Semantics. When I hear that someone is a "Windsurfing champion" I don't think they represent Windsurfing Incorporated.

When I read "Linux Consultant" it looked the same as "Legal Consultant", "IT Consultant", or even "Unix Consultant". I think most people understood that he is a "consultant who specializes in Linux" which just doesn't roll off the tounge quite as easily as "Linux consultant" or "burger flipper". Imagine if you had to say "man who flips hamburgers". Writers are sometimes forced to choose between precision and brevity.

A lot of times, especially on the internet, people critique journalists regarding the fact that they weren't precise about such-n-such. The problem with most of these critiques is that if the writer took the pains to precisely describe everything, their style would come off as tedious, long winded, pedantic, and perhaps under confident.

As far as the phrase "Linux consultant" is concerned, I don't think there is a problem. If he worked for a company they might say "Linux consultant from Acme Inc" or something like that. If he is independant, then "Independant Linux consultant" is perhaps clearer, but I don't think anybody with a clue had trouble understanding what "Linux consultant" meant, neither do I think /.'s editorial policy should play to the clueless.

A lot of times, especially on the internet, people critique journalists regarding the fact that they weren't precise about such-n-such. The problem with most of these critiques is that if the writer took the pains to precisely describe everything, their style would come off as tedious, long winded, pedantic, and perhaps under confident.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
-The Beastie Boys

From what I've read, its not that simple and if Alan Cox is worried about it, it will not be easy to defeat. This ain't no MP3 watermarking scheme.

The fact that this has gotten this far pisses me off a great deal, if I buy a HD I should be able to do as I please with it. Its bad enough with DeCSS bullshit, if this gets anywhere near HDs we'll have the same battle: "Sorry Linux, you don't have a licence to read the new HDs and even if a benevolent stranger were to donate a license, you can not write drivers and open the source".

What's that you say? It's only for selective content such as films and music, for now maybe but once the spread of the technology is wide enough, who knows? This is fat cat corporate heaven.

We are no longer living in interesting times but very worrying times. George Orwell seems to have only missed the date by 20 years, maybe he misjudged human nature and thought we would rollover quicker but regardless if "inititives" like this HD shit get implimented I'd say we're half way on our backs already.

People forget that people had found ways to get unencrypted .VOB files long before DeCSS was designed -- there are many ways of doing it, everything from grabbing data in memory after decryption to the old low-tech standbys of hooking video out to video in. Don't underestimate the ability for people to find ways around these technological control measures. Macrovision only stops the least determined of pirates. CD-R audio with it's serialization and high price never caught on (and likely never will). CSS was broken long before DeCSS was even thought of.

--
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard

...but that's silly and hard to control.

It's far easier to control software that can contact the mothership through the OS it requires than it is to control hardware that can run any OS.

Agreed. That's why I predict...

The next Microsoft O.S.'s will not just do driver code signing, but will refuse to load drivers that have not been signed by an "approved" developer.

Doing this both reduces the average user's ability to load drivers that don't implement copy protection-schemes, and it's the only way I can see Microsoft defeating "debugging" audio and video drivers that intercept the unencrypted data streams on the way to the speakers and display and write them as standard .WAV and .AVI file.

Microsoft will in part be forced to do this by the big media companies, who will not allow computers to play next-generation media formats (HD-DVD, audio+video over FireWire, SDMI, etc.) without better assurance that they can't be hacked. Either Intel and M$oft give up on the idea of the PC being a platform for personal video recorder, audio library, home entertainment portal, etc. or they knuckle under and put in whatever hardwre and O.S. restrictions the bit media companies dictate. (As an aside, Intel and Microsoft have failed so badly to move the PC out of the home office and into the home entertainment center rôle that they may well abandon the effort to specialized, and even more closed, devices such as Xbox, WebTV, etc.)

This will just be a further reason to use alternatives such as Linux, but additional strengthening of laws like the DMCA will turn those who even mention hacks around the limitations into international criminals, let alone those who develop them.

The whole battle over DVD and DeCSS is just a warm-up :-(

Check back in a 6 months and see how much of this comes true.
--
=S Page

I am really starting to dispair of people trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with my life. Already today we've had the War On Drugs and now the "War on Piracy." Both of these seem to look to outlaw people who do not have the traditional, Conservative, "Old Ways" of doing things. Both seem to really be a war on people who are open to new ideas. And both seem to be unstoppable.

