The power consumption of SRAM is actually increasing to the point where it doesn't offer any real benefits over DRAM. The problem arises from smaller transistors with greater leakage current.
Note that both IBM and Intel have recently announced new processes that provide reduced leakage currents.
Revoking hardware player keys is a lot easier and less of a hassle, because hardware players have essentially individual keys.
(a) I'm willing to bet that there's a manufacturer out there lazy enough to give the same key to each player. (b) I don't see any mention of a contract being associated with ownership of an HDDVD player that grants permission to some authority to disable it. Therefore, if my player is disabled, will they be offering to replace it? Or will I have to sue them?
Don't know about the book payment side. I hope to find out first hand at some point
I'm informed their book payments are pretty similar to most: c. $5-10,000 advance, with ~6% royalties. I understand the royalties on e-books are higher, but don't have a figure. This is from one of their authors who often uses a chatroom I also frequent.
One key thing to take away from this is that the authors of the software made it really easy to pull the device keys out of memory for two reasons
1. They kept them in variables that were physically near the variables for the volume key
2. They zero-ed them out after use, leaving big gaping holes of zeros in memory in a place where that kind of looked funny, drawing attention to those areas
Yes, but even if they learn from these mistakes in future versions, we still have the keys for these early discs. When the player is loaded up with an early disc, the known key will be loaded. We can simply trace the execution until we find bytes from those keys loaded into registers. At worst, this will give us a small number of candidate keys to try until we find the right one. At best, it'll lead us straight to the key wherever they put it.
If they are smart (and if the MPAA even give them another chance), the powerdvd/windvd authors will reimplement their AACS decryption code to never store the keys in memory. Without double-checking, I believe the keys are only 128 bits, they could be loaded into the SSE registers in encrypted form and then decrypted on chip. The authors will still need to take measures to prevent an OS context switch from storing the registers in kernel-private memory during the period in which the device keys are present, but that is not an extended period of time, presumably they can kick their priority up high enough that it won't happen without hurting the system much.
Even that approach isn't hack-proof, but it is a lot harder to dump the cpu registers under such conditions than it is to trace memory accesses.
Not really. You just run as an administrator and use GetThreadContext. A user process *can't* prevent an OS context switch from occurring. You use SetThreadContext to put the CPU into single step mode, and catch the exceptions caused by that in your process using WaitForDebugEvent. See here for details.
Apple could license that from the CSS consortium instead of reverse engineering it. The DMCA has nothing to do with why you can't rip DVDs in iTunes.
They can license whatever the hell they like, they still can't legally distribute a tool that enables users to bypass an effective copy-prevention measure.
It's merely a matter of making it hard enough to stop most attacks. By the time you're sniffing on-chip signals with RF, you're way past "most".
As soon as somebody has a working mechanism to break TPM security, the game's over. What happens then is that software is implemented that pretends to be a computer with a TPM module, but lets the user see the internal state (i.e. get hold of the keys necessary to decrypt stuff). You hack a real TPM module, then you sell a few hundred consumers software with the keys for that module. They buy DRM-protected media and can immediately unencrypt them. Repeat ad infinitum. After not particularly many iterations TPM-based DRM vendors will stop trying to track the compromised keys and this scheme will be permanently and effectively broken.
Further to your point: the essay completely fails to take into account that the lists of featured/good articles aren't really kept particularly up to date. Many of the articles that aren't on these lists are in fact excellent articles nonetheless. Picking one that I know something about from the list of important articles cited, I come to Novel. This is an excellent article, IMO. It goes into the history of the novel in incredible depth, and covers all the most important aspects. It has links to hundreds of relevant articles to find out more information about these aspects. It is, at least on the face of it, accurate and well referenced. It is clearly written and interesting. Perhaps it doesn't cover the modern novel particularly well: it merely directs readers to one a few other pages for information concerning the modern forms. There is nothing seriously wrong with this article. Yet it isn't listed as a "good article". I'm sure a lot of other articles are the same.
Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present.
If that's the case, your software is badly designed. Have you considered having a static HTML version of the most up-to-date version of each page spat out whenever it is modified, and just directing read traffic at that static cached copy? That way, readers shouldn't use up any more resources than readers visiting any static site. I understand that's how most dynamic sites aimed at large numbers of visitors work (e.g. slashdot).
RTFA. The cores have onboard RAM. There isn't an FSB, only a network between cores. They're working on a 3D interconnect to stack memory on top of the cores (i.e., 80 FSBs -- or perhaps TSBs).
Seriously, though, I have been wondering about this. With a design where each core connects only to its neighbours, surely a square array (i.e. either 64 or 128 cores) makes much more sense than the rectangular 8x10 array that this chip appears to be based on. Anyone?
Firstly, as addressed elsewhere, this chip can do 1.8 TFlop, and can run at 65W, but not both at the same time. At full speed it uses a lot more power.
Well, when you sign up to be an AdSense "partner" it does tell you that they will review your site's content to make sure that it will be acceptable for their ads. They won't allow you to be a porn site, etc, etc, etc.
So, if they are doing that, then they should be able to block anything else that they might not want to have their ads displayed on.
Just because their T&C says they *can* do it, doesn't mean they actually *will*. This is like your ISP says they can block your account for doing anything illegal with it -- 99% of the time they don't notice so don't do anything, but they need the term in place so that on the occasion they do notice something's wrong with what you're doing they can do something about it.
There has to be some exception to this, otherwise you could abuse the food industry and transportation wicked bad.
"Thanks for the cab ride, i didn't like the service, I'm not paying!"
Yes, the exception is that if you're buying goods you have to return them (so food that has been eaten is right out) and if you're buying a service it has to be cancelled before it's performed. Quite simple, really.
I don't know if it's based on a EU directive, but in the Netherlands, you can return any online purchase within 7 working days, no need to give a reason, and get your money back. Shipping costs are yours, but that's all.
It is an EU law, yes, the Distance Selling Regulations. The UK has interpreted it to require refund of delivery charges as well, and has ordered (at least) Amazon to refund postage when consumers return stuff they've purchased from them.
There are exceptions to this rule (like things made to order on your specs, or opened CD cases).
As I understand it, the issue here is the "unsealed audio recording" exception hasn't been universally applied, and the EU are considering "harmonising" it out of existence...
According to UK law, the iTunes store is required to accept returns within 28 days of sale with no reason given (as is any other retail establishment), although I don't believe that anyone has attempted to force them to do so yet.
Which law? The Distance Selling Regulations have a specific exception for audio recordings. I'm not aware of any other law that gives an unconditional right to return goods.
One side-effect of this might be that you couldn't return music CDs, since they can be freely copied.
This is, in fact, currently the case. EU law on returning goods requires you to be able to return anything purchased remotely for any reason, with a list of exceptions. One of those exceptions is audio and video recordings that aren't (still) in a sealed container.
This is funny, because some of those EU countries are also demanding that the music be un-DRM'd
Uh... no, (AFAIK) they're not. They are demanding that DRM be open in such a way that any music player vendor could implement any DRM protocol that is used to protect content sold by any online music store that happens to have a near monopoly on sales of music downloads. But that's subtly different.
Usually you can only return an opened product if it is faulty.
I suggest you read up on EU law before making statements like that. TFA states "consumers in some European countries have the right to return items with no questions asked for a specified time period after purchase." This is incorrect. This applies to all EU countries, although there are exceptions for various types of product.
The Distance Selling Regulations allow a consumer to return goods they have bought from a vendor via mail/Internet order for any reason as long as they make arrangements to do so within 7 days of delivery. The only current exemption regarding "opened" products is "(d) for the supply of audio or video recordings or computer software if they are unsealed by the consumer". They are also considering removing this exemption, putting all digital media on a par with other products where the consumer is allowed to open the packaging to examine what they have purchased before deciding whether or not to keep it.
back on topic, this is a good thing, just because I buy something online doesn't mean I should have lees consumer protection than if I buy it physically.
