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Some mobile PIIs have PIII-type IDs
dtor writes "P3 Id? Worry about the P2 Id.
According to this MSNBC article, some P2s ship with a P3-like unique ID enabled. Apparently, this was an mistake at the factory." Intel apparently was testing the process, used in the PIIIs on some of their PII mobile lines, and someone forgot to turn that circuit off before they left the factory. Intel is saying that a BIOS update is out that will take care of the problem - anyone have a link to that?
This is a GOOD thing if CPU's have software addressable ID's that cannot be turned off! This is exactly what the commercial world needs to stop piracy. Tie the software to one unique ID that you get by calling up a number and registering your software and voila. No piracy issue. We deal with this all the time on Sparcs running Solaris or SGI's and it's not that big of a deal. The only people that should be concerned are software pirates. This would also be a good thing for Linux and would allow companies like Oracle to tie their software to one machine under Linux x86 and not have to worry about piracy or complex licensing software that never works anyway.
1 4m 4n 313373 p1r4t3. d0nut m3zzup my ju4reZ 4 m3 pl33z.
p34c3 l0v3 4nD win2k b3t4's 4 a11.
... that update is not out yet.. Intel is working on it.
This is total and complete BS that somebody simply forgot to turn off the switch. I don't care what Intel claims, but it is obvious to me that this was a very calculated decision. Chip fabrication process is a very complex procedure. There are many reticles used to build up and etch away all of the layers that make a working piece of silicon. It is always an extremely precise procedure to make sure that all of the right reticles are used in the right order. Test chips which use a different set of reticles are always maintained separately.
It is impossible to add the PIII-ID number to a PII after the PII has been manufactured. Intel must have a complete set of reticles for a mobile PII that contains the ID number.
From what I gather, this is a very sneaky way of Intel to release the PIII marketing tracking ID number into other processors, not just a mistake.
Yes, Suns have hostid's and many a flexlm tools that I use have the license file locked by the hostid. However, there are ways to make it look to a process that the hostid is something different. Not difficult at all, if you have root and the right patches.
To those who think that IDs will stop piracy... Yeah right! Those who purchase Sun and SGI machine expect to be raped by the vendors. I could care less about supposed piracy. Take Quake II. It was initially slated to sell X copies and budgetted accordingly. Well, it sold X+Y copies with P copies pirated. No one lost money.
The problem with the IDs is that if you let them use the f*ng IDs, they track your PC everywhere. They first package you register, EVERYONE on the net knows who you are. Big brother is watching and can now find you! Hell there are enough kiddie-questionable pictures on Logos on sites that all the site has to do is send it to you and get your code. The Big Brother nabs your ass for viewing kiddie porn.
Boy, I sure want my ID all over the net. It is as bas as the serial numbering from MS on 98 and all products to track files to a person/machine.
software piracy is a different thing from people tracking. people tracking is BIG BROTHER.
you can still enable software for a particular host without encoding the hostid into every file produced with that processor.
host id cloning/spoofing etc is of course a very, very interesting subject.
in the eyes of some people, the mere posession of software that does not encode this id into the product files should be 'against the "law"'. that is unacceptable. that is BIG BROTHER.
the interesting question is - how can you tell if your hostid is not encoded into your files? i would be very hesitant to taking anyone's word for it.
Exactly! Must be at the mask level! How stupid do they think we are? AMD should strike now!
I followed a link from the Register. This seems to be one of the people who noticed it first if I am not mistaken...
http://jpc.pair.com/Codex/article/psne.html
Are you implying that Microsoft Access is professional grade? The microbes living in my shower drain could design a better RDBMS.
http://jpc.pair.com/Codex/article/psne.html
There's a small source code also to test the ID feature.
My wife(also a technogeek) was researching alternatives to the P III because of the ID and found that iMacs have an ID and I have heard that Cyrix and AMDs also have IDs. But don't expect them to be very forthcoming about it. Duh.
http://www.alphalinux.org/ - even cures that darned Pentium floating point bug!
Alphas also have processor IDs :(
Excuse me if I am wrong, but isn't it possible to read the serial number of disk drives (and floppies for that mater) via software. Wouldn't this identify a particular machine just as well as a CPU ID?
I think it all comes down to how much you trust the code that you are running.
Personally I have little (falling fast) with Microsoft production. I'm sure other big companies are just as bad.
Simon W.
Lawnmowerman's in your head now...
1/1/1984...happy new year!
What the hell are you talking about? You put your return address on envelopes don't you? What's stopping anyone from just opening your envelope and reading whatever they want? You're being paranoid. And yes, I'm anonymous because I'm fucking lazy and don't feel like logging in.
Access has its own place. I have worked with Access for 2 years. Access is a nice personal type RDBMS. It is convenient if you and probably your coworker are the only ones who use/maintain a database. The ease of use is rediculous and the results are impressive. I have seen nontechnical people (public health managers) who learned to create rather impressive databases only with 2 week of RTFM. Once we have discovered Access we dumped all Mac boxes that were running Frame Maker ...
I have also used Access for a simple accounting system. My college used Access as its main student databese (600 hundered students, why need Oracle?)
Access has its own place. Using Oracle or real SQL server for such small and centraliazed projects would be laughable. In fact, it would be nice to have an Access like RDBMS for Linux.
Access is a productivity application that belongs to Office suites, not a "Server". The kind of applications that Linux really lacks..
Please don't disparage a good man like Howard Stern like this. Howard unlike many others has morals.
What if I buy a new machine and dump the old one? Should I buy ALL of my software again???
That would suck.
Ok, you are not required to download that plugin to view the site. However if you have windows (plugin works only in windows) this plugin makes browsing the MSNBC site soo easy and so much fun, try it some time. I wish they had plug ins for all plotforms .
Was just in a meeting with some intel marketing and technical types. I work on a project that is about to design a board that needs a lot of horsepower, and we will be making possibly >100,000 boards over the life of the project.
The intel guys claim that if we go with the pentium line, they guarantee there will always be an ID function in all future chips, which will alway be enabled, and they will put that guarantee in writing. They were trying to show us how good it would be for "new paradigms" of software licensing, which includes time based rental and per use payments.
Our marketing guys were thrilled that they could now make 10x the revenue from software if we went with the intel chip. But every single technical type including some managers were shocked at the promise.
Our boxes are not going to be general purpose with BIOS or an internet connection, which kind of confused the non-tech types. They think that every machine made should be hooked to the internet.
Our design team is now leaning heavily towards ARM or Sparc Ultra as the architecture, and revulsion at the pentium ID feature did more to sell them than the other 2 marketing presentations we have had.
Anonymous in Santa Clara
What's this? Time based rentals?, seems as if Big Brother is cramming a revision of pay per view down our throat.
What the hell are you talking about? You put your return address on envelopes don't you? What's stopping anyone from just opening your envelope and reading whatever they want?
Last time I checked, intentionally opening mail that didn't belong to you was a federal crime.
Maybe there should be open source hardware design.
quality control at its finest, 1 whole darn assembly line run left unnoticed for eons.
figures
I have heard that this is the deal with the new Macs:
For the new Macs, there is a serial number written as normal data on the hard drive. If you reformat the hard drive, it will wipe away this number.
I'm not absolutely sure, though. Visit www.macintouch.com for more info.
Intel has repeatedly stated that the serial number has nothing to do with the prevention of software piracy. Instead, the strength in the PSN lies in its ability to facilitate a greater degree of security where e-commerce is concerned.
Either way, I don't buy ANY of the arguments used to justify use of a PSN.
Sparc Ultra Chips also have a unique ID which is used to tie software to specific hardware. Several software packages that I use (matlab, mathematica, etc) require that the System ID# be sent to the publisher, who will send back a registration key based on that number. The existence of a serial number isn't the problem. The problem with the Intel ID# is that it will be broadcast with transactions made over the 'net.
