Apple Files Patent for "Tamper-Resistant Code" 401
freaktheclown writes "The US Patent and Trademark Office has revealed that Apple has filed patent no. 20050246554 for a "system and method for creating tamper-resistant code." The system is presumably for use in Apple's Intel version of its Tiger operating system."
Link to patent publication (Score:5, Informative)
typo in the patent? (Score:5, Funny)
it's candle proof? it can't be narrowed?
Re:typo in the patent? (Score:2, Funny)
Glue all the way!! Death to duct-tape!!
Re:typo in the patent? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:5, Funny)
~X~
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:5, Funny)
obl. Simpsons quote required here. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link to patent publication (Score:3, Interesting)
A 30 metre resistant watch will probably survive washing up, or wearing in the shower. a 50 should survive surface swimming. a 100 should survive diving to 10 metres, a 200, should survive diving to 30 metres and a 1000 to as deep as humans have ever been and survived.
The standards are ISO 2281 and ISO 6425 if anyone cares.
re: unhackable DRM, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: unhackable DRM, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no one ever really cracked the P3 DRM either, what was known was due to internal leaks, rumored to have been possibly deliberate, as NDC (Rupert Murdoch) owns their competitor, Dish Network! Anyway, the P3 hacks were all workarounds that still needed the real hardware DRM decryption engine to do the work. There was rumors of a soft decryptor, but I never saw one and personally I think that was vaporware.
Oh, I get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't I think of that?
Seriously, this idea sounds so silly, it will only invite more developers to hack OSx86 in their spare time. With OpenDarwin already ported to x86, unless they make serious changes to the OS X kernel, I doubt any measure of TPM will be able to keep people from homebrewing their Macs now.
Re:Oh, I get it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh, I get it (Score:2)
Re:Oh, I get it (Score:3, Insightful)
What this will do (and this is why it's
Re:Oh, I get it (Score:5, Insightful)
And even if I could...would I? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And even if I could...would I? (Score:2)
Well, you can actuallly. The magic file does exist. Seeing as it isn't endorsed by Apple however once you install you will have to play the game of chase that Apple and the x86 OS X hackers are involved in. You may not have drivers, you won't be able to update applications unless you get a hacked update. This would be the same situation on a Dell x86 running OS X.
The real question I guess is, would I pay to get an Apple branded x86
Re:And even if I could...would I? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is really beginning to get to me. Here I am, having used Windows almost daily for 15 years, and I still haven't been infected with any of this spyware that's supposedly so rampant.
What on earth can I be doing wrong?
Re:And even if I could...would I? (Score:3, Funny)
You're forgetting that the plural of anecdote is still not data.
That's fair. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's fair. (Score:2)
You mean like switching from the PowerPC CPU which is very uncommon in the market to the x86 which dominates the market?
Yep, that's quite a length they're going to to protect their code.
Re:That's fair. (Score:2, Interesting)
If they could get past the issue of drivers, maybe they ought to be selling this like windows, though. After all, their OS is leaps ahead of Win XP in usability...they could charge for the software. They could require system vendors to demonstrate conpatibility before getting an "Apple Compatible" lo
Re:That's fair. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they want to be BETTER in all ways, and let that sell their computers.
Jobs is a perfectionist, I think, before he is a capitalist.
You make better customers when you do this, have a superior product in all ways. How many Windows fanatics are there compaired to the Mac people. Much more? Pretty good being that MS has a 80% market share, yeah?
Re:That's fair. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really mean to sound whiney, but it's never cool to like the market leader. It's cool to like the smaller company. Macs are good for art, so the artist clique are the ones that identify the systems as cool — just as "proper" geeks are usually Linux enthusiasts. It's all image.
I don't think there's as much of a void between Apple and MS as people think. Apple's market share just comes from their "cool factor", so it's something they focus on.
Spoken like a true zealot (Score:3, Insightful)
You aren't on Apple's board of directors. What qualifies you to discuss his company's methods and intentions as if you are?
True, I don't know you either, but your words suggest that you're on a steady diet of Apple kool-aide.
Why is it that software patents and IP law in general is evil except when it comes to Slashdot darlings like Apple and Google? The inconsistency and hypocrisy is a sure sign that relig
Re:That's fair. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it runs, but it runs best when there is a remote control driving it.
