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Why the World Needs Reverse Engineering
bl968 writes: "Zdnet has an article entitled "Why the world needs reverse engineers." The article covers among many things the Cuecat barcode scanner and some of the reason the hardware or software manufacturers dislike reverse engineering of their products. Privacy violating serial numbers anyone? Security problems and the DMCA are also touched upon."
Reverse engineering allows capitalism to happen in the world of technology, where the "standard" (which is usually defined by whoever comes first) is all-powerful. It's not only just acceptable, it's absolutely necessary if we want the market to move forward.
Reverse engineering is one of the few things consumers can do that can check the quality, integrity, and for the most part, ethics of a company's product. It can be most compared to the government's checks and balances system, except where the real power lies wit hthe consumer in this situation. Almost seems like the exploits that are released for security holes, it might seem evil, but it's needed to keep the corporations on their toes.
Has anyone thought of the idea that reverse engineering might actuallly help the product even become more so of a standard. If to anyone, this would be beneficial to the company. It helps by increasing the capital value of the product. It stupidity that they don't realize this. Luke
A collective community dedicated to reverse engineering, say, the Cuecat would stand a much better chance of fighting the stupidity of the designers claims than if the developers stay in disparate camps. One collective force will put up more of a fight then a bunch of little camps. I think that is probably the only way that reverse engineerings laws will be changed, and even then it is going to take a LONG time.
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It's somewhat hard to imagine why we -wouldn't- need reverse engineering, what with a world of privacy concerns and obscure (and sometimes rather obvious) bugs in commonly used software today. Believe it or not, some companies aren't actually as quick to repair bugs in their software as others are to report them ;> The reverse engineer, in this case, takes it upon themselves to understand and dissect the finished product, dividing it into its component parts until finding the flaw which the designers themselves are reluctant to fix; then code a quick hack to exploit the bug, and hand it out to the blindly gcc'ing script kiddies..once a high-level security flaw is made simple for the kiddiots, designers pick up the pace a little :P What we really owe to reverse engineers is gratitude for explosing the inner workings of that which most of us know little about.
Not only does id not take action against these folks, they support them with code releases from the product and ongoing .plan files describing upcoming tweaks and the algorithms used in the games. Write to the id developers and they are likely to write back, answering questions about the game and encouraging you to write your own tools for it.
These independent tools are what have allowed the game modification (mods) communities to grow around their games and have led to id's real cash cow: licensing game engines. Other game makers license id's engine in part because there are so many tools available for it. In a recent Gamasutra article, the lead programmer for Soldier of Fortune, a new 3D game, talked about why his company chose to license the Quake engine: because the tools created by independent developers for level editing and cut scene creation were so good.
-m
The benefits of reverse engineering apply not only to the consumer world, but also to the coporate world. Consumers get detailed info on the innards of a particular piece of hardware or software, and companies scream bloody murder. What they are ignoring, however, is the opportunity to improve their products. The reverse engineering people are a perfect target market. Companies can give (or sell) initial versions of their products to reverse engineers, in the HOPES that a security flaw or bug will be uncovered. They can reduce their PR problems by fixing the major (and, hopefully, minor) bugs and security holes in their products BEFORE THEY BECOME A MAJOR ISSUE. This benefits companies in another way, as well: a decrease in their quality assurance budgets. By turning over their products to a few people to play with, they don't have to spend hundreds (or, in some cases, dozens) of man-hours testing a product for bugs. You can be sure that reverse engineers will either be pushing the product to the limit, or going over every square inch of it to try to figure out how it works. This brings me to a third point. Companies can use reverse engineers as a test market for new tech toys. Wouldn't it have been nice if Digital Convergence had decided to let people use their devices for USEFUL purposes? They could have found out any number of applications for them by simply giving them out to people who would have some idea of the implications of such devices.