It's worth noting that the aspects of the current Distance Selling Regulations that allow you to arbitrarily return stuff you've bought over the Internet don't apply to digital content on "unsealed" physical media either; it's assumed that because they're easy to copy, the consumer could have copied them and then returned the originals.
But: it may be 8 core, but it lacks out-of-order execution, and each core can't perform at full speed without 4 threads, so it's not much better in terms of performance than a 32-core processor running at a quarter of its speed. This isn't bad for some workloads, but for others it's a nightmare.
If Jobs hates DRM so much, and if iTMS really does "just barely break even" as mac users like to claim, then why not just drop the major labels and go with eMusic's indie-only model?
Because they'd lose the market share that less them sell 5 times as many downloads as their nearest competitor, and drives the sale of iPods, which is where they make their real profit. Besides, they made $452 million in the last quarter due to iTMS. iPod sales (of which they'd lose about half if they stopped selling popular music through iTMS, I reckon) made them $1,559 million.
First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing.
Not really. The university owns it. The university employs both the professor and the IT services people, so both are representatives of the university and therfore have roughly equal rights to university resources.
But: IT services exist, in a university, in order to provide services to staff and students. Not the other way around. It isn't up to them to regulate what is done with the network, but merely to enforce the university's decisions about what should be done with it. It sounds as though the university's decisions in this matter (the policy that the professor helped write) isn't clear, so if IT services really want to stop this behaviour, they should seek clarification from somebody who has more authority.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again I see the rather bizarre nothing of higher demand reducing the price - the opposite to what economists tell us should happen.
Only in cases where supply is constrained. If supply is not constrained, higher demand enables higher economies of scale. This is EC101 stuff.
The power consumption of SRAM is actually increasing to the point where it doesn't offer any real benefits over DRAM. The problem arises from smaller transistors with greater leakage current.
Note that both IBM and Intel have recently announced new processes that provide reduced leakage currents.
Revoking hardware player keys is a lot easier and less of a hassle, because hardware players have essentially individual keys.
(a) I'm willing to bet that there's a manufacturer out there lazy enough to give the same key to each player.
(b) I don't see any mention of a contract being associated with ownership of an HDDVD player that grants permission to some authority to disable it. Therefore, if my player is disabled, will they be offering to replace it? Or will I have to sue them?
Don't know about the book payment side. I hope to find out first hand at some point
I'm informed their book payments are pretty similar to most: c. $5-10,000 advance, with ~6% royalties. I understand the royalties on e-books are higher, but don't have a figure. This is from one of their authors who often uses a chatroom I also frequent.
One key thing to take away from this is that the authors of the software made it really easy to pull the device keys out of memory for two reasons
1. They kept them in variables that were physically near the variables for the volume key
2. They zero-ed them out after use, leaving big gaping holes of zeros in memory in a place where that kind of looked funny, drawing attention to those areas
Yes, but even if they learn from these mistakes in future versions, we still have the keys for these early discs. When the player is loaded up with an early disc, the known key will be loaded. We can simply trace the execution until we find bytes from those keys loaded into registers. At worst, this will give us a small number of candidate keys to try until we find the right one. At best, it'll lead us straight to the key wherever they put it.
If they are smart (and if the MPAA even give them another chance), the powerdvd/windvd authors will reimplement their AACS decryption code to never store the keys in memory. Without double-checking, I believe the keys are only 128 bits, they could be loaded into the SSE registers in encrypted form and then decrypted on chip. The authors will still need to take measures to prevent an OS context switch from storing the registers in kernel-private memory during the period in which the device keys are present, but that is not an extended period of time, presumably they can kick their priority up high enough that it won't happen without hurting the system much.
Even that approach isn't hack-proof, but it is a lot harder to dump the cpu registers under such conditions than it is to trace memory accesses.