I always remember a quote from George Orwell's Animal Farm:-

The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view-the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm-and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property-appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead-she did not know why-they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones's gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

The film "The Beach", whilst being pretty awful, probably aimed to explore the same idea: Given total freedom, a tropical paradise, and a bunch of people all with the idea of escaping from current society, social interactions with other people always seem to destroy paradise. It seems to be a recurring theme throughout history - is this just a natural consequence of the way we are, or is it possible to actually ever build a truly free state?

At school, I asked a professor to borrow a CD of Jazz music. He asked why, because I am not in any of his jazz classes, and I replied that I wanted to put it on Napster (because I did). Eventually, I went through his sizable collection of rare CDs, creating redundant copies so that the recording will be less likely to disappear.

The point is, distributing information to reduce the likelihood of its disappearance is generally good, as it reduces redundant research and creation, which takes more time than simple duplication. The modern study of Science depends on research being shared and experiments repeated. Nobody is trying to figure out how to clone sheep, because it is already done. They may be trying to figure out how to clone humans, but that's an entirely different topic.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
-The Beastie Boys

-Christian


our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves

Totally untrue. Are you crazy? Someone smoking some pot in their apartment is potentially even less harmful than burning a CD! Also, no habitual drug user that I know is a violent, harmful, or bad person at all! Do you honestly believe that the war on drugs is only on cocaine and heroin? There are literally hundreds of outlawed drugs that pose little if any threat to anyone.

Don't believe what the government says about their drug war. It's about as true as the record company argument saying that they're looking out for the interests of their artists.

-Christian


our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves

Nowadays I'd suggest inflation would require a $100,000 investment - but that really isn't all that much, that is, for many of the small time Taiwanese manufacturers. Heck, if you were lucky, you could probably sell your car and get a mortgage to raise that cash.
(My email address is reversed...)

Common sense lesson number one: Who's making the specs? Well, IBM for one and they have quite a vested interest in HD sales, do you think they'd leave the door open like this?

Problem number one is that to make hard disks that are compatible with the new specs you will have to license the technology. In that License there will be a little clause that states the whole spec must be implimented which will of course mean you have to include all of the digital rights managements features.

Put this another way: When the price of DVD burners falls there will be a market for blank DVDs that don't have the key code portion of the disk already written, this will enable backups of films. However to produce blank DVDs you need to license the technology, I'll give you one guess on what the license says you're not allowed to do.

More to the point, why wouldn't they? What do IBM (or any other drive maker) have to gain from CPRM? Sure, CPRM is great for the big content providers, but how does it help sell hard drives? That's the bit that I'm failing to understand. Of the three interested parties (consumers, drive makers and content providers), the only one that will benefit from CPRM is the only one that has no impact on drive sales. I just don't get why this scenario ever got off the drawing board. Can anyone shed any light on this?

--
"Tsukini kawatte... Oshiokiyo!" Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, 1992.

The perfect business opportunity would be to sell disks that comply with the spec, but all of your disks have identical serial info. So if you buy two SloppyDisks, you can install copy-protected software on them, but if you image copy one SloppyDisk to another SloppyDisk, the software doesn't know that it has been moved/copied. SloppyDisks will fly off the shelves. :-)

Oh no, software vendors may only release to systems they feel are secure!

Okay, I'm not exactly a fan of CPRM, but as long as software vendors make it clear that their software will not work without CPRM, I wouldn't call it unscrupulous. Stupid, given how many people won't have the drives, but not unscrupulous.

On top of which, the main purpose for this appears to be protecting digital music/video from being copied; even if they are only made available to people with CPRM hard-drives, it's not exactly as if you can buy legal MP3s of your favourite group, at the moment, is it (I know there are exceptions, I'm talking about the majority of cases).

What I mean is, if CPRM is implemented, and music/video is only made available to those with CPRM harddrives, those without aren't going to actually lose anything.

If that happens, buy RedHat. I can't imagine a better scenario for a booming Open Source industry.

Exactly. So what if the copy protection features are optional? Like the parent post says, the MPAA (or whoever else) can simply release the next popular, ground-breaking movie or media in a form that requires you to turn on the copy-protect features. Then since everyone (read, enough to make a difference) wants to see those movies or hear the music, etc., eventually the opt-out feature will fall out of use and vendors will just stop including it in newer HD's.

