'XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use"'. Yes. Except when you try to do it the first time as non-admin user and it wants to install drivers, even for such things as mass storage devices. So you switch to an admin user, plug it in, it works and you go back to the normal user.
I hadn't noticed that issue, since I'm a bad user who runs with admin privileges just to avoid this sort of hassle. But I had noticed the one where you plug in the device and maybe one time out of three the little balloon pops up and says "There was a problem with your hardware" and you have to reboot to get Windows to see the little gadget again. Or when you boot up with the gadget plugged in but Windows won't see it until you unplug it and plug it back in. Or, on Windows 2000, where you've got a multi card reader and there's no way to safely remove a card without stopping the whole device, and then you have to unplug and replug the whole card reader if you want to read another card before rebooting. Oh, and let's not get started on the forced weekly rebooting after you run Windows Update and the little nag screen keeps stealing focus to remind you that you haven't rebooted yet. No, let's not even go there.
I wrote that in 1999, and I didn't even start working on BitTorrent until 2001," Cohen said. "I find it really unpleasant that I even have to worry about it....
That was written in a combative confrontation style; I wasn't really talking about anything. It was a reaction-getting thing.... I think it's pretty clear the way that was written is that it was written in voice. It was an exaggerated character speaking it.
So what will Microsoft and the MPAA require next--a mandatory webcam permanently bolted to the top of your monitor that shuts it off if it detects that you're pointing a camcorder at it?
Seriously. How did whatever suits who came up with this idea get their heads so far up into their posteriors? It's just like Real complaining that Apple won't license their DRM for the iPod--as if Apple and not DRM itself was the real problem. So now, the MPAA and Microsoft want to eliminate the market for high-def PC content in a hopeless quest to try and stop a few people from intercepting and stripping DRM from the high quality signal. Unbelievable!
I agree that Microsoft's Windows installer is hopelessly antiquated--it doesn't look like it's changed much since Windows NT--but there actually is a way to get SATA drivers installed without a floppy. This program can, given your Windows CD, generate a bootable ISO with your SATA drivers (plus the latest service pack if you want) pre-installed.
Because Firefox renders PNG completely, it is prone to these sort of errors. However there is one browser that won't need a patch issued to be safe from this bug, which is Internet Explorer. While IE can render PNG a little, it hasn't implemented the full technology. By using IE, you ensure that you will be safe from any bugs that arise from new technologies, such as PNG.
Wow, that's some attempt at spin. Too bad it's completely wrong.
The fact that Microsoft doesn't support the PNG alpha channel, antialiasing, shadow masking, etc. is completely immaterial--IE still has to decompress the PNG, which means it is vulnerable to any zlib bugs.
By the way, the "new technology" known as PNG was approved by the W3C on October 1, 1996. The fact that Microsoft still doesn't properly support it does not mean it's some bleeding edge thing. Microsoft is just stuck in the stone age.
Uh, no it's not. Pi is an irrational number. 22/7 is just an approximation. And it's not a hard approximation to memorize either, seeing as how it repeats every 6 digits...
At no time did I ever click "yes" when prompted to install software. The point was to attract the "drive-by" malware, the ones that didn't put an entry in "Add/Remove Programs", the ones that were the hardest to remove (e.g., randomly named polymorphs, malware that sees if one tries to terminate the process or remove a registry key and re-installs, malware that prevents anti-spyware programs from running, etc.).
In fifteen minutes, I can infect an XP box with between 400 and 600 objects (by AdAware's count)...
Wow. That's scary.
What is the typical vector (or vectors) for infection? Internet Explorer? Windows file sharing?
In your testing, do you use fully patched XP boxen, or a fresh base-level install? The reason I ask is that I browse the web a lot, but I use Mozilla (and configure IE on "high" security, using it only for Windows Update and the occasional site that doesn't work properly in Mozilla). And I haven't been wormed--but if I used MSIE more frequently, would I be? Is a fully patched Internet Explorer still so buggy that it will allow malicious sites to silently install malware? Or do most PCs get pwn3d when malicious servers record their IPs and attack their machines directly (which would be prevented by something as simple as a cable modem or DSL modem that does NAT)?
Nope. You'll get more function-call & other overhead from setting up the sort in the GPU, so this is completely irrelevant.
Is there the same overhead per comparison? std::sort() performs much faster than qsort because it avoids the overhead of a function call on every comparison. With a deep-pipelined processor like a P4 Prescott, there's real savings to be found there.