It seems like this will provide the PERFECT vehicle for the open/free software movement to gain significant momentum. Let 'em try it.
K7 does do smp...so your ready for amd.
Well I used to get banners ads on win95 with Netscape 4 like: "Tired of waiting? Upgrade to IE4" or something like that.
Coincidence? Think that perhaps they were screwing around people with Netscape and making the page take longer to load?
http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/code/
Wonder if this patch will work for the PII's with this feature (bug) as well.
All Pentium II processors have manufacturing information on them. This is part of a fuse register, which are parts of the circuit which are created unique to every processor. These fuses can also be blown after the processor has been created to enable/disable certain features, for instance to disable a feature which is broken.
The Unique ID merely combines this manufacturing information into a single number. This is done entirely in microcode, and therefore doesn't require much in the way of circuit changes.
It was probably put on the mobile PII for testing, but was supposed to be disabled by manufacturing, and one of the mobile groups at Intel apparently screwed that up.
Thank you for your astonishing knowledge of chip fabrication.
FACEIntel
And in doing so, they will be signing their own death warrant.
Major bullsh*t ... MAJOR bullsh*t. Only if your dumb-ass internet exploder software sends the damned thing. I'm sick and tired of people assuming that the CPU is somehow going to think on its own and go about maliciously sending information "over the internet".
Wake up.
Who cares if the PII or PIII have chip IDs? Let me give you a clue... the hardware can't do squat without the help of software. How do you think "those people" on the internet will get your Chip ID? Will the PIII magically send "those people" its chip ID? NO. The only way ANYTHING is going to be sent over the internet (or any other medium) is via the SOFTWARE. For chrissakes, the PIII could have your name, social security number, annual income, chromosome code, all on there.. and you know what? It wouldn't be of use to ANYONE unless the SOFTWARE sent it out there.
Bottom line. If you want privacy, bitch at the software vendors out there. Tell them you don't want your info sent around the net for everyone to see.
maybe the sole reason they put cpu id so that they can goof up and recal cpu by id number...*l*
but than againthey wouldn't have this problem at the first place if they hadn't go along with microsoft demand toput cpuid so M$ can execute the office 2000 and win2k develish registration online thing.
...and JFK accidentally sent a few men to the moon.
but enough for the joke, what i want to know...what othr accidental thing they put on their cpu product lately?
You know, comments like this make me think you people wouldn't mind living in a totalitarian society... I mean, suppose they wanted to put a centrally monitored camera in each room in your house? If you are not breaking the law you have nothing to worry about right? right?!?!?
Oh, come on. You don't need a hostID for software to track you.
Wrong, with acess you do not need an SQL server. And you don't need a techie who knows how to set up and SQL server.
people once laughed at bill gates when he wanted to charge for software... Im still laughing...
And what happens if I upgrade my CPU?
I regularly have to change the unit serial number on a handful of sparcs, because of per machine licenses. There's a utility to do it, and it doesn't take any intellegence to run it.
We started doing this when we couldn't get the bankrupt software manufacturer to give us a new key when our main sparc motherboard went up in smoke. So now we change the serial # depending on what software we need to change.
But you cant change the serial # on the new pentium II/III chips.
Why wouldn't you copy it? It doesn't hurt Adobe, they might even benefit if you like it and buy it once you can afford it, and it benefits you, so it's a maybe-win-but-not-lose/win situation. Seems like a great idea to copy it to me.
Plugins have many uses. I haven't downloaded this plugin for obvious reasons, but I could see MS designing it so that when you load your browser, it fires a hit to some server out in MSland. Then they can start bombarding you with "news," but more imporantly, ads. It's so much more convenient then having to wait for users to go to MSNBC's web site. And besides, users told them they wanted it, and it is a vital part of the OS, and Linux is just copying them, and BeOS too, oh and OS/2 tried to as well.
Sounds like the Tuskegee Study all over again if you ask me..
linuxonline.org
You have to "trick" Windows into crashing? I would've thought that was pretty much a voluntary thing on Windows' part :-)
linuxonline.org
Posted by jguest:
Thank you MSN for a completely uninformative article. It would have been much appreciated it they had posted *which* CPU's were affected--PII-300? PII-233? PII-266? Families? Steppings? MFG dates? Identifying tattoos and scars?
If the news can provide a date and ID number for spoiled milk products, etc., why the H*LL can't they do the same for this?
Amateurs!!!
Posted by jguest:
From C/NET (via www.x86.org) I found this:
"Processor serial number prototypes were included on the 333-MHz and 366-MHz mobile
Pentium II processors with 256KB of integrated, secondary cache and the 266-MHz and
300-MHz mobile Celeron processors, according to an Intel spokesman. These chips
were all released January 25."
Looks like they hit a number of fab lines with this!
An ID within the processor can in no way be more trustworthy than an ID anywhere else. Consider the hardware ID in UNIX workstations you mentioned. These cannot be read by normal user code, but are read by the operating system and are made available via the hostid() system call.
Of course it is an easy example to patch your operating system to return any hostid() you desire instead of the real hostid(). In fact, you may return different hostid()s to different processes. A driver which does this for Solaris has been made available for many years. Check the comp.sources archives on USENET for more information.
The moral of this story is: In a "piracy" environment, your software cannot trust any other software, the operating system or even itself to perform as exspected. Or shorter: You cannot win.
If you're using a proprietary OS, you have no clue what's going on, or who might be tracking you. If you're really concerned about privacy, you should be using Linux/BSD. There is no way for a CPU ID to get out on the net unless you run software that allows that, and the only way to be *sure* that you're not doing so is to run an OS with publically available source.
:-)
So, don't come whining to me. Intel's IDs are no threat to the privacy of anyone with half a brain, whether they're in PIIs or PIIIs. Intel's not the problem, the problem is proprietary software (as usual). Just say NO!
When I went to that page, an annoying Java-like dialog box opened on my NT machine asking me to download a plug-in. The page was visible without the plug-in, though.
:-)
But why on earth does every "big" website these days have a stupid plug-in to go along with it? MSNBC told me it's "only" a 20 minute download at 28.8.
The day Rob makes a Slashdot plug-in to download is the day I stop visiting slashdot.
The ROM could easily be on die.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
There's a digital ID engraved inside my eyelid! That feature wasn't supposed to be included in my series. Seriously though it seems to me there was a serial number in some of the 486 chips, or am I dreaming? Wasn't CPUID an individual chip ID? *scratches head to try to stimulate memory* I don't have a 486 handy at the moment.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Intel:
" We accidentally spilled some Pentium III seeds into the Pentium II chips! Ooops!"
Typical Windows User:
"Really Wow ! Can I have one?
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I'm having a hard time keeping track of this all. I read about that patch, but I also read that somebody had developed an exploit that allowed the ID to be turned back on without rebooting, and that this code could run from userspace, basically making it all but impossible to keep the ID turned off if a program really wanted to turn it on and knew how. I don't know much except what I've read. Can anybody out there with the hard facts enlighten us?
Shawn Asmussen
The exploit I was thinking of was from this article. The Slashdot discussion after this seemed to suggest that however this particular exploit was done could be coded to run in userspace on a unix box, and would be nearly impossible to block through the kernel. This was just what several people seemed to say, though, and I am kind of hoping that somebody out there can provide a more definitive answer.
Shawn Asmussen
Contradiction in terms?
A news.com article about yet another hack to get the PIII ID even when it's disabled. This one uses an ActiveX control to crash your system, then grabs it on reboot (is it just me or does anyone else think that ActiveX controls are getting out of hand).