In programming classes, we are given parts of programs to understand what they are doing. When we get an exam in these classes, we have to reverse engineer the program in the question to know what it does. Remember, having to take apart a car engine and put it back together in autoshop?
Fight Spammers!
IBM could have "encrypted" their BIOS (double ROT13 anyone :-) and we'd all be using either $3000 486s, Macs, or some random brand of computer, each one of which would be massively expensive and require its own OS and software...
You could only watch television on an "approved" set, simply receiving a signal would be considered dangerous "piracy" and against the law. Oh, wait, it already is that way with satellite transmissions...
Taking apart your digital clock to scavenge the LCD for another proejct would be illegal as the circuit paths to activate the crystals are a content protection device.
Prescriptions drugs would be insanely expensive, as it would be illegal to reverse engineer a competitior's formula after the patent runs out (okay, so it's not digital, but if we're talking about reverse engineering in general).
Nobody would have ever heard of a little company called Microsoft. If not for the popularity of of clone PCs Windows probably would have never caught on.
The Internet? Forget it.
Well, it's time to MAKE them care, by making them aware of the impact that the DMCA will have on their lives. It might turn out that Joe Sixpack downloads his favorite Elvis Costello tunes from Napster because his LP's are scratched beyond recognition. And what if he wanted to get DVD soon, but didn't want to worry about the MPAA charging him a flat rate to play the movie? Then he should start caring about how the DMCA will affect his life.
One of the major reasons why I hate the DMCA is because of how it became law: a joint venture between the MPAA, RIAA, and the government. In no way was this act approved by the US citizens. The very fact that the DMCA will become law soon flies in the face of this passage of the Declaration of Independence:
From the consent of governed. Now, did we give any consent to have the DMCA passed into law? NO. Were any referendums held to study public opinion on this issue? NO.
The DMCA IS destructive of the ends established in the Declaration, and it is our right to abolish the DMCA. It is not only our right, but now it is our responsibility to eliminate the DMCA. The DMCA will affect our happiness in the future; we will become drones, being forced by the MPAA to shell out X amount of dollars to watch a pre-recorded movie for Y amount of time. Even worse, the RIAA might soon mandate that we pay for FM radio by the minute. I fear that this idea (or a similar incarnation) isn't far off.
Do I sound a little like Henry David Thoreau? Good! It's nice to know that I'm one of the only remaining Transcendentalists in the US.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Think about, they could rapid oil change places, repair shops, chiltons, haynes, and body shops all out of business within a few years. The real fun would begin when people would realize that they no longer have the right of first sale. That's right, that brand new car you just bought can't be given away, but your allowed to trade it in for a $1,500 discount. Ala AT&T, gas stations would have to pay money to auto manufactures for a /right/ to sell gas for their cars. And the thing that they would love the most, popping the hood of your car could void your warranty. After-all, no one other than the dealer needs to look inside there, right?
I bet ZDNet wouldn't have ran it if they had been giving out CueCats.
It's still nice to see a mainstream computer site getting the issues around reverse engineering right. Most of the time they seem to accuse hackers of breaking protections, and reverse engineering for piracy. Here they were highlighting the good points. Privacy, security and interoprability are all good reasons that reverse engineering should be important to us all.
If I buy something I want to own it not lisence it. If I take it apart to see how it works that is my right.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
When the Altair originally succeeded companies such as Proc Tech reverse engineered the bus and made add on boards. MITS called these companies "parasites" but ther were actually adding value to the product and helped it succeed.
When the IBM PC came out it was pretty much open apart from the BIOS. Even before Compaq reversed engineered it there were heaps of 3rd party add-ons that make the product more attractive to buyers.
Contrast that to the Mac which was closed in every regard, you had virtually one source for add-on's, Apple. The Mac was at a severe disadvantage even before the PC Clone market go going because there were so many people creating extra value for PC's.
Companies hate reverse engineering because they have delusiuons of grandure. They believe that they will be able to predict every possible use for their product AND be able to supply the demand for those products.
