VideoGuide didn't go out of business, they were acquired by Gemstar and shut down. Gemstar also acquired at about the same time the main competitor to VideoGuide, which IIRC was called StarSight or some such. VideoGuide was far and away the superior product, but since it was a retail product vs. StarSight being something they licensed to OEMs, they shut down VideoGuide. But they obsoleted both in favor of their crummy TV Guide+.
Some of us complained to the FTC about the fact that they bought both competitors in that market, but the FTC apparently didn't care.
The VideoGuide even offered some functions that worked without the subscription, such as the universal remote. When they shut it down, they started sending "poison packets" to the receivers that rendered them completely non-functional. There was some talk of filing a class-action suit against Gemstar for remotely disabling a purchased product, but nothing ever came of it.
Actually, you can copy the contents of the DVD to the hard drive without decryption,
But not without authentication. If you don't authenticate to the drive, it won't give you all of the encrypted bits. It will return errors for some sectors. After you authenticate, it will return any or all of the encrypted data.
This is relevant because it means that without using reverse-engineered code (such as that in DeCSS), it is NOT possible to make a copy of an encrypted DVD using readily available consumer or commercial equipment. The people who assert that it is trivial to make bit-for-bit-identical copies of encrypted DVDs without decrypting them have obviously never tried to do so.
AFAIK there's nothing that would prevent a skilled engineer from extracting the modulated data directly from the read channel of a DVD player or DVD-ROM drive, and feeding that stream "directly" to the write electronics of a DVD-R drive. This would require the construction of a moderate amount of custom electronics, and possibly some alteration to the firmware of the DVD-R drive.
Cant you copy any ENCRYPTED movie, just do a byte for byte clone of it?
Not easily. A DVD-ROM drive won't even let you read the encrypted data unless you use the reverse-engineered algorithms to authenticate to the drive.
And to the best of my knowledge, even if you have the encrypted data, DVD-R drives will not allow it to be written to a blank in such a manner that a normal DVD Video player can handle it.
However, if you negotiate with the DVD-ROM drive, get the bits, decrypt them, and THEN write to a DVD-R, you will have an unencrypted copy. Of course, you've now spent more money than an original DVD movie costs.
But what the studios are afraid of is that the media prices will eventually drop to under $2, just as happened with CD-R.
I live in CA, but I was just in CO for the holidays. My sister needed to buy a new computer for her business, and asked me if the Compaq or HP systems advertised by OfficeMax in the 2-Jan-2000 Rocky Mountain News were any good. The most attractive was an HP Pavilion with a 466 MHz Celeron, 128M SDRAM, 40x CD-ROM, 15 inch monitor (13.8 viewable), and an inkjet printer, for $879 before rebates (if memory serves). There was a $400 rebate for three years of MSN, an three $50 rebates from OfficeMax on the CPU, monitor, and printer, for an after-rebate price of $429. (The CPU alone was available for $599, $149 after rebates.)
When we got there, the salesman said that it was out of stock. My sister asked if any other stores had it. The salesman went away to check, and came back and said no. I asked about a rain check, and the salesman said it was discontinued. I pointed out that since they advertised it without any restrictions like "quantities are limited" or "while supplies last", that they would have to make good on it. He went to fetch the manager, who asked if we would be satisfied with a different computer. I said sure, as long as it was comparable.
After a long wait, the manager produced a much better HP Pavilion (faster CPU, more memory, bigger hard drive, and a CD-RW) which listed for $300 more. She discounted it by $350 to match the price, including the $50 OfficeMax rebate that had been offered on the other CPU. My sister got a much better system for the same $429 price. And when we set up the computer at her office, we found that there was a $50 rebate coupon from HP for the CPU inside the box!
Anyhow, while I was studying the flier about the MSN rebate, I noticed the language about CA and OR residents. When we opened the actual MSN signup envelope, we found that it included two separate legal agreements, one for residents of CA and OR only, and one for everyone else. I don't have them here to study in detail or quote, but a quick glance seemed to confirm that if I made a purchase myself that I would receive the rebate but not be obligated to continue the service, and would not have to repay the rebate.
I almost bought a second computer of the same type for myself. It looks like I could have gotten the same nicer HP Pavilion as my sister (without the monitor and printer) for about $99 plus CO sales tax plus $21.95 for one month's MSN service. I didn't do it because I didn't have an extra $600 at the time, and I was doubtful that it would make a good Linux box since it uses some strange combination modem and sound card.
