Today, the end is near. Mail servers are failing al over the world. The dutch ISP's Planet, and Chello are having sever problems with their mail server.
Chello
having problems is nothing new :-) . They always seem to have a problem of some sort. It's beyond coincidence that even
Planet AND Gmail are having difficulties at the same time.
XS4ALL is still working as expected (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this) :-)
AppleInsider found a filed
patent by Apple that reveiles a possible future new iPod design.
And again, I can't wait
Anyone who says that the Germans don't have a sense of humor haven't seen the hilarious movie
'Dreamship Surprise' / 'Traumschiff Surprise - Episode Eins'. The movie is a persiflage on
Star Wars, and
Star Trek. It's like
Naked Gun, and
Spaceballs, but then way more hilarious.
The last couple of days were all about the leaked key for decrypting HD-DVD movies. This made me curious about the technology, so I headed to the
AACS LA website.
There's variety of
white papers available, which explain the AACS concept. The same papers were used by
musilix64 in making his first breakthrough on circumventing the AACS protection.
But there is more to be found on their website... There's even a section which explains the
Consumer Benefits of AACS.
- Support a superior viewing experience delivered by next generation media formats
AACS is added to the content. The content itself will probably 'work' better without AACS.
- Enable greater flexibility to manage distribute, and play entertainment content on a wider range of devices
This is a 'feature' for the publishing companies. Without the restrictive AACS protection, the content can be played on virtually every device. With AACS protection 'they' control on which device you can play the content.
- Enable groundbreaking home entertainment choices and the ability to use content on PCs and a range of CE devices
AACS is added to the content. The content itself will probably 'work' better without AACS.
- Work across a variety of formats and platforms
Five letters: L I N U X. AACS protected movies CANNOT be played on Linux. Only movies without the protection can be player on certain Linux players.
The
MPAA will have serious problems removing the
key from the Internet. Even Google has
received a letter to remove the links from their databases. Somehow, these retards have the idea that you can copyright a number.
As the word spread yesterday the articles started showing up on
Digg.com. Digg.com is a popular website where you can submit 'news', and others may rate it and comment on it. Within minutes the stories about this key got thousands of 'diggs'.
This resulted in the fact that the moderators on Digg removed the posts. Result: Mass uproar.
Kevin Rose (the Digg founder) wrote the following on
his Digg blog:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
I think that's the right attitude towards this. Hopefully, the MPAA will come to its senses (not likely), and stops harrassing the consumers with their lame-ass copy-protection.
It would even be better to abandon the '
turn every consumer into a criminal' DMCA bill completely, but that's another story....
Just to be sure you got the right key:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B
D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
As some of you might know, the protection of Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD movies is based on a 'secret' key. You need the key to watch protected movies.
The (software)players for these movies are able to 'decrypt' these keys from the disc containing the movie. So you already have these keys on the disc. They (the movie companies) just try to hide them from the user (security through obscurity).
This is not strange that they use this scheme. It's just the way DRM works on these discs. Due to the lame-ass
DMCA law in the United States, it's ILLEGAL to try to find the key on the disc :???: .
Somehow a
HD-DVD key got discovered (or leaked), and it's going around the great Internet. Several websites have been approached by lawfirms to
take the pages down.
This key is represented by a hexidecimal code. How the hell is it possible to declare a hexidecimal string illegal?? The same string can also be represented by a different format (e.g. BASE64). Is this also illegal?
Since we dont know other hex keys for decrypting copy protected content, every other string of hex codes might also be illegal. Image this; what if the 'next' key might represent the number pi (03 14 15 92 6.....)? Does that mean that all math books need to be burned?
Just another example of the fucked up DMCA law in the US.
B.t.w. wondering what the last part is of the key... just use
Google to search for "09 F9 11 02 9D".... Google knows he rest.
I'm one of those lucky bastards who lives like a gazillion miles from a phone central. This means that the ADSL speed reduces dramatically on high speeds. My older ADSL subscription was an Ultra Fast subscription (20Mbps/1Mbps). Due to the distance I only got about 6Mbps (if the wind was blowing from the right direction).
The cheaper version (Basic, 8Mbps/1Mbps) is slower, but I get relatively more speed (around 5Mbps). So for me, the additional <1Mbps more costed about 20 euro's a month.....
Damn, it's about time that they start using different technologies to bring the Internet into peoples homes. How the hell will they be able to bring phone, Internet, and TV over the Internet? Currently, it would mean that downloads 'stop' if you pick up the phone, or that artifacts appear on the TV signal when browsing the Internet.
Scotty, the engineer from Star Trek, has
returned to space (for a short time) to meet his maker Gene Roddenberry.
Yesterday, James Doohan's (better known as Scotty from the Sci-Fi series Star Trek) remains were launched in to space.
Currently, over a hundred people are 'buried' in space. One of the first was
Gene Roddenberry. He was the creator of the Star Trek series.
I wonder who of the original Star Trek cast will be next to be 'buried' in space....
I installed
Ultimate Tag Warrior recently, because I liked the tag clouds I saw on other blogs. Unfortunately, the plugin seems to cripple the search capabilities on the website. If the plugin is activated, you can't find any posts with a search query. Disabling the plugin make things work again.
So, I want to humbly apologize to all those people trying to find important stuff on this blog :-)
Recently, the dutch
Tweakers website started with dissecting USB flashdrives. Their goal is to see if the so-called secure USB flashdrives are as secure as the manufacturer says they are.
They reviewed the SecuStick, and a BioStick. The first protects the data with a password. The latter (two different versions were tested) uses biometrics (fingerprints) to secure your precious data (in combination with AES encryption).
The full reports can be read
here, (SecuStick) and
here (BioStick). The dutch review can be read on the tweakers.net website (
here, and
here) along with interessting comments on the article.
Conclusion of the articles: Some of these so-called secure USB flashdrives are not as secure as you might think. Oke, the data is 'secure' for the casual user. If real secrets (your private pron collection :-) ) are being stored on those USB flashdrives, you might want to consider using TrueCrypt (with a strong password, and keyfiles) to store your 'valuable' data.