My point is that Apple have logical ways that entice people to spend their money rather than hack around it, if the mac is for convienience and luxury, then hacking, possible slowdowns via emulated hardware and losing stability are simply not on the agenda.
Additionally a similar argument is that alot of Mac software doesn't come with activation(when their intel counterparts do.) This is because there is strong correlation between people that purchase macs and people who are willing to cough up the dollars for software to run on it. A person who is unwilling to pay for software, is also someone who is unwilling to pay the premium prices that apple ask for.
And Another: You can burn all your DRM iTunes Music Store songs to CDs, re-rip them and put them on any device you like... but the majority are happy with just using it on an iPod.
My point is that, by taking away trivial hacks to make OSX work on generic hardware, the people who are likely to buy a mac, still will. The people who are never going to buy a mac, will hack it and run it on any hardware they like and probably aren't interested in purchasing an apple anyway; but this will just eat away a bit of that MS Windows marketshare. (Which makes Jobs happy.)
Aptly named. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Aptly named. (Score:2)
Yes it really is (Re:Aptly named). (Score:4, Informative)
The Titanic was really sink-resitant...
Sounds impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
Wonder if it will take more than 48 hours for someone to figure out a way to crack this one?
Re:Sounds impossible (Score:2)
Magnetic containment field?
Re:Sounds impossible (Score:2)
Re:Sounds impossible (Score:2)
[Apologies for those people who wanted to struggle on with how to complete Monkey Island]
Re:Sounds impossible (Score:5, Informative)
By separating it into 2 or more inert components and storing them seperately. How is that at all like tamper-resistant code?
It's not impossible to create code that is very difficult to alter in a desirable manner, unless that desire is to have it cease functioning. The current StarForce copy protection achieves this by encrypting the executable and libraries of the program in question, and then running them on its own virtual machine which runs at the driver level. It sounds like Apple is planning to do exactly the same thing, unless I'm misinterpreting their patent. Each of their points says: But that's just how I'm reading it.. I could be wrong. At any rate, StarForce has yet to be cracked directly, but since its main purpose is to prevent copying, other weaknesses have been exploited; mainly in the area of virtual drives. Evidently it tries to identify the drives on a system, and if it successfully IDs one, it will require the disc to be placed in that drive. To ensure forward compatibility, if it cannot identify any of the drives, it will accept any drive that the disc appears to be in. It still attempts to blacklist virtual devices though, so the virtual drive software must be obfuscated. As I said, the only successful means of defeating the protection thus far have been to alter the data external to the program; the executables and DLLs themselves have not been successfully cracked, except when the publisher opted not to use encryption.
Re:Sounds impossible (Score:2)
Are they trying to patent checksums? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a checksum would fall into that category.
Prior Art! (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that"
Hey... back off (Score:5, Funny)
Translating code blocks (Score:5, Interesting)
After looking over the article, the method reminds me of Synapse Software's SynCalc (and related) programs for the 8-bit Atari computers. They had some real good code obfuscation, and they managed to do it in less that 48K of RAM! I never did get as far as figuring out whether they were using more than one level of a virtual machine, code obfuscation, or what have you.
Re:Translating code blocks (Score:2)
Re:Translating code blocks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Translating code blocks (Score:2)
Re:Translating code blocks (Score:2)
Because we like to tinker and see it as a challenge. Especially since most people are anticipating Apple using every trick they can come up to prevent it. I'm sure that there will be a significant portion of slashdotters who are looking forward to getting a copy of OS X for Intel just to see if they can get it to run, only
Don't they mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't they mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tamper resistent? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tamper resistent? (Score:4, Interesting)
The most interesting thing about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The most interesting thing about this (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The most interesting thing about this (Score:2)
My letter to Apple for what I want on a x86 Macs (Score:4, Insightful)
What the (blank) department would like to see in future Intel based Macintosh computers.
1. A multi-button mouse. With the recent "Mighty Mouse" part of this need has been address. Although, this mouse could use more ergonomic feedback and improvements. A default option from the Apple Store for the "Mighty Mouse" is fine, but additional choices for a two button or three button mouse from a pull down menu choice will give customers more flexibility.
2. The HFS+ journaled filesystem must coexist with an NTFS, or any Linux filesystem like XFS or ext3 on a multi- partition harddrive.
3. Intel based Macs should have IEEE-1394 support and have Firewire target mode and netboot from EFI (the new Intel based BIOS)
4. Intel based Macs should be able to run Windows XP SP2 on it and future Windows Vista. i.e. minimize or eliminate custom ASICs on motherboard that would cause problems installing Windows. Dual booting Intel based Macs will be desirable, but what would be even better is virtualization using Intel's Vanderpool technology to run the few Windows applications that haven't been ported to Mac OS X i.e. AutoCad, Rhino 3D.
5. Intel based Macs have to support PCI Express x16 for graphics cards. Support high end professional graphics card from Nvidia Quadro and ATI FireGL with CoreImage support is absolutely critical for engineering, scientific and the visualization industry. If possible a 3rd player supporting Mac OS X, like 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm series. This would greatly benefit the Mac OS X platform as a more serious player in the CAD and high end computer graphics industries.
Last but not least for all Macs (x86 and PPC) an easy integration with Active Directory or AFS for user login. Currently both methods require work on Mac OS X.
Emulators (Score:4, Interesting)
20. A method comprising: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is formatted for requesting a service from a first operating system, wherein the system call is included in a first object code block, wherein the first object code block is a run-time translation of a second object code block; determining which system call services of a second operating system are needed for providing the service; determining whether system call services for servicing the system call have been disabled, wherein the determining is based on a tamper-resistance policy; servicing the system call, if the system call services for servicing the system call have not been disabled.
21. The method of claim 20, wherein the tamper-resistance policy disables system call services that access system resources.
22. The method of claim 20, wherein the first operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
23. The method of claim 20, wherein the second operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
Can some ... (Score:3, Funny)
20. A method comprising: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is formatted for requesting a service from a first operating system, wherein the system call is included in a first object code block, wherein the first object code block is a run-time translation of a second object code block; determining which system call services of a second operating system are needed for providing the service; determining whether s
Re:Can some ... (Score:4, Funny)
Marketing language:
"20. A method comprosing: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is in synergy with other components of a system, wherein the sum of the system is leveraged to meet market demands in a new and fundamentally influential way, wherein a paradigm-shift results from the impact of the novel processes and inherently forward-looking business model that thereby ensues."
Money language:
"20. A method comprising: we program our computer to do something, someone else somewhere on earth programs their computer to do something that turns out to be similar; we determine that they have a computer doing something that only we are allowed to do; we sue; we make money."
Tinfoil-hat language:
"20. A method comprising: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is formatted to include all personal information on the computer, wherein this information is then encrypted and sent off to corporate HQ servers in order to be analyzed and thereafter used against the user of the originating personal computer sytem."
(very) Plain english:
"20. A method comprising: stuff happens."
Plain english:
"20. A method comprising: A translation layer between different operating system abstraction levels. When a running program (which may have been translated from a stored version of the program) makes a system call to the operating system, this methodology will handle that system call in such a way as to be "tamper resistant." For instance, it will only allow operations determined to be acceptable."
Old Idea-Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
(yawn)
Re:Old Idea-Prior Art (Score:2)
You were probably looking for the phrase "self modifying".
There's another, more interesting aspect of this: (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the patent describes a process whereby users would be able to load one of three operating systems as their primary OS and then load a secondary operating system as their secondary OS. In the patent application, titled, System and method for creating tamper-resistant code, they describe the process as thus:
From the sound of this, Apple is indeed going to do what I had simultaneously hoped for and feared: They're going to enable people to boot into OS X and run Windows at the same time (and vice versa)-- probably very similar to the way Classic runs now.
I had hoped for this because it makes switching infinitely easier-- people can just load up Windows and their apps on their Intel-based Mac, and make a gradual transition to OS X. Those who use Windows-only vertical-market apps will have the world of the Mac opened up to them.
I had feared this because there are bound to be some cheap/lazy asshole developers who will take one look at the Windows compatibility environment, cancel the Mac versions of their products, and tell Mac users to just use the Windows versions in said compatibility environment. I'd hate to see this reverse the Mac application availability renaissance that has been going on for the last few years.
