If I buy something, I own it.  It is mine.  That is the nature of property law.  If I want to pry it apart with pliers, that’s my right.  If I want to hook it up to a Tesla coil to see it glow, that is my right.  If I want to take a piece of media that I bought and have the receipt for, and crack some silly encryption scheme that prevents me from enjoying it on the device of my choice, that is my right.

That is not piracy.  That is making personal use of something I bought and paid for in a way that suits me.

By legalizing “Format Shifting” but making the practice of cracking a digital lock punishable by a fine of up to $5,000, you effectively countermand the legality format shifting.  What most consumers don’t realize is that virtually all modern media contains some form of encryption or digital lock to prevent copying.  This goes back to the 80′s Macrovision standard on commercial VHS and BetaMax tapes (which is way before most people realize digital locks started).

If I buy a hard copy CD/DVD of software, and want to back up an image of the CD/DVD in case the medium is damaged and I need to re-install it, there will be DRM I have to circumvent in order to perform that backup.

Also, the definition of “encryption” and “digital lock” is woefully gray.  In simple terms, encryption is merely an algorithm that must be decoded in order to view the contents of a “message” – be that message a coded letter or the movie on a Blue Ray disc.  Mathematically, and thereby legally, compression formats are no different than what most people think when they think of “encryption”.  To decompress and view the media, you must use an algorithm in order to “decode” the media.

All modern digital audio/video uses some form of compression.  To “format shift” such media from one device to another, it is often (actually, almost always) necessary to change the compression format.  Technically, this is breaking an encryption scheme.

So, if you want to “back up” a commercial CD (which typically uses the AAC compression format) to your digital media player (which typically prefers MP3 format), you would need to “crack” the AAC compression in order to “recode” the media to MP3.

Even better, if you want to download video that you yourself have taken using an HD cam-corder, and edit it with anything other than the editing software provided by the cam-corder manufacturer, you will inevitably need to recode the media to a different format, thereby “breaking” the encryption of a commercial device.

This legislation also goes against the intent of previous legislation to encourage consumer choice in the telecom market.  The CRTC, backed by legislation, has made telephone numbers portable for both land lines and cel phones, so that you can change carriers without losing your phone number.  However, with this legislation, what you will lose is the right to keep your equipment. Virtually all cel phones on the market today come with a “Carrier Lock” – a tiny piece of digital code which will only allow that cel phone to work with a single carrier.  The wording of the legislation is such that if you were to circumvent this lock, so you can use a device you paid for on the carrier of your choice, you would be in direct violation of the law, and subject to a fine of up to $5,000.

You are putting all the rights in the hands of the distributors, and taking them all away from the consumer.  You put some pleasant window dressing on your bill, but there are people out here, amongst the unwashed masses you so obviously care little about, that can see through the window dressing to the traps you have placed behind it.

And we will talk.  We will take the time to patiently explain the issues to our friends and families.  We will post messages on the Internet.

We will spread the word and work hard to see this bill crushed.  And some of us will work hard to see your government collapse – the sooner the better, although some of us are patient enough to wait for the next election.  Because some of us have long memories.

Pretty much all you need to know about this is in the title.  Well, and that after cramming an E class motor into it, I managed to get a 900 foot vertical flight out of the thing.  I wish I had video, but my wife was in charge of the camera that day, and well….  Let’s just say no video and leave it at that.

Here’s the pic:

Now, you might think that, given the order of posts, the following project was inspired by the Conan Night I held last weekend, but the two are fairly unrelated. Actually, the inspiration for the following project came during the winter when I started to set aside some heat sinks from old PII Slot 1 processors, just because I thought they were a neat and nasty looking piece of industrial design. See for yourself:

Pentium II Slot 1 Processor and Heatsink

Any rational human being is going to take one look at that hunk of metal and think to himself: “I can make a weapon out of that.” At least this human being thought that. And I’m pretty rational. Most of the time anyway.

So the idea emerged to wrap them around the head of a baseball bat and create a nice looking mace. Problem was my boss frowns on me making weapons on company time (go figure), and my shop at home isn’t heated, so I had to wait for spring to get a chance to work on it.

Stage one was basically gathering up the parts I’d need. I collected four heatsinks from the old slot 1 processors, and some neat memory heatsinks from some really old servers to attach as runners down the side of the bat. I ended up going out and buying the cheapest wooden bat I could find to complete the parts list. Here’s a pic of the assembled necessities should you decide to try and imitate the project.

The Collected Parts

Stage two was squaring off the top of the bat so I could attach the heatsinks. I cut the very top, bevelled part of the bat off with a chop saw so I had a nice smooth surface on the top to mark out. Basically, to mark square, determine the centre of the bat, draw an X at right angles through the centre, and then connect the points of the X to create a square. I took a pic of the bat with the bevelled top off, but forgot to take a pic of the markings, so I photoshopped in the X and square. Oddly, I was less accurate with Photoshop than I was on the actual bat, but you get the idea.

