Down here (Brasil), they make you drive on the city streets in the rush hour, stop near the curb, make a 30-m reverse, parallel parking, and automatic cars are prohibited during the exam.
The problem with monarchies and removing them is: they theoretically own the assets that form the basis for the State to work (their salaries/alimonies/allowances are, therefore, kind of a "rent" payment that the people pays to use that which belong to the Crown). When you rattle this cage too hard, you rattle the foundations to the real estate market, too: the right to own a State is very close to the (also hereditary) right to own a house. It's not simple to do without a very radical institutional breakage.:-) And, to make it worse, there are cases where the Crown helps the democratic process (Spain is a good example), and estabilizes the government.
and I wouldn't flame you anyway, my post, beginning with the words "my take", was exactly stating my personal opinion. And, besides, I agree with you that the best moments of Sci-fi is when the writer does not take it too seriously.
Unfortunately, up until the Net age, living in the biggest USofAn colony (BR), I didn't have a lot of access to Brit Sci-fi. Can you refer me to some DC hub or BT site where I can find, for instance, DrWho, Bl7, RedDwarf eps?
In one of the best Brazilian Trek sites (Trek Brasilis) many people often mention "why don't... ever use the bathroom?".
And I think it's a stupid question, it would be dead time and must be done only if it has a good conection to the rythm of the scene. And it's false. The bathrooms in the Enterprise-D (TNG) quarters are shown often (normally with Berverly or Deanna coming out of it and brushing their hair), in ENT the artificial gravity fails while Archer is taking a shower, Hoshi is shown doing the 22th century equivalent of brushing her teeth in the "catwalk", besides the other examples already mentioned.
Here in Brasil, Caller One pays for his airtime (unless he's calling from a fixed phone) AND for Caller Two's airtime. There are regulations here that prevent you for paying to receive calls.
Down here we have 4-5 companies that offer dial-up access without costs, and than charge for support (if you use it), web acceleration (use of an specialized proxy that crunches jpegs etc), wideband access, and other stuff. In the case of 0-cost access, the phone companies pay them part of the calls (normally local).
exp-time-complete: the time to solve one particular problem for an input of size N is no less than O(2^N) time units. exp-space-complete: you can solve one particular problem in less then O(2^N) if you calculate all the solutions and try to keep all the O(2^N) results around, wasting an enormous amount of storage.
If you are not advocating DRM, then you are really naive. My credentials: I have a hacked XBox running Linux, a hacked Nokia 6820 phone with stealth "spy microphone" mode, and an actual metric ton of equipment I amassed in the last 10 years in the field of network and gadgets' security. I think I can hack everything that is in my hands and that is mine to hack. I don't rent or let phone companies lend me phones -- I buy them so I can hack them (first buy doctrine is part of our consumers' law, too).
As a lot of bomb defusers would tell you, even things engineered to explode when tinkered with can be hacked, if you try it "the right way" (disclaimer: I actually know three bomb experts).
And to complete: you admit in one of your posts that you could exploit some bugs in the XBox and then you say that "it was luck those bugs were there or something." I am just arguing that it wasn't luck, it's a high probability that bugs will crop, enough people tinkering will find them... in the XBox, in a cell phone, and in any commercialized gadget. Simple as that.
But to be sincere, since you are bugging and trolling me without dropping, I became decided to have the last word, and to enjoy myself in the process.
It is often within the rights of and ethical for authors and publishers to restrict freedoms. Even the GPL, poster child of the Free Software licenses, relies on restrictions enacted through copyrights and license to guarantee certain things can not be done. So simply saying DRM restricts freedoms does not mean it's unethical or somehow inately wrong.
But restricting certain types of freedoms is. for instance, it is generally considered unethical to restrict some one else's freedom of speach outside of certain exceptional circumstances. Similarly, removing someone's rights to fair use and negating the doctrine of second sale is also generally considered not right. Because of this, second hand book and music stores are possible and even thrive. You know, like Amazon.com;) These issues have been tried in the courts of the USA and other countries and things like photocopying, second sale, etc have been upheld. So now industry is trying to work around the legal system by inventing one of its own where the judge and jury are themselves and the police are bits of DRM code.
Since this is the most common use of DRM when it comes to media, DRM is usually considered to be generally negative. And this is before we even get to looking at secondary effects like making any media non-accessible to those with disabilities as it removes their ability to recode the data into a something they can use.
So while DRM itself is not unethical in my opinion, it's general application today more often than not is. Invent all the possible good uses for it you want, in the real world it's used to limit previously guaranteed rights and to rob the blind, well, blind.
But there's something that trumps all the philosophizing in the world: pragmatism.
Let's get realistic: DRM only works when the user has their freedom removed prior to the DRM being introduced. It's a lot like sucker punching someone when they are expecting it: it's much easier to accomplish this task when you have a couple of friends holding them down. Otherwise they can just step out of your way.
DRM is a freedom removing sucker punch. It's a "sucker punch" because it isn't tied to any mutual interests between the creator and the audience, nor is it done with any consensus outside of the will of the publisher (which may not be the creator). No, instead DRM tries to enforce the will of the publisher by forcefully removing freedoms by implicitly assuming the user can't simply remove the DRM enforcement mechanisms.
What does DRM really protect?
DRM protects a business model that relies on something that no longer is true: that it's prohibitively expensive to copy large volumes of information. Instead of looking at ways to reform the premise of the industry and instead of engaging the consumer market, they are trying to force the world back into the 1800s by making modern technology behave more like antiquated technology. How could the business of publishing be changed to keep up with technology, rather than try and deny it?
DRM also primarily protects the publisher. Not the author and not the consumer. If the author and the publisher were more closely related that would be one thing. Today, they often aren't. This tends to raise people hackles. Publishers need to reexamine their place in the world, or risk taking down not only themselves but also the authors many of them truly wish to promote and help through their creative process. Most disgusting is the use of DRM by publishers on works that are in the public domain.
DRM also protects business interests from the law. By creating their own extralegal means to define the rights of the audience, we are seeing the formation of a dangerous precedent: economic interests playing the role of government. And this is the most extreme problem I see with DRM.
These are just some of the Big Questions with Hard Answers. just ask Lawrence Lessig.
All you have to do (that how my modchip works) is to fool the loader presenting it with the old rom to hash (thus making it load it) and then, after, switch the rom for another one, modded. Once you switch to this second ROM, the environment is yours to do whatever...
Cell phones are not different. My neighbour is a private eye. He has a box (costed him less than US$1000, and is nicely shaped as a briefcase) that you attach to a Siemens A* phone and voila. It uses the phone hardware to make calls, fool the cell phone towers in many different ways, intercept other people's calls etc. If he grabs your phone -- and I've seen him doing it -- it can reflash it with a ROM that, for instance, when you turn off your phone, it just turns off the display and makes a hidden call so he can hear what you're talking around the phone.
You are trolling unstoppingly, and I did not understand why. My point (and a lot of crypto experts will agree with me) is that there is no real DRM because when you can listen to something or watch something, you have the data. As a last resort, you have it in analog form (just connect your DRM-d iPod to your Line-In in the computer), but usually you have it in digital form, too.
Using the police (DMCA) to leverage DRM protection is not an option -- it's the digital version of the Prohibition and of the War on Drugs (those did not work, remember?)
I used the word bollocks because you used it first, but this just set you off into orbit. So, let's try again, friendly:
now, you disassemble the watching gadget, put a tee-junction before the DAC part and you have...... -> decrypt -> write to some port so you can get it into any HD.
voila. no more encryption.
See my point? Unless, of course, your watching gadget is all in ONE IC (cell phones?), but even then you can usually make a software "tee-junction", exploiting security holes in the phone's software, etc.
Your worse pound-me-on-the-arse jail is a five-star hotel compared to our eleven-inmates-in-a-room-without-flowing-water ones.
There is one case that I can remember of a serial killer/rapist called the "Red Light Bandit" (the idiot used a flashlight covered in red celophane to spook his vics), that attacked in the 60's, served his 30 years and got out,... when he got out he was half-crazed, and not in condition to do anyone any harm... Funny as it seems, he was robbed and murdered less than two months after he got out.
