Fsf-friends February 2005

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35 participants
67 discussions

DVD Region-changing Restrictions
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

Dear Friends, This article mentions mostly Apple devices,DVD region codes are really problem for people like me.Beware FYI --arky Tuesday, February 1, 2005 Apple restricting DVD region-changes -- voluntarily! -- UPDATED http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/01/apple_restricting_dv.html Apple's DVD players are subject to restrictive rules laid out by greedy Hollywood studios that don't really care if they piss off Apple's customers, since that's Apple's lookout. However, I've just discovered, to my amazement, that Apple imposes its very own restrictions on its DVD players over and above those imposed by the studios: that's right, Apple voluntarily treats its customers worse than the studios say it has to. In the crazy world of DRM for DVDs, there's this idea that a Hollywood studio should be able to tell you where you're allowed to watch a DVD after you buy it. They accomplish this with something called "Region Codes." Discs have region-codes and players have region-codes. If you have a Region 1 disc (US and Canada) and a Region 2 player (Europe), and you put the disc in the player, the player will reject it. But what happens when you take your laptop from New York to London? You're in Region 2, but you bought your device in Region 1. Can you buy a disc in London and play it on your computer? Yes and no. When a computer manufacturer gets a DVD-decoding license from Hollywood's licensing cartel (the DVD Copy Control Association or CCA), it is allowed to make players that can change regions up to five times. What's more, once the region-switches have run out, computer companies can reset your counter at a service depot a further five times. That means that you get 25 region-switches. This sucks pretty bad: I moved from San Francisco to London with hundreds of Region 1 DVDs and now when I buy a movie in the shop, it's Region 2. That means that if I watch a movie from my US collection once a week, and once from my UK connection the next week, I'll run out of region switches in three months. Three months after moving to the UK, I'll have to throw out half my DVDs. So, basically, I don't watch my DVDs. Sometimes, though, I'm weak, and I tune into one and squander one of my precious region switches. Now my nearly-new Powerbook has only one switch left out of its initial five, and so I brought it to Apple to get them to reset the counter. It needed service anyway (I'm on my fifth or sixth screen replacement for the defect in the 15" machines that causes the "white blobs" to obscure the display), so it seemed like a good time to do it. I know that Apple is allowed to do this. How do I know? Well, when EFF went to the Copyright Office and asked it to give us an exemption to the DMCA to make tools for watching out-of-region DVDs, Time-Warner showed up and told us this: "And, the way it works, and I apologize because it's a little bit complicated, the consumer can set it five times. After the fifth time that they've reset it, they do have an ability to reset it again, but they have to bring the drive to an authorized dealer or an authorized service representative, who can then authorize an additional set of five changes, and then they can bring it back for a second, for a third, fourth and fifth set of authorized changes. So you can change it 25 times in total, but you have to go back for each set of five. You only get the first five when you buy the ROM drive itself." That was Dean Marks, from AOL Time Warner. Straight from the horse's mouth, testifying to the US government. But when my Powerbook was ready for pickup, Apple left me a voicemail saying that they couldn't reset my DVD player, that doing so would void my warranty. When I went into the Apple Store in London to get the machine, I asked about it. I wanted this in writing: if they had a policy that said that they couldn't fix my region-counter, I wanted to be able to tell Dean Marks about it the next time we went to the Copyright Office and ask him why Apple thought it couldn't reset my counter. Apple refused to put it into writing. They refused to let me record them telling me they couldn't fix my Powerbook. They wouldn't even put in writing that they were referring me to the legal department. Eventually I spoke to the manager, who promised to get back to me the next day. The next day, he did. He told me that he'd spoken to legal and that they wouldn't put anything in writing. However, they did have some documents on their website they printed for me that talk about DVDs. 1. DVD Player: About DVD-Video Regions, last modified July 16, 2004, technical contributor J Scalo. This document describes the different regions, saying that after five region-switches, "the drive is permanently set to use that region, and you cannot make any more changes." Interestingly, this also contains something labeled APPLE EYES ONLY that says that On Wallstreet and PDQ (PowerBook G3 Series M4753), the number of region code changes remaining is not stored in the firmware of the DVD drive but rather in the DVD extension and NVRAM. This information should absolutely not be conveyed to the customer. In extreme customer satisfaction situations you can reset the region change count by following this procedure: 1. Reset PRAM/NVRAM by pressing Fn-Ctrl-Shift-Power while the computer is turned off 2. Startup with system extensions off. 3. Restart with system extensions on. Note: This procedure resets some of the customer's custom settings. After following this procedure, the region change count for the drive is reset to five. In later PowerBook models, the region count is stored in the firmware of the drive and cannot be reset with this procedure. 2. Changing the region code of your DVD drive, last modified on January 23, 2004. This document says that you can only change your region code five times. "After that, the region code is set permanently and you cannot change it." So there's two things going on here that I'm pretty pissed off about: 1. The studios have screwed the electronics companies with this region code business and I have to throw out my DVDs or buy an extra Powerbook or something 2. Worse, though: Apple has a policy about region-changing that is more restrictive than it has to be: they're playing for the other side. This really stinks and makes me wonder why I should keep on buying Apple hardware. Lots of Apple execs read Boing Boing. If you have a reply on this, email me and I'll be happy to discuss it with you. Update: Many of you have written to point out that VLC plays out of region DVDs on a Powerbook. That's nice, but it doesn't work reliably on my Powerbook. Update 2: Thanks for all the tips on how to hack my Powerbook or change its firmware. I'm afraid that I'm not in the market for this, though, tempting as it is, as I've been informed that using these tools will void my warranty. posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:46:39 AM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post ===== ____________________________________ /\ \ \_| Rakesh 'arky' Ambati | | Bangalore (INDIA) | | Homepage: http://arky.port5.com/ | | _______________________________|_ \_/_________________________________/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250

