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You do bring up some interesting points. Restricting a program to physically secured hardware along with software protection would definitely make it extremely

You do bring up some interesting points. Restricting a program to physically secured hardware along with software protection would definitely make it extremely difficult to get the program or information outside of the way that the maker wants you to. Although I am not entirely convinced that it would be impossible. The issue is that it still must be a deterministic system. And this means that with enough money, expertise, time, precision someone could produce a situation in which they would be able extract the code and edit it. Now in most cases the amount of resources and effort that would be required to do so would probably not be worth it which would mean that it wouldn't be worth it to pirate, but i would be hesitant to say that it would be impossible to. Any deterministic system can be compromised the key is to make compromising it so difficult/expensive/time consuming that compromising it is not worth it. Now from a practical stand point I don't know how well this would work in a consumer market, but can certainly see it being used in areas where protection of information is extremely important. It just seems a little to costly to implement on a wide scale to me, and I think consumers would see it as too invasive and resist it, so if there were alternatives in the marketplace I think a lot of people would opt for the alternative.

abecedarius 14y ago
I broadly agree, but claims of impossibility face a burden of proof; and you can see iPads as cheap crude approximations to sealed systems, and they're effective enough that AFAIK most developers needn't worry about pirating. And I'm not sure but I get the impression that successive models of iDevices tend to take longer to find a jailbreak for.
- stevenameyer 14y ago
  See my post to another one of your comments as to why as far as I can see it is impossible to make a system that is completely unbreakable. But I definitely think you could create a system that is so difficult to break that in practical applications it would cost more to break then what is to be gained. The solution you suggested is likely a very good example of this. I'm not saying your proposed solution isn't a good solution to the problem or that it wouldn't work in the real world(if security is the only concern). I'm simply saying I don't there is such a thing as an unbreakable system, as long as it is deterministic.

abecedarius 14y ago

I broadly agree, but claims of impossibility face a burden of proof; and you can see iPads as cheap crude approximations to sealed systems, and they're effective enough that AFAIK most developers needn't worry about pirating. And I'm not sure but I get the impression that successive models of iDevices tend to take longer to find a jailbreak for.

stevenameyer 14y ago
See my post to another one of your comments as to why as far as I can see it is impossible to make a system that is completely unbreakable. But I definitely think you could create a system that is so difficult to break that in practical applications it would cost more to break then what is to be gained. The solution you suggested is likely a very good example of this. I'm not saying your proposed solution isn't a good solution to the problem or that it wouldn't work in the real world(if security is the only concern). I'm simply saying I don't there is such a thing as an unbreakable system, as long as it is deterministic.