Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 232 posts

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#211

Post by colejohnson66 »

zerohm wrote: post #193
skoczymroczny wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Players overwhelmingly vote with their wallets in favour of DRM. Just wait until some day Steam servers get shut off, the backlash will be massive.

I don't know any players that are in favor of DRM per se. Players are willing to accept DRM, IF it is transparent, and even more willing if it enables some perks. There was a time when DRM was only visible when it broke your legitimately purchased game (e.g. SimCity, Diablo 3) Now at least gamers are getting some decent perks from DRM (e.g. digital loaning, play anywhere, cross platform licensing) so it's a bit easie…

> Now at least gamers are getting some decent perks from DRM (e.g. digital loaning, play anywhere, cross platform licensing) so it's a bit easier to stomach.

That's because people have been vocal about that. If the companies had it their way, I'm sure the majority would want you to buy a new license for each platform and system (like how the cheap Windows licenses are - locked to your system)

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#212

Post by colejohnson66 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #112
voltagex_ wrote: post #37

I'm so so glad he mentions archiving in this video - I don't think enough thought has been given to the impact of DRM on museum collections in 10-50 years.

Maybe a condition of copyright should be that you submit the unrestricted media to Library of Congress, and it gets released upon expiration of copyright.

Isn't that what the Internet Archive can do? They can host old games under the pretense of them being a "library".

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#213

Post by brokenmachine »

djsumdog wrote: post #92
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Aussie he's going to be subject to the TPPs DMCA-lite restrictions on circumvention devices once it's ratified.

Australia has some of the best reverse engineering laws currently. Those four kids reverse the Sydney train system legally (they did responsibly disclose n such).

?? link please?

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#214

Post by ZenoArrow »

aperrien wrote: post #83
stepvhen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be, but cycle perfect emulation is very difficult and costly. Higan (formerly Bsnes) manages it with Snes emulation and it requires a cpu with a rate over 3GHz. I remember reading the N64 would require a 10GHz cpu to emulate with 100% archival accuracy. long story short, it is the real solution, but its not a practical one by any means.

Have there been any efforts made with FPGA emulation? It might work out better for this type of project.

Yes, FPGA implementations exist for some classic systems, including some game consoles.

Here are some relevant links (I'm sure there will be other systems that have been recreated in FPGA form):

http://www.retrocollect.com/News/super-nintendo-recreated-in...

http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/stuffing-an-nes-into-an-fpga/

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12847-fpgagen-a-...

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1chipMSX

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#215

Post by tremon »

shmerl wrote: post #194
apecat wrote: post #163

Wow. I certainly hope someone with a lot of power over company culture at, say, Apple is watching this. And that they get inspired to think about cultural preservation. I really think it should be a standard act of corporate responsibility and platform stewardship to make it so that work like that of Professor Abrasive's, is not the only spare key we have to current culture a few decades down the road. We as a global…

To fix it, people should stop using DRM. Or as a first step to repeal crooked corrupted laws which declared breaking DRM illegal even for legitimate purposes. http://www.fixthedmca.org

As an alternative: we could demand that, for works that are only released to the public in encrypted form, an unencrypted copy is put in independent escrow (e.g. Library of Congress) to qualify for copyright protection.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#216

Post by LeifCarrotson »

tremon wrote: post #215
shmerl wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To fix it, people should stop using DRM. Or as a first step to repeal crooked corrupted laws which declared breaking DRM illegal even for legitimate purposes. http://www.fixthedmca.org

As an alternative: we could demand that, for works that are only released to the public in encrypted form, an unencrypted copy is put in independent escrow (e.g. Library of Congress) to qualify for copyright protection.

That's an interesting and compelling idea.

But that database of unencrypted copies would be the ultimate target for industrial espionage, copyright theft, and hacking. I don't think we can trust any one organization with that responsibility.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#217

Post by rasz_pl »

voltagex_ wrote: post #205
rasz_pl wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

original Playstation used similar copy protection trick - ASCII string SCE(I/E/A) was stored in pregap pre-groove wobble between the leadin and the first track. PSX used Three-beam pickup and was able to track this wobble and extract code from radial tracking error signals. Modchips simply injected same error signal for couple of seconds after closing CD lid, enough for the CD controller to recognize it as "original"…

Any idea why PS modchips used to kill the drive laser pretty quickly?

they didnt. lasers were poor to begin with, plus weaker media(cdr) probably caused extra mechanism movements (focusing)

edit: hmm, now that I think about it, its possible someone incompetent made modchip that would keep sending wooble constantly, that could cause tracking problems and tire mechanism pretty fast.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#218

Post by LeifCarrotson »

shmerl wrote: post #201
apecat wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well, I agree that people should stop using DRM, but it's not like it seems to be happening. And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case. Anyway, the world looks really bleak for open platforms right now. The main example is Android. If you have like one toe dipped into a role related to infosec at the moment, you can't serioulsy recommend that people you work with or care for eve…

> And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case. Not really. DRM usage has nothing to do with (honest) business cases. They are all crooked or Lysenkoist in nature (i.e. based on completely wrong / ignorant reasoning). Also, I think you are mixing up DRM with security. DRM is the opposite of it. DRM can employ encryption, but its purpose is not to secure your system, but to police you, an…

> DRM usage has nothing to do with (honest) business cases. They are all crooked or Lysenkoist in nature (i.e. based on completely wrong / ignorant reasoning).

Can you explain this? The argument and terminology are unfamiliar to me. Wikipedia says:

> Lysenkoism is also used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.

The goal of DRM is, ostensibly, to be paid for the hard work of creating something that is easy to duplicate after being created. That's a reasonable goal, but really hard to do when the software is executing on a machine in the control of the user. Requiring a remote server is a logical way to accomplish that goal, with unfortunate side effects when that server is inaccessible.

What part of this logic is crooked or Lysenkoism?

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#219

Post by 83457 »

PostOnce wrote: post #136
toast0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No EA Games, when Madden was huge; no DVD player, and the PS2 hype cycle was perfectly timed and had an even better launch. Wikipedia sales numbers for the PS2 and Dreamcast say the PS2 sold 10.6M by March 31, 2001, whereas the Dreamcast was dead by then and only sold 9.13M. Sega also had troubled finances as a result of the Saturn.

the 2K Sports series negated the need for EA and sold so well that EA sought out an exclusivity contract with the NFL so that 2K would be killed? The DVD drive after the ps2 was released probably would be a huge factor though, if the dreamcast wasn't in fact already dead which it was. I'm sure some business school guys have written papers on this, I should find them. Would be interesting to read all the opinions on S…

I actually preferred the 2k football games so EA getting exclusivity there was annoying.

Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years

#220

Post by wmil »

apecat wrote: post #163

Wow. I certainly hope someone with a lot of power over company culture at, say, Apple is watching this. And that they get inspired to think about cultural preservation. I really think it should be a standard act of corporate responsibility and platform stewardship to make it so that work like that of Professor Abrasive's, is not the only spare key we have to current culture a few decades down the road. We as a global…

One of the nice things about Apple's review / publish system is that it encourages multiple parties to keep release binaries around. Both parties will need them in case there's ever an allegation of malicious or dangerous code.

Also app-specific DRM is unnecessary AFAIK, so that will avoid common problems.

Post reply on HN