You think so, but I had the opportunity to talk with a several chip designers at intel, who lay out the roadmap, and create the software for the testing mechanisms.
There is a big slab of marketing that DOES go into it, but it is also about the realestate which they are creating the devices and testing measures as well. Get a chip thats clocking too low? kill a feature on it and then sell it as a smaller cheaper chip to provide incentive to buy a chip in "better" condition.
But the process i described is the process they use for elimination for their chips, and not just simple marketing of their chips. If they could produce hundreds of chips all identical and absolutely the fastest and then have their premium chips sell at the price of their low end offerings they would, they could litterally destroy thier competition.
but artifically crippling chips that failed the initial check is a good way to move silicon out of your building too.
the reason they are guarenteed at certain clock speeds, and yes, I know what im talking about, is because when a chip is cast it is cast on a wafer, the area of the wafer is not uniform as you go from the center to the edges of the wafre. When the process is being done the wafers have impurities which can exist in some of the chips cast on the wafer.
So what they do is they have machines that roll the new made chip through and test how high it is "safe" to clock it at a certain level. The ones that are more impure get sold as a lower ghz chip, the ones that are more pure get sold as higher ghz chips.
When you overclock, you are overclocking a chip that has failed its pre-test qualifications for the clock speeds you want to clock it to, which is why thye wont give you money on your warrentee if you tell them you fried your chip overclocking.
I have found myself on the wrong end of information pollution as described in this article, I went out of my way to do exactly what this fella describes.
My desktop has no icons, My start bar has 4 icons based on priority and then by catagory (1 icon is for freq used programs the others for 3 main catagories of programs) I keep my start menu in pretty good shape, and I use a program called samurize to keep all my data summerized and unobtrusively check e-mail and tell me when my box has mail.
yes it helps, my time on the computer is greatly optimized, but the best solution is probably the easiest... simply stop signing up for things, and checking so much.
I used to check 10-12 pages per day, now i read pages that summarize news from many other sources based on my interests. I dont put my e-mail in places im likely to get spam from, and i sign up for services using a "spam" e-mail, which i do not give to my friends. It allows me to read the subjects, see who they are from, and dump the rest.
The best medicine in this case is limit the flow of information that you receive, instead of trying to smart prioritize it on your end.
After I was warned, i began downloading only 1 gig a day per day. Now, I know someone earlier on the thread called me a "file whore" but I download anime, and no, i dont download anime you can get in the united states.
Things like Naruto, or Gundam Seed, things you dont get in the US. These files are typically 200 megs in size and downloading 4 of them about peeks the meter on download rates.
But thats what I signed up for the internet for, downloading whatever I wanted.
I dont use file sharing services, unless you count bittorrent as a filesharing service.
I dont think 1 gig a day IS outrageous, or more. With the amount of things on the interent, completely legit things such as those on redvsblue.com or gametab, and such, 1 gig a day is easy to go over if you download all the time.
I downloaded 8 gigs in the course of 3 days, and I had my internet turned off, I used the cable service provided in lawrence kansas.
I had absolutely no warning, no phone calls.
The only reason I know I had been cut off was because I figured that my excessive downloading for the last 3 days had probably triggered it.
I called the cable company and they said that I had been turned off for grossly exceeding standard usage amounts. It took me 2 days and about 4 calls, but I finally got the service turned back on with a verbal agreement not to download more than 3 gigs a week.
So, I had to skimp, but i survived!
I cant imagine someone only allowing 2 gigs a month though, i have downloaded more than that just off of demos and things from gametab.
Its because the US, in all truth, might lose in all the matters that actually matter.
If you go against a country willing to use nuclear weapons, even ones merely as small as hiroshima and nagasaki (and yes i say merely as small) then your in for a heap of trouble.
Fighting doesnt mean dick if who your fighting destroys the prize, at a high cost to yourself.
The entire trick with sadaam, was to get him BEFORE he had the ability to do such things.
Now whether or not it was justified to beleive he had that ability, or would have the ability, is not part of this convo.
But if the US were to attack china, or North Korea, China would have to have nukes used on it, and i dont think there is any person, or any nation who could hold such responsibility. Even the United States is still considering the ramifications of just dropping 2 very small (in nuke terms) nukes during a war more than 50 years ago. No one wants to be responsible for dropping 20 if a war against china goes bad, or losing large chunks of south korea to nukes from north korea, because we had an axe to grind with north korea.
We ARE fighting a war with north korea, but its the same kind of war we won against Russia, and in that kind of war, patience, not rash action is going to win the day.
There was an episode of junkyard wars where they made full size RC cars out of scrap, and had them fight in an arena...
