Julien McArdle

Microsoft and the entertainment industry’s holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.

Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come DRM-enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case.

DRM for those who aren’t familiar is a scheme to control the use of legitimately downloaded media. It is what prevents you from putting music you bought onto your CD player; what prevents you from listening the music on MP3 players; or putting it on any hardware other than that specified by the manufacturer. Its implementation kills legitimate online music sales. However its also insisted as a requirement by the Music Industry (who later cry foul… go figure).

But this isn’t all:

Conversely, Intel is heavily promoting what it calls “active management technology” (AMT) in the new chips as a major plus for system administrators and enterprise IT. Understood to be a sub-operating system residing in the chip’s firmware, AMT will allow administrators to both monitor or control individual machines independent of an operating system.

Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls “IDE redirection” which will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems. Both AMT and IDE control are enabled by a new network interface controller.

In other words, anyone from the outside will also be able to utterly destroy your computer. Without your assistance. Personally, I’ll just continue to stick with the arguably better and cheaper AMD Chips.

Update: Intel has dismissed the original article from Computerworld Today Australia. Full story here.

The Ultra-High Quality WMV idea worked for the EYNTO show. Am now transencoding to XViD; using RAD Video Tools (free!). Those tools also saved me when I found out that the audio for the movie files taken by my digital camera were at the wrong rate, permitting me to transencode to AVI files w/o this audio hurdle.

As far as I’m aware, this is the only program that can convert WMV to XViD as well.

Update: Using VirtualDubMod to process the 2nd processing render for the XViD, as RAD can’t recognize its non-standard (maligned) output of the first. At least I can use it now, as the files are no longer unrecognizeable WMVs, but AVIs. Next up: rendering into MPG for DVD output.

I found the following commentaries on Slashdot insightful:

My friend once thought the same thing. After explaining why Bit Torrent wasn’t at fault for any of this, I decided to provide a visual demonstration. I asked him for a pencil, I took a pair of pliers, and I broke it in half. He then asked why I broke his pencil, and I told him that the pliers did it, and he should be accusing them. He said that he still didn’t understand, so I produced a pair of scissors and asked for a $100 note. He got the message.

You are still blaming the TOOL for what the PEOPLE do.

Your claim that 99.9% of P2P traffic is totally, irrefutably, undeniably illegal is ignorant, foolish, and asinine. Much like guns can be used for hunting and to commit murder, Bit Torrent is used for taking the load off of people who wish to distribute free content, but have no way to finance it. (After all, distributing free content isn’t a huge moneymaker)

Sure, there are a lot of people who use it to commit copyright infringement, much like there are a lot of people who use a gun to commit murder. That doesn’t mean that they are in the majority, especially not the huge percentage that you listed.

By banning P2P software, all you are doing is hurting those who use it LEGITIMATELY. You are not doing anything to stop those who use it illegally.

Why? Because the people who are actually behind the crime are going to commit the crime using another tool. If guns were banned, people would just use knives to commit murder, but those who hunt with guns will no longer be able to do that. Ban knifes, and people will turn to something else, but chefs will definitely be hurt by it.

Similarly, if Bit Torrent is banned, people will turn to FTP and HTTP. It’s not going to stop. It’s not even going to be HINDERED.

Tools are crafted with a specific purpose in mind, but people find many ways to abuse them or use them in a way that their creator did not intend. I’m sure that whoever invented bricks did not give a thought to people who might clobber someone over the head with them. I’m sure he only thought of how many buildings could be made with them. Similarly, the author of Bit Torrent likely didn’t think that his tool would be headline news after being used by people commiting copyright infringment, and it is not Bit Torrent’s fault that such a thing happened. It is, ultimately, the people who use it wrongly that are to blame, and MPAA is only going after Bit Torrent because, however futile it is, it’s far more easier to place the blame on Bit Torrent.

I think the $10 price of a ticket is starting to dim the “Magic” of movies more than bootlegs…

Why is it whenever anyone talks about wanting to ban guns because of the “dangers” they pose, they get laughed out of the spotlight and everyone says “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. However, when it comes to piracy these idiots seem to be making progress with their message of trying to ban technology.