From the article, it appears that the device stores the "private" key in RAM (ROM? Would make more sense for reboots...), and if a physical intrusion is detected, it zeroes all of its memory, thus destroying the key. The whole machine is not "secure", but the part that is performing crypto operations is. It is very doubtful that anyone could ever get your private key from this device.
So this new hardware will allow for the protection of intellectual property, which in turn will allow for cesorship and government control over the internet. This doesn't sound like good news to me.
Jesus H. Christ on a freakin' popsicle stick, man! I am really tired of people who immediately blow up when they hear the phrase "intellectual property". Yes, there have been some stupid patents approved by the US Patent Office. Yes, companies have been crying "protect intellectual property" whenever someone comes up with a way to view/edit/manipulate "protected" data. Does this mean that intellectual property is bad? No.
All this means is that some intellectual property laws need overhauling, and the Patent Office needs a swift kick in the ass. I bet that if you invented something that could conceivably make you a lot of money, you wouldn't want every Joe Schmoe making a cheap knock-off of it and selling it for 1/4 the price you could have charged. Someone will always lose; TANSTAAFL. Either the inventors lose, and there's no more innovation, or the consumers pay a bit more and support people who are inventing and making our world better.
Umm... how did this get modded as insightful? Someone should get a serious smackdown in metamod.
Re:What does this have to do with innovation?
on
The End of Innovation?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
the constraints that we're looking at here are primarily on reverse engineering, which has never really struck me as being an integral part of innovation...
I agree with most of your statement, but I have to take exception with this comment. While reverse engineering may not be necessary to innovate, it is often necessary in order to compete. If you cannot compete, then you have no resources with which to innovate. These issues are all tied together, and to destroy any one of these facets is to damage the whole.
I usually create my PDF files using pdflatex. With this, I can also generate dvi and PostScript files at the same time. If someone can't read one of those formats, then they're brain dead.
So I guess Dolby will politely ask JVC to recall my DVD player and pull the AC3 decoder out of it since the ability to decode AC3 streams exists in there?
While I don't agree with Dolby, there is a difference here. JVC most likely had to license the AC3 technology from Dolby, while the ac3dec package implemented the decoding without a license. This is utter b*llshit, but unfortunately it's the way things are right now...
I agree with most of what you say; however, I think many companies' time would be better spent trying to improve the bottlenecks that already occur in every-day usage (Disk, memory, bus, etc.). This would have a much more tangible impact that pumping up the processor speed. Most processors are already crippled due to the lack of a memory bus that can keep up with them, along with disk I/O. It's disappointing to see these MHz wars continue while the real performance issues receive short shrift.
Most of you probably think 90% is good, but think of it this way: 1 out of every 10 times you try and click on something, or double click something, or open a file, whatever, it fails. Every 10th Word file fails.
Yet again, another Slashbot posts on a topic about which he appears to have no knowledge whatsoever. This analogy is by far one of the worst I have ever seen. Do you even know what branch prediction is? Yes, 90% may not be great, but it's certainly not the huge problem that you make it out to be. There are many other architectural factors that come into play here.
Personally, I don't agree with the Brute Force methodology by Intel; I prefer simpler, cleaner and more elegant solutions. It is difficult to deny, however, that the brute force method has worked so far. Yes, yes, I know that the "x86 suxx0rs" crowd is now going to come out of the woodwork. Let me just say this: It may not be the best architecture, and it may be kludged for backwards compatability, but... it works, and it's cheap. With any luck, the 64-bit processors will be able to buck the trend of backwards compatability (has anyone heard anything about this with regards to Itanium and/or AMD's 64-bit chip?).
The remaining 1% are "corporate" sites such as notes.net that for some odd reason think that you need javascript to implement a plain hyperlink.
Unfortunately, I believe this is tied to the way that Lotus Notes is implemented. If you hadn't noticed, notes.net is actually a Notes DB being served up on the web via a Domino server. Notes uses Javascript for all web-based events when doing this. I'm guessing it has something to do with maintaining internal/external compatability. To be honest, I've only done internal databases that are meant to be used with the Notes client, so my knowledge here is a bit fuzzy at best.
be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows anything about logic gates any more. I'd be willing to bet there's hardly a person here who can even draw the schematic for a shift register. The soul has gone out of the machine, it lays now as a mere carcass of it's former splendor.
Actually, I'm finishing up my BS in CS, and we were required to take several logic courses. We ended having this old-school professor who made us do all sorts of number conversions in our heads. He also made us learn the logic for many different registers, including a shift register:)
So there's at least one person here who could draw it, and I'm willing to be there are others. Just because there are a decent number of MS Visual Basic "programmers" out there doesn't mean that the real kind have vanished.
Remember, if you oppose the DMCA, then you really need to let your congressman/senator know about it! Here is a letter that I just sent to a senator from my State who chairs the Judiciary committee.
