Unique IDs may be used anywhere in proprietary programs without the users KNOWLEDGE and CONSENT, tied to databases with personal information. CPU ID# is just one more number it is harder and more expensive to get rid of (if they didn't include the option to disable it). The public opinion is quite clear however. The CPU ID#, the id number in Word and the id incorporated in RealPlayer was all stopped due to outcries of violation of privacy. Doubleclick however only included an Opt-Out feature, which sadly for everybody, puts them into the dirt where spammers belong.
In the future, maybe we'll have to logon to Internet sites by using our fingerprints or perhaps a bloodtest?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Bingo. That's why I wouldn't use MS word to compose anything that I wanted to be anonymous. If plain html was good enough for Tim Berners-Lee, it's good enough for me.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
*shudder*
I hadn't heard of that. I guess I know not to buy SMBus or PXE NICs. I hope my ancient eepro and eexpress can't do this!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and