Skype 5-way Calling Limit Cracked 427
BobPaul writes "It turns out when Skype limited 10 way calling to Intel Processors only it really was arbitrary! Maxxus has a patched version of Skype that allows 10-way calling regardless of the processor installed. There's also info about the patch: "The patch is the result of two phases: code analysis and design of the patch. The code analysis, or reverse engineering, reveals the relevant code block, which overrides Skype's limitation for Intel's dual-core CPUs. The patch design isolates the minimal set of instructions that need to be modified to cancel this limitation." Windows only so far."
Lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that argument just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The simple fact that a patch exists that allows it to work on AMD chips means that the software does not need to have processor-specific instructions to support the full 10-way calling.
More to the point, there is so little difference in the instruction sets between the two architectures that it is exceptionally unlikely that any difference is beneficial, let alone n
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It -is- AMD theyre locking out. (Score:4, Informative)
there was already a case decided involving sega that using a trademark to lock out interoperability is not permitted.
Law suit bullshit... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:2)
If they were bit players in the market, it'd be one thing. Considering they're already going through antitrust litigation and thus under greater scrutiny than normal, this move just had "dumb, dumb, dumb" written all over it.
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
The rules change slightly when you've got a near-monopoly. This is part of what tripped up Microsoft in their anti-trust trials.
The problem is that it's far easier to convince someone to exclude "the competition" from the market when the competition has a disproportionately small portion of the market.
For the ease of math, let's say that the Skype market is 90% Intel, 10%AMD. If Intel had to pay Skype 10million to compensate Skype for the lost market in excluding AMD then AMD would have to pay 90million to get Skype to do the same thing. Add to that the fact that Intel has 10x as much income from their larger market share (presuming the same gross profit margin -- which is rarely accurate in a near-monopoly situation) and you have a 90-1 difference in impact on their profit margins.
Or - - to put it another way, between gross profits and market share, Intel could afford to buy off 100 market slots for every one that AMD could afford to.
If it came to open warfare like this, AMD would be reduced to a tiny portion of the market and customers would be effectively unable to even find business that deal with AMD. (Dell anyone?). Once you further reduced AMD's market share like this, Intel's ability to further marginalize them would increase until AMD was reduced to an insignificant market access independent of the relative quality of their products.
It's basically a market-ratio squared relationship which can easily spiral into a near-absolute market ownership, denying customers any real choice in the market no matter how good the competition is. (MS/Linux, anybody?)
It's actually a worse than ratio squared relationship because we haven't taken into account the probability that, if Intel has a 100-1 ratio of market-exclusionary agreements, they can now charge a higher profit margin without significantly affecting customers' willingness to buy AMD. That, however is harder to quantitize, so I'll only mention it, rather than including it in my math.
About the only real way to avoid this problem is to create artificial rules designed to stop such market-killing agreements when the market gets too lopsided, to prevent market choice from getting totally destroyed.
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really a form of product tying [wikipedia.org], which was made illegal by the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), but only if a non-trivial amount of business is affected by the tying. This last requirement will likely be the reason the suit isn't successful, but that certainly dosn't mean that the behavior isn't borderline, at best.
Again, this isn't a compatibility issue, as you said, "Why should Skype have to write software to work on AMD?" The real question is "Why should Skype be allowed to artificially exclude AMD users in exchange for money from AMD's competitor?"
Not a bribe... (Score:3, Informative)
There is no bribe here, it's a business agreement. Happens AL THE TIME in business. One business says to the other, "If you make your product exclusive to my product, I'll pay you some money". This is n ot called a "bribe". Get your facts straight.
Learn What a Bribe Is Before You Open Your Mouth (Score:3, Informative)
n.
1. Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.
2. Something serving to influence or persuade.
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, I would say "get a life." Honestly, getting hot and bothered because "Skype tried to blow smoke up our arses" sounds like childish foot stamping. Show your displeasure with Skype by not using their product, spend your valuble time (it is, right?) doing something productive rather than reactive. By the way, all this frothing and arm waiving will accomplish nothing at all, it's wasted energy. Move on to some other VoIP app in the secure knowledge that due to their greed, Skype will soon be dead. Or part of some spyware package...
Re:Law suit bullshit... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not fraud. Get your facts and definitions correct. Talking like a lawyer does not make you a lawyer.
Aaaah Maxxuss (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Aaaah Maxxuss (Score:4, Insightful)
(I hope.)
Re:Aaaah Maxxuss (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Aaaah Maxxuss (Score:3, Informative)
"Arbitrary"? (Score:5, Interesting)
And now that it's in the open, (like that was going to take very long?) I wonder if they'll remove the block?