FWIW, my boss, who is a former Intel employee, told me quite frankly several months ago that Intel is guilty of all of this and more. I'm surprised that AMD has waited this long to take action.
I've been considering investing in a decent digital camera and some backdrops so I can take pictures of my kids and do what I want with them (reprint, put online, email to grandma, etc.) without having to pay ruinous fees. I'm sure the professional photographers couldn't care less that their abuse of the law prevents would-be photographers from finding an alternative to their services. (Why not just avoid taking pictures altogether? Ask my wife.;)
So the gist of this protection is that the autorun installs a piece of malware that disables CD ripping. What I want to know is, when will Sony and SunComm get sued under computer trespass laws? Disabling someone's physical property to prevent them from "infringing" on your "intellectual property" should not be legal.
Microsoft was able to revoke Winamp's ability to play subscription-based DRM files to close the loophole offered before. I believe it was still able to play songs that were purchased.
I'm speaking from experience here. My music purchased from walmart.com stopped playing until I upgraded Winamp.
To find a collision, you've probably got to hide a clump of randomness in the document, and then rotate that clump until the hashes collide.
That's actually not what they did. They generated two essentially random blobs of data that have the same hash. We'll call these X and Y. They then created a PostScript document containing BOTH messages, the one that Alice's boss would sign and the one he presumably would not sign. They inserted two copies of block X into one of these documents, and a one X and one Y into the other. The original document contained code that compared the two blocks, and if they were the same, caused one message to be rendered, or if they were different, caused the other message to be rendered. Thus both documents hash the same (since X hashes the same as Y), but you see different text when you view the files.
This sort of attack would only work on documents that can contain code of some sort. It would not work on text files.
So, if you were to authorize a computer, then go to the web interface and say it is now no longer authorized, the files would still play on said computer, at least if that computer didn't hook back up to iTunes.
Makes sense. I guess iTunes DRM doesn't phone home like Windows Media DRM does (or at least not as often).
After the Winamp disk writer plugin "security hole" allowed users to strip DRM from WMA files, Microsoft revoked Winamp's player key, and suddenly Winamp stopped being able to play DRMed files entirely. So users (I being among them) had to download a "fixed" version of Winamp in order to continue listening to our music with that player. (WMP10 still played them regardless.)
This situation shows that Windows Media DRM requires your player to phone home and potentially revoke your licenses. (This is why I won't buy anything with Windows Media DRM anymore.)
The only reason you are convinced of this is because you are not familiar with how the #1 music store works (iTunes). I have had many upgrade cycles. No problem. Deauthorize my computer. Move to new computer. Reauthorize.
Hmm. That is interesting. DRM sucks, but it sucks less when it puts the owner in control over their licenses to some extent. Microsoft could learn something from this.
The only problem they haven't quite solved is what to do when your system crashes and you cannot deauthorize it.
Clearly some remote server stores hardware hashes or some other form of identification for each "authorized" computer. They ought to let you log in to a web-based service and deauthorize a machine without having to be logged on to it. That could solve that problem.
However, I had this happen to me, and I contacted iTunes, and that same day they emailed me back to tell me they had cleared out all 5 authorizations and I could start from scratch. (They also told me they won't do this again.)
So iTunes isn't immune to the disappearing music problem; it just has a longer half-life.
If you are really concerned, pull up all your iTunes music and burn CDs for each album. Then you have a copy that can later be ripped from or just played from if disaster strikes. Like if someone breaks into your car and steals all your physical CDs.
I find music CDs to be an undesirable medium. They're too bulky for the amount of music they hold. And reripping them (1) causes a loss in quality due to recompression, and (2) violates the terms of service anyway, so you might as well just get them off Kazaa.
I honestly don't get the way you're thinking. You seriously think selling freely copyable MP3s wouldn't reduce sales far more?
The problem with DRMed products is, if it's not freely copyable, you will eventually be locked out of it for good. Take Microsoft's DRM, for example. Microsoft will only let you restore your license backups twice. After that, you can kiss your paid-for music collection goodbye.
Do you plan on upgrading your computer or reinstalling the OS more than twice? If you've bought music online, you've spent real money on a disappearing product.
I'm convinced the only reason online music stores sell anything at all is that they're too new. 99.9% of users haven't read the fine print and won't find out that they didn't really buy anything until the next upgrade cycle comes around.
People who want music without paying for it can already find it. But I believe if the record labels made it possible to pay a fair price for something better--no risk of bad rips, truncated files, or lawsuits from the RIAA--people would gladly pay for it. But the only thing the labels will allow to be sold online is shackled to one PC, artificially incompatible with many players, and practically guaranteed to disappear. That is supposed to sway people from P2P?
it can be difficult to convince buyers to buy an unprotected format because they can simply get a copy from a friend/p2p
What?! Are you saying you prefer to buy music that is artificially incompatible with your MP3 player and is likely to disappear entirely when you upgrade your computer?
DRM is the reason I don't buy music online, and it boggles my mind that the record labels are so myopic that they think crippling their product will improve sales.
The underlying CPU means almost nothing to the vast majority of application developers. The endianness might make it easier to port Windows and Linux/x86 applications to the Mac, but I can't see OSS developers moving en masse to OS X for that reason. And if OS X/x86 ran on standard PC hardware, it could easily take a chunk out of open source Windows apps, but that's just not going to happen--See here, the last paragraph: Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.
(Incidentally, the use of the word allow indicates to me that perhaps the hardware will be practically identical and artificial restrictions may be put in place to ensure the hardware is a genuine Apple box... then someone will hack OS X to run on generic PCs... and Apple will bludgeon them with the DMCA... I can hardly wait.)
What claim does Sony (or whoever) have on the DVD Decrypter source code? I can understand forcing him to take it offline--an unfortunate yet very real aspect of the DMCA's anti-free-speech provisions--but what right do they have to make him give it up? Might makes right, I guess.
If Apple plans to sell OS X for "Wintel" hardware, in direct competition with Windows, I'd understand this switch. (That would rule, IMHO.) But otherwise, it just seems like a giant step backward. Apple has always been an elegant architecture from the bottom up. Intel's nasty x86 baggage just doesn't belong.
I can't imagine Apple going for the P4 in any event. Pentium M possibly--but is there a 64-bit Pentium M? Or maybe Intel has at last found a home for the Itanic?
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Wow! That is news!
'XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use"'. Yes. Except when you try to do it the first time as non-admin user and it wants to install drivers, even for such things as mass storage devices. So you switch to an admin user, plug it in, it works and you go back to the normal user.
;)
I hadn't noticed that issue, since I'm a bad user who runs with admin privileges just to avoid this sort of hassle. But I had noticed the one where you plug in the device and maybe one time out of three the little balloon pops up and says "There was a problem with your hardware" and you have to reboot to get Windows to see the little gadget again. Or when you boot up with the gadget plugged in but Windows won't see it until you unplug it and plug it back in. Or, on Windows 2000, where you've got a multi card reader and there's no way to safely remove a card without stopping the whole device, and then you have to unplug and replug the whole card reader if you want to read another card before rebooting. Oh, and let's not get started on the forced weekly rebooting after you run Windows Update and the little nag screen keeps stealing focus to remind you that you haven't rebooted yet. No, let's not even go there.
Yeah, Windows is such a joy...
So what will Microsoft and the MPAA require next--a mandatory webcam permanently bolted to the top of your monitor that shuts it off if it detects that you're pointing a camcorder at it?
Seriously. How did whatever suits who came up with this idea get their heads so far up into their posteriors? It's just like Real complaining that Apple won't license their DRM for the iPod--as if Apple and not DRM itself was the real problem. So now, the MPAA and Microsoft want to eliminate the market for high-def PC content in a hopeless quest to try and stop a few people from intercepting and stripping DRM from the high quality signal. Unbelievable!
I agree that Microsoft's Windows installer is hopelessly antiquated--it doesn't look like it's changed much since Windows NT--but there actually is a way to get SATA drivers installed without a floppy. This program can, given your Windows CD, generate a bootable ISO with your SATA drivers (plus the latest service pack if you want) pre-installed.
Because Firefox renders PNG completely, it is prone to these sort of errors. However there is one browser that won't need a patch issued to be safe from this bug, which is Internet Explorer. While IE can render PNG a little, it hasn't implemented the full technology. By using IE, you ensure that you will be safe from any bugs that arise from new technologies, such as PNG.
Wow, that's some attempt at spin. Too bad it's completely wrong.
The fact that Microsoft doesn't support the PNG alpha channel, antialiasing, shadow masking, etc. is completely immaterial--IE still has to decompress the PNG, which means it is vulnerable to any zlib bugs.
