Editor’s note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing. The content creation class shall inherit the Internet. Richard Florida coined the expression the “Creative Class”, his belief being that these some 30 to 40 million would be the driving force for economic development in a postindustrial world. Instead of driving the macro economy the Content Creation Class refers to the group of people who drive content on the internet those that write blogs, those that upload video to YouTube, and those that upload pictures to share with the world. The Internet is a key segment within this postindustrial world identified by Florida. Since the emergence of Webernets, two distinct classes that have emerged — those that create content and those who consume it. For every content creator there are far more individuals that consume content. Like other class systems, there are inherent advantages or disadvantages with each class. While content creators have had their share of benefits, the concept of mass content creation also comes with its own risks. The rise of the content creation class Content creators have enjoyed advantages over content consumers since the dawn of the internet. They enjoy higher amounts of influence; they have the potential to earn more money and fame. The only prerequisite to be part of this class is to create content; you do not need to be creative, correct or even factual. Bloggers are a great example of this — some blog just for blogging’s sake, while others have made it into a career or in some cases a successful business. Whether it is through paid promotion, advertisement or Google Adwords, people make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars monthly creating content on their blog. This system is has been used and abused by paid bloggers and those looking to bend the Google algorithm to their will to bend a torrent of traffic to their respective site. Thin content is a common problem, and parasitic to the Internet as a whole. It is still however, a part of content on the web, good or bad. Filling the content vacuum The content vacuum requires new content and it doesn’t seem to matter what it is. People will consume it. This isn’t to say that the better content won’t command more eyes, but even bad content will find viewers. This is another key differentiation between the creative class, you don’t need to necessarily be creative or factually correct to create information on the Internet. The reality is those that create either good or bad content will still see a benefit from it. A prime example is YouTube, there is tons of questionable videos that garner hundreds of thousands of views. As eyes continue to shift from traditional channels and to the Internet, there is tons of potential to fill the web with content good and bad, which in reality mirrors society on the whole. Social media has changed the content creation paradigm Social media has added a new dimension to content creation and changed the paradigm. While it has allowed many more people to become creators, it has also magnified existing content creators to previously unheard of levels. Whenever a key creator puts out a new piece of content, hoards of followers are ready and waiting to magnify that content even further. There is also a question of equivalency, what is more important or relevant, 10,000 microblogs (140 character tweets) or 10 to 20 2,000 word blogs? While the barrier to become a content creator is now lowered, it also increased the ability to adept content creators to be even more effective using new tools. These tools have been used to push people from the background to center stage. From obscurity to fame or infamy People can literally create their own 15 minutes of fame (or infamy) through content creation on the Internet. There have been countless pieces of content that have come from obscure blogs to become national news. Bloggers without an established network to distribute their content have had various distribution mechanisms tip influence to their favor. Teens have been able to distinguish themselves from the crowd and gain further notoriety by building a blog presence — heck, Justin Bieber was discovered via his videos on YouTube. Internet content creation has almost become a feeder system to more traditional media outlets. The content creation class is driven by a sense of meritocracy and the thrill of letting the mob decide whether you get a thumbs up or down. While cute kittens are driving eyes, it isn’t just the cute and cuddly that is catching attention on the web. A content creator has emerged to serve each niche and some are finding big business around it, especially mom bloggers. As new trends emerge, new laws follow This rise of the content creator class has led to the rise of some new issues, though. For example, those who record videos have been opened up to prosecution. In the last two years there have been incidences of people being arrested for filming activities of policemen on duty . The reality is, in today’s world you have to assume if there is something going on, there is likely a person with a camera or a video camera in their phone to capture it. Courts have now become involved in determining what content is legal. Recently, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a ruling that would make it illegal to film on-duty cops. Content creation has become an important check and balance for democracy or internationally, those trying to achieve democracy. Content creators internationally Internationally, content creators were simultaneously exalted and persecuted this year in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. One could make the argument that without social media and content created by individuals, people vying for freedom would not have been able to maintain momentum in their cause. Yet at the same time, anyone posting content in these situations has cause to fear for their lives. This article speaks to that some of the issues surrounding this. When journalists are not able to expose what is going on during uprisings, citizen journalists take on a lot of risks to ensure the world knows about their plight. They have adeptly help cut through the fog of war. That ability to shed light on dire circumstance provides those individuals with power and influence over many both locally and internationally. This is especially true when this information becomes the fuel for governmental policy or even military action. In Summary While handheld devices has made it easier for all to become content creators there will continue to be an inherent divide in who chooses to participate in content creation shared to the masses. A new class system has quietly emerged. The content creation class will continue to enjoy greater advantages, but like anyone sticking out their neck they will also face challenges. Anyone who creates content has the potential of being judged, either by a snarky comment or a legal court and that fear is what segments the Internet into two groups, the content creators and the content consumers. Excerpt image from WinsonYeung.com
Archive for the ‘Software Tools’ Category
The Emergence Of The Content Creation Class
Twitter, Democracy, and Internet Freedom
Editor’s Note: Richard Fontaine , a Senior Advisor at the Center for a New American Security, is the co-author of Internet Freedom: A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age . Follow him @rhfontaine . Twitter has taken fire in recent days from activists and bloggers who fear that the company’s new censorship policies will muffle online freedom. News reports recall the ways in which protestors have had made use of Twitter to oppose dictatorships, and dissidents express concern that their ability to communicate will be harmed. The more immediate issue, however, may lie elsewhere. Twitter’s new policies demonstrate vividly the complicated relationship between Internet freedom and democratic government. The complications take on greater importance in light of America’s global Internet freedom strategy. The U.S. government began an active policy of promoting Internet freedom in the second George W. Bush term, and its efforts have accelerated in the Obama administration. The State Department devotes tens of millions of dollars to support technology and training for online dissidents, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given a series of major speeches highlighting the issue. In one , she invoked Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous four freedoms, added a fifth — the “freedom to connect” — and observed that “the spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet.” It is easy to imagine two sides locked in pitched battle over Internet freedom: The democracies, embracing the freedom to connect for all, and the dictatorships, who censor, monitor, and disrupt. Indeed, pressing the cause of Internet freedom has thus far generally meant taking on autocracies, like Beijing and its Great Firewall, the Mubarak regime when it shuttered Egypt’s Internet during the 2011 protests, or Iran as it systematically monitors domestic dissidents. But it has become increasingly clear that autocracies alone do not challenge Internet freedom; democracies do as well. In the blog post explaining its new policy, Twitter hit on this truth, noting that the company will be active in “countries that have different ideas” than the United States “about the contours of freedom of expression.” All democracies restrict speech to some degree, and the forms of banned expression vary, ranging from child pornography (which is illegal virtually everywhere) to hate speech (banned in Europe and other places but not the United States) to country-specific expression (such as criticism of national heroes or monarchs). America, however, is an outlier. The United States recognizes some limits on free expression – slander, perjury, “fighting words” and certain other forms of expression are illegal online or off – but its commitment to free speech is nevertheless the most absolute of any major country. This puts it in potential conflict with fellow democracies about what constitute legitimate restrictions on online expression. Given Washington’s role as the world’s most active proponent of Internet freedom, it also complicates its efforts to rally fellow democracies behind the cause. The examples of differing democratic practice abound. Witness, for example, the recent request by Indian telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal to Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others that they remove content deemed insulting to leaders of the Indian Congress party. Mr. Sibal pledged that his government would take unspecified steps to act if the private sector would not. This month, during a hearing on a related case , an Indian high court justice said that, “like China,” the government could block websites entirely if their hosts do not remove offensive content. Turkey banned YouTube for two years because it refused to remove videos that Turkish courts deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Germany and other countries prohibit Holocaust denial online, and France bans the sale of Nazi paraphernalia over the Internet. Governments in Britain, Italy and Germany have established lists of blocked websites – generally those containing child pornography, hate speech, or online gambling platforms – even though those lists are not always transparent. The differences arise not only in national policy, but in international law as well. A number of European democracies, including Denmark, France, Slovenia and Switzerland, have signed an additional protocol to the European Convention on Cybercrime , which requires them criminalize such acts as using computers to distribute xenophobic material or insult people because of their race, religion, or ethnic origin. The United States faces its own potential contradictions. Secretary Clinton used one of her major addresses on Internet freedom to explain why the notion did not apply when Wikileaks published thousands of classified cables online. A district court recently ruled that, as part of its lawful intercept authorities, the Justice Department can seize Twitter feeds. And then there is the tremendous debate that has emerged over the Stop Online Privacy Act. The truth is that the U.S. government will always enforce some limits on free expression, and our political system will continually wrestle with where the limits should be drawn. But we should not allow this to undermine the important