I have this weird beleif that the fellas on Junkyard wars might be a little more bright to hvae thought of and accomplished this goal in 10 hours, instead of having all the time in the world to work on it.
Make their computer boot off of a partition they have not otherwise got access too, and then allow them to save files only in a specified directory, any "added" files in the other directories get deleted.
I have seen computers at my college (the university of kansas) business school labs, where no matter how much you saved to them, it would delete itself after you logged off, except for what you saved to your personal network share.
If you do this, or something similar, then you can basically audit what your children do. Also, having a browser helper object that is "hidden" that keeps a log file of all internet traffic is also good (i wrote one for the last business i was at to keep track of what people were downloading).
With these steps there is not a whole lot they can do.
If you take a product such a securikey, from www.securikey.com you can actually bar them from access to the computer, unless they have the securkey, and you can control when they have the key.
anyway hope that is some ideas, someoen should make a software package that does this kind of thing;-)
This is space we are talking about, so if you land on it, or can show that you can land on it, then the property is yours.
So, by this proposal, the only one able to claim ownership would be the United States Government.
But, the second half of my proposal would allow a large company to "lay claim" to a resource in space, if they could prove (ie put forth plans and such) that they can get to the asteroid to do whatever they need to do with it.
This would allow companies to make money, and not have the "fastest person to arrive" syndrome, but allow them discover a body, and the first one to claim it gets it, other than whoever was close and found out that an expensive space vehicle was wheeling toward it from a farther out distance.
This fellas claim is truly eroneous, because if it were not, then we could "claim" a sun in a distant galaxy, and then charge people rent for looking at it and thus using its light...
I dont know, i cant beleive nut jobs like these fellas exist, but they do bring up an intresting point if you think about the implications of what happens if we ever do go into space, and who exactly does own what (if say we could actually mine these things).
Think about this, if SCO is being puppeted, and no one can tell who. If SCO gets countersued, and decides to just fold up shop (its CEO and other stock holders bailing out before the stock goes down) and then just dump the company.
For whoever is behind SCO, and the people that run SCO, this whole thing is a win win situation.
I know you are nidded 0 as an AC, but i often find myself doing the same thing, I use no cd cracks on software i have purchased legally, the software tends to load faster, run better, and perform top notch, and if i have to shut it down and restart... well that aint half bad.
I have always been annoyed, especially when the CD checking algo sometimes didnt work! Like when i first got UT 2k3, it kept saying i didnt have the disks, as i stared at my 3 perfectly legitimate non warez disks, i went on to a popular hack/crack site, and was able to get a no cd patch, and it worked fine.
In fact, I rarely launch a game I buy now with the CD, even the first time i install it, its just a lot less headache to go get the patches, then grab the nOCD crack for the game then it is waste time swapping CD after CD out of the tray.
I though support the use of dongles, just not dongles like the one you have which only works for one product. If everyone could move over to a unified dongle such as WIBU new Codemeter dongle, you could just stick the dongle in and it would work after you had product activation, and it would work on your computer no matter what, even if you had to reformat.
The only hassle is if you break the dongle and then you have to get it replaced, and the update stage there is handled all on-line while your new dongle is plugged in.
I dont know, i just think the CD checking thing is not reliable enough, and current dongle stuff are evne harder to use (some software makes you plug the dongle into each hardware slot on your computer which takes time).
its bad stuff, and its a lot easier to simply use a hack or crack than worry about using your legitimate copy.
If they come and hunt you down and say "hey you stole this" and you have your 3 freaking owned disks, what are they going to do?
Consider this, schools, if done on voucher, would not necessarrily be held to higher education standards, they would be their to make a profit. Yes, higher education standards would be present in some schools, but they also can refuse admission.
Also, you forget about the location problem. What if no one wants to have thier children go to a local school. only the ones that cant afford to have their children go elsewhere would send their schools to less advantaged schools.
the problems simply mount from their on, you have children with no mixed economic level in the same area, the schools that are in the area can also be selective (probably) and the ones that are good and do have all the things that parents want will fill up fast, leaving only places considered "not good enough" for the "rest" of the children to get into.
I think you miss the fact that this would only INCREASE the problems in current school systems.
I am not saying what we currently have is "good" but I am saying that vouchers are not the way to fix the problem.
You forget one thing, the Human factor. Location and Economic standing of a group near a school is important, and if a school is allowed to limit admission to say.. everyone that lives close gets entry first, then if leftover space we allow others, then you will still have the same problem.
Consider the case in Kansas City Kansas, there are schools in Johnson county in "well to do neighborhoods" where attendance is high, school activities are frequent, and parent participation is often.