Re:"Arbitrary"? (Score:2)
Re:"Arbitrary"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Arbitrary"? (Score:2)
Exactly which is why the DMCA does not apply. The DMCA is very explicit in saying that it is only illegal to reverse engineer or crack encryption for the purpose of circumventing a copy protection scheme.
Re:"Arbitrary", but they already admitted it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Arbitrary", but they already admitted it (Score:5, Insightful)
If that was said by a representative from Intel then that statement quite qualifies as misrepresenting a competing product. Comparison is perfectly fine, misrepresentation is definitely not and Intel should be forced to compensate for it.
Re:"Arbitrary", but they already admitted it (Score:2)
Intel does this crap all the time. They partner with companies and have them put "if (cpu == intel)" restrictions around some features so users will have an arbitrarily "better" experience on an Intel chip than on o
Now all that's missing (Score:2, Insightful)
..is someone demonstrating that the X2 can in fact handle 9+1 persons at once, which I have no doubt it can. Then it's time for Intel to open up the wallet and give AMD some nice $$$ and some even nicer PR. Stand by to bend over!
Re:Now all that's missing (Score:2)
If the only reason why the limit exists is that on less powerful systems the performance of > 5 members is poor, then surely a better set of checks would allow a better service on a wider number of platforms.
Re:Now all that's missing (Score:2)
Victory for AMD? Not so fast! (Score:2, Funny)
But wait -- there is a way out. See the code is written to identify CPUs, and to run on dual core CPUs, but it doesn't make that distinction for AMD. So all the defense needs to do is set up an XP box running an AMD 1.4 GhZ "Firebird", next to some oily rags, get a 10-way conference
Optimization is where? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm having trouble understanding what this optimization that used the special features of Intel chips (presumably their high power) was. It looks from the patch that they just check who the manufacturer is, and if it is not AMD, they pretend your computer doesn't have the power to host 10 participants.
What's also interesting is that folks likely signed up for SkypeOut and other paid products not realizing that they would be treated differently depending on what chipsets they happen to use, especially as that choice matters almost no where else. They should give more warning about this to paid users.
This focus on locking software into specific vendor chips seems a dangerous one. No longer will it be the best chip that will win, but the focus goes to competing on locking up software applications. The proprietary unix'es went down that path, and it would be sad if Intel managed to get that to happen here.
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess, like yours, is that this is blatant marketing crap. But it would be nice to see some tests of how many people can be usefully conferenced on different hardware. Skype is a CPU pig, and it's possible that they really have optimized it for some Intel-specific feature.
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:5, Insightful)
To anyone doing such testing, make sure the code running is the same that would run on a dual-core Pentium. I didn't follow the patch in detail, but you'd have to make sure that any flags changed after CPU detection (like for instance the one at 0xB8E6DC) is the same for both cases. Else you might find yourself in the situation that, yes, the limit is removed, but you're still running a different ("unoptimized") path. In the (very interesting case) that the code crashes on AMD (due to use of Intel-only prefetch instructions or whatever, I don't even know if such still exists?), such crash can be used to land smack boom right in the relevant code to analyze.
A good reverse-engineer could then fix the code if needed (substituting or even noping the faulting ops) -- the theory being that the major optimizations are in fact portable.
In fact, demonstrating that there truly really is only one code-path would be pretty damning too; that's evidence this is just pure PR with no grounding in tech at all. So either case makes for an interesting evening in front of IDA.
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:5, Informative)
The AMD instruction set is a strict superset of the Intel instruction set. There are no Intel-only instructions anymore. There are however many AMD-only instructions (3dnow, 3dnow+, etc.), so if the situation were reversed, there might have been a legitimate claim, but since the AMD CPUs were locked out, it is clearly a bribe^Wmarketing descision.
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:2)
Re:Optimization is where? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to see is benchmarks, on Intel and Amd, with 10 clients attached. That way, we can see if the code is indeed optimized for Intel, or if it's just crap. I suspect it's crap.
If anything, I'd suspect we'd see Intel being, what, 10% or 15% less load. Which would be something, but not something which justifies a 50% crippling of AMD hardware. And it'd be funny if AMD actually performed better.
Yeah, someone should benchmark:
Origional Executable, 5 clients, Intel
Origional Executable, 5 clients, A
Skype Patch... from Russia with Trojan?? (Score:5, Funny)
Poor programmer at Skype (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd bet that they will be as funny as some of the SCO transcripts.
I'd bet that they will depose the programmer who wrote the code encryption and the GenuineIntel check, and then continue with his supervisors.
Who authorized to add code encryption?
Who approved it?
How were the limits to 5 or 10 concurrent connections determined?