The long term fortunes of businesses that take the "reverse-engineering-bad" mentality follows a pretty similar path.
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
Posted by DRAGONWEEZEL@HOTMAIL:
Reverse engineering is instinct in most children. Remember when you were two and all you ever did was ask WHY? Once you knew what why meant, You asked it till you were blue in the face. REMEMBER?? I KNOW YOU DO!! I personally remember reverse engineering some kewl toys I had. I.E. remote/radio controled vehicles, my bicycle, fire, the toilet, and a feeble atempt to recreate the cooking of popcorn (when I was three). my point here is not only is reverse engineering something that may help our society, it is instinctive to human nature to do so. dw Fire is red,violets are blue I am a schitzophranic, so am I.
Also i ask as a question which is more illegal: If a company A, releases a device D (like the CueCat), and A says that they are not collecting information, that the device D has no way of identifying someone &tc, if a person P, reverse engineers D, does only P get into trouble, is there no accountablility for A, which lied to the public?
This has been an issue for a long time in the United States. The laws basically say that if something is investigated illegally, it can't be used in court and therefore in your semi-hypothetical situation the company does not get in trouble. This is actually intended to protect the citizens from the government, but in this situation you no longer have the citizens being protected. Obviously, something needs to be reevaluated.
It is clear that half the regulation either hasn't caught up with the digital age and the other half has been subverted by the companies taking advantage of us. Does anyone know of plans to challenge the DMCA in court? I know a number of organizations that are probably doing this but haven't seen an organized effort (mostly due to my own ignorance).
The world needs dynamite too; but that doesn't mean it ought to be available to just anyone on a whim as some so-called "right".
Any activity, no matter how useful, must be tightly controlled if it has the potential to cause great harm to others. Thousands of employees paychecks and hundreds of thousands of shareholders may well depend on some trade secret or copyrighted function. I'm sorry, but you have no "right" to steal that from them in the name of OSS or whatever golden idol you worship.
Like other engineering disciplinies, reverse engineering (and also programmers developping for life critical components) needs to be licensed by a regulatory body after the applicant applies for and passes a rigorous test. Once he passes he is granted the privelege of practicing reverse engineering under a code of ethics that among other things requires him not to disclose proprietary or trade secrets that may result in harm to others. Violators will have their licenses revoked with stiff fines for illegal practice. In secirity testing, vulnerabilities need to be address and corrected before being revealed to the general public. Issues of interoperability are issues for the people trying to make their components work with one another's and is no one elses business.
Reverse engineering should not be not a right, but a privelege instead.
Click here for the details. Was it this?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Don't laugh. It is already forbidden for CA residents to tinker with their newer lawn mower engines. Access is protected by a seal that is illegal for all but authorized service personnel to remove! Don't think CA legislators aren't already at looking to do the same with cars down the line!
I'm a reverse engineer. The very first contract job I did when I started my new consulting business was to reverse engineer the file format for a project management database used by the motion picture industry.
My client, Graphical Planet, wanted to make a product that would interoperate with Movie Magic Scheduling. Only the Movie Magic publishers wouldn't tell them how, and in fact were quite unfriendly towards them.
We initially agreed that I would complete the reverse engineering in a week and be paid $1500.
It actually took me three weeks, and was some of the most difficult work I have done as a programmer - while it was interesting, it was mentally painful, like cracking an enemy code. Perhaps what made it worse was that I desperately needed the money and only would get paid if I succeeded.
In the end I was able to write up a detailed file format specification document, and I also wrote a C program that would dump the contents of a MM project file into a human-readable text file. I successfully tested it by dumping out the full project file from an actual full-length motion picture.
How did I do it? I created lots of little sample files, for example, my first document I added only the letter "A" in one field, then made a second, where I changed that to the letter "B". I made hex dumps of the files and then compared the hex dumps. A lot of the work went into trying to find the best kind of files to make for my testing.
