And why, why, why would you call it Skynet? Seriously?
Probably because the original SkyNet satellite was launched in 1971. So, they probably called it SkyNet because it's building a communications network in the sky:)
This key doesn't really add anything to what's already done. They could already decrypt every movie by simply sticking it in the player and extracting the key, all this does is make it possible to make a standalone tool to decrypt discs (until they revoke this key, anyway). But if you don't mind breaking the DMCA in the first place, how many would have moral problems getting a copy of WinDVD to extract the key anyway? This really is non-news.
It's more news in that it could make HD content decryption as universally accessible as DVD decryption currently is. A lot of people might want to extract their HD content but not have the know-how or motivation to do anything beyond "download this program, hit start", though it's less news since I've heard there are already programs that will do that using a list of title keys that's periodically updated over the Internet.
How many keys are there? Why aren't there just one? What's the difference? IS there any difference?
AACS uses a bunch of different keys in a hierarchical structure. Gradually, the cracks have been revealing keys higher and higher up the food chain. As I understand it, this is a bottom-up description of AACS's key structure:
At the lowest level, every piece of content is encrypted with a Title Key, which is unique to at least an individual title, possibly a particular printing of the title. The original cracks revealed the Title Keys for individual titles one at a time. These can be used to decrypt the content, but don't break the scheme, just the encryption on an individual piece of content.
The Title Key is stored on the actual media, encrypted by the Volume Unique Key, which is unique to a given title.
The Volume Unique Key is the result of a keyed hash of the Volume ID (stored on the media) and a Media Key, which is unique per title.
The Media Key used is generated by combining the Media Key Block (stored on the media) with a key unique to the decrypting device. Each device has a different key, but generates the same Media Key.
I'm not entirely sure why so many keys are used, but that's basically how the scheme works. Previous cracks were based on revealing keys that were title-specific. This one has revealed a device-specific key, which means that until the key is revoked, which would cause all future discs to no longer play on that particular player, any piece of content can be completely decrypted.
sorry, not a lawyer so probably mixing up patenting and copyrighting
Just because this is commonly mixed up, I figured I'd let you know that you're actually talking about trademarks, the third major kind of intellectual property (along with patents and copyright).
Patents are concerned with new and novel (at least, in theory) inventions and give the holder of the patent a monopoly over whatever was patented in exchange for telling the entire world how to make whatever it is.
Copyright is concerned with creative works (including software code, nowadays) and prevents people from distributing or creating derivatives of them without the creator's permission.
Trademark is concerned with the naming of things and is intended to prevent customer confusion by keeping two entities from naming products in very similar ways.
Of the three, I personally think trademark is the one that's set up the best. If you don't actually use your trademark, you lose it, and the only basis to claim infringement is the likelihood of customer confusion. Thus, you can have Bass beer along with Bass shoe stores, but you can't name your new clothing store Target.
Why? In most places you build a phone using a standard GSM module, get it approved by the FCC equivalent and market it to the public.
I know the US doesn't use GSM, but why does that make it different?
Actually, some networks in the US do use GSM (Cingular and T-Mobile are the two big ones). However, historically in the US, you couldn't just take any phone and have it work on a service's network, you had to get a SIM card that was provided by the network, and they would only provide that if your phone was one of the models they supported. That may change now that there's a DMCA exception for allowing phones to hook up to wireless networks, though.
I'd have to say that Visual Studio pretty much rocks. I use it for c++ development only, and am very happy with it. If linux had any dev environment that was ANYWHERE NEAR as good as VC++, maybe I wouldn't despise working on it.
Interestingly, I had to use VS for working on a C# project last year, and I was somewhat surprised at how it could do so much intricate stuff while at the same time totally screwing up some basic features.
For instance, if you've got a line that's calling some overloaded method and you select it and do "show definition", no matter what, it always points you to the first definition of that method, even if it's not the version you're actually calling. It's incredibly annoying.
It certainly has some nice features, but I'd rather an IDE that does the basic stuff right without a lot of fluff.
Apple really needs to buy Parallels or do something similar. It would make a huge difference to people moving from Windows to the Mac and eventually, Windows could go the same way as Classic MacOS has under OS X and just fade away. I don't think MS would be very pleased with this development though:-)
You never know. As long as running Windows in Parallels requires a copy of Windows that's purchased from Microsoft, they're still getting their money. Parallels is an interesting situation for Microsoft, as it means that some portion of the folks buying Macs are paying them for Windows anyway (and at retail prices at that, which is much more profitable for Microsoft than OEM).
What CPU does it use? Another Power-based from IBM?
Not really related, but I was looking at how the hardware designers came together for the current and last generation of consoles, and it was pretty interesting.
