Macking 87

Use Toast? You're In A Jam
As of version 5.1.4, Roxio, the company that took over Adaptec and now publishes CD authoring software for Macs and Windows (EasyCD) will be shipping a version that decides whether or not to let you duplicate a CD.
This kind of behavior is called Digital Rights Management (DRM). The new version of the program will enable Roxio to enter your hard drive via the Internet and make changes to the software to prevent you from copying CDs that YOU own, based on demands from the record industry (RIAA). Roxio doesn't mention this on their web site (big surprise) but the story was broken by the CDR Zone, as quoted from TheMacintoshGuy, an e-list from Portland. To quote the story,
"Owners of such Secure Content ("Secure Content Owners") may, from time to time, request Roxio or its suppliers to provide security related updates to the DRM components of the Software ("Security Updates") that may affect your ability to copy, display and/or play Secure Content through the Software or other applications that utilize the Software. You therefore agree that, if you elect to download a license from the Internet which enables your use of Secure Content, Roxio or its suppliers may, in conjunction with such license, also download onto your computer such Security Updates that a Secure Content Owner has requested that Roxio or its suppliers distribute."
Your only protection, for now, is to make sure your version is 5.1.2 or older. 5.1.2 will work under OSX. Or just stay off the Internet. You could also try locking the program, and keeping a copy of its helper folders and plug-ins, should you wind up getting stuck with 5.1.4 or later.
Update: When 5.2 finally came out, this requirement was nowhere to be seen. I guess sufficient protest can motivate a company.

Speaking of Bleeding Idiots (er, RIAA)
The entire world was laughing long and hard at the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), whose website was brilliantly hacked last month. Instead of the usual destructive hack with porn or obscenities, the bogus pages claimed that the RIAA has reversed the long-standing hatred of MP3s and file sharing, and then offered free downloads to people, about 30 of them.
The hacked index page was replaced later that day, but due to incredible incompetence they missed the download page, so over the entire Labor Day weekend people were downloading hit songs by Linkin Park and other popstars. The MP3s were actually placed on the RIAA servers, which were slowed to a crawl when Slashdot announced this fact and set the entire world loose on them.

Get A Clue, RIAA
The thing that they can't understand is that downloading is here to stay, and if they were smart they would end the hostility, quit copy-protecting the CDs (which are so corrupted they can't legally call them CDs any more) and encourage this new medium. Sales will go up as people get to sample more new music; it's happened time and again. Audio cassettes were claimed to be the ruination of LPs; people would copy records and sales would plummet. Not only did overall sales go up, but a new category of prerecorded cassettes came into being.
The RIAA's partner in crime, the MPAA, sued during the '70s to prohibit Sony from releasing the Betamax, claiming that it would be the end of moviegoing and commercial television. Instead a market for videotapes was created that outgrossed (in $$$) the walk-in theater trade while overall moviegoing went up too.
Can't these idiots ever learn? If they would embrace and encourage file sharing and online distribution, there would be more money to be made than ever before. What they would lose is their vertical-monopoly control where the same company creates an artist, releases the records, promotes them in their own publications and radio stations, and profits from tours they set up. How else do you explain Britney and all the little boy bands?
No one should be surprised. The record industry, and the movie industry too, has always been run by the most corrupt, incompetent and arrogant people of any industry; sometimes making the Mafia look like amateurs. They rammed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act down our throats before anyone could catch on, but as the ramifications are becoming clear about how much freedom we are losing, there is a rising call to repeal this horrible monstrosity before things get worse.
Educate yourself on the RIAA. Visit the Electronic Freedom Foundation's web page and find out for yourself. You will be appalled and hopefully motivated to action.

Apple Attacks One of Its VARs
Or is it just a case of Apple's new Microsoft-inspired management demanding more control over the users? OtherWorld Computing, a reseller of Macs, had developed a patch for iDVD that would let it work on external FireWire DVD recorders so people were not limited to using the Apple internal SuperDrive. Apple's lawyers got all snitty and ordered OWC to stop making the DVD Enabler available immediately and destroy the source code. Apple is willing to sell you a copy of iDVD for $20 if you didn't get it with your particular Mac, but if you want to use it with a 3rd party drive, too bad. You gotta pungle up for an Apple internal SuperDrive or you don't get to use iDVD.
The patch is called DVD Enabler and if anyone got ahold of it before OWC pulled it, please get in touch with me and I will happily help spread it around. This kind of arrogance on the part of any company, not just Apple, must be combatted in all ways possible.

W&K Can't Find No Soul
This quote by Phil Russell is from the last printed issue of Corvallis MUG's Mouse Droppings (all future issues will be PDF only):
"The Portland-based creative powerhouse Wieden & Kennedy - which has kept a relationship with Nike since the agency opened its doors in 1981 - had sought in vain to find something deeper within Microsoft that would resonate with the world, not unlike what they had accomplished with Nike.
"They tried to define something in the brand that was more meaningful to people than mere software, but they came up empty-handed. Even the best advertising cannot create something that is not there.
"If a company lacks soul or heart, if it doesn't understand the concept of 'brand,' or if it is disconnected from the world around it, there is little chance that its marketing will resonate deeply with anyone.
"It's a lot like putting lipstick on a pig."

Great free plug-in
DreamSuite Dreamy Photo from Auto FX is a Photoshop plug-in and standalone program that enhances the look of an image by creating a "warm and soft dreamy look." DreamSuite Dreamy Photo is free and is available for Mac OS X and Mac OS 8.5 and up (as well as Windows).

Lawyers Needed to Protest
For the last ten years, FTR Ltd., with headquarters in Arizona and Australia, has been selling digital recording systems to the world's courts, including our own Clackamas County and a good portion of Oregon.
The CD-Rs that are produced by the recording device are unreadable on Macs, as well as Linux and Windows computers, but can be accessed by downloading a free player from the company's website. This player runs under Windows only and thence the problem.
I originally had nightmarish visions of a corporate conspiracy to take over our public court systems, eventually leading to forcing Microsoft on the world's lawyers and courts, in spite of the fact that Macs have a very high presence in the legal industry. According to a 2001 Gartner Group study, 25% of the Fortune 500 law firms are run on Macs, due in part to a special focus from Apple from 1993 until things started to fall apart in 1995.
I have three small-law-firm clients who also use Macs exclusively. (Any others out there I would like to hear from.)
So, in an attempt to learn more about this "conspiracy," I contacted Steve Townsend, CEO of FTR Ltd. at his office in Arizona. What I learned made a lot of sense, and quashed any thoughts of evil conspiracies.
The primary reason the CD-Rs are not readable by any computer unaided is due to the fact that in 1993, when the company developed their digital recording devices, they had to be able to record proceedings through four channels at the same time, with full separation, and no delay factor between channels which would create echoes and muddy the sound. There was no currently available technology from the audio industry that would serve their needs. They wound up engineering a variation on MPEG-2 which combined twin stereo signals into a blended stream that their player would separate out for the listener. Each channel could be isolated from the others to enhance clarity when everyone was talking at once.
Over the years they upgraded the compression algorithms, finally winding up with something called AAC, which is a codec from Dolby Labs. They resisted the temptation to use Microsoft's WMA, which was inferior and also would have engendered a licensing fee of approximately $0.47 per court, per trial, per day.
Lawyers needing a copy of the CD-R may request it be exported into standard AIFF (Audio CD) format, which takes three disks for every CD-R but combines all the channels. The CD-Rs are usually handed over to court reporters, who sit at playback devices or Microsoft PCs equipped with foot pedals so they can transcribe the proceedings into printed text.
The digital recording technology is being sold to replace the primitive cassette recording systems originally used for this purpose, which themselves were introduced to provide backup to the traditional court reporters, typing away in their special shorthand as has been done for a hundred years. Clackamas County is using FTR's equipment, whereas Washington County is still using the old cassette systems.
But the bottom line is still this: FTR will not spend the money to have a player developed for Mac users until they start hearing demand for one. If you are a lawyer who does not wish to contaminate your office with an MS-based PC, then you are encouraged to write to the local representative of FTR, Dave Parker in Washington or Steve Townsend in Arizona.

Letter
bryce writes,
I'm a somewhat new computer geek to the Portland area. I've made some friends at the Portland Linux Users Group, as well as at freegeek. Anyways, i read your recent article, and in the particular section about M$'s Palladium, which bothers me too being an open source software user, you start to mention some programs that a Mac user can use to read/write MS word files. I just wanted to share with you, maybe you know, maybe you don't, that if a Mac user uses OSX they can use OpenOffice which is an open-source application that is sponsored by Sun to compete with MSOffice. And if they don't want to handle the massive download, or if your readers find it too slow, they can use Abiword. Which like OpenOffice both reads and writes in M$'s doc format. And both are completely free (as in beer). Maybe you would like to inspect these programs and recommend one, both, or neither to your readers. Just thought I'd pass the info from one M$ hater to another. PS- no M$ code was used in the creation of this email (sorry I couldn't help myself!!!). :-)

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)