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Skype 5-way Calling Limit Cracked
BobPaul writes "It turns out when Skype limited 10 way calling to Intel Processors only it really was arbitrary! Maxxus has a patched version of Skype that allows 10-way calling regardless of the processor installed. There's also info about the patch: "The patch is the result of two phases: code analysis and design of the patch. The code analysis, or reverse engineering, reveals the relevant code block, which overrides Skype's limitation for Intel's dual-core CPUs. The patch design isolates the minimal set of instructions that need to be modified to cancel this limitation." Windows only so far."
I think this shows this was done on purpose to lock out amd users. A lawsuit by amd should be succesfull.
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..is someone demonstrating that the X2 can in fact handle 9+1 persons at once, which I have no doubt it can. Then it's time for Intel to open up the wallet and give AMD some nice $$$ and some even nicer PR. Stand by to bend over!
Will we see transcripts from depositions done by AMD?
I'd bet that they will be as funny as some of the SCO transcripts.
I'd bet that they will depose the programmer who wrote the code encryption and the GenuineIntel check, and then continue with his supervisors.
Who authorized to add code encryption?
Who approved it?
How were the limits to 5 or 10 concurrent connections determined?
Anybody know anything about their encrypted binary? I can't figure out what they were trying to achieve with that. Some sort of misguided anti-hax0r protection? Or perhaps they're trying to conceal something...
This has nothing to do with the DMCA or Patriot Act.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
To anyone doing such testing, make sure the code running is the same that would run on a dual-core Pentium. I didn't follow the patch in detail, but you'd have to make sure that any flags changed after CPU detection (like for instance the one at 0xB8E6DC) is the same for both cases. Else you might find yourself in the situation that, yes, the limit is removed, but you're still running a different ("unoptimized") path. In the (very interesting case) that the code crashes on AMD (due to use of Intel-only prefetch instructions or whatever, I don't even know if such still exists?), such crash can be used to land smack boom right in the relevant code to analyze.
A good reverse-engineer could then fix the code if needed (substituting or even noping the faulting ops) -- the theory being that the major optimizations are in fact portable.
In fact, demonstrating that there truly really is only one code-path would be pretty damning too; that's evidence this is just pure PR with no grounding in tech at all. So either case makes for an interesting evening in front of IDA.
The software doesn't make a call to the registry or other software settings. The software makes a call to the hard coded cpuid. To get around that, need to a) hack the processor; or b) hack the software making the call.
utility is not the point. the point is to stick it to the unctuous twits who crippled their product and lied about the reason.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Unless Skype's playing reflector for the whole conference, each peer's connectivity limits what you can/can't do.
:-)
At 128kbps (the average upstream speed on broadband these days in the US...), you can typically host a four to six way voice conference or a 2-3 way video conference. This is because you have to provide the outbound traffic for each of the peers and control traffic. With a reflector system, you can host larger conferences, limited only by the inbound bandwidth because the reflector is flipping the traffic from your mic (and possibly camera...) to all the participants. However, that's REALLY bandwidth intensive, so to keep it economical, you'd probably limit it to 10 participants or so to limit hogging of that limited resource.
Now, this is all due to everything being unicast UDP. If we had IPv6 and Multicast support for the same available, one could handle at least up to the 10 without needing a reflector as the router infrastructure would handle it right along with the video on demand, etc. streams. However, since this is not likely to happen in our or several generations' lifetimes at the rates things are going, waiting or wishing for that is a waste of time.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Considering that SIPPhone already HAS voice conference calls of at least 10 or more, works with ANY SIP enabled device that's not crippled to a single provider (Vonage devices come immediately to mind...), and costs nothing for VoIP calls- I'd say, skip Skype all together, especially after this little stunt.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It was a made-up limit? No kidding.
Remember folks; Asterisk. Skype isn't open source, and the company behind it has it's own motives. Asterisk is open source, has a good community behind it, and can do *anything* you want it to. Regardless of the hardware behind it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This is a case of DMCA IP Protection being abused for trade protection rights Intel bought and paid for and AMD did not.
Sherman Anti-trust aside (which this may be a real material breach) it looks like DMCA could either get abridged or affirmed for trade control purposes. For instance, does this mean someone with an Oracle license has the right to use some delta patches to open it wider open on their AMD Opteron for better threading than Intel?
Hmmm... you see how the lines get to be less than black and white.
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
In other words, he found the problem then fixed it. Forgive my ignorance, but how else would you possibly go about it? Apply random patches until one kind of works?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The Skype software has been preset to only accept Intel's chips as having the performance necessary to host conference calls of more than five people, the representative said.
If that was said by a representative from Intel then that statement quite qualifies as misrepresenting a competing product. Comparison is perfectly fine, misrepresentation is definitely not and Intel should be forced to compensate for it.
More precisely, I think it means that by modifying the source code, your limits can be imposed by your hardware instead of your software.
Mods: Do you disagree with me? Go ahead and mod me down. Meta-mods will sort it out. Good luck!
Next stop: HDCP!
(I hope.)
Of course, I'm ignorant. But how come a law suit? Companies make marketing arrangements all the time. What law says Skype has to work with AMD at all? Why should Skype have to write software to work on AMD? No reason at all other than the desire not to alienate a set of users. Skype doesn't have a monopoly on VoIP, if they want to limit their software to Z80s or PowerPC chips, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Market pressures will determine if self-imposed limitations prove workable for Skype, not the politics of Intel hate, and geeks frothing at the mouth...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Sound software typically is optimized quite well for both company's offerings, esp. if you don't use special features of the other brand. To be sure, there's edge cases where you need that- but Skype's NOT one of them nor is there evidence that there's the degredation you claim happened with your app experience. (Not to mention that there's tons of other P2P VoIP applications that use SIP and Jabber technology that work as good or better than Skype, and there's other commercial proprietary systems (such as Eyeball Networks' stuff...) that DOES handle up to 10 people (or more as bandwidth will allow...) without needing a dual core anything, let alone an Intel one.)
This is plain and simple being bought to support one over the other. Please don't try to defend this- it's not something that has much of any good explanation for this, especially considering that they actually DO appear to be just CPUIDing and crippling the app if it's not a dual core Intel CPU...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Come on. The idea behind declaring a company a monopoly is that consumer choice is limited because of collusion and anti-competitve behavior. In this case, there is some potential to support the idea that Intel and Sykpe may have colluded to create an artificial barrier that is anti-competitive. As a result, it limits consumer choice. When that barrier is arbitrary and is not based on the merrits of the product, for example that AMD chips really don't have some sort of defect that limit the number of telephone calls down to five while an Intel dual core allows up to ten phone calls at the same time, that is anti-competitive. Worse, is when it limits consumer choice and in a business sense, forces a business to adopt a chip that they might not otherwise buy, that is where the issues start to come into play. Merely stating that you don't buy the chip is a straw man arguement. The protections against monopolies where put in to protect the consumer. When companies and monopolies collude, the consumer looses. AMD is outselling their chips -- they can't make them fast enough. Intel might feel threatened, but that is by no means a reason for them to engage in anti-competetive behavior. Also, it is interesting to note that Intel and AMD have agreements for them to coperate together in the development of the x86 instruction set. But Intel doesn't play nice. Intel stopped cooperating with AMD when AMD started to outshine them. It took a judge to order Intel to play nice. Now that AMD is winning the x86-64 game, and has a better server chip, has integrated memory controllers (although Intel does have DDR2 memory, and their mobile chips are about par) people are paying attention to AMD. And an AMD chip is cheaper than an Intel chip. So forcing a company that wants to use the features of Syke or any software to use a particular chip for an arbitarary reason (and Intel verse AMD is arbitarary for the most part) is anti-competitive IF there was any undue influence on the part of the chip maker. If Intel paid any amount of money or applied any pressure that makes the whole arbitarary restriction very illegal and would probably result in an FTC investigation.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Then you might as well just go write your own patcher. Hell, he told you *exactly* what to do in the article.
More likely its in a server exterior to the US so some judge-with-a-god-complex can't just rip the server down at a request from the people who run Skype. Injunctions are like candy these days.
I wonder what your reaction would be if microsoft announced they believe Intel's CPUs aren't powerfull enough to run Vista in all its glory. So if it detects an Intel CPU, you can only open 2 windows at a time. It's microsoft's product, so their free to market it as they like. So either you don't buy Vista which has previously informed you about this limitation (there are plenty of alternatives), or you throw away your Dell... How about if Oracle started thinking the same way and limited the conections to their DB buy CPUID (just so people don't exclude MS for their monopoly)? With all do respect, it isn't so funny now, General 8883 sir, is it? :)
One thing I also haven't seen pointed out yet is this: Let's say that AMD's CPUs really can't handle 10 conferences at the same time. How can skype guarantee that this will be the case six months down the road. Determining the CPU's capabilities by its manufacturer is lame...
I think an xp2000 should be enable to push 10 streams via vnware.
I mean, wtf is supposed to take the cpu power?
An xp 2000 can compress mp3 in 10 times realtime, for example. Plus in a conference call, you actually send THE SAME to everybody...
Mixing audio is quasi cpu free (with less than 50 channels or so)
Sending data over the net is nearly cpu-free.
So what needs a dual core cpu for 10 connections?
I would understand that for VIDEO streaming, but its simply inconcievable for audio...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?