Not really. You just run as an administrator and use GetThreadContext. A user process *can't* prevent an OS context switch from occurring. You use SetThreadContext to put the CPU into single step mode, and catch the exceptions caused by that in your process using WaitForDebugEvent. See here for details.
Apple could license that from the CSS consortium instead of reverse engineering it. The DMCA has nothing to do with why you can't rip DVDs in iTunes.
They can license whatever the hell they like, they still can't legally distribute a tool that enables users to bypass an effective copy-prevention measure.
It's merely a matter of making it hard enough to stop most attacks. By the time you're sniffing on-chip signals with RF, you're way past "most".
As soon as somebody has a working mechanism to break TPM security, the game's over. What happens then is that software is implemented that pretends to be a computer with a TPM module, but lets the user see the internal state (i.e. get hold of the keys necessary to decrypt stuff). You hack a real TPM module, then you sell a few hundred consumers software with the keys for that module. They buy DRM-protected media and can immediately unencrypt them. Repeat ad infinitum. After not particularly many iterations TPM-based DRM vendors will stop trying to track the compromised keys and this scheme will be permanently and effectively broken.
Further to your point: the essay completely fails to take into account that the lists of featured/good articles aren't really kept particularly up to date. Many of the articles that aren't on these lists are in fact excellent articles nonetheless. Picking one that I know something about from the list of important articles cited, I come to Novel. This is an excellent article, IMO. It goes into the history of the novel in incredible depth, and covers all the most important aspects. It has links to hundreds of relevant articles to find out more information about these aspects. It is, at least on the face of it, accurate and well referenced. It is clearly written and interesting. Perhaps it doesn't cover the modern novel particularly well: it merely directs readers to one a few other pages for information concerning the modern forms. There is nothing seriously wrong with this article. Yet it isn't listed as a "good article". I'm sure a lot of other articles are the same.
Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present.
If that's the case, your software is badly designed. Have you considered having a static HTML version of the most up-to-date version of each page spat out whenever it is modified, and just directing read traffic at that static cached copy? That way, readers shouldn't use up any more resources than readers visiting any static site. I understand that's how most dynamic sites aimed at large numbers of visitors work (e.g. slashdot).
RTFA. The cores have onboard RAM. There isn't an FSB, only a network between cores. They're working on a 3D interconnect to stack memory on top of the cores (i.e., 80 FSBs -- or perhaps TSBs).
Seriously, though, I have been wondering about this. With a design where each core connects only to its neighbours, surely a square array (i.e. either 64 or 128 cores) makes much more sense than the rectangular 8x10 array that this chip appears to be based on. Anyone?
Firstly, as addressed elsewhere, this chip can do 1.8 TFlop, and can run at 65W, but not both at the same time. At full speed it uses a lot more power.
Yes. At 65W it "only" manages 1TFlop.
Well, when you sign up to be an AdSense "partner" it does tell you that they will review your site's content to make sure that it will be acceptable for their ads. They won't allow you to be a porn site, etc, etc, etc.
So, if they are doing that, then they should be able to block anything else that they might not want to have their ads displayed on.
Just because their T&C says they *can* do it, doesn't mean they actually *will*. This is like your ISP says they can block your account for doing anything illegal with it -- 99% of the time they don't notice so don't do anything, but they need the term in place so that on the occasion they do notice something's wrong with what you're doing they can do something about it.
There has to be some exception to this, otherwise you could abuse the food industry and transportation wicked bad.
"Thanks for the cab ride, i didn't like the service, I'm not paying!"
Yes, the exception is that if you're buying goods you have to return them (so food that has been eaten is right out) and if you're buying a service it has to be cancelled before it's performed. Quite simple, really.
I don't know if it's based on a EU directive, but in the Netherlands, you can return any online purchase within 7 working days, no need to give a reason, and get your money back. Shipping costs are yours, but that's all.
It is an EU law, yes, the Distance Selling Regulations. The UK has interpreted it to require refund of delivery charges as well, and has ordered (at least) Amazon to refund postage when consumers return stuff they've purchased from them.