No, CPRM must be discarded entirely. No compromises will suffice, because MPAA/RIAA has enough clueless customer base to generate enough demand that any compromising features such as opting-out will fall out of common use, and vendors will stop including them.

OTOH I don't see how this battle can be won, though. The MPAA/RIAA has clearly decided to fight against copy-protection using this (flawed) way. *Sigh* How greed can blind people. Even Micros~1 knows enough to leave places like Taiwan or China alone when it comes to pirating Windows -- they know very well that even a pirate installation of Windows is more to their advantage than a non-pirate, non-Windows installation. Why can't MPAA/RIAA get a clue and just leave things be? It's not like they aren't already making a fortune in spite of the current rampant music/movie piracy.

The only problem with this analogy is that there is no viable alternative to MPAA/RIAA -- nothing comparable to Linux vs. Windows, if you will. Perhaps somebody should get the DoJ to go after the MPAA/RIAA after they're done with MS :-)
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.

Hello,

I am writing to you as an owner of several IBM disk drives and as an IBM investor.

I've been following recent media reports about CPRM with alarm. The proposed standard for control over information would present problems for many applications (such as free software, which I use almost exclusively) while having dubious benefits.

Please consider retracting support for CPRM. If IBM continues to support it, I'll likely boycott IBM products -- and I don't want to do that (my Deskstars and Ultrastars are working great). Also I'll divest my IBM stock.

IBM made great contributions to open source community recently, and I'd hate to see that relationship affected by the policy of the storage division.

I wonder if more feedback like this will influence their actions...

Need some big names with big mouths smacking them down, and a petition or two signed by a few thousand folks using the word "boycott". That _is_ the way to make a difference.

Newsflash:

Microsoft has declared that in their efforts to innovate, Windows 2010 will have new condensed code that will run faster than ever before. The operating system will install essential files to the hard drive, while core components will remain on the DVD and will need to be loaded into RAM when the computer is restarted.

Microsoft is seeking to diffuse fears of a consumer backlash by pointing out that since Windows 07 the OS is so stable that it only crashes once every two days. Early tests have shown Windows 2010 only crashes every five days. Because the vast majority of computer users leave their machines on continuously, it is not expected that needing to use the DVD every five days will bother consumers.

Microsoft concluded the press conference by noting Windows 2010 will be its first OS to utilize the removable media copy protection implemented in 2001.

C:\Windows. C:\Windows\Run "C:\Windows\Run" Does not exist. Would you like to create it? NOOO!!!

C:\Windows. C:\Windows\Run "C:\Windows\Run" Does not exist. Would you like to create it? NOOO!!!

The whole idea behide it is to make it so that the data/program if coppied off to another hard drive is non functional by some means. The main way this would be accomplished would be for the application it's self to check the hidden data or the OS to verify it with the hidden data and possibly decrypt the application as it's loaded. For media files it would be the player or the OS that would verify the file was from this hard drive and decript it at play time from information stored in the hidden sectors.

The chipset has absolutely nothing to do with this scheme from what I can tell and just deals with the HD and software. So the best place to stop this BS is with the HD vendors.

- subsolar

--- If ignorance is no excuse under the law, then why do ignorant people write laws? - sanepsycho

The reason it failed is simply that other companies would have made non-protected drives. Given the choice between protected and non-protected drives, I'd take the non-protected - even if all else wasn't exactly equal. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't. Guess they must have realized that.

CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP

t.

"To be suspended from the legal profession is the moral equivalent of being ostracized by child molesters."

Just like the dotcom deathwatch site, we need a single webpage that lists all products that consumers should avoid.

According to whom?? The EFF, the FSF? RMS? ESR? Bruce Perens? Alan Cox? Linus? CmdrTaco? You? Me?

The thing about boycotting anyone/anything is that it is very subjective to the morals and ethics of any given individual. What I find objectionable, you find perfectly acceptable, and vice-versa. And what criteria are used? That it violates your privacy, your freedom, your sense of fair play? Or does it simply have to be 'too expensive' or maybe even the wrong colour. And what about crossover issues? I quite like the UI on Macintosh, but I object to the lack of freedom the OS offers. Is Macintosh on the 'good' list or the 'bad' list? DVD's employ an objectionable region-coding scheme, but I have a region-free player. Is it ok for me to buy Anime? I happen to agree with the EFF - opt-out on CPRM is not enough, but what if the maintainer of the 'good/bad' site doesn't agree?

If I'm going to avoid, say, buying DVDs because I think the MPAA is evil, then I don't need the approval of popular opinion to help me make that decision. The facts are quite sufficient, and those are already available in abundance.

Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...

Of course any website will be the product of the mind(s) behind it. Of course some boycots will be suggested that you or I or Linux or Dubya or someone won't agree with. Of course boycots are the products of personal ethical choices. And of course there is always the possibility that some dumbfuck really will take seriously the straw men you threw up: MacOS UI vs. MacOS limitatations, for example, or expensive or tackily coloured equipment.

But what I found valuable in the original post was the idea that one website, replete with information about and reasons to avoid dangerous technology like this -- one central and focussed source of information, not approval (another straw man) -- would be a good and useful and potentially very valuable thing.

I am now blessing your keyboard...

And yes the facts are available to people like us. But not to people in general, that would be the purpose of the website. To make that one website, replete with information about and reasons to avoid dangerous technology like this -- one central and focussed source of information, not approval.

Maybe you could make it kuro5hin-ish so that everyone can rant about what they think is a POS device. The how is a secondary issue.

The point is, shouldn't someone do this? The companies already do it themselves, it's called marketing. And we know all to well how truthfull that side of the camp tends to be.

If no one does anything then the general populace are stuck with the most common source of information, ads, press releases, & Wired. Even god won't be able to save that future.

t.

Because I'm sure I'm not alone on this, I would venture to guess that those companies that do choose to implement this copy-protection crap on their disks would lose and lose big, because the few companies that don't will be making a killing on the market. Even if the "good" disks have to be produced by third-party manufacturers and imported from random countries throughout the world, I can't see this copy-protection business taking over.

I mean come on... Napster is still alive and well...

crash.neotope.com

Everything you ever wanted to know about CPRM, but ZDNet wouldn't tell you...
CNet suckered by CPRM spin
Linux lead slams 'pay per read' disk drive plan
Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive
4C retreats in Copy Protection storm
EFF's Gilmore calls for CPRM hardware boycott

I think we are the ones with intellectual property...the key of the past month or so(or has it been going on longer?) is that they take the intellectual stuffs from us and charge us for using them.

Not good business practice, I must say.

Every politician can be convinced of something. It takes a lot of big petitions, though.

Big businesses throw money at senators, who propose and pass restrictive laws. Then they throw money at lawyers who get the courts to interperate the laws the way the businesses want them to.

On the whole, however, we seriously need to stop chatting and start organizing with a specific goal. Not a 'Open Source Good, Closed Source Bad' type of goal...I can't see we're getting anywhere with that, other than convincing some large-capital companies to give away some of there work. (I'd like to see a big company take part in developing the Linux kernel, or some other such large project.

Special interest groups like the NRA are what make politics happen. Anyone getting my drift?

1. Equate oligopolies with the annoyances of telephone companies. ("There is no answer yet. If you would like, you can record a message for them to play back at a later time. To activate, for 75 cents, please press ..." When I'd rather listen to the 'ringing' sound.)


2. Take screenshots of bluescreens or GP errors...anything you often see in Windows that annoys you.


3. Raise money to run a few adds on CNN or Fox, and get public attention.


4. When the inevitable local groups form, coordinate them, and get some sort of steady income going.

(forgot to set to 'HTML', and accidentally hit the 'submit' button instead of 'preview'.)

Dem's the breaks of starting from scratch. I'm certain that gun control was an issue since before the IRA. I suppose that if someone were to spend the time going back through /.'s references to the DoJ, M$, and many other large-capital corps, there ought to be enough information to start with.

Here's how I see it:

1. Equate oligopolies with the annoyances of telephone companies. ("There is no answer yet. If you would like, you can record a message for them to play back at a later time. To activate, for 75 cents, please press ..." When I'd rather listen to the 'ringing' sound, and it's only rung twice. That's worse than most 'hold' music.)
2. Take screenshots of bluescreens or GP errors...anything you often see in Windows that annoys you.
3. Raise money to run a few adds on CNN or Fox, and get public attention.
4. When the inevitable local groups form, coordinate them, and get some sort of steady income going.

I think that's all that's necessary, at least to start.

Once you have a couple thousand people focusing on the subject, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with ways to pressure polititians. (sp)

They would have 99% (ok, hyper optimistic) of the consumer market if they were the only company that refused to screw up there hard drives.