Negative. (Score:2, Informative)
>I get a free Disney toy with my Happy Meal
The difference is that Skype is getting paid to make sure their software does NOT work fully with a competitor to Intel. That's a whole different ball game as far as the law is concerned. If this was 'Buy Skype and get a X% off of your next Intel Purchase' no one would give it a second thought. They're not making it BETTER on Intel, they're making it WORSE on AMD. This is very different.
(if this post is redundant it might be because I have to wait no less
An encrypted binary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An encrypted binary? (Score:2, Informative)
The Skype binary is encrypted to try to prevent a similar thing from happening (removal of ads, addition of features that are technically possible but they might want to limit for marketing reasons). Up until now Skype hasn't done any sufficiently annoying
Re:An encrypted binary? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. [wikipedia.org]
and bundled a bunch of spyware with it.
No. [wikipedia.org]
Re:An encrypted binary? (Score:2)
Re:An encrypted binary? (Score:2)
Limit (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably a limit due to bandwidth or latency... (Score:5, Insightful)
At 128kbps (the average upstream speed on broadband these days in the US...), you can typically host a four to six way voice conference or a 2-3 way video conference. This is because you have to provide the outbound traffic for each of the peers and control traffic. With a reflector system, you can host larger conferences, limited only by the inbound bandwidth because the reflector is flipping the traffic from your mic (and possibly camera...) to all the participants. However, that's REALLY bandwidth intensive, so to keep it economical, you'd probably limit it to 10 participants or so to limit hogging of that limited resource.
Now, this is all due to everything being unicast UDP. If we had IPv6 and Multicast support for the same available, one could handle at least up to the 10 without needing a reflector as the router infrastructure would handle it right along with the video on demand, etc. streams. However, since this is not likely to happen in our or several generations' lifetimes at the rates things are going, waiting or wishing for that is a waste of time.
Maxxuss (Score:2, Redundant)
BitTorrent Mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Don't Believe the Skype (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, so as not to break other programs that use cpuid (to determine which instructions they can run, for example) perhaps this could be done in a user-space way.
I'm thinking of artsdp as a model, so you would just launch your Skype client with something like "cpufake --cpuid='Genuine Intel Dual Core We Like Skype' skype.bin" (or whatever it's called.)
I've got no idea how such a program would work, but the article did say the code was encrypted so I wonder if that would be an issue.
Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried skype a couple times (mostly because some girl talked me into it), but she wasn't worth it. The lack on interoperability totally killed it. The last thing I need is yet another app running on my main console all the time. Asterisk runs happilly on my server in the corner and rings my normal home phones all over the house if someone is trying to reach me. I might even pay for a skype IAX2 or SIP access account. But being a closed system they are too much trouble to deal with.
Just do what Maxxus did... (Score:2)
Re:Don't Believe the Skype (Score:3, Informative)
Need Open Standards (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Need Open Standards (Score:5, Informative)
There is also signifcant work to make SIP P2P to eliminate the central servers http://www.p2psip.org/ [p2psip.org] from SIP going on right now. As an aside, Skype isn't really even that P2P -- it uses central auth servers, so it is more of a hybrid system -- ala Napster -- in reality.
And with a SIP phone you can use *any* of those SIP providers. With Skype, you have one choice.
Skype is very good at making things work out of the box, hence the popularity, but there really isn't much (if anything) it can do that SIP can't. It isn't even that the P2P mattered. Skype's success is a matter of a very nice UI and user experience. They gained market on ease of use and marketing -- not bad things mind you -- not better technology. Kudos to Skype for making it easy for users to use VoIP, which was (and still is) notoriously hard to use with other providers. But the technology is different to allow Skype to lock up users, not to make things better from a technical standpoint.
Re:Need Open Standards (Score:3, Informative)
Inherently proprietary, huh? And what makes it so, when there are countless other clients and platforms that do the same on an open platform.
Try gizmoproject or openwengo. I have tried the former and the voice quality is better than Skype's while offering me full interoperability through SIP. Damn easy to use and it actually has a good and improving Linux client
No shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember folks; Asterisk. Skype isn't open source, and the company behind it has it's own motives. Asterisk is open source, has a good community behind it, and can do *anything* you want it to. Regardless of the hardware behind it.
Re:No shit (Score:3, Informative)
the main client we use is the xlite softphone, there is a gui configuration menu,
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Not "optimized"... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is plain and simple being bought to support one over the other. Please don't try to defend this- it's not something that has much of any good explanation for this, especially considering that they actually DO appear to be just CPUIDing and crippling the app if it's not a dual core Intel CPU...
10, or more? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of interest here is also the code marked with (*). It reveals that the string is somehow used if a certain memory location has the value 4. Theory is, this 4 means "4 additional conference members";
Is that possible that by modifying some variables...we can have unlimited number of user in the conference?
