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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."
Ah, Maxxuss. Is there anything you can't do? First you crack OS X, now Skype. You and DVD Jon should team up and become some sort of cracking superheros.
Skype made a lot of noise in their press release saying that the 10-way feature was "optimized" for Intel chips. This was picked up by the media of course as well as evidence of AMD's poor performance.
I'm having trouble understanding what this optimization that used the special features of Intel chips (presumably their high power) was. It looks from the patch that they just check who the manufacturer is, and if it is not AMD, they pretend your computer doesn't have the power to host 10 participants.
What's also interesting is that folks likely signed up for SkypeOut and other paid products not realizing that they would be treated differently depending on what chipsets they happen to use, especially as that choice matters almost no where else. They should give more warning about this to paid users.
This focus on locking software into specific vendor chips seems a dangerous one. No longer will it be the best chip that will win, but the focus goes to competing on locking up software applications. The proprietary unix'es went down that path, and it would be sad if Intel managed to get that to happen here.
Yeah right.. I'm gonna' d/l this patch and app from www.silo.ru (in Russia!!!), they even say on their aite that that "There is no virus or backdoor added!". You've got to be kidding me!
The drop from 64 bit to 32 bit is one thing, however, in this case, the Skype code specifically queried the hardware for the GenuineIntel. If I remember this correctly from another /. post (not mine)
The opcode used in Skype, when activated on the processor, sets 3 4-byte registers on the processor as an identifier. This is burned into the silicon, basically.
For Intel Chips, the registers become
Genu, ineI, ntel - Genuine Intel
For AMD:
Auth, enti, cAMD - Authentic AMD
Like I said, since it's burned into the chip, there's no real way of 'masking' those registers as something else. This crack skips the verification, basically telling Skype that 'any processor is cool to run 10way' as opposed 'only GeniuneIntel chips can run 10way'
Just goes to show why we need open protocols and open code for the future of VOIP. It's too important to leave to a single company, which is why I prefer SIP and clients like Google Talk and Gizmo where possible.
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
Spoiled kids. When I was young, an occasional 3-way was enough.
The rules change slightly when you've got a near-monopoly. This is part of what tripped up Microsoft in their anti-trust trials.
The problem is that it's far easier to convince someone to exclude "the competition" from the market when the competition has a disproportionately small portion of the market.
For the ease of math, let's say that the Skype market is 90% Intel, 10%AMD. If Intel had to pay Skype 10million to compensate Skype for the lost market in excluding AMD then AMD would have to pay 90million to get Skype to do the same thing. Add to that the fact that Intel has 10x as much income from their larger market share (presuming the same gross profit margin -- which is rarely accurate in a near-monopoly situation) and you have a 90-1 difference in impact on their profit margins.
Or - - to put it another way, between gross profits and market share, Intel could afford to buy off 100 market slots for every one that AMD could afford to.
If it came to open warfare like this, AMD would be reduced to a tiny portion of the market and customers would be effectively unable to even find business that deal with AMD. (Dell anyone?). Once you further reduced AMD's market share like this, Intel's ability to further marginalize them would increase until AMD was reduced to an insignificant market access independent of the relative quality of their products.
It's basically a market-ratio squared relationship which can easily spiral into a near-absolute market ownership, denying customers any real choice in the market no matter how good the competition is. (MS/Linux, anybody?)
It's actually a worse than ratio squared relationship because we haven't taken into account the probability that, if Intel has a 100-1 ratio of market-exclusionary agreements, they can now charge a higher profit margin without significantly affecting customers' willingness to buy AMD. That, however is harder to quantitize, so I'll only mention it, rather than including it in my math.
About the only real way to avoid this problem is to create artificial rules designed to stop such market-killing agreements when the market gets too lopsided, to prevent market choice from getting totally destroyed.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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...