So I don't have proof that CA and OR residents can take MSN for $388, but it sure looks that way. Even if it's legal, I haven't convinced myself that it's ethical.
The CSS "crack" was necessary whether you want to rip or just to play the DVD.
Naturally, the recording industry chooses to interpret the situation as an act of piracy, even though that had nothing to do with the motivations of many of the people involved.
If they put stronger encryption on DVD-Audio, so that I can't play them under Linux, I will never buy a DVD-Audio disc.
These are the same fools that have complained about every new recordable audio and video medium since the introduction of the Philips Compact Cassette in 1964 and the Beta VCR in the 1975. But now the industry makes billions of dollars each year on sales of prerecorded cassettes and videotapes.
Instead of viewing new technologies as opportunities, they choose to view them as threats.
This is not the first time Apple has tried to institute such a policy. It happened at least twice before that I know of, although in those cases it probably didn't come down from the CEO.
On those occasions, Apple's SCM (Software Configuration Management) organization, which was chartered with doing all offical software builds, had their engineers scouring the source code looking for easter eggs and credits. It became a game for development engineers to find creative ways to hide them such that SCM couldn't find them. In one case the credits were stored in a block of hexadecimal data. In another, thousands of characters of source code for an easter egg were present in the source code, but indented hundreds of spaces so that the MPW editor wouldn't normally show them (unless you scrolled right).
The super-secret about box in the first release of Multifinder was done despite management efforts to eradicate such things. If they couldn't do it then, I doubt that they can do it now.
Where is the "Steve Capps Memorial No-name Burrito Joint", anyhow? I don't think it is La Costena, although they make damn good burritos.
Until we figure out how to stop this from happening,
We figured out how to stop this from happening at least 30 years ago. You simply rotate part of the ship to provide gravity.
Unlike what was shown in the Babylon 5 TV series, you'd have to spin down for manuevers. But during the long balistic trajectory part of the mission it should work fine.
You would have a valid point if it were true that suppressing crypto in the US would keep it from being used elsewhere. The US Administration and Congress seem to think this way, but in reality the assertion had been demonstrated to be false.
The point is is that some intellectual property should not be allowed to be published into the public.
And the US Supreme Court has held that any restrictions on First Amendment rights must be very specific, and limited to the minimum restriction necessary to further the objective. In no case of which I am aware has prior restraint on publication of non-classified material been held to be constitutional.
Why doesn't the government publish the exact plans for how to create an ICBM w/mutli warheads along with the code for PGP and RSA and everything else we need to stay safe from prying eyes? Because it would harm us more than help us.
This argument does not support restrictions on crypto export. Let's postulate that dissemination of ICBM technical data is bad. It follows logically that if exporting ICBM data is bad, that distributing ICBM data and crytopgraphy is bad. But that is not sufficient to support a conclusion that export of cryptography (without ICBM data) is bad.
In other words, you're arguing that A is bad, and that A+B is bad, therefore B is bad.
How exactly are you suggesting that China and Singapore are trampling my civil liberties? Despite my distaste for civil liberties violations in other countries, the US government is here primarily to protect the rights of US citizens. Having a huge budget for the FBI and letting them harass US citizens with impunity will not in any way improve the condition of the citizens of China or Singapore.
There's people out there who'd stomp on your rights a heck of a lot more than the US government if the US government wasn't around.
I never suggested that the US government shouldn't be around. There are obviously legitimate powers of the Federal government, as spelled out in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. Investigating IETF contributors because they endorse or recommend the use of cryptography does not seem to be covered by any of these powers.
The government is good enough to provide everything you will ever need to live, including the protected ability to post on/., and to criticize it's every move, even to the point of depicted how are lives would be better without it. And then you go and hide behind the government and feed off of it like everyone else.
IMNSHO you're the one that doesn't get it, not "us". To the extent that the government does protect our rights, it's precisely because people like us raise hell whenever well-meaning (or even ill-meaning) bureaucrats and government agents trample on those rights.
And it's not in any way inconsistent to be an advocate of reducing the size of the federal government and at the same time an advocate of protecting the civil liberties of individuals. In fact, this position is very defensible, as those very civil liberties tend to be more commonly disregarded by the US government than by any other organization. Of course, when the US government does trample our rights, it's generally claimed to be necessary in order to protect us from terrorists and child pornographers.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
So, is this guy guilty of treason? I don't know, but somebody smarter than all of us obviously does.
