[b1kmpn95]

Has anybody attempted to start from 2 and enter every unlock code until they found the correct one? Assuming time and patience were infinite, other than warranty, is there any reason this couldn't be done?

Taking it one step further. If you could do it by hand, I don't see a reason why there couldn't be a way to automate the process with a computer to complete it within 3-5 hours.

Thoughts?

[Machineit]

Has anybody attempted to start from 2 and enter every unlock code until they found the correct one? Assuming time and patience were infinite, other than warranty, is there any reason this couldn't be done?

Taking it one step further. If you could do it by hand, I don't see a reason why there couldn't be a way to automate the process with a computer to complete it within 3-5 hours.

Thoughts?

WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!

[txcncman]

WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!

He is Canadian?

[Machineit]

He is Canadian?

Okay then, "WHY EH?"

[Machineit]

Hey, anyone up in Canada missing a machine that was supposed to be delivered? We may have found it.

[Matt@RFR]

is there any reason this couldn't be done?

You're talking about doing something illegal on a public forum. Probably not the smartest thing to do.

And why would you steal from a good company that has found a way to offer a pretty good product at an almost-impossible price point??

[WallyL7]

You're talking about doing something illegal on a public forum. Probably not the smartest thing to do.

I'm not sure why it is illegal? Can you share the exact law that states this? It is like putting a power programmer on your car to "unlock" all those extra ponies...it may void warranty...but so what? Most of our warranties are out anyway.


Would it be illegal to bypass the original monitor and hook up an external one? If haas actually cared financially then they wouldn't put it in there in the first place. To me once the machine is yours, then you should be able to do with it as you want. For instance, I bought a Haas with a crappy t-slot table that is all but useless. I built a sweet oversize tapped and doweled precision table that I use on it. Illegal? I also modified the sheetmetal and installed vacuum lines for a vacuum table that I use...Illegal?

Here's one that probably IS illegal. Instead of paying Haas the "rip off" price of over 500 bucks for a new coolant pump, I instead purchased 15 bucks worth of American made bearings and pulled out the 3 dollars worth of crappy chinese ones and now my pump is running absolutely silent again. Did I break any law?


While I do agree that it is probably an exercise in fruitillity I just can't imagine it being "illegal" and "hush hush"...lol

And why would you steal from a good company that has found a way to offer a pretty good product at an almost-impossible price point??

I'm not so sure of this.

[keebler303]

I'm not sure why it is illegal? ....

Not that I really care either way but I think it would come down to intellectual property. Those extra features are built in because its not feasible to add them later. By accessing those features without paying for them you are illegally obtaining their intellectual property.

Not at all the same as the mechanical parts of the machine, which your examples mention.

My $0.02
Matt

[WallyL7]

Not at all the same as the mechanical parts of the machine, which your examples mention.

That is why I threw in the power programmer for a car...

Like I said...I would love to see the actual law that is broken.

[b1kmpn95]

That is why I threw in the power programmer for a car...

Like I said...I would love to see the actual law that is broken.

In the US, the DMCA says "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title".

This seems to cover the public sale/offering of services. It doesn't seem to deal with people tackling the actions themselves.

As for Canada, there is currently no DMCA equivalent yet. Bill C-11 is similar, and may be passed soon. I'm a software developer by trade, and the 'can it be done' question is what drove me to put together a quick code generator to get my rigid tap function back after I lost the code.

I'm sure I could have called Haas to get the code back (possibly for a cost since it's so old), but what's the fun in that? Nothing was stolen, and I was able to satisfy my curiosity.

[cygnus x-1]

Has anybody attempted to start from 2 and enter every unlock code until they found the correct one? Assuming time and patience were infinite, other than warranty, is there any reason this couldn't be done?

Ignoring the ethical/moral/legal issues, I suppose there isn't.

Taking it one step further. If you could do it by hand, I don't see a reason why there couldn't be a way to automate the process with a computer to complete it within 3-5 hours.