In our jails, it's forbidden to kill anyone. The other inmates will kill you if you kill somebody. Our official law may be lax, but our "prision law" is tougher. You can be killed in prision for bragging about your intimate visits, or for staring too hard at someone's sister, daughter, or girlfriend. The inmates stage trials with "attorneys", "prosecutors" and "judges" and they'll execute you in accord to the "prision law".
As I said, we have a great criminal law -- but a lousy (in practice) prision system.
The "monsters", as you call serial killers/rapists, are far less common down here than in the USofA. Rapists have a short life in prision here, too, altough it's common practice for them to be segregated inside the penitentiaries. Pedophiles die normally in less than one year in prision. They are an aberration.
You know, more than 90% of the world's population are not under the weight of USofA's stupíd regulations. We have our own rules, some of us are quite good in following those, and our rules can be relatively sane -- much saner than the DMCA, that is completely insane.
The USofAn gov'ment can be easily *AA-persuaded, but the other countries' are not the same.
The problems with criminalizing attempts to defeat DRM are:
* you criminalize acts that should not be criminalized (reverse engineering for instance)
* you criminalize the possesion or use of tools that increast productivity and security
* you create slippery slope
* it's immoral to defend a business model that is doomed because it's based on selling a high number of ultra-low-cost copies of something for a price not-so-ultra-low
* some countries and their governments realize the last point.
care to elaborate? I am really curious why wouldn't it be fixed or worked-around. Even if it was to create a fix or workaround (you know, some program that lies about stuff to the asking program, so you could run it encompassing the browser's run, etc)
if you don't want to post it on/. you can send it to me in hmassa 'at' gmail...
Please tell me how you'll be able to extract the information from your memorystick when you just reflashed your phone, erasing the cryptographic key needed to decrypt the content.
Who said I need to erase each and any crypto key to reflash my phone? It can be copied before I reflash, and it can be in the new image I reflash to the phone, too... nonsense.
We're back to you being able to run software on your phone, while still being able to access the key. To do that, you probably need to circumvent the cryptographic checks that are in place to see if the software you're trying to run/flash is signed with the correct key.
Now you are making a little bit more of sense. But I can hash the old image, too, and send the old signed hash when software on the other side asks for the signed hash of the flash image of the phone...
So, again. Please tell me the private signing key used for signing Xbox games. That we found bugs in the Microsoft implementation (bunnie found a key travelling in cleartext, myself and Franz found out they used TEA for hashing which it's not good for) only means that that implementation wasn't good enough - a new one might be.
Hey, in public-key crypto, all you have to do to issue another private key and then mod your XBox so you check against the new public key. It's easy, a lot of people do it. And it does not make a bit of difference to what I said.
In the end you'll discover that you need to extract 1s and 0s from a physical chip with LOTS of security in place - security which will cost you a shitload (and I really mean it) of money to build equipment to circumvent.
No, silly, the private key is not there to begin with... you are mixing apples and microsofts:-)... The private key is locked somewhere in the Microsoft HQ, very securely. Public-key crypto is very different than the normal one-key-crypto schemes that DRM normally uses. But, the public key is easily gettable inside the box (obviously, or otherwise, you would not be able to play any game).
If you want to de-DRM some media stuff that -- for instance -- shows only in your XBox, mod it, copy the stuff to the HD, de-DRM it (fooling the DRM to think your XBox is not modded), send it via net to another computer, and voila there you have your supposedly-protected media so you can make it available in FastTrack or wherever.
So, my point stands. There is no DRM. You can enforce DRM, as mrchaotica said, if you have a 1984-like police state. I.e., it's really difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Down here (Brasil), they make you drive on the city streets in the rush hour, stop near the curb, make a 30-m reverse, parallel parking, and automatic cars are prohibited during the exam.
The problem with monarchies and removing them is: they theoretically own the assets that form the basis for the State to work (their salaries/alimonies/allowances are, therefore, kind of a "rent" payment that the people pays to use that which belong to the Crown). :-)
When you rattle this cage too hard, you rattle the foundations to the real estate market, too: the right to own a State is very close to the (also hereditary) right to own a house. It's not simple to do without a very radical institutional breakage.
And, to make it worse, there are cases where the Crown helps the democratic process (Spain is a good example), and estabilizes the government.
and I wouldn't flame you anyway, my post, beginning with the words "my take", was exactly stating my personal opinion. And, besides, I agree with you that the best moments of Sci-fi is when the writer does not take it too seriously.
