An Open Letter From Elbox

[CodeSmith]

This sounds way too much like saying "if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear"  and  "We are doing this to protect you".  What next, "this hurts us more than it hurts you"? (actually, from all the fallout they're getting this may end up being true  :-D )

[seer]

If MS would be caught doing this you people would jump all over them...

... and forget it the next morning..  Look at the so called case against them now. Hardly news is it these days ? And all the spyware crap, security holes etc.. Joe Average users cares nothing about these kinds of stuff, and the Amiga users left aren't your average users.... Things like these get forgotten faster the bigger the userbase it seems.. Or did you mean the Amiga users ?

Disclaimer: this does NOT mean I'm defending M$, Elbox or any Hacker.

[System]

>We have seen a number of statements posted in recent days, whose authors devote their precious time and
>energy to spreading twisted and untrue information on Elbox and our products. We are presenting here our
>official position in reference to their falsification of the truth."

OK, so this letter basically says that the truth is that, indeed there was such RDB trashing code in their driver and pci library. Isn't this what the previous posters were saying??

Now, sure, Elbox has a right to protect their work. But there is no such thing as fault-proof software, especially when run on an unprotected OS. Some non-hack, non-virus code from someone else could have a weird bug that just happens to jump into this piracy protection code and set it off. Don't say it's impossible, as that is wrong. Unlikely perhaps, but NOT _impossible_. Even without any mischievous intent involved. Nothing even needs to hack into or decrypt the driver file, as it gets decrypted into RAM in order to function, as my 68K does not have a decryption engine built into it, code must be decrypted before trying to run.

So, there is fully decrypted driver code laying around in RAM that can accidentally be jumped into. We'd hope a developer would test for bugs, and fix them before release, but sometimes crap happens. What if this same developer was testing his new code on a machine equipped with this USB card that he paid for and is legit licensed for, but his new code has a bug, and during the debug phase it goes off and frags his hard drive? Was he lucky enough to have backed up his RDBs? Is it really that easy to recreate the RDSK sector without trashing other RDB data? I dunno, but I've found disk recovery is never an easy 5 minute job. This innocent software developer could struggle for quite a while trying to figure out why his program that may not even access disk data is trashing his hard drive.

Such destructive code cannot be fault-proof in AmigaOS. This makes it even more of a bad idea than it would be on a memory protected OS. It's just plain wrong, even if it would rarely go bad when not intended to do so. Please, Elbox, find non-destructive ways to deal with piracy, as this most certainly can _possibly_ hurt legitimate users.

[Fats]

First the Picasso96 rip off, now this.
I made my mind. I will never ever buy anything from Elbox.
Deliberately putting conde in a driver that can write on an unwanted place on the drive is just plain wrong.

[createcoms]

I think a good name for the next virus is the 'ELBOXwannabe_AOSPPC'.

If ELBOX fux me up in any way when I put their daughter replacement card in my Daddy's A4k I'm going to fly to Poland and have a punch up with this guy.  Of course I will have a DV Cam at hand and all those interested can view it off the internet :-)


Now to make some interesting T-Shirts about all this......... ;-)!!!!!!

[Paul_Gadd]

Any company what does this are just OUT OF ORDER and deserves NO SUPPORT, IF this was a NON amiga company nobody on here would be defending them but as it is to do with the amiga then people are supposed to forgive them and defend them to the death,

Elbox are nothing more than Trojan developers and deserve no support whatsoever from the amiga community,

If i want my harddrive f**ked up then Elbox you have my custom  :-)  :-)  :-)

[AmiGR]

Dream on... This is AmigaOS.

[DanDude]

SO?

I rather not pay a lot more for supporting crackers!  NO WAY!

Hey, if you see someone steal your neighbors $500 BBQ gas grill, would you call the police or just laugh out loud?

I rather see crackers build sophisticated websites or extrodinary demos on any platform.  Heck, I'd have fun fooling around with Shockwave animation if I have to!

CRACKERS:destroy:

[WarPiper]

Dandude,

I cant hope but wonder if you really mean that.  What do you mean "SO?" and " I rather not pay a lot more for supporting crackers! NO WAY!"  First let me say that

1) you are already paying out your ass for that peice of Amiga hardware from Elbox.

2) If that card fux up in anyway (some hardware does that) then guess what, you will lose you RDB, NOT COOL.

3) Other manufactuers are able to make drivers for their hardware on other platforms that do not trash the system if the said hardware is not the one for that driver software.

In my opinion I think that the Amiga community should get together and create a OPEN SOURCE DRIVER for that Elbox hardware.

