Shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
The article strongly implies that the OLPC will be defective by design, as RMS would say. A central authentication system that locks users out if they don't authenticate regularly, being used in an environment without reliable net access? Yeah, great idea. Can't see any problems with that. Does it also prevent users loading their own applications or custom kernels?
Would someone from the OLPC project care to comment on this? What precautions have been taken to ensure that users are still in control of their machines, and can easily work around all digital restrictions if they want to? How does a user recover a machine that has been "bricked" by failed authentication or a WGA-style glitch?
That is the one of the key differences between Bitfrost and Microsoft "trusted computing" schemes: you as owner of the box can get around it.
Yes? But the article also says:
Beyond cyberthreats, the XO laptop will have an anti-theft system designed to render stolen laptops useless. Each XO is assigned a "lease," secured by cryptography, that allows it to operate for a limited period of time. The laptop connects to the internet daily and checks in with a country-specific server to see if it's been reported stolen. If not, the lease is extended another few weeks. If the lease expires, the XO's internet connectivity is turned off, and shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
Surely this is only possible with a TCPA-style system? Otherwise the thief could just disable the check after stealing the machine. It sounds worse than Windows Genuine Advantage: that doesn't try to stop you installing another OS, and it won't kill your machine if you can't go online for some reason.
Shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
There are a few small webservers already in existence: thttpd and dhttpd to name two. thttpd is faster than Apache at serving static pages as its feature set is very small. It is also a useful power tool - you can instantly set up a webserver to serve any directory you want.
Someone could probably make a tidy piece of cash by making an instant webserver for Windows users. It's an easy way of distributing files that doesn't require any special software or configuration on the client side. thttpd + GUI + shell integration would do the trick nicely.
As well as wanting to know what the nodes represent (system calls or procedure calls?), I'd like to know what the edges represent. Control flow? Data flow? What are they supposed to be?
This article is unbelievable, apparently presenting a conclusion that the writer doesn't understand, using meaningless data.
Then where and what do atheists worship and how is not believing the same as believing?
One curious property, common to every religion, is the belief that "this religion is different to the rest". Every religious person can come up with reasons why their religion is not comparable with others.
Although I agree that atheism isn't a religion, it is nevertheless a belief system. It has more in common with religion than atheists are ever willing to admit.
I'm an agnostic. I suppose that agnosticism is a belief system too, but it's a very minimal belief system. Is there a God? I've no idea.
They want to sell their programmes to broadcasters in other countries, but they know that just restricting downloads to the UK won't be enough to stop UK-based viewers downloading and redistributing shows with BitTorrent. If all the Dr Who fans in Usania have already seen the latest episode online, then the Usanian TV network will be less keen to buy it.
Although the DRM is effectively useless, as UK viewers can just capture the DRM-free signal from digital television, the DRM pays lip service to foreign broadcasters that at least something is being done to prevent their viewers getting the programmes early. Even if it is futile and will turn more UK-based viewers to piracy in order to get an unrestricted play-anywhere copy.
Well then you should get along famously then because that is exactly what you are.
Nice! That'll teach me for having an opinion that was different to yours.
To be honest I can only imagine that you haven't seen any of Mr Cleese's work since sometime around the mid-Nineties, when it became quite obvious that whatever spark he had once possessed was long gone. Which I think is very sad as I am a great fan of his work with Python, Fawlty Towers and the various films that he starred in before about 1990. He might just have got old, or he might have found that doing commercials was easier than being creative and interesting.
Which is exactly my complaint about Mitchell and Webb. Doing comedy ads is a dark portent of impending creative bankruptcy for any comedian.
"There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs," it said.
The news will be a disappointment to the one million people who downloaded Beethoven's symphonies in a Radio 3 trial last year.
I downloaded those symphonies. I still listen to them. There's no DRM, my only complaint is that a higher bitrate could have been used (128k hardly does justice).
The BBC should be providing licence fee payers like myself with unrestricted digital content. If we end up building up massive libraries of free classical music, then so much the better! It is their job to educate, inform and entertain licence fee payers, not sell us CDs. They should not be concerned with "negative market impacts" - they should be providing the public service that we Brits are paying for.
How can you be worried about mere search engines at this time of crisis for our great nation?
Wow, love the comments. People actually seem to think that site is for real. I guess that sufficiently advanced satire really IS indistinguishable from reality (to copy a meme I saw in someone's sig).