Sixth generation:
PS2: Sony/Toshiba CPU + Sony GPU
GameCube: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox: Intel CPU + NVIDIA GPU
Seventh generation:
PS3: IBM CPU + NVIDIA GPU
Wii: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox 360: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
The DMCA isn't just about copy protection, it also includes sections that detail the way a copyright holder is to notify a service that hosts user-uploaded content and the way such a service must respond to those notifications. Check out 17 USC 512.
even though there was no crime comitted in the USA (interresting isn't it?), and you could be extraded to France to be judged and put in prison.
Just a small correction, most extradition treaties nowadays require that an act be a crime in both countries for extradition to be possible, so you probably couldn't be extradited. I wouldn't ever plan on vacationing in France, though.
"recent"? I have been hearing (and using) that term at least since the 80s. Even back then, it was so common that even in the "Max Headroom" series, the computer hacker-type characters exclaimed "elegant!" when looking a well crafted system.
It's also been used in mathematics to describe especially well put together proofs for decades, I expect that's how it got into computer science.
After an invasion of South Korea the US is left with an ugly choice, let SK fall or risk Nuclear retalliation against a 3rd neighboring coutnry from the NK.
I'm not sure you have an accurate picture of the Korean DMZ. The zone itself is covered in landmines, and each side has more than a million men guarding it (with United States troops already being part of the South Korean force). An invasion by either side would be a long and bloody struggle to get more than a couple miles into the other country.
Why would anyone want to move back to the days of proprietary cartridges and drives, when we've come so far from there?
We certainly wouldn't, but businesses that need to back up a whole mess of data are still often stuck in the proprietary cartridge and drive space. A cartridge-style solution that has higher density would likely be marketed to them.
it's the general "no leadership, no goals" culture at Google that scares me (and reminds me of the late 1990s dot-com businesses).
The thing is, that's been Google's culture all along, pretty much. And in 2005 they had a net income of $2.1 billion before taxes on $6.1 billion in revenue. It seems to be working just fine for them.
Brazilian courts have asked for the data. I live in the USA. I'll destroy the data and Brazil can cry in their beer.
Except for the fact that obstruction of justice is one of the crimes covered by the US-Brazil extradition treaty. Are you willing to stake your freedom on the United States government caring more about you than their relations with the largest country in South America?
If Google owns the data then one option they have is to simply destroy it. No government can compell them to hand over something they no longer have.
That would generally be called obstruction of justice, which would expose individuals inside Google to the possibility of spending some time in a Brazilian jail. If a court of law has asked you for information, it's illegal to destroy it.
Apple wins because the iPod does a few things very well, looking the best while it does it. Zune, in attempting to be all things to all people, misses the point; there are actually very few people who want anything to do everything.
Exactly. I remember a study that was done about music players a while back, and in terms of functionality (ie, not "style"), it found that basically only three things mattered to people: physical size, capacity, and battery life. Take a look at what Apple is advertising on the iPod Nano page and iPod page. I can't even find a real Microsoft home page for the Zune, the closest thing I can find is this press release, which doesn't even mention either physical size or battery life.
If they're taking a loss at $13 per DVD what's the real cost? If Wal-Mart buys 300,000 copies of something, do you mean to tell me they're paying more than $12.99 per movie?! I thought they were these great negotiators, cutthroat distributer killers. Or does that only work on toilet paper and tools made in China?
Wholesale cost of a new release DVD to a retailer like Wal-Mart is typically about $17.95. So yes, they're paying more than $12.99 per movie, that's what a loss leader is. The idea is that by selling it so low, and then advertising the crap out of it, people who want the movie will say to themselves, "Hrm, Pirates is way cheaper at Wal-Mart than anywhere else, let's go get it there." Then, while they're in the store, they also grab the toilet paper, food, and whatever else they need.
The DVD is there to get people into the store, with the knowledge that people who enter with the purpose of buying a DVD rarely leave with only the DVD in hand.
To be fair though, I'm guessing there are SR-71 replacements (Aurora?) busy doing a similar job but we just don't know about it yet.
The US launches 5-10 spy satellites a year, and they publically announce when they go up (though not what they do). Just look at something like this launch schedule and look for launches with "classified spacecraft payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office".
The US has been wanting to launch a large network of smaller satelites for a while now, and now that they're giving money to NASA again that may happen.
Just to let you know, research on things like picosats for military purposes isn't coordinated by NASA, it's done by the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The military spends a lot more money on satellite programs than NASA does.
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And why, why, why would you call it Skynet? Seriously?
:)
Probably because the original SkyNet satellite was launched in 1971. So, they probably called it SkyNet because it's building a communications network in the sky
This key doesn't really add anything to what's already done. They could already decrypt every movie by simply sticking it in the player and extracting the key, all this does is make it possible to make a standalone tool to decrypt discs (until they revoke this key, anyway). But if you don't mind breaking the DMCA in the first place, how many would have moral problems getting a copy of WinDVD to extract the key anyway? This really is non-news.
