Re: Sysadmins

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   > There are no socially positive uses of something that limits
   > someones freedom.

   So you advocate that there should be no law or mechanism that
   should limit my ability to murder you, for example?

Law does not dictate what is moral or not, nor does it dictate what
freedom is.  Slavery was legal you know.  If you are allowed to
dictate if I can live or not, you are restricting my freedom to decide
what I can do with my life.

   >   Treacherous computing is no way near `value-neutral', it lets
   > another entity control what someones machine does without their
   > consent.

   You are confusing several different technologies into one.

No, I'm not, Digital Restricting Managment and Treacherous Computing
are closley related.

   Your statement about DRM is close to true (I actually do not agree,
   but I think this is because we are proceeding from different
   principles where DRM is concerned), but your statement about
   Trusted Computing is, to my knowledge, widely promulgated but
   entirely wrong.

Please don't call it trusted computing, there is nothing trusted about
letting another entity other than owner of the computer dictate what
the computer can or cannot do.  Calling it TC is OK since it doesn't
propagte the lie that Treacherous Computing has anything to do with
trust.

   Can you please give an example of the type of third-party entity
   control that you believe is made possible by the presence on the
   motherboard of a TPM chip?

It can prohibit me from running a free operating system, a free boot
loader, it can make it impossible to play CD's or DVD's on free
platforms since they are not `treacherous' to the user.  Treacherous
computing makes it impossible to circumvent data that is encumbered by
Digital Restriction Managment.