As far as x86 chips go. AMD/Cyrix do indeed have a CPUID instruction that identifies them as "Authentic AMD K6..." or " Cyrix M2" but not a unique serial # like the PIII's.
AMD is reportedly considering it for the K7, but the K6, K6-2, K6-III, and all Cyrix chips do not have one as of yet.
Ok, there are a few things here.
First off, Intel offered a DOS/Win software fix that was to allow you to turn it off (I think it ran in autoexec or something equivilent for NT or whatnot). This is get-around-able due to ActiveX and other wonderful Windows "features". The gist of at least one of these is that it reboots the system and somehow or other grabs the ID before the Intel patch can be run.
There is a Linux kernel patch to disable the ID, and to my knowledge it is not possible to re-enable the ID while running Linux while that patch is in place (other than recompile/reboot of course).
Some motherboard manufacturers offer the ability to turn it off in hardware, but I don't know if this is able to be changed or not (again likely through ActiveX exploits, etc).
I suppose it it would be too much to ask for the favor of letting us know we were being tracked.
So that's it. I've been wondering what ActiveX was good for.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
With no disk drive, where exactly were you going to install that software?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Funny, I've got that plug in already and when I went to the site the bottom half of the page was foobared.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You are not seeing the impact. You put your mail in envelopes, right? Well the only people that would hide their mail in an envelope are criminals, right? If you had nothing to hide, you should just let everybody read them, right? It is your business what you want people to know. Give an inch and they take a mile!
Good Point! I was trying to say that, if a person wants to stay anonymous they should be able to. And what about PO Box's? What if that is my return address? SomeCompany PO BOX XXX.
This will not work anyway. You're speaking about Oracle? For example, is Oracle only selling software for Pentium-IIIs? Are they even only selling software for x86s only? A company cannot restrict the use of its software to architectures that have IDs.
I consider this to be a Good Thing, and hope that nobody will start selling its software in "standard" and "P3 only" versions.
.sig: SEGV
Excuse me if I am wrong, but isn't it possible to read the serial number of disk drives (and floppies for that mater) via software. Wouldn't this identify a particular machine just as well as a CPU ID?
Well, I don't have a disk drive connected to my x86 box. I don't think some company will be going to say that I will not be allowed to install their software on my box.
I think the point is that there's either a standardized ID mechanism for all users (which I don't think will ever happen) or no IDs at all.
I prefer the latter.
.sig: SEGV
With no disk drive, where exactly were you going to install that software?
Sorry, Germanism, I think. For me, "disk drive" simply means "floppy disk drive".
mmh, even with winchester drives (hard drives?), it wouldn't make much sense. I'm backing up and restoring data far too often, and I really don't care on what disk the data goes if I write a partition back from the streamer (I have 6..8 IDE drives I swap quite often).
.sig: SEGV
And what happens if I upgrade my CPU?
Simple. A digit is appended to your previous ID.
.sig: SEGV
no, what belongs on Linux is a front-end that looks and acts a lot like Access, and accesses (pun intended) a real SQL server, which doesn't need to be Oracle either, just make it PostrgreSQL by default.
this is what I suspected... glad to see it posted by somoene who seems to know more about the process than I do.
looking at the patch itself, it should. it tests that the processor has the (mis)feature, not that the processor is a p3, before disabling the psn.
Think it is really a mistake? Heh. Right.
This sig is false.
AMD is reportedly considering it for the K7
What the hell are we nerds gonna do? I was really hoping to get a few K7's if they support SMP.
I heard some time ago about a patch to the kernel that stopped that whole piii serial number mess. The same thing could be done for any other chip, right?
This sig is false.
It probably just reminds windoze how long it has been running, windoze freaks if (time > 1 minute), and shuts itself down immediately. ie crashes.
More crap from Wintel to make our lives easier.
Bah.
This sig is false.
Definitely on puprose and I do not believe all this bullshit about unintentional.
In btw: it was done in the same time while Microsoft did that illegal serial number collection. I wonder did they collect only ethernet addresses?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Your link is good, but few people can afford it. I would suggest another link - www.amd.com.
;-). So I use AMD (I did not have an Intel CPU on any of my personal machines for the last 2 years).
Something not well known by worshipers of the ZD benchmarks is that the AMD main "flaw" - low FPU is meaningless for a Unix system. Actually, when running at the same MHz AMD is even faster then Intel under Linux if the hard disk subsystem is supported by the kernel.
Personally I prefer Alpha as well, but I cannot afford it
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
comments from intel:
"...But as when c't pointed out that the software utility could be bypassed, company spokesman George Alfs noted that all software can be hacked..."
"We would want to look at the code before we make a comment on that," Alfs said. "But the end user always needs to be aware of malicious software."
So then WHY THE FUCK DOES INTEL TRY TO CONVINCE THE CONSUMER THAT THEIR PATCH IS SECURE?
Now everyone knows that Intel cannot be trusted
farther than they can be kicked.
I think MS and Intel are trying to be the
Howard Stern of privacy invasions.... "yea
boys, let's just keep taking a little more
away from these dumb comsumers until, at last,
we have cameras in their living room..."
BOYCOTT sounds like a fitting word here!
"All that glitters is not gold"
Still... On the server side, yes, it's "just an administrative hassle". Yeah, right.
What about the end-user side? You know, where most of the discussion on this originates? CPU ID's are worthless for "anti-piracy"; in that sense they fall right in there with all of the other schemes used in the desktop environment for the last 20 years. How effective have they been?
Of course, this all completely ignores the real question that has people all hot under the collar. What about the potential for abuse in the end-user area?
In a typical week, I use about a half-dozen different machines heavily and a much larger number of them 'a little bit'. If all of them had CPU ID's that just 'had' to be included in any transaction, I can imagine what my use pattern would look like - and anyone who tried to do base some 'targeted mailing' on it would be completely wrong. (This, of course, skips some of the other issues - I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader.) Even if I only used one box - say the closest thing I have to a 'personal' machine, that's changed completely every 18 months for the past few years - again, anything based on that would be completely wrong.
How about one of the other big concerns - encryption? Yes, you use this unique value to seed a secure transaction, and someone else has managed to get it from your machine with, say, a trojan plug-in for your browser, making cracking the transaction that much easier. Not too different from other secure transaction issues, but the same value is used for all additional transactions, making it much more valuable in cracking them.
--
"If you can read this you are too close."
I hate paying $400 as much as you. But there's a REASON they charge that much. Look at the programs that cost a lot: Quark XPress, $700; Adobe Photoshop, $600; Microsoft Access, $300. The reason these are expensive is because they're not intended for the same guy who pays $50 for Quake 7. The people that buy programs like that are MAKING MONEY BY USING THEM, so they can afford it. If I had a professional-grade photo editing package, I'd charge a few hundred as well, since good graphics designers make more than that on a single job.
Granted, I'd love a copy of Adobe Premiere, but the $500 price is just out of my range. For most of the people who are using it, $500 is lost in the noise of other expenses. That doesn't mean I'm going to pirate it; it means I'll find another solution.
-Chris
I wonder if this means there's a switch they DID turn off would theoretically activate the coprocessor on my mobile pentium II and turn it into a mobile pentium II-SX?
Seriously, though, there was no reason whatsoever for them to be screwing around with putting the serial number option on the sillicon for these PII's. It's a waste of space, and a dirty little trick.
Which brings up another question: the serial number itself can't be implemented on the actual CPU, can it? It must be on a rom attached to the cpu card. Which means if we pop open a PIII, we could theoretically pull off the chip with the serial number and put one on with whatever number we wanted? Even if the serial number is on the same chip as other data (maybe where the microcode updates go? or the speed information?) -- all the data on that chip should be easy enough to copy.
Anyone wanna open their PIII and start experimenting?
-Chris
Sounds like a good way to get a "friend" in trouble for copyright violations which you've accrued.
"Hey, want a new Pentium III? I've only been using it for a month. I'll give it to you! For free! As long as you visit the FBI website twice a week."
-Chris
96 bits, eh? Looks like Intel put more thought into their serial number than the original ipv4 implementors... :)
-Chris
Just because us geeks know it's not oracle doesn't mean fourtune 500 companies realize it.
-Chris
I'm sick of everyone turning the Piii serial number thing into AMD plugs. I don't care if AMD is the more hippy and into peace, love, happiness and privacy. Intel has pumped more into R&D and *does* have a better product. I'm not going to buy a mobile pentium II or a PIII anytime soon based on the serial number issue, but that doesn't mean I'm going to switch to AMD. When the K6's start supporting some standard of SMP which is SUPPORTED BY MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURERS, then I'll start buying third party chips. It'd help if amd put out a better chipset, too. These "BXtoo" chipsets from the garage of everyone and their brother in Taiwan just don't cut it.
-Chris
That's what I've read. Now show me one. Running linux. :)
-Chris
Hey just because some of you guys have gotten degrees and the rest of us haven't gotten to the class with verilog yet... sheesh. :)
-Chris
I'd rather put $600 towards an open source version....
-Chris
Oh my.. Intel has become what seems to be a big group of idiots.. I think i'll stick w/ my AMD stuff.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
So paying $400 for a package of software you think is a good deal.. It's a rip off IMO.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
if you read closely, you'll see that the serial no.s that were left on were in _notebook_ PC's.
"WE WERE INFORMED by a customer that the chip ID was present in the mobile Pentium II processor in mobile module form,"
Note the word "mobile" Desktop users shouldnt have anything to worry about.. Well, that is except for the stuff they didnt tell you about.. you can always worry about that.
"I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend." --Jack Handey
... but y'know.. it sure seems like the big guys are waay into tracking us users and they are getting a bad reputation of not *telling* us about it... too bad we cant make freely distributable hardware.. including.. schematics?
"I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend." --Jack Handey
So, like, my desktop is OK but my laptop is yet another device capable of linking me to specific hardware.
Like the poster says, "I want to believe..."
Still, what with all the security holes, any one that steals any of my Intel PCs is seriously screwed. =)
jeez.. why bother messing with the PII's anyway?? The PIII is out, one would think intel would spend money working on new products, or marketing.. but they keep changing the damn chip design!%#! I can't wait for the K7. Once it does i'm outtie 5 ...gone like donkey kong.. etc..
"Don't make me throw yo ass foo!" - Mr. T
--- lokai
But what happens if you sell your PC? Or upgrade the processor? In order for a software-protection scheme based on ID to work, you must assume that the owner will be forever tied to the processor ID... Like a ball and chain... Or, you have to re-register every single piece of id-tied software.
My problem with this is that I will probably sell a P3 I buy now, someday. Now, I have to rely on a potentially large number of vendors (or whoever) figuring out that the ids don't match the software because I upgraded my processor (God help us). What'll I have to do? Mail in the proof-of-purchase? Will this polute upgrades?
I'm not getting a warm-and-fuzzy feeling.
ya weather is really a mistake or not the hole chip id thing is a mistake if they wanted there competitors to get bigger this is a great way to do it.
if you read the message the pII's with this came out befor the pIII and were used to test teh id crap.
well if they can make a piece of software to turn on and off the id while the computer is running then they can make a program to make your computer send the id over the net.
I don't tend to side with big companies, but Intel had a point when they said all kinds of IDs and serials are available in any PC.
The most reliable source seems to be the harddrive manufacturer and drive serial number. All available within the IDE and SCSI APIs if I recall correctly.
Why the sudden fuss? The Bad Guys Out There have known this for a long time...