I want to point out that, until the DMCA reverse engineering was always perfectly legal in the US, and in fact state trade secret protection laws specifically grant reverse engineering an exemption from trade secret protections.
Even now, most things are still legal to reverse engineer, and I think it is likely that the DMCA will be found unconstitutional - or some applications of it will be, for example the Content Scrambling System is clearly a violation of well-established antitrust laws.
One of the reasons that reverse engineering is legally protected, I understand, is that it is not the public's objective that novel inventions be kept secret.
What the government would prefer a company do if it wants to have a monopoly over an invention is to apply for a patent, because part of the patent application is a full disclosure of the invention (sufficiently detailed that some one expert in the art could reproduce it), and then the monopoly is granted for a limited time.
Twenty years may seem like forever in high-tech, but keep in mind that the monopoly does eventually come to an end. This is why we have generic drugs, for example, and also not that the patent on RSA public key cryptography, the basis of PGP encryption and the SSL or secure socket layer, used for https secure web pages, expired in September of this year.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Now IANAL, but I suspect that *ue*at just didn't invoke the DMCA properly, or did so poorly:
Sec 1201 (i) Protection of Personally Identifying Information. -
(1) Circumvention permitted. - Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection for a person to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title, if -
(A) the technological measure, or the work it protects, contains the capability of collecting or disseminating personally identifying information reflecting the online activities of a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected;
(B) in the normal course of its operation, the technological measure, or the work it protects, collects or disseminates personally identifying information about the person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, without providing conspicuous notice of such collection or dissemination to such person, and without providing such person with the capability to prevent or restrict such collection or issemination;
(C) the act of circumvention has the sole effect of identifying and disabling the capability described in subparagraph (A), and has no other effect on the ability of any person to gain access to any work; and
(D) the act of circumvention is carried out solely for the purpose of preventing the collection or dissemination of personally identifying information about a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, and is not in violation of any other law.
(i)(1)(B) Likely is a killer -- too many "ands" in there, and a EULA might be considered "conspicuous" even if no one reads it. But conspicuous sounds like a nice word that lawyers can around play with.
Note that this *only* means that one *single* company just hasn't used the DMCA properly -- yet. One minor change to their software, and the lawsuit floodgates can open against their new(er) users. Don't expect anyone else to make this mistake.
I just wish the DMCA let people other than just the Librarian of Congress decide what "classes of works" didn't fall under it. To me, DVDs from other regions fall under the area of items were are "severerly restricted" from using -- I prefer European and Asian content over most American works.
Wow.. you learn a little something every day.
I initially thought Cue Cat was some sort of fancy vibrator. Amazing the things you can learn reading
I imagine it could still be hacked to scan for signs of cervical cancer and take you to the AMA website if any abnormalities popped up.
It suddenly occurred to me that most of physics is based on reverse-engineering the universe. Everything from the experimental method to atom-smashers.
Where would we be if the creator of that universe had issued a decree that dis-allowed reverse engineering?
-Eldurbarn
That kind of product will open an opportunity for a competitor whose products are not as well protected. It's the same as one of the arguments for open source software: it isn't practical for most users to reverse engineer closed-source software to fix bugs in it or otherwise understand its workings. Very few highly successful products can thrive without a third-party/aftermarket, and the ability to reverse engineer to various degrees is one of the things that allows a 3rd party market to function. Companies that try to close their products entirely may find their lunch being eaten by others who are less paranoid.
Ed
First of all, the Declaration of Independence has absolutely zero legal standing in this country. That was a CONSCIOUS DECISION by the Founding Fathers. It may make nice rhetoric but it really has very little bearing on the day to day in America.
Now, did we give any consent to have the DMCA passed into law?
You really just completely and utterly fail to understand how a republic works, don't you?
