lojack for your laptop

new laptop sports built-in tracer. they don't say how the technology works, but apparently, if it's not found within sixty days, you get a refund of up to $1000--which is just super on a laptop which costs twelve or thirteen hundred dollars containing who knows how much (possibly sensetive or irreplaceable) data.

gateway is doing it, along with another embedded security device--a tpm (technical protection measures) chip. i don't think i like it.

this chip could be used to enforce drm at the hardware level, it contains a uniquely identifying number which is never a good thing, and, on the whole, seems to be set up to protect a corporation from losing important data on a stolen laptop, and retrieve their computer than actually protecting an end user from data loss or even really (in some cases) get enough money to even cover teh hardware.

i'm not impressed.

--cid