• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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  Unless otherwise stated, the content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 License

  

The company Media Rights Technology (MRT) are suing Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) because they won’t use their technology. The DMCA makes software designed to circumvent copy protection illegal. It all hinges around MRT’s X1 SeCure Recording Control software which, according to them at least, is effective against the ripping of streaming media. MRT’s court case is based on the fact that these companies have been “actively avoiding the use of MRT’s technologies”. MRT are now claiming that because of this refusal to use their software these companies software is designed to facilitate piracy and therefore illegal. This is obviously totally laughable and if the American courts have even an ounce of sense left it will get thrown out of court. However, it is a dangerous case because if it wins it will mean that the DMCA makes DRM compulsory. This is also an interesting attempt to build a monopoly for MRT through legal action. Their business must really be suffering if they have to resort to abusing the DMCA to force companies to use their software. One has to ask what legal standing they have to even bring this case. This has the potential to set some very dangerous precedents. Lets hope common sense wins out in the America legal system for once.

[tags]DRM[/tags]

There are many more operating systems than just Windows but for the vast majority of people Windows is their first and often only OS. Hence, the majority of people who use Mac OS X, Linux or Unix are people who’ve switched from Windows to those other OSes, i.e. the are ‘switchers’. Contrary to what some people may like to have you believe switching is not always straight-forward and it’s not for everyone, however, for some people it really works and the change really improves their daily lives. So, if you think you might be interested in saying goodbye to Windows this post may be of some help to you.

[tags]Windows, Linux, Unix, OS X[/tags]

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Tagged with: operating system

To settle a little argument in the family I’ve been keeping a record of the results of all the games of Solitaire I’ve played since Easter. Since Nature weren’t interested in my results I present them here on my humble blog 🙂 To cut a long story short, Dad’s hypothesis was that one only wins about one in every twenty games of Solitaire, I disagreed giving a non-scientific estimate that I win about one in five games. He asked me to prove it, so I started keeping records! Today my dataset hit 150 games which I think is enough to average over and get meaningful results. To further support my work my brother also contributed data on a further 100 games owing to extreme boredom while forced to take time off work because of a football injury.

[tags]Solitaire[/tags]

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For my post yesterday on the HD-DVD key I needed to convert the 128bit HEX key into a decimal number and then divide it by two. I figured this would be easy. I’d wander over to Google, search for “convert hex to decimal” and hey-presto, I’d get a web-based converter somewhere to bang the hex key into and get out a decimal number. This soon proved not to work in practice for large numbers. All the converters I tried gave me back floating point numbers with very large exponents. The means loads of precision was lost and hence I couldn’t get the exact number the MPAA claimed to own. So I did what I always do when I can’t find a program to do what I want, I hacked something together in Perl! Now, when I say hacked I do mean hacked. It only took me a few minutes to do and what do ya know, Perl lost precision too, giving me an answer of 1.32562788879895e+37. So, I needed to re-implement this algorithm in a language that could give me basically unlimited integer arithmetic. I chose Java because of the java.math.BigInteger class and because Java is the language I know best. I implemented the same basic algorithm in both languages. It’s interesting to see just how much bigger the Java code is!

[tags]Java, Perl[/tags]

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Tagged with: Java • Perl

‘An AACS Executive’ (AACS is the name of the copy protection on HD-DVD) has told the BBC that:

The key that has been leaked has now been revoked

It’s not clear when ‘now’ is. What we do learn is that the key was not one used in hardware players but rather in software. Could this be one of the revoked WinDVD keys? Who knows. It’s also not clear if this means the MPAA will stop threatening legal action over the publication of what is now definitely just a number.

However, it is clear that the MPAA have gotten away easy this time. Since the key in question is not a hardware key they were able to revoke it without breaking anyone’s hardware HD-DVD player. So, for now, they have avoided their Catch 22. However, I for one, believe it’s only a matter of time until a hardware key does get out, and they are facing the catch 22 I described yesterday for real.

You can find out more on this BBC article (link courtesy of Dave C in the comments on my original post on the HD-DVD key).

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I am no fan of DRM technology. I think it’s a stupid idea that is fundamentally flawed. Security by obscurity is always a bad idea. Every device that can play a HD-DVD has a secret key inside it, including all computers that can play HD-DVD. If one person finds one of these keys then they can remove the DRM from HD-DVD. Basically, the whole system is dependent on these keys remaining secret. This of course won’t happen. So, the MPAA’s system provides a mechanism for disabling all devices that use a compromised key. The idea being, if a key gets out it is not the end of their DRM, they just revoke the key. Slight problem, when a key is revoked all devices that use the key will stop working leaving thousands of very miffed consumers out for the MPAA’s blood!

The cat is out of the bag, a key has gotten out. I have a copy of the key. I’m just an ordinary pleb, if I can get it trivially, so can the bad guys! So, what will the MPAA do? If they revoke the key they will break loads of people’s players and make them very grumpy. If they don’t revoke the key they will be making all their DRM efforts totally null-and-void. The MPAA think they’ve found a third alternative, they are attempting to use their lawyers to magically make the key a secret again and in the process declaring ownership of a number.

[tags]MPAA, DRM, HD-DVD[/tags]

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Without a shadow of a doubt a motorway along the route of the current N3 is needed. Cavan, where I grew up, is along this route so I know just how over-loaded it is. For the most part the routing of this new motorway, the M3, was straightforward, except near the town of Navan where the N3 passes through a very historic valley near the famous Hill of Tara. This area is considered to be one of the most important archaeological landscapes in Europe. Most of Ireland’s history has been played out there since it has been an important site for over 5,000 years. For this section of the road there were four different possible routes which would have varying impacts on the Tara archaeological landscape. One route would have had zero impact, avoiding the valley altogether, however, the route chosen does not avoid the valley. In fact, it passes between the main site on the top of the hill and a fort known to be part of the ancient defences of Tara. In other words, it passes right through the heart of this historic landscape.

[tags]M3, Tara, Irish Government, Archaeology[/tags]

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This seems to be the time of year for 2.0 releases. Three pieces of software I use on a daily basis have gotten their big 2.0 update recently. Mozilla Thunderbird, the dashboard widget Pakze, and the iStat family of tools from iSlayer. (I discussed both Pakze and iStat in my post on Dashboard widgets for Techies.) In all three cases the most obvious change is a new coat of proverbial paint. Thunderbird and iStat in particular have really benefited from the addition of a little more polish to their interfaces. However, there is more to these upgrades than just looks.

[tags]Mozilla, Thunderbird, iStat, Pakze, Dashboard, Widget[/tags]

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Tagged with: open source • software • review • OS X

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