It is a bad business strategy to give away a free product and then expect customers not to take full advantage of it. That's almost as bad as basing your whole business on the hope that Microsoft will license you their latest source code every single year for as long as you run your business. Isn't it funny how some so-called businessmen are so eager to sue people for defying their expectations, when the problem is with their own lack of foresight? If you expect somebody to do only certain things, you'd better get it in writing (i.e., by signing a contract with them where they agree to do only those certain things.) If you don't have a contract, you don't have a guarantee, and it's your job as a businessman to consider what other people and other companies are within their rights to do -- and you must plan accordingly.
When businessmen and investors make bad decisions, they destroy wealth -- hopefully only their own. If the effect is localized that way, then the effect on the economy, though negative, is minimized. Hopefully people will learn to make better decisions. It's an expensive lesson, but it should be learned: If you give something away for free, people will take it.
-- An Ayn-onymous Coward
I think it would be helpful to have a central website devoted to reverse engineering tools, as well as archives of legal documents, tracking reverse engineering news developments, discussion forums for trading tips and so on.
Anyone want to set one up? I don't really have the time right now but I could contribute expertise and code.
What would be a good domain name?
Or are there any sites like this already? Certainly there must be sites that contain bits of what I propose - but what about a full-fledged reverse engineering archive and portal.
Better not physically locate it in the US!
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Hi
OK, I know that software isn't like a car, but i find it disturbing that companies are trying to make it illegal to reverse-engineer their products, while the first thing competing companies in the car business do when for example Ford releases a new car, is buying like 12 cars of the new model, driving them around, and totally take them apart and re-assemble them again!
Reverse-engineering is something that every company uses, hi-tech or not, so why would it be illegal in the software business?
http://www.zd net .com/tlkbck/comment/22/0,7056,99112-589101,00.html
Apparently the DMCA itself requires that notifications of violations of the DMCA must be made in writing with a "wet" signature, that is actually written by hand with ink. Email and fax is insufficient.
The fellow suggests that you post the following on your site as a legal notice to those who may attempt to contact you about material on your site that they claim infringes their copyright:
Procedure for Notifying Yourname.com of Copyright Infringement Claims
In accordance with the DMCA, copyright owners, or persons authorized to act on behalf of owners who believe specific Shared Content may infringe any exclusive right(s) of the copyright owner should notify Yourname.com's designated agent in the following manner:
Notices Must Be in Writing: Yourname.com must obtain all required information in writing in the form of a 'Notice of Copyright Infringement' ("Notice"). Telephonic, verbal or other non-written communications are insufficient under Yourname.com's policies and do not meet the requirements of the DMCA.
Content of Notice: Notice to Yourname.com must include the following information:
1. Identification of the copyrighted work that You claim has been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered in the Notice, a representative list of the copyrighted works that You claim have been infringed using Yourname.com's services; 2. Identification of Shared Content, material or activity that You claim is infringing, that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled. Such identification must contain information sufficient to permit Yourname.com to locate that Shared Content; 3. Your street and mailing address, telephone number and, if available, Your electronic mail address; 4. A statement by You that You have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., fair use); 5. A statement by You, made under penalty of perjury, that all the information in Your Notice is accurate and that You are the copyright owner, or authorized to act on behalf of an owner of any exclusive right that is allegedly infringed by the materials referenced in Your Notice.
Notices Must be Signed: The written notice must be subscribed with the "wet signature" (no facsimiles, proxies or copies) of the copyright owner or of a person authorized to act on behalf of an owner of any exclusive right(s) that are allegedly infringed by the materials referenced in the Notice.
Delivery to Designated Agent: The Notice must be addressed and delivered via U.S. Mail, Express Mail, or Courier to Yourname.com's Designated Copyright Agent, as follows:
Copyright Agent
Yourname.com
Your Blvd
Your Town, State Zip Code
Your Phone Number
If You suspect specific Shared Content may constitute copyright infringement, but are not the copyright owner or authorized to act on behalf of an owner of any exclusive right(s) that You believe may be infringed, please notify Yourname.com at legal@Yourname.com. If You are not the copyright owner or the owner's representative, Yourname.com may not be able to remove the Shared Content. Yourname.com will attempt to investigate each report and forward each notice to the appropriate copyright owner, if identified.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Anyone interested in Economics will tell you that end-users screwing with products is bad. Now, as a n economist and a hacker my two paths diverge. I think that if a free piece of equipment is released to the public, it cannot be considered an economic scarcity, (laymen defined as "if something was free of charge, and there'd be none left after 5 minutes, it's an econmic scarcity");
Anyways, So they release this product to the public, planning on increasing popularity and (factors of demand) of another product (Database registration). So basically if enough users get cuecats, then there's a huge market for cuecat licesences from other businesses. Now that DigitalConvergence has a potential strangle hold...
Back to the hacking =)
It is true that if a product is hacked then it thrives new tests which makes the product run better. However, if it is in the hands of the consumer (wether they are paying for it or not), this can turn ugly. Websites popup with FAQs on extracting features, etc.
So lets bring these two sections together.
So you (say you're DigitalConvergence) have an investment in a popularity inducing object (said Cuecat). A website all of a sudden pops up providing obsolescence and alternatives/substitutions to you're product. Now if this were another company DC would either buy them, or succum to the "competitve market"...
But NO, It's a Flyingbuttmonkey with a plan. This buttmonkey wants to exploit your product, making you lose millions.
So look at it this way...
1) A company can continue with a cheapo investment.
2) The company must sucuum to people hacking their free of charge product.
Economically speaking, the hacking is a market sucess, however a product failure... So the end-user lucks out, and the product fails.
This would be good (non-economically) only if another alternative came about (not based on exploitation).
Moderators: Look lightly upon my post and I shall reward you with an MD5 of PI.
http://siokaos.org/
By letting the greedy outlaw reverse engineering, is the US slitting its own throat?
The laws if the United States stop at the border. ALL of the imported goods, by definition, come from outside of the border.
The trend to employing manual labor "off shore" outside the borders, has been rampant for decades and industries are running out of things to shift offshore.
The use of H1-B visa's is plundering the high-tech workers from the very shores that are being exploited for manual labor. Their use is accelerating rather than being balanced through any attempt at educating the US populace.
But H1-B visa holders are treated like indentured slaves and sent packing at every corporate down-turn. They leave taking their knowledge extra territorially where the opportunities may be less but the stability is greater.
The DMCA applies ONLY to within the borders of the United States. The H1-B "deportees" are intelligent enough to reverse engineer solutions without concerning themselves with the stupidity hatched by the RIAA and the MPAA and other organizations which, in effect, produce nothing but law suits.
Is the United States going to end up on the short end of the stick for pursuing such short sighted policies?
As an H1-B worker myself, I don't give a rat's ass about the internal politics of the Unites States. If they wish to reduce themselves to ignorant groveling in front of imported television sets watching imported quality programs like those produced by the BBC or cheap home-made porn, so be it.
To paraphrase Newton (a Brit by the way:) "We see far because we stand on the shoulders of giants."
The DMCA is a great way to take the head from those shoulders and insure the giant doesn't bother anyone anymore. Its only a question of time.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Why should we care that it's natural for a company to do X or Y, because it's only out to make money? It may be a scorpion's nature to sting--but does knowing that mean that we ought to go ahead and pet it anyway?
If corporations like DC can't help themselves when it comes to things like trying to bully reverse engineers (something I doubt, since there are other companies--also only interested in making money--who shrug off or even encourage reverse engineering), all the more reason that we should be wary of them and attempt to curb their abuses.
the site was originally starhack.ml.org. But like all good things on the net, 'life' intruded on the creator's part and he stopped being cool. bnetd was open source, but then someone came along and made it closed source, turned it into fsgs, and went above and beyond whatever bnetd did. fsgs.net, the only place to pick up a serious battle.net clone. bnetd just doesn't have it, never did, never will.
which is kinda disturbing when you think about it ^^;;
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Note: This is not as refined and lucid as it should be, but it may still have a point. Just don't hold your breath.