Now consider only 10s of miles away (a long drive but worth it for a parent) to failing kansas city magnet schools. Vouchers will not help this at all, the schools would not have to "accept everyone" they could simply say "we no longer have seats" once they fill whatever small quota is required, then where are the children to go? Thats right, where their parents have choice, thats to another low level public school that is within the area.
Even if vouchers are allowed at private schools, the competition for the voucher money will be amazing. THe private schools have no set standards that they have to follow for teaching children, they can simply teach cirriculums that are against doctrine of church and state as well, and PUBLIC money will be used to support teaching children in a method that would probably violate the constitutional rights of an athiest.
And, if a forced cirriculum were set for the private schools, you would thus be violating their rights to teach their children and the children of those who choose to go their.
I think you possibly havent though this through, and thought of the people you are trying to actually help, at least i hope your trying to help.
This would widen class gaps so wide, that in some areas children might not even be ABLE to attend school, simply because it would not be profitiable enough to do so.
Schools dont simply "exist" they are their either because the government saw a need, or a private group saw a need. When teh government stops funding a school to keep it alive, then that school is going to die, especially in a "high risk" area.
Oh and btw, these are the "future" of dongle based computing. They have thier own memory, their own processors, and their own Trusted memory which cant be accessed, and only written to by a vendor. Yes you can write a program to "re-write" the trusted sectors, but you cant read them.
This is Trusted computing, the only difference is the dongle is a small computer hooked to yours and you can carry it around. Instead of being forced to lug your machine around to listen to that copy of britaney spears, you can use the dongle as the authenticaton device, and if you have the dongle in, you can download the music from the site again and just listen to it again.
On audio/visual stuff it doesnt cover the analog hole, but it is a step to portable DRM, wherease being screwed with one machine that can run things but another cant is no fun at all.
actually, you assume the program can "run" without the key, and that it merely "checks" the key, thats not actually a very well designed program.
Using the WIBU key you can actually force a program to encrypt parts of itself, and it wont decrypt without the key. Yes you can make a JUMP statement around the encrypted and compiled code, but if the programmer has done it properly, the code wont run.
You can, for example, encrypt several KEY subroutines with the key, that requires the key to run, the key then loads these into memory via its specialized ASIC.
The only way to actually defeat a properly programmed bit of code would be to take a snapshot of it in ram and then run that snapshot.
And even then , if the code user made a key call within the encrypted secure block , i think it might even be impossible.
What you are thinking of is some examples, and a single example, on the net of the WIBU key being broken in a peice of software. Having looked at how that was done, i can tell you the person that programmed the WIBU code did NOT read the programmers guide for the WIBU key.
He basically said "hey WIBU key here is 999999, tell me what you think"
and then checked to see if the WIBU key replies "9999999"
the problem is, that is NOt what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to Encrypt all start up code using the WIBU asic, and within that encrypted data make a call to WIBU key to verify its the same key that decrypted it.
Since the only time you have "running non encrypted data" in the system is in the ram after the program starts, making a JUMP command around the code wont help, since it wont have loaded the proper data required by the WIBU key.
I mean, about the only other "exploit" i have seen is someone claiming to have gotten around "securikey" by logging in as administrator and uninstalling its drivers. When the trick is, they have to have a key and a password for them to be able to log into administrator.
Both are examples of groups not reading the manual, and not doing things properly.
1 was someone who threw a hack job of coding into the mix, the other was someone who thought that since they were the administrator, and knew the password and assumed that they would let their children log in as administrators and give them passwords, that that was an exploit.
It would be like making a safe and then keeping it unlocked and open at all times, then sueing the safe company because someone stole stuff from it.
in concurrence with an operating system they can be used for sealed storage, and key decryption.
Right now, griffin technologies has a working (though not released) program that can encrypt/decrypt based on secure keys stored ina dongle onto the hard drive. Without the dongle you dont get access to the data.
even if you try to make whatever program is accessing the data "bypass" the dongle, it will only read it in "raw" encrypted form, which doesnt help
They are very easy to install, at least CodeMeter is, it "looks" like a USB harddrive, but the software can make calls to it through a COM interface.
The dongle "SCREAMS" ease of use, you merely stick it into your computers easiest USB port and BAM you have a working dongle. USB is also pretty robust, and the place I interned at only had a few returned WIBU USB dongles returned, and that was mostly due to children stepping on them, or in one case a child breaking it in an attempt to get back at his/her parent so they couldnt get on the computer.
Now I know that kind of thing MAY happen, but thats why licensing can be handled over the internet very easily, especially with CODEMETER which has a protocol just for that purpose.
