Blackmoor Vituperative

PlaysForSure is essentially the brand name for Microsoft’s DRM and it’s supposed to be the cue. You can’t help but spot the contradiction between the name “PlaysForSure” and what Amazon has written on it’s Web site. On one hand, the phrase “plays for sure” is designed to breed confidence in end users that the content will play for sure. On the other, it doesn’t play on anything Apple makes and it’s not guaranteed to work by Amazon with content acquired through Amazon if the device is PlaysForSure-compliant but not listed on Amazon’s list of tested devices. Furthermore, going back to the statement about the Unbox player not being able to play video content downloaded from other vendors, if I’m to understand that correctly, Unbox can play PlaysForSure-compliant content from Amazon, but no one else (an example of why, just like the way I call Apple’s FairPlay DRM “UnFairPlay,” I call Microsoft’s DRM “PlaysForSuren’t”). Not to mention how, if every Amazon-like source of content decided to take that route, how overly bloated and complex our systems would be with redundant technology that all does the same thing.

All this because of DRM. Perhaps now you understand why I have a different name for DRM: C.R.A.P. (Cancellation, Restriction, And Punishment). Just look at the eggshells Amazon has to walk on when rolling out a potentially cool service and all the crap that customers have to put up with if they want a guarantee from Amazon that what they buy will actually work. Oh, and if it doesn’t work? Again, from the Amazon FAQ:

Can I return an Amazon Unbox video after I purchase it? No. Amazon Unbox products are not returnable once purchased.

But wait. It gets worse.

(from ZDNet, Amazon’s brand new UnBox video download service relies on (recently hacked) Microsoft DRM)

My position on media crippled with DRM aka CRAP is very simple: I do not buy it, and I urge others not to buy it either. Vote with your wallets, people. Don’t reward the media robber barons by giving them your money.

This is a good open source story with a happy ending. I haven’t read something that made me feel this good in weeks.

The 160 first-year medical students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine used to receive a boatload of printed course materials during their first weeks in school%u2014four cases’ worth of paper per student, in fact.

Printing costs were sky-high. So it wasn’t surprising when state budgetary officers zeroed in on printed course materials as a prime opportunity to slash.

But with printed materials no longer available, pressure was mounting on the electronic version of course materials, available on the SOM’s intranet site. After pondering upgrading the course materials via a commercially available application, the SOM’s Office of Information Systems decided to go with an open version of course management software, implemented by Cignex, a systems integrator specializing in open source and based in Santa Clara, Calif. Cignex would prove critical in helping SOM select an open application that would prove a scalable platform for future growth.

read more…

(from eWeek, College Taps Open-Source App to Solve Costly Paper Chase)

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is creating the world’s largest storage network by combining a number of separate networks into a gigantic 17,000-port Meta SAN monster.

The Meta SAN will store many petabytes (millions of gigabytes) of both administrative and mission-critical command and control data, and be put together by Brocade and reVision, an IT consultancy.

The existing SANs have multi-vendor storage devices, and Meta SAN will use securely connected end-points, virtualisation technologies, and other techniques to tightly control access to each storage device and safeguard its highly sensitive data. Critical data is stored on high-performance storage devices, whereas less sensitive information is saved on cheaper arrays, cutting hardware costs across the DoD’s agencies.

(from US defense department builds world’s biggest SAN, Techworld)

Phishing Phor Phishers

The State of Massachusetts has reaffirmed its commitment to begin using the OpenDocument Format by Jan. 1, 2007, a move that has been welcomed by the ODF Alliance.

“We plan to implement ODF, using translator technology plugged in to Microsoft Office, in a group of early adopter agencies, including the Massachusetts Office on Disability, by January 1, 2007,” Louis Gutierrez, CIO of Massachusetts’ ITD (Information Technology Division), said in a mid-year statement on ODF implementation, dated Aug. 23.

(from eWeek, Mass. Back on Track for ODF Implementation)

And of course, anyone who does not depend on assistive technology can just use OpenOffice.

Yes, the prices for Windows Vista are ridiculous.

No, I won’t be buying Vista.

If I could run Photoshop CS2 on Linux, I would have switched my desktop OS to Linux already.

If you’re like the majority of Internet users, a good quantity of your e-mail is junk. Perhaps the amount seems like less than it actually is thanks to filtering, but it’s still there. The world is fighting a losing battle with junk e-mail — primarily because of weaknesses in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) — and everyone knows it.

(from TechRepublic.com, Replacing SMTP: A proposal)

Spam is beyond ridiculous. We have needed a better email protocol for years. Yarden’s sugestion is as good as anything else that I have seen.

There are all sorts of stories whirling around the Internet regarding the pros and cons of desktop Linux as well as its chances of adoption (or track record so far) that I thought I’d try to connect the dots to form a more coherent picture (well, perhaps a confusing picture).

(from ZDNet, The skinny on desktop Linux)

This is a really good article that touches on several issues (Linux, the next version of the GPL, DRM, the crashing of Apple laptops, the evil of iPods, and so forth), with lots of interesting links. You should read it.

Microsoft’s most recent security update for Internet Explorer introduces a serious security flaw on some Windows systems.

See Tech News on ZDNet, IE patch carries security bug.

Many novice Web developers use CSS positioning and layout directives without a sound understanding of how they really work. A brief introduction to the box model explains what it is and how you can use it to make better decisions about positioning your HTML elements on a Web page.

(from Tech Republic, Make better Web pages by understanding the CSS box model)