Re:10, or more? (Score:2, Insightful)
Intel compiler? (Score:3, Interesting)
DMCA for IP protection or Trade protection? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sherman Anti-trust aside (which this may be a real material breach) it looks like DMCA could either get abridged or affirmed for trade control purposes. For instance, does this mean someone with an Oracle license has the right to use some delta patches to open it wider open on their AMD Opteron for better threading than Intel?
Hmmm... you see how the lines get to be less than black and whi
Two phases, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, he found the problem then fixed it. Forgive my ignorance, but how else would you possibly go about it? Apply random patches until one kind of works?
Re:Two phases, huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Seems to be working pretty well for MicroSoft.
kids these days... (Score:5, Funny)
Torrent? N/T (Score:2)
Skype didn't break any laws. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason this issue is important is that it seems likely Intel went to Skype, and in some way coerced/bribed them to do this. This could be extremely strong evidence in helping AMD with their current lawsuit against Intel. Hence AMD issuing a subpoena to Skype, to retrieve information that will show whether or not Intel is to blame for this limitation.
It's silly to hear people saying AMD should sue Skype. AMD doesn't care about skype, nor are they trying to run a huge campaign of lawsuits. They are only interested in forcing Intel to stop their current tactics which have arguably kept AMD from massive success in the OEM market.
Re:Yay!??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tempest in a tea pot. (Score:2)
Re:Watch out! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Watch out! (Score:2)
Re:Watch out! (Score:2)
In the EU at least, reverse engineering *for interoperability purposes* is a legal entitlement that can't be revoked by any licence agreement. Dunno how it works in the US though. (I also suspect that the EUCD overrides this entitlement since otherwise you'd be able to get away with cracking the DRM on bluray discs to make your open source player interoperable with them
Re:Watch out! (Score:2)
Always make it clear that USA has a lot of those
Re:Watch out! (Score:2)
2. While the decryption and reverse engineering of the code might have something to do with the DMCA (assuming Maxxuss is in the US), the DMCA has nothing to do with partisan politics. It's been noted repeatedly on Slashdot that many members of both the Republican and Democratic parties are more than happy to sell their constituents out to the media industry.
Re:Watch out! (Score:2)
Re:DMCA/TOS/EULA (Score:2)
Re:DMCA/TOS/EULA (Score:2)
I'm sure the authorities will say different if you reverse engineer the DRM on BluRay discs of HDCP in order to make them interoperable with open systems.
Re:DMCA/TOS/EULA (Score:2)
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:2)
Would there be a way to run the software through an emulation layer that catches such calls and sends back false information, or would such a call always go directly through the hardware?
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:2)
Possibly, but it would definately require quite a bit of overhead.
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:2)
I don't think there's any way to catch CPUID through processor virtualization (a la VMWare), since it's not a privledged instruction and doesn't touch any memory pages.
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:5, Informative)
The opcode used in Skype, when activated on the processor, sets 3 4-byte registers on the processor as an identifier. This is burned into the silicon, basically.
For Intel Chips, the registers become
Genu, ineI, ntel - Genuine Intel
For AMD:
Auth, enti, cAMD - Authentic AMD
Like I said, since it's burned into the chip, there's no real way of 'masking' those registers as something else. This crack skips the verification, basically telling Skype that 'any processor is cool to run 10way' as opposed 'only GeniuneIntel chips can run 10way'
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't you get the OS to look through the code before it's executed and replace the offending instruction with a simulated version, like they do to workaround the pentium f00f bug?
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:2)
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Emulation would have worked too? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:should teach intel a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, wtf is supposed to take the cpu power?
An xp 2000 can compress mp3 in 10 times realtime, for example. Plus in a conference call, you actually send THE SAME to everybody...
Mixing audio is quasi cpu free (with less than 50 channels or so)
Sending data over the net is nearly cpu-free.
So what needs a dual core cpu for 10 connections?
I would understand that for VIDEO streaming, but its simply inconcievable for audio...
Re:should teach intel a lesson (Score:2)
Re:should teach intel a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I also haven't seen pointed out yet is this: Let's say that AMD's CPUs really can't handle 10 conferences at the same time. How can skype guarantee that this will be the case six months down the road. Determining the CPU's capabilities by its manufacturer is lame...
Re:should teach intel a lesson (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. So, why would skype want to make such a move if it obviously would lose sales from it also? If Intel has a hand in this, I don't see how it is legal for Intel and skype to make a deal that would make AMD and/or other CPUs look bad when they most likely can handle the conferences. Or if not, they can probably 'catch up' with Intel really quick. I don't know how the law works in the USA exactly and IANAL, but this sort of defamation is illegal in Europe (I don
Re:should teach intel a lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DMCA anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interoperability? (Score:5, Informative)
For more indepth information, read Sega v. Accolade [digital-law-online.info].