It's more news in that it could make HD content decryption as universally accessible as DVD decryption currently is. A lot of people might want to extract their HD content but not have the know-how or motivation to do anything beyond "download this program, hit start", though it's less news since I've heard there are already programs that will do that using a list of title keys that's periodically updated over the Internet.
How many keys are there? Why aren't there just one? What's the difference? IS there any difference?
AACS uses a bunch of different keys in a hierarchical structure. Gradually, the cracks have been revealing keys higher and higher up the food chain. As I understand it, this is a bottom-up description of AACS's key structure:
At the lowest level, every piece of content is encrypted with a Title Key, which is unique to at least an individual title, possibly a particular printing of the title. The original cracks revealed the Title Keys for individual titles one at a time. These can be used to decrypt the content, but don't break the scheme, just the encryption on an individual piece of content.
The Title Key is stored on the actual media, encrypted by the Volume Unique Key, which is unique to a given title.
The Volume Unique Key is the result of a keyed hash of the Volume ID (stored on the media) and a Media Key, which is unique per title.
The Media Key used is generated by combining the Media Key Block (stored on the media) with a key unique to the decrypting device. Each device has a different key, but generates the same Media Key.
I'm not entirely sure why so many keys are used, but that's basically how the scheme works. Previous cracks were based on revealing keys that were title-specific. This one has revealed a device-specific key, which means that until the key is revoked, which would cause all future discs to no longer play on that particular player, any piece of content can be completely decrypted.
sorry, not a lawyer so probably mixing up patenting and copyrighting
Just because this is commonly mixed up, I figured I'd let you know that you're actually talking about trademarks, the third major kind of intellectual property (along with patents and copyright).
Patents are concerned with new and novel (at least, in theory) inventions and give the holder of the patent a monopoly over whatever was patented in exchange for telling the entire world how to make whatever it is.
Copyright is concerned with creative works (including software code, nowadays) and prevents people from distributing or creating derivatives of them without the creator's permission.
Trademark is concerned with the naming of things and is intended to prevent customer confusion by keeping two entities from naming products in very similar ways.
Of the three, I personally think trademark is the one that's set up the best. If you don't actually use your trademark, you lose it, and the only basis to claim infringement is the likelihood of customer confusion. Thus, you can have Bass beer along with Bass shoe stores, but you can't name your new clothing store Target.
Why? In most places you build a phone using a standard GSM module, get it approved by the FCC equivalent and market it to the public.
I know the US doesn't use GSM, but why does that make it different?
Actually, some networks in the US do use GSM (Cingular and T-Mobile are the two big ones). However, historically in the US, you couldn't just take any phone and have it work on a service's network, you had to get a SIM card that was provided by the network, and they would only provide that if your phone was one of the models they supported. That may change now that there's a DMCA exception for allowing phones to hook up to wireless networks, though.
I'd have to say that Visual Studio pretty much rocks. I use it for c++ development only, and am very happy with it. If linux had any dev environment that was ANYWHERE NEAR as good as VC++, maybe I wouldn't despise working on it.
Interestingly, I had to use VS for working on a C# project last year, and I was somewhat surprised at how it could do so much intricate stuff while at the same time totally screwing up some basic features.
For instance, if you've got a line that's calling some overloaded method and you select it and do "show definition", no matter what, it always points you to the first definition of that method, even if it's not the version you're actually calling. It's incredibly annoying.
It certainly has some nice features, but I'd rather an IDE that does the basic stuff right without a lot of fluff.
Apple really needs to buy Parallels or do something similar. It would make a huge difference to people moving from Windows to the Mac and eventually, Windows could go the same way as Classic MacOS has under OS X and just fade away. I don't think MS would be very pleased with this development though :-)
You never know. As long as running Windows in Parallels requires a copy of Windows that's purchased from Microsoft, they're still getting their money. Parallels is an interesting situation for Microsoft, as it means that some portion of the folks buying Macs are paying them for Windows anyway (and at retail prices at that, which is much more profitable for Microsoft than OEM).
Companies strive to produce a product that loses money hand over fist.
Yeah, but they'll make it up on volume!
Oh, wait...
What CPU does it use? Another Power-based from IBM?
Not really related, but I was looking at how the hardware designers came together for the current and last generation of consoles, and it was pretty interesting.
Sixth generation:
PS2: Sony/Toshiba CPU + Sony GPU
GameCube: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox: Intel CPU + NVIDIA GPU
Seventh generation:
PS3: IBM CPU + NVIDIA GPU
Wii: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
Xbox 360: IBM CPU + ATI GPU
I don't get what this has to do with the DMCA...
