Science Addiction

This is my constructive response to the column at CoolTechZone on the 5th of August titled Is it Wrong to Love Microsoft? To give you a little perspective, I have a WindowsXP desktop dual booted with Fedora Core 4 Linux, Windows XP Professional laptop, and Mac Powerbook at home and so have sufficient experience with all of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple Matters has a nice article about the different types of Windows users out there. From the article

Did you know that every time a Windows user converts an angel gets an iPod? It’s true. So convert someone and make an angel’s day.

Aah, I love being an Apple-snob.

A few days ago, I had written about a flawed copy protection scheme on the new Dave Matthews Band CD which, if you have autorun enabled, installs itself on your computer and prevents copying. Key phrase is if you have autorun enabled. Also, it works fine on a Mac – so maybe that’s the computer you should use :). I know I do.

Well, there’s an update to that story; apparently with a new technology (believe-it-or-not, it’s called First4Internet!), you can’t transfer the songs on to an iPod either UNLESS you email Sony BMG and complain in which case you will get a nice email explaining how to circumvent the copy protection. Great- flawed technology for an unnecessary purpose built by people who tell you how to break it if asked politely.

The new Dave Matthews CD, Stand Up (which I, admittedly, will buy at some point) apparently has some new fangled copy protection in place to prevent kiddies from making MP3s off them. According to the FAQ on SunnCom’s (the company responsible for this technology) web site:

…similar to other software and games, usage of the CD on your computer does require your acceptance of the end user license agreement and installation of specific software contained on the CD. It also requires your computer to be appropriately configured. Please review the Systems Requirements documented on the package of the CD you are trying to play.

The key quote on this page is that you cannot (so they say) copy it on to an iPod because “Apple’s proprietary technology doesn’t support secure music formats”. However, they fail the 12-year-old-boy test as described in this Playlist article. From the article:

It’s a fact. Boys are their most wily just before the onset of puberty. They’ve got all their faculties, have no notion of property rights, and—unlike males from 13-‘til-death—are not governed by their hormones. There’s nothing a 12 year old boy likes better than taking apart that which adults have deemed impenetrable. I’m well into post-puberty—and therefore confused much of the time—and all it took was me trying the disc on a different computer platform to crack this scheme. Imagine what could happen in the hands of little Scooter down the block.

The solution is to use a Mac. The CDs work fine on Macs, can be ripped in iTunes and copied to the iPod. Or just buy the songs from iTunes and do what you want with them.

MacWorld has a great rundown of all the facts (and some speculation) from yesterday’s announcement from the WWDC that Apple is leaving the PowerPC architecture for Intel by next year. A few things I gathered from Steve Jobs’ keynote:

• Intel Macs will appear in early 2006.
• They demonstrated how Mathematica was ported to the new platform within 2 hours with 20 lines of code changed. The complexity of the change will depend on how much the code depends on the architecture.
• People from Adobe, Microsoft and the CEO of Intel assured the audience that the move will be smooth.