By the way, the "new technology" known as PNG was approved by the W3C on October 1, 1996. The fact that Microsoft still doesn't properly support it does not mean it's some bleeding edge thing. Microsoft is just stuck in the stone age.
Try punching 22/7 - pi = into Google Calculator. You'll see they're not the same.
22/7 is just 3 1/7. 1/7 is a repeating decimal,
Just yesterday, I challenged a co-worker to see who could recite the most digits of pi. I wasted him... he only knew 40 or so, to my 80.
Well, looks like I've got my work cut out to me... to the tune of three orders of magnitude.
Its is merely 22/7 after all
Uh, no it's not. Pi is an irrational number. 22/7 is just an approximation. And it's not a hard approximation to memorize either, seeing as how it repeats every 6 digits...
At no time did I ever click "yes" when prompted to install software. The point was to attract the "drive-by" malware, the ones that didn't put an entry in "Add/Remove Programs", the ones that were the hardest to remove (e.g., randomly named polymorphs, malware that sees if one tries to terminate the process or remove a registry key and re-installs, malware that prevents anti-spyware programs from running, etc.).
In fifteen minutes, I can infect an XP box with between 400 and 600 objects (by AdAware's count)...
Wow. That's scary.
What is the typical vector (or vectors) for infection? Internet Explorer? Windows file sharing?
In your testing, do you use fully patched XP boxen, or a fresh base-level install? The reason I ask is that I browse the web a lot, but I use Mozilla (and configure IE on "high" security, using it only for Windows Update and the occasional site that doesn't work properly in Mozilla). And I haven't been wormed--but if I used MSIE more frequently, would I be? Is a fully patched Internet Explorer still so buggy that it will allow malicious sites to silently install malware? Or do most PCs get pwn3d when malicious servers record their IPs and attack their machines directly (which would be prevented by something as simple as a cable modem or DSL modem that does NAT)?
Nope. You'll get more function-call & other overhead from setting up the sort in the GPU, so this is completely irrelevant.
Is there the same overhead per comparison? std::sort() performs much faster than qsort because it avoids the overhead of a function call on every comparison. With a deep-pipelined processor like a P4 Prescott, there's real savings to be found there.
Why "former"? Did he get fired?
No, he just didn't like the politics.
FWIW, my boss, who is a former Intel employee, told me quite frankly several months ago that Intel is guilty of all of this and more. I'm surprised that AMD has waited this long to take action.
I've been considering investing in a decent digital camera and some backdrops so I can take pictures of my kids and do what I want with them (reprint, put online, email to grandma, etc.) without having to pay ruinous fees. I'm sure the professional photographers couldn't care less that their abuse of the law prevents would-be photographers from finding an alternative to their services. (Why not just avoid taking pictures altogether? Ask my wife. ;)
So the gist of this protection is that the autorun installs a piece of malware that disables CD ripping. What I want to know is, when will Sony and SunComm get sued under computer trespass laws? Disabling someone's physical property to prevent them from "infringing" on your "intellectual property" should not be legal.
Just because the idea came from M$ doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from it.
Yes it does. Can you honestly believe Microsoft hasn't already applied for a dozen patents over this?
Microsoft was able to revoke Winamp's ability to play subscription-based DRM files to close the loophole offered before. I believe it was still able to play songs that were purchased.
I'm speaking from experience here. My music purchased from walmart.com stopped playing until I upgraded Winamp.
To find a collision, you've probably got to hide a clump of randomness in the document, and then rotate that clump until the hashes collide.
That's actually not what they did. They generated two essentially random blobs of data that have the same hash. We'll call these X and Y. They then created a PostScript document containing BOTH messages, the one that Alice's boss would sign and the one he presumably would not sign. They inserted two copies of block X into one of these documents, and a one X and one Y into the other. The original document contained code that compared the two blocks, and if they were the same, caused one message to be rendered, or if they were different, caused the other message to be rendered. Thus both documents hash the same (since X hashes the same as Y), but you see different text when you view the files.
This sort of attack would only work on documents that can contain code of some sort. It would not work on text files.
So, if you were to authorize a computer, then go to the web interface and say it is now no longer authorized, the files would still play on said computer, at least if that computer didn't hook back up to iTunes.
Makes sense. I guess iTunes DRM doesn't phone home like Windows Media DRM does (or at least not as often).
