12 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
QUICKSTART^
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALLIf the gods give you lemons, make
lemonade. And if the fabs give you bunk
quad-core procs, you make tri cores. At
least AMD does.
The company has just introduced
the 2.4GHz Phenom X3 8750, the 2.3GHz
Phenom X3 8650, and the 2.1GHz Phe-
nom X3 8450
tri-core chips.
All three fea-
ture the same
cache size asthe quad-core Phenoms and are mainly
targeted at consumers on a dual-core
budget who want a little more bang for
their buck. The chips are priced at $195,
$165, and $145, respectively.
AMD’s main problem is that its fast-
est CPU, the quad 2.5GHz Phenom X
9850, costs just $230. Intel is also a fac-
tor, having lowered the price of its older
quad cores to compete against AMD.
For example, Intel’s 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad
Q6600, which outperforms any Phenom,
is $219 and dropping.
Fortunately, all three of AMD’s tri
cores are free of the TLB bug that hurt
performance in the original quad-core
Phenom chips.–G UAMD’s Tri Core
When four cores are too many and two are not enough
Folding@home, Stanford University’s distributed
computing project, has been around since 2000,
but its ongoing contribution to medical science
bears revisiting. By harnessing the spare CPU and
GPU cycles of hundreds of thousands of individual
PCs, researchers are able to study protein folding
and thus better understand the causes of common
diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. To
join Maximum PC’s folding team, download the
Folding@home software from http://folding.
stanford.edu and register with team 11108. – K SEvery PC Counts
AMD’s new
50-series tri
core is free of
the dreaded
TLB bug.PlaysForSure Won’t
Microsoft kicks old DRM scheme (and consumers)
to the curbA
s of August 31, Microsoft is shutting down the DRM authorization servers
for tunes purchased from its MSN Music store. That means the PlaysFor-
Sure-shackled music will be forever after confi ned to the hardware it
resides on at that time; if you get a new PC, lose a hard drive, or even switch
your OS, too bad—your music’s not moving. It’s a raw deal, but it’s not unprec-
edented. Customers of the now-defunct Sony Connect and Virgin Digital stores,
which each had their own proprietary forms of copy protection, fi nd themselves
in a similar pickle. Microsoft’s answer is for customers to back up their MSN
Music purchases onto a CD and then transfer the music (in its degraded state) to
future systems. Meanwhile, the company is staunchly sticking with the propri-
etary DRM used in music sold through its Zune Marketplace—for now.–K SS
ummer is upon us, and it’s a perfect time to
take a fair-use vacation.
Here in America you can buy plenty of
DVDs, but if you want to copy them for personal
use or run them on Linux, it’s another story: You’ll
be breaking U.S. law. To make that backup of your
kid’s favorite Disney movie before it gets covered in
blue marker, consider going somewhere you won’t
go to jail for the act.
Who doesn’t love a Caribbean island? Imagine
yourself on a beach in Antigua with a drink that
comes in a hollow coconut. Beautiful women
walk by. The sun begins to set, and you’ve just
fi nished importing your DVD collection to a hard
drive. Antigua and Barbuda is home to SlySoft,
the maker of AnyDVD, a program that sits in the
background of your computer and quietly removes
copy protection from DVDs, including HD formats.
As SlySoft was doing its thing in 2007, in the
United States the AACS Licensing Authority was
threatening to sue Digg for publishing a number—
the HD DVD encryption key.
Or maybe you’re a do-it-yourselfer who can’t
take the heat. Consider a trip to Norway, where
you can roll your own DRM breaker. In 2002,
Norwegian courts acquitted Jon Johansen of
charges stemming from the creation of DeCSS,
which stripped copy protection off DVDs so he
could play them on his Linux box. By contrast,
back in the U.S., a court convicted 2600 magazine
for linking to DeCSS.
Perhaps you’re a pedagogical type with a
penchant for long days and vodka. Russia’s your
spot. In 2001, Moscovite Dmitri Sklyarov pre-
sented a flaw in Adobe’s eBook security at Black
Hat in Las Vegas. This information didn’t stay in
Vegas—Adobe had him arrested. Back in Mother
Russia, telling people how to circumvent Adobe’s
weak protection isn’t illegal. After a harrowing
ordeal, Sklyarov was allowed to return home,
where he continued his research in peace.
Turns out none of these vacations is about
piracy. They violate the DMCA, not copyright. The
fact is, you can go almost anywhere in the world
and you won’t run into these restrictions. So have
fun on your trip! It’s your computer.BYTE RIGHTSGetting Away
(from DMCA)
QUINN NORTONQuinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired
News and other publications. Her work has
ranged from legal journalism to the inner life
of pirate organizations.