It saddens me that America’s so-called government for the people, by the people, and of the people has less compassion and enlightenment toward their fellow man than a corporation.
Microsoft’s laudable reaction to Xbox hackers — that is, no persecution or attempt so far to shut down Xbox hacking projects — will hopefully serve as a role model to others thinking about using the DMCA to stop hacking activities.
The most alarming aspect of the DMCA for hackers is that it embodies the fallacy that the only sources of innovation of benefit to society lie within the halls of research institutions and corporations. Suddenly, it is a crime to explore, in the comfort of your own home in pursuit of your hobby, the cryptographic methods used to secure access rights.
For every copyright protection scheme that is defeated by a hacker, there is someone who learned an important lesson about how to make a better protection scheme.
To pass laws that regulate the research of technological measures that protect copyrights and the dissemination of such results is to concede that copyright technology is broken and can never be improved — that the only possible outcome of allowing common people to understand copyright control technology is the demise of the technology.
Freedom of speech should not require a lawyer, and free thought should not involve letters of authorization for research. I fought to publish my paper because I had nothing to lose, and because I believed in making a statement about my rights as a hacker. Unfortunately, there is a silent majority of hackers out there who have families to feed and jobs to lose, and not everyone can be so fortunate as to have the EFF helping them out.
In general, I hack because it is quite satisfying to know that somebody’s life was made better by something I built. I feel it is my obligation to apply my talents and return to society what it has given me.
My best advice to aspiring hardware hackers is to be persistent and to be thorough. Significantly, persistence and thoroughness come naturally if you love what you are doing.
“Poop like an elephant” refers to sharing your information and discoveries with your fellow hackers. No matter how much information you digest, you can never know it all. Sharing your findings freely invites the advice and good will of fellow hackers and leads to a synergy of minds.
There are also many grades of soldering irons. The cheapest ones cost around ten dollars and come with large, unwieldy tips
While capacitors are everywhere to provide local storage of energy for all the components, the resistors remove excess energy. Fast signals on a motherboard carry a lot of energy, and if the energy is not dissipated at the receiver in a controlled fashion with a resistor, the signal energy will reflect back to the transmitter and cause problems.
Not even the best visible microscopy technology can resolve a 150 nm transistor, since the shortest wavelength of light is 450 nm
CTT is a current-mode signaling convention that drives +8 mA or -8 mA into a 50 ohm transmission line terminated at 1.5 volts. The receiver is a differential amplifier that compares the reference termination voltage with the transmission line voltage. In the Virtex-E, a CTT receiver amplifier is specified to work as long as the received voltage swings more than 200 mV up or down from the reference voltage. Most CMOS transmitters driving a CTT terminated line will have no problem sourcing or sinking 8 mA of current into a 50 ohm load.