Senator Leahy,
I am writing today to raise my voice in protest against the unfortunate arrest and subsequent jailing of a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov. I have no doubts that you have at least heard of this issue. For the moment, let us ignore the unconstitutional nature of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (the law the Mr. Sklyarov has been accused of violating). The "violation" was the writing of a piece of software that removes the encryption from an Adobe E-book. Should this be illegal? Probably not. Is it? Yes. However, the crime occurred in the Soviet Union, not in the United States. I feel that I should add that the inability to back up an E-Book is actually a crime in the Soviet Union, and Sklyarov created software that circumvented this. I shudder to think what would happen if every citizen of the Unites States could be arrested in a foreign country for doing something considered perfectly legal in the U.S.
This sad case only underscores something that is very wrong with our country today; under the DMCA, a programmer can be arrested for simply writing a piece of software. This software does not have to be used illegally; simply the fact that it can be used illegally is enough to incriminate someone. If one applies this logic to other areas of the world, it is easy to see that this idea is patently ridiculous. A hunting rifle is not illegal because it could be used to commit a homicide. A locksmith's tools are not illegal because they could conceivably be used to break into somebody's home. Thus, I would argue that a piece of software should not be considered illegal based on only one possible use. Fair use rights are being overturned in order to give corporations far more control than copyright should allow. The fact is, these corporations are able to pay lobbyists and make large campaign contributions, while the average citizen, whose rights are being trampled upon, does not have the resources to defend himself. I strongly urge you to look at this inherently flawed piece of legislation, and join with the few other sane souls in the Senate who have finally seen the law for what it truly is.
As a life-long Vermonter and a constituent, a reply would be greatly valued. You most likely do not recall, but we have met several times in Washington years ago during a "Model Congress" outing from Vermont. At the time, I was impressed by your technical knowledge and awareness of issues surrounding the rapid growth of technology. I hope that the years have not changed this.
All they need is to strike some sort of deal with Cisco and voila, 10 years from now we end up with exactly what this guys was asking for.
I am not saying it is right or wrong, but it IS possible.
I think that any company that tried this would receive such a backlash from the technical sector that it would never go through. They would have to replace a LOT of infrastructure, and they would need our help to do it.
"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network."
You're fscking kidding me, right? First of all, I can't believe that this guy can say that with a straight face. Why is the Internet expected to comply with "basic economic laws"? Nobody is twisting a business' arm and forcing them to do business on the damn Internet. If they try and fail, then obviously it's not their fault, it's the underlying technology that's to blame. This is a pathetic and whiny excuse. Yes, the original infrastructure wasn't designed to handle the load that the 'net has today, but the 'net of today isn't the same as the AARPNET of yesterday.
By adding "intelligent" switches and other devices, they believe, the system could work faster, avoid traffic jams, distinguish between high-priority data and other material that can wait, and generally live up to its promise as a worldwide communications and entertainment medium.
By saying this, they basically mean "We want hardware that gives our data priority!" Well, guess what, schmuck. This is one medium that you're going to have one hell of a time controlling. If QoS is that important to you, design and implement your own private ATM network.
Heh, it would be nice... if you think about it, though, I think that traffic congestion would quickly become the same problem. After all, it would probably be necessary to delineate "sky lanes" for traffick, since you can't just have everybody up there drivin' around free. Thus, eventually, the sky traffic would be just as bad as the ground-based traffic.
One thing that is cool is that you would have three dimensional freedom of movement, so you could be an asshole and weave over and under people instead of just side-to-side. Also on the plus side, you could have live-action games of Descent...
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Re:Developers Have a Louder Voice than Speech
on
Still in DMCA Prison
·
· Score: 1
I completely agree with this. I would be willing to take part in a nation-wide technology workers strike if that's what it takes to return some sanity to this country. The question is, who will step up to the plate and make it a reality? Will people be willing to risk jobs for this? If enough of us actually got together and made this work, it would be incredible.
The G3/G4 processors have a much smaller power consumption than the PIII/P4 or Athlon/Duron cores. I believe that the G4 cube at one point was sold without any fans at all. Thus, I would guess that this would be much quieter than your current system.
Hmm... thanks for the interesting link. It looks like the it's definitely possible to have SCSI, but I'm still not sure that this is included in the $75 package described in the article.
One thing I noticed is that the SCSI interface is multiplexed on the same pins as EIDE/Parallel and serial ports, so it looks like you cannot have all of those capabilities in the same chip.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... is it just me, or was this story already posted a few days ago? I seem to remember reading it on /.
Amen! Somebody mod this up...
Same here... it looks fine to me as well. What is supposed to be screwed up on that page?
From the article, it appears that the device stores the "private" key in RAM (ROM? Would make more sense for reboots...), and if a physical intrusion is detected, it zeroes all of its memory, thus destroying the key. The whole machine is not "secure", but the part that is performing crypto operations is. It is very doubtful that anyone could ever get your private key from this device.
Jesus H. Christ on a freakin' popsicle stick, man! I am really tired of people who immediately blow up when they hear the phrase "intellectual property". Yes, there have been some stupid patents approved by the US Patent Office. Yes, companies have been crying "protect intellectual property" whenever someone comes up with a way to view/edit/manipulate "protected" data. Does this mean that intellectual property is bad? No.