With the amount of users accessing the internet, a site that say encoded everything comeing from it with the public key of the remote user, ONLY the remote user using his dongle that has the private key stored on it can access the data (that btw was my job, to explore the feasiblity of this) and the USER doesnt even have access to the private key, since that part of the data translation is in "hidden" sectors of the key.
So no one knows the private key, and the sites you want to get data know the public key. This makes it very secure and ensures you have the proper dongle.
If you register a new dongle, you get a new private key, and returned licencing data (which are two different things) so that you can use your new key even though an old one might have been broken.
Since it also has an internal limit counter (to be set by the licensure) the people who create products that rely on the key, can also force a remote user to update his licence every X uses/days so that he doesnt call a key in false serveral times and have offline use of his product with multiple keys and invalid licences.
Its pretty neat, and since I took several grad classes in Info Sec I can tell you its pretty darn secure, though not infalible. I mean if someone comes up with computing that can check all possible keys, then well there you go.
I used to intern for a company that works with a product called "WIBU KEY" now despite the fact their is a single note of one group "getting around" WIBU key, done properly WIBU should not be feasible to break.
Now WIBU is making something called "Codemeter" in which a user will be able to have licence information for hundreds of different software packages, that means if someone has MS word on their computer, and knows someone else that has it, they can use their licence on the Codemeter stick on their friends computer.
They are USB devices that can be carried on the keychain, and places like www.securikey.com are going to start using the new codemeter product.
It is MUCH better than other trusted computing schemes, since the data is not just being hanleded on the computer, all codes are "private" and all licence data is "private" on the key itself.
The way the part is manufactured you cannot get the data off of the key, if it is stored using a certain key mode. Since the key has its own integrated chip, it can use its key to decrypt as a private key that you need never know. If you lose your key or break it, you can go on-line, register a new key that you have bought, and get the data transferred to your new codemeter stick.
I was excited when I got to look at the product in its pre-development stages, and only wish that I had been able to stay on with the company to do more work with the new product line.
I think token based authentication is the way to go for the future, simply make programs that will not run unless large chunks of them have been decoded, and make sure small but important algos in the programs have to be run through the key every so often.
And as you detail attacks (if you reply) please note, spoofing the key doesnt work when the code runs inside the key, and if you use random checking algos against the key, it wont work either.
Any WIBU key hack on the net (which i researched) is totally based on bad programming by the target company, IE they sent "999999" to the key, and expected "99999" back, which was just bad programming on thier part.
In episode 3, anakin becomes an evil man known as darth vader, after making padme pregnant with twins. Palpatine becomes the Empreror, and the Jedi are hunted down, with only a few escaping. Yoda lives through it, and so does Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda goes to Dagobah (though it might not be revealed in the 3rd movie) and ObiWan goes to live on Tatooine, where Luke is left with his uncle Own Lars.
ha, but disney might have copyright grandfather extended to being 500 hundred years, through clever money practices with you congressman, so anyone with reasonable proof they were shakespeares heirs could sue!
Actually Orson Scott Card is a known mainstream author, in some high schools his book "Enders Game" is taught to students, as well as in some college classes.
In fact, Enders Game is an extremely popular book, even outside of regular sci fi reading, you can even find large print "childrens" versions (same story differnet package) at bookstores.
If you mean by "mainstream" that he isnt on television, then you might be right, but if you mean "mainstream" as being "well read by a LOT of people, more than say 2 million" then yes he is mainstream.
There is no first sale in everquest either, you dont own a plate at a restaurant because you used it to eat, Itunes he "owns" the copyrighted material, it resides on HIS computer, so he should be able to sell it HOW HE wants to. Everquest, all the strappings are just part of the service, you dont actually own anything, except the copy of the game you use to use the service.
its one of the most played games on the internet for FPS shooters, at least using gamespy stats. at any one time it can often have more players than UNreal 2k3, as it is right now it is number 5.
Live Stats Game Players Game Players Half Life
73661 Battlefield 1942
7584 Americas Army: Operations
4938 Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
4693 Medal of Honor Allied Assault
4014 Unreal Tournament 2003
3966
Slashdot Mirror
You think so, but I had the opportunity to talk with a several chip designers at intel, who lay out the roadmap, and create the software for the testing mechanisms.
There is a big slab of marketing that DOES go into it, but it is also about the realestate which they are creating the devices and testing measures as well. Get a chip thats clocking too low? kill a feature on it and then sell it as a smaller cheaper chip to provide incentive to buy a chip in "better" condition.
