So I looked up the patent:
METHOD FOR MINIMIZING PIRATING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED COPYING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF/TO DATA ON/FROM DATA MEDIA INCLUDING COMPACT DISCS AND DIGITAL VERSATILE DISCS, AND SYSTEM AND DATA MEDIA FOR SAME, #6,684,199
and here is the method they claim:
(a) reading the mixed data from said media;
(b) detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed data;
(c) comparing the predetermined errors to the at least one authentication key or component thereof;
(d) authenticating the at least one of the media and the data in the mixed data responsive to the comparing step;
(e) removing the predetermined errors from the mixed data via a decoding operation resulting in substantially the data; and
(f) outputting the data as at least one of audio, video, audio data, video data and digital data substantially free of the predetermined errors.
They elaborate on a number of those points, but they don't on "detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed media."
I tried but failed to include a snip in here from libdvdcss-1.2.8, css.c (distributed under the GPL) , but here's the general idea:
int _dvdcss_unscramble( dvd_key_t p_key, uint8_t *p_sec )
{
if (p_sec[0x14] & 0x30)
{
some funky math involving pluses, minuses, and bitwise operations
while (p_sec != p_end)
{ do a lot more funky math to determined the correct data, incriment P_sec }
}
return
}
Now, the question I have is this: If they computed
the decryption for the entire block, for every block (whether or not it has errors), and not just blocks that had that 0x30 bit on in 0x14, and then decided which of the two blocks was a valid block, the encrypted one or the decrypted one, would they in fact be 'detecting predetermined errors' (as is not very well described in the patent)?
That's all good and well, but I have a couple questions:
1) So if DVDCCA patented a particular method of doing CSS, and then came up with a better one later on, they'd have both patent and trade secret protection, the former on the original algorithm, and trade secret protection on the new and improved algorithm, right?
2) Someone comes allong and creates a clean room implimentation of the new algorithm. Is that infringment?
3) Someone comes allong and creates yet another clean room implimentation of a CSS algorithm. Is that infringement?
Just a quick addendum (though somebody figured out what I meant anyhow) I was complaining about an
ArrayList greater than sign Integer less than sign
and an
ArrayList greather than sign Number less than sign
Evidently, it is true that an ArrayList(integer) is not a sublcass of ArrayList(number) and there is no good way to solve this problem for mutable objects; otherwise a function that takes a list of numbers could insert say a float into a list of integers. Just one of those things, I guess.
A friend of mine is bitching about this: if you type a list, say ArrayList, you can't use that as an argument for a function that takes a ArrayList. He's tried casting it, it just doesn't like it. Anyone else seen something like this?
I think the ABI stuff is something else entirely. When it's back up, rta; you'll get the impression they're talking about different stuff, not 1991 first-realease-of-linux stuff.
I do enjoy the whole Star Trek universe, but it's hard to deny that Enterprise has largely been unoriginal. This hairbrained season-long plot hasn't worked out well, and I find that the only episodes I most like heavily feature Phlox.
If the series had instead of going with this "temporal cold war" idea gone with a simple "explore nearby space and meet new races" type idea, I heavily suspect that things would have been better. I mean, hell; TNG and TOS were great; DS9 was alright, but Voyager was a step in the WRONG DIRECTION.
You've been modded as a troll because your position is untennable. If a company doesn't want people to have drivers, then they can damned well not release specs for their products. Fairly stupid of them, but it is their perogative.
It also doesn't have much to do with Microsoft, I think, if anything.
Either you didn't pay attention in US History in high school, or you didn't have it. I could grace you with a well written essay on the true causes of the Revolutionary War, but I'm not going to, because you obviously don't care enough to read it if you advise people to return the history class you were snoring in.
Your assertion that the founding of the country was religious in nature is ludicrous. I don't care whether you intend that to mean that in reference to the Revolutionary War or the colonization of the eastern seaboard, you're just wrong.
If you want to talk about a portion of the colonists, this is true. Some of them came over for religious reasons.
Don't preach in such an authoritative tone without some fucking history next time, asshole.
first question: If they were simply using stock GPL products in their routers, they would be required to distribute the source for the stock GPL products along with their product, or make it available (online/mail-order/whatever) at cost, make mention of it in the manual. Tivo is an example of this. I think that's pretty close to full compliance.
If you use Apache in your product, I'm not sure what the license provisions are. I imagine it's something similar. Someone else said Apache isn't GPL.
The unfortunate fact is that they did make modifications to packages. Busybox and probably some others, but most notably, the Linux kernel was modified. I think the Busybox maintainer eventually convinced them to release the modifications on Busybox, which they didn't initially do.
As for the linux kernel: When you write a linux kernel module, it's a sticky issue as to whether a module can be closed source. Linus's stance on this is that the module interface is sort of like an API, which means that close-source drivers make use of the kernel like a library. Closed drivers don't get access to a lot of kernel symbols and stuff like that, in order to make this analogy sound. I'm sure somebody has bones to pick with this statement, please do.
Included on the device were some modules that allowed loading of various Broadcom wireless cards. If things were all nice and happy, then Linksys would need to release the source for stock Linux on their GPL page or something, state "The drivers developped by Broadcom contained on the router are not licensed under the GPL and are not released here on this website."
Unfortunately, things are not nice and happy. In order for these drivers to function, you need some extra symbols inside of the kernel proper - not modules. Thus, Broadcom, Linksys, or whoever made the modifications, didn't just write a couple of modules. They made a derivative work, and that's why this is a mess; their modules are making use of a derivative of linux, and maybe that API analogy isn't sound any longer.
That's poorly worded and confusing. Someone flame me and correct my mistakes so roertel can make sense of this. But that's the general idea, I think?
OSC, you just got yourself a sale. I've read a few of your books, liked some of them, liked some of them less, but an article like this one deserves reward.
Unless someone is watching their mail queue, then they don't know how many messages to send - if response is pretty large, then they're not going to be able to pull one over. If response is fairly small, and conspirators were to send many messages, then it's obvious something is wrong.
Clearly, they're depressed that MIT and BC (was it BC?) defeated their subpoenas in Boston, so they're trying to convince as many universities as possible that they shouldn't spend any money fighting on behalf of their students, and just give in.
I applaud schools and ISPs that have been fighting these subpoenas. It's the right thing to do.
And they don't need a report to tell themselves that they don't need to defend their students. They're just doing what any good institution would do that cared about it's students/employees/whatever.
Why is it that "a virus did it" is an acceptable excuse for a priest or some random guy downloading child pornography, and establishes some reasonable doubt, to the point where people often successfuly evade prosecution, not just conviction?
Maybe there's nothing wrong with the excuse - if it's true - but why can't the governments keep the same standard when investigating hacking incidents, etc. I find it annoying that a pedderass doesn't even get charged while I myself might one day be tried and convicted of someone jacking my box and using it as a anonymizer for their hacking activities. Especially since I may fit 'the profile' - whatever that might be. Of course, a priest fits the profile too! ARGH!
(I'm expressing frustration over several things at once, but basically, some priest in california had gigs of child porn on his computer, got caught, and is not going to be charged because 'there's not enough evidence'. My ass.)
You're probably right about the mp3s. However, I will tell you this. Any song I consistently listen to - not just the standard "Have one song from the album, it occasionalyl makes it to my playlist for 2 iterations" - I do go out of my way to buy the CD. I really shouldn't, but I do. Can't help myself.
I myself downloaded a copy of 'arry's latest adventure. It was good. I actually finished the entire thing before the hard copy that I ordered online showed up on my doorstep. I've reread the entire "Myth" series in the past month or two. (Nevermind the fact that I actually OWN the damned things but can't find three of the books.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Book piracy is no big deal.
Anybody who has the patience to read a book on their computer REALLY REALLY wants the book that they're reading. So much so, that they tend to either already own the book, but have lost it, left it at home and they're somewhere else, or something of that nature.