Of course, this won't work, the original poster forgets that the MPAA/RIAA are the government. They'll just pass a law, "You must include copy protection in your hard drives now that it is available."

Then Apple (and anybody else) would have to do it, or suffer from the law.

How about trying to get the DOJ involved? Sure, a lot of people who read this don't like government intervention, but they're voted in by the people, for the people, and they did a pretty good job of distracting Microsoft and allowing Linux / Open Source to become a feasible alternative.

D'ya really think that Dubya is gonna let the DOJ run with stuff like this anymore? Read up a little on Ashcroft. OK. Now, get yourself out of the fetal position. He's expected to be confirmed as Attorney General, and though he does look more feminine than Janet Reno (heh), he's still an asshole. One of my cow-workers has spoken to him (he's from St. Louis) and left quite unhappy. This was a few years ago, when he was involved in state politics.

Dubya's shown in many ways that he was elected by the corporations, for the corporations. I don't know about vote counting, and I don't want to start that thread again, believe me, but I don't trust him. The US citizens have been screwed by the sheeple who elected George W. Bush.

If the only way to run the software is ..., and the software is mission-critical, then you've got no choice.

Jeez, that sounds like my parents and their embracement of M$ products with our family business and in our home.

I once tried to argue that Linux could be used for all the tasks that we perform, (smtp/pop3 email, BBS functionality, web hosting, Internet access w/ RADIUS) but they just looked at me and said,

"Microsoft only tries to make things better. You can't say that about a rogue OS without an owner."

(paraphrasing, but they did use all of those words at one point or another in that context. First sentence is a direct quote, though.)

"This software requires
32 MB RAM
Such-and-such Processor
CPRM-enabled Hard Disk"

In this case, the question becomes - Is there any way for the software to know that it is running on a CPRM drive?

I haven't yet read the specs, but I do not believe that there is any way for a CPRM drive to be detected which could not be easily spoofed by a non-CRPM drive, either in the drive electronics or in the software drivers.

After all, the whole point of the OS is to insulate the software from the details of the hardware.

- cicadia

Do onto others what has been done to you.

The NOLIMITS-PC

As in "non limits to usage, no controls from external entities"

The "Industry" is creating an empty space in thei're product range, and somebody will fill it

The best way to kill limitation/control moves from external entities is to turn them into market gains for those who don't go with it (and losses for those who do go with it).

In the current market (i.e. decrease in PC sales) if a move by any hardware company turns out to be a market loosing action ... well, shareholders won't be very happy (except the ones that stick with the other companies)

I sugest the creation of an identifying brand-like marking (NOLIMITS) to be placed on control-free product (ie NOLIMITS-videos: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-tv: no MACROVISION; NOLIMITS-dvd: no MACROVISION, no Region Coding; NOLIMITS-pc: no CPRM) - this can increase sales of otherwise nameless products from nameless companies by creating brand around a concept ...

OK, so if CPRM takes off on IDE no doubt SCSI disks will get it implimented at some point but I just can't see the M$ insisting on a CPRM device until 99.9% of users have them and with a lot of power users running SCSI it might take a while to get massive coverage of CPRM.

I hate the idea of CPRM but I just though I'd post something a little possitive.

So, can someone without a flaming streak of extremism or a conflicting interest and with some detailed technical knowledge of the facts please speak up. Is this Risks submission (from a guy from Intel) accurate?

I don't like it when zealots create a big wave and brou-ha-ha over nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.

``We will not license this technology for hard drives for PCs. Period,'' [Intel spokesman C.] Mulloy said.

Put together, this means that Intel is being blatantly dishonest. Again.

So in fighting CPRM, it is not enough to use logic, reasonableness, or sense. Intel, and others, don't care about such things. They have to be shown that CPRM is not in their best interests. With IBM, this might not be too difficult: IBM just committed a gigadallar to Linux--and they won't want that wasted.

Because anyone with a removable IDE rack and Win9x set to boot to DOS can use any "fixed" ATA drive like a 30 gigabyte floppy with Norton Ghost by yanking it out of one machine and shoving it into another. (Or anyone with a removable IDE rack and a Real OS and /bin/dd for that matter.)

Hell, you can do it without the rack if you're willing to open your case to unplug the drive and remove it. All the rack does is make a 5-minute operation into a 10-second one.

