News

November 2005

Why don't I want DRM #2: After Sony's recent big fiasco, I believe that the addition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on audio discs and DVDs will bring us back to an experience already known to software vendors in the 80's.

Very concerned with the financial losses coming from software copying, software manufacturers (including Microsoft) were starting to include more and more protections. Clearly, without even the help of Internet, this led to a catastrophic situation where it was safer to grab an illegal copy from a friend rather than install the paid copy just to avoid the awful experience of installation and computer crashes coming from incompatibilities between protection systems and the Operating System (or other protected software programs). Pirates didn't mind...

In this context, the editorial from Chasseur d'Image photo magazine clearly states the problem: Only lawful users are annoyed.

In the end, the software industry had to abandon this idea except for a very small number of cases where the price of the program was so high that protecting it really efficiently was paramount.

150€ coupon for a Canon EOS 20D: The Canon EOS 20D is known as one of the really good high-end digital single lens reflex (it made it real hard for the Minolta Dynax/Maxxum 7D which has about the same price). Canon offers (before the end of 2005) a 150€ coupon for buying a 20D.

In short, the EOS 20D is:

8.2 mega-pixels
5 images per second
9 points AF system
magnesium alloy body
Compatibility with EF/EF-S lenses and the Canon Speedlite EX flashes
PictBridge

Low cost laser printers: It was just right to update my previous comparison of entry-level color laser printers. The new comparison sees new candidates added to the list of the possible printers: Canon LBP-5200, HP Color LaserJet 2600N and Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2400W.

Alien Arena 2006, free FPS game: After a real test, I can recommend this fast-paced video game to all addicts of shooting at aliens (some remind me of Mars attacks!, the movie). Take a deep breath, and dive into it. Excited by the music, you'll have to look around you (you may find useful to grow a pair of eyes behind your head just to avoid being fragged too much).

Great screensavers (realistic and 3D): I don't often speak about this kind of software programs. There are too many of them and most just lack any originality (for me, nohting beats the screen blanking of the most basic screensaver). But 3Planesoft has a very neat collection of them and they are quite unusual while staying cheap (shareware at 12.95$).

Alien Arena 2006, free FPS game: For once a First Person Shooter is free (as in free beer). this FPS video game (like Doom, Quake, FarCry or F.E.A.R.) is licensed under GPL and can be downloaded on the official web site. It is a sequel to Code Red: Alien Arena (this previous game was also free and visible on the DVD-ROM of last month PC Team magazine).

Both games use the Quake 2 graphic engine and this explains why, contrary to a power sucking monster like F.E.A.R., they can run on a PC that is no longer considered young (an 800 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 200 MB hard disc space, and any kind of 3D graphics card).

I could not test it by myself yet, but it looks pretty good.

SETI@home, aliens are gone now: More precisely, this giant distributed computing project grouping millions of computers looking into the signal from the deep cosmos in order to find possible signs of extraterrestrial life in the universe will stop and leave room for BOINC, a project even wider in scope (it will allow to keep looking for ET but also to help cancer research and other big adventures of distributed computing.

Xbox 360: A few news about the latest video game console from Microsoft, after a few days of use all over the world. First comments:

Microsoft looses about 126$ each time an XBox 360 is sold (a common habit on this market where game sales offset the loss on the console).
Weirdly, technical problems are all over the place:
- overheating,
- unexpected crashes (notably with Project Gotham Racing 3),
- hard disk drive failures.

DRM #17 (Virgin: The pirates are not the ones you thought): You were listening to these messages about Internet users being ugly pirates copying and downloading music to force music majors to bankruptcy. You were merely forgetting who the real big pirates are. Example: France Telecom, Warner Music and Madonna signed an exclusivity contract to distribute the latest hit of the pop singer to Orange mobile phones. But Virgin Music simply hacked the music (Hung up) and put it on its online web site (VirginMega.fr) at the same time, well before the official launch. France Telecom sues for 12 millions euros, Warner Music sues for 2 millions euros. The judge will decide in a trial that looks like a plain copyright infringement.

Recover lost files on CD or DVD: I sorted my ideas about this important computer issue in an article where I try to explain why the optical medias are not a professional archival mean.

Dynax 5D tip #2: Konica-Minolta got the nice idea of opening a specialized web site to serve the needs of the users of this nice Digital Single Lens Reflex (D-SLR): www.Dynax5D.com. In English, in French, In Spanish, in Italian, etc.

DRM #16 (Why the Sony fiasco?) : An interesting explanation of the recent Sony rootkit DRM fiasco. A web visitor known as a good old purchaser of Sony products (I, myself, am the proud owner of many Sony products since 17 years?) and brought a possible explanation:

Sony left the reigns to the American business and this company suddenly forgot about the Customer.
Mr. Masuru Ibuka and Mr. Akio Morita would probably not recognize their child.

L'argoteur: is a small web site that hosts a small tool that translates another web site in a selected language. For example, to observe my own news page as read by a person who's caught this year's flu.

www.Pere-Lachaise.com: On this web site, you will find a virtual visit of this major tourist attraction of Paris, the city of lights (but also of cemetaries). Weird, isn't it?

