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Hardware Technology

Microchips With Multiple "Selves" 143

Stony Stevenson brings news from Rice University about designing integrated circuits with multiple distinct identities, which could be used in new types of hardware-based DRM, among other things. From the news release: "'With "n-variant" integrated circuits, it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique,' said Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and principal investigator on the project. 'New methods of digital rights management can be built upon such devices. For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another.' Koushanfar said content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times."
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Microchips With Multiple "Selves"

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  • *Ahem* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wandering Wombat ( 531833 ) <mightyjalapeno.gmail@com> on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:40PM (#23784461) Homepage Journal
    Is there a good use for this technology?
    • Re:*Ahem* (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:57PM (#23784693) Journal

      Is there a good use for this technology?
      Sure, "to sell metered access to software, music or movies"
      Good is a subjective judgement.

      I think it's bad for consumers, but from a business standpoint it's great*
      The only way I can see this taking off is if either the hardware or content is really cheap

      *assuming you can get any kind of market penetration
      • Re:*Ahem* (Score:5, Funny)

        by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:13PM (#23784905)

        *assuming you can get any kind of market penetration
        I'm starting to feel penetrated already.
      • It is inherently hostile and it's creators consider you the enemy. The subjective judgment has already been made:

        "The key here is that a successful adversary has to simultaneously compromise all chip variants with the same input. By switching among the variants -- and by designing each in a security-conscious way -- we can make it impossible for attackers to do this."

        The customer is the "attacker" who might "compromise" the device to exercise their fair use rights or -gasp- share with their friends. App

        • It is inherently hostile and it's creators consider you the enemy.

          That's pretty much been the status quo for a long time
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_curse [wikipedia.org]

          The use of book curses dates back much further, to pre-Christian times, when the wrath of gods was invoked to protect books and scrolls. In their medieval usage, many of these curses vowed that harsh repercussions would be inflicted on anyone who appropriated the work from its proper owner.
          ...
          For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails ... when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

          Rights management isn't a new concept, whereas fair use is.

          The customer is the "attacker" who might "compromise" the device to exercise their fair use rights

          Current law allows for
          1. Fair Use of copyrighted works and
          2. Copyright creators to encumber their works and
          3. The consumer to try and disencumber it and
          4. The dissemination of disencumbering tools to be illegal

          This is obviously a poor state of affairs for consumers.
          But the content producers & copyright owners aren't doing anything illegal.

          And I don't

          • by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @06:28PM (#23786763)
            Rights management isn't a new concept, whereas fair use is. ...For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner...

            Right. The difference being that back then the OWNER of the book had all the rights.
            Today, the OWNER of the book is the one being cursed.
          • Except that those curses were for the actual theft of valuable property which had a physical existence. Now the curse is for taking a copy. These are altogether different. I would not want someone to steal my car. I have no objection to someone making a copy of my car.
            • by turgid ( 580780 )

              I would not want someone to steal my car. I have no objection to someone making a copy of my car.

              Neither do I. The point about cars, the written word, music art, etc. is that someone invested time and effort designing them (for want of a better term).

              I like Free Software and I like to contribute and give my contributions away for free under the GPL/LGPL, however we must make a distinction between the circumstances under which something was produced and the producer's wishes.

              It's a balance. In the old sy

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by mangu ( 126918 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:45PM (#23785397)

        from a business standpoint it's great*
        The only way I can see this taking off is if either the hardware or content is really cheap

        *assuming you can get any kind of market penetration

        The problem is that any DRM system intrinsically raises costs. I don't know why so many executives fail to notice this: physical goods have their own intrinsic copy-protection, yet they cannot be priced higher than the market will bear. Honda doesn't try to sell Civics for the price of Ferraris, even if no one can copy a Civic like you copy a song.


        By spending more on copy-protection they are pricing their products further away from the optimum price.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

          I don't know why so many executives fail to notice this: physical goods have their own intrinsic copy-protection, yet they cannot be priced higher than the market will bear.

          Have you ever heard of a "counterfeit"?
          It's what they call a copy of a physical good.
          Saying a good can't be priced higher than the market will bear is a tautalogy.

          Honda doesn't try to sell Civics for the price of Ferraris, even if no one can copy a Civic like you copy a song.

          That's an issue of demand, not of pricing.
          3 cylinder Geo Metros are selling for waaaay above their Blue Book value on eBay. [cnn.com]
          Why? Because they're suddenly in demand.

          The problem is that any DRM system intrinsically raises costs.
          By spending more on copy-protection they are pricing their products further away from the optimum price.

          I'm assuming that the math works out such that whatever they spend on copy-protection is less than whatever they're losing from counterfeits & copyright violations. If every consu

      • > Sure, "to sell metered access to software, music or movies"
        > Good is a subjective judgement.

        Let's not forget poor struggling shareware authors. "Metered access" could be used to offer the 30 day trial period, so let's not blindly lump it all into the "evil" category.
      • or you get the government to foist this on us like they are digital broadcasts.
    • Re:*Ahem* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JonTurner ( 178845 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:01PM (#23784737) Journal
      A good use? Certainly: It illustrates beautifully that a hardware solution won't solve a social problem nor rescue a flawed business model.
    • *Ahem*

      No.
    • I hate to say it, but in domestic and utility robotics of the future there might be a desire for individuals to be unique in some way - in order to deter broad hacking or something.

      Might this in fact offer some kind of barrier against virus outbreaks in general as well?

      In other words, by making it hard to copy information, viruses and other malicious software which relies heavily on ease of prorogation might find infertile soil in such tech.

      Of course, as these are speculations in the heterogeneous nature, I
    • by KGIII ( 973947 )
      There are good uses for it. Yes. How about your business has an in-house video that contains proprietary information or corporate secrets... You only want it to be played off the server, only on networked computers, etc... This is one legitimate reason for DRM. Unfortunately we typically only see it in use with other forms of media but there are legit uses for it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by couchslug ( 175151 )
      "Is there a good use for this technology?"

      Yes, if malware is programmed to disable systems using it.
      That use is called "object lesson". :)
    • Re:*Ahem* (Score:4, Informative)

      by Intron ( 870560 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @05:00PM (#23785639)
      About 15 years ago I worked on a design that had to be split into multiple chips because we needed a lot of I/O pins. We realized that there were enough gates to put all four designs on one die and just activate one of them depending on a couple of program lines. That way we only had to make one mask and one set of test vectors (and pay one NRE) and we got four different chips. The PC board hardwired the program pins so we could just solder any chip anywhere and it became the right thing. That would be a good use of multiple-personality chips.

      The use in the article seems to be: you buy what you think is a certain product, and it behaves differently and has different bugs from what everyone else buys. That would be the last product I bought from that company.
    • A good use for this technology would be to milk the recording industry yet again for millions of dollars up front by promising a new and improved but equally doomed Yet-Another-DRM scheme.

      These guys will buy anything if you promise them it will lead to DRM that works that the customer will accept.

      They don't even get that most of the pirated product is distributed before the content reaches its final form -- let alone after they've had a chance to encrypt it. Cocaine causes brain damage. They can't help

    • by mrmeval ( 662166 )
      I've seen similar done with FPGA's. A product I did RMA worked on could be flash upgraded with more features than the stock unit. These were changes that normally would have taken a hardware upgrade but it only took a few minutes to download the upgrade and enter the license code.

      The device was Xilinx, it worked well enough.

  • MAGI? (Score:5, Funny)

    by athdemo ( 1153305 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:40PM (#23784469)
    So they finally made the MAGI system?
    • by Chas ( 5144 )
      Aw come on! I don't want to explode into a communal goo again!

      Been there, done that, sent postcards (only look if you have a strong stomach).
  • Emulators (Score:3, Insightful)

    by edlinfan ( 1131341 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:41PM (#23784477)
    I bet that emulators will defeat this. You could presumably use them to simulate any one of these "unique" processors. Such emulators probably won't work on mobile devices, though.
    • It's called a universal Turing machine [wikipedia.org] -- a Turing machine capable of emulating any other. Every computer produced in the past half-century or so is a UTM, give or take the available storage space.
  • That number is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:41PM (#23784479) Journal

    after a file has been accessed a certain number of times

    For me and this technology that number would be 0.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:43PM (#23784513)
    A System with a multiple personality disorder. I'll never know what it will boot to, a whole new substitute for grub.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by SpiderClan ( 1195655 )
      You underestimate the potential of multiple personalities. Me, Myself and I,Robot seems like the only possible outcome.
  • by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:46PM (#23784543) Journal
    If it can play unprotected audio, then all the DRM in the world isn't going to help anything. People will still swap mp3s. If it can't play unprotected audio, no one will ever buy it.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by darealpat ( 826858 )
      Microsoft, for Zune. Or Apple. Don't look too shocked by the latter. We can see how much it wants to lock you into iTunes... and how many of us so willingly let them.

      sad but true, eh.
    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Eventually that wont be the case. If your code isn't 'signed and trusted' the very hardware will reject it. Eventually hardware will have to be replaced, and when all you can get its the uber-drmed hardware, there will be no using 'untrusted data'.

      Sure that wont happen today, or tomorrow, but that will happen eventually if this train isn't derailed soon enough.
      • by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:24PM (#23785049) Journal

        I record music. I wouldn't buy a player that won't let me play my own stuff, or my friend's stuff, just because an authority hasn't signed off on it.

        With home recording becoming cheaper and better all the time, I expect that this will be more of an issue in the future, not less. The era of "top-down" music distribution is ending.

        • by nurb432 ( 527695 )
          If the *AA gets their way, you wont be able to.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by digitrev ( 989335 )
            If they get their way, people will resort to any means necessary. If this boils down to breaking the law, then people will do so. Hell, if it means going back to wax cylinders, it will be done.
          • I seriously doubt they could win that battle. I mean really, you're talking about something that most Americans take for granted. Telling people that it's illegal for their teenager to record the song he wrote with his band, or that they can't make and publish their own home movies, even when there is no copyrighted content involved, would not fly.

            If anything, I think the pendulum is going in the other direction: lots of people are putting stuff on Youtube that is already technically illegal, and at least

    • Device free, with $49.99 / year subscription. Play any song you want, anywhere, anytime. Not all DRM is bad.
      • Here's the problem: DRM based stuff works only on certain hodgepodge of devices. MP3 works everywhere.

        I can download/trade to get MP3's that work anywhere. Even my phone can play mp3s.

        Junky DRM service works only when on internet (most likely streamed drm) and only works on ordained players

        And 50$ a year sounds ok, but why even the drm? They play those songs on the radio, evidently they arent worth that much. Even the Sat radio guys have unique content.

        Perhaps DRM can work as a model in terms of "pain to do
    • by TheSeventh ( 824276 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:24PM (#23785059)
      I don't think that these companies will ever really "get" it and stop trying to eliminate the effects of DRM and sharing and look at the cause.

      This type of n-variant system will never work because if I own a copy of a song, I want to play it on my mp3 player, in my car, on my home stereo, or on my computer, depending on where I am and what I'm doing. All of these are legal activities, and I don't need to buy 4 copies of a song.

      So, if I can have 4 copies of a song I bought, then it becomes highly difficult for the record companies to make sure I don't take one of these copies and give it to someone else. This is one of the biggest flaws in their current business model.

      The other thing these people will never understand, is that with digital copies of ANYTHING, modifications can and will be made. A copy of a song that can only play on your mp3 player? Only until someone hacks the copy so it can play everywhere, rendering this "new technology" useless.

      People have and will always share music and movies and software and whatever else they either can't or don't want to pay for. What these companies should do is to make these items Convenient, Low-Cost and Available everywhere. Why steal that song when you can get it for under $1? Why burn a copy of that movie when you can get a high-quality version cheaply? Customers get what they want (high-quality, convenience, low-cost, etc.), and the companies continue to make money.

      Yet, these companies continue to piss more and more people off, and remain clueless. They screwed the customers with $15 CDs that had 1-2 songs anybody actually wanted. Then they resisted making individual songs available because the rest of the crap on a CD would never sell.

      The lesson they should have learned YEARS ago, is that if you piss off your customers, and don't give them what they want at a reasonable price, some of them will find a way around your restrictions, illegally if necessary.
      • I want to play it on my mp3 player, in my car, on my home stereo, or on my computer, depending on where I am and what I'm doing. All of these are legal activities, and I don't need to buy 4 copies of a song.
        Not for long!
      • All of these are legal activities, and I don't need to buy 4 copies of a song.

        Not according to the RIAA. After all, these are the people who say that copying songs from your CD to your iPod is illegal.

        Only until someone hacks the copy so it can play everywhere, rendering this "new technology" useless.

        How, precisely? This new technology allows for hardware manufacturers to create uniquely keyed processors, just as MasterLock can create uniquely keyed locks. If the song is encrypted, and your digital audio player is the decryption key, then it doesn't matter how you "hack" the song, you'll have to pass around your player with the file in order to get it to play. Of course, if

    • I sure as hell would not buy this!

