Has anyone heard of this Trusted Computing(TC) chip? read this article: http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html
An interesting article - the whole issue of Trusted Computing/Digital Rights Management has so much potential to remove user control of their equipment though, that the only place it is likely to make real headway is with vendor-supplied hardware where the users are purchasing a service and have no choice about the equipment (e.g. cable/satellite decoder boxes).
So what happens when adware, spyware, worms, trojan and virus makers start making use of the TCG specification? ( You know if there is a way they will and they always find a way)