Topped and Marked

Next was to cut vertically down the bat along the square lines I had drawn, to an apropriate depth to accommodate the heatsinks. I used a carpenter’s saw for this, and made the cut by hand, because I have pretty good control with a carpenter’s saw and can make a nice accurate cut that way. A band saw or some other mechanized means would be just as good. Just use something you feel comfortable with. Once down to depth, I used the carpenter’s saw to cut across the grain and remove the wedge at base.

Cutting the Square

NB: You can see the line I drew to mark the depth of the cut I needed.

This created a square tipped bat, but the square was just a tad small for my purposes. To increase the size of the square, I cut some shims out of 3/8″ plywood to wrap around the tip. I then glued and clamped the shims onto the tip and let that dry.

Shims and Glue

Leave the glue to set at least overnight. In this case, it got set aside for a week, just because I ran out of time that weekend, and didn’t get a chance to get pack to it until today.

The rest was pretty straightforward. On the squared end I created, I lined up the first heatsink, and drilled pilot holes for the screws to match the existing mounting holes in the heatsink, I made sure to line up the first heatsink well, because all the other heatsinks would be based on the placement of the first. The third pic in the following series is just me lining up the second heatsink. Make sure to drill a small pilot hole for every screw, so you don’t crack the wood, and also so the sink doesn’t move or slip as you drive in the screws. Also, use long enough screws so that it penetrates the shims you added and gets a good purchase in the wood of the bat. It’s a good idea to use a screwdriver to drive the screws, instead of a drill driver. With the torque of a drill driver, it can be a little easy to over drill the screw, and just bore out the hole.

Pre-Drilling Holes

Screwing on the Heatsink

Lining up the Second Heatsink

After I finished attaching all four heatsinks, I screwed the bevelled top back on to give it a bit cleaner look.

Side View of Finished Head

Top View of Finished Head

After that, it was merely a matter of lining up the runners, pre-drilling some holes to match up with the existing mounting points of the heatsinks, and screwing them down.

Runners Attached.

And Voila! I have my own customized medieval looking mace. Kinda steampunkish in mixing modern equipment with an old design aesthetic. Only much older design than steampunk. As far as being an actual weapon goes, I really don’t recommend it. While it’s pretty well bolted together to a solid chunk of good Ash bat, the heatsinks themselves are aluminum. If you hit anything substantial with it, the aluminum spikes will just bend. Also, it has horrible balance, very tip heavy and unwieldy. Which could probably be said about real maces as well, which might be a good part of the reason they fell out of favour. Still, could you see a burglar (or door to door salesman, or JW or Mormon) arguing with me if I answered the door with that thing In my hands? I doubt it.

The Urban Viking

]]> http://grelmar.com/2008/05/25/weaponize-your-pentium-ii/feed/ 4 http://grelmar.com/2007/08/28/an-suv-for-the-rest-of-us/ http://grelmar.com/2007/08/28/an-suv-for-the-rest-of-us/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:48:41 +0000 grelmar http://grelmar.com/2007/08/28/an-suv-for-the-rest-of-us/ Subtitle: The Ultimate Urban Assualt Vehicle.

I dunno, maybe it’s just because after over 2 years of working nights and now I suddenly find myself dealing with rush hour traffic again, but I really, really, want one of these. God bless the US military industrial complex for coming up with newer and better ways to off each other. (err, I hope you get the sarcasm intended from that last sentence).

Anyway, cue the video:

I really wish I could embed this video, but (so far) it’s only directly available on the manufacturer’s website.

Now, the Army and various individuals in the field in Iraq have been hacking their bomb disposal robots and adding shotguns and machine guns for a bit, and there’s formal army program called SWORD (video link) – to make a packbot with an interchangeable weapon mount, so you can swap out a machine gun, for a grenade launcher, for a rocket launcher, etc.

But somehow, this slick promotional video from TASER Inc. is way, way creepier. The product is a joint venture between TASER Inc, and iRobot Corporation, makers of the much friendlier Roomba self guided automatic vacuum cleaner.

The end result is a purpose built, Taser equipped attack robot. Great. Just what the world really needs. Notably, at that point in the video when the robot is “engaging the most dangerous subjects…” (their words, not mine), who does it take out? If you guessed a big, muscular black dude, you guessed right. No latent racism there, no siree.

I’m waiting for them to come out with the next logical step. The Roomba Home Defence Robot. When not fending off home invasion, the RHDR will while away the hours by cleaning the carpets.

Oh, and in case you didn’t believe me about the robot’s target, here’s a quick screen cap for you: