<Out of curiosity, what is your area of expertise? Some of us really seek the truth in this. It's too bad that from where I sit, your Intel-employee bias badly spoils your objectivity...are we wrong to think that?>
Well, my area of expertise is chipsets, but I also have a very good grasp of processor architecture. And I try to keep my bias down to a minimum, but let's face it, we're all biased in one form or another. The best way to gain truth from a biased person's statements is to take the statements within a certain context. In other words, take this employee's statements with a grain of salt.
<By the way, AMD has never "conjured up Big Brother" re the CPU I.D. thing...that's an obvious obfuscation on your part. They have pretty much ignored it, but a huge number of other folks think that it's an EXTREMELY BAD idea.>
Well, you brought up the subject, not AMD. AMD's marketing is smart enough not to try and throw mud at the Pentium III serial number. It's better for them to stay away from the issue than to take a side and draw criticism. I just said that if AMD resorted to conjuring up Big Brother Doomsday scenarios, that's a sure sign that they've already lost.
As for my own opinion, I think the serial number is a non-issue. Granted, there are much better ways to implement security in hardware than the way that Intel is promoting with the Pentium III. (I have a few ideas of my own. Digital cryptology is a fascinating subject for me.) But on the same tone, there are also many, many other ways to invade a user's privacy than the serial number. Microsoft's embedded ID in Office 97 documents is a prime example (you know, the ID which helped the FBI track down the alleged author of the Melissa virus).
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