$20 for the drive bay. $10 for the rack. Buy one rack per drive, and one bay per box. (And yes, they exist in SCSI variants too.) Standard equipment on every box I build for myself and friends - backing up boot partitions and 'doze installs is now too easy not to do, and it's a great use for all those ~1G drives we seem to have floating around. (200M for swap and /tmp, the rest is backup for the boot partition)

But instead of our own systems, we could just as easily be replicating TiVo drives, or drives from Nomad jukeboxes. Or 30G drives full of DiVX'd $MOVIEOFTHEWEEKs that the guy down the hall just slurped down through his broadband pipe.

That's what they're scared of.

Of course, I say "fuck 'em". My right to back up my data is a right. MPAA's "right" to protect its content through CPRM isn't a right, it's called "prior restraint", and they can go piss up a rope.

(BTW, am I the only one who read "4CEntity" as "Force Entity" and parsed it as "the entity that imposes the whim of the entertainment industry upon the PC industry by force?")

1. Older ATA controllers will not have this built into their BIOS. Maybe there will be a run on them.
2. How much of the controller code is in flash, and can be updated? What happens if the updates get hacked? "oh, look, now it always returns 00h".
3. From what I could find of the specs, The drive serial number is on the magnetic media somewhere. How long before a "utility" is developed to overwrite/change this? A side note: Wrap this up in an email virus. Send to fifty of your ex-friends. Better than a reformat, and takes less time. I bet drive manufacturer's tech support will love this.
4. The specs also mentioned "Encrypted key space" Are parts of keys stored there? Is there a limit? Generate small encrypted random files. Register and repeat until overflowing. Tech support will love this, too.
5. How about releasing a bunch or really cool freeware, stuff the masses will want to run. Only it won't work on CPRM activated systems, and gives a short message about why not, and then suggests that the consumer return his computer for one that isn't broken.

The list goes on. You just have to think about it creatively. The best arrangement is going to be education, though. Make sure that joe consumer knows he's getting screwed, and that other folks around him aren't.

Please remove all stupidity before e-mailing"

From what I hear programs already exist to do this. The Hard-drive serial numbers are often used as the seed for licence keys. Crackers often just change the number by a few and watch how the resulting licence changes. Once they've worked it out they'll write a key generator.

At least that's what I hear.

Please remove all stupidity before e-mailing"

Likely as not, the only thing to get these ideas out of their heads is to use their own favourite means; a law-suit. Simply(?) find a few applications (at least more than one, preferably from different, non-opensource manufactors) that breaks so heavily on a CPRM-disk that it corrupts your on-disk data. Best would be if these programs are backup-utilities, scandisk or similar.

However powerful the MPAA/RIAA are, they still won't be as threatening as a class-action law-suit against all the Hard-Disc manufactors...

Then again, I'm not a lawyer...

The BIG drives (the ones with so much Gigs that my mind hurts when thinking of it) are the ones where the REALY BIG MARGINS are - the smallish stuff can be manufacture by any no-name factory in half-way-to-the-end-of-the-world, so there's a lot of competition (and thus small profit) in that area.

Big manufacturers (like IBM), who spend loads of money in HD research need the premium price sales to pay for that research.

The thing is - it's not John Doe who buys that stuff - those things are bought by companies, and it's John Techie Doe (IBM sales people can call him "Sir") who chooses them (as in: "If i cannot backup this we're not gonna have it here")

So maybe the market will bring us some surprises ... (like IBM giving a profit warning)

Not to mention all the artsy geeks (e.g., animators) that greatly contribute to the corporate profits of the "content owners."

I wonder how attached to CPRM IBM, Matsushita, Toshiba and Intel would be if all of their Software Engineers, Hardware Engineers, System Administrators, Project Managers, and Helpdesk folk ditched work for a month or two (or even a couple of weeks).

It always surprises me how "of one voice" we can be as a demographic about issues such as this, and yet our actions (or suggestions of action) are so ineffectual compared to those of other segments of the labor force who learned around a century ago how to get large companies to respect their wishes.

GASP!! The commie bastard is talking about <shudder> UNIONS .

I know it probably goes against the capatalist, libertarian grain of my fellow slashdot readers to even suggest such a thing as a geek general strike, but look at it this way: you can talk all you want about boycotts, but though we might like to think otherwise, geeks probably represent a relative minority of technology consumers. Our power & value in this society derive from our being a significant majority of the labor force required to produce technology.

