Hardware security in PCs to accompany new Windows

[Colin McGregor]

--- James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Mike Newman wrote:
> > Stronger anti-copying measures for Windows would
> be excellent. Almost
> > everyone I know runs Windows but I think only one
> or two of them is
> > using a copy that they bought, or received bundled
> with their
> > computer. Home users would flock to GNU/Linux if
> they actually had to
> > pay $300 for Windows.
> 
> A while back, Intel was talking about putting a
> serial number on the 
> CPU.  This could have been used to verify single
> use, when Windows 
> phones home to register.  However, that was killed,
> due to "privacy" 
> concerns.

Intel has been putting serial numbers in their
microcontroller CPU chips (for doing things like
controlling industrial equipment where having a unique
number can be very valueable). Intel did include
serial numbers in some versions of the Pentium III but
this was a "feature" that got killed (due to public
outcry) in the Pentium IV and Celeron CPU chips. Still
this would be a trivial "feature" to add to systems,
either as part of the CPU or as some sort of external
dongle (i.e. "to use this software you must plug in
this USB memory key"). Now, external dongles have
never been very popular even though they have been
tried many times since the Commodore 64 days (and
before)... Not sure how you could make something like
serial numbers fly...

Colin McGregor


--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml