Saturday 4 June 2005

How Thoughtful Of Them

From OS News :
Intel is adding DRM capabilities to its new Pentium D chipsets, but as with AMD, they're not that keen on talking about it. Aside from DRM, there's also this gem: Additionally, AMT also features what Intel calls "IDE redirection"...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.
To simplify, DRM - Digital Rights Management - is s system to make sure that no matter where you are in the world, you comply with that particular company's interpretation of US copyright laws. But all that does is prevent you playing music and accessing other intellectual property you may have a right to.

IDE allows the chip make to do whatever they want to your computer, whenever they want to. Of course, it's for your own good, and we can all be quite sure that no-one not authorised to use this feature would be able to do so for at least the first few weeks.

Still, it could be worse. Mother Nature's doing a pretty thorough job of giving me a field upgrade to my own biological hardware, whether I like it or not. Looked at objectively, yes, it's an improvement (so far, anyway), even one I would have welcomed if offered the choice. But choice didn't come into it.

Hat Tip to reader Shaun

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