DRM – Definite Rip-off Machine

Truth about – Digital Rights Management

Long ago Digital content was sold in digital media, then came the Internet. And then came “the piracy”! Digital content was distributed illegally, which is BTW totally different from “Sharing”. And then came DRM with an intention to whoop piracy’s ass, but eventually got carried away.

 

In a vague description DRM is a technique used by the sellers, dealing with digital content to control / limit the content even after the customer has paid hard earned cash for it. It mainly puts a sense that customers are taken for helpless goofy ducks!

It’s implemented both software and hardware perspective. For eg music, ebooks, movies, set top boxes, media centers preciously everywhere.

DRM uses high level cryptographic algorithms which usually uses public key cryptography. Each company has it’s own way of generating the “master key” which is corresponded to the customer through servers. The numbers generated are random in nature and thus hard to tweak. On top of that the algorithms are combination of different math based, usually the numeric based algorithms. Some of the examples are

–        Symmetric Key cryptography

–        Elliptic Curve Cryptography

–        Digital signature Algorithm

–        One Key Message Authentication code

–        Encrypt Control word etc

These algorithms are so called hack-proof ones.( Exceptional to a few hack-creed, but then these people are either ethical or work for the company, unlike the infamous “ANONYMOUS”.)

The implementation in the hardware goes another level higher. The components like the set top box card slot, the receiver or the media player have inbuilt DRM which ask for the signatures. This DRM is implemented onto their firmwares as well.

COMCAST one of the leading broadcast service comes with a DRM card slot.

Intel, the leading PC maker desperate to get in Media center has come up with Intel Insider, which’s totally DRM. On  leaking of it’s master keys, it has now chickened out to impose a law on to penalize such an individual. How Brave!

Microsoft came with all the Windows 8 certified hardware to be secure-boot. An approach to make it impossible to install Linux/GNU. You can never stop Linux Gates!  It also holds proprietary for Play-Ready which’s a DRM deployment.

Sony PSP with official firmware works only with expensive PSP CDs. However thanks for Homebrew game community making it possible to play so many games.

 

Some of you chumps might be thinking “oh, this is fair enough”.

Here’s few butt-stinging DRM virtues for you boys and girls.

–        Folks are restricted to listen to music for a limited number of times even when you’ve purchased the track. Fair-play comes up with this stupid idea.

–        Movies or music can’t be stored or copied or shared. You can’t store copies of Harlod and kumar anymore. Disney, Sony etc support this mental cause.

–        Ebooks can’t be ported to devices, even when you’ve paid for it. Amazon’s DRM holds credit for this lame concept.

–        VIDEO GAMES COME WITH LIMITED NUMBER OF INSTALLATIONS. YA HAVE TO STOP THIS, MAN! Kickass game developers like Blizzard are moving to this strategy. That day is not far where you gottu pay for every COD mission. 😦

Currently there’re many Laws protecting the DRM. But sane folks are protesting against it from being implemented everywhere. Organization like Defective by Design (DBD), Electronic Frontier Foundation etc  across the world are fighting to stop this mean machine.

DRM are kinda Corkblockers. There’re other ways to fight piracy.

However since DRM is not widespread and fully implemented everywhere folks around are still breathing free.

Plus it’s not that they’re impossible to hack. Game CD’s have been cracked within 2 hours of release, but it’s just that there’s just too many over-complications for the legit user. Hence he thinks “Why pay for some shit, when you can get it for free”.

Myself having worked on DRM, I think the technology should benefit the humanity in lieu get commercialize. There’re serious problems to be solved. Let’s not solve problems, which actually aren’t.

BasementWorks.tk  believes “Technology is meant for all”! How about you?

Moore’s Law Can now Kiss Good Bye

Single atom Transistor

Ever since the era of vacuum tubes came to end due to the invention of transistors, there’s been whooping growth in the computer technology.

As ya’ll know Transistors are the semiconductor devices that are incorporated in the processors that are mainly for the purpose of gate switching, in order to process lotta computations.

For the games you play, music to listen, movies you watch or anything you do there’re millions of transistors working on to get ya the best result. Preciously they’re the workers and you’re the big boss.

For the initial processor like for e.g. the famous Intel 8086 the number of transistor was around 29,000. Seven years before that the first Intel 4004 had around 2,000 transistors.

So in 7 years it was increased 15 times!!! And all the 2000’s kids are well aware of Pentium 4, playing all kickass games like Halo, Max Payne, half life, Diablo 2 etc. This processor the count is around 42 million. More than a 1000 times in 20 years.

NOW, the all new Core i7 (sandy-bridge) has around 2 billion transistor!!

Now that’s a big difference. Don’t you think the number of transistor can’t just play not bothering to anything? Well yeah…there’s a LIMIT to everything.

Moore’s law defines this limit. According to this  “the number of transistors that can be incorporated on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months to two years”.

With this the threshold limit to reach with existing technology to shrink transistors will be reached by 2020.

So that’s it? 2020 and the highest peak is achieved and we can just play with only those many games possible? Nah science is not that bad at all!

Recently there’s been a successful implementation of what is called as “Single atom Transistor”!

Say what?

In the experiment a phosphorus atom (P) was etched with tiny silicon. The voltage then applied to the terminals makes it behave as transistor in it’s quantum state.

The fig a shows the etched silicon at the sides of P atom. Fig b shows the transistor behavior exhibited.

Courtesy—nature nanotechnology

This fig shows the readings taken between the terminals D,S,G1,G2 to display the transistor properties.

This preciously states that a new dimension to a quantum computing is discovered. And the future seems good.

So yay, alright we did it again! No more limitations…. but woa this new finding got limit as well

Damn it!….The atom has to be maintained in a temperature of -391 deg. This is because to make the atoms stay in it’s channel and not migrate! Also here the SEPARATION of atoms is of crucial importance.  This is in order to make thin atomic WIRES.

With this the future seems bright. But how successful will this be implemented on a large scale is still the question. It loves us, loves us not?

What do ya’ll think? Think about!