Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-)
This isn't an attempt to break the "fun" that you guys have been having but realistically, if some Eastern European (for example) outfit decided to use the "backdoor" technology you've come up with to then buy up 10,000 of our phones at £50 and then recycle the electronics into some completely new product with their own software or even continue to use the h/w for their own telephony then we'd make a HUGE loss. We can't afford to run that risk so have to protect our investment in the per unit subsidy. It's not the fact that 5 or 10 talented engineers in the UK have managed to "break in" - that's no real problem for us - good luck to you and your ingenuity, you got £100+ worth of electronics for £50. In fact we owe you thanks for highlighting our security shortcomings - I'd be interested if anyone can "break in" to newly protected hardware (OK, desoldering the NOR doesn't count! ;-)
I know this sounds a bit heavy handed but otherwise it turns into Alan's famous "Apprentice" quote of "selling £10 notes for a fiver a time" and Amstrad as a relatively small company, just cannot afford to do that.
Cliff -----Original Message----- From: Gavin Andrews [mailto:GavinAndrews@yahoo.com] Sent: 16 June 2005 22:51 To: e3-hacking@earth.li Subject: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
The reason I am interested in E3 hardware recycling is that the hardware is good value.
It makes no sense to be to buy something at a reasonable price! It's the subsidy that makes the E3 make sense!
Just being realistic.
Regards, Gavin
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On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 10:28:13AM +0100, Cliff Lawson wrote:
Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-)
I'm surprised you didn't do it to start with. At the moment anyone can use your freephone numbers to send SMSs, download games, check mail, etc. Seems like you haven't done much on the security front yet. What are you going to do with your legacy E2 and E3s though?
Paul
On Friday 17 June 2005 10:28, Cliff Lawson wrote:
Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-)
Sounds like I should go and buy an E3 quick!
One of the things I like about playing with my E2, apart from the sheer fun of making something do something it was never designed for, is the fact that it's a really nicely designed piece of equipment. It feels solid and well-built, and has a very nice form factor. If you can produce an unlocked but unsubsidised version, then good luck to you; I hope you sell a bucketload. I'd certainly recommend them to people who want a small, powerful ARM box.
(Incidentally, depending on how your security system works, you may be able to sell one model of the hardware and then sell a seperate unlock code. Downloading the code would disable the encrypted boot process and wipe the flash. That way you might be able to save costs by only needing one production line.)
(You should also be aware that some people are going to take any encrypted boot sequence as a challenge; look no further than the incredible lengths some people went to to crack the XBox. However, I doubt any approach that requires hardware modification will achieve enough volume to worry you.)
(Also incidentally, I own a NC200. It's a lovely piece of hardware. I'm trying to hack that, too --- I have my own code booting from the SRAM card, but I haven't deciphered the floppy disk boot code yet...)
Cliff Lawson clawson@amstrad.com writes:
Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-)
If that is your plan (and I have no beef with it - you are perfectly entitled to try to protect your investment just as we are perfectly entitled to try to evade it :-)) then it would be good to continue to have the modem part of the new hacker board populated. My intention was to use one as a means to interface a VoIP system to a POTS line for non-VoIP calls IYSWIM - so that I could merge incoming POTS calls with the VoIP system and/or manage my own VoIP-or-POTS decision making.
This isn't an attempt to break the "fun" that you guys have been having
For a few sick, twisted individuals it will make it more fun ....
but realistically, if some Eastern European (for example) outfit decided to use the "backdoor" technology you've come up with to then buy up 10,000 of our phones at £50 and then recycle the electronics into some completely new product with their own software or even continue to use the h/w for their own telephony then we'd make a HUGE loss. We can't afford to run that risk so have to protect our investment in the per unit subsidy.
Why not offer it at a higher price that makes a profit *on the unit* and had no hardware-hacker-defeating mechanism? You could even do that now with the E3 and make it flashable with an image from the SD card or a USB memory stick or somesuch. And thinking along those lines, it has no need of the larger of the two sets of flash on board if it has the SD card socket - it can boot from the small flash bootloader and then take its image from the SD card. I don't believe it would be cannibalising your own market as I think it would be a completely separate market. It may of course be that if you remove the subsidy it becomes more expensive than something that could be assembled at home, but the fanless, single boardedn-ess of it is attractive.
Peter
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel Never ending or beginning on a never ending reel Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind. - "Windmills of your mind", Bergman & Legrand
"The real beginning of home computing all started with the ZX Spectrum. Introduced by Sir Clive Sinclair in 1982, it proved to be a huge hit in the home.
The machine was small, smaller than any laptop available today. It plugged into a standard television set and used a standard tape recorder for storage. It was equipped with 48K of ram which was plenty for what it needed to do. A 5.25" disk drive was available for those that needed it (programmers and the like). It was a machine tailored for home use." - Alt-Tab: A Brief History of the Sinclair Spectrum http://www.alt-tab.net/games/zx-spectrum/history/
"It'd basically be a box (maybe pressed steel or something) with an E3 board at the heart (maybe with modem section depopulated) and the LCD/backlight module fitted into the "roof" - a trailing cable would go to the PS/2 QWERTY as found on the E3. So it'd just look like a generic little computer in a box - nothing like a telephone. I think we probably would put a JTAG header on it for those interested in such things (though maybe this isn't such a necessity now that Linux is ported)" - Cliff Lawson
<delurk/>
Do you see what I see?
