[HN Gopher] Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)
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Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)
Author : erjiang
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-03-13 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zdnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zdnet.com)
| monocasa wrote:
| > Q: I've never heard of software "expiring." How is that
| possible?
|
| What a beautiful world that was
| Emendo wrote:
| > 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.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| And better yet, whenever you complain about how invasive it
| is, someone will appear to take up page space to call you
| names for wanting things to be better.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, in 1999 one of the dominant software distribution
| models was shareware where frequently applications would stop
| working after some amount of time and demand payment.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| The article is referring to automatic expiry of license keys
| though. Still seems like a rather naive question, I agree.
| sn_master wrote:
| 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.
| ttt0 wrote:
| 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 company will pull the plug once it's no
| longer profitable.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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).
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| my Word 97 still works great (and blows away today's
| software, both foss and not)
| dehrmann wrote:
| _serial number_
|
| Seems so quaint to think of that as a privacy concern.
| bcrl wrote:
| I look back over the last 22 years, and we had very different
| attitudes towards privacy back then. It's sad to think that
| almost 2 generations are now growing up without knowing what
| privacy was, or how much actual freedom there was in being a
| free range kid with the only obligation being home for
| supper.
|
| We overestimate the change over the course of a year, but
| seriously underestimate it over a couple of decades.
| salawat wrote:
| Someone hasn't heard of the German Tank Problem...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
|
| Further, over time, many authorities have to be repeatedly
| reminded that User-Agents with UUID's != the user themselves,
| and every attempt by technologists to cram more UUID on more
| and more closely held technology with more and more
| ubiquitous and trending toward always on data streams just
| makes this threat harder and harder to play down.
|
| You don't need to serialize and track everything. We need to
| stop doing it. This is also why the systemd machine-id was a
| step in the wrong direction.
| azalemeth wrote:
| In many ways, all of the predictions made at the time in
| replies to articles like this have come true. Everyone _is_
| spying on us constantly; legitimate end-users _are_ absolutely
| peeved off / made to suffer SaaS and activation crap, and the
| pirates _do_ just continue exactly as before (albeit with a
| nice, NSA-provided open-source RE environment to play in...)
| tyingq wrote:
| 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.
| tails4e wrote:
| Flexlm is alive and kicking. All of thr EDA software I use
| daily is protected by it. Its so archaic I can only assume
| its been broken seven ways from Sunday, but its still there.
| Id be interested to know if anyone here knows why it's the de
| facto standard for on premises software licencing.
| [deleted]
| beervirus wrote:
| Oh man, I remember this. What a simpler time.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > But didn't you say it'd help to prevent counterfeiting of
| chips?
|
| The stolen part I get, but did it used to be easier to
| counterfeit chips? There's a lot that goes into making something
| that looks like a PIII, and even then, I assume Intel had state-
| of-the-art fabs, so I'm surprised this was a concern.
|
| The hardware scams I've heard of stamping better specs on
| something, for hard drives, a firmware hack that makes it appear
| to be higher capacity, and unauthorized hardware made in off-
| hours on the same production line.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| Those are the direct scams - but there are also lesser scams
| where a supplier replaces a part with a working part made by
| another manufacturer and pockets the difference. The parts may
| work correctly (in some cases it was only discovered because
| the parts worked FASTER than expected) - but it is fraud.
| moonbug wrote:
| a common problem back then was chips getting remarked as higher
| clock bin parts.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| I felt at the time that when Intel said "counterfeit" they
| really meant "clones".
| illys wrote:
| "Big Brother Inside" for just a unique id? What should we say now
| about Intel Management Engine?
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| We already know the management engine is a backdoor/botnet. No
| intel powered computer is secure or private.
| wmf wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| Every single iPhone and iPad transmits its hardware serial
| number to Apple when you launch the App Store app, or on first
| boot after restore for "activation".
| trollied wrote:
| I don't know why you've gone on a tangent and randomly
| mentioned Apple?
|
| Anyway, speaking of unique identifiers in mobile devices,
| mobile phones have had IMEIs for ages - pre-dates Apple by a
| long time.
| JohannMac wrote:
| 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.
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