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Makoto916 writes "In five years with my current employer as the IT administrator, I've amassed a sizable cabinet of discarded hard drives; just shy of 100, in fact. All of the drives range in size from 20GB up to 300GB. They've all been stored in anti-stat bags, and spot checks of even the oldest ones show that most of them still work. Individually, they're mostly useless for our line of work, which is digital video production. However, the collective storage potential is quite significant. They are of varying size and speed, but the one commonality is they're all IDE. What is the best way to approach connecting all of these devices and realizing their storage potential? On a budget, of course. Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage, but it certainly would be useful as a massive backup array to our existing SAN that does store critical data. I have several spare and functioning PCs, but not nearly enough to utilize their internal IDE controllers; even with multiple add-in controllers, it still wouldn't be enough. Not to mention the nightmare of managing a bunch of independent PCs. I've looked into ATA Over Ethernet and there's a lot of potential there, but current 15 to 20 bay AoE cabinets are expensive, and single device enclosures are so rare that they're also expensive. Are there any hardware hackers out there who have crafted their own home-brew AoE systems? Could they scale to 100 drives? Is there a better way?"

OrochimaruVoldemort writes "In an unexpected move, Microsoft has disclosed 14,000 pages of coding secrets. According to The Register: 'This is Microsoft's latest effort to satisfy anti-trust concerns of the European Union, which is possibly a tougher adversary for the company than Google.' The article mentioned that this will be done in three phases. 'Between now and June it will garner feedback from the developer community. Then, at the end of June, Microsoft will publish the final versions of technical documentation — along with definitive patent licensing terms.' Lets just hope those terms are pro open source."

Tom's Hardware has an interesting look at the HTC Shift, the newest contender in the ultralight portable arena, with a strong compare and contrast to the other two heavyweights, the ThinkPad X300 and the Macbook Air. "As some of you know, I actually like the Macbook Air but found the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 to be a vastly more useful product in the class. I'm one of the few folks that have been using an early version of the HTC Shift , a smaller screened ultra light tablet with a keyboard and a touch screen which is superior to both offerings in some ways and just released on Amazon.com for $1500 (someone screwed up, this wasn't supposed to happen until next week). This got me thinking: The perfect next generation ultra-sexy notebook should be a blend of all three products."

An anonymous reader writes "SlySoft writes that their backup tool AndDVD now can copy BD+ protected BluRay discs, too. According to Peer van Heuen, head of High-Definition technologies at SlySoft, they already broke BD+ copy protection, but wanted to wait until the format war was over. This does not mean that BD+ is completely broken yet, as current BluRay discs don't use all possibilities of BD+ yet, but Peer van Heuen is optimistic: "The worst-case scenario then is our boss locks us up with only bread and water in the company dungeon for three months until we are successful again"."
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14786

Blu-ray has a variety of access control systems which are supposedly part of the reason why studios like Fox wouldn't support HD DVD at all. Like HD DVD, it has AACS (cracked within a few months of it coming out, though not as wide open as CSS), and there are several other systems Blu-ray uses. These are:

1. BD+ - a VM which differs from player to player, with the disk containing code to look for "compromised" players. This is based upon a 78 year old technology used by Sinclair Spectrum programmers where timing loops were used to determine if the Spectrum had been modified in anyway, such as having an Action Replay back-up device attached, or being a later model, or having a joystick interface plugged in... wait a moment, I see the flaw here, but anyway... and crashing the game if so. Like BD+, it's remarkably effective, not just preventing horrible pirates from ripping Blu-ray discs and distributing them over the Internet, but also preventing many legitimate owners from watching them, "just in case".
2. ROM Mark - a very simple hardware fix where the disk is made hard to copy by keeping information validating the authenticity of the disc off the main part of the disk into a place where only the (self contained) drive itself can read it. The drive never passes this information on. The idea is to make it harder to do bit-for-bit copies that can play on legitimate players, because your cheap mass-market drive will never be able to copy that information over.
3. Compulsory AACS - the fact AACS is compulsory is actually also an anti-piracy hack. The idea is that you have to license it to produce disks that play in BD players, and as such it's going to be much harder to press illicit material without it being traced back to you.
4. Lack of support for recordable media on most mainstream BD players. So you can copy that movie, but you can't hand over copies to your friends to watch on their 60" LCD panels because their Blu-ray players will refuse to play the discs. I'm not sure how long this will last, but it's a very common complaint at the moment.

Well, we can probably argue the merits of systems 2-4, certainly they make it difficult to produce knock-off discs that play in BD players. But the first, which is an ACM and prevents physical access to the content, has finally been cracked.

You know, put it all down like that again, and it's increasingly obvious that Blu-ray isn't just slightly more evil than HD DVD and regular DVD, it's unbelievably evil compared to either format. What a shame it succeeded, I like buying movies, and online downloads aren't quite ready for that yet.

