cpswan

A thief broke in to our house and stole some special blueprints from a safe in the drawing room. We don't think they took any cash or gadgets from other parts of the house, but we have so much lying around who can tell?

makes me wonder what they've been holding back from customers and pen testers? Obscurity shouldn't be part of the strength of the solution.

I was planning on getting a GSM model on an upcoming trip to the US (so that I could pop a SIM into it if need be, and also to get GPS), but if it's locked to AT&T then that seals my decision to get a WiFi model (and tether to my iPhone or use my MiFi).

Apple, you just lost an upgrade sale. I'm sure I won't be the only one.

Sadly it now seems clear that the iPad 2 will be locked to specific providers (at least in some regions) - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/06/apple_forced_to_make...

Anybody know if the 3G models are carrier locked, or is it simply that the 'AT&T' model is GSM/UMTS and the 'Verizon' is CDMA?

It doesn't matter where you start out. You're always staring up at that sheer cliff (in fact it's probably true that it seems steeper and harder to climb the closer you get to it).

It seems that ARccOS has evolved into 'structural protection' - http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=23291

The disc is physically perfect - no scratches.

Sony use an additional DRM system called ARccOS on their DVDs. ARccOS keeps changing, so my assessment is that this latest version is another stinker - it's happened before.

I've often wondered how bog standard DVD players can ignore these intentional errors and get on with things, whilst ripping software like AnyDVD seems to be in a constant arms race against ever evolving DRM.

Of course the problems start when you have a player that isn't bog standard (like some Sony players), or if you want to do something far out like watch a DVD on a PC (even a Sony PC).

Good luck with the AP2P thugs like ACS Law. When they send you a letter demanding that you pay or be sued I'm sure it's fine to write back and tell them that you bought the disc.

The whole reason I have the DP-600 in the first place is that in addition to playing DVDs it can play media files (such as rips) from a UPNP server on a PC.

Of course there are plenty of other streaming media players out there these days.

Since it did play on my other DVD player it would seem that the only errors are intentional.

Try Googling Sony+drm - they have form for this type of nonsense.

I think part of this DRM scheme is to make the process that you describe fail.

If only that were true. I think it was around about the same time (2004) that Bill Gates said "Two years from now, spam will be solved". Of course the spammers quickly adapted their techniques to defeat Bayesian filters, leading to the sender reputation based systems we have today (like Postini).

When Google/Postini can't deliver my mail to my users I have a problem. When they can't deliver their own mail to their own users we all have a problem. But it's worse than that - any given recipient will be running a system with an unknown false positive rate, so email degenerates into a game of chance.

Perhaps I should have made it clearer that the purpose of using a proxy in the way I illustrated was to access geographically restricted sites (such as the Amazon.com Kindle store) rather than for security/anonymity (which as you point out needs further consideration around side channel leakage etc.)

This idea has been kicking around the WEIS community for some time (http://weis2011.econinfosec.org/)

I've been using www.SMEstorage.com for this. They support multiple storage clouds as back ends, and have DropBox style tools that give me automated sync between multiple machines (and mobiles). Keeping all of my 'work' data safe and in sync between my desktop and laptop is costing me cents a month.

None of these problems are specific to computer science. Education in general is trapped in 19th century models. It's just that this is more of a problem in a discipline like IT where the state of the art changes so fast.

I'd add Edu 2.o (www.edu20.com) and School of Everything (schoolofeverything.com) to the list of web based alternatives.