Found Nemo:

Cardstacker: Bryan Berg is mad. Or he is a genius. It's up to you to choose just by looking at his gallery of cardstacking.

A better Bush: Build Your Own President Bush. You can also create a random image (for the really lazy type).

DRM #15 (Sony BMG steals software to build its DRM): You have to admit that Sony did not miss any error, nor any mistep in the Digital Rights Management (DRM) fiasco. Today, we discover that the rootkit used by Sony is not only a tool routinely used by pirates and hackers, but it happens that by using this rootkit, Sony merely violated authors rights. Yes, this software contains open source code (in flagrant violation of the user licence of this code).

Sony is thus caught red-handed violating copyright (or copyleft) while trying to protect the rights of their artists. One of the arguments of Sony (and the other music publishers) was that they had honesty, legality and good faith on their side. Where is all this gone? Digital rights just appeat to mean that rights only useful when they favour Sony and the music business.

DRM #14 (Sony proves why DRM is bad for the consumer /3): My short chronicle of a simple, clear-cut case of the worst kind of Digital Rights Management gone wrong. After you see how Sony BMG handles its customers, nobody would be surprised if music sales would plumet and downloading would grow even faster.

Latest news:

Two lawsuits (one class action) are started against Sony BMG in the US for this.
A Trojan horse (Stinx-E) was just spotted exploiting the presence of the Sony rootkit to propagate itself.
Finally, Sony published a patch that actually removes the rootkit, but it is as difficult as ever to find it on the Sony web site and it leaves your PC unable to read the mere music CD you just bought.
After more than a week of hot battle around this issue, Sony just caved in and announced abandonning this specific rootkit (of course, you can expect to see the issue to pop up again later under a new face). Unfortunately, the CDs already in the distribution channel will stay there and the poor guys and gals buying them will we left alone (with their lawyers)...

Nikon D50 against Pentax *istDL: An interesting comparison of these two entry-level Digital SLR (D-SLR) from Nikon and Pentax.

Nikon latest problems: After the recent recall of some Digital Single Lens Reflex (D-SLR) photo cameras (including the Nikon D70 that risks locking up in some situations), Nikon has new problems with EN-EL3 Lithium-Ion batteries (installed in the Nikon D50, D70 & D100). Some of these batteries can short-circuit and overheat.

Nikon USA
Nikon Europe

Microsoft Development tools for free: It is a bit unusual, but Microsoft decided to provide its Express Editions of the development tools for free. It's probably not going to interest everybody, but it's creating some competition on this narrow field.

SimplyTheBest font library: is a nice collection of typographic fonts of high quality and freely available (for most of them). Contrary to the ugly bad habits of this kind of web site, SimplyTheBest font library is not covered with ads and the browsing is quite easy.

How the death star works: This is the big round battle station of Star Wars with its super laser weapon. If you ever wondered how the Death Star works, it's time to check.

The oldest operating light bulb: Weirdly, this light bulb was plugged in a fire department hose cart house in 1901 and it has been continuously working since then (more than a century of faithful operation).

Web techniques weekend

Webmaster solutions: My advice to build a professionnal-like web site (even if it is a merely amateur web site).

My own selection of Internet tools: Sometimes, people ask what tools I use for Internet (both surfing and editing). Here's the list.

My own configuration for Webalyzer: Webalyzer is a good tool to analyze the traffic on your web site, but the basic configuration is both minimal and somewhat silly. Here is my own configuration.

Abstract art in the tramway: The heavy works to create the South Paris tramway line are an opportunity to collect news photos. However, I rather took advantage of the opportunity to study an abstract subject using the various available colors and the numerous material textures found there.

Epson inkjet paper: When you no longer find the Epson products you wanted (for example, for old references of paper that department stores no longer sell - probably to favour the sale of modern ink jet printers), you only have to go to the online web site of Epson.

Google suggest: This improvement to the Google seearch engine is still in beta-test but it is fully functional, so why bother? When you input the first letters of the word you want to search, Google suggests the words starting with those same letters - based on the statistical occurence of words searched by the other users. Very handy.

La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast) of Jean Cocteau: A true masterpiece of cinema, a pure pleasure moment if only you accept to find your child's imagination again.

Au delà du mode automatique: With the arrival of fully automatic photo cameras (and not only digital ones), we often chose the easy way and simply pressed the button to take a snapshot. But, while being quick and efficient, this way may not often produce very nice results. If you can read French, you can take a few simple lessons on Clubic.com to know how photograph further than automatic mode.

Again some nice snapshots coming to our view.

Origin:

Looking for a job? Specially if you're interested by a position in France, you will probably appreciate my Looking for a job bookmarks page.

The handmaid's tale (Margaret Atwood): An astonishing book letting us look into the intimate life of a woman in a near future where the social orgnization (certainly derived from a far-right religious movement of Christian origin) has fully submitted women. This is a relatively common Science-Fiction subject. It could have been exploited in a directly violent way. But M. Atwood opted for a slow presentation of the bits and pieces that make Offred social environment and this is strongly favoring the intimate chronicle of the heroe's life. The narration is striking and gripping while the story moves very slowly. Surprising, touching and horrifying at the same time. A classic sociological science-fiction book that you can't leave before you read the last page and that won't leave you after you read the last page.

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November 2005

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