      When are these people going to learn that trying to sell things to people that the people do not want DOES NOT WORK???

      I guess about the same day that forcing people to go along via lawsuits stops working.
  • Two things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitrev ( 989335 ) <digitrev@hotmail.com> on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:47PM (#23784563) Homepage
    One: is this practical from a manufacturing perspective? If it isn't, this'll never take off the ground.

    Two: how much does this complicate programming? Is it possible to program for all variants at once? Can you make an interpreter to do so? If this makes the life of a programmer too goddamn difficult, it won't get off the ground.
    • It is very easy to put a one-time programmable ROM on silicon. Intel did something like this on the Pentium 3 [junkbusters.com].

      As long as the device syncs with a central server, programming should be easy since only the central server has to maintain the variant list. The device just has to update itself with the 'plays' you have left and count down. It is just like what Apple does with buying music off of itunes, except in this case you only play a set number of times.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sohp ( 22984 )

      If this makes the life of a programmer too goddamn difficult, it won't get off the ground.

      Hahahaha.

      Hahaha.

      OK, now, I...hahahahaha..

      You've never programmed for a living I take it?

      There are many many technologies out there that make life for programmers too goddamned difficult, but that doesn't prevent the PHBs and the marketecture-driven corporations from buying them and telling the line programmers to make it work. And there are programmers, sofware companies, and consultancies with misaligned ethical compasses more than willing to throw droves of bodies at a problem while picking clean the poc

      • I've done some QA work for a company that upgraded old Powerhouse databases to the newer version of Powerhouse or to .NET framework, though I mostly worked on the Powerhouse side. I'm also currently working developing a model for a larger simulator of a spectrometer planned to go up in about 10 years. That being said, I'm a co-op student working with a university, and I'm using a programming language developed by a physics professor (IDL).

        However, stupid as the PHBs can and will be, even they'll understa
        • by Intron ( 870560 )
          Lets see:

          10,000 hours of programming at $100/hr = ONE MILLION DOLLARS (in best Dr. Evil voice).

          Annual global music industry sales = $21 billion in wholesale revenue (2005).

    • by dpilot ( 134227 )
      It's already there.

      I sat in on a presentation about a next-generation HDTV chip, about a year back. There was more extra hardware on that chip dedicated to encryption that I could believe. They made sure that clear signal was never present on ANY chip pin, and was even re-encrypted when it had to go to other chips in the same system, then decrypted at the other chip, etc.

      You can swallow incredible amounts of encryption when you've got a budget of tens or hundreds of millions of transistors.
      • Transistors may be cheap but electricity is not. These devices should be outlawed. It's bad enough the content will satisfy copyright requirements by making it to public domain. Burning millions of watt-hours a year on it is a crime.

        • by dpilot ( 134227 )
          I wasn't approving, I was more surprised at silicon lengths they were going to.
          • by Odder ( 1288958 )

            I'm amazed at the intentional waste but those pushing digital restrictions think that's OK because it maintains their position of control. Wouldn't it be better if companies spent their research time on devices that do nice things for people who use them?

        • Re:Other Costs. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by digitrev ( 989335 ) <digitrev@hotmail.com> on Friday June 13, 2008 @07:35PM (#23787341) Homepage
          Devices should never be outlawed. Unless their only purpose is to cause damage, and I mean damage to humans, then it's legal. Outlaw certain uses, but never the device itself. Otherwise you're just as bad as the people who outlaw devices that can circumvent DRM measures.
  • yay... (Score:2, Informative)

    by pwolf ( 1016201 )
    Just another thing for bored programmers to play with.
  • Sure to be a hit (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yet another technology that will be expensive and offer no benefit to consumers whatsoever. I'm sure it will take off just like all of its DRM'd cousins from the past.
  • Hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:50PM (#23784591) Journal
    So, a system whereby every installation is also a port to a unique platform. I think this deserves a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".

    I suspect that I don't fully understand the proposal; but I'm a bit unclear as to how this is better(or worse, if you are not a sinister IP overlord) than a TPM with an embedded key, or the obfuscated VM from BD+. I'd also be very curious to know how one can, easily enough to use on a commercial scale, generate "content" or binaries for a given unknown unique architecture. Is there some sort of compact way that the chip can send its state to a remote agent(without revealing that state, and making reverse engineering easy)? Does the manufacturer of the device need to disclose the state of all devices to all vendors in order for them to build customized binaries for those devices?

