Windows Vista content protection: a big long suicide note

On a sunny day (Mon, 25 Dec 2006 22:42:32 -0500) it happened Yousuf Khan wrote in :

Thank you, that was informative. We will find a way around it and bury Balmer's company in the process.

Happy New Year :-)

I will post you link to comp.os.linux.development.apps and sci.electronics.design.

It has been a topic twice (dupe) on /. I found this comment especially apt:

Let's see if folks react to the massively DRM-encumbered HD-DVD / Blu-Ray paradigm the way they did to (Circuit City's) DivX (completely ignored it) and in so doing find that they don't need M$ Vista.

The big difference is that DIVX was clearly marketed as a "use it for 48 hours... pay more if you then want to keep if from self-destructing" whereas with Vista there's no self-destruction: There's just degradation of the output down to a "standard definition" display/audio output.

It's still pretty rotten, though. Although you'd expect there will be various hacks/patches to work around the DRM nonsense, they aren't going to be commonly applied given that here in the U.S. the technology required to do so would undoubtedly be considered illegal per the DMCA.

I like Windows, but Microsoft is giving people more and more reasons every day to move to Linux.

Looks like older video card hardware, etc. will be more and more valuable on eBay as time goes on, too... especially if all newer video hardware implement this DRM stuff.

Michael

On a sunny day (26 Dec 2006 09:26:49 -0800) it happened "JeffM" wrote in :

I want to get a Sony PS3 :-) It has a blue ray player, HDMI out, supports HDCP, and can run Linux. Sure you do not need Vista, but if they f*ck up all hardware to make it 'Vista compatible' then there may be a cost problem. Somebody will then jump in and make non-Vista mobos and stuff. many people want just speed! (be it for crypt, or rendering, or games, or data processing, or whatever). Maybe my current vista-free box will do 50000 Euro one day on the black market... LOL

I found this passage interesting :

This calls for a piece of software to automatically send a reminder to fix the problem to microsoft, say once a minute.

Rene

I wouldn't read that into it. Rather, I expect Microsoft and their "partners" will be on the lookout for compromised devices/drivers, and once they find it, they'll push out the revocation via "Windows Update."

The article stating "...that driver WILL have its signature revoked..." is also somewhat speculative, I think -- Microsoft isn't stupid, and they're not going to revoke, e.g., the certificate for, say, the million video cards in a PC that Dell just sold to a California school district, for instance. At least not without a very *long* "grace period" first.

sci.electronics.design.

All the extra cost of all this crap, I would rather see that money go straight to the performers who make the content.

I cant see how its going to work, there will be a loophole somewhere, microsoft has shown its totally incapable of producing software that is free from such things, in fact every week it anounces new flaws found, and these flaws allow acces from remote computers, its far easier to bypass stuff when you are actually at the computer.

I just hope there is now the incentive for linux/unix to get up to speed and simply make windows unecessary. I think I would switch to linux rather than goto vista. Theres a few things wich it cant do well enough though.

I even doubted if this want some amusing made up nonsense.

Colin =^.^=

It does seem to be a terrific piece of hardware indeed - I would like to port my DPS on it... However, things may be not much better than with the to be expected Vista "compatible" hardware... Linux runs in a "guest" mode, the details of the peripheral chips to the Cell CPU are secret; that is, you can play linux-like or whatever on top of something which will allow you do that and disallow you this. Unless that companion chip (Toshiba made) gets publically specified, the PS3 will be yet another Vista-like thing - unfortunately...

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

------------------------------------------------------

Jan Panteltje wrote:

=3Dnested#17362176

)=2E

arket...

On a sunny day (27 Dec 2006 03:55:28 -0800) it happened "Didi" wrote in :

Yes, this is a difficult issue. If I am completely honest to myself then I know I am not 100% sure I will be able to crack this. For me it is not to violate copyright but to play with Cell. The price 499 Euro (I think) is rather high too. I was hoping to do some H264 decoding in a peripheral processor. Because PS3 is networked, I could run it as simple server too.

A Blu-Ray DVD burner still costs 750 Euro now, maybe less in March when we can buy PS3 here (or later even??). This is what one should upgrade to anyways IMO, but prices will drop. If Cell or PS3 is too limited, then it is perhaps best to ignore them, and go for a normal PC with Blu-ray writer, but then a HDMI output graphics card. It is hard to beat the Sony price. Anyways the Sony PS3 hypervisor cannot be _that_ impossible to get rid of. If not possible then you still have a nice server, movie player, and game machine :-)

On 26 Dec 2006 10:58:14 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com Gave us:

Content protection is in your future. Get used to it. Get ready for it. Get over it. You will likely never succeed in getting it gone, however. DRM may be the wrong direction for content protection, but some schema will end up in play regardless of what you think.

The Toshiba HD DVD player is a fine example of a piece of hardware that can mutate certain processing routines to match changing standards, and codec changes, etc.

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:03:35 GMT, Jan Panteltje Gave us:

And has s*it for audio. Half of the entire reason for high def content is high quality playback.

That's silly. Back when 9 pin serial was the interface, that's what got used. When it became USB, that's what got used. It has nothing to do with the OS or software that commands it.

CPU, computer and hardware makers want speed, and have no concern for the "target OS". Ther is not target OS. If there becomes one, it could actually slow hardware advancement down.

market...

Right. My Alphas have a better chance.

Wthout having read the details on the Cell PPC implementation I would suspect this "hypervisor" mode is just some Sony kernel or something, I cannot imagine they have hoped to not allow anyone to run code in PPC supervisor mode (?).

Quite certainly it is possible, the question is is it really viable, I don't feel like spending half a year to uncover all the registers and stuff one would need to access the disks, Ethernet and USB. If they really want to massively sell the hardware, they'll publish the documentation. If they view the hardware as just a tool for taking over of whatever, they will neither take over nor will they sell that many (which may still be a lot, of course). Me, I'll be watching the development and get involved if I see a chance to use the thing....

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

------------------------------------------------------

Jan Panteltje wrote:

The PowerPC/AS Architecture has three modes, Problem, Supervisor, and Hypervisor. There are two bits in the MSR that control the mode, MSR[PR] and MSR[HV].

MSR[PR] MSR[HV] 0 0 = Problem state 0 1 = Hypervisor mode 1 0 = Supervisor state 1 1 = Undefined

That's a little naive. Historically, things like *libraries* and *VCRs* were legally challenged on the grounds that intellectual property rights would be subverted, and yet both are quite legal today. Remember that thing called "fair use?" Hence, I think there's a swinging pendulum here -- it wouldn't be surprising to see legislation in the new decade or so that does try to clean up the morass of IP laws that we have today... and hopefully kills off the DMCA in the process.

Sure, but keep in mind that business desires often compel companies to release new (hardware) products when a software upgrade actually could have given old machines the features of new ones. A good example is dual-layer DVD recorders: There are many single-layer DVD recorders out there that have the hardware capabilites to burn dual-layer discs, but only a very small number of manufacturers ever released firmware upgrades to support this.

---Joel

Thanks for posting this, I have not had a 64-bit core yet here (I know the 603E and I have ported my DPS on it, VM and all).

This means that on the PS3 the users are supposed to never have real access to the hardware, and rely on whatever master/spyware has been preinstalled to run in hypervisor mode. Well, I guess I'll forget about it until they publish enough details so I can program it... Thanks again for your posting, it saved me some reading which it would have taken me to find out the PS3 is (for now... hopefully) a waste of time.

Dimiter

krw wrote:

On a sunny day (Wed, 27 Dec 2006 11:25:49 -0500) it happened krw wrote in :

Good, so the thing will likely boot from Flash, now here we hardware guys can do some things with perhaps a firmware upgrade, or if that is in ROM soldering chips?

Oops make that (I always get PR upside down):

The PPC970 users manual is close, at least for this sort of thing:

I'mot familiar with what the PS/3 did, just the PPC Architecture. The intention of HV mode is to be able to virtualize the OS (running in supervisor mode) under a hypervisor. As such, hardware mucking is purely an HV=1 operation. The PPC970 based PowerMacs had HV hardwired on so there wasn't a hypervisor.

Well I have had it on my disk for some time; and I have downloaded the Cell PPC documents as well. However, I never had a reason (hardware with such a CPU, that is) to read them.... :-). I do hope this will change soon... I want a 64 bit architecture to port to. I guess I'll look a bit more into it once the PS3 hits the market in Europe.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

------------------------------------------------------

krw wrote: