Battleangel

No, this is not an episode of The Lone Gunmen …

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.

While Intel steered clear of mentioning the new DRM technology at its Australian launch of the new products, Intel’s Australian technical manager Graham Tucker publicly confirmed Microsoft-flavored DRM technology will be a feature of Pentium D and 945.

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.

Source: Digit Mag, INQUIRER

A futile attempt, at least for now. But put this into an Orwellian vision of the future and the context of the contemporary world and you’ll have something to worry about.