Stephen Fry and DVD Jon Back USB Sniffer Project

An anonymous reader writes "bushing and pytey of the iPhone DevTeam and Team Twiizers have created a Kickstarter project to fund the build of an open-source/open-hardware high-speed USB protocol analyzer. The board features a high-speed USB 2.0 sniffer that will help with the reverse engineering of proprietary USB hardware. The project has gained the backing of two high-profile individuals: Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon), and actor and comedian Stephen Fry."

Comments

Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Stephen Fry also did a video for the GNU project's 25th birthday:

http://www.gnu.org/fry/ "Freedom Fry"

Re:Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[Spad]

Well, apart from the freedom to choose a locked down device if you want one.

Unless, of course, you're advocating forcing people to use devices that give them freedom?

Re:Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[MightyYar]

The capitalist pig probably also drives a non-opensource car.

Re:Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[beelsebob]

But then, considering freedom good, and considering high quality hardware and software good are not mutually exclusive. Nor are acknowledging that sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other.

It's entirely possible to like both apple products, and open things.

Re:Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[adamofgreyskull]

You're either a troll, or are ignorant. I saw a speech he gave a few years ago that was broadcast on BBC Parliament (or whatever it's called) on software freedom, DRM, format-shifting, P2P etc and he completely grokked the issues. He's not "just an old man", or "just a celebrity", he's actually incredibly fucking astute. He's a high-profile, highly intelligent celebrity, who actually knows what he's talking about, and exactly the kind of person people in power might actually listen to, as opposed to some AC on /. or "some beardy yank". tl;dr: He shares "our views" and communicates at a level that most British politicians respect and understand. This is a Good Thing.

Re:Stephen Fry's previous good stuff: gnu bday

[Pax681]

actually Stephen Fry is extremely intelligent and computer literate.

he IS deffo a mac fanboi however, saying he doesn't understand just shows your complete ignorance of the man.

For example, Emma thompson's laptop went tits up and she thought the script for the movie she had written was all but lost. she called stephen and asked his help....

he managed to recover the script and everything else on the macbook that emma thought she had lost.

so check the Production section of sense and sensinility wiki page for this little snippet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility_(film)

On an episode of the popular quiz show QI, Emma Thompson revealed that she lost the screenplay on her faulty computer. When a repairman could not retrieve the file, she took the computer in a taxi to friend Stephen Fry, who, along with flatmate Hugh Laurie, spent seven hours retrieving the missing file.

personally i am not a mac fan either however stephen fry does like their stuff and it was the writer Dougles Adams that got him into apple products

he has also been dealing with mental health issues and WINNING.. he's not the type to run off in a strop....

perhaps you should not comment on subjects that YOU can't understand or people you blatantly know nothing about eh?

Re:so?

[adamofgreyskull]

He's not just a comedian though is he? Most actresses know less about foreign policy than Sarah Palin, whereas Stephen Fry knows a lot about open-ness, DRM and the importance of being able to play a DVD on the OS of your choice. Should we ignore anything Brian May has to say on the subject of Astrophysics because he's "just a musician"?

Why hardware?

[bcmm]

Why does this need to be implemented in hardware?

I presume the main purpose of this is analyzing the communication between a USB device and its proprietary Windows driver. Wouldn't it be easier to modify virtualization software to do this? Qemu can already connect a real USB device to a virtual machine (see its "-usbdevice host:" option).

Re:Why hardware?

[marcansoft]

Two main reasons: Embedded device peripherals, and USB device development. Sometimes you don't have access to the OS running on the host to set up a sniffer (game consoles, some smartphones, and similar). And sometimes you need to debug a USB device that you're developing, and software USB sniffers don't provide the kind of detail needed to do that effectively (some errors are only evident when you watch the stuff on the wire, not the high-level requests).

Also, software sniffers are imperfect. I've had issues with them. A physical hardware device is completely transparent and can work without either side noticing anything. Sure, you can make do with a software sniffer sometimes, but that doesn't mean there's no point to a hardware version.

And since this is open, it can be repurposed for other uses. For example, you could use only the device port, and turn it into a kind of usb device-to-device bridge that lets your computer impersonate a USB device. That is currently not possible except on embedded systems with USB device controllers, and those have limitations. You could also use it as a pretty good logic analyzer, given proper firmware.

Re:Yes, because

[DavidWeight]

Should we ignore anything Brian May has to say on the subject of Astrophysics because he's "just a musician"

He's Brian Cox, OBE.

Or he's Brian May-of Queen, with a PHD in astrophysics from Imperial College... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May