Gus - Slashdot User

Submission + - HD-DVD encryption crack surfaces

Submitted by spisska on Wednesday December 27, 2006 @10:57PM

spisska writes: This looks preliminary but genuine. Poster muslix64 at doom9 has put up links to BackupHDDVD, a tool to decrypt a AACS protected movie. The program is written in Java and seems to work by retrieving encrypted keys from memory. Windows-only at the moment, but since it's Java-based, ports should not be difficult.

The post includes links to source and executable [alternate download site] as well as video of the program in action. It's not quite the death of AACS yet, but a significant first step. Congratulations. The paint on the prison isn't even dry yet and there are already holes in the wall.

Submission + - Geeky Wedding Proposals

Submitted by

stewartj

on Tuesday December 26, 2006 @08:36PM

stewartj writes: "I'm about to get married, and I proposed to my fiancee in a fairly normal fashion — romantic dinner, flowers, chocolate strawberries, on one knee and pop the question. I remember reading that Jerry Kaplan (pioneer of pen computing) proposed to his girlfriend using one of the early prototypes of the PDA, and I wondered what other super geeky ways Slashdot readers had proposed to their spouses?"

Submission + - Computer Characters Tortured for Science

Submitted by

Rob Carr

on Tuesday December 26, 2006 @06:22PM

Rob Carr writes: "Considered unethical to ever perform again with humans, researcher Mel Slater recreated the Milgram experiment in a immersive virtual environment. Subjects (some of whom could see and hear the computerized woman, others who were only able to read text messages from her) were told that they were interacting with a computer character and told to give increasingly powerful electric shocks when wrong answers were given or the "woman" took too long to respond. The computer program would correspondingly complain and beg as the "shocks" were ramped up, falling apparently unconscious before the last shock. The skin conductance and electrocardiograms of the subjects were monitored. Even though the subjects knew they were only "shocking" a computer program, their bodies reacted with increased stress responses. Several of the ones who could see and hear the woman stopped before reaching the "lethal" voltage, and about half considered stopping the study. The full results of the experimental report can be read online at PLoS One. Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical. The application of these results to video games are obvious, and it's only a matter of time before someone starts using this research to question the effects of violent video games on people."

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