cause of promoting global Internet freedom. Authoritarian governments will inevitably attempt to shield themselves from criticism and pressure by pointing to democracies that ban online expression. Denying them the opportunity to do so successfully will require the United States and other to articulate, publicly and consistently, the critical distinction between the restrictions placed on online speech by democracies and the repression favored by many autocracies. The distinction rests not only in the kind of banned speech, but also in the process by which the decision to restrict it is made. True democracies bar forms of expression based on law and regulation, and they make decisions to do so in accordance with due process. Their pronouncements are generally transparent, with decision makers accountable to the law, to legislatures, and ultimately to the people, who can turn them out of office in periodic elections. There is a world of difference between a democracy banning speech on “security” grounds when the citizens know what the decision is, who made it, and how to change it, and a dictatorship banning its own “security”-infringing speech by autocratic fiat. It is crucial to make that distinction clear. Doing so can benefit America’s diplomatic effort to promote Internet freedom, and it may also help guide policymakers at home. Resolving tough new issues often involves complex considerations of technology, law, and fundamental principle. In remembering what makes a democratic approach to the Internet distinctive, we might avoid falling prey to measures that would suggest we are otherwise.
Posted in Software Tools 
Tags: clinton, democracy, digital, france, free-speech, freedom, secretary, slovenia, twitter 
Comments OffSony Rolls Out A Trio Of New Cyber-Shot Point And Shoots
In the market for a new point and shoot? Didn’t think so. Why don’t you take a gander at the new Sony shooters anyway? You’ve basically got two models worth looking at. First is the rather expensive TX200V: It’s expensive for a reason, though. They’ve made it look as much like an iPhone as possible, flat glass on both sides. Unlike the iPhone, however, this thing is waterproof down to 5m. It’s got a 5x non-protruding zoom, for which they provide no F numbers, so it can’t be very fast — though the camera’s back-illuminated 18-megapixel sensor makes up for that a bit. It’ll shoot 1080/60p of a sort. On the back is a 3.3″ OLED touchscreen of the “Xtra Fine™” variety, which I presume is a higher resolution than the previous 3.3″ OLED they put on a camera. Should be nice, high contrast, and decent resolution. There are no buttons on the thing except power, shutter, and a zoom rocker. Looks like a fun little camera, though for my money I’d want something with a brighter, bigger lens. This thing will set you back Next you have the WX70 and the WX50: They share the same internals, but are different on the outside. The WX50 has normal controls: switches and dials and all that, and a 2.7″ normal LCD. The WX70 is like the TX200V, all touchscreen on the back, and with just power, zoom, and shutter controls on the top. The screen is 640
Posted in Software Tools Tags: bumping-the-iso, camera, gadgets, iphone, like-the-tx200v, Money, photography, press, resolution, sony, the-touchscreen, Thing, Touchscreen, wx70 Comments OffDreamHost’s Unhappy January Continues: First, A Database Breach, Now An Outage
DreamHost has been having a rough couple weeks. The low-cost hosting provider and domain name registrar found some unauthorized activity in its databases back on January 20th, which they later admitted were a series of attacks that may have led to the theft of some of their customers’ FTP passwords. The company required mandatory password resets for all their Shell/FTP accounts — you can read our coverage here . DreamHost’s bad dream continued today, as they’ve been reporting outage problems, as Web, SSH, and FTP services were down for many of the company’s virtual private servers, shared, and dedicated machines. The outage was first reported at 4am PST on Sunday, and has continued throughout the course of the day, with the company offering updates on its blog . In the company’s initial blog post, the team said that “the apache (web), SSH, and FTP services on a subset of our VPS and dedicated servers are currently down. FTP services on some shared servers are also experiencing downtime. Our system administration and data center operation teams are currently on the case and we are attempting to restore services as soon as possible.” Furthermore, the post said that the outage only affected web VPS/dedicated and shared web server FTP services, while other services or servers, i.e. mail were unaffected. They also, unfortunately, did not specify which “subset” was affected in particular. Yeesh. And, judging from the parade of comments and subsequent updates, users were apparently experiencing problems with MySQL and webmail services as well. The majority of the large problems seem to have been addressed as of DreamHost’s last posting at 6:30 pm on Sunday, although there’s been no final word. DreamHost plays host to thousands of small websites and personal blogs across the Web, and for many of them, it was a surprise to find their sites offline for most of the day. By now, most of the sites are back up, but from what these site owners have learned from DreamHost, the VPS server was damaged by new software they were installing this morning, leading to a sizable outage with ripple effects across their services. Even though the outage lasted nearly 24 hours for some, many could not even access files to move to another host. Unsurprisingly, the outage caused a flurry of DreamHost users to flock to Twitter to express their chagrin, with some saying that it might cause others to consider moving to other services. Veteran tech journalist Dan Frommer and his SplatF were among them: Props to @swein for his reaction. Clearly, other hosting providers may be seeing some new clients in the near future. Though as of now, it remains unclear whether the software installation this morning had anything to do with the database breach on January 20th. As far as I can tell, they were unrelated. More here from DreamHost . Will update should we hear any updates.
Posted in Software Tools Tags: Apache, back-on-january, database, domain-name, Dream, dreamhost, from-the-parade, Hosting, morning, outage, parade, Services, startups, updates-on-its Comments OffFor Those Who Can’t Let Go Of The Past: The Techmeme Re-Underliner
Remember the old Techmeme of a week ago, before the new design took effect? Sure, the new design is easy on the eyes. But is it better ? Personally, I’m already used to the new look, other than the sponsored posts stuck in your face in the new middle column (push those to the right, please, where ads belong). But some people just can’t let go of the past—people like Eric Marcoullier (founder of OneTrueFan, Gnip, and MyBlogLog). Marcoullier hates the new design so much that he created a Chrome extension to revert it back to its old look. The main feature he cannot live without is the underlined links. In the new design, the underlines are gone, making the site much cleaner with more room to breathe. But it also removes a key part of the information density which makes the site so useful, argues Marcoullier. Techmeme’s headlines and excerpts now makes it look more like a blog or other primary news source than a link aggregator. Partly that is because the links have been de-emphasized. Marcoullier thinks it is easier to parse the different sources when they are underlined than when they are separated only by a comma and spaces that make them look too similar to the excerpted text below the main headline. You can see a before and after below. Which one do you think is more scannable? I always found the underlines too cluttered. But seeing them here next to the new look, Marcoullier does have a point that the source names in the “More” section now tend to bleed into each other when the conversation gets too dense.
Posted in Software Tools Tags: below-the-main, conversation, hates-the-new, makes-the-site, making-the-site, Source, underlined, underlines Comments OffParallel Programming is easier than separating 2 corks
I’ve known Prof. Tom Murphy for a few years now. Whenever we were at a conference or other event together and had dinner, he invariably would ask the wait staff if they had two corks he could have. If the place served wine, it wasn’t too difficult to find two corks that were the same size or close. Upon receiving the corks, Tom would demonstrate his “cork trick” and mystify everyone that had not seen it before. After going through it three or four times he would hand the corks back to our server and have them try to do it. They would go away, sometimes showing others, as they struggled to figure out the trick. If they actually tried to recreate the solution as Tom had been able to do, they always came back before we had paid the check and triumphantly demonstrated their dexterity. At SC11, the Educational Alliance for a Parallel Future ( EAPF ) commissioned some corks with the organization’s logo. Tom wandered around part of the conference urging attendees to try his cork trick. The tagline he used was that “Parallel Programming is easier than the cork trick.” You can see a short video of his efforts to bring a little magic to the SC11 proceedings here . If you meet Tom with some corks in his pocket and he brings them out to show you the cork trick, be aware that he will never show you the solution. (He says he really likes me, but I had to figure it out for myself.) Like most problems you encounter in life, very few are impossible to solve; it is just that you don’t have a solution, yet. Parallel programming is the same. It may seem difficult and impossible to figure out, but that only means you haven’t discovered the key that will allow you to wrap your brain around the concepts.
