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Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

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Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#51

Post by icedchai »

DanBC wrote: post #38
kmeisthax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years ago the vast majority of communications were either unencrypted or, if you had a fancy mobile phone, encrypted using weak, ITAR-compliant ciphers. Encryption on the Internet was for e-commerce sites with the budgets for the extra hardware, certification, and compliance needed for SSL, and the protocol was also kneecaped by ITAR outside of the US. Hell, even early DRM systems were laughably easy to break beca…

> 2. Private wiretapping would land you in jail, and required covert access to someone's house, making it riskier to pull off Or people could just access the pole outside the house, or the cab on the street.

Back then, I remember listening to people's analog cordless and cell phones with a scanner.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#52

Post by [deleted] »

jerkstate wrote: post #45
tyingq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure I remember Sun compilers, Veritas Volume Manager, and several other pieces of software having license keys that expired in the 1990's. Several of them used something called FlexLM.

FlexLM was remarkably easy to defeat, though. I did it in about 10 minutes with truss and a preloaded library in the early 00s.

[deleted]

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#53

Post by kortilla »

tails4e wrote: post #48
berkut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason it became de-facto was it had bindings to C/C++/Java (what most commercial software was written in from the 90s onwards) and worked on all main platforms (including most Unixes). There wasn't much else which provided that in the 90s, early 2000s. RLM is a slightly more modern alternative to FlexLM which some software has moved to over the past 10 years from FlexLM.

Thanks, interesting to see that this seems like a niche market thats relitively untapped. What seems initially strange is its protecting SW that can be as much as 100k per seat (e.g. ASIC EDA licenses) I'm sure less scrupulous operations are pirating the SW, though perhaps the EDA vendors know the compabies who do pay are honest lest they are found out so a truly secure licensing system is less critical to them.

With most software in that price category, the actual software is a small piece of what you’re paying for. It’s really support, custom features, etc.

Additionally, the potential users that can pay have much bigger legal exposure using the pirated version and just wouldn’t risk it.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#54

Post by stjohnswarts »

Emendo wrote: post #6
monocasa wrote: post #2

> Q: I've never heard of software "expiring." How is that possible? What a beautiful world that was

> A software product could even "seek permission" from the vendor -- via the Internet or your modem -- each time it ran, so that the vendor would know whenever you started the program. Now it is the norm.

Not just to check for license but also to upload all your activity for their AI to comb through :)

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#56

Post by wolrah »

wmf wrote: post #25
illys wrote: post #9

"Big Brother Inside" for just a unique id? What should we say now about Intel Management Engine?

This was a self-own by Intel where they claimed that the processor serial number would be used for online authentication which was then exaggerated to "the processor serial number will be a super-cookie sent in every HTTP request" which does sound pretty big-brotherish. The ME, on the other hand, is obviously good since it "allows" you to watch 4K Netflix on your PC.

> The ME, on the other hand, is obviously good since it "allows" you to watch 4K Netflix on your PC.

The ME has nothing to do with this, it's entirely about the GPU. 7th generation Intel GPUs and 10xx or newer nVidia GPUs support the DRM that Netflix requires, the CPU just needs to be fast enough to handle its part of the equation.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#57

Post by o-__-o »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #23
ttt0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never guaranteed, no matter what payment model. There is plenty of discontinued closed-source software from way before a subscription model became a thing that everyone does, and some of it managed to stay alive only thanks to piracy. With subscriptions it's way worse, because it has to rely on a central server, sometimes for no good reason at all, and you can't even do that. It's just bound to happen that the c…

my Word 97 still works great (and blows away today's software, both foss and not)

WordPerfect 5.1 user here. Nothing comes close on the terminal

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#58

Post by sn_master »

tehjoker wrote: post #14
ttt0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never guaranteed, no matter what payment model. There is plenty of discontinued closed-source software from way before a subscription model became a thing that everyone does, and some of it managed to stay alive only thanks to piracy. With subscriptions it's way worse, because it has to rely on a central server, sometimes for no good reason at all, and you can't even do that. It's just bound to happen that the c…

Back in the day, the license keys weren't checked at a central server, there was some kind of check sum or database inside the software instead. This was wonderful for both pirates and legitimate users for when the company disappeared. I still remember a working Starcraft CD key (though it later turned out that something on the order of 01234566789 worked).

I remember my Windows XP QQWD7 serial key too. Even when central server was the default, there was usually still a way to do an offline activation. Nowadays, not anymore.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#59

Post by sn_master »

ttt0 wrote: post #12
sn_master wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With subscription, even continuing to pay increasing amounts isn't a guarantee than the product will remain available once the vendor decides to cancel it. And, piracy isn't an option for developing countries where the software price is over a year's average wage.

It's never guaranteed, no matter what payment model. There is plenty of discontinued closed-source software from way before a subscription model became a thing that everyone does, and some of it managed to stay alive only thanks to piracy. With subscriptions it's way worse, because it has to rely on a central server, sometimes for no good reason at all, and you can't even do that. It's just bound to happen that the c…

Discontinued software can still be usable for a very long time. Proper written applications like Office can work on Windows versions that are decades older than itself, or the worst case continue working on VMs until the end of time, like those legacy apps that are still running from before the 90s.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#60

Post by snailmailman »

JohannMac wrote: post #29

Common to have unique SN in a processor. Let the SW vendors do copy protection too. E.g. at Sonos we used them to associate with the software signed certificate such that you couldn't run a given Players software on another Player without the same SN. When making products via contract manufactures, especially in China, it was a wise procedure.

When I built my pc the cpu came with some free game or game coupon or something. It wasn’t in the box, I instead had to download and run some AMD software that verified that I was in fact using the CPU. I’m under the impression that it detected my specific CPU not just make/model but some sort of unique ID. Presumably this stops people from claiming the code and reselling the cpu,(or at least without reselling it as “new”) or from spinning up a VM and trying to redeem random promos without owning the real CPU.

Thought it was interesting that they did that but didn’t think much more of it. I don’t even remember what the promo was. Might have just been extended warranty or something?

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