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Submission + - AACS Processing Key discovered, HD DRM is toast.

passthecrackpipe writes: "The nice folks over at doom9 really don't like DRM. After the discovery of the individual title keys used for AACS "protection" a while back, and the subsequent release of a tool that makes it nice and simple for you to back up your (obviously legally purchased) HD-DVD or Blue-Ray discs, arnezami has found the processing keys — this key can be used to decrypt *all* titles as opposed to just a single title of which the key is known. His approach sounds actually pretty easy (but is probably a lot harder then it sounds):

what I wanted to do is "record" all changes in this part of memory during startup of the movie. Hopefully I would catch something insteresting. In the end I did something a little more effiecient: I used the hd dvd vuk extractor (thanks ape!) and adapted it to slow down the software player (while scanning its memory continously) and at the very moment the Media Key (which I now knew: my bottom-up approach really paid off here) was detected it halted the player. I then made a memdump with WinHex. I now had the feeling I had something.

And I did. Not suprisingly the very first C-value was a hit. I then checked if everyting was correct, asked for confirmation and here we are.

For me, the best part is imagining the insane amount of money the *IAA pumps into these braindead schemes to begin with.

Well done arnezami, beer's on me!"
Communications

Submission + - Inside the Lucasfilm datacenter

passthecrackpipe writes: "Where can you find a (rhetorical) 11.38 petabits per second bandwidth? It appears to be inside the Lucasfilm Datacenter. At least, that is the headline figure mentioned in this report on a tour of the datacenter. The story is a bit light on the down-and-dirty details, but mentions a 10 gig ethernet backbone (adding up the bandwidth of a load of network connections seems to be how they derived the 11.38 petabits p/s figure. In that case, I have a 45 gig network at home.) Power utilisation is a key differentiator when buying hardware, a "legacy" cycle of a couple of months, and 300TB of storage in a 10.000 square foot datacenter. To me, the story comes across as somewhat hyped up — "look at us, we have a large datacenter" kind of thing, "look how cool we are". Over the last couple of years, I have been in many datacenters, for banks, pharma and large enterprise to name a few, that have somewhat larger and more complex setups.

It used to be so that the the SFX industry had the largest, coolest, hottest technology around. Is this still the case?"
Microsoft

Submission + - MS copies feature, then patents it

jbgreer writes: "Michael Kölling, a senior lecturer at the University of Kent and one of the developers of BlueJ, an educational development environment, realized last year that Microsoft had copied one of the BlueJ features into Visual Studio. Flattery, right? Recently he was informed that Microsoft has filed a patent describing the very same feature. For more details, read Michael's blog entry."
Music

Submission + - Music labels considering blanket license for P2P

CSMatt writes: "The New York Times reports that the Big 4 music labels are considering issuing blanket licenses to ISPs for sharing popular music on peer-to-peer networks. The decline in CD sales, and the inability of digital downloads to successfully fill that loss, are sited as motivations for accepting this method of compensation and lack of consumer control. Other problems concern digital downloads and interoperability with devices, which "are heating up again, at least in Europe." Whether or not the major labels will truly use such a system is unknown, but RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol stated that the licenses would be distributed "...on a voluntary, commercial basis.""
Space

Submission + - Remembering Apollo 1

wiredog writes: On January 27, 1967, (forty years ago tomorrow) Apollo 1's crew — Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee — was killed when their capsule, which had a pure oxygen atmosphere, caught fire during testing. Articles from Wikipedia and Nasa.
Movies

Submission + - Bypass Netflix 'Watch Now' time limit

vee_anon writes: "I've discovered a method for viewing Netflix 'Watch Now' movies without having it deduct time from your account. Additionally, you can also choose whatever quality video you want to view without being limited to what Netflix determines.

Here is how:
  1. Login to Netflix with IE (or Firefox using the UserAgent spoofer) and goto the Watch Now tab. Choose whatever movie you want and click Play.
  2. After the Netflix movie loads you get the popup box prompting you to accept the license and click play. Don't click play — click Cancel instead.
  3. You will now see this message: "Windows Media Player has experienced an error: MediaError(0)"
  4. Right click on the webpage, somewhere outside of the video player and choose 'View Source' and you should get the source code of the webpage opened in Notepad.
  5. Do a find/search for: var WNPlaylistMovie
    This will be about midway down in the code.
  6. If you scroll to the right, you will start to see the URL's of the actual movie files, in increasing order of their quality. So the first one is the worst quality (about 100MB to download) and keep scrolling to the right and the last one will be the highest quality (about 1.4GB to download)

    The url of the movie will look something like this:http://index.ehub.netflix.com/item?x=U8wlKQQS AYM_Hlg-1Z094oB-wVes8acegEJe01iGIoE5Mpn1O4prcUs_Fs wmVi2X6Ze7rNzN-4i0ky2B0aHrQl4U01uCXZRpnB4 .
  7. Just copy and paste the URL's like this into a new browser window address bar. It will either prompt you to download the files, or open them automatically in Windows Media Player.
  8. If they open in Windows Media Player just accept the license agreement that pops up and then goto File > Save Media As... and you will now be able to save it to your hard drive.
This has been tested will multiple movies and has been verified not to subtract any time from your account if you download them and view them or stream them through Windows Media Player, which leads me to believe the time tracking of the viewing is done through the embedded Netflix Video Player. Also, since these files are DRM'd you will still need to have a valid Netflix account to watch them but it does get you around the quality limitations. Netflix has been notified about this poor system design, but has not responded."
Windows

Submission + - Vista Reviewed by The Economist

Erik Love writes: "Esteemed British newspaper The Economist, reviews Windows Vista. They love it, but advise WinXP users to wait awhile before upgrading: "Many say Vista's problem is its sheer size and complexity. All told, the program comprises some 50m lines of computer code. And as any programmer will tell you, software contains typically five to ten errors for every 100 lines of code. So, even if 90% of them were squished during the extensive testing programme, Vista will hit the shelves with at least a quarter of a million bugs in it.""
The Internet

Submission + - vBulliten License Revoked for Moral Reasons

Drive-By Spammer writes: As weird and disturbing as loli is under current US laws it's not illegal — a point which Howard G. Spinks of Pirate Report failed to comprehend when he decided to revoke Hongfire's vBulliten license on the grounds that it's illegal (which it's not) and violates Jelsoft's AUP (which it doesn't). If you run your forum on vB, best be careful of what goes on, because even if it's not illegal all it has to be is disagreeable.

The email 'discussion' that lead up to this situation:
www.hongfire.com/vbulletin.txt

Section 502 (Subsection A and C) of the PROTECT Act excludes anime/cartoons:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=108_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ021.108.p df

Link to the AUP:
http://www.vbulletin.com/order/license_agreement.p hp
The Media

Submission + - Video on demand what is worth it?

COMON$ writes: I know this has been covered in different flavors before but I have tried software ranging from various flavors of Myth to plug-ins for Windows Media Center. Both have led me to wait patiently for a legal way to have my videos in a readily available digital format.
Enter Vongo 'www.vongo.com', this program allows for me to download movies on demand any time I want, and as many as I want. There are drawbacks, DRM, didn't play well with my remote, a questionable compression level, limited movies, and only 3 devices at a time can have the software installed. However, I was able to simply grab a movie, and have it playing in full on my TV in under 20 minutes. Which beats the pants off of netflix and blockbuster.

Which leads me to the question, what would be an acceptable media center for Joe User? Is Vongo on the right track? Personally I want a single console that will rip music and DVDs to an acceptable format, download media as needed, and work completely from a remote. I don't care much about DRM as long as I can watch/listen on my multiple media devices at any given time. I think Vongo is a start, but has a long ways to go to meet my wish list. What about you?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Hans Reiser puts Namesys up for sale

Theodore Ts'o writes: "Looks like Hans Reiser may be putting his company for sale. The article suggests this is because Hans needs to raise funds for his legal defense, but I suspect it may also be because Hans, as CEO of a small company, was also the primary salesperson and dealmaker for the company, and without someone to get grants from the Federal Government and try to get sales from new customers, there won't be any new revenue coming into the Namesys company. Although the circumstantial evidence (at least as the case has been tried in the media) is pretty suggestive, he may very well be innocent; that's for the courts to decide. But if he is indeed innocent, it's really going to suck that he's been held without bail for months now, and he may end up losing his company. Even though I've been critical of his creative use of benchmarks in the past, I do have to feel sorry for him."
Censorship

Submission + - VBulletin abuse of power?

Anthony Boyd writes: "A representative for the VBulletin software product has revoked the license from a site simply because he found the material objectionable. He initally claimed it was due to violation of law until people started quoting the law to him. Then he said they revoked the license because it violated some "morality" clause in the VBulletin license — but people looking at it are unable to find such a clause. What do you think? Was this capricious or reasonable? Is it justified in law? As a VBulletin customer, how secure do you feel about your license?"
Microsoft

Submission + - A "SAM" engagement with Microsoft

christian.einfeldt writes: "Microsoft is getting heavy-handed again with its software subscriptions by sending "Software Asset Managers" around to poke into its customers software licensing practices. From Ed Foster's Gripelog on InfoWorld about the results after such visits: "The end result? An enterprise agreement that VOIDED the several hundred thousand dollars worth of Office 2003 licenses we had and instead gave us over 4,000 Office licenses under a new Enterprise Agreement. We had to shell out well over a million dollars for licenses that we already had."
Censorship

Submission + - vBulletin revokes forum license on moral grounds!

An anonymous reader writes: http://www.digg.com/software/PirateReports_revokes _vBulletin_license_of_HongFire_com_for_moral_reaso ns Forum Developer vBulletin revokes license for Hongfire.com on moral grounds that it didn't want to be associated with a site that carried lolicon imagery. Is this a step towards the quashing of internet free speech as software developers determine how software should be used ?
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft limiting Vista Technology Guarantee

MSRedfox writes: I'm a 32 year old gamer and beta tester of Microsoft Vista. When Microsoft offered the Technology Guarantee to upgrade new systems to Vista on its release, I went ahead and built a new computer with the understanding that I would be able to upgrade to the 64-bit Vista. I picked up a copy of Windows MCE 2005 for my new system. I entered the required data on https://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/Vista to setup my update. But for MCE 2005 they didn't offer a 64-bit upgrade, only 32-bit. Both Windows XP Home and Pro have 32-Bit and 64-Bit upgrade options on the website. When I email the support and asked about the 64-Bit upgrade for MCE 2005 to Vista Home Premium I was sent this response: "Dear Customer, Thank you for your interest in the Upgrade Redemption Program. The upgrade you qualify for on this offer, is directly related to the version of WinXP that is installed on the qualifying computer. For example, if you have a 32 bit version of XP, you will get Vista 32, not Vista 64. If you want further upgrades, you will need to purchase an upgrade when Vista becomes available retail. Regards, Upgrade Redemption Center" They have successfully turned this MS Fanboy angry. So what I'd like to ask the Slashdot community, is if anyone has any advice on who to contact at Microsoft to try to get them to fix this blatant mistake. They've already taken $120 for my OEM of copy of MCE 2005, please help me from giving them more cash. Thanks.
Music

Submission + - Alabama Man Beats RIAA Motion Without Lawyer

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