Indeed. It seems to me now that shutting down all insecured wireless is an essentially impossible task. It's so widespread. Most people don't know that they should even consider securing their access points, let alone how to actually do it. Even if there was a major campaign to get everyone to close up their access point, many people would assume that it didn't apply to them, or they'd do it badly (e.g. with WEP), or they would turn it off after having trouble using it themselves.
So if anyone ever wants to use the Internet anonymously, they can. This is not a bad thing. But it does make the FBI's actions pointless: any intelligent terrorist, pedophile or liberal is going to use an unsecured access point to evade detection. Or a service like TOR, which is specifically designed to allow you to avoid your oppressive government, whether it be Chinese or American.
Heh, I guess you're right. I don't watch much TV, apart from things I actually want to watch, so I only find out about these things when they turn up online.
Woody Allen and John Cleese must be sell-out hacks then...
Yes they are. Unfunny, tedious, awful. Particularly sad in Cleese's case, to go from his incredible work on Python and Fawlty to a string of dire adverts. I don't think he's done anything funny for about 15 years now. I almost feel sorry for him, a genius lost.
I love Bill Hicks, but he also genuinely believed he was abducted by aliens. His word isn't scripture.
I just agree with him on this particular point. Mitchell and Webb's future work is compromised by this. Which is sad.
As I said in my post, I followed Mitchell & Webb's career from their work on Radio 4, through Peep Show, the TV series, the stage show. I saw them move from obscurity through cult comedy to become almost mainstream. They have never failed to entertain, until now.
As Bill Hicks said, doing a commercial makes you a sell-out. That's not so bad if you are an actor, particularly one who is short of cash, but it is bad if you are a comedian (like Mitchell or Webb) and it is worse if you are not short of cash. Remember, they're at the height of their career. They've got a film coming out soon. Further episodes of Peep Show and M&W Look are guaranteed. They've made it. They don't need to do ads.
Now we know they will say anything they are paid to say. They are not comedians, they are corporate shills. They are sell-outs. The distinction is important to me, as a long-time fan of their work. It means that all their future work is coloured by the possibility that they've been paid to have a particular opinion or say a particular thing.
It may not matter to you - for all I know, you may never have heard of them before - but it matters to a fan. It's a bit like discovering that Mr Lucas turned your favourite space-based film saga into a toy advert. It's almost that disappointing.
This is about integrity. It's not about betraying their characters - it's about betraying themselves. I didn't expect Mitchell and Webb to sell out until their careers hit the rocks, but I was wrong.
But such things shouldn't matter, right? People like Bill Hicks and myself are just morons for thinking that integrity is important. Me, sir? I'm just an imbecile.
Yes but Jeremy is a drugged-up idiot who can't get anything done. He's moved in to Mark's apartment because he can't get a job and is broke. And Mark is so uptight and full of self-loathing that he can't ever enjoy himself. He's neurotic and miserable.
You wouldn't want an OS modelled on either of them: it would either be useless (Jeremy) or no fun (Mark). To be honest, neither of them is in any way similar to Mac or Windows.
They just wanted the money so they whored themselves out. Nice work, chaps.
I loved them too (Peep Show series 1-3, M&W Sound series 1&2, M&W Look, the M&W stage show, etc. etc.). But I feel betrayed by this awful abomination. At the height of their careers, why are they already at the point where they will do anything for money?
"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink." - Bill Hicks
I'd hoped they were better than this.
Those Brits love their 'shenanigans and tomfoolery' just as much as the next guy.
Hmm, but not all reactors work like that any more. Newer designs are better - pebble bed reactors for example. Tiny amounts of waste are not really so difficult to manage.
I agree that "pollution free" is inaccurate, but I stand by the rest of what I said.
I think that really it's about economics. At the moment oil is king because it's cheap, but when it becomes too expensive to use, cheaper fuel will be used instead. That will be coal. I don't want people to burn coal because doing so is incredibly bad for the environment, as I am sure you are aware. But the only way to stop them is to offer something that is comparable in price. Unfortunately, that isn't ethanol, hydrogen, wind or solar power. These might be cost-effective in some areas, but we need a global solution so that all pollution is minimised.
Nuclear power seems expensive when the cost of building the plant is factored in. Costs much more to build a reactor than a coal-fired boiler. That's why we need investment in the technology right now, so that when we can't afford to use oil and natural gas any more, we don't have to start using coal again.