All this means is that some intellectual property laws need overhauling, and the Patent Office needs a swift kick in the ass. I bet that if you invented something that could conceivably make you a lot of money, you wouldn't want every Joe Schmoe making a cheap knock-off of it and selling it for 1/4 the price you could have charged. Someone will always lose; TANSTAAFL. Either the inventors lose, and there's no more innovation, or the consumers pay a bit more and support people who are inventing and making our world better.
Umm... how did this get modded as insightful? Someone should get a serious smackdown in metamod.
I usually create my PDF files using pdflatex. With this, I can also generate dvi and PostScript files at the same time. If someone can't read one of those formats, then they're brain dead.
I agree with most of what you say; however, I think many companies' time would be better spent trying to improve the bottlenecks that already occur in every-day usage (Disk, memory, bus, etc.). This would have a much more tangible impact that pumping up the processor speed. Most processors are already crippled due to the lack of a memory bus that can keep up with them, along with disk I/O. It's disappointing to see these MHz wars continue while the real performance issues receive short shrift.
Personally, I don't agree with the Brute Force methodology by Intel; I prefer simpler, cleaner and more elegant solutions. It is difficult to deny, however, that the brute force method has worked so far. Yes, yes, I know that the "x86 suxx0rs" crowd is now going to come out of the woodwork. Let me just say this: It may not be the best architecture, and it may be kludged for backwards compatability, but... it works, and it's cheap. With any luck, the 64-bit processors will be able to buck the trend of backwards compatability (has anyone heard anything about this with regards to Itanium and/or AMD's 64-bit chip?).
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So there's at least one person here who could draw it, and I'm willing to be there are others. Just because there are a decent number of MS Visual Basic "programmers" out there doesn't mean that the real kind have vanished.
Remember, if you oppose the DMCA, then you really need to let your congressman/senator know about it! Here is a letter that I just sent to a senator from my State who chairs the Judiciary committee.
Senator Leahy,
I am writing today to raise my voice in protest against the unfortunate arrest and subsequent jailing of a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov. I have no doubts that you have at least heard of this issue. For the moment, let us ignore the unconstitutional nature of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (the law the Mr. Sklyarov has been accused of violating). The "violation" was the writing of a piece of software that removes the encryption from an Adobe E-book. Should this be illegal? Probably not. Is it? Yes. However, the crime occurred in the Soviet Union, not in the United States. I feel that I should add that the inability to back up an E-Book is actually a crime in the Soviet Union, and Sklyarov created software that circumvented this. I shudder to think what would happen if every citizen of the Unites States could be arrested in a foreign country for doing something considered perfectly legal in the U.S.
This sad case only underscores something that is very wrong with our country today; under the DMCA, a programmer can be arrested for simply writing a piece of software. This software does not have to be used illegally; simply the fact that it can be used illegally is enough to incriminate someone. If one applies this logic to other areas of the world, it is easy to see that this idea is patently ridiculous. A hunting rifle is not illegal because it could be used to commit a homicide. A locksmith's tools are not illegal because they could conceivably be used to break into somebody's home. Thus, I would argue that a piece of software should not be considered illegal based on only one possible use. Fair use rights are being overturned in order to give corporations far more control than copyright should allow. The fact is, these corporations are able to pay lobbyists and make large campaign contributions, while the average citizen, whose rights are being trampled upon, does not have the resources to defend himself. I strongly urge you to look at this inherently flawed piece of legislation, and join with the few other sane souls in the Senate who have finally seen the law for what it truly is.
As a life-long Vermonter and a constituent, a reply would be greatly valued. You most likely do not recall, but we have met several times in Washington years ago during a "Model Congress" outing from Vermont. At the time, I was impressed by your technical knowledge and awareness of issues surrounding the rapid growth of technology. I hope that the years have not changed this.
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Wasn't the first ARPANET connection between UC Berkeley and somewhere on the east coast via phone lines? Or am I thinking of something else...
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Heh, it would be nice... if you think about it, though, I think that traffic congestion would quickly become the same problem. After all, it would probably be necessary to delineate "sky lanes" for traffick, since you can't just have everybody up there drivin' around free. Thus, eventually, the sky traffic would be just as bad as the ground-based traffic.
One thing that is cool is that you would have three dimensional freedom of movement, so you could be an asshole and weave over and under people instead of just side-to-side. Also on the plus side, you could have live-action games of Descent...
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I completely agree with this. I would be willing to take part in a nation-wide technology workers strike if that's what it takes to return some sanity to this country. The question is, who will step up to the plate and make it a reality? Will people be willing to risk jobs for this? If enough of us actually got together and made this work, it would be incredible.
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No, I think that was just Pitr from UserFriendly testing his new missile guidance system.
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The G3/G4 processors have a much smaller power consumption than the PIII/P4 or Athlon/Duron cores. I believe that the G4 cube at one point was sold without any fans at all. Thus, I would guess that this would be much quieter than your current system.
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Hmm... thanks for the interesting link. It looks like the it's definitely possible to have SCSI, but I'm still not sure that this is included in the $75 package described in the article.
One thing I noticed is that the SCSI interface is multiplexed on the same pins as EIDE/Parallel and serial ports, so it looks like you cannot have all of those capabilities in the same chip.
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