Intel chip to include antipiracy features. Does anyone know if this is true? Just wondering.

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: ToBeMe

Originally posted by: CrazySaint

Originally posted by: ToBeMe

Originally posted by: ripthesystem

Originally posted by: wfbberzerker
how is the technology supposed to discern between a hacker or virus and an online program or someone accessing your data if youre a server?

Microsoft will tell it...

What don't you Trust them?

Thing is.............this isn't JUST MS...............Intel, AMD, and others are involved and have apparently all agreed (probably with much lobbying by RIAA and others) on this so the blame can not lay with MS alone..............

Except that MS is running the software end of it, so MS does, in fact, tell it what's allowed and what isn't.

Whatever...........some people seem to have to put blame directly on a specific company all the time............especially if the company happens to be MS! Tell me...where would this all be if AMD or Intel said no?????

Well, I do blame Intel and AMD as well, however I trust them not to screw it up (more than it is already) a lot more than I trust MS not to. Simply put, when I see "vaults of (personal, private) data" and "protected by (insert MS technology)" I get scared One thing MS is NOT known for is security. IOW, I at least expect the parts made by Intel and AMD to work right. I don't expect the part made by MS to work right, even though I wish none of it were going to happen at all. Fortunately, by the time I need to upgrade my CPU/OS again (1-2 years from now since I'm currently in the process of upgrading), I should have sufficient knowledge of Linux to able to switch to Linux for everything except gaming and the little bit of graphics work I do (assuming I can't get used to GIMP).

 

[JellyBaby]

How do anti-piracy measures at the hardware level help or benefit consumers?

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: JellyBaby
How do anti-piracy measures at the hardware level help or benefit consumers?

Unless you define "customers" as the RIAA and MPAA, they don't.

 

[pm]

How do anti-piracy measures at the hardware level help or benefit consumers?

The only reasonable arguement that I have heard is that, without them, media companies won't agree to stream video or sell audio content over the internet.

 

[Jhill]

I am getting the urge to buy A LOT of stock in apple.

 

[Nack]

Originally posted by: Jhill
I am getting the urge to buy A LOT of stock in apple.

I think you are being sarcastic, but you may have a point. I had to use an ibook for two years at work, and it was bad, but not as bad as PCs will be if what we are talking about here really happens. Once you figure out what the dumbed down functions are as they relate to similar functions on PCs, they do actually work, and can even replicate many of the functions of an actual computer. If there are no decent alternatives, I will take another look at Apple when and if this happens. I do not like Macs, but it might be better than nothing.

Nack

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Nack

Originally posted by: Jhill
I am getting the urge to buy A LOT of stock in apple.

I think you are being sarcastic, but you may have a point. I had to use an ibook for two years at work, and it was bad, but not as bad as PCs will be if what we are talking about here really happens. Once you figure out what the dumbed down functions are as they relate to similar functions on PCs, they do actually work, and can even replicate many of the functions of an actual computer. If there are no decent alternatives, I will take another look at Apple when and if this happens. I do not like Macs, but it might be better than nothing.

Nack

LOL, your opinion of Apple seems to be pretty much what my opinion of them used to be. But, now with their UNIX-based OS X, I think they've come a long way. The only complaint I've heard about OS X is that it's slow unless you happen to have some of Apple's higher end hardware (which of course is terribly expensive).

 

[ToBeMe]

Originally posted by: jliechty

Originally posted by: Nack

Originally posted by: Jhill
I am getting the urge to buy A LOT of stock in apple.

I think you are being sarcastic, but you may have a point. I had to use an ibook for two years at work, and it was bad, but not as bad as PCs will be if what we are talking about here really happens. Once you figure out what the dumbed down functions are as they relate to similar functions on PCs, they do actually work, and can even replicate many of the functions of an actual computer. If there are no decent alternatives, I will take another look at Apple when and if this happens. I do not like Macs, but it might be better than nothing.

