Category: Interesting Reads

Suggested name change for DRM – I concur

(via Dubious Quality)

David Berlind at ZDNet has come up with a name change suggestion for Digital Restriction Mangling (DRM – real meaning Digital Rights Management). Instead, he proposes calling it CRAP instead. A fitting name, and very accurate.

Hi, I’m David Berlind, Executive Editor at ZDNet. Today, we’re going to talk about a rather uncomfortable subject, CRAP. That’s right, CRAP. Now, CRAP stands for Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection. It’s my catchy buzz-phrase for a technology that’s really called DRM. Now DRM technically stands for Digital Rights Management, and it’s a rather cancerous technology that technology vendors are actually building into most of the products that we’re buying today.

So for example, if you own an iPod, it’s got CRAP in it. That’s right, it’s got this technology that will restrict what you can do with your content, allows the owners of the content to annul that content-in other words, take it away from you-or protect it from being copied out onto the internet.

[tags]DRM, CRAP[/tags]

Tracking down an unknown driver

The always informative Mark Russinovich (you may have heard of him – he pretty much broke the Sony DRM malware story) has a brief but detailed article on how he tracked down an unknown driver on his system and why he noticed it in the first place.

The other day I used Process Explorer to examine the drivers loaded on a home system to see if I’d picked up any Sony or Starforce-like digital rights management (DRM) device drivers. The DLL view of the System process, which reports the currently loaded drivers and kernel-mode modules (such as the Hardware Abstraction Layer – HAL), listed mostly Microsoft operating system drivers and drivers associated with the DVD burning software I have installed, but one entry, Asctrm.sys caught my attention because its company information is “Windows (R) 2000 DDK provider”

[tags]Driver tracking, DRM[/tags]

AP steals blogger’s article, doesn’t care to attribute

A blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna, spent scads of time documenting changes in security clearance policies.  She shared this information with others, and after getting it checked by others, released her work.  The work apparently showed a tightening of requirements for granting security clearances.  Since one of the items of interest was guidance on sexual behavior, some GBLT groups picked up on it, shared the story with the Associated Press, and said the AP needed to cover this story.  How AP handled it was not quite professional…

In response, several GLBT groups contacted us and issued a statement. We gave the advocacy groups our notes and article, which they then took to the AP and demanded that the story be covered. The AP was given our article and maybe our notes.

On March 14, 2006, the AP did their own article, left out any attribution to me or my publication and lifted not only my research but also whole sections of my article for their own (making cosmetic changes of course).

We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us.

Hmmmm, so stealing from bloggers isn’t plagiarism?  Interesting.

[tags]AP plagiarism[/tags]

Universal loves customers?

(via Engadget)

Now here I go, just minutes after posting my rantish article about Universal hating digital distribution and customers, I find this article indicating Universal won’t downsample their next-gen hi-definition DVDs when displaying on non-HDMI capable hi-def TV sets. At least, not initially. How odd that the movie studioes demand this feature which will force downsampling on non-HDMI sets, and then all but Warner Home Video announce they won’t be using the feature (again, at least no initially). Could this be an indication that movie studios believe fans will use their products legally given the chance? Or is it just a move by the studios to avoid pissing off the hi-def early adopters who are going to be so important in the early success of next-gen optical technology? I’m betting on the latter, but I’m just cynical that way.

New software included on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases, however, will automatically slash the image, making it only marginally better than current DVDs, unless consumers have a relatively new connector and cable called HDMI to hook up players to their televisions. Only one in 20 HD sets sold to early adopters over the past few years has the right version of the connector. Only 15% of new sets sold this year will include it, and deliver the full 1080 resolution capable of showing such detail.

Sony execs say a majority of Blu-ray content, at least initially, will play at the highest resolution possible on a consumer’s HDTV, regardless of how the player is hooked up. Four major studios — Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Disney, and Paramount say they initially will not use the new copy protection on their releases. Universal execs told BusinessWeek on Mar. 21 that they, too, will forego the protection. Execs at Warner Brothers declined to comment, but sources with knowledge of the studio’s plans say “at least some” of the 20 HD-DVD releases planned through April will use the software. “What do you have then? A very expensive DVD player,” says Sony Senior Vice-President Tim Baxter.

[tags]hi-def TV, next-gen optical media[/tags]

Universal hates digital distribution (and customers)

(via The Consumerist)

I will admit to being in love with the “Company X hates blah” general title, but it just seems so many companies don’t want customers, or don’t want customers to have a good experience.  This latest is based on the news that Universal pictures is going to offer movies for download starting next month.  That doesn’t sound bad, until you look in to pricing.  The first movie available will be King Kong, for the amazing price of $35.  The same movie I can get from Amazon.com for $15 and rip to digital format myself using free tools, I can download in a Digital Restriction Mangled (DRM) format for only $35.  I can’t decide if Universal is doing this to show how much they hate consumers, to show the market how “selling downloadable movies doesn’t work,” or if the executives in charge of this just have no clue how this works.  I’m pretty sure those are the only three choices, but I’m willing to entertain other options if my readers have other thoughts. Continue reading “Universal hates digital distribution (and customers)”

Wired – best accidental discoveries

The 10 greatest accidental discoveries, according to Wired magazine.