~Philly
Re:There's another, more interesting aspect of thi (Score:2)
Re:There's another, more interesting aspect of thi (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, there's probably an entire team at Apple devoted to making it just right: easy enough to claim compatibility, hard enough to act
Re:There's another, more interesting aspect of thi (Score:5, Funny)
Re:reminds me and makes sense of ms droping office (Score:3, Informative)
remember when microsoft dropped office for the mac.
Sure don't. You must be thinking of Internet Explorer, abandoned years ago at version 5. Office is still supported on the Mac.
Tamper-resistant != tamper-proof (Score:2, Interesting)
Does it have to work to be patentable? (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, someone could try to create a processor that does not but audit the code being run and that it be outside of the main system's functions. I can imagine a lot of things that could be done with a scenario like that... but again, just like a thousand other things, it'll be hackable.
Apple should just face the facts: Build on a system that is already populated with crackers and coders who are intimately familiar with hacking software systems, and you are giving them a new toy to play with. They had a good thing going when they were vending relatively unique hardware. Now they have decided to switch, ever increasingly, to less propietary hardware in order to save costs. They did it when they adopted PCI, PC style memory and IDE mass storage devices. Before long, people were upgrading their own systems with non-Apple stuff. Now the very core of the computer itself is being moved over to something more readily available on the market... they don't expect people to want to play?
They are going to spend a LOT of money to avoid the unavoidable... they are going to waste a LOT of money. At some point they are going to have to choose either to abandon the OSX86 project and go back to PowerPC or just live with the fact that some people will run their OS on PCs not made by them.
Re:Does it have to work to be patentable? (Score:2)
Actually, they don't have to spend that much money. They just need to make it robust enough that it can't be casually broken. Then the DMCA does the rest. The hackers can do their worst, but whether or not they succeed won't matter.
Apple wins either way because the prime objective is to prevent en-masse adoption of Mac OS X on generic Intel hardware, greatly eroding Apple's own hardware sales. As long as Apple's hardware sales are safe, a
Re:Does it have to work to be patentable? (Score:3, Funny)
Melissa
Re:Does it have to work to be patentable? (Score:3, Funny)
Missed the point (Score:4, Informative)
So not only is Apple not preventing users from installing Windows or Linux along side OS X, they are going out of their way to enable them to do so.
Michael Dell is feeling a tightening of the rectum right about now.
And yet...slashdotters are still preoccupied with how Apple might someday try to prevent the OS from being installed on non-Apple hardware.
Re:Missed the point (Score:2)
I love my Powerbook and I run VPC for Windows access. I have a solid OS that I love and I let Windows 98, 2000 and XP run in nice little sandboxes while OSX runs the whole show. Very Nice.
Now if only VPC was faster.
In a very short time it will be.
Prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
And for the paranoid, I've mentioned nothing above I couldn't find on Arxan's or someone else's public website.
This smells of MS style TCPA... (Score:2, Interesting)
To see apple jumping at something like this first is scary. When i found out apple boards had TPM's i suspected, though objectively. To me.. apple is pretty much signalling their intent to join ranks with gates and h
I ask again: what DRM? (Score:2)
Jobs has publically stated that Apple is not in the business of treating its customers like criminals. And what in Apple’s past suggests they support Digital Restrictions Management? I would like to point out that not even the iPod has any form of DRM [slashdot.org] to prevent you from recovering songs off of it.
So, care to clarify this at all?
Re:I ask again: what DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all well and good... I trust Jobs despite his egotistical nature (unfortunately, he's often right). But...
What happens when he no longer runs Apple (succumbing to that great GC in the sky, or losing interest, etc.)? Do you trust #2 at Apple to keep this claim? And for how long?
Re:This smells of MS style TCPA... (Score:2)
Also, my main worry with the x86 switch was that they would loose their "Just Works" image, and enter the a
NOT tcpa (Score:2)
This is not what TCPA is about. The point of TCPA is that a chip in the computer can create a digitally signed report on the software controlling the machine (i.e. BIOS code, boot loader, kernel, device drivers, OS security policy, and any other pertinent information) and send it out the network interface on demand.
The effect is that in the future when some genius coder cooks u
Re:This smells of MS style TCPA... (Score:2)
More like a translator that converts x86 instructions to a RISC-like internal representation, which might or might not be a reasonable instruction set for machine code. See The Microarchitecture of the Pentium® 4 Processor [intel.com] (the Pentium {Pro,II,III} and the Pentium M are similar in concept).