Nack

LOL, your opinion of Apple seems to be pretty much what my opinion of them used to be. But, now with their UNIX-based OS X, I think they've come a long way. The only complaint I've heard about OS X is that it's slow unless you happen to have some of Apple's higher end hardware (which of course is terribly expensive).

Ya' know the funny part about that???? I know quite a few "Apple" users and even visit a forum they go to...................seems all the Apple/Mac users like to make it quite clear that Mac OS is NOT Linux and never will be because in their words...........Linux Sucks worse than Windows!:Q LOL! I had to laugh at them................

 

[smp]

Originally posted by: imtim83
Yeah but what if everyone does not upgrade to these newer processors and stay one processor behind? Like never upgrades their processor after that lets say. I know its sorta impossible but you could do it if you wanted.

It's not gonna happen. The media will convince everyone that buying new processors to counteract piracy will help the war on terrorism... and everyone will line up.

 

[JellyBaby]

The only reasonable arguement that I have heard is that, without them, media companies won't agree to stream video or sell audio content over the internet.

Yet the internet is quite robust without that content. And there are movie theatres, concert halls, standalone media players, etc. where one can go for that stuff. Plus I don't see people crying out in the streets for streaming audio/video over their dial-up.

So, why should anti-piracy at the hardware level be mandatory? PCs have been tremendously successful over the years because they empower individuals to perform tasks they otherwise couldn't. The sky has been the limit. And now we're to settle for less? All because media companies want a supposedly gauranteed level of profitability?

I think this is the next step to shackling digital freedom.

 

[ripthesystem]

It's not gonna happen. The media will convince everyone that buying new processors to counteract piracy will help the war on terrorism... and everyone will line up.

sad but true. As long as people don't actually see their privacy rights being taken away and as long as it's just small amounts at a time I feel the majority of people will live with it.. Just like

some of the "features" in Windows XP (like when you put in a CD, it does a CDDB lookup in Microsoft's servers - while this is a service, MS now knows what CD's that I'm listening to and could sell the information).

knowing that and thinking about it.. how many people still support this by allowing it to happen? little things.. tiny knives.

ripthesystem

 

[Santa]

Please don't use the analogy of MAC as the same as CPUID's .. It is not comparing apples to apples.

MAC numbers are not unique but need to be unique to a paticular network it is on.

MAC numbers are needed to perform network functions, without it current networking would not work.

If they can prove how without having CPU IDs then computing would not work because communication packets are based upon knowing source and destination of the CPU ID then I might at least see a usful technology but until then it is overhead and potential for false positives make it not worth implementing or I will be one of the admins filtering out any sort of reply though the firewalls created by these chips.

 

[pm]

MAC numbers are not unique but need to be unique to a paticular network it is on. MAC numbers are needed to perform network functions, without it current networking would not work.

MAC addresses are, unless spoofed, unique. They contain a product/vendor code and a product serial number. Since vendors do not repeat their product serial numbers in their product lines, this should be a unique number. It is designed to be a unique number. From searchnetworking.com

On a local area network (LAN) or other network, the MAC (Media Access Control) address is your computer's unique hardware number. (On an Ethernet LAN, it's the same as your Ethernet address.) When you're connected to the Internet from your computer (or host as the Internet protocol thinks of it), a correspondence table relates your IP address to your computer's physical (MAC) address on the LAN. The MAC address is used by the Media Access Control sublayer of the Data-Link Layer (DLC) layer of telecommunication protocol. There is a different MAC sublayer for each physical device type. The other sublayer level in the DLC layer is the Logical Link Control sublayer.

As far as performing a function, unique identifiers within the CPU are useful. You may not like the function, but they do have a purpose. CPUID's are not intended for networking, but for uniquely identifying hardware - typically for encryption and authentication purposes. You don't need them to have a useful computer, but then you don't need an Ethernet card to have a useful computer either.

 

[Santa]

NIC Card vendors create batches of NICs that are sent to all parts of the world. In one batch all the NICs will have the same MAC address. This makes production cheaper and reuse of MAC addresses quicker.