Rufus211 writes "The BD+ copy protection used on Blu-ray Disks has been cracked by SlySoft. There's no official post about it, just a note in the latest release notes."
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/606

jobeus writes "After saying BD+ would be secure for 10 years, Sony found out the hard way that no such security exists. At least, not with BD+. After only 8 months, Slysoft (AnyDVD HD) has cracked it, and Bluray images encrypted with BD+ are playable in a media player of your choice. When will companies learn that DRM does nothing except anger consumers?"
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14787

johanwanderer writes "ExtremeTech and ArtTechnica is reporting that SlySoft, a developer of DVD cloning software, claims to have completely cracked the BD+ DRM protocol guarding Blu-ray discs. The ExtremeTech article can be found here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2277472,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 And its content is as follow: SlySoft, a developer of DVD cloning software, claims to have completely cracked the BD+ DRM protocol guarding Blu-ray discs. BD+ is a small virtual machine environment included on Blu-ray discs; HD DVDs lacked the feature. Last year, SlySoft said it had hacked the BD+ environment to allow encoded movies to be ripped to a hard drive and viewed using a specific version of its CloneDVD software. Now, SlySoft is claiming that version 6.4.0.0 of its AnyDVD HD program has completely broken the BD+ copy protection, allowing transcoding of the video into an unprotected form. About a year ago, SlySoft cracked HD DVD. "Admittedly, we are not really so fast with this because actually we had intended to publish this release already in December as promised," Peer van Heuen, head of High-Definition technologies at SlySoft , said in a statement. "However, it was decided for strategic reasons to wait a bit for the outcome of the "format war" between HD DVD and Blu-ray. "On top of that, we first wanted to see our assumptions confirmed about the in the meantime released BD+ titles regarding the BD+ Virtual Machine," van Heuen added. "We are rather proud to have brought back to earth the highly-praised and previously 'unbreakable' BD+. However, we must also admit that the Blu-ray titles released up to now have not fully exploited the possibilities of BD+. Future releases will undoubtedly have a modified and more polished BD+ protection, but we are well prepared for this and await the coming developments rather relaxed." Theoretically, the BD+ code can be replaced if a player manufacturer discovers that the player has been hacked. However, it wasn't clear at press time whether the AnyDVD HD release would either prevent the modified BD+ code from being overwritten, or whether an updated release would be be necessary, as van Heuen seemed to imply."

Steve Kerrison writes "Freedom loving HD viewers rejoice! Slysoft has just updated its AnyDVD HD software to include BD+ removal from discs [changeset]. As a paid-for and Windows-only piece of software, Linux and FOSS fans may have to wait a while, but if Slysoft can do it, so can others. And if you are a Windows user willing to pay for it... enjoy the luxury of not being locked in any more."
http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=12355

An anonymous reader writes "BD+, which Sony had claimed would remain uncrackable for 10 years, has been cracked. SlySoft has improved on their previous BD+ hack which allowed users to copy BD+ discs, the new version of AnyDVD HD can completely strip out the BD+ (not to mention AACS) infestations starting to show up on Blu-ray discs."
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/19/slysofts-latest-anydvd-hd-release-strips-bd-from-blu-ray-discs/

An anonymous reader writes "http://www.slysoft.com/download/changes_anydvd.txt"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "IBM's Rob Weir has done a study on how many flaws were addressed by the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting. So far, using a random sampling technique, he has yet to find a flaw that was addressed, making the upper bound a paltry 1.5%. Even so, he's found a number of new flaws, including a security vulnerability: OOXML stores passwords in database connection strings in plain text. At least there were no mistakes on five of the first twenty five random pages he reviewed."

PhilLong writes "Slysoft has reaffirmed that laws of physics hold and that it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to encrypt a message against it's intended recipient AnyDVD HD 6.4.0.0 now provides for fair use rights to legitimate holders of BD+ blu-ray titles."

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

The title pretty much says it all here, folks. Just a few months after SlySoft revealed a beta of its AnyDVD HD software which obliterated BD+, v6.4.0.0 has finally arrived and proudly possesses the ability to "remove BD+ protection from Blu-ray Discs." Among the other changes is an option to enable / disable BD+ removal, a fix for seeing a black display with some BD discs and other minor DVD-related tweaks. Brimming with excitement? Hit up the read link below -- your next download awaits.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/254383899/

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired is reporting that the FBI hid Patriot Act abuses with retroactive and flawed subpoenas, and used them to illegally acquire phone and credit card records. There were at least 11 retroactive, 'blanket' subpoenas that were signed by top counter-terrorism officials, some of which sought information the FBI is not allowed to have. The FBI's Communication Analysis Unit also had secret contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, and abused National Security Letters by issuing subpoenas based on fake emergencies."