But the process i described is the process they use for elimination for their chips, and not just simple marketing of their chips. If they could produce hundreds of chips all identical and absolutely the fastest and then have their premium chips sell at the price of their low end offerings they would, they could litterally destroy thier competition.
but artifically crippling chips that failed the initial check is a good way to move silicon out of your building too.
the reason they are guarenteed at certain clock speeds, and yes, I know what im talking about, is because when a chip is cast it is cast on a wafer, the area of the wafer is not uniform as you go from the center to the edges of the wafre. When the process is being done the wafers have impurities which can exist in some of the chips cast on the wafer.
So what they do is they have machines that roll the new made chip through and test how high it is "safe" to clock it at a certain level. The ones that are more impure get sold as a lower ghz chip, the ones that are more pure get sold as higher ghz chips.
When you overclock, you are overclocking a chip that has failed its pre-test qualifications for the clock speeds you want to clock it to, which is why thye wont give you money on your warrentee if you tell them you fried your chip overclocking.
I have found myself on the wrong end of information pollution as described in this article, I went out of my way to do exactly what this fella describes.
My desktop has no icons, My start bar has 4 icons based on priority and then by catagory (1 icon is for freq used programs the others for 3 main catagories of programs) I keep my start menu in pretty good shape, and I use a program called samurize to keep all my data summerized and unobtrusively check e-mail and tell me when my box has mail.
yes it helps, my time on the computer is greatly optimized, but the best solution is probably the easiest... simply stop signing up for things, and checking so much.
I used to check 10-12 pages per day, now i read pages that summarize news from many other sources based on my interests. I dont put my e-mail in places im likely to get spam from, and i sign up for services using a "spam" e-mail, which i do not give to my friends. It allows me to read the subjects, see who they are from, and dump the rest.
The best medicine in this case is limit the flow of information that you receive, instead of trying to smart prioritize it on your end.
Buzz OUT
Actually, they could use the humans and some type of fusion and use the humans as batteries and creative thought engines.
The humans could live in this... oh god what sould i call it.,... matrix and never know that they are actually humans.
I am at a loss to what the story would be after that point, but im sure you can think of somethig.
I honestly think this must be a new policy.
After I was warned, i began downloading only 1 gig a day per day. Now, I know someone earlier on the thread called me a "file whore" but I download anime, and no, i dont download anime you can get in the united states.
Things like Naruto, or Gundam Seed, things you dont get in the US. These files are typically 200 megs in size and downloading 4 of them about peeks the meter on download rates.
But thats what I signed up for the internet for, downloading whatever I wanted.
I dont use file sharing services, unless you count bittorrent as a filesharing service.
I dont think 1 gig a day IS outrageous, or more. With the amount of things on the interent, completely legit things such as those on redvsblue.com or gametab, and such, 1 gig a day is easy to go over if you download all the time.
I downloaded 8 gigs in the course of 3 days, and I had my internet turned off, I used the cable service provided in lawrence kansas.
I had absolutely no warning, no phone calls.
The only reason I know I had been cut off was because I figured that my excessive downloading for the last 3 days had probably triggered it.
I called the cable company and they said that I had been turned off for grossly exceeding standard usage amounts. It took me 2 days and about 4 calls, but I finally got the service turned back on with a verbal agreement not to download more than 3 gigs a week.
So, I had to skimp, but i survived!
I cant imagine someone only allowing 2 gigs a month though, i have downloaded more than that just off of demos and things from gametab.
Buzz OUT
Its because the US, in all truth, might lose in all the matters that actually matter.
If you go against a country willing to use nuclear weapons, even ones merely as small as hiroshima and nagasaki (and yes i say merely as small) then your in for a heap of trouble.
Fighting doesnt mean dick if who your fighting destroys the prize, at a high cost to yourself.
The entire trick with sadaam, was to get him BEFORE he had the ability to do such things.
Now whether or not it was justified to beleive he had that ability, or would have the ability, is not part of this convo.
But if the US were to attack china, or North Korea, China would have to have nukes used on it, and i dont think there is any person, or any nation who could hold such responsibility. Even the United States is still considering the ramifications of just dropping 2 very small (in nuke terms) nukes during a war more than 50 years ago. No one wants to be responsible for dropping 20 if a war against china goes bad, or losing large chunks of south korea to nukes from north korea, because we had an axe to grind with north korea.
We ARE fighting a war with north korea, but its the same kind of war we won against Russia, and in that kind of war, patience, not rash action is going to win the day.
There was an episode of junkyard wars where they made full size RC cars out of scrap, and had them fight in an arena...
I have this weird beleif that the fellas on Junkyard wars might be a little more bright to hvae thought of and accomplished this goal in 10 hours, instead of having all the time in the world to work on it.
Make their computer boot off of a partition they have not otherwise got access too, and then allow them to save files only in a specified directory, any "added" files in the other directories get deleted.
;-)
I have seen computers at my college (the university of kansas) business school labs, where no matter how much you saved to them, it would delete itself after you logged off, except for what you saved to your personal network share.
If you do this, or something similar, then you can basically audit what your children do. Also, having a browser helper object that is "hidden" that keeps a log file of all internet traffic is also good (i wrote one for the last business i was at to keep track of what people were downloading).
With these steps there is not a whole lot they can do.
If you take a product such a securikey, from www.securikey.com you can actually bar them from access to the computer, unless they have the securkey, and you can control when they have the key.
anyway hope that is some ideas, someoen should make a software package that does this kind of thing
Buzz OUT.
This is space we are talking about, so if you land on it, or can show that you can land on it, then the property is yours.
So, by this proposal, the only one able to claim ownership would be the United States Government.
But, the second half of my proposal would allow a large company to "lay claim" to a resource in space, if they could prove (ie put forth plans and such) that they can get to the asteroid to do whatever they need to do with it.
This would allow companies to make money, and not have the "fastest person to arrive" syndrome, but allow them discover a body, and the first one to claim it gets it, other than whoever was close and found out that an expensive space vehicle was wheeling toward it from a farther out distance.
This fellas claim is truly eroneous, because if it were not, then we could "claim" a sun in a distant galaxy, and then charge people rent for looking at it and thus using its light...
I dont know, i cant beleive nut jobs like these fellas exist, but they do bring up an intresting point if you think about the implications of what happens if we ever do go into space, and who exactly does own what (if say we could actually mine these things).
anyway
Buzz OUT.
Think about this, if SCO is being puppeted, and no one can tell who. If SCO gets countersued, and decides to just fold up shop (its CEO and other stock holders bailing out before the stock goes down) and then just dump the company. For whoever is behind SCO, and the people that run SCO, this whole thing is a win win situation.
I know you are nidded 0 as an AC, but i often find myself doing the same thing, I use no cd cracks on software i have purchased legally, the software tends to load faster, run better, and perform top notch, and if i have to shut it down and restart... well that aint half bad.
I have always been annoyed, especially when the CD checking algo sometimes didnt work! Like when i first got UT 2k3, it kept saying i didnt have the disks, as i stared at my 3 perfectly legitimate non warez disks, i went on to a popular hack/crack site, and was able to get a no cd patch, and it worked fine.
In fact, I rarely launch a game I buy now with the CD, even the first time i install it, its just a lot less headache to go get the patches, then grab the nOCD crack for the game then it is waste time swapping CD after CD out of the tray.
I though support the use of dongles, just not dongles like the one you have which only works for one product. If everyone could move over to a unified dongle such as WIBU new Codemeter dongle, you could just stick the dongle in and it would work after you had product activation, and it would work on your computer no matter what, even if you had to reformat.
The only hassle is if you break the dongle and then you have to get it replaced, and the update stage there is handled all on-line while your new dongle is plugged in.
I dont know, i just think the CD checking thing is not reliable enough, and current dongle stuff are evne harder to use (some software makes you plug the dongle into each hardware slot on your computer which takes time).
its bad stuff, and its a lot easier to simply use a hack or crack than worry about using your legitimate copy.
If they come and hunt you down and say "hey you stole this" and you have your 3 freaking owned disks, what are they going to do?
Consider this, schools, if done on voucher, would not necessarrily be held to higher education standards, they would be their to make a profit. Yes, higher education standards would be present in some schools, but they also can refuse admission.
Also, you forget about the location problem. What if no one wants to have thier children go to a local school. only the ones that cant afford to have their children go elsewhere would send their schools to less advantaged schools.
the problems simply mount from their on, you have children with no mixed economic level in the same area, the schools that are in the area can also be selective (probably) and the ones that are good and do have all the things that parents want will fill up fast, leaving only places considered "not good enough" for the "rest" of the children to get into.
I think you miss the fact that this would only INCREASE the problems in current school systems.
I am not saying what we currently have is "good" but I am saying that vouchers are not the way to fix the problem.
You forget one thing, the Human factor. Location and Economic standing of a group near a school is important, and if a school is allowed to limit admission to say.. everyone that lives close gets entry first, then if leftover space we allow others, then you will still have the same problem.
Consider the case in Kansas City Kansas, there are schools in Johnson county in "well to do neighborhoods" where attendance is high, school activities are frequent, and parent participation is often.
Now consider only 10s of miles away (a long drive but worth it for a parent) to failing kansas city magnet schools. Vouchers will not help this at all, the schools would not have to "accept everyone" they could simply say "we no longer have seats" once they fill whatever small quota is required, then where are the children to go? Thats right, where their parents have choice, thats to another low level public school that is within the area.
Even if vouchers are allowed at private schools, the competition for the voucher money will be amazing. THe private schools have no set standards that they have to follow for teaching children, they can simply teach cirriculums that are against doctrine of church and state as well, and PUBLIC money will be used to support teaching children in a method that would probably violate the constitutional rights of an athiest.
And, if a forced cirriculum were set for the private schools, you would thus be violating their rights to teach their children and the children of those who choose to go their.
I think you possibly havent though this through, and thought of the people you are trying to actually help, at least i hope your trying to help.
This would widen class gaps so wide, that in some areas children might not even be ABLE to attend school, simply because it would not be profitiable enough to do so.
Schools dont simply "exist" they are their either because the government saw a need, or a private group saw a need. When teh government stops funding a school to keep it alive, then that school is going to die, especially in a "high risk" area.
Oh well
Buzz OUT
Oh and btw, these are the "future" of dongle based computing. They have thier own memory, their own processors, and their own Trusted memory which cant be accessed, and only written to by a vendor. Yes you can write a program to "re-write" the trusted sectors, but you cant read them.
This is Trusted computing, the only difference is the dongle is a small computer hooked to yours and you can carry it around. Instead of being forced to lug your machine around to listen to that copy of britaney spears, you can use the dongle as the authenticaton device, and if you have the dongle in, you can download the music from the site again and just listen to it again.
On audio/visual stuff it doesnt cover the analog hole, but it is a step to portable DRM, wherease being screwed with one machine that can run things but another cant is no fun at all.
actually, you assume the program can "run" without the key, and that it merely "checks" the key, thats not actually a very well designed program.
Using the WIBU key you can actually force a program to encrypt parts of itself, and it wont decrypt without the key. Yes you can make a JUMP statement around the encrypted and compiled code, but if the programmer has done it properly, the code wont run.
You can, for example, encrypt several KEY subroutines with the key, that requires the key to run, the key then loads these into memory via its specialized ASIC.
The only way to actually defeat a properly programmed bit of code would be to take a snapshot of it in ram and then run that snapshot.
And even then , if the code user made a key call within the encrypted secure block , i think it might even be impossible.
What you are thinking of is some examples, and a single example, on the net of the WIBU key being broken in a peice of software. Having looked at how that was done, i can tell you the person that programmed the WIBU code did NOT read the programmers guide for the WIBU key.
He basically said "hey WIBU key here is 999999, tell me what you think"
and then checked to see if the WIBU key replies "9999999"
the problem is, that is NOt what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to Encrypt all start up code using the WIBU asic, and within that encrypted data make a call to WIBU key to verify its the same key that decrypted it.
Since the only time you have "running non encrypted data" in the system is in the ram after the program starts, making a JUMP command around the code wont help, since it wont have loaded the proper data required by the WIBU key.
I mean, about the only other "exploit" i have seen is someone claiming to have gotten around "securikey" by logging in as administrator and uninstalling its drivers. When the trick is, they have to have a key and a password for them to be able to log into administrator.
Both are examples of groups not reading the manual, and not doing things properly.
1 was someone who threw a hack job of coding into the mix, the other was someone who thought that since they were the administrator, and knew the password and assumed that they would let their children log in as administrators and give them passwords, that that was an exploit.
It would be like making a safe and then keeping it unlocked and open at all times, then sueing the safe company because someone stole stuff from it.
in concurrence with an operating system they can be used for sealed storage, and key decryption. Right now, griffin technologies has a working (though not released) program that can encrypt/decrypt based on secure keys stored ina dongle onto the hard drive. Without the dongle you dont get access to the data. even if you try to make whatever program is accessing the data "bypass" the dongle, it will only read it in "raw" encrypted form, which doesnt help
They are very easy to install, at least CodeMeter is, it "looks" like a USB harddrive, but the software can make calls to it through a COM interface.
The dongle "SCREAMS" ease of use, you merely stick it into your computers easiest USB port and BAM you have a working dongle. USB is also pretty robust, and the place I interned at only had a few returned WIBU USB dongles returned, and that was mostly due to children stepping on them, or in one case a child breaking it in an attempt to get back at his/her parent so they couldnt get on the computer.
Now I know that kind of thing MAY happen, but thats why licensing can be handled over the internet very easily, especially with CODEMETER which has a protocol just for that purpose.