Let me start off by saying to consider me any sort of enginneer would be laughable, so I may have this completely wrong.
While I read the posts made by people in this discussion, I tried to relate the idea to other forms of media.
Reverse engineering a program means pulling it apart to see how it works on the inside, but how would that translate with a movie, music, or book? To me it would seem that in these mediums reverse enginneering is quite common. You could deconstuct or analyze any of these and in the underlying basic "code" you would end up with a very general principal containing characters, plot, theme, etc.
As a wanna-be writer, I try and deconstuct everything I take in, be it the movie I watched last night, the book I was reading this morning, or the song I listened to on the way to work. I try and get a feel for what the artist is saying through their work. And sometimes you need more information then is placed directly in front of you order to do that. In order to see the larger picture of what is going on you may have to read between the lines a little. . .
Hell, one of the things that makes a piece of media meaningful to me is when I find it so profound and engaging that I start to wonder "how did they come to that conclusion?". I may even take it a step further and think: "what if this happened? What would the effect be then?"
To me, that directly correlates with what I believe is the basic purpose and goal of reverse engineering. Screwing around with things leads to a better understanding and somtimes a greater appreiciation of how things work. It also allows for greater innovation and improvement. If nobody understood the underlying principle of the wheel, would we as a species ever have progressed to where we are now?
The Entertainment industry does everything I do with movies, books, and music, only they even take it a step further. Heard any pop music that didn't sound like other pop music lately? Or watch a "blockbuster" summer disaster movie that was unlike any other? I swear, it seems like some of those flicks even use the same dog, which somehow always manages to make it to safety while other actual characters perish in patriotic, sacrificing, or possibly deserving ways.
I may not like how much of the movies, music, and books all end up feeling the same tired, cliche idea borrowed from other movies, music, and books. That doesn't make me file a lawsuit against anybody in the entertainment industry though.
If I remember correctly, the premise for "Survivor" was hardly original. Did the "oringal" creater of the idea recieve any royalty checks from the American Producers? Did he have his name in the end credits? Better yet: did they bother to even try sending a cease and decist letter upon hearing of the American "hack" of their idea?
This entire post may just be a mindless leap to the wrong conclusion, but I do believe it also goes some way in explaining why the acronyms of the month (MPAA/RIAA/DMCA/whatever) say lines of computer code differ from lines of other media in the fact they are not speech.
If they did treat it the same as other media, they would be far greater hypacrites then all of us that use the protocol of the month (Napster/Gnutella/HTTP) to fight the power in the name of the artist. Hell, they would be far greater pirates as well.
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To a creationist, all investigation of the world (especially animal dissection) is a form of reverse-engineering.
But to non-creationists, such investigation is merely called "science", because the objects studied were not engineered to begin with, so there's nothing to reverse.
Therefore, I conclude from Sorehands dissection example, that he is from Kansas. ;-)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I saw Soylent Green for the first time the other night, and it strikes me that the movie was a story about reverse-engineering.
If Thorne hadn't illegally entered the food-processing plant, and observed the manufacturing process (and killed two workers in the process), he would not have discovered that Soylent Green is people.
I believe that is all that needs to be said on this subject.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If GM were reverse-engineering Ford cars, they wouldn't be producing the utter crap they are now.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
We represent God and it has been brought to our attention that you have been attempting to reverse engineer his work.
You are hereby ordered to cease this immediately. If you continue with this action, we will bring legal action.
Please note, our client has never lost a case. Furthermore, he is the final judge in all matters in this universe.
Fight Spammers!
If you fight God in court, then he'll have to recuse himself on Judgement Day. The chances of Him being replaced by Mattel are vanishingly small.
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