Dear Moderators...

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

Dr.Moo! wrote:

I read your post prior to this one, and running F@H is better than running D@i, but it would be just fine to run both at the same time.

Folding@Home is quite processor intensive as far as I know. W'N'N told me his processor was at 60% even while idling but he was able to fold his first protein in a week or two I think (so yes, practical and realizable results!). But it really depends on your computer.

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how long would the decryption process take and (on your computer (include specs if you could) how much would it slow down your computer? As zacaj and others state there it runs as a background process (or at least can be run in the background, something about it being in the background).

If zacaj states it as running as like a background process, that can only indicate an extreme lack of efficiency ; / If you really want speed, your program should be pushing your computer to the max (e.g. multiple, multiple threads all running at once rather than a linear, test-by-test). The @Home program makes efficient usage of threads; hardware such as dual-core is put to good use and how much processing power being used is limited by what is reasonable (no-one will be willing to run F@H to the point that they can't even do simple things like browse the internet). I'm sure theres settings on F@H that allow you to adjust things like that.

As for how long decryption will take, I'm not a person who can answer that with my current computer. Just running Photoshop lags me. If I ever tried F@H, my ancient hardware would probably start smoking (someone hardware-savvy like joeywc or DerPapst on the other hand would probably find it easy Wink

)

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So, by saying that Apple fulfills the conditions and doesn't need to release their (edited) source code? That changes it.

Thats why if you look at the original thread in the iPodWizard forums (I think thats where it originated) the first few knowledgeable posts were ones that shot the idea down. Same happened here if you dig a bit. Unfortunately the masses don't bother reading more than just titles anymore Rolling Eyes

(We sure are getting off-topic, but its healthy off-topic Wink

)

Moderator Joined: 26 Oct 2005

I think you're not understanding encryption in the slightest. You don't even grasp the kinds of numbers that are involved here.

People have built machines to crack DES encryption. They could crack it and find the key in about 2-3 hours.

Suppose you could build some kind of machine that could crack a DES key in a single SECOND. That's over 2^55 keys per second. It would take 149 thousand-billion years to crack a 128 bit AES key at that rate. The universe is only about 20 billion years old. Do you have 149 trillion years to spare?

People have been trying to crack AES for YEARS now. The NSA has reviewed the standard hardcore, 3rd party people have tried to develop a way to crack it, mathematicians have tried, what makes you think a couple little kids are going to do it?

This is a totally stupid and infeasible project. I think it's great that you're trying, but you're going about it wrong. You're not going to get lucky when it comes to a 128 bit keyspace. You plan on sitting there for 149 trillion years?

Alex

Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Location: Sean-Der.awardspace.com

Then what can we do? Even if we do crack it I doubt Apple is going to sit around a smile about it. Second it really is going to hamper the project as it will give it an underground look and I doubt many will want to contribute if the legality of the issue is in question. I say we start a petition asking Apple for a bootloader of some kind. If we can get enough signatures I bet we can convince Apple to give us some help.

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

In my opinion, a more feasible approach would be try to exploit the Apple firmware and work from there. Such, however, requires great skill and knowledge (and either a lot of time and knowledgeable, interested people working together or insider info, both of which we don't have). Issue there is finding people who can and are also willing to do it (as far as I know, such is prohibited in some countries). Imphasing's "couple little kids" may meet the latter requirement but are far from being close to the former. Nevertheless, it seems to me the only plausible method apart from a hardware RE.

Still, I really don't see any useful payload here. You're trying to crack one of many millions of brands of MP3 player to give it a tiny bit of extra functionality. Just because it has an "Apple" brand to it doesn't make it all that high and mighty. If you really wanted a few free games, go buy something else or go build your own portable device. iPodLinux was written originally for personal interest/challenge and because the original iPod had no encryption, i.e. nothing stopping it from happening. Going out of your way just to accomplish an insignificant goal like this is truely a failure of logic no matter how you look at it. A few years later, the current iPod models (apart from the touch, etc.) will be nothing but extra hard-drives/USB keys that the general masses won't care about. Sure you can continue on for your own personal interest/hobby (and there are amazing people who do that) but the perspective I'm seeing here is "hurry up and crack it so we can play free games on our old iPods." Will any logical programmer have any motivation to waste their time on such? (Go ahead if you want but don't drag others in)

Ps. Note that the universe isn't even 20 billion years old. Imphasing is making a very generous rounding (up to the nearest 10).

Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Location: Sean-Der.awardspace.com

We should work with Apple it is possible I believe that would sympathize with us. They aren't trying to fight with us we can work with them!

http://ipodlinux.org/User:BleuLlama · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:19 pm

Sean-Der wrote:

We should work with Apple it is possible I believe that would sympathize with us. They aren't trying to fight with us we can work with them!

Not going to happen. The iPod Linux enthusiasts are such a minute percentage of the entire iPod owner population. Of the millions of iPods sold, i doubt they will care if a relative handful of their owners decide to get another product, for a reason they know full well will not affect the general iPod user population.

The average person doesn't care if Linux will not or can not run on their iPods. Apple made that not possible, which did not affect this category of users.

