Josh the Aspie’s Blog

I’ve previously defined what DRM is, but why does big business want DRM at all?

Big media makes its money off of media content when the consumer buys its products.

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HDCP

1. Officially: High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection
2. A form of DRM invented by Digital Content protection LLC, a subsidiary of Intel.
3. Technology used to block people from displaying “HDCP” protected digital content on media described as being insecure. The technology will either completely block, or blur the content, unless all devices in the chain are equipped with HDCP technology. It is purportedly designed as a form of “copy protection” but has wound up becoming a form of “access prevention.”

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Hey all. Some of you may remember that I’m trying to loose weight. Well, my recent bout with physical inactivity brought on by throwing my back out didn’t help, nor will my resolve to minimize heavy physical activity over the next week.

On the up-side, it turns out that I was able to keep most of the weight off that I talked about in my previous post according to the scale at my parents house. Unfortunately, that scale shows me as weighing far less than the one at the doctors office does, and I won’t have access to it nearly as often as I used to. So I bought a new scale.

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DCMA is another abbreviation that I’ve used, and received blank looks about. I’ll be giving what it officially stands for, as well as my definition.

DCMA

1. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998
2. The Defrauding Misappropriation Copyright Act of 1998
3. A law passed by congress in 1998, which restricts and inhibits the creation of new ideas and technology by causing copyright law to cover derivative works as well as the original work. The law also criminalizing the unauthorized accessing or copying of materials who’s use or ability to copy has been restricted through any technological means.

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Some of you may recall my earlier post in which I posted that I injured my back. Well, after resting up, my back is feeling much better.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of work to catch up on. So, between resting my back, and catching up on work, I haven’t had much chance to post lately.

Over the next week, I intend to continue to rest my back, which means I have to refrain from doing more unpacking and moving into my new apartment. This will give me time to catch up on my blogging, and hopefully a bit of light cleaning as well.

A lot of people I’ve talked to recently are unaware of what DRM is, so I’ll try to fill you all in with what it stands for officially, my definition of the term, and do a basic discussion of the reasons for it’s existence, and the problems with it.

DRM

1. Digital Rights Management
2. A term used to describe any form of technology which is designed to restrict the use, access, or alteration of any form of data or content. This technology is desired primarily by those who create content, and wish to control how that content is used even after they sell a copy of said content. For example, a system of DVD or CD encryption designed to prevent people from ripping their DVD or CD, and then listening to the music they bought on an MP3 player, or watch it on their computer.

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Recently I snatched up a 720p 32″ LCD TV with 2 HDMI ports and a VGA port, which was drastically on sale. I was told in store that HDMI was backwards compatible with DVI, and it even said so on the package of a converter. I also have a video card with 2 DVI outputs (and no VGA outputs), 256M DDR3 RAM.

Unfortunately it turns out that HDMI is only backwards compatible on pin out. As DVI and HDMI are both digital signals, they are both encoded. There are differences in this encoding, which can cause problems in hooking up DVI and HDMI devices together. Unless the device accepting the input can understand the encoding of the other format, problems are very likely.
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My apologies for not posting more often recently. As usual, there’s a combination of reasons. First of all, I have been continuing to move boxes of all kinds into my apartment and unload them. This caused the next reason: Despite lifting correctly, I threw my back out.
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For those that don’t know, there is a running gag among computer engineers that when a chip goes bad and lets out smoke, the reason the chip no longer works is because “you let the magic blue smoke out.”

In a related note, earlier today I was moving some boxes out of storage with my friends, when we noticed a burning smell, like burning plastic. We tried to find the cause, but did not. Moments later while they were getting some more boxes, and I was working to finish up a book shelf to put some books we brought up into, one of the air conditioning vents in my apartment suddenly started billowing smoke.
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Recently, there has been a large amount of media coverage about an immigration bill that was before the house and senate. Many in the main stream media (such as television) have praised the bill, while many in the blogosphere, and in talk radio have blasted the bill. The bill had both Bipartisan support and opposition.

With all of the problems surrounding immigration, and the views on it, it’s no wonder that there is so much talk about it recently.
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