I think you're confusing authority (which is granted essentially arbitrarily) with smarts.
Even assuming that they are smart, I never gave my consent to be governed by a secret organization of smart people without due process of law or judicial oversight, which is what you seem to be advocating.
In case you've forgotten, the government similarly abused their authority and power to harrass the hell out of Phil Zimmerman (author of PGP), but ultimately didn't press any charges. Despite not pressing charges, they succeeded in making his life a living hell for several years and making him spend a huge amount of money on legal fees. This is likely what they intend to do to Bill Simpson if they choose to pursue it.
That the FBI considers the mere advocacy of the deployment of strong cryptography to be treasonous scares the shit out of me. We seem to be well on our way to Perry Metzger's Ruritania.
The Wired article quotes Jim Margolin of the FBI as saying
What if the video had been the work of some rogue government agency or a terrorist militia group? We certainly would be remiss if we get one or more reports and did nothing about it
I'm confused. Is the FBI claiming that if I was a member of a terrorist militia group (which I'm not, although I am a member of the United States Militia), I would not have the right to peaceably distribute a video over the Internet? And furthermore, that anyone else that distributed that video was subject to prosecution?
And what's the crap about a "rogue government agency"??? If such an agency existed and produced a video, why shouldn't it be put on web sites?
As usual, it seems like the FBI is going way overboard in their zeal to "protect" us. Welcome to the police state.
Re:Virtual Reality is like Reality, man.
on
License to Surf
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· Score: 2
When I go into a brick and mortar store [...] I'm basically anonymous until I whip out my credit card or a check.
Nice example. When Miniscribe was in bankruptcy and was shipping bricks (literally) rather than disk drives in order to fraudulently inflate the numbers that they reported to their creditors, the way the responsible company executives were eventually caught and brought to justice was that they found the credit card purchase records for the bricks!
Anyhow, you (and others) have made a good case for not having this stupid proposed "web surfing license".
But we need to go one step further. Just as you can in meatspace buy bricks for cash rather than by credit card, and thus preserve your anonymity, we need to create new methods of increasing the degree of anonymity possible in cyberspace, not to decrease it.
AMD has said that they stand behind the Kryotech systems. Therefore, the parts are being run within the manufacturer's specifications, and are not "overclocked".
If you do the same thing at home, it's overclocked.
If they sold the movies for reasonable rates, it'd be easier to pay for them than pirate them.
At US $15-25 for the typical DVDs I buy from an online store, it is much easier to pay for them than to digitally pirate them.
Most of the discs are either two-layer or two-sided. Where are you going to find 9 gigabytes of random-access storage for under $25? It's actually fairly hard to even find tape for under that price, considering that the MPEG files won't compress further. Almost all of the tapes are now rated by "2:1 compressed capacity" rather than native capacity, so you'd need at least an 18G tape. Last I checked, it was hard to find DDS-3 tape (12G native, 24G at 2:1 compression) for much less than $25.
Someday there will be cheap rewritable (or even write-once) optical discs with that kind of capacity, but they aren't here yet. The closest things at the moment are DVD-RAM (2.6G per side) and DVD-R (4.7G), and the media is expensive.
I don't buy it. I'm familiar with the internals of FORTH, Java, and the old UCSD P-System. I haven't seen any compelling size advantage to Forth code, which, by the way, does NOT normally use wordcodes, but uses thread pointers which these days are typically 32 bits.
Just having the code be 16-bits wide neither allows you to have more primitives (which you can do with multi-byte sequences of bytecode), nor does it "not have as many illegal combinations of primitives". Certainly FORTH allows (even in 16-bit implementations) for a huge number of "illegal combinations".
Furthermore, there is every reason to expect that wordcodes would be larger than bytecodes, since even the most common primitives are forced to use twice as many bits.
If x-codes were fundamentally better for larger x, don't you think people would have noticed that by now?
For equivalent security to that provided by Java, wordcodes would still require a wordcode verifier. The verifier does a whole lot more than check for illegal codes. It has to analyze the code and make sure every possible path results in the same stack depth. Wordcodes don't help with this sort of problem.
Is it possible to make an encryption system that supports one-way transmission (broadcast) to a hostile client?
If the client device is somehow protected against reverse-engineering (by burying the decryption hardware inside a tamper-proof chip), and you don't want to charge pay-per-view, it's basically possible.
