The state of the art content management system AACS, used in the Blu-ray is many times more powerful than the system used in the DVDs. Additionally, AACS enables new consumer usage models around network functionality and internet connectivity including managing copies, in an authorized and secure manner.

Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted the most comprehensive Digital Rights Management (DRM) ever employed on an optical disc format in a move to protect the original buyers against unauthorized copying and large scale duplication.

In addition to AACS, the BDA took one another bold step in choosing for the battle against mass pirated production by adopting the ROM Mark. This mass piracy is something that analyst estimated to have cost around a souring 3 billion USD in revenue loss to the movie industry. This ROM mark, a unique feature in the Blu Ray disc was specially designed to combat this and prevent this huge loss. The ROM Mark technology embeds a unique and undetectable identifier in pre-recorded BD-ROM media such as movies, music and games. While invisible to consumers, this ROM Mark can only be mastered with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers, essentially preventing unauthorized copies of a disc.

The new Blu-ray content management system also has another primary component “BD+”, a Blu-ray-specific enhancement for content protection renewability. This BD+ gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD+ affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven’t been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.

Obviously the Blu Ray Disc Association (BDA) has used a lot of new unique technology and also a many lot of money to combat and prevent the threat that is plaguing the movie industry and original copyrights – Piracy.

But the question automatically arises. Have they succeeded?

The same exploit used to crack part of the anti-piracy technology on the next-generation HD DVD format has been successfully used on the rival Blu-ray format, a report on Wired News stated.

A hacker calling himself Muslix64, who also claims credit for the HD DVD crack that resulted in HD copies of films including “Serenity” appearing on the BitTorrent file-sharing network, takes partial credit for the Blu-ray crack, along with another programmer called Janvitos.

There are a lot of claims and counter claims about this. A lot have argued that the new disc is indeed not that easily hack able.

Neither of the exploits completely removes the fundamental security technology on the advanced DVD formats, but can work around the AACS encryption — a digital rights management security — when coupled with a particular movie’s unique “key.”

One technique about using this key by the use of a simple flash drive has come up in a lot of websites. Initially a lot of people have expressed their doubts and failures about using this method. But not any more. Those who are already familiar with movie sites and peer to peer sites would have already come across a horde of Blu ray DVD movies even in their original 1080p resolution. Not some HDTV prints but newly released movies as well.

In countries like India where the Blu Ray is yet to make a popular entry and where people are hooking up to faster Internet connections widely, This is definitely not good news for the BDA or the movie industry.

Written by Nathesh

Even before its release, Oliver Stone’s film “Alexander” sparked controversy. While a group of Greek lawyers wanted to take legal action against the movie because they were upset about suggestions in the film that Alexander was bisexual, campaigners for homosexual rights criticized Stone for not making Alexander openly gay.

Zoroastrian communities in the United States and Parsis in India got upset for different reasons. They noticed that in promos for the movie, the winged Zoroastrian symbol of Farohar or Fravahar was used in the background.

Kaveh Farrokh is an expert on the history and linguistics of Persia, particularly in the pre-Islamic era. “One of the reasons we don’t know many aspects of Zoroastrian teachings is that people wrongly blamed it on the Arab invasion of the 7th century. In reality, we have to go back and look at Alexander’s invasion, which was extremely destructive, and many of the ‘magis,’ the Zoroastrians priests, were killed,” Farrokh says.

Since the release of the movie, some historians have expressed surprise and regret that some key events of the time, such as Alexander’s burning of the city of Persepolis, are overlooked. There are different historical accounts about the arson. Some say Alexander instigated it in revenge for the destruction caused by Persians in Greece in the 5th century before Christ. Other say Alexander did it while he was drunk, on the encouragement of a woman.

Some people, some media, wrote letters, e-mails and decided to show their protests but their actions were not correlated, it didn’t draw any attention. Some boycotted the movie, but many went to see the movie out of curiosity.

But viewers in India were surprised about the important factor they all have read in their eighth standard history books was simply left out or ignored. The one about how Alexander was very much moved by Porus alias Purushothaman’ courage, and Alex out of a new leaf of friendship gave back the kingdom to him and went back to Greece. The entire part was left out. A lot of people in India too felt that the movie was heavily inaccurate according to the sources from their history books.