Posted in Software Tools Tags: academic, corks, Dexterity, hand-the-corks, Organization, parallel programming, programming, sc11, seen-it-before, size-or-close, tom murphy Comments OffMeshcentral.com – Waking up computers
With this post, I want to cover how Meshcentral.com powers up sleeping computers. As many of you know, you can go on the web site, see all your computers and select one or many and remotely powered them off, reset them, etc. These operations are fairly simple, just tell the mesh agent to instruct the operating system to do the operation. The real magic comes when you want to wake a system back up. I use this operation myself to wake up my Microsoft Home Server which is set to go to sleep after an hour. To remotely wake a computer, the web site can’t just hop in a cab, go to the computer’s location and press the power button… but almost all desktop computers sold in the last 10 years support “wake-on-lan”, also know as the “magic packet”. Your are very likely to have this on your computer if, when you power your computer down, your Ethernet port is still blinking. Meshcentral has two requirements to get wake working. You need another mesh computer on the same network powered on, and you need your computer to have wake-on-lan enabled. The first requirement is required since, in order to get passed the home router, there needs to be a mesh agent acting as the relay. The relay node can be a full computer, a laptop, a plugpc, router or android device. As long as it runs the mesh agent and belong to your account, you are set. If you have more than one, even better. The second requirement is also important since, by default Wake-on-LAN is often disabled. You may need to go into the BIOS and enable it, also in Microsoft Windows, go in the device manager, go in the properties of your network card, power management tab and enable it. I suggest also selecting “Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer” because if you don’t any packet that hits a listening port with wake the computer (it’s called wake on pattern) and it causes the computer of wake up too often. Well, that is it. If you meet these two requirements, your computer will wake up, even from a full S5 power off using Meshcentral.com or the Meshcentral mobile application. Have fun! Ylian meshcentral.com
Posted in Software Tools Tags: meshcentral, meshcentral.com, mobility, network, power management, wake, wake-on-lan, wake-on-pattern, wol Comments OffIntel Aids Search for Lost DaVinci Masterpiece
In the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, a feverish search occurs seemingly in slow motion. In order to make progress in the search, a team of researchers from the University of California/San Diego has been inventing a brand new field of work called art forensics. Armed with innovative new portable sensing devices and Intel technology, they are searching for a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci called The Battle of Anghiari . This impressive painting, considered by some to be da Vinci’s greatest artistic accomplishment, was lost more than 450 years ago. Lost: The Masterpiece of the Renaissance The great mural was painted by da Vinci in 1505 to commemorate a battle in 1440. His artistic rival, Michaelangelo, was commissioned to paint a mural on the opposite side of the hall. (Imagine these two artists in the same room, not just two of their masterpieces in the same room!). Michaelangelo did not finish his project. He had sketched his painting out, but had just begun the painting when he was invited back to Rome to build the tomb of Pope Julius II. A rival artist, Bartolommeo Bandinelli, destroyed Michaelangelo’s sketch in a fit of jealousy in 1512. Peter Paul Rubens's copy of The Battle of Anghiari (from Wikipedia). Da Vinci did not finish his painting either, but he got much further than Michaelangelo. His painting depicted the power, fury, and intense emotions of four horsemen engaged in battle. Always experimenting with new techniques, da Vinci tried to apply oil colors to the wall. The result was less than satisfactory. The paint dripped and only the lower part of the painting could be dried quickly enough to achieve the desired result. Da Vinci subsequently abandoned the project. Nevertheless, da Vinci’s painting was considered the masterpiece of the Renaissance. Numerous copies of The Battle of Anghiari were made over the course of the next 50 years and others praised the work in commentaries and diaries. Many sketches by da Vinci (“cartoons”) that served as studies for the mural still exist. An engraving made in 1553 by Lorenzo Zacchia was used in 1603 by Peter Paul Rubens as the basis for a copy of the central section of the mural. Rubens’ second-hand copy of da Vinci’s painting is in the Louvre. Eventually, the hall was enlarged and remodeled by Giorgio Vasari and Vasari painted six new murals over the east and west walls of the hall. It is assumed that the famous, unfinished works of da Vinci and Michaelangelo were lost during this process, as they were not seen again. Seek and Ye Shall Find Scaffolding covers a wall in the Hall of Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio where a team of researchers are searching for a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci Some people, included UCSD’s Maurizio Seracini, believe that the da Vinci masterpiece might still exist. Vasari, who painted the murals that now adorn the hall, had high praise for the da Vinci fresco, so Seracini thinks it is unlikely that Vasari destroyed the mural during the hall’s renovation. A clue to this effect is in the Vasari mural, 12 meters above the ground. The only text on the entire painting is on a green flag held by a Florentine soldier. The text says “Cerca trova”—”He who seeks, finds.” Seracini has taken this advice to heart. An initial non-destructive 3D survey of the hall used surface penetrating radar and thermographic cameras to create a three-dimensional model of the space. This process led to the discovery of a wall built by Vasari in front of the east wall where The Battle of Anghiari was located. A gap of a couple of centimeters was discovered between the two walls, supporting the theory that the lost masterpiece is still intact and located behind Vasari’s mural. Of course, Vasari’s mural is a more-than-400 year-old masterpiece too, so there is understandable reticence by the involved government and cultural agencies to do anything that would cause irreversible damage. This is where the UCSD researchers and Intel technology come into play. 21st Century Technology Aids Search As part of its Visual Computing Academic Program, Intel’s University Program Office supplied 50 quad-core Intel Core i7 Extreme 3.33 GHz processors to Falko Kuester of UCSD. The parallel processing performance of these powerful processors has allowed UCSD to tackle a series of unique and transformative visual computing projects. Kuester’s team is currently using these CPUs to “Create (Compute) a Future for the Past” as part of its cultural heritage diagnostics research and its field sites in Italy and Jordan. Multiple nodes loaded with Intel CPUs are on-site in Palazzo Vecchio driving UCSD’s visual analytics/visual computing environment. Small holes drilled through the Vasari mural to the back wall have revealed fragments of pigment on the far wall that might be part of the da Vinci mural. The UCSD team is therefore developing new non-invasive sensing and analysis techniques to try to “peer through” the front wall and visualize the surface of the back wall. Maurizio Seracini, Falko Kuester, and the other members of the UCSD cultural heritage diagnostics research team on site in Florence, Italy The National Geographic Society is also sponsoring the search and is documenting the entire process. Our UCSD colleagues indicate that National Geographic will air a documentary on the project on January 15 (but I don’t yet see this program on the guide for the National Geographic channel). The search for a lost da Vinci masterpiece…it is a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery. Intel technology is at the heart of the search. And the results will of the search will soon be revealed in a National Geographic TV special. Further information Home page for UCSD’s cultural heritage diagnostics effort National Geographic’s blog for The Battle of Anghiari Project CBS 60 Minutes 2008 story on Maurizio Seracini’s search Wired magazine’s 2007 interview with Seracini
Posted in Software Tools Tags: anghiari, art, california, Graphics, Guide, intel, italy, Office, parallel programming, project, research, space, Theory, ucsd Comments Off01.2012: Intel(r) AMT Developer’s Most Wanted
What is the Heci and LMS – this is the rolling question week after week. Reseting the ME password. Intel VT-d and how is Intel AMT enabled? Here are the most popular Forum threads and blogs during the last few weeks. Top 15 Forum Threads HP DC7700 (2007) Intel Management Engine Password Reset (2007) AMT Error Message “[UNS] Failed to subscribe to local Intel(R) AMT” (2008) how to install AMT SOL/LMS and HECI drivers silently (2008) lms service cannot connect to heci driver (2009) “Me is in recovery state” (2008) Intel AMT status is disabled (2007) Need to Enable or Disable AMT on your system? (2008) problem with HECI and network connection? (2008) intel management engine interface device cannot start code 10 on HP 8200 elite (2011) Intel Active Management Technology Status: Disable (2008) AMT is disabled (2009) Enabling AMT on system (2008) AMT status error message (2007) Intel motherboard monitoring (voltage/fan/temperature/CI status) programming documentation (2009) Forum posts can be great for finding answers to your questions, but it is even better if the question has been blogged. Here are Top Blogs that our developers have been reading: Top 20 Blogs (pretty much the same list as from last month with a couple of exceptions.) Let us talk about HECI and LMS (2007) Understanding VT-d: Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (2009) Intel AMT software: LMS, HECI, MEI… why do I need those? Part 10 in the series (2009) I forgot my “ME” Password! (2008) All about System Power States (S0-S5) (2007) Tips & Tricks for Setting up & Accessing an Intel AMT Client (2008) Step by Step Guide on How to Enable VT-d and Perform Direct Device Assignment (2009) Intel Management and Security Status (IMSS), advanced configurations. Part 9 (2009) To VT-d or Not to VT-d? A guide on whether to