Hardware development (Score:2)
Re:Hardware development (Score:2)
It's called Rosetta [apple.com] (and it's software, not hardware, if you weren't aware of that).
This is bogus (Score:2)
I like Apple products, and I think that on balance the company has done a lot of good for the personal computer industry over the years. However, I really hope they don't keep going down the software patent road. We've seen much gnashing of teeth on Slashdot over similar moves by Microsoft. Let's not be hypocrites. Apple needs to wake up and recognize that they'll gain less than they'll lose from patenting software.
Apple's Gift to the BSD Community (Score:5, Insightful)
23: The method of claim 20, wherein the second operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
29: The method of claim 24, wherein the machine includes an operating system selected from the set consisting of Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
66: The machine-readable medium of claim 64, wherein the first operating system is selected from the set consisting of Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
67: The machine-readable medium of claim 64, wherein the second operating system is selected from the set consisting of an Apple Macintosh Operating System, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
Has anyone actually read TFPA? (Score:5, Informative)
So, having tried to wade through all of this, here's my potted summary.
A "tamper-resistant" code block can be created *automatically* (i.e. not by hand) by translating an ordinary code block into a tamper-proof code block. The tamper proof code-block may be composed of checksummed code with extra inserted code that performs arbitrary operations (using, for example, information stored on a ROM, or taken from the computer's clock, or from the user's settings) and then is expected to produce a specific result.
E.g. multiply the current time by the user's name converted into a number and subtract the checksum of the code block and produce the number it did when the code was initially "tamper-proofed".
To verify the code has not been tampered with it can be executed in an environment (a virtual machine, say) which behaves like the real environment but where system calls have no effect so that only the ancillory results are produced. If these results aren't right, the code block is rejected.
I'm probably missing a lot, but the proposed system is AT LEAST this sophisticated, which is a heck of lot more convoluted than, say, checksumming code blocks. I think figuring this out is well beyond the script kiddies that produce the majority of malware.
Re:Has anyone actually read TFPA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Creating a chip to
evil, bad patent (Score:3, Insightful)
The USPTO will probably grant this, or many of its claims, despite its lack of novelty. But this patent is a poster child for what is wrong with the patent system.
Such a confused debate this (Score:3, Informative)
Apple should not sell the OS seperately because I don't want to buy it. I want the integrated experience. Its a non-sequitur, if that's what you want, buy it. Why should it not sell to others who don't want it?
Apple is a hardware manufacturer and if it allows people to run the OS on other hardware, it will go out of business. People who argue this, then turn around and claim that Apple hardware is better cheaper and faster than anyone else's. So why will unbundling not lead to a boom in hardware sales?
Apple shouldn't lock its OS at all. Why not? Of course, its entitled to protect its investment by product activation or DRM or whatever. Everyone else does.
Finally, we have the argument, if its unbundled, people will try to run it on hardware which will not run it, and this will put off buyers and damage the reputation of the company. This is crazy. It will be shipped with a list of what is supported. And manufacturers of cards, mainboards etc will tell you what the OS requirements are. They do it now, after all. Why would they stop?
Finally we have the argument, people who buy X and run it on their Toshibas (as ZD-net seems to have done) will not be having the Apple Experience. Well, maybe not. Why do you care? If you want to have the Apple Experience, which seems to consist in looking at a particular case while using X, go ahead. But this is not a reason for selling other people the unbundled X experience, if this is what they want.
The more I hear people arguing about this, the less sense it makes. Surely the point is, sell the customer what he wants to buy. He probably really does know what he wants. Let the customer worry about value for money and the sort of experience he is having. Don't try to dictate what he is supposed to want or how he is supposed to feel.
Re:in other news ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:in other news ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other words (Score:2)
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds hip and jaded, but it also belies a disturbing lack of faith in society. Next you'll declare that all employees care about, by definition, is their paycheck -- therefore they don't care if their job consists of beating children with baseball bats, as long as it pays the bills. And all politicians care about is getting elected, therefore they'll just put their feet up and masturbate once they get into office; and all men care about is sex, and all women care about is babies ... et cetera.