Unfortunately, up until the Net age, living in the biggest USofAn colony (BR), I didn't have a lot of access to Brit Sci-fi. Can you refer me to some DC hub or BT site where I can find, for instance, DrWho, Bl7, RedDwarf eps?
it's all about panis et circencis...
1. DS9 > TOS > TNG > VOY > ENTs3 > ENTs1 > ENTs2
2. ENTs4 > DS9
3. ENTs4 =~ BSGs1
I just watched the last episode today, and I'm loving it. All 15 episodes are great.
For ready-to-consume solutions, look up AdZap and others in google.
This, for instance, can help.
HTH
In one of the best Brazilian Trek sites (Trek Brasilis) many people often mention "why don't ... ever use the bathroom?".
And I think it's a stupid question, it would be dead time and must be done only if it has a good conection to the rythm of the scene. And it's false. The bathrooms in the Enterprise-D (TNG) quarters are shown often (normally with Berverly or Deanna coming out of it and brushing their hair), in ENT the artificial gravity fails while Archer is taking a shower, Hoshi is shown doing the 22th century equivalent of brushing her teeth in the "catwalk", besides the other examples already mentioned.
Don't do this to me. Is Commander Adama gay? Or were you referring to President Laura Roslin?
this time, the title is different. What makes me really pissed off is when they publish a dupe with the same title and the same blurb.
Here in Brasil, Caller One pays for his airtime (unless he's calling from a fixed phone) AND for Caller Two's airtime. There are regulations here that prevent you for paying to receive calls.
And they sell mpeg4 movies/tv shows for US$ 3 or less/hour then I would buy one.
Down here we have 4-5 companies that offer dial-up access without costs, and than charge for support (if you use it), web acceleration (use of an specialized proxy that crunches jpegs etc), wideband access, and other stuff. In the case of 0-cost access, the phone companies pay them part of the calls (normally local).
exp-time-complete: the time to solve one particular problem for an input of size N is no less than O(2^N) time units.
exp-space-complete: you can solve one particular problem in less then O(2^N) if you calculate all the solutions and try to keep all the O(2^N) results around, wasting an enormous amount of storage.
lots of black-hat and spyware developers seem to love ActiveX ... :-)
If you are not advocating DRM, then you are really naive. My credentials: I have a hacked XBox running Linux, a hacked Nokia 6820 phone with stealth "spy microphone" mode, and an actual metric ton of equipment I amassed in the last 10 years in the field of network and gadgets' security. I think I can hack everything that is in my hands and that is mine to hack. I don't rent or let phone companies lend me phones -- I buy them so I can hack them (first buy doctrine is part of our consumers' law, too).
... in the XBox, in a cell phone, and in any commercialized gadget. Simple as that.
As a lot of bomb defusers would tell you, even things engineered to explode when tinkered with can be hacked, if you try it "the right way" (disclaimer: I actually know three bomb experts).
And to complete: you admit in one of your posts that you could exploit some bugs in the XBox and then you say that "it was luck those bugs were there or something." I am just arguing that it wasn't luck, it's a high probability that bugs will crop, enough people tinkering will find them
But to be sincere, since you are bugging and trolling me without dropping, I became decided to have the last word, and to enjoy myself in the process.
Is DRM ethical?
;) These issues have been tried in the courts of the USA and other countries and things like photocopying, second sale, etc have been upheld. So now industry is trying to work around the legal system by inventing one of its own where the judge and jury are themselves and the police are bits of DRM code.
It is often within the rights of and ethical for authors and publishers to restrict freedoms. Even the GPL, poster child of the Free Software licenses, relies on restrictions enacted through copyrights and license to guarantee certain things can not be done. So simply saying DRM restricts freedoms does not mean it's unethical or somehow inately wrong.
But restricting certain types of freedoms is. for instance, it is generally considered unethical to restrict some one else's freedom of speach outside of certain exceptional circumstances. Similarly, removing someone's rights to fair use and negating the doctrine of second sale is also generally considered not right. Because of this, second hand book and music stores are possible and even thrive. You know, like Amazon.com
Since this is the most common use of DRM when it comes to media, DRM is usually considered to be generally negative. And this is before we even get to looking at secondary effects like making any media non-accessible to those with disabilities as it removes their ability to recode the data into a something they can use.
