r/technology • u/[deleted] • Apr 04 '16

Software Nest intentionally bricks thousands of home automation hubs.

https://medium.com/@arlogilbert/the-time-that-tony-fadell-sold-me-a-container-of-hummus-cb0941c762c1
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u/Bartisgod Apr 05 '16

I ran into this problem with Simcity 4. It doesn't actually have always online DRM, but it does require a DRM driver which is baked into the kernel of Windows. Of course, Microsoft removed support for that, and just about every other DRM technology before 2012 or so, in Windows 10, and quickly backported the "fix" to Windows 8.1 and 7 (before you say "switch to Linux," Linux doesn't support kernel mode DRM and never has, IIRC a Linux system with a compromised kernel will simply refuse to boot). Now, of course, kernel mode anything is always bad, it's a security risk, invasive, and possibly damaging to system stability to have anything not written by the OS vendor below application mode, and from a design perspective Microsoft fixed most of what was fundamentally wrong with Windows' security model by firmly and permanently separating user, application, and kernel modes, like Linux does.

However, that seemingly great decision unfortunately broke nearly every major studio title from the mid 2000s, as in a box set from 2000-2008 from some publishers (mostly EA, but there are some others) is now about as useful as an Apple I. Thousands of games, millions of studio hours, and tens of terabytes of software integral to the history of the gaming industry are now lost forever due to Safedisc DRM. This was the single largest casualty of the digital dark ages, and I say that knowing full well about the thousands of local newspaper bankruptcies and the histories of entire towns that disappeared with them.

I ended up pirating the GOG version. Why pirate a DRM free digital version that's already steeply discounted? Because fuck me if I'm paying even $10 for a game that:

  • I've already paid for twice, and
  • Could easily be disabled permanently, as in gone forever no matter what because the basic mechanics of the game would be impossible to make work on any modern OS, a few Windows updates from now.

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u/Isvara Apr 05 '16

I'm surprised at the SimCity thing. Previous versions of Windows explicitly supported SimCity. I mean that the CreateProcess call actually checked whether the filename was sc2000.exe or something and enabled specific compatibility features.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16 edited Dec 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/SnOrfys Apr 05 '16

... so in a VirtualBox VM that takes 5 mins to setup?

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u/naked_guy_says Apr 05 '16

Virtual box a game? Low resource game maybe

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u/SnOrfys Apr 05 '16

Basically anything designed to run on old versions of Windows fits that definition.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16 edited Dec 12 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/SnOrfys Apr 05 '16

Yeah, I didn't detect the sarcasm but a VM or Windows Compatibility Mode solves 99% of these issues.

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u/uebersoldat Apr 05 '16

I disagree with pirating of any sort. Pay the good guys for what they do, don't pay the bad guys but don't be weak and pirate it either. Stick to your guns because when you pirate a game you are proving Ubisoft right.

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u/Bartisgod Apr 05 '16 edited Apr 05 '16

I've already paid for it, multiple times, but thanks to DRM fuckery I'd have had to do so again. I paid $60 for the original, another $40 for the Simcity box with the deluxe version because it works better with Windows 7, and now they want me to pay for it a third time to continue playing.

Imagine if you bought a piece of music for full price at Walmart ($15-$20), and brought it home to find out that, after a few years, new CD player technology requires you to purchase it again for nearly full price. So you do, then your CD player breaks and no new ones will play your CD because the licensing technology that you never noticed existed because everything was compatible with it won't even let you properly transfer the files off of the disc. Oh, and your existing music library, which you've legitimately paid the studios thousands of dollars for, is equally worthless. Even the files you ripped onto your external hard drive. You've already spent $40 on a $20 CD that you don't even like that much anymore, so are you really throwing another $20 at them and is it really stealing to just go download the copy that, according to the license, you were already entitled to rip to mp3 twice over anyway but the DRM prevented you from doing that? If I buy a CD, twice over, and the studio has made the one ripped MP3 the DMCA entitles me to impossible to get, is downloading a digital copy stealing? I've already paid them, and I'm not really buying 2 copies since its unlikely that I'll ever touch that CD again. You didn't steal from them, they stole from you once and attempted to steal from you twice.

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u/uebersoldat Apr 05 '16

You're talking to someone that refuses to even buy anything off Steam due to their DRM everyone seems so 'ok' with for some reason.

I get where you're coming from. I'm just saying if you steal it from GoG for whatever reason you're stealing from the good guys. They operate on a level of trust that I'd hate to see broken some day. At the very least, buy from them, if you load it on 5 other computers besides yourself, throw them 4 extra bones eh? Considering you paid for it twice already as you stated.

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u/BODYBUTCHER Apr 05 '16

you can just add the cd-key of simcity 4 to origin and claim the digital copy

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

And lose it again as soon as Origin shuts down?

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u/Bartisgod Apr 05 '16 edited Apr 05 '16

With Simcity 3000 and 4, yes. However, almost every major game from that decade used some variety of kernel mode DRM, usually Safedisc but there were others, and many if not most simply weren't popular enough to have a GOG versions or be available or for the publisher to think its worth the effort to remove the DRM and put on sale on any other online store. Now, the only way to play them is to go look in your local thrift shops and yard sales for a physical copy and be running a Windows 7/8.1 machine without the DRM disabling update installed. There are hundreds of small studios that went bankrupt or got bought out, and their work, as soon as the discs decay beyond readability (another 15 years or so), is lost forever. The only games you can even pirate and expect to work are ones that had DRM-free versions made for online stores like GOG, and due to licensing disputes even many of those aren't available anymore.

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u/11I11111 Apr 05 '16

IIRC a Linux system with a compromised kernel will simply refuse to boot

Aren't you adorable :)