Dutch Online Music Store Stops

The Dutch download store download.nl closes its virtual doors. Reason; Too many complaints about the restrictive DRM. So it doesn't just limit the average consumer in playing their favorite tunes, but it also puts people out of a job...... The dutch site isn't the only online music download store. The German musicload.de reveiled that most of their complaints (75%) are about the restrictive DRM. Will the music industry ever learn?

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Wordpress 2.1.2 Update

I upgraded my version of Wordpress to version 2.1.2. This went the usual 'problems'. First of all I 'forgot' to make a recent backup. Second, I used Transmit (an OSX FTP Client) to upload the new pages. Transmit has the possibility to overwrite files. No worries (I thought), I just renamed the files I editted, do I could rename them back when I had uploaded the new files. It seems that I didn't read the warning very well. When I overwrote the directories, Transmit removed them first and uploaded the new files afterwards. This meant that all my uploads, and customized files were gone..... aaaaargh. Fortunatelly, I had a backup from two weeks ago, so I could get the old files. This reminds me to make a decent backup before doing anything about my Wordpress installation in the future....

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Internet Porn On A Different 'Channel'

Most internet traffic for browsing is using ports 80 (http) and 443 (https). The wise governor (Huntsman) of Utah has suggested to ban pornsites from these default ports. This way it should be easier to block traffic to these sites (just block the porn-port). So I guess that the following ports will be used in the future of Internet browsing:

• 69 - porn related websites
• 666 - websites about satanisme
• 1337 - TechTalk
• etc.

Thankfully, the world is bigger than Utah, but I do feel sorry for those who live there......

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Remote Annoyances

It's been a couple of days since I got my new home cinema set, and there are several annoyances with remote controls. My old home cinema components were also from Pioneer, so I guessed that the new remotes would be similar, but boy I was wrong. The new remote for the AV receiver has about 10 times as many buttons, with every at least 2 functions per button. The remote for the Pioneer DVR-545 lacks several key buttons on the remote;

• numeric keys for zapping
• buttons for going fast forward and reverse
• Audio and subtitle selection

If you need those controls (and I need them a lot), you have to slide the remote open, and use a SHIFT button to alter in movie settings (like the subtitles). Why not place these buttons on the surface? So newer doesn't mean better IMO

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Next Generation Internet

Researchers at the Stanford University believe that the current Internet isn't fit for the future. They believe that a fundamental redesign is necessary to accommodate future usage.

We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research.

Well, I think they have a point. BUT, starting over from scratch means that you throw everything out and start with absolutely nothing. Will the 'old' Internet still be there during the migration? Are we (the consumers) gonna have two Internet connections (one plain-old-Internet, and a new-and-improved Internet)? That's not gonna happen.... So migrating means that 'both' Internets are active at the same time, and accessible over the same 'wire'. There has to be some sort gateway between the two. This introduces backdoors etc. The new network is bound to fail if your not able to access info on the plain-old-Internet. A long time ago, we had a separate 'Internet' in Holland called 'HetNet' (TheNet). That didn't last long, because there was no (official) gateway between the two. So that meant that you had to switch between the two... I guess it's pointless to say that HetNet didn't last that long (HetNet is a dutch ISP atm). So I guess that I'm more than curious how they're gonna solve this.

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Multiregion Pioneer DVR-545H

My latest DVD Harddisk recorder is a Pioneer DVR-545H. Since these things are still region locked I needed to do some searching on how to get the thing region free. In my early DVD years (when a simple DVD player costed about 700 euro), I bought lots of DVD's from Amazon in the USA. The reason for buying them at Amazon was that the prices were much lower, and they had a bigger collection to choose from. Every DVD player I bought afterwards had the possibility of making it region free. Mostly by a hardware modification, or with a hacked firmware. My latest acquisition had the possibility to make it region free by sending an infrared (IR) signal to the player/recorder All you need is a PC/Laptop with an IR out. On this page, you can get a 'kit' which makes your DVR-545H region free without hacking the firmware or making hardware modifications. Just one click on your laptop, and your Pioneer DVR reboots, and is region free. Note that the page is about another DVR from Pioneer. The nice part is that Pioneer standardizes their recorders, so it works on most of them. So again, no need to 'backup' my DVD collection to remove the region coding. And before I forget to mention it.... Use it at your own risk!!.