How long it will take will depend on how long each "trial" takes, how many digits the code has, and how many different characters can be used for each digit. If the code has 8 digits, and there are 10 possible values for each digit (0-9), there will be a total of 10^8 possible permutations to test. That's 100,000,000 codes to test. If it took 1 second to test each one, it could take as long as 100,000,000 seconds to find the right one. That's over 3 years time. Obviously if the code has fewer digits it would take less time, but if alphabetic characters are allowed (as well as numerics), it will take a REALLY long time.

Theoretically, you could rig up an automated method for doing this, but if you have that kind of knowledge/skill, then your time would be better spent doing something more productive anyway.

C|

[dertsap]

A question like this will pull the self righteous out of the woodwork . EH !
how bout looking at the simplest of logistics , haas options are dirt cheap in comparison to anything else on the market , if you can't afford the options for your machinery then you may be in the wrong business ! Also how well do you think something like this is going to fly when you need to have your machine serviced

[cygnus x-1]

A question like this will pull the self righteous out of the woodwork . EH !
how bout looking at the simplest of logistics , haas options are dirt cheap in comparison to anything else on the market , if you can't afford the options for your machinery then you may be in the wrong business ! Also how well do you think something like this is going to fly when you need to have your machine serviced

And that was really my point. If you're smart enough to actually do it, you would be smart enough to know it's not worth the effort.

C|

[haastec]

Has anybody attempted to start from 2 and enter every unlock code until they found the correct one? Assuming time and patience were infinite, other than warranty, is there any reason this couldn't be done?

Taking it one step further. If you could do it by hand, I don't see a reason why there couldn't be a way to automate the process with a computer to complete it within 3-5 hours.

Thoughts?

I think you should get started right away and report back when you have them all figured out.

[miljnor]

As an intellectual exercise only!!!

I would say they might have trouble defending that "intellectual property" just because although locked they did already give it to you.

But Hey I'm not a lawyer and don't really care I like the bought options as then I can get the machine fixed.

[dertsap]

you can modify the machine any way that you want and that would include pulling the computer out and replacing it with whatever you'd like , software on the other hand has a whole realm of rights of its own that don't allow you to modify or reverse engineer the software without the companies approval , this would be the same as buying a basic mastercam package and then cracking the rest .
personally I think that since everything is already in the machine then the options should be part of the machine package , its not as though someone needs to come into the shop and install extra hardware .
m19 being an option is outright stupid

[neilw20]

Really, at the end of the day it restrictive trade, made legal, because they can.
If I change something, mechanical electrical, or electronic, I own, and don't on sell it, who is the loser?

If it was never going purchased, and not on sold, then NOBODY has lost.
And by the time the legal end of town think they have lost, it has been superseded and is not worth selling? Who has lost?

I bought a S/H computer with a cisco wifi gadget, but the software was gone/destroyed. So the gadget is junk. What have they lost? A possible customer.

I will always buy anything but one of those gadgets - nah, there is better stuff out there.

Selling technical stuff, so it can't be copied. Fine. But stopping an owner that is bought it S/H is just ridiculous. Buy someone else's widget.

Bugger, I will design my own.

[WallyL7]

Really, at the end of the day it restrictive trade, made legal, because they can.
If I change something, mechanical electrical, or electronic, I own, and don't on sell it, who is the loser?

If it was never going purchased, and not on sold, then NOBODY has lost.
And by the time the legal end of town think they have lost, it has been superseded and is not worth selling? Who has lost?

I bought a S/H computer with a cisco wifi gadget, but the software was gone/destroyed. So the gadget is junk. What have they lost? A possible customer.

I will always buy anything but one of those gadgets - nah, there is better stuff out there.

Selling technical stuff, so it can't be copied. Fine. But stopping an owner that is bought it S/H is just ridiculous. Buy someone else's widget.

Bugger, I will design my own.

Exactly.

[gizmo_454]

personally I think that since everything is already in the machine then the options should be part of the machine package , its not as though someone needs to come into the shop and install extra hardware .
m19 being an option is outright stupid

I have to agree, but disagree. I agree because if the manufacturer can afford to give the technology with every machine and just turn it off, then why not just turn it on in the first place?