They have their charts and statistics on how far apart to send out the shipments to make sure that very few percent actually fall into the same company.

Every so often though you are sent NICs from the same batch and the troubleshooting looks to point to bad hardware but really the NICs just have the same MAC address.

MAC address in conjunction with Private side address in conjunction with legal address can perhaps identify at least a company / ISP in question but there is no possible way that MAC alone can identify a unique machine because there are many machines out there in the world with the same exact MAC address.

Vendor's do[/d] repeat their MAC numbers though. There is only 48bit comprising of a MAC address and some of it has to represent the manufacturer so there are a finite amount of combinations. Sooner or later the manufacturer decides the older combination is so out of date there is a slim chance a conflict will happen if reintroduced into the new network products.

But the MAC address was never meant to be used for anything more than internetworking. This is the point that is more important. So thus no one complaints about it.

If a feature included in a CPU is made specifically to twarth pirating it will cause 1) False Positives 2) delay in processing because any additional checks made will cause a delay that when added up = overhead

 

[Paulson]

Well, if that happens, guess what, I'll keep my windows 2000 running on my Athlon XP 1700...

Oh yeah, I'll keep my server running my athlon classic 1ghz pc running linux too...

:|

 

[BaDaBooM]

I'll have to back up Santa on this one. I have personally ran into having to troubleshoot a networking issue that turned out to be two network cards with the same MAC address on the same network.

 

[MadRat]

MAC conflicts are easy to diagnose. What was the problem that made it hidden? Why don't you hard code your MACs?

 

[BaDaBooM]

No one said that it wasn't easy nor was it hidden. Not sure what you mean by hardcoding the MAC address... they are always hardcoded on NICs (except for spoofing).

 

[pm]

Having done a lot of reading and a fair amount of calculating, I have come to the conclusion that I am wrong: MAC addresses are not unique. I had been taught that they were unique, and if you do a search on MAC address on Google, nearly all of the results that are brought up say that they are unique. But Santa is right, the numbers don't add up. 24 bits isn't a very big number (16 million), and - although vendors are allowed to have multiple vendor ID's (OUI's), large companies like Intel don't have enough to warrant the volumes of Ethernet NIC's that I would think that they are shipping. Linksys has two ID's on the public database, and, while they may have more hidden that are not in the database, it doesn't seem like they would have enough.

The original intent was that they are supposed to be unique... one would have thought that they would have thought ahead enough to see that they would run out. Or they should have reduced the size of the vendor ID's block from 24 bits to something like 15 bits (allowing 32k company ID's to ship 8.5 billion NIC's per each).

 

[MadRat]

I really meant soft coded when I said hard coded. I meant that you can afix a MAC to the card in your OS.

 

[BaDaBooM]

To answer, the reason they didn't do anything about the lack of unique MAC address is because it wasn't needed. From a networking perspective MAC address are only meant to be used internally by companies/organizations/etc and between routers on the same "network" and not globally across the internet. It does not make any difference if my MAC address is the same as yours. My router knows/uses my MAC and yours knows/uses your MAC, but mine doesn't know/care about your MAC and vice versa (at least with properly setup routers/firewalls). The problem only comes about when there are two MACs that are the same on the same network, which is very rare - even in the very large company I was working for at the time.

Also soft-coding MAC addresses in a large company doesn't make sense because it is a waste of resources for something that just isn't an issue. You would need to either manually keep track and allocate all those addresses or or develop a system to do it. I can just picture the look on the CIO's face if I proposed such a project.

 

[pm]

Thanks for the explanation, BaDaBoom.

 

[BaDaBooM]

No problemo

 

[MadRat]

It IS an issue if you use MAC addresses to lock down traffic. I do work in a large company of 50000 employees and it is critical to have the MAC addresses set correctly whether it is token ring or ethernet environments. Token ring environments are dependent on the MAC address by their very nature. I highly recommend that you use MAC address as yet another layer of security for your enterprise if you do not do so already.

 

[Bluga]

So.....is it a reality?