I had a friend how use to say "if your going to punish me by sticking the unbrella up my ass, DONT OPEN THE F**KING THING!

AT LEAST I CAN TRY DIFFERENT DRIVERS FOR DIFFERENT HARDWARE ON THE PC WITHOUT LOSING MY WINDOWS OR LINUX BOOT SECTORS.

I AM NOT SURE BUT IN THE PC WORLD THERE IS A VIRUS CALLED THE CHERNOBLE, IT PRETTY MUCH DOES THE SAME THING AS THE ELBOX DRIVER DOES, IT WIPES YOUR BOOT SECTOR AND SOMETIMES YOUR BIOS

[jdiffend]

Elbox can't even keep their story straight.
First it was "there is no malicious code" and now getting your RDB overwritten is "no big deal".

They clearly broke the law.  You can't put malicious code like that in a piece of software.  For most people that would destroy their data since they wouldn't know how to restore the RDB.

Oh please let them try to defend that in court!!!!

[Seehund]

Elektro said:

If MS would be caught doing this you people would jump all over them...

Just being "an Amiga company" and playing the trusty old "anti piracy" card would probably be a valid excuse for murdering and eating handicapped children and cute puppies in the eyes of some of the most deluded zealots...

Anyway, this open letter was one of the funniest Amiga-related things I've read this year. It deserves some kind of award.

[DanDude]

Poster: WarPiper Date: 2002/11/20 2:39:57
Dandude,

I cant hope but wonder if you really mean that. What do you mean "SO?" and " I rather not pay a lot more for supporting crackers! NO WAY!" First let me say that

1) you are already paying out your ass for that peice of Amiga hardware from Elbox.

Hey, man, I'm SUPPORTING Amiga, not DISSING it!!  If you don't want to pay a lot, wait for a SALE!

2) If that card fux up in anyway (some hardware does that) then guess what, you will lose you RDB, NOT COOL.

You have been drinking too much coffee, huh?

Your RDB will be messed up ONLY when you use a hacked driver.  Yes, I can understand it can give you a massive headache, but that was meant to slow down the crackers, right?  Besides, I backup ALL my stuff on my Amiga on a regular basis.  And on a floppy, a copy of my RDBs.  Elbox stated, that if you do use HDToolBox, it should restore the corrupted area w/o problems.

The company has taken a security measure to ensure that they'll stay in business.  It's tough to sell your product without getting it stolen!  Can you just trust all the people in the world not to steal?

3) Other manufactuers are able to make drivers for their hardware on other platforms that do not trash the system if the said hardware is not the one for that driver software.

Yeah, under their license agreement.

In my opinion I think that the Amiga community should get together and create a OPEN SOURCE DRIVER for that Elbox hardware.

Do you know how many HUNDREDS of jobs are going to be laid off if anyone gone through with an OPEN SOURCE DRIVER?!  (Sure, you may think that this is bull until you see a string of partners working with them)

I had a friend how use to say "if your going to punish me by sticking the unbrella up my ass, DONT OPEN THE F**KING THING!

AT LEAST I CAN TRY DIFFERENT DRIVERS FOR DIFFERENT HARDWARE ON THE PC WITHOUT LOSING MY WINDOWS OR LINUX BOOT SECTORS.

I AM NOT SURE BUT IN THE PC WORLD THERE IS A VIRUS CALLED THE CHERNOBLE, IT PRETTY MUCH DOES THE SAME THING AS THE ELBOX DRIVER DOES, IT WIPES YOUR BOOT SECTOR AND SOMETIMES YOUR BIOS

Don't be so sure!  I had a friend of mine gone thru some nasty experiences.  XP reported device driver failures after resetting to a BIOS start!

PC virii don't work on my Amiga  :-D

BTW, don't judge a book by its cover.

Boohoo to the PC revolution.  Like I care.  Everybody's using that same ol' platform.  
"640k ought to be enough for PCs," Bill Gates 1985

[Hammer]

The Elbox debacle is the chicken and the egg scenario. To verify the truth, one has to dissemble the complied code. But that would breach the copyright laws. It’s catch-22.

I wonder how government agencies  and big businesses look for rogue routines from commercial software.

I also wonder how did anti-MS camp know about the routine code that makes the old 16bit Windows (on some builds/variants) fail on some non-MS built DOS OS.

It seems Elbox is using “security through obscurity” as their form of security.

[Paul_Gadd]

There was a old man called Joe
Who knew Elbox was so low
He installed the drivers from the disk
Then he found out he has took a serious risk
Now his harddrive is not working from the word go.

"Elbox the future of hd killing is HERE"