Sinclair produced a computer built from parts. No amazing powerhouse, no magic abilities. Just a little box that a kid could buy and put together, and discover the magic of computers.
So I see before us the possibility of another little box, "smaller than any laptop available today", "a machine tailored for home use". Perhaps this time with another great British entrepreneur's company name printed on it. Make it simple, provide decent documentation and a little spiral bound manual. Make it available to kids, to affordable computing initiatives, and perhaps Mr Sugar could capture far more than he expected.
"For 10 years the ZX Spectrum was a mainstream computer. Nothing before or since has matched it. Just think how obsolete the Pentium III will be in 10 years time. The spectrum was incredibly well designed and it is the amazing British design which put it in good stead for an entire decade. No computing machine could match that today."
Phil H
On 18 Jun 2005, at 09:36, linux@things.org.uk wrote:
. A 5.25" disk drive was available for those that needed it (programmers and the like).
Nobody used 5.25" discs on a Spectrum; lots of people had Microdrives.
Has anyone noticed how CompactFlash cards look like Microdrive carts?
-J., humming Hey Hey 16k...
On Saturday 18 June 2005 10:32, Jasmine Strong wrote: [...]
Nobody used 5.25" discs on a Spectrum; lots of people had Microdrives.
I used to use a QL. I know about microdrives; let's not go there. Even in jest.
[...]
humming Hey Hey 16k...
I've allocated more space for a single icon's bitmap than most old 8-bitters had RAM, let along video RAM. Sigh. I think all programmers these days should be required to start out on a 1kB ZX81 (or, if you want to go upmarket, a 3kB Jupiter Ace), just to get the right attitude towards space and efficiency.
(I gather we have a friend in common...)
On 19 Jun 2005, at 20:54, David Given wrote:
I used to use a QL.
Nah, you *tried* to use a QL.
I know about microdrives; let's not go there. Even in jest.
CompactFlash, though... that's just lovely.
I've allocated more space for a single icon's bitmap than most old 8-bitters had RAM, let along video RAM.
Hey, I spent most of May writing a faster memcpy() for OMAP processors. (Specifically, OMAP16xx, since that has an ARM926EJ in it.)
Sigh. I think all programmers these days should be required to start out on a 1kB ZX81
...or a new Amstrad hobbyist machine, maybe?
My first computer was a CPC6128. Lovely, it was.
(I gather we have a friend in common...)
Indeed so. Have you not fled that sinking ship yet? Even the rats are going hungry, I hear.
-J.
On Sunday 19 June 2005 20:58, Jasmine Strong wrote:
On 19 Jun 2005, at 20:54, David Given wrote:
I used to use a QL.
Nah, you *tried* to use a QL.
Ah, I see you know them.
[...]
Hey, I spent most of May writing a faster memcpy() for OMAP processors.
Hmm. An exciting life, eh?
[...]
...or a new Amstrad hobbyist machine, maybe?
The problem with the E3 is that it's *too* powerful; the temptation to port a real OS like Linux on it is far too great. If you go that route, eventually you start complaining because Firefox runs badly on it, which means you've missed the point.
The smaller 8-bitters were so crippled that you had to resort to clever tricks to get them to do anything at all... which means you end up having to learn the clever tricks, which stands you in good stead if, say, you have to spend a month writing memcpy().
Plus, it teaches you that you can write a usable word processor that runs in 4kB.
My first computer was a CPC6128. Lovely, it was.
I was posh. I had a (borrowed) BBC Micro.
[...]
Indeed so. Have you not fled that sinking ship yet? Even the rats are going hungry, I hear.
No, no, I can say with some certainty that there are no rats left. Not even at the very back of the freezer.
I'm going to be quite annoying and reply to myself...
So I see before us the possibility of another little box, "smaller than any laptop available today", "a machine tailored for home use". Perhaps this time with another great British entrepreneur's company name printed on it. Make it simple, provide decent documentation and a little spiral bound manual. Make it available to kids, to affordable computing initiatives, and perhaps Mr Sugar could capture far more than he expected.
It seems we are reminiscing somewhat. I will join you, if only to illustrate my point.
I remember programming in those daft languages where you felt clever using four gotos in seven lines, cleverly creating a logic tree that would defeat anyone who tried to understand it. I remember the excitement of controlling stuff with this little box just by typing commands (or sometimes hitting the right combination of keys to create a command - thanks Sinclair).
The most magic thing was the simplicity though. When you have a decent interface to the equipment, and more importantly its i/o, the thing comes alive.
So here's my thought on producing a dev-friendly/child-friendly box. Choose a language - something of the python/ruby ilk - and build a set of scripts for it, which can control the entire i/o of the box. From flashing lights to keyboard, smartcard reader to disk access. If it's all there, and all easy to use, people will write for it. And if they're script based, there will be no open/closed source question. I don't mean prevent people using it as a linux box, just provide an easy and uniform interface for people new to it all to program in. Oh, and give them a manual...
So what thinkest?
Phil
On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, linux@things.org.uk wrote:
So here's my thought on producing a dev-friendly/child-friendly box. Choose a language - something of the python/ruby ilk - and build a set of scripts for it, which can control the entire i/o of the box.
Clearly Brandy BASIC is the answer to this. BBC BASIC is the ultimate in kid-friendly, awesome languages.
-J.
-
Cliff Lawson -
David Given -
Jasmine Strong -
jasmine＠electronpusher.org
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linux＠things.org.uk -
paul＠e3.sbrk.co.uk -
Peter Riocreux