Utilize Direct Device Attach in your Virtualized System? (2010) UNS “Failed to subscribe to local Intel AMT” Error Messages and how to fix them (Intel AMT SW, 7th part) (2009) Instructions to disable the Intel AMT privacy notification popup (2007) Meshcentral.com – New Mobile Application (New in Jan 2012!) How about a Security Layer? (2011) Dual Boot Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (2008) More configurations (disabling) of the Intel AMT icon. Part 4 in the Intel AMT software series (2008) And the Lenovo T400 said: “Beep.Beep-Beep-Beep.Beep-Beep-Beep.Beep! (2009) Wake On LAN and the Magic Packet (2007) Sharing Virtual Disks Among VMs using VMware* ESX Server (2009) The Keys to Intel vPro Technology: HECI-MEI-LMS-SOL-UNS (2011) Intel® AMT User Notification Service (2009)
Posted in Software Tools Tags: amt, amt disable, Guide, heci driver, intel management engine, lenovo beep, Management, open source, Security, security-status, Sharing, technology, utilize-direct, virtual, Windows Comments OffAES-NI in Laymen’s Terms
What is AES-NI – first answer AES-NI are a set of six new instructions introduced by Intel when we introduced the new 2010 Intel® Core™ processor family code named Westmere. AES-NI stands for Advanced Encryption Standard – New Instructions. These instructions implement hardware accelerated versions of certain compute intensive steps used in the AES (RijnDael) algorithm. Okay – so what is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)? AES is a standard that defines how to encrypt plain text using an encryption key. It is implemented with the RijnDael (pronounced Rhine Dahl) algorithm. One cool thing about AES is that even though this algorithm is completely open for examination, it is possible to encrypt a plain text message with it that is very, very difficult to break. This is possible because the algorithm takes the plain text message you want to encyrpt, and merges it in a certain way with a secret key. As long as the key is kept private, the encrypted message has proven to be safe from being broken, at least to this point in time. So the algorithm is completley known, but as long as the key is protected, messages encoded with it are virtually safe from eves dropping. So who cares? So what kind of software developers might use AES? and who might benefit from the new AES-NI? There may be more than you think at first: developers who write code that that use secure socket layer (SSL), database engines, whole disk encryption applications, files compression applications, VoIP, instant messaging, email, virtualization software, electronic payment systems, virtual private networks, and list goes on. To learn more about who might use AES see this wiki article on AES instruction set or this article on AES-NI analysis on Tom’s Hardware . So how does AES (Rijndael) work? To understand how the AES (Rijndael) algorithm works I highly recommend that you look at Jeff Moser’s “A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) – A play in 4 acts” . This creative, stick figure, cartoon approach is the best method I have seen for communicating how AES works – five stars Mr. Moser! My stick figure image below is an icon tribute to the excellent efforts of Mr. Moser in laying bare the essense of AES. Thanks Mr. Moser! What is AES-NI – second answer Now consider that the six AES-NI from Intel provide two instructions to accelerate encrypting a round, two instructions for decryping a round, and two more instructions to accelerate the generation of round keys. In summary, the six new instructions provide a faster way to crunch through the Rijndael algorithm (AES). Curious to know more? Read more about it in my friend, Jeff Rott’s, blog. Jeff wrote an excellent blog on Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard Instructions (AES-NI) , in which he introduces the six instructions, describes the benefits, and introduces ways to actually implement these in your code (plus references). So how can you implement AES-NI in your code? As long as you are using one of the following compilers (or later) you can get direct access to the instructions: AES-NI are supported by version 11 of the Intel C/C++ compiler, and also by Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2008 Service Pack 1 and by gcc version 4.4. You can implement it the hard way using MASM or inline assembly. Or you can make it easier on yourself and use compiler intrinsics (just be sure to include wmmintrin.h or intrin.h). See Martyn Corden’s Post here on Compiling with AES-NI . Another approach is to use a library such as OpenSSL or Intel’s IPP to implement AES-NI – Jeff has references 
If you really want to dig in and see the reference and code snippets read Intel’s Shay Gueron’s in-depth whitepaper called “Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Instructions Set”. See Shay’s abstract and whitepaper link here . Finally – if you want a complete understanding of AES, much more than you will find in a Wiki article or blog, then check out the following book. ” The Design of Rijndae l” is the definitive book on the subject, written by the Rijndael creators.
Posted in Software Tools Tags: aes, cryptography, intel, Microsoft, reference, rijndael, Security, standard Comments Off