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New Home Cinema Set

My new home cinema set arrived today. Earlier I mentioned that I'd probably get me the Philips 42 inch TFT, but after seeing lot's of those screens work, I decided to get a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 (1080p). With a new screen, I also needed a new Home Cinema Receiver. This became the Pioneer VSX-2016AV-S. Together with a nice KEF iQ7 speakerset, and an active Klipsch subwoofer. Oh my god, this setup rocks....

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Microsoft Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 Released

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 this week. Normally, the release will be announced, but this time they released it quietly (??). Anyway, I tried to upgrade my experimental Windows 2003 SP1 server with SP2, but that was a no-go. It seems that if yo uninstalled Internet Explorer 7 AFTER you installed sp1, you need to uninstall IE7 (according to the release notes).

Internet Explorer If you installed Internet Explorer 7 after installing Windows Server 2003 SP1, you must uninstall Internet Explorer 7 before you install Windows Server 2003 SP2.

After this you can install Service Pack 2. This means 2 reboots instead of 1 (are we going back to the old days where you needed a reboot every time you sneezed??) First of all, I didn't want IE7, but it got pushed down my throat in their so-called 'critical updates'. And second, this confirms the lack of inter-department communication in Redmond, otherwise this wouldn't be necessary.... And the fun continues.... After uninstalling IE7 I received an 'Access Denied' error while updating. Research on that error gave me some pages relating to Windows XP service pack installations. It seems that there might be some registry keys which are not modify-able by the installation of SP2. For godsake, I run the update under the administrator account. Why can't the installer modify the registry setting for me? Why do I have to screw around with the registry editor and logfiles to install a freakin' service pack from Microsoft :mad: ? The Windows box goes out the window, as soon I have enough money to get me a OSX based server.... UPDATE: The update via Windows Update also didn't work. It didn't show the Access Denied error, but it wouldn't install SP2. I did get it to work though by 'resetting' the permissions on the registry with the following command:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

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Mac OSX update 10.4.9

Apple had released a couple of updates these last couple of days. The first was an update for the Airport Extreme, and a couple of days after that they released an update to OSX Tiger 10.4.9. Also iPhoto got an update to version 6.0.6. The Airport Extreme update was more than welcome for me since I had trouble connecting to WPA(2) wireless networks. Only the WEP protected networks were working for me. This update seems to have solved the problem (so far). The update to OSX 10.4.9. contains the following improvements:

- RAW camera support - Handling of large or malformed images that could cause crashes - Image capture performance - Mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts - Font handling - Playback quality, and bookmarks in DVD Player - USB video conferencing cameras for use with iChat - Bluetooth devices - Browsing AFP servers - Apple USB Modem - Windows-created digital certificates - Open and Print dialogs in applications that use Rosetta on Intel-based Macs - Time zone and daylight saving for 2006 and 2007 - Security update

While the iPhoto 6.0.6 update deals with EXIF and Photocasting issues.

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More EU Action Against Apple

And yet another dumb-ass politician with no clue whatsoever is starting a campaign against Apple. Again the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is the victim in this crusade. A certain Meglena Kuneva is complaining about the fact that music bought at the ITMS can only be played on the iPod. Well, Meglena Kuneva, I got some considerations for you:

• Music bought in the ITMS can be played on Windows and Apple platforms (iTunes, which is free).
• 5 platforms can be authorized to play these songs. This means that you can buy 1 song and play it legally on your work, at home, on your laptop, on your wife's PC etc.
• Music bought in music stores selling the MS flavor (PlayForSure) can ONLY be played on Windows platforms.
• ITMS music can be burned on CD's by default, lot's of MS flavors won't allow that. There are some limitations on burning when you're burning playlists.
• Music burned to CD can be ripped to MP3, and can be played on ANY mp3 player.
• Music protected with PlayForSure solution, can't even be played on their own Zune media player, so you have to buy the song(s) multiple times.

The biggest advance is that there are no different flavors of FairPlay. The MS DRM can be different on each song. Sometimes you're not allowed to do anything but listen to it on you're PC, while other implementations allow you to do more with the music. This is nice, but when you have plenty of songs, how do you keep the limitations apart? An accurate list with the Apple FairPlay DRM limitations can be found here.

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