On the other hand, it is technology that costs money to produce and support, so yes, they should charge for it. But how much are you, (we), willing to pay for a machine? Haas' machines are generally at a lower price point because they sell you a base machine, in this case a mill with a spindle, x, y, and z axes. If you want Rigid Tapping, it's extra. M19, it's extra. Etc, etc, etc.

Go buy a Citizen swiss machine. Every option that can be on in the control, is on when you buy the machine. But hold on to your wallet...A 20mm machine starts out at $120K with a barfeeder. 32mm machine starts out at $225K with a barfeeder. Our SL-10 lathe's base price was what? $49K?

I think a good share of us would agree, from a bottom line price point is concerned, we like to be able to pick and choose the options we want on our machine.

As for the "unlock" problem that started this thread, I can see how unlocking options, while morally questionable, may work, unlocking the time limit on the machine would be next to impossible. The machine outputs either a 4 or 5 digit code, to which there is only one correct response, also being either a 4 or 5 digit code. The outputted code is supposed to be random. That being said, from 0000 to 99999, there are 100,000 possible codes the machine can choose to display. For any one code it displays on the screen, there are again 100,000 possibilities. That means that the chances of hitting the write answer, assuming you have the patients to search for the correct code, is extremely slim. We are talking approximately 10 billion combinations. Assuming 1 code per second, and it took until the 10 billionth code to find the correct one, (since we all know it's always darn near the last possible combo to try before we find the right one), it would take approximately 2,777,777.8 hours to find the right code. Even if you could enter 10 codes per second, you'd still be looking at 277,777.8 hours to find the right code. That's roughly 31.7 years at 10 codes per second, 24/7/52.:drowning:

I'm sorry, I'll keep paying for my machine by making parts. It'll only take 5 years to pay for!:wee:

Mike

[b1kmpn95]

I have to agree, but disagree. I agree because if the manufacturer can afford to give the technology with every machine and just turn it off, then why not just turn it on in the first place?

On the other hand, it is technology that costs money to produce and support, so yes, they should charge for it. But how much are you, (we), willing to pay for a machine? Haas' machines are generally at a lower price point because they sell you a base machine, in this case a mill with a spindle, x, y, and z axes. If you want Rigid Tapping, it's extra. M19, it's extra. Etc, etc, etc.

Go buy a Citizen swiss machine. Every option that can be on in the control, is on when you buy the machine. But hold on to your wallet...A 20mm machine starts out at $120K with a barfeeder. 32mm machine starts out at $225K with a barfeeder. Our SL-10 lathe's base price was what? $49K?

I think a good share of us would agree, from a bottom line price point is concerned, we like to be able to pick and choose the options we want on our machine.

As for the "unlock" problem that started this thread, I can see how unlocking options, while morally questionable, may work, unlocking the time limit on the machine would be next to impossible. The machine outputs either a 4 or 5 digit code, to which there is only one correct response, also being either a 4 or 5 digit code. The outputted code is supposed to be random. That being said, from 0000 to 99999, there are 100,000 possible codes the machine can choose to display. For any one code it displays on the screen, there are again 100,000 possibilities. That means that the chances of hitting the write answer, assuming you have the patients to search for the correct code, is extremely slim. We are talking approximately 10 billion combinations. Assuming 1 code per second, and it took until the 10 billionth code to find the correct one, (since we all know it's always darn near the last possible combo to try before we find the right one), it would take approximately 2,777,777.8 hours to find the right code. Even if you could enter 10 codes per second, you'd still be looking at 277,777.8 hours to find the right code. That's roughly 31.7 years at 10 codes per second, 24/7/52.:drowning:

I'm sorry, I'll keep paying for my machine by making parts. It'll only take 5 years to pay for!:wee:

Mike

I would like to clarify that the 'unlock' codes that I referred to in the first post were not referring to the 800 hour time limits. It was referring to feature specific access/unlock codes. In my case, getting back my rigid tap code.