Remember, they're a business. They will protect their investment. They don't want their hardware compromised or used in ways that might confuse the end users. (how i'm sure their support department handles such things) If they are okay with us (or others) running foreign code on their designs, they wouldn't have put such protection on them in the first place.

IMO, it doesn't matter how many signatures you get on that petition... Apple will not change their ways. If anything they will tell you to go out and buy the latest iPod Touch, and sign up to be an iPod Developer and just write programs for that.

Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:41 pm

Keripo Test Account wrote:

(someone hardware-savvy like joeywc or DerPapst on the other hand would probably find it easy Wink

)

Heh, my pc is an old P4 with 2GHz and 1GB RAM. When i switch it on i can make and drink lots of coffees before it's done with booting Very Happy

Not entirely sure but iirc apple used OpenSSL for their games. So they could have developed an own custom decryption/encryption algorithm with an insane long key length (512bit if they were terribly bored) and different decryption and encryption keys. And to be even more mean they could have encrypted the firmware twice, maybe even with different algorithms. Since the processor of the new generations is much faster compared to the older generations and booting takes almost the same amount of time as on the older iPods they could do a lot of evil decryption voodoo in the same timeframe before the firmware is executed.

Moderator Joined: 30 Oct 2005

Der Papst wrote:

Keripo Test Account wrote:

(someone hardware-savvy like joeywc or DerPapst on the other hand would probably find it easy Wink

)

Heh, my pc is an old P4 with 2GHz and 1GB RAM. When i switch it on i can make and drink lots of coffees before it's done with booting Very Happy

I have similar specs. I just have an insane amount of hard drive space that I'm never going to use.

Code:

joey@alpha ~ $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 147435896 48648436 98787460 33% /
udev 10240 204 10036 2% /dev
/dev/hda1 101086 14537 81330 16% /boot
/dev/hdb1 53247408 9593352 43654056 19% /mnt/xp
/dev/hdb2 103000744 9800908 93199836 10% /mnt/vista
/dev/sda1 153834852 93305164 52715272 64% /mnt/backup
/dev/sdb3 312568636 66884652 245683984 22% /mnt/share
shm 516992 0 516992 0% /dev/shm

Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Location: alone. :(

Id just like to say a few things:
First, I know that it will probably never work, in fact it looks like we will never finish it! But thats not the point. THe point is that it could, while however unlikely, work. Maybe the 20th key will work, maybe the 2000th. It wont take that long to get to 2000, my computer(If it wasnt for dialup) could do 1-2 keys a second, and my computer is slow compared to what some people have out there. Sure, maybe im not even using the right algorithm, but based on the iPod touch, which does use 128 bit AES, im using the most likely. THe program Is supposed to be run WHILE YOURE NOT USING YOUR COMPUTER, FOR INSTANCE, EVERY NIGHT, OR WHEN YOU GOT AWAY FOR A WEEKEND, SO THAT IT CAN USE ALL YOUR COMPUTING POWER. Yes, it probably wont work, but at least it tried.

Second, As Keipo said a page ago, he made ZeroSlackr for his own personal learning, but included everything, not just what he wanted. And look, hes made what I see as the best installation system iPodLinux has had since the released the first nano, and Installer 2 didnt compleatally work. Whenever someone is haveing trouble, I redirect them to ZeroSlackr, because I know its easy to use, AND it works. If all users were like him, wed have the most advanced iPod hack there is, but theyre not, most are used to just having everything, and dont want to do much tog get it. The moderators always say, learn C and make it yourself. A few people do, including me and Keirpo, among probably a few others, I learned C before mods even started saying that, just because I thought it would be cool to make stuff for iPodLinux, once I learned the basics, iPodLinux made me want to learn more C and coding, and I was driven my my wanting to learn how to program, becasue I go insane once I figure out how something works, doing everything i can think of with it. Of course I can think of way to many things to do with C, but thats not the point. Most users, however, wont bother, theyll just think,

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Stupid mods/devs, dont want to do any work themselves, just want to get us to do all of it!

and a select few will actually listen and try to learn C, but not everyone is set out to be a programmer! Looking back at the two classes ive taken at my local college where i learned Java and VB, I can tell you, some people catch on very quickly, while others cant wrap theyre heads around it, even though they both want to learn it equally as much. So maybe some of those people that you yelled at and told to learn C and do it yourself actually tried, but they couldnt understand C. Some of them would just give up and leave, others would get mad at you, thinking C was impossible for anyone but the uber geek to learn, which is also partly the uber geeks fault, because they subconsiously try to raise themselves above the rest, showing off how smart they are, and the rest believe them, and that all the things they do really are super complicated. DOnt get me wrong, some of them are, and I respest them for knowing how to do that. I could never port linux to the iPod, so I respect the devs for that, but some of the things the developers do, looking back at them, are REALLY SIMPLE to do, but they promote them much ho0w they promote doing the complicated stuff(subconsiously), to boost theyre self asteem, and make others look up to them. So, in a way, you put yourself in this situation. I go to school reading a gigantic programming book everyday, as much to learn whatevers in it as to impress my classmates, and make them think Im smarter than them. I do this subconciously, not realizing it until I look back later. Some people learn lots of big words, and use them to highten themselves. EVERYONE does this with whatever theyre good at, atheletes do this, geeks do it. For some, its useful. Say you want a programing job, you want the task to seem difficult, you dont want everyone in the world also applying for the job! THis happened in a different way with ZeroSlackr, because its so easy, users expect everything else to be handed to them to, which makes Kierpo make ZeroSlackr easier to use, which makes people expect everything more. Its not theyre fault, most dont intentionaly do it, but they do do it

Third, there were three other point I wanted to point out, but because of my rambpling style of writing, ive forgotten them.