Piracy of textbooks and, say, RPG manuals is another story, however. I think most people who acquire that stuff might actually have purchased the real deal, but because they don't want to shell out for a reference manual, as they already have it, they won't go out and buy the real thing.
Book piracy may have a negative impact on sales, however. I think that would-be book pirates should be aware of that and restrict themselves to downloading books they already own or would immediately purchase if they saw it on a shelf, and then order it immediately online before making a real dent in the sucker, BEFORE deciding if it's worth finishing.
Why? I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Haldeman a couple years ago, and he explained the financial facts about writing.
It's important to remember that most authors are in pretty bad financial shape - they don't make a whole lot on a book, or for that matter for shorts and articles. "Bridget Jone's Diary" and it's like are the exception, not the rule. Science fiction and fantasy - minus JK Rowling and a very small set of other lucky ducks - are probably the worst paying genres.
So if you're planning on purchasing a book but find yourself downloading the book instead, whether or not it turns out the book is your style, buy it anyhow, unless you're that guy who sits for 3 hours in the bookstore trying to determine if the book is worth buying.
You may have been confused by what I was saying. busybox was an example of a modified utility. Zebra was probably modified as well. The busybox maintainer was vocal as all hell, which is probably why his code is up there. Zebra's maintainer may have been a little less vocal.
Slashdot Mirror
So I looked up the patent:
METHOD FOR MINIMIZING PIRATING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED COPYING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF/TO DATA ON/FROM DATA MEDIA INCLUDING COMPACT DISCS AND DIGITAL VERSATILE DISCS, AND SYSTEM AND DATA MEDIA FOR SAME, #6,684,199
and here is the method they claim:
(a) reading the mixed data from said media;
(b) detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed data;
(c) comparing the predetermined errors to the at least one authentication key or component thereof;
(d) authenticating the at least one of the media and the data in the mixed data responsive to the comparing step;
(e) removing the predetermined errors from the mixed data via a decoding operation resulting in substantially the data; and
(f) outputting the data as at least one of audio, video, audio data, video data and digital data substantially free of the predetermined errors.
They elaborate on a number of those points, but they don't on "detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed media."
I tried but failed to include a snip in here from libdvdcss-1.2.8, css.c (distributed under the GPL) , but here's the general idea:
int _dvdcss_unscramble( dvd_key_t p_key, uint8_t *p_sec )
{
if (p_sec[0x14] & 0x30)
{
some funky math involving pluses, minuses, and bitwise operations
while (p_sec != p_end)
{ do a lot more funky math to determined the correct data, incriment P_sec }
}
return
}
Now, the question I have is this: If they computed the decryption for the entire block, for every block (whether or not it has errors), and not just blocks that had that 0x30 bit on in 0x14, and then decided which of the two blocks was a valid block, the encrypted one or the decrypted one, would they in fact be 'detecting predetermined errors' (as is not very well described in the patent)?
That's all good and well, but I have a couple questions:
1) So if DVDCCA patented a particular method of doing CSS, and then came up with a better one later on, they'd have both patent and trade secret protection, the former on the original algorithm, and trade secret protection on the new and improved algorithm, right?
2) Someone comes allong and creates a clean room implimentation of the new algorithm. Is that infringment?
3) Someone comes allong and creates yet another clean room implimentation of a CSS algorithm. Is that infringement?
Just a quick addendum (though somebody figured out what I meant anyhow) I was complaining about an
ArrayList greater than sign Integer less than sign
and an
ArrayList greather than sign Number less than sign
Evidently, it is true that an ArrayList(integer) is not a sublcass of ArrayList(number) and there is no good way to solve this problem for mutable objects; otherwise a function that takes a list of numbers could insert say a float into a list of integers. Just one of those things, I guess.
A friend of mine is bitching about this: if you type a list, say ArrayList, you can't use that as an argument for a function that takes a ArrayList. He's tried casting it, it just doesn't like it. Anyone else seen something like this?
you mean signal.h and it's buddies?
I think the ABI stuff is something else entirely.
When it's back up, rta; you'll get the impression they're talking about different stuff, not 1991 first-realease-of-linux stuff.
Great game, easy interface, no fear of dying.
There's really only one puzzle that is sort of tough to solve, but even then, it's hardly frustrating.
Adventure games should be like that, I think... just a fun storyline and a few puzzles along the way.
I do enjoy the whole Star Trek universe, but it's hard to deny that Enterprise has largely been unoriginal. This hairbrained season-long plot hasn't worked out well, and I find that the only episodes I most like heavily feature Phlox.
.02 $US.
If the series had instead of going with this "temporal cold war" idea gone with a simple "explore nearby space and meet new races" type idea, I heavily suspect that things would have been better. I mean, hell; TNG and TOS were great; DS9 was alright, but Voyager was a step in the WRONG DIRECTION.
Just my
You know, every time I've ever seen someone who described themself as a technologist describe a hypothetical system, I've been disappointed.
What the hell is a technologist *supposed* to be, anyhow, and why are so many of them imbeciles?
On a more tender note, I've noticed goatse.cx is down - what happened?
You've been modded as a troll because your position is untennable. If a company doesn't want people to have drivers, then they can damned well not release specs for their products. Fairly stupid of them, but it is their perogative.
It also doesn't have much to do with Microsoft, I think, if anything.
But back at SC96, I remember paying a nice cheap $75 to get in the door. Quite a bit of inflation, there.
Saw an advanced screening. Forget the second and third one ever existed. Your life will be better that way.
Either you didn't pay attention in US History in high school, or you didn't have it. I could grace you with a well written essay on the true causes of the Revolutionary War, but I'm not going to, because you obviously don't care enough to read it if you advise people to return the history class you were snoring in.
Your assertion that the founding of the country was religious in nature is ludicrous. I don't care whether you intend that to mean that in reference to the Revolutionary War or the colonization of the eastern seaboard, you're just wrong.
If you want to talk about a portion of the colonists, this is true. Some of them came over for religious reasons.
Don't preach in such an authoritative tone without some fucking history next time, asshole.
first question:
If they were simply using stock GPL products in their routers, they would be required to distribute the source for the stock GPL products along with their product, or make it available (online/mail-order/whatever) at cost, make mention of it in the manual. Tivo is an example of this. I think that's pretty close to full compliance.
If you use Apache in your product, I'm not sure what the license provisions are. I imagine it's something similar. Someone else said Apache isn't GPL.
The unfortunate fact is that they did make modifications to packages. Busybox and probably some others, but most notably, the Linux kernel was modified. I think the Busybox maintainer eventually convinced them to release the modifications on Busybox, which they didn't initially do.
As for the linux kernel:
When you write a linux kernel module, it's a sticky issue as to whether a module can be closed source. Linus's stance on this is that the module interface is sort of like an API, which means that close-source drivers make use of the kernel like a library. Closed drivers don't get access to a lot of kernel symbols and stuff like that, in order to make this analogy sound. I'm sure somebody has bones to pick with this statement, please do.
Included on the device were some modules that allowed loading of various Broadcom wireless cards. If things were all nice and happy, then Linksys would need to release the source for stock Linux on their GPL page or something, state "The drivers developped by Broadcom contained on the router are not licensed under the GPL and are not released here on this website."
Unfortunately, things are not nice and happy. In order for these drivers to function, you need some extra symbols inside of the kernel proper - not modules. Thus, Broadcom, Linksys, or whoever made the modifications, didn't just write a couple of modules. They made a derivative work, and that's why this is a mess; their modules are making use of a derivative of linux, and maybe that API analogy isn't sound any longer.
That's poorly worded and confusing. Someone flame me and correct my mistakes so roertel can make sense of this. But that's the general idea, I think?
No, you fools! Clearly the correct arrangement of letters is: "RIAA STONES VI THEFT!"
They put code in the kernel proper, linksys is in the wrong. Bad linksys!
So who wrote the code in the first place? Probably some guy at broadcom, yes?
OSC, you just got yourself a sale.
I've read a few of your books, liked some of them, liked some of them less, but an article like this one deserves reward.
Can't wait for part two.
Dear Genius:
Try again tomorrow.
Unless someone is watching their mail queue, then they don't know how many messages to send - if response is pretty large, then they're not going to be able to pull one over. If response is fairly small, and conspirators were to send many messages, then it's obvious something is wrong.
Clearly, they're depressed that MIT and BC (was it BC?) defeated their subpoenas in Boston, so they're trying to convince as many universities as possible that they shouldn't spend any money fighting on behalf of their students, and just give in.
I applaud schools and ISPs that have been fighting these subpoenas. It's the right thing to do.
And they don't need a report to tell themselves that they don't need to defend their students. They're just doing what any good institution would do that cared about it's students/employees/whatever.
Why is it that "a virus did it" is an acceptable excuse for a priest or some random guy downloading child pornography, and establishes some reasonable doubt, to the point where people often successfuly evade prosecution, not just conviction?
Maybe there's nothing wrong with the excuse - if it's true - but why can't the governments keep the same standard when investigating hacking incidents, etc. I find it annoying that a pedderass doesn't even get charged while I myself might one day be tried and convicted of someone jacking my box and using it as a anonymizer for their hacking activities. Especially since I may fit 'the profile' - whatever that might be. Of course, a priest fits the profile too! ARGH!
(I'm expressing frustration over several things at once, but basically, some priest in california had gigs of child porn on his computer, got caught, and is not going to be charged because 'there's not enough evidence'. My ass.)
ls /mp3s/mp3s/|wc -l
/mp3s/mp3s/ -lt|grep drwx|wc -l
312
ls
11
You're probably right about the mp3s.
However, I will tell you this. Any song I consistently listen to - not just the standard "Have one song from the album, it occasionalyl makes it to my playlist for 2 iterations" - I do go out of my way to buy the CD. I really shouldn't, but I do. Can't help myself.
You're right about the books, largely, however.
I myself downloaded a copy of 'arry's latest adventure. It was good. I actually finished the entire thing before the hard copy that I ordered online showed up on my doorstep. I've reread the entire "Myth" series in the past month or two. (Nevermind the fact that I actually OWN the damned things but can't find three of the books.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Book piracy is no big deal.
Anybody who has the patience to read a book on their computer REALLY REALLY wants the book that they're reading. So much so, that they tend to either already own the book, but have lost it, left it at home and they're somewhere else, or something of that nature.
Piracy of textbooks and, say, RPG manuals is another story, however. I think most people who acquire that stuff might actually have purchased the real deal, but because they don't want to shell out for a reference manual, as they already have it, they won't go out and buy the real thing.
Book piracy may have a negative impact on sales, however. I think that would-be book pirates should be aware of that and restrict themselves to downloading books they already own or would immediately purchase if they saw it on a shelf, and then order it immediately online before making a real dent in the sucker, BEFORE deciding if it's worth finishing.
Why?
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Haldeman a couple years ago, and he explained the financial facts about writing.
It's important to remember that most authors are in pretty bad financial shape - they don't make a whole lot on a book, or for that matter for shorts and articles. "Bridget Jone's Diary" and it's like are the exception, not the rule. Science fiction and fantasy - minus JK Rowling and a very small set of other lucky ducks - are probably the worst paying genres.
So if you're planning on purchasing a book but find yourself downloading the book instead, whether or not it turns out the book is your style, buy it anyhow, unless you're that guy who sits for 3 hours in the bookstore trying to determine if the book is worth buying.
Counter as you will, people.
You may have been confused by what I was saying. busybox was an example of a modified utility. Zebra was probably modified as well. The busybox maintainer was vocal as all hell, which is probably why his code is up there. Zebra's maintainer may have been a little less vocal.
to start pumping out more low power chips! Feynman gates anyone?