Why DRM cannot work

Sep 102007
 

Cory Doctorow (of boingboing fame) wrote a nice column where he explains why DRM (Digital Rights Management) will never work. The article is intended to explain to non-technical people why DRM is impossible. It also explains why DRM only hurts people who actually go out and buy the content and NOT the pirates.

The thing is that when they say that you can’t travel than fast than the speed of light, they’re talking about the fundamental principles of physics: it’s impossible to get beyond lightspeed, even if science fiction movies help us conceptualise it.

In the same way, we can imagine building progressively better software locks for movies, music, ebooks, and software until we hit on one that even the wiliest hacker can’t defeat. But, just like the physicists, the geeks who say that DRM can never reach this point are speaking about fundamental principles of information science. It’s impossible to get that far.

Link.

 Posted by at 18:18 Site news , , ,  No Responses »

HowTo replaygain your entire collection

Aug 212007
 

Every time I need to do this, I forget where I found it. This information is copied from here.

Vorbis ogg:
vorbisgain -arfs *

mp3 (using mp3gain):
find -type d -exec sh -c "mp3gain \"{}\"/*.mp3" \;

mp4 and mp3:
find -type d -exec sh -c "mp3gain \"{}\"/*.mp3" \;

mpc:
find -type d -exec sh -c "mp3gain \"{}\"/*.mpc" \;

flac: just use the –replay-gain option when encoding or use the following (treating all the flacs as one album!):

find originals -name "*.flac" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 metaflac --preserve-modtime --add-replay-gain

or you can create the following small script and call it with the name of your base directory (/srv/music, or something like that). This will treat all songs in one directory as one album.
#!/bin/sh
basedir=${1:-.}

IFS="
"
for dir in `find $basedir -type d`; do
ls $dir/*.flac >/dev/null 2>&1 && metaflac --add-replay-gain $dir/*.flac
done

 Posted by at 19:59 Free software, Fun, Just bloggin' ,  No Responses »

My own encryption key

May 092007
 

Thanks to all kind of funny laws in the US of A I can now call myself the owner of the following 128 bit integer: 41 D5 77 97 FA B1 7B F9 3F D8 B9 06 DF 74 37 1C. Nope, you can not use this number anymore, it is mine.

You want one for yourself? Get it at freedom-to-tinker.com.

And if you don’t get what this is all about. You might want to check out this link for additional information and a funny solution for the problem.

Link

Boingboing has an update to this and some backgrounds on the release of the new AACS key. This is all very funny and amazing, read it here.

 Posted by at 14:43 Stupid rat creatures ,  No Responses »

Usb sound card, alsa and udev

Mar 132007
 

Found the following information on Joeys blog:

If you’re like me and had to buy a usb sound card since the laptop’s onboard soundcard creates too much noise, and would like to have that card used by default when it’s plugged in, but otherwise have builtin card be used, create an /etc/udev/rules.d/00_local.rules containing:

# Default to using additional (USB) sound cards when they are available.
KERNEL=="pcmC[D0-9cp]*", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k; K=$${K#pcmC}; K=$${K%%D*}; echo defaults.ctl.card $$K > /etc/asound.conf; echo defaults.pcm.card $$K >>/etc/asound.conf'"
KERNEL=="pcmC[D0-9cp]*", ACTION=="remove", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'echo defaults.ctl.card 0 > /etc/asound.conf; echo defaults.pcm.card 0 >>/etc/asound.conf'"

Only programs started after the sound card is plugged in will use it of course, and this might not work if you have it plugged in while booting.

Link

 Posted by at 19:06 Free software, Stupid rat creatures  1 Response »

Bogus agreements.

Feb 042007
 

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this article, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

More infos can be found here and here

 Posted by at 23:51 Stupid rat creatures  No Responses »
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