After the Winamp disk writer plugin "security hole" allowed users to strip DRM from WMA files, Microsoft revoked Winamp's player key, and suddenly Winamp stopped being able to play DRMed files entirely. So users (I being among them) had to download a "fixed" version of Winamp in order to continue listening to our music with that player. (WMP10 still played them regardless.)
This situation shows that Windows Media DRM requires your player to phone home and potentially revoke your licenses. (This is why I won't buy anything with Windows Media DRM anymore.)
The only reason you are convinced of this is because you are not familiar with how the #1 music store works (iTunes). I have had many upgrade cycles. No problem. Deauthorize my computer. Move to new computer. Reauthorize.
Hmm. That is interesting. DRM sucks, but it sucks less when it puts the owner in control over their licenses to some extent. Microsoft could learn something from this.
The only problem they haven't quite solved is what to do when your system crashes and you cannot deauthorize it.
Clearly some remote server stores hardware hashes or some other form of identification for each "authorized" computer. They ought to let you log in to a web-based service and deauthorize a machine without having to be logged on to it. That could solve that problem.
However, I had this happen to me, and I contacted iTunes, and that same day they emailed me back to tell me they had cleared out all 5 authorizations and I could start from scratch. (They also told me they won't do this again.)
So iTunes isn't immune to the disappearing music problem; it just has a longer half-life.
If you are really concerned, pull up all your iTunes music and burn CDs for each album. Then you have a copy that can later be ripped from or just played from if disaster strikes. Like if someone breaks into your car and steals all your physical CDs.
I find music CDs to be an undesirable medium. They're too bulky for the amount of music they hold. And reripping them (1) causes a loss in quality due to recompression, and (2) violates the terms of service anyway, so you might as well just get them off Kazaa.
I honestly don't get the way you're thinking. You seriously think selling freely copyable MP3s wouldn't reduce sales far more?
The problem with DRMed products is, if it's not freely copyable, you will eventually be locked out of it for good. Take Microsoft's DRM, for example. Microsoft will only let you restore your license backups twice. After that, you can kiss your paid-for music collection goodbye.
Do you plan on upgrading your computer or reinstalling the OS more than twice? If you've bought music online, you've spent real money on a disappearing product.
I'm convinced the only reason online music stores sell anything at all is that they're too new. 99.9% of users haven't read the fine print and won't find out that they didn't really buy anything until the next upgrade cycle comes around.
People who want music without paying for it can already find it. But I believe if the record labels made it possible to pay a fair price for something better--no risk of bad rips, truncated files, or lawsuits from the RIAA--people would gladly pay for it. But the only thing the labels will allow to be sold online is shackled to one PC, artificially incompatible with many players, and practically guaranteed to disappear. That is supposed to sway people from P2P?
What?! Are you saying you prefer to buy music that is artificially incompatible with your MP3 player and is likely to disappear entirely when you upgrade your computer?
DRM is the reason I don't buy music online, and it boggles my mind that the record labels are so myopic that they think crippling their product will improve sales.
The underlying CPU means almost nothing to the vast majority of application developers. The endianness might make it easier to port Windows and Linux/x86 applications to the Mac, but I can't see OSS developers moving en masse to OS X for that reason. And if OS X/x86 ran on standard PC hardware, it could easily take a chunk out of open source Windows apps, but that's just not going to happen--See here, the last paragraph: Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.
(Incidentally, the use of the word allow indicates to me that perhaps the hardware will be practically identical and artificial restrictions may be put in place to ensure the hardware is a genuine Apple box... then someone will hack OS X to run on generic PCs... and Apple will bludgeon them with the DMCA... I can hardly wait.)
What claim does Sony (or whoever) have on the DVD Decrypter source code? I can understand forcing him to take it offline--an unfortunate yet very real aspect of the DMCA's anti-free-speech provisions--but what right do they have to make him give it up? Might makes right, I guess.
If Apple plans to sell OS X for "Wintel" hardware, in direct competition with Windows, I'd understand this switch. (That would rule, IMHO.) But otherwise, it just seems like a giant step backward. Apple has always been an elegant architecture from the bottom up. Intel's nasty x86 baggage just doesn't belong.
I can't imagine Apple going for the P4 in any event. Pentium M possibly--but is there a 64-bit Pentium M? Or maybe Intel has at last found a home for the Itanic?