    I suspect that people smarter than I am have given the matter some thought; but TFA doesn't give me much to go on.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

      Is there some sort of compact way that the chip can send its state to a remote agent(without revealing that state, and making reverse engineering easy)?

      I also had some questions about wtf the article was talking about.
      "Security by diversity" caught my eye, because it sounds like "security by obscurity" and I know that is a stupid idea.

      The "security by diversity" aka "N-state variant" systems do not rely on any secrets. Their basic mode of operation is like having a multiple redundant system made up of different technologies (but on one chip). Even if you can exploit/corrupt one of them, the others carry on as planned. So to exploit the system, you have to

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        all this is then, by your description, is multiple layers of security by obscurity in one chip.

        Just like blu-ray, people will break down 2 or more separate drm schemes and STILL get the data out to the p2p networks.

        brilliant! GoodLuckWithThat
  • by JCOTTON ( 775912 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @03:51PM (#23784615) Homepage Journal
    What about programmable EEPROM technology from, say, the 80's? For you youngins, this was a way of burning code into read-only memory. There are also programmable processors, where the connections between gates can be permantently burned and thus programmed. Bottom line, there are many old ways of permenently programming processors. What is so new now?

    "Hello, World"

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by pipatron ( 966506 )

      <anal>Technically that would be PROM or EPROM, since the first two Es in EEPROM stands for "Electrically Erasable" which is precisely what you don't want in this case.</anal>

      • by ozbird ( 127571 )
        The grandparent is correct: writing to a ((E)E)PROM stores data into read-only memory. You can only write to (E)EPROMs in a device if the circuitry to do so is included. EEPROMs are convenient, but otherwise no different to EPROMs in this respect.
  • Beginning Countdown until this (like all other DRM schemes) gets cracked.
  • Either they are ignorant(doubtful) or liars( probably not) or .. well I wanted to put something positive here, but even I can see the problems and why this can not work in the world as a DRM.
    • DRM generally works perfectly as intended. It causes the average paying customer to re-purchase media for each device they own and whenever they upgrade devices. It's no different than purchasing the White album on vinyl, then atrac, then cassette, then CD, etc. Of course you can dub from your record player to your tape deck, but most people just bought it again.

      I doubt anyone really believes DRM can stop the commercial pirates, or the technically literate from going to the work of breaking it, but I guaran
  • trolling for research dollars is all this is.
    • I don't disagree with you, you're probably right.

      My question is, aside from the obvious money aspect, what motivates a researcher to do thi kind of research? Is it really that interesting of a problem? Is it some sort of mysterious knot that researchers can't stop picking at or is it really just a money issue?

      I'm no professional researcher, though I play one in my off time. I see exactly zero motivation to work on a problem like this.
  • Another day, another retard who thinks that he can make something work which is proved not to.
    • by ady1 ( 873490 )
      Ok how the fuck is it a troll? DRM is proved to not work over and over again and for good reason. Wtf is the moderator smoking?
  • They are called smart card chips. You can get them packaged as surface mount too. It's got all crypto goodness one needs.

    Except management can't comprehend decent crypto, so we'll have a few more decades of encryption keys stored on disk.
  • To paraphrase Professor Frink: "Oh, well to be honest, the technology only has evil applications"
  • by suck_burners_rice ( 1258684 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:06PM (#23784817)
    Why not pass a worldwide law that upon birth (or on the date the law goes into effect), every single person in the world must have an implant that detects whenever that person sees, hears, or otherwise experiences any form of copyrighted material, and on each occurrence, transfers money from their bank account directly into the accounts of the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft. This would solve the problem of people downloading illegally, as it would become legal to download copyrighted material for free. You would pay each time you hear/see/use the material. This would be a form of Pay-Per-Use, and to the RIAA's, MPAA's, and Microsoft's huge advantage, they'll get to charge you even when you pull up to a stoplight and you hear a song being blasted on the radio of the car next to you. Violation of the law by not having the implant will be punishable by weeks of inhumane torture, followed by the death penalty, without wasting anyone's time with nonsense like trials, legal proceedings, due process, or any of that other pesky stuff.
    • Why not pass a worldwide law that upon birth (or on the date the law goes into effect), every single person in the world must have an implant that detects whenever that person sees, hears, or otherwise experiences any form of copyrighted material, and on each occurrence, transfers money from their bank account directly into the accounts of the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft. This would solve the problem of people downloading illegally, as it would become legal to download copyrighted material for free. You would
    • by azzuth ( 1177007 )
      I'd stand in busy locations singing copyrighted music, and make my own copyright infringing clothing so everyone around me would pay. If i could make copyrighted smells i'd do that too... but i have a feeling noone has cornered that particular market...
  • by pseudorand ( 603231 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:09PM (#23784861)
    > content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times. By switching the chip's identity, wouldn't that disable not only the metered content I've consumed the appropriate amount of times but also all the other content that I may not have consumed yet? Or do I need a separate chip for each song I buy?
  • Why the hell would I want a chip with multiple personality disorder?

    cptnapalm sits down to work at his computer

    *a message pops up on the screen*

    "Hello, Dave."

    cptnapalm: "My name's not... Oh shit..."
  • "He has multiple personalities... ALL Lincoln"
    "I was born in 200 log cabins"
  • by Sarusa ( 104047 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:20PM (#23784991)
    How about we call this an 'FPGA'? Now all we need is a backronym....
    • An 'FPGA'? Now all we need is a backronym....
      - Finally Protecting Groovy Audio?
      - For Profit - Genuine Advantage (r) - Fucking Punk Gangster Attorneys? - Forced to Purchase Google Adware? - Financial Ploy to Generate Assets? - Federal Policy Gets Absurd? - Funding Prohibited Government Appropriations? - For Playing God Again? Freedom, Privacy Getting Ambushed?
    • by Alsee ( 515537 )
      Fucking Peice of Gargbage Architecture

      -
  • Liar (Score:4, Informative)

    by Woundweavr ( 37873 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:20PM (#23784993)

    it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique,'

    This is obviously untrue. If it can be manufactured once, it can be again and it can almost certainly be emulated.
  • by beavis88 ( 25983 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:20PM (#23785003)
    FFS, would it be possible to invent some new technology for the purpose of letting us do NEW things, rather than keeping us from doing the things we used to be able to do (and for free, at that)?
  • The article seems to be written in Buzzwordian, and while I've got a passing acquaintance with it I'm not at all familiar with the Academentian dialect.

    Seriously, what the hell do they mean?
    • Seriously, what the hell do they mean?
      "We want more funding! We'll do anything for more funding!"
  • Vista on schizophrenic hardware...
    I think global warming is the small problem here
  • This sounds stupid.
  • by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:35PM (#23785215) Homepage Journal
    we DONT want any kind of "Digital rights RESTRICTION"
  • For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another

    Sort of like how I can't play Video Tape's on my BetaMax player.

    This analogy works even better due to the instant fail of any device that attempts to implement it.

    Any machine that "Can't play" will get returned as "broken" by the average joe, just like those who returned HD-DVD's cause they wouldn't play in the DVD player.
  • ... on their new Sybil line of computers.
  • Why always media? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bitflip ( 49188 ) on Friday June 13, 2008 @04:54PM (#23785535)
    With the way identity theft and misplaced data is being trumpeted in the media, I feel influenced to ask for something that will protect my data from them.

    Can this chip do that?
  • I could see this being used for nastier things than DRM...how about an iPhone that turns into a crippled iPod Touch when not activated by an approved carrier (and can't be simply unlocked, due to its sudden lack of phone hardware after being remotely told to turn the 3G chip into Mr. Hyde)?
  • which could be used in new types of hardware-based DRM

    (cough) It STILL WON'T WORK if I have physical access to the machine... DRM is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed until the day computers start zapping people with laser beams the moment they are "tampered" with.

    WHEN will these people understand that you cannot give both the lock AND the key to the "thief" and expect your "method" to be secure. The only thing this does is add yet another layer of smoke, bill corporations for even m
  • This is software. Reconfigurable hardware is software. A program is an n-variant component of a CPU: it's a set of on/off gates attached to a memory bus. The electronic impulses the CPU follows can be dictated by ROM; one step further, you can construct a semiconductor network specifically to act like ROM burned with a specific contents. RAM works in the opposite direction but does the same.

    This chip is what, an FPGA? A chip with a built-in serial number? It's software. You can make it alter itself,
  • but can't we use it for something benifical to somebody or something other than a failing business model?

    Encryption?
    Authentication (banks, etc)?

    If you can't fake one of these, there's much better and more beneficial ways to use this... rather than making sure Joe doesn't copy your shitty song.

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