Anyone who thinks that geeks stand an iota of a chance fighting attacks on our liberty from Mega-Corps by appealing to a majority of tech consumers who could't care less if Sony & Time Warner control their hard drive is kidding themselves. We already agree that the bastards need to be forced to grow a clue, why not take advantage of the means of influence of which we are most uniquely capable?

The history of the planet is [one] of idiocy highlighted by a few morons who stand out as comparative geniuses. - WSB

Then you will have just permanently given your job away to the more motivated H-1B immigrant who won't play games like that.

Many of you are more expendable than your egos allow you to think. Start thinking about what real job skills you have other than playing with computers and you may find there's not much else there.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.

...the 4C group, consisting of IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba...

Okay, I'm baffled. Not a single one of these manufacturers has even one "C" in their name. What does "4C" stand for?!
"Downloaded" from user "lintux" on Slashdot... -- Hi, I'm a signature virus. plz set me as your signature and help me s

Death to Spammers!

"2001-01-05 15:33:31 CPRM dealt a blow (yro,hardware) (rejected)"

it was rejected. Screw you, Slashfolk.

--
"Tsukini kawatte... Oshiokiyo!" Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, 1992.

Are they all eventually cracked? Yes... but that's not the point. The point is that it slows casual copying. I call that a limited success and I bet the movie guys think the same way when they use CSS and Macrovision(tm).

Being a "content creator" myself, I guess I just see things a bit differently than most of the people on here. (You'll probably come to my views if you've walked in my shoes and saw the huge amount of effort that goes into making a quality game these days. You'd feel disappointed too when somebody rips off your game, is obviously being entertained by it, but they think it's their "right" to steel it.)

As I see it, the gist of a secure harddrive is that it is the same as any old harddrive but now you have the option to download commercial content from the web... and that the company who sells it to you gets to describe how you can use that content. What's wrong with that? If you don't like the content licenser's terms... don't buy the content. It's really that simple.

I think the questions we should be asking are:

• Is the proposed implementation technically good?
• Is it robust?
• Is it going to be transparent for those people who don't want to download secure content?
• How do I upgrade to a new machine/bigger harddrive and move my licensed content there?
• Is there any privacy concerns?
• Will it support unlicensed "public domain content."
• Will it support "independently produced content?" E.g. If I shoot an indy film on my DV camcorder, is there a way I can release it independently to the world without onerous licensing fees. (This is a weakness of DVD licensing that I don't like.)

So far, my take on the current proposal is that it is weak because it doesn't address all these issues and concerns. These are the areas where we should let our voices be heard but I don't think the whole idea of a secure harddrive is a bad one.

Maybe the open source community should come up with a proposal of their own for how a sane system for licensed content could work. (You might think I'm insane for even suggesting this, but I do think it could be done and we'd get to shape the future rather than let it be done behind closed doors.)

Would it really be so bad for unauthorized copying to be hard (in the strict computer science sense of the word) or even impossible?

10 to 1, this is what the resulting playing field will look like in a couple of years. . .

1) Regular people won't have a clue, and won't care, and whatever happens, they'll end up with their asses planted in front of funky flatscreens and cruddy CRTs for even more hours a day sucking up mind-cum with their pudgy brains and bleeding their free will down a highspeed access wire. And they will be happy and content because that's what they will be told.

2) Hackers and Subversives will find a clever back-door, probably involving a soldering iron or something. They'll save a few nickels from online subscription services, and they'll be content because they'll think they've ‘won' through cleverness and guile, when really they'll just end up listening to and watching the same old mass-market, pre-programmed crap as always,

In the end, NOBODY IS GOING TO BE SPENDING LESS TIME IN FRONT OF THEIR MONITERS. The ensuing hard drive drama will keep all the minds that matter tied up, distracted from the real show.

To those who might like a possible view on what the real show is, check out this amazing site I just found: (Real or not, who cares? Clean and intelligent writing, it makes for the BEST sci-fi I've read in years! The Swiss watch of conspiracy theories. And frankly, any geek who isn't familiar with this cutting edge, web-based story telling technique can just turn in his membership card and kick his lame ass out the door. This is actually something new.) (Once you get past the cheesy opening page, it gets good fast.)

-Fantastic Lad. –Ten Steps Ahead and Lost With Confidence!

Pronounce it, and you get 'force entity'...

--

To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB

CPRM = Consumers' Personal Rights (are) Meaningless.

--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.