With the amount of users accessing the internet, a site that say encoded everything comeing from it with the public key of the remote user, ONLY the remote user using his dongle that has the private key stored on it can access the data (that btw was my job, to explore the feasiblity of this) and the USER doesnt even have access to the private key, since that part of the data translation is in "hidden" sectors of the key.
So no one knows the private key, and the sites you want to get data know the public key. This makes it very secure and ensures you have the proper dongle.
If you register a new dongle, you get a new private key, and returned licencing data (which are two different things) so that you can use your new key even though an old one might have been broken.
Since it also has an internal limit counter (to be set by the licensure) the people who create products that rely on the key, can also force a remote user to update his licence every X uses/days so that he doesnt call a key in false serveral times and have offline use of his product with multiple keys and invalid licences.
Its pretty neat, and since I took several grad classes in Info Sec I can tell you its pretty darn secure, though not infalible. I mean if someone comes up with computing that can check all possible keys, then well there you go.
hehe
I used to intern for a company that works with a product called "WIBU KEY" now despite the fact their is a single note of one group "getting around" WIBU key, done properly WIBU should not be feasible to break.
Now WIBU is making something called "Codemeter" in which a user will be able to have licence information for hundreds of different software packages, that means if someone has MS word on their computer, and knows someone else that has it, they can use their licence on the Codemeter stick on their friends computer.
They are USB devices that can be carried on the keychain, and places like www.securikey.com are going to start using the new codemeter product.
It is MUCH better than other trusted computing schemes, since the data is not just being hanleded on the computer, all codes are "private" and all licence data is "private" on the key itself.
The way the part is manufactured you cannot get the data off of the key, if it is stored using a certain key mode. Since the key has its own integrated chip, it can use its key to decrypt as a private key that you need never know. If you lose your key or break it, you can go on-line, register a new key that you have bought, and get the data transferred to your new codemeter stick.
I was excited when I got to look at the product in its pre-development stages, and only wish that I had been able to stay on with the company to do more work with the new product line.
I think token based authentication is the way to go for the future, simply make programs that will not run unless large chunks of them have been decoded, and make sure small but important algos in the programs have to be run through the key every so often.
And as you detail attacks (if you reply) please note, spoofing the key doesnt work when the code runs inside the key, and if you use random checking algos against the key, it wont work either.
Any WIBU key hack on the net (which i researched) is totally based on bad programming by the target company, IE they sent "999999" to the key, and expected "99999" back, which was just bad programming on thier part.
Buzz OUT
A user was found with downloaded music today on their computer, they were tried this afternoon, and execution begins tonight.
This is your RIAA controlled world.
Would you like to know more?
In episode 3, anakin becomes an evil man known as darth vader, after making padme pregnant with twins.
Palpatine becomes the Empreror, and the Jedi are hunted down, with only a few escaping.
Yoda lives through it, and so does Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda goes to Dagobah (though it might not be revealed in the 3rd movie) and ObiWan goes to live on Tatooine, where Luke is left with his uncle Own Lars.
ha, but disney might have copyright grandfather extended to being 500 hundred years, through clever money practices with you congressman, so anyone with reasonable proof they were shakespeares heirs could sue!
Actually Orson Scott Card is a known mainstream author, in some high schools his book "Enders Game" is taught to students, as well as in some college classes.
In fact, Enders Game is an extremely popular book, even outside of regular sci fi reading, you can even find large print "childrens" versions (same story differnet package) at bookstores.
If you mean by "mainstream" that he isnt on television, then you might be right, but if you mean "mainstream" as being "well read by a LOT of people, more than say 2 million" then yes he is mainstream.
There is no first sale in everquest either, you dont own a plate at a restaurant because you used it to eat, Itunes he "owns" the copyrighted material, it resides on HIS computer, so he should be able to sell it HOW HE wants to. Everquest, all the strappings are just part of the service, you dont actually own anything, except the copy of the game you use to use the service.
I know you may not, in many years, got an e-mail you wanted from brazil.
;-)
But i got this e-mail from brazil that had pictures of a naked brazillian soccer team... but other than that... well i guess your right
dont forget the naked brazilian soccer team!
its one of the most played games on the internet for FPS shooters, at least using gamespy stats. at any one time it can often have more players than UNreal 2k3, as it is right now it is number 5.
Live Stats
Game Players Game Players
Half Life
73661 Battlefield 1942
7584
Americas Army: Operations
4938 Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
4693
Medal of Honor Allied Assault
4014 Unreal Tournament 2003
3966
all gleaned from gamespy stats