In this specific case, what's wrong with Apple developing technology to make its products hard to emulate or reverse-engineer? Aside from its potential for harassing pirates, I don't see the harm in it. And the harm to pirates is most likely illusory anyway, since pirates and crackers are a very, very resourceful demographic.
Tamper-proof code is still ultimately only as secure as the hardware at its weakest link, and that weakest link for Apple will be this: The DVD that a new OS upgrade ships on. Put it in the drive, read it off. From there, it's only a matter of a carefully developed emulation environment and a precise sequence of code patches until the software is just as redistributable as the latest RedHat image.
Still, and as has been said a million times already, Apple doesn't need to make it impossible - just inconvenient for the layman. And even if Apple ties its OS to its hardware with a zillion steel cables, ... what's the loss, for a company that refuses to license them separately? You wouldn't complain that the software operating your Honda Accord isn't portable to your Ford Taurus, would you? (Well, if you're a Linux rivethead, you'd probably point and laugh, but you still wouldn't complain.)
As for the Powerbook with strips "all over" the LCD ... call AppleCare and keep complaining until they take it back. A friend of mine (who now works for Apple, ironically) sent his 15" PowerBook back THREE TIMES before receiving a machine that didn't have white spots on the LCD, and Apple paid the postage both ways each time. (They also told him they were tracking all the returns in order to build a legal case against the supplier of their LCD screens.)
And as for "why shouldn't I just buy a Dell", ... I don't know, why shouldn't you just buy a Dell? Get the freaking system you'll be happy with. The rest is just slashdot-esque dick-measuring.
Re:So.... (Score:2)
Haha! And you don't see a problem with this? This is hilarious! Just keep calling back. Nice, man. Nice. Now, maybe I should bring up how apple refuses to replace the obviosly defective Nanos. Or maybe how Apple refused to admit the infamous power button problem when they first released the new Imacs? Or maybe some Cube stuff? Like how they refused to admit the cube had a poorly designed h
Small - Medium Businesses as well (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Corporations are not people (Score:2)
This gets trotted out constantly, and it is bullshit every time.
A corporation is required to fulfil the conditions of its constitution to some extent, but there's always a division of power between the board and the general meeting (shareholders).
Some corps have pure profit-driven agendas, but others are non-profit, profit sharing or have additional social agendas. The division of power allows the flexibility needed to keep o
Re:Looks like some of the IOCCC code is being rele (Score:2, Interesting)
I've SEEN this! (Score:5, Funny)
eval(gzinflate(base64_decode('7T39Vxs5k...')));
The parameter went on for ages. When I changed the eval to echo, I got another block of the same, only the data was different. Apparently the guy had just gzipped his code over and over (five times to be exact) and used that as "encryption" so nobody would be able to modify it. I got around it in around five minutes, and sure enough, the domains were simply an array in the decrypted (inflated?) code.
The point is, according to the parent, it looks like Apple is patenting object code encryption, which has been done many, many times before in many different ways. I'm sure that the rest of the patent indicates something "unique" (and I put unique in quotes because there's no way to know it hasn't been done before somewhere) but in the end it's just diminishing possible future innovations by a little bit, like all software patents.
(Does this mean I'm liable under the DMCA?
Re:I've SEEN this! (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus, a vendor-ID-ed CPU family, locked to Apple, would be the only one capable of accessing crucial DRM-ed parts of the OS (the one wich loads AQUA and friends--not the open source Open Darwin layer).
Anyone will still be able to boot OpenDarwin on pretty much any Intel hardware.
But, running the sugar on the cake will be very hard without Apple ID-ed CPUs (and hence, motherboard) without actually using an Apple-is
Re:Looks like some of the IOCCC code is being rele (Score:3, Interesting)
In one embodiment the system comprises a processor and a memory unit coupled with the processor. In the system, the memory unit includes a translator unit to translate at runtime blocks of a first object code program into a blocks of a second object code program, wherein the blocks of the second object code program are to be obfuscated as a result of the translation, and wherein the blocks of the second object code program include system calls.
TPM cont
Re:What if MS makes Windows Incompatible w/ Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed, Microsoft might be secretly happy about this scheme, since they might be less beholden to Dell.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this just comes of as a sorry effort at excusing the behavior of crackers. "We're just at the mercy