1. Viagra
Men being treated for erectile dysfunction should salute the working stiffs of Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh hamlet where, in 1992 trials, the gravity-defying side effects of a new angina drug first popped up. Previously, the blue-collar town was known for producing a different kind of iron.

4. Penicillin
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was researching the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a blue-green mold had infected one of his petri dishes – and killed the staphylococcus bacteria growing in it. All hail sloppy lab work!

[tags]Accidental discoveries[/tags]

Surprisingly, 42 may indeed be the answer

(via Slashdot)

Very interesting article over at the Seed magazine web site.  It’s a great discussion of number theory, placement of primes, the relationship between heavy elements’ energy patterns and prime number locations, the Riemann Hypothesis.

There is an important sequence of numbers called “the moments of the Riemann zeta function.” Although we know abstractly how to define it, mathematicians have had great difficulty explicitly calculating the numbers in the sequence. We have known since the 1920s that the first two numbers are 1 and 2, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that mathematicians conjectured that the third number in the sequence may be 42—a figure greatly significant to those well-versed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It would also prove to be significant in confirming the connection between primes and quantum physics. Using the connection, Keating and Snaith not only explained why the answer to life, the universe and the third moment of the Riemann zeta function should be 42, but also provided a formula to predict all the numbers in the sequence. Prior to this breakthrough, the evidence for a connection between quantum physics and the primes was based solely on interesting statistical comparisons. But mathematicians are very suspicious of statistics. We like things to be exact. Keating and Snaith had used physics to make a very precise prediction that left no room for the power of statistics to see patterns where there are none.

But I have to admit, I’m not certain I believe that solving the Riemann Hypothesis will allow one to crack Internet encryption (bad reference to TV show involving math).

[tags]42, H^2G^2, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Riemann Hypothesis, 42[/tags]

Preserve a snowflake for years

Popular Science has an article on how to catch, photograph, and keep snowflakes using superglue.

frozensnowflake.jpg

  1. Set microscope slides, coverslips and superglue outside when it’s 20°F or colder to chill them. Catch flakes on the slides or pick them up with cold tweezers.
  2. Place a drop of superglue on the snowflake. Note: Gel glue doesn’t work. Find a brand that’s thin and runny.
  3. Drop a coverslip over the glue. Don’t press down hard or the flake could tear or melt from the heat of your finger.
  4. Leave the slide in a freezer for one or two weeks and don’t touch it with warm hands. The glue must completely harden before the snowflake warms up.

[tags]Snowflake, Popular Science[/tags]

Your rights as a photographer

Given our governments ever growing desire to restrict our rights here in the US, it is more important than ever to be aware of your rights.  If you plan on taking photographs of public buildings, you face a real possibility of getting harrassed.  In case that happens, it might be handy to have a guide to your rights as a photographer.

If you are interested in what set this off, read this ABC news story about a photographer arrested for taking pictures of flags in front of a courthouse.

[tags]Citizen rights[/tags]

Music companies apparently still hate consumers

(via BoingBoing)

A new CD from EMI in Brazil comes with DRM that cannot be uninstalled, must be agreed to even though not written in the local language (Portugeuse), and installs even if you decline the potentially unreadable agreement.  Apparently, the DRM also prevents playing the CD on Linux and MacOS systems or an iPod (although I’m not sure how this is accomplished).

One user’s experience follows:

When you insert the CD in your computer, it automatically opens a window with the “License Agreement” of the CD. This is a very large contract in Portuguese, but it is very difficult to read. The agreement is opened in window programmed in flash, so it is impossible to cut and paste the text into another program. In some computers, when you try to scroll down the contract using the arrows, the text slides completely out of control, making it impossible to read.

After taking some time to read the agreement, the first thing that called my attention is that the text says that a full copy of the contract is available at the address “www.emimusic.info/”. That is NOT TRUE. If you go to the “Brazil” link at the page, there is no copy of the agreement whatsoever at the website, contrary to what the agreement itself expressly says.

The text of the agreement says that the CD will install software in your computer in order to make the cd playable. However, it says that the user must acknowledge the fact that “certain files and folders might remain in your computer even after the user removes the digital content, the software and/or the player”.

Additionally, it says the following: “This contract has been originally drafted in English. The user waives any and all rights that he or she might have under the laws of his or her own country or province, in regard of this contract drafted in any other language”.

Finally, my favorite part. There are two buttons below the agreement. The first reads “Accept the Agreement” the second reads “Reject it”. After reading all the above, I decided to reject it, and pressed the “reject” button. Immediately a screen with the word “Initializing” appeared, the proprietary software was installed, and the music started to play in my computer using the proprietary EMI player, as if I had “accepted” the whole thing.

[tags]DRM, Consumer rights[/tags]