LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:05:05 +1030

Re: end of linux and open source - nobody cares!!

On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 07:36:16PM +1030, Glen Turner wrote:
> Stephen Donaldson wrote:
> > 
> > Hmm i'm not sure I follow your logic, do you mean that the operating system will
> > be no good if it does not have the ATA spec on the hard drive?
> 
> As far as I can tell, the "Hollywood Plan" is to implement
> cryptography on the disk and graphics CPUs such that
> the main CPU only ever sees random bits.

The really scary thing is that probably as soon as CPRM gets
established, it could be possible to distribute _all_ software
in uncopiable form. So not only would software be sent out
as binaries; it would also be impossible to copy them.

I remember the days of copy-protected floppy disks.
It was a real pain when you wanted to make back-ups etc.
Now that could apply to all software from closed-source
companies.

But my main point in this e-mail is:

Please read this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15718.html

This is yet another excellent Register articles on the subject,
and it summaries all earlier ones.
It really clarifies the technology and the reasons why
it's scary.
Roughly speaking, next year's disk drives would refuse to
let you read the file unless you had a key from the owner of
the software. 
I wonder what will happen if you can't connect to the net
for a week.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

-----------------------------------------------------------
PS. On the subject of the apparent bug in "mkisofs"
that I seemed to find a couple of weeks back, it seems
that there is indeed a bug.
I've found that if you use the -volset-size and
-volset-seqno parameters with mkisofs, the linux iso9660 file system
software detects errors which mkisofs has created and then
reads the file lengths wrongly. In fact, isoinfo sees these
lengths correctly, but isovfy sees the file system errors.
Windows OSs don't seem to even notice the file system errors.
Quick fix:
Just don't use the parameters -volset-size and
-volset-seqno with mkisofs.
If you're using a nice GUI over this software, I don't
know how you'd make sure that these parameters are not invoked.

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