I'd rather have a small amount of waste, sealed in glass and buried in a mine, than a large amount of waste choking up the atmosphere and making acid rain. Wouldn't you?
Yes, I agree, "pollution-free" was inaccurate - bit of an overstatement!
I suppose that one could also argue that renewable energy is never pollution free either, because of the environmental cost of manufacturing and maintaining the equipment. But it's still better. Same goes for nuclear energy.
I agree. It is a shame that environmentalists often oppose nuclear power, as it is still the best solution we have for generating pollution-free energy on a practical scale.
By campaigning against nuclear power stations, environmentalists have forced more fossil-fuel stations to be built. Their actions helped to prevent investment in an infrastructure for sustainable energy, and have thus furthered our dependence on dirty fuels like oil and coal.
They should have been campaigning *for* nuclear power. They should have demanded the closure of all fossil fuel stations, to be replaced with both renewable energy and nuclear power. But they couldn't see past the A-bomb and Chernobyl.
They're at least as dangerous as many illegal drugs. More people die because of overuse or long-term addiction to alcohol or tobacco than any other drug. If the war on drugs was really about protecting public health, both would be illegal.
Of course, we know what happened when alcohol was prohibited. The consequence of prohibition is organised crime. When alcohol was legalized again, the gangsters moved on to substances that are still prohibited in this "land of the free". The high demand for illegal drugs continues to keep them in a business that rivals many global corporations in wealth generated.
Laws that prohibit drugs are simply moral laws. They are derived from the same religious roots as the temperance movement: the Puritan belief that any kind of inebriation must be sinful (to see what Jesus has to say about this, see John 2). I personally don't think these laws should be on the books any more than laws requiring Intelligent Design to be taught in place of science. But that's just my personal view. Hopefully even those who disagree with me will agree that they are hypocritical moral laws, because prohibition is not applied fairly and equally to all "morally harmful" things.
One thing is for certain - this is going to take quite a bit of hacking.
I do think there are ways to attack this, but I personally reckon that the main chance lies in extracting the private key from the TC module. An easier approach would be welcome.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the info.
Given that, it doesn't sound bad. Restrictions aren't a problem as long as the user can turn them off.
Shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
The article strongly implies that the OLPC will be defective by design, as RMS would say. A central authentication system that locks users out if they don't authenticate regularly, being used in an environment without reliable net access? Yeah, great idea. Can't see any problems with that. Does it also prevent users loading their own applications or custom kernels?
Would someone from the OLPC project care to comment on this? What precautions have been taken to ensure that users are still in control of their machines, and can easily work around all digital restrictions if they want to? How does a user recover a machine that has been "bricked" by failed authentication or a WGA-style glitch?
That is the one of the key differences between Bitfrost and Microsoft
"trusted computing" schemes: you as owner of the box can get around it.
Yes? But the article also says:
Beyond cyberthreats, the XO laptop will have an anti-theft system designed to render stolen laptops useless. Each XO is assigned a "lease," secured by cryptography, that allows it to operate for a limited period of time. The laptop connects to the internet daily and checks in with a country-specific server to see if it's been reported stolen. If not, the lease is extended another few weeks. If the lease expires, the XO's internet connectivity is turned off, and shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
Surely this is only possible with a TCPA-style system? Otherwise the thief could just disable the check after stealing the machine. It sounds worse than Windows Genuine Advantage: that doesn't try to stop you installing another OS, and it won't kill your machine if you can't go online for some reason.
Shortly thereafter the whole computer becomes a brick.
Try to beat HFS (Htttp File Server) featurewise and pricewise (free as in beer). I don't think theres money to be made here.
I thought something like that might already exist, and now I know. Thanks for pointing it out!
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-europe-06/bh-eu-06 -speakers.html
That Blackhat link is very interesting, thanks. Deliberate spying behaviour aside, Skype doesn't seem a very trustworthy app!
There are a few small webservers already in existence: thttpd and dhttpd to name two. thttpd is faster than Apache at serving static pages as its feature set is very small. It is also a useful power tool - you can instantly set up a webserver to serve any directory you want.
Someone could probably make a tidy piece of cash by making an instant webserver for Windows users. It's an easy way of distributing files that doesn't require any special software or configuration on the client side. thttpd + GUI + shell integration would do the trick nicely.
As well as wanting to know what the nodes represent (system calls or procedure calls?), I'd like to know what the edges represent. Control flow? Data flow? What are they supposed to be?
This article is unbelievable, apparently presenting a conclusion that the writer doesn't understand, using meaningless data.
Then where and what do atheists worship and how is not believing the same as believing?
One curious property, common to every religion, is the belief that "this religion is different to the rest". Every religious person can come up with reasons why their religion is not comparable with others.
Although I agree that atheism isn't a religion, it is nevertheless a belief system. It has more in common with religion than atheists are ever willing to admit.
I'm an agnostic. I suppose that agnosticism is a belief system too, but it's a very minimal belief system. Is there a God? I've no idea.
Bingo! That's a reason for the DRM.
They want to sell their programmes to broadcasters in other countries, but they know that just restricting downloads to the UK won't be enough to stop UK-based viewers downloading and redistributing shows with BitTorrent. If all the Dr Who fans in Usania have already seen the latest episode online, then the Usanian TV network will be less keen to buy it.
Although the DRM is effectively useless, as UK viewers can just capture the DRM-free signal from digital television, the DRM pays lip service to foreign broadcasters that at least something is being done to prevent their viewers getting the programmes early. Even if it is futile and will turn more UK-based viewers to piracy in order to get an unrestricted play-anywhere copy.
Thankyou for the link, I will certainly be doing that.
Well then you should get along famously then because that is exactly what you are.
Nice! That'll teach me for having an opinion that was different to yours.
To be honest I can only imagine that you haven't seen any of Mr Cleese's work since sometime around the mid-Nineties, when it became quite obvious that whatever spark he had once possessed was long gone. Which I think is very sad as I am a great fan of his work with Python, Fawlty Towers and the various films that he starred in before about 1990. He might just have got old, or he might have found that doing commercials was easier than being creative and interesting.
Which is exactly my complaint about Mitchell and Webb. Doing comedy ads is a dark portent of impending creative bankruptcy for any comedian.
The BBC should be providing licence fee payers like myself with unrestricted digital content. If we end up building up massive libraries of free classical music, then so much the better! It is their job to educate, inform and entertain licence fee payers, not sell us CDs. They should not be concerned with "negative market impacts" - they should be providing the public service that we Brits are paying for.
How can you be worried about mere search engines at this time of crisis for our great nation?
Wow, love the comments. People actually seem to think that site is for real. I guess that sufficiently advanced satire really IS indistinguishable from reality (to copy a meme I saw in someone's sig).
Heh, that was supposed to be satirical :).
Indeed. It seems to me now that shutting down all insecured wireless is an essentially impossible task. It's so widespread. Most people don't know that they should even consider securing their access points, let alone how to actually do it. Even if there was a major campaign to get everyone to close up their access point, many people would assume that it didn't apply to them, or they'd do it badly (e.g. with WEP), or they would turn it off after having trouble using it themselves.
So if anyone ever wants to use the Internet anonymously, they can. This is not a bad thing. But it does make the FBI's actions pointless: any intelligent terrorist, pedophile or liberal is going to use an unsecured access point to evade detection. Or a service like TOR, which is specifically designed to allow you to avoid your oppressive government, whether it be Chinese or American.
Heh, I guess you're right. I don't watch much TV, apart from things I actually want to watch, so I only find out about these things when they turn up online.
Woody Allen and John Cleese must be sell-out hacks then...
Yes they are. Unfunny, tedious, awful. Particularly sad in Cleese's case, to go from his incredible work on Python and Fawlty to a string of dire adverts. I don't think he's done anything funny for about 15 years now. I almost feel sorry for him, a genius lost.
I love Bill Hicks, but he also genuinely believed he was abducted by aliens. His word isn't scripture.
I just agree with him on this particular point. Mitchell and Webb's future work is compromised by this. Which is sad.
Yes, I'm an imbecile.
As I said in my post, I followed Mitchell & Webb's career from their work on Radio 4, through Peep Show, the TV series, the stage show. I saw them move from obscurity through cult comedy to become almost mainstream. They have never failed to entertain, until now.
As Bill Hicks said, doing a commercial makes you a sell-out. That's not so bad if you are an actor, particularly one who is short of cash, but it is bad if you are a comedian (like Mitchell or Webb) and it is worse if you are not short of cash. Remember, they're at the height of their career. They've got a film coming out soon. Further episodes of Peep Show and M&W Look are guaranteed. They've made it. They don't need to do ads.
Now we know they will say anything they are paid to say. They are not comedians, they are corporate shills. They are sell-outs. The distinction is important to me, as a long-time fan of their work. It means that all their future work is coloured by the possibility that they've been paid to have a particular opinion or say a particular thing.
It may not matter to you - for all I know, you may never have heard of them before - but it matters to a fan. It's a bit like discovering that Mr Lucas turned your favourite space-based film saga into a toy advert. It's almost that disappointing.
This is about integrity. It's not about betraying their characters - it's about betraying themselves. I didn't expect Mitchell and Webb to sell out until their careers hit the rocks, but I was wrong.
But such things shouldn't matter, right? People like Bill Hicks and myself are just morons for thinking that integrity is important. Me, sir? I'm just an imbecile.
Yes but Jeremy is a drugged-up idiot who can't get anything done. He's moved in to Mark's apartment because he can't get a job and is broke. And Mark is so uptight and full of self-loathing that he can't ever enjoy himself. He's neurotic and miserable.
You wouldn't want an OS modelled on either of them: it would either be useless (Jeremy) or no fun (Mark). To be honest, neither of them is in any way similar to Mac or Windows.
They just wanted the money so they whored themselves out. Nice work, chaps.
Hmm, but not all reactors work like that any more. Newer designs are better - pebble bed reactors for example. Tiny amounts of waste are not really so difficult to manage.
I agree that "pollution free" is inaccurate, but I stand by the rest of what I said.
I think that really it's about economics. At the moment oil is king because it's cheap, but when it becomes too expensive to use, cheaper fuel will be used instead. That will be coal. I don't want people to burn coal because doing so is incredibly bad for the environment, as I am sure you are aware. But the only way to stop them is to offer something that is comparable in price. Unfortunately, that isn't ethanol, hydrogen, wind or solar power. These might be cost-effective in some areas, but we need a global solution so that all pollution is minimised.
Nuclear power seems expensive when the cost of building the plant is factored in. Costs much more to build a reactor than a coal-fired boiler. That's why we need investment in the technology right now, so that when we can't afford to use oil and natural gas any more, we don't have to start using coal again.
I'd rather have a small amount of waste, sealed in glass and buried in a mine, than a large amount of waste choking up the atmosphere and making acid rain. Wouldn't you?
Yes, I agree, "pollution-free" was inaccurate - bit of an overstatement!
I suppose that one could also argue that renewable energy is never pollution free either, because of the environmental cost of manufacturing and maintaining the equipment. But it's still better. Same goes for nuclear energy.
I agree. It is a shame that environmentalists often oppose nuclear power, as it is still the best solution we have for generating pollution-free energy on a practical scale.
By campaigning against nuclear power stations, environmentalists have forced more fossil-fuel stations to be built. Their actions helped to prevent investment in an infrastructure for sustainable energy, and have thus furthered our dependence on dirty fuels like oil and coal.
They should have been campaigning *for* nuclear power. They should have demanded the closure of all fossil fuel stations, to be replaced with both renewable energy and nuclear power. But they couldn't see past the A-bomb and Chernobyl.
Why are alcohol and tobacco not drugs?
They're at least as dangerous as many illegal drugs. More people die because of overuse or long-term addiction to alcohol or tobacco than any other drug. If the war on drugs was really about protecting public health, both would be illegal.
Of course, we know what happened when alcohol was prohibited. The consequence of prohibition is organised crime. When alcohol was legalized again, the gangsters moved on to substances that are still prohibited in this "land of the free". The high demand for illegal drugs continues to keep them in a business that rivals many global corporations in wealth generated.
Laws that prohibit drugs are simply moral laws. They are derived from the same religious roots as the temperance movement: the Puritan belief that any kind of inebriation must be sinful (to see what Jesus has to say about this, see John 2). I personally don't think these laws should be on the books any more than laws requiring Intelligent Design to be taught in place of science. But that's just my personal view. Hopefully even those who disagree with me will agree that they are hypocritical moral laws, because prohibition is not applied fairly and equally to all "morally harmful" things.
One thing is for certain - this is going to take quite a bit of hacking.
I do think there are ways to attack this, but I personally reckon that the main chance lies in extracting the private key from the TC module. An easier approach would be welcome.