So while DRM itself is not unethical in my opinion, it's general application today more often than not is. Invent all the possible good uses for it you want, in the real world it's used to limit previously guaranteed rights and to rob the blind, well, blind.
But there's something that trumps all the philosophizing in the world: pragmatism.
Let's get realistic: DRM only works when the user has their freedom removed prior to the DRM being introduced. It's a lot like sucker punching someone when they are expecting it: it's much easier to accomplish this task when you have a couple of friends holding them down. Otherwise they can just step out of your way.
DRM is a freedom removing sucker punch. It's a "sucker punch" because it isn't tied to any mutual interests between the creator and the audience, nor is it done with any consensus outside of the will of the publisher (which may not be the creator). No, instead DRM tries to enforce the will of the publisher by forcefully removing freedoms by implicitly assuming the user can't simply remove the DRM enforcement mechanisms.
What does DRM really protect?
DRM protects a business model that relies on something that no longer is true: that it's prohibitively expensive to copy large volumes of information. Instead of looking at ways to reform the premise of the industry and instead of engaging the consumer market, they are trying to force the world back into the 1800s by making modern technology behave more like antiquated technology. How could the business of publishing be changed to keep up with technology, rather than try and deny it?
DRM also primarily protects the publisher. Not the author and not the consumer. If the author and the publisher were more closely related that would be one thing. Today, they often aren't. This tends to raise people hackles. Publishers need to reexamine their place in the world, or risk taking down not only themselves but also the authors many of them truly wish to promote and help through their creative process. Most disgusting is the use of DRM by publishers on works that are in the public domain.
DRM also protects business interests from the law. By creating their own extralegal means to define the rights of the audience, we are seeing the formation of a dangerous precedent: economic interests playing the role of government. And this is the most extreme problem I see with DRM.
These are just some of the Big Questions with Hard Answers. just ask Lawrence Lessig.
Every single one of them?e ?
Cigarretes?
Cigars?
Tequila?
Beer?
Win
Wine-cooler drinks?
Coffee?
Cola?
Chocolate?
Viagra?
In the light of your other post (where you say you work for the cell industry etc) I am relieved and glad that you are so naive.
Go Bears!
All you have to do (that how my modchip works) is to fool the loader presenting it with the old rom to hash (thus making it load it) and then, after, switch the rom for another one, modded. Once you switch to this second ROM, the environment is yours to do whatever...
... -> decrypt -> write to some port so you can get it into any HD.
Cell phones are not different. My neighbour is a private eye. He has a box (costed him less than US$1000, and is nicely shaped as a briefcase) that you attach to a Siemens A* phone and voila. It uses the phone hardware to make calls, fool the cell phone towers in many different ways, intercept other people's calls etc. If he grabs your phone -- and I've seen him doing it -- it can reflash it with a ROM that, for instance, when you turn off your phone, it just turns off the display and makes a hidden call so he can hear what you're talking around the phone.
You are trolling unstoppingly, and I did not understand why. My point (and a lot of crypto experts will agree with me) is that there is no real DRM because when you can listen to something or watch something, you have the data. As a last resort, you have it in analog form (just connect your DRM-d iPod to your Line-In in the computer), but usually you have it in digital form, too.
Using the police (DMCA) to leverage DRM protection is not an option -- it's the digital version of the Prohibition and of the War on Drugs (those did not work, remember?)
I used the word bollocks because you used it first, but this just set you off into orbit. So, let's try again, friendly:
Hey, there is no DRM.
Let's try to implement DRM with cryptography:
film -> ADC -> file -> encrypt -> send -> decrypt -> DAC -> watch
now, you disassemble the watching gadget, put a tee-junction before the DAC part and you have...
voila. no more encryption.
See my point? Unless, of course, your watching gadget is all in ONE IC (cell phones?), but even then you can usually make a software "tee-junction", exploiting security holes in the phone's software, etc.
And I have read a lot of crypto books, thank you.
Your worse pound-me-on-the-arse jail is a five-star hotel compared to our eleven-inmates-in-a-room-without-flowing-water ones.
