🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <athos-301292211047@kip2-34.apple.com> athos@apple.com (Rick Eames) writes:
>I recently found this newsgroup, so if I am bothering people, please be
>patient.  A friend of mine's father just had his descrambler (8 years old)
>zapped by the cable company.
>
Zapped? What do you mean? Smoke now comes out of it? Or does it just not
descramble any more? If it doesn't descramble any more, perhaps the cable
company broadcast control signals that the descrambler is designed to
listen for, and it will shut off when it receives the right code.

>How in the hell can they do this? I could understand on the new two-way
>systems, but on the old A/B one-way systems, how could they "zap" a system?

basically, certain descramblers are built to stop working if they get told
the secret-magic-auto-destruct sequence (you know, same way Capt. Picard
can lock out the helm with the right code words :-)

I don't _know_ of any that actually destroy themselves, or at least
permanently damage themselves; but they could easily do it by making
the descrambler turn on a voltage that erases all its microcode, or 
blow a fuse...

> If they can do this, how could one defeat it?

build/hack a descrambler to ignore or bypass it.
>
>******************************************************************************
>Rick Eames                               My Opinions Are My Own (not
>Apple's)
>athos@apple.com
>Don't blame me, I didn't vote for Boxer.
>******************************************************************************


-- 
__________________________________________________________________________
 John Paul Morrison                     |  
 University of British Columbia, Canada |  
 Electrical Engineering                 |   .sig file without a cause
 jmorriso@ee.ubc.ca              VE7JPM |  
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