DIVX only needs the phone line because of its pay-per-view nature. The player has to report back the serial numbers of the discs you watch, so that they can bill your credit card.
Note that there's really no such thing as "tamper-proof" hardware. It's all a matter of how difficult you make it. And naturally, the more valuable the content is, the more money people will be willing to spend to try to crack the system.
I've always thought that the best way to advance research into factoring very large numbers would be to adopt a digital cash system based on the RSA cryptosystem.
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Some of us complained to the FTC about the fact that they bought both competitors in that market, but the FTC apparently didn't care.
The VideoGuide even offered some functions that worked without the subscription, such as the universal remote. When they shut it down, they started sending "poison packets" to the receivers that rendered them completely non-functional. There was some talk of filing a class-action suit against Gemstar for remotely disabling a purchased product, but nothing ever came of it.
At least with DIVX, the disc was still reusable if someone was willing to pay $2. This would result in huge piles of useless crap in landfills.
This is relevant because it means that without using reverse-engineered code (such as that in DeCSS), it is NOT possible to make a copy of an encrypted DVD using readily available consumer or commercial equipment. The people who assert that it is trivial to make bit-for-bit-identical copies of encrypted DVDs without decrypting them have obviously never tried to do so.
AFAIK there's nothing that would prevent a skilled engineer from extracting the modulated data directly from the read channel of a DVD player or DVD-ROM drive, and feeding that stream "directly" to the write electronics of a DVD-R drive. This would require the construction of a moderate amount of custom electronics, and possibly some alteration to the firmware of the DVD-R drive.
And to the best of my knowledge, even if you have the encrypted data, DVD-R drives will not allow it to be written to a blank in such a manner that a normal DVD Video player can handle it.
However, if you negotiate with the DVD-ROM drive, get the bits, decrypt them, and THEN write to a DVD-R, you will have an unencrypted copy. Of course, you've now spent more money than an original DVD movie costs.
But what the studios are afraid of is that the media prices will eventually drop to under $2, just as happened with CD-R.
Hey, loose the attitude!
When we got there, the salesman said that it was out of stock. My sister asked if any other stores had it. The salesman went away to check, and came back and said no. I asked about a rain check, and the salesman said it was discontinued. I pointed out that since they advertised it without any restrictions like "quantities are limited" or "while supplies last", that they would have to make good on it. He went to fetch the manager, who asked if we would be satisfied with a different computer. I said sure, as long as it was comparable.
After a long wait, the manager produced a much better HP Pavilion (faster CPU, more memory, bigger hard drive, and a CD-RW) which listed for $300 more. She discounted it by $350 to match the price, including the $50 OfficeMax rebate that had been offered on the other CPU. My sister got a much better system for the same $429 price. And when we set up the computer at her office, we found that there was a $50 rebate coupon from HP for the CPU inside the box!
Anyhow, while I was studying the flier about the MSN rebate, I noticed the language about CA and OR residents. When we opened the actual MSN signup envelope, we found that it included two separate legal agreements, one for residents of CA and OR only, and one for everyone else. I don't have them here to study in detail or quote, but a quick glance seemed to confirm that if I made a purchase myself that I would receive the rebate but not be obligated to continue the service, and would not have to repay the rebate.
I almost bought a second computer of the same type for myself. It looks like I could have gotten the same nicer HP Pavilion as my sister (without the monitor and printer) for about $99 plus CO sales tax plus $21.95 for one month's MSN service. I didn't do it because I didn't have an extra $600 at the time, and I was doubtful that it would make a good Linux box since it uses some strange combination modem and sound card.
So I don't have proof that CA and OR residents can take MSN for $388, but it sure looks that way. Even if it's legal, I haven't convinced myself that it's ethical.
Naturally, the recording industry chooses to interpret the situation as an act of piracy, even though that had nothing to do with the motivations of many of the people involved.
If they put stronger encryption on DVD-Audio, so that I can't play them under Linux, I will never buy a DVD-Audio disc.
These are the same fools that have complained about every new recordable audio and video medium since the introduction of the Philips Compact Cassette in 1964 and the Beta VCR in the 1975. But now the industry makes billions of dollars each year on sales of prerecorded cassettes and videotapes.
Instead of viewing new technologies as opportunities, they choose to view them as threats.
On those occasions, Apple's SCM (Software Configuration Management) organization, which was chartered with doing all offical software builds, had their engineers scouring the source code looking for easter eggs and credits. It became a game for development engineers to find creative ways to hide them such that SCM couldn't find them. In one case the credits were stored in a block of hexadecimal data. In another, thousands of characters of source code for an easter egg were present in the source code, but indented hundreds of spaces so that the MPW editor wouldn't normally show them (unless you scrolled right).
The super-secret about box in the first release of Multifinder was done despite management efforts to eradicate such things. If they couldn't do it then, I doubt that they can do it now.
Where is the "Steve Capps Memorial No-name Burrito Joint", anyhow? I don't think it is La Costena, although they make damn good burritos.
Unlike what was shown in the Babylon 5 TV series, you'd have to spin down for manuevers. But during the long balistic trajectory part of the mission it should work fine.
In other words, you're arguing that A is bad, and that A+B is bad, therefore B is bad.
And it's not in any way inconsistent to be an advocate of reducing the size of the federal government and at the same time an advocate of protecting the civil liberties of individuals. In fact, this position is very defensible, as those very civil liberties tend to be more commonly disregarded by the US government than by any other organization. Of course, when the US government does trample our rights, it's generally claimed to be necessary in order to protect us from terrorists and child pornographers.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
I think you're confusing authority (which is granted essentially arbitrarily) with smarts.Even assuming that they are smart, I never gave my consent to be governed by a secret organization of smart people without due process of law or judicial oversight, which is what you seem to be advocating.
In case you've forgotten, the government similarly abused their authority and power to harrass the hell out of Phil Zimmerman (author of PGP), but ultimately didn't press any charges. Despite not pressing charges, they succeeded in making his life a living hell for several years and making him spend a huge amount of money on legal fees. This is likely what they intend to do to Bill Simpson if they choose to pursue it.
That the FBI considers the mere advocacy of the deployment of strong cryptography to be treasonous scares the shit out of me. We seem to be well on our way to Perry Metzger's Ruritania.
And what's the crap about a "rogue government agency"??? If such an agency existed and produced a video, why shouldn't it be put on web sites?
As usual, it seems like the FBI is going way overboard in their zeal to "protect" us. Welcome to the police state.
Anyhow, you (and others) have made a good case for not having this stupid proposed "web surfing license".
But we need to go one step further. Just as you can in meatspace buy bricks for cash rather than by credit card, and thus preserve your anonymity, we need to create new methods of increasing the degree of anonymity possible in cyberspace, not to decrease it.
If you do the same thing at home, it's overclocked.
Most of the discs are either two-layer or two-sided. Where are you going to find 9 gigabytes of random-access storage for under $25? It's actually fairly hard to even find tape for under that price, considering that the MPEG files won't compress further. Almost all of the tapes are now rated by "2:1 compressed capacity" rather than native capacity, so you'd need at least an 18G tape. Last I checked, it was hard to find DDS-3 tape (12G native, 24G at 2:1 compression) for much less than $25.
Someday there will be cheap rewritable (or even write-once) optical discs with that kind of capacity, but they aren't here yet. The closest things at the moment are DVD-RAM (2.6G per side) and DVD-R (4.7G), and the media is expensive.
Just having the code be 16-bits wide neither allows you to have more primitives (which you can do with multi-byte sequences of bytecode), nor does it "not have as many illegal combinations of primitives". Certainly FORTH allows (even in 16-bit implementations) for a huge number of "illegal combinations".
Furthermore, there is every reason to expect that wordcodes would be larger than bytecodes, since even the most common primitives are forced to use twice as many bits.
If x-codes were fundamentally better for larger x, don't you think people would have noticed that by now?
For equivalent security to that provided by Java, wordcodes would still require a wordcode verifier. The verifier does a whole lot more than check for illegal codes. It has to analyze the code and make sure every possible path results in the same stack depth. Wordcodes don't help with this sort of problem.
DIVX only needs the phone line because of its pay-per-view nature. The player has to report back the serial numbers of the discs you watch, so that they can bill your credit card.
Note that there's really no such thing as "tamper-proof" hardware. It's all a matter of how difficult you make it. And naturally, the more valuable the content is, the more money people will be willing to spend to try to crack the system.
I've always thought that the best way to advance research into factoring very large numbers would be to adopt a digital cash system based on the RSA cryptosystem.
They don't just give it out to anyone who wants it.
What are wordcodes? And why are they faster, smaller, and more secure than bytecodes? Secure in what sense?