There are exceptions to this rule (like things made to order on your specs, or opened CD cases).
As I understand it, the issue here is the "unsealed audio recording" exception hasn't been universally applied, and the EU are considering "harmonising" it out of existence...
According to UK law, the iTunes store is required to accept returns within 28 days of sale with no reason given (as is any other retail establishment), although I don't believe that anyone has attempted to force them to do so yet.
Which law? The Distance Selling Regulations have a specific exception for audio recordings. I'm not aware of any other law that gives an unconditional right to return goods.
One side-effect of this might be that you couldn't return music CDs, since they can be freely copied.
This is, in fact, currently the case. EU law on returning goods requires you to be able to return anything purchased remotely for any reason, with a list of exceptions. One of those exceptions is audio and video recordings that aren't (still) in a sealed container.
This is funny, because some of those EU countries are also demanding that the music be un-DRM'd
Uh... no, (AFAIK) they're not. They are demanding that DRM be open in such a way that any music player vendor could implement any DRM protocol that is used to protect content sold by any online music store that happens to have a near monopoly on sales of music downloads. But that's subtly different.
Usually you can only return an opened product if it is faulty.
I suggest you read up on EU law before making statements like that. TFA states "consumers in some European countries have the right to return items with no questions asked for a specified time period after purchase." This is incorrect. This applies to all EU countries, although there are exceptions for various types of product.
The Distance Selling Regulations allow a consumer to return goods they have bought from a vendor via mail/Internet order for any reason as long as they make arrangements to do so within 7 days of delivery. The only current exemption regarding "opened" products is "(d) for the supply of audio or video recordings or computer software if they are unsealed by the consumer". They are also considering removing this exemption, putting all digital media on a par with other products where the consumer is allowed to open the packaging to examine what they have purchased before deciding whether or not to keep it.
See the green paper mentioned in TFA for more information.
back on topic, this is a good thing, just because I buy something online doesn't mean I should have lees consumer protection than if I buy it physically.
It's worth noting that the aspects of the current Distance Selling Regulations that allow you to arbitrarily return stuff you've bought over the Internet don't apply to digital content on "unsealed" physical media either; it's assumed that because they're easy to copy, the consumer could have copied them and then returned the originals.
Oh, here's one. Though it's been out since before Intel had quad-core chips.
Not to mention its availability as an open-source chip design.
But: it may be 8 core, but it lacks out-of-order execution, and each core can't perform at full speed without 4 threads, so it's not much better in terms of performance than a 32-core processor running at a quarter of its speed. This isn't bad for some workloads, but for others it's a nightmare.
As long as you use only 3 types of gates (pass through, not, xor), you can create a heat-free CPU.
And how would such a CPU go about calculating an arithmetic result, say 5 * 7?
If Jobs hates DRM so much, and if iTMS really does "just barely break even" as mac users like to claim, then why not just drop the major labels and go with eMusic's indie-only model?
Because they'd lose the market share that less them sell 5 times as many downloads as their nearest competitor, and drives the sale of iPods, which is where they make their real profit. Besides, they made $452 million in the last quarter due to iTMS. iPod sales (of which they'd lose about half if they stopped selling popular music through iTMS, I reckon) made them $1,559 million.
There is no evil conspiracy here.
So why, exactly, were the police turning up to enforce a violation of the university's IT policy? Is it just me that finds this scary as hell?
First: please stop using Tor on our network. Not very objectionable, they do own it and can request that sort of thing.
Not really. The university owns it. The university employs both the professor and the IT services people, so both are representatives of the university and therfore have roughly equal rights to university resources.
But: IT services exist, in a university, in order to provide services to staff and students. Not the other way around. It isn't up to them to regulate what is done with the network, but merely to enforce the university's decisions about what should be done with it. It sounds as though the university's decisions in this matter (the policy that the professor helped write) isn't clear, so if IT services really want to stop this behaviour, they should seek clarification from somebody who has more authority.