Is one smart cookie. He's also the only prof I wouldn't take a class from because it wasn't webcast. In other words you can't pause and rewind his live lectures. He talks real fast. And tilts his head at a 30 degree angle to his left.
Actually, apt-get has been ported to RedHat. You can get it here. Free (RHN-less) updates and you just change sources.list and `apt-get dist-upgrade` when a new release comes out.
The basis of symmetric key crypto is a pseudo-random number generator. This is a deterministic function that, given a random seed, generates pseudo-random bits that, information theoretically, should be indistinguishable from random noise if you don't know the seed. There are many different implementations of PRNGs, and this company has just built another one. And PRNGs are not magic OTP generators.
The following is a first-hand account from a Stanford student of the lack of police brutality:
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 00:24:07 -0800 (PST) From: "Louise A." Subject: Re: EMERGENCY RESPONSE DEMO TO POLICE VIOLENCE IN SEATTLE (fwd)
Greetings from Seattle,
I was at the demo today -- will send out a full report soon -- but for now, i just want to say that reports of police brutality are not exaggerated. Many are in fact grossly underestimated. I didn't get anything worse than tear gas, but police have been beating with riot sticks peaceful protestors who sat or lay on the ground. They have taken protestors who were wearing face masks, covered the inside of the mask with pepper spray and forced it back onto the person's face. They dragged an elderly woman across the ground by her hair and an arm. They've shot rubber bullets at ranges of a few feet, and one officer pulled a real gun on protestors before other officers restrained him. In addition, police have _not_ been arresting protestors to any extent -- I heard 18 arrests the whole day -- they have simply been attacking us. Now the mayor has declared a state of civil emergency, set a 7 pm curfew dowtown, and called out the National Guard. So if you can make it to the Palo Alto demo tomorrow, do. (info below if you missed it)
Aren't there cracks available for DVDs that work the same way? Don't even bother trying to decrypt the stuff, just capture the result of decryption.
Even if noone was ever able to crack WMA or SDMA (which I'm sure is succeptible to the same sort of crack), there is always the digital out on the back of a sound card. Simply record digital SMDA to DCC and then back to MP3. There's no way to stop this. But I don't think it will even be necessary
But if you already have a MacOS license from an old machine, couldn't you legally install MacOS on one of these machines and save yourself the $500 Apple tax? That is, until UCITA gets passed. Also, if you're a naughty person, couldn't you just install the OS and not license it? Won't this eventually force Apple's hand to begin licensing the OS again?
One of the biggest things I see happening from this move is the inability of hardware manufacturers to ignore Linux. Any OEM who wants to be bundled with Dell (which is basically everybody) will now _have_ to produce Linux drivers. With this move, we now have a chicken and OEMs will have to produce the eggs.
Don't buy a Rio. Buy a Nomad. They have come with the same amount of flash RAM (64 MB) and cost less ($220 vs $243) than the Rio. And Creative hasn't signed on with RIAA. I really do love capitalism.
I understand that both DVDs and this new SDMI format use some sort of encryption. But, as we have seen, seemingly unbreakable encryption schemes have been broken by the likes of distributed.net. I really don't know the technical details of the encryption schemes used by DVDs and SDMI, but, given Moore's law, how long will it be before we can decrypt these files in a reasonable amount of time on an ordinary computer? We're only a few months away from 1 GHz Alpha processors, remember, and only a year or two (hopefully) from a "reprogrammable" Transmeta chip that could theoretically be reprogrammed to just crack codes. So I am asking those of you with any sort of knowledge about cryptography and specifically the encryption scheme used by DVDs and SDMI what the outlook is.
If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.
It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the MP3 version, and just as likely that it won't be available. Until they can ensure that every song I want will be available in this format, I might was well waste my time looking on hotline for a song that I want instead of wasting my time looking on the RIAA's website for a song that they don't have available. And at that point, there really aren't any advantages of the SDMI's format over MP3s -- only disadvantages.
If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.
It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the free version.
Unless the record companies stop releasing stuff on CD, I can't imagine how they are going to stem the tide of n-generation cloning
The plan is simple (if sub-moronic): encrypt CDs. According to this article, the SDMA also plans on creating a new CD Audio spec that's encrypted. They admit that current CD players will need to be upgraded, but neglect to mention the multiple billions of dollars that that would cost. Or the fact that there is zero incentive for anybody to do so. But hey, I'll be willing to spend $200 just to make Sony happy and make my life more difficult. Right.
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Imagine all the millions and millions of dead people who would vote if they could do so electronically!