... when he got out he was half-crazed, and not in condition to do anyone any harm... Funny as it seems, he was robbed and murdered less than two months after he got out.
There is one case that I can remember of a serial killer/rapist called the "Red Light Bandit" (the idiot used a flashlight covered in red celophane to spook his vics), that attacked in the 60's, served his 30 years and got out,
In our jails, it's forbidden to kill anyone. The other inmates will kill you if you kill somebody. Our official law may be lax, but our "prision law" is tougher. You can be killed in prision for bragging about your intimate visits, or for staring too hard at someone's sister, daughter, or girlfriend. The inmates stage trials with "attorneys", "prosecutors" and "judges" and they'll execute you in accord to the "prision law".
As I said, we have a great criminal law -- but a lousy (in practice) prision system.
The "monsters", as you call serial killers/rapists, are far less common down here than in the USofA. Rapists have a short life in prision here, too, altough it's common practice for them to be segregated inside the penitentiaries. Pedophiles die normally in less than one year in prision. They are an aberration.
* yes, I can extract the keys, yes I can run code on my phone before I de-flash the original flash. and you can run code in a lot of new phones.
* as the other answer to your post noted, you can run in modded x-boxen
ah... you're trolling... sorry everybody, nothing to see here.
You know, more than 90% of the world's population are not under the weight of USofA's stupíd regulations. We have our own rules, some of us are quite good in following those, and our rules can be relatively sane -- much saner than the DMCA, that is completely insane.
The USofAn gov'ment can be easily *AA-persuaded, but the other countries' are not the same.
The problems with criminalizing attempts to defeat DRM are:
* you criminalize acts that should not be criminalized (reverse engineering for instance)
* you criminalize the possesion or use of tools that increast productivity and security
* you create slippery slope
* it's immoral to defend a business model that is doomed because it's based on selling a high number of ultra-low-cost copies of something for a price not-so-ultra-low
* some countries and their governments realize the last point.
care to elaborate? I am really curious why wouldn't it be fixed or worked-around. Even if it was to create a fix or workaround (you know, some program that lies about stuff to the asking program, so you could run it encompassing the browser's run, etc)
/. you can send it to me in hmassa 'at' gmail...
if you don't want to post it on
Please tell me how you'll be able to extract the information from your memorystick when you just reflashed your phone, erasing the cryptographic key needed to decrypt the content.
:-) ... The private key is locked somewhere in the Microsoft HQ, very securely. Public-key crypto is very different than the normal one-key-crypto schemes that DRM normally uses. But, the public key is easily gettable inside the box (obviously, or otherwise, you would not be able to play any game).
Who said I need to erase each and any crypto key to reflash my phone? It can be copied before I reflash, and it can be in the new image I reflash to the phone, too... nonsense.
We're back to you being able to run software on your phone, while still being able to access the key. To do that, you probably need to circumvent the cryptographic checks that are in place to see if the software you're trying to run/flash is signed with the correct key.
Now you are making a little bit more of sense. But I can hash the old image, too, and send the old signed hash when software on the other side asks for the signed hash of the flash image of the phone...
So, again. Please tell me the private signing key used for signing Xbox games. That we found bugs in the Microsoft implementation (bunnie found a key travelling in cleartext, myself and Franz found out they used TEA for hashing which it's not good for) only means that that implementation wasn't good enough - a new one might be.
Hey, in public-key crypto, all you have to do to issue another private key and then mod your XBox so you check against the new public key. It's easy, a lot of people do it. And it does not make a bit of difference to what I said.
In the end you'll discover that you need to extract 1s and 0s from a physical chip with LOTS of security in place - security which will cost you a shitload (and I really mean it) of money to build equipment to circumvent.
No, silly, the private key is not there to begin with... you are mixing apples and microsofts
If you want to de-DRM some media stuff that -- for instance -- shows only in your XBox, mod it, copy the stuff to the HD, de-DRM it (fooling the DRM to think your XBox is not modded), send it via net to another computer, and voila there you have your supposedly-protected media so you can make it available in FastTrack or wherever.
So, my point stands. There is no DRM. You can enforce DRM, as mrchaotica said, if you have a 1984-like police state. I.e., it's really difficult.
It'll be funny if he sues and wins. ... not U.S...