A lot of that same application of mind should have created this string of protests against the new movie, “Jodhaa Akbar”. They did not read anything in their history books about the facts that were shown about Akbar in the movie. The protestors argued that Akbar was not as innocent as depicted in the movie Jodha Akbar. He was barbaric, greedy, and imperialist and maintained a big harem of women. He did convert who so ever (Jodha or was some one else) was married to him to Islam and she was buried too by Islamic tradition and not Hindu tradition. Akbar shed lot of blood and only at fag end of his life of lust for territory he realized the futility of all. The movie also showed fancy conclusion that Akbar had played a vital role of uniting the entire territory into Hindustan. They have read only under British rule the whole country was brought together but not under Akbar.

The question is why people care about these things. One lived some two thousand years ago and the other five hundred years ago. Is it really necessary to know how kings with devastating expansionist ambitions lived or loved? Or is there anything a movie that was actually produced entirely for entertainment purpose going to change anything that actually happened some centuries or many centuries ago? Why this hullabaloo?

Written by Nathesh

Forecasting the Threat. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) scientists have designed two models that can forecast the impact of this threat. Both the models have predicted about the possible increase in hotter climate but differed about the monsoonal changes. If the concentration of green house gases increase by 1 percent each year than the temperature will rise at 2 to 3 degree Celsius by the end of this century. This increase would cause serious consequences for crop growth and weather patterns.

Global warming’s effect on the Indian monsoon. The models indicate a weakening of the link between El Nino, the warming of eastern pacific waters and the monsoon. This weak link is already been evident in India over the past two decades. This is now being considered as an early signal of possible global warming effect on monsoon variability. Global warming, however, is not expected to affect the link between La Niña, or the cold sea surface temperatures in tropical Pacific waters, and the Indian monsoon. This may the reason both the models differ each other out on the Global warming’s effect on the Indian monsoon.

Green house gases. The green house gases are on the rise each year and large cities in India and China are recording a worrying increase in aerosol because of human activities that in turn would create more hotspots for climate change.

Shrinking Glaciers. It has already been proven that the Himalayan glaciers are actually shrinking and within 50 to 60 years they will virtually run out of the water supply they are giving out now. This will cut down drastically the water available downstream, and in agricultural economies like the plains of UP (Uttar Pradesh) and Bihar, which are poor places to begin with. This is probably going to, over a short period of time, cause tremendous social upheaval.

But not everyone agrees upon this point. Some scientists say the glaciers have been shrinking for decades and other factors are to be blamed. Certainly India has a long history of extreme weather patterns. Floods and draughts have followed one after another. They argue that it will be too simplistic to blame global warming just because for these few years floods and draught have been acute.

Not Accurate Models. Dr RR Kelkar, the director general of the Indian meteorological department, says it is too early for accurate data to be available yet. He also adds that even some scientists have simulated models of this phenomenon there is no clear statistically significant trend that things are going to change drastically. He reminds that India is a tropical country and we are also used to heavy rains and severe draughts. Dr. Kelkar also added that the models these scientists have modeled just have one big problem since they are sometimes blown out into scary stories and we should not fall for that.

Some believe even if the stories are fact or scary the knowledge on the impact about global warming is entirely controlled by the west.

Professor SK Sinha, a specialist at the water technology centre at the Pusa Institute accuses the West, and in particular the United States, of manipulating the debate. He says that they (Western powers) make the rules and in fact lure people from the developing countries to substantiate or to confirm that data, not necessarily always with very valid equipments and arguments.

India not affected by Global Warming. Former scientific adviser to the Prime Minister and eminent scientist Vasant Gowarikar feels that global warming has not affected the Indian climatic system. He puts forth various data for his case. Gowrikar says that if we look at the last 115 years of data on cyclones, we will find that the highest number of cyclones (ten) hit the country in 1893, 1926 and 1930. If we check last 20 years’ data, the highest number of cyclones in that period, which is six, hit the Indian shores in 1992 and 1998.

He also points that the highest rainfall recorded in the country was in 1917, with 1457.3 cm of rainfall and the lowest was in 1918 with 913 cm and over the last 20 year period, if we look at the highest rainfall, it was recorded in 1988 with 1288 cm while the lowest was in 2000 with 939 cm and argues that if climate change has taken place in terms of warming, that should reflect on this data, but there is nothing to indicate the claims of warming affecting the Indian climate system.

According to him, the monsoon is one of the most complex weather phenomenons as it involves both local and global factors. He also did argue that India should not take or share the responsibility with the gang that actually caused the factors for this global warming nor should it look into the effortless warnings the western powers put before it.

Written by Nathesh