The DMCA isn't just about copy protection, it also includes sections that detail the way a copyright holder is to notify a service that hosts user-uploaded content and the way such a service must respond to those notifications. Check out 17 USC 512.
While loosed lawyers are much more powerful than chained ones, the chained ones are safer.
Holy crap, someone used the word "loose" properly!
even though there was no crime comitted in the USA (interresting isn't it?), and you could be extraded to France to be judged and put in prison.
Just a small correction, most extradition treaties nowadays require that an act be a crime in both countries for extradition to be possible, so you probably couldn't be extradited. I wouldn't ever plan on vacationing in France, though.
"recent"? I have been hearing (and using) that term at least since the 80s. Even back then, it was so common that even in the "Max Headroom" series, the computer hacker-type characters exclaimed "elegant!" when looking a well crafted system.
It's also been used in mathematics to describe especially well put together proofs for decades, I expect that's how it got into computer science.
After an invasion of South Korea the US is left with an ugly choice, let SK fall or risk Nuclear retalliation against a 3rd neighboring coutnry from the NK.
I'm not sure you have an accurate picture of the Korean DMZ. The zone itself is covered in landmines, and each side has more than a million men guarding it (with United States troops already being part of the South Korean force). An invasion by either side would be a long and bloody struggle to get more than a couple miles into the other country.
Why would anyone want to move back to the days of proprietary cartridges and drives, when we've come so far from there?
We certainly wouldn't, but businesses that need to back up a whole mess of data are still often stuck in the proprietary cartridge and drive space. A cartridge-style solution that has higher density would likely be marketed to them.
it's the general "no leadership, no goals" culture at Google that scares me (and reminds me of the late 1990s dot-com businesses).
The thing is, that's been Google's culture all along, pretty much. And in 2005 they had a net income of $2.1 billion before taxes on $6.1 billion in revenue. It seems to be working just fine for them.
Brazilian courts have asked for the data. I live in the USA. I'll destroy the data and Brazil can cry in their beer.
Except for the fact that obstruction of justice is one of the crimes covered by the US-Brazil extradition treaty. Are you willing to stake your freedom on the United States government caring more about you than their relations with the largest country in South America?
If Google owns the data then one option they have is to simply destroy it. No government can compell them to hand over something they no longer have.
That would generally be called obstruction of justice, which would expose individuals inside Google to the possibility of spending some time in a Brazilian jail. If a court of law has asked you for information, it's illegal to destroy it.
That's going to be quite a kerfuffle, I would imagine.
Kudos to google for protecting user's rights, though.
And kudos to you, sir, for using the word kerfuffle.
where did they get all those Terabytes to send?
I'm pretty sure somewhere like that gets them directly from the manufacturer.
Apple wins because the iPod does a few things very well, looking the best while it does it. Zune, in attempting to be all things to all people, misses the point; there are actually very few people who want anything to do everything.
Exactly. I remember a study that was done about music players a while back, and in terms of functionality (ie, not "style"), it found that basically only three things mattered to people: physical size, capacity, and battery life. Take a look at what Apple is advertising on the iPod Nano page and iPod page. I can't even find a real Microsoft home page for the Zune, the closest thing I can find is this press release, which doesn't even mention either physical size or battery life.
If they're taking a loss at $13 per DVD what's the real cost? If Wal-Mart buys 300,000 copies of something, do you mean to tell me they're paying more than $12.99 per movie?! I thought they were these great negotiators, cutthroat distributer killers. Or does that only work on toilet paper and tools made in China?
Wholesale cost of a new release DVD to a retailer like Wal-Mart is typically about $17.95. So yes, they're paying more than $12.99 per movie, that's what a loss leader is. The idea is that by selling it so low, and then advertising the crap out of it, people who want the movie will say to themselves, "Hrm, Pirates is way cheaper at Wal-Mart than anywhere else, let's go get it there." Then, while they're in the store, they also grab the toilet paper, food, and whatever else they need.
The DVD is there to get people into the store, with the knowledge that people who enter with the purpose of buying a DVD rarely leave with only the DVD in hand.
How weird is that? Who lies about their religion?
That does seem really weird. Is it hip to be atheist these days?
To be fair though, I'm guessing there are SR-71 replacements (Aurora?) busy doing a similar job but we just don't know about it yet.
The US launches 5-10 spy satellites a year, and they publically announce when they go up (though not what they do). Just look at something like this launch schedule and look for launches with "classified spacecraft payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office".
The US has been wanting to launch a large network of smaller satelites for a while now, and now that they're giving money to NASA again that may happen.
Just to let you know, research on things like picosats for military purposes isn't coordinated by NASA, it's done by the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The military spends a lot more money on satellite programs than NASA does.