Overall, the two opposing sides are both partly right, WhiteNNerdy's side and the mods. But theyre both also partially wrong. Just looking at the posts in this thread by the mods(theyve banned almost everyone on the other side), can prove this, if you look at it, and know and consider the full picture.

If you didnt read this whole post, or any other posts long posts in this thread or any other, and you just 'skimmed' it, and made your argument on the information you garnered from your 'skimming', shame on you, although I admit, and others should to anything Ive pointed out in this post, Ive done this too. In an effort to support my own side in my mind, ive subconsiously skipped over some parts of this thread, ill bet, although I didnt notice it, its just human nature to support the side youre on. I fully expect to be flamed but some people for writing this, although some people wouldnt consider it flaming.

Oh yeah,
Forth, Holy crap joeyjwc. that looks like a lot of disk space!
Now excuse me, its 12:45, and im going to eat breakfast.

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

zacaj wrote:

This happened in a different way with ZeroSlackr. Because its so easy, users use it and expect everything else to be handed to them to. Which makes Keripo want to make ZeroSlackr easier to use. Which makes people expect everything more. Its not they're fault; most don't intentionally do it, but they do do it. (fixed up a bit of spelling errors, specially my name ; P )

I've thought a bit about that and am still unsure of how to handle it. Its quite ironic that while I am against "easy installers" and "one-clickers", due to how I've shaped ZeroSlackr so far, it goes quite contrary to my beliefs. I would rather have the user learn more about the applications that they're using, but at this point, it almost seems like I'm spoon feeding them. I'm still unsure of how to approach the issue of ZeroSlackr's installer right now rather. I'm thinking of just providing the packages as downloads and instructions on how and where to extract them rather than using a GUI installer, but even that doesn't really seem interactive/manual enough. Confused

On your point on respect/esteem, while I don't like it, such is often indeed the mentality of programmers and non-programmers. Its quite a sad product of society rather ; /

On your point on learning C, while for the most part I agree, such is not always the case. As you guessed, I was never told to learn C (since I never begged for new features, etc.) but I never properly learned C either. I've never opened up a C/C++ book and read more than a paragraph nor have I ever taken any lessons (I only occasionally cross-reference websites for syntax). I "learned" C by downloading other people's code and starring at it for hours, then playing around with things until they seemed to work, then learn from that experience. Most of the time my code is a copy-paste of someone else's but modified (sometimes extensively) to achieve what I'm aiming for. If you asked me to write my own "Hello World" program completely from scratch, I probably couldn't, but if you asked me to modify an already written program to fix things or add a bit of basic functionality and gave me sample code snippets/access to Google, I probably could. As you can see, learning how to contribute does not, as many people misunderstand, require any intense learning or innate "mad coding skillz" but rather just good logic, common sense, and, as you mentioned, a will to learn and try. If you demonstrate those (especially the last one), others such as myself will be more than willing to help and teach.

For the decrypter, my opinion remains unchanged; I see it in the same light as trying to surf the internet on your toaster, but, as always, do as you like.

And yeah, joeycw, you have way too much hard-drive space. I've only got 68 GB in total Crying or Very sad

Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Location: alone. :(

I learned C by buying a C for DUmmies book, and searching through it for the stuff i wanted to find out, and of course returning it to the library after ignoring all hte stuff on opening FILES and modifying strings, becasue I was sure id never need that stuff Wink

Moderator Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Location: Australia

WhiteN'Nerdy wrote:

So GO f---- YOURSELF!!!

:<

*sips tea*

I don't remember locking, let alone reading any of your topics recently, so I'll assume that applies to someone else.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:27 pm

i dont feel like a big part of this discussion... but when i saw the red F's, i was like Z0M9 PWnZ4g3 Laughing

Joined: 20 Oct 2005 Location: Toronto Insane Asylum

Idea 2: (Hypothetically)

Let Apple run Linux on their iPods. Come at them from the opposite approach. Market it to them that it will open up the iPod's features more, and you could make endless possibilites to the consumer! Have it kidn of what they did to the PS3: Advertise the iPod w/Linux installed! It would make a lot of people interested in iPods thanks to Linux's growing popularity.
Then again, how would we even pitch this idea?

Would be cool, but isn't happening. Reverse Engineering seems the only way to go ATM, but who knows where that will lead?
I say we be pateint, learn a bit of coding, and hope for the best!