Is one smart cookie. He's also the only prof I wouldn't take a class from because it wasn't webcast. In other words you can't pause and rewind his live lectures. He talks real fast. And tilts his head at a 30 degree angle to his left.
Actually, apt-get has been ported to RedHat. You can get it here. Free (RHN-less) updates and you just change sources.list and `apt-get dist-upgrade` when a new release comes out.
The basis of symmetric key crypto is a pseudo-random number generator. This is a deterministic function that, given a random seed, generates pseudo-random bits that, information theoretically, should be indistinguishable from random noise if you don't know the seed. There are many different implementations of PRNGs, and this company has just built another one. And PRNGs are not magic OTP generators.
The following is a first-hand account from a Stanford student of the lack of police brutality:
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 00:24:07 -0800 (PST)
From: "Louise A."
Subject: Re: EMERGENCY RESPONSE DEMO TO POLICE VIOLENCE IN SEATTLE (fwd)
Greetings from Seattle,
I was at the demo today -- will send out a full report soon -- but for
now, i just want to say that reports of police brutality are not
exaggerated. Many are in fact grossly underestimated. I didn't get
anything worse than tear gas, but police have been
beating with riot sticks
peaceful protestors who sat or lay on the ground. They have taken
protestors who were wearing face masks, covered the inside of the mask
with pepper spray and forced it back onto the person's face. They dragged
an elderly woman across the ground by her hair and an arm. They've shot
rubber bullets at ranges of a few feet, and one officer pulled a real gun
on protestors before other officers restrained him. In addition,
police have _not_ been arresting protestors to any extent -- I heard 18
arrests the whole day -- they have simply been attacking us. Now the
mayor has declared a state of civil emergency, set a 7 pm curfew dowtown,
and called out the National Guard. So if you can make it to the Palo Alto
demo tomorrow, do. (info below if you missed it)
NO WTO!
In solidarity,
Louise A.
Aren't there cracks available for DVDs that work the same way? Don't even bother trying to decrypt the stuff, just capture the result of decryption.
Even if noone was ever able to crack WMA or SDMA (which I'm sure is succeptible to the same sort of crack), there is always the digital out on the back of a sound card. Simply record digital SMDA to DCC and then back to MP3. There's no way to stop this. But I don't think it will even be necessary
But if you already have a MacOS license from an old machine, couldn't you legally install MacOS on one of these machines and save yourself the $500 Apple tax? That is, until UCITA gets passed. Also, if you're a naughty person, couldn't you just install the OS and not license it? Won't this eventually force Apple's hand to begin licensing the OS again?
One of the biggest things I see happening from this move is the inability of hardware manufacturers to ignore Linux. Any OEM who wants to be bundled with Dell (which is basically everybody) will now _have_ to produce Linux drivers. With this move, we now have a chicken and OEMs will have to produce the eggs.
Don't buy a Rio. Buy a Nomad. They have come with the same amount of flash RAM (64 MB) and cost less ($220 vs $243) than the Rio. And Creative hasn't signed on with RIAA. I really do love capitalism.
I understand that both DVDs and this new SDMI format use some sort of encryption. But, as we have seen, seemingly unbreakable encryption schemes have been broken by the likes of distributed.net. I really don't know the technical details of the encryption schemes used by DVDs and SDMI, but, given Moore's law, how long will it be before we can decrypt these files in a reasonable amount of time on an ordinary computer? We're only a few months away from 1 GHz Alpha processors, remember, and only a year or two (hopefully) from a "reprogrammable" Transmeta chip that could theoretically be reprogrammed to just crack codes. So I am asking those of you with any sort of knowledge about cryptography and specifically the encryption scheme used by DVDs and SDMI what the outlook is.
If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.
It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the MP3 version, and just as likely that it won't be available. Until they can ensure that every song I want will be available in this format, I might was well waste my time looking on hotline for a song that I want instead of wasting my time looking on the RIAA's website for a song that they don't have available. And at that point, there really aren't any advantages of the SDMI's format over MP3s -- only disadvantages.
If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.
It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the free version.
Unless the record companies stop releasing stuff on CD, I can't imagine how they are going to stem the tide of n-generation cloning
The plan is simple (if sub-moronic): encrypt CDs. According to this article, the SDMA also plans on creating a new CD Audio spec that's encrypted. They admit that current CD players will need to be upgraded, but neglect to mention the multiple billions of dollars that that would cost. Or the fact that there is zero incentive for anybody to do so. But hey, I'll be willing to spend $200 just to make Sony happy and make my life more difficult. Right.