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Go to schools -- the need of the hour
by Praveen A 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

Hi all, I have got a chance to train the teachers of the nearby [NIT Calicut, where I'm doing Btech] higher secondary school for IT @ school as part of NSS programme. In Kerala we have succeeded in including the GNU/Linux as an alternative to M$ non-free OS, but the most schools stick to Window$ because they didn't get any training in the free OS. Yeasterday I showed them the Redhat's GNU system, they were seeing it for the first time [http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi/7566.html]. They found it very interesting and they found it as easy as Window$. It is very important that they get a chance to use the free alternative. If it is already in the curriculam then they won the first step [those who want it can use it]. If it is not there then your primary goal should be to get it included as part of the curriculam. The next step is to make sure they get to know how to use it, confidently. Other thing is to let the students know that there is an alternative exists which don't keep them divided and helpless. More on my experience on my blog http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi/5152.html So the students, especially the school studets should be our primary target to have a free (as in freedom) future...... Regards Praveen A 8th Semester Btech EEE NIT Calicut -- "There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com My Weblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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FSF India Events in Tamil Nadu (Chennai/Vellore)
by Ramanraj K 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

5th February (Saturday)::Chennai ================================ 1:00 PM : Anand Babu talks about "Hacking GNU/HURD" at CSD#320, Electrical Sciences Block, IIT Madras. Poster: http://www.geocities.com/cyborg4k/anandbabu.feb.5.2005.pdf 8:15 PM : RMS arrives at Chennai Airport to proceed to Vellore. 6th February (Sunday)::Vellore ============================== 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM : Inauguration of FSF-TN and Keynote Address by RMS The Swatantra schedule includes: *Lecture on "High Powered Computing with Free Software" by Anand Babu *Talk on "Free Software Movement in India" by Nagarjuna More details at http://www.swatantra.info 7th February (Monday)::Chennai ============================== 12:00 Noon- 1:45 PM : RMS visits MIT, Chrompet 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM : RMS Lecture on "The Danger of Software Patents" at the Central Lecture Theatre, HSB, IIT Madras Poster: http://www.chennailug.org/meeting/info/eml-rms-color.pdf 6:20 PM : RMS leaves from Chennai Airport to Hyderabad

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[Fwd: [Ilugc] Extramural Lecture by RMS @ IIT-Madras]
by Ramanraj K 02 Feb '05

02 Feb '05

This is a reminder about the RMS Talk at IIT-M on 7th. Please note that the talk has been advanced an hour earlier to 3:00 PM. Links to a couple of posters are also available. -------- Original Message -------- Hello All, Extramural Lecture by RMS @ IIT-Madras :- ======================================= Topic : "The Danger of Software Patents" Speaker: Richard M Stallman (RMS) Time : 15:00 - 17:00 Monday February 7th 2005 Venue : Central Lecture Theater (CLT), Opp to Open Air Theater (OAT), HSB, IIT-Madras. Posters: http://www.chennailug.org/meeting/info/eml-rms-bw.pdf : http://www.chennailug.org/meeting/info/eml-rms-color.pdf Abstract of the talk :- Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every design decision brings a risk of getting sued. Patents in other fields restrict factories, but software patents restrict every computer user. Economic research shows that they even retard progress. About the speaker :- Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (See http://www.gnu.org/ and http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU OS with Linux kernel added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates (See http://www.stallman.org/). ALL ARE WELCOME :) Bye :) -- Bharathi S _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Some economic aspects of FOSS
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 02 Feb '05

02 Feb '05

> logic is backported to pre-computer era, we should not have had > computers at all. After all computers have taken off millions of jobs Well said Raman. Richard Stallman used a similar argument in a recent interview - http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484 Here is a quote from the interview, "Suppose somebody developed an AI and no programmers were needed anymore. Would this be a disaster? Would all the people who are now programmers be doomed to unemployment for the rest of their lives? Obviously not, but this doesn't stop people from exaggerating the issue." Vijay -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Skype for Linux and Mac OS X released
by Praveen A 01 Feb '05

01 Feb '05

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/68901/skype-for-linux-and-mac-os-x-released.html Skype for Linux and Mac OS X released Luxembourg based, free internet telephony company Skype has introduced versions of its VoIP software for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms. Amongst the other features included in the free download are a global contact directory, cross platform instant messaging, file transfer and end to end encryption. `We encourage all Mac OS X and Linux users to experience the cost and quality gains with version 1.0 Skype software,` said Niklas Zennstrom, Skype CEO and co-founder. `We will remain committed to innovation and will continue to expand platform choice.` Zennstrom along with partner Janus Friis were also the driving force behind the p2p network Kazaa. The widespread adoption of broadband and the prospect of being able to call almost anywhere in the world for almost nothing has led to the boom in VoIP products. Although initially seen as a toy for geeks, some of the world's biggest companies now realise that they can slash the cost of telecoms with cheap VoIP systems. Even some of the world's biggest telcos like BT are realising that internet telephony is the future and is planning to rollout voIP services over the coming years. The company claims to have more than 23 million registered users, and says it is signing up more than 130,000 new users per day. You can download the software from the Skype site. http://www.skype.com/ -- "There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com My Weblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Some economic aspects of FOSS
by Praveen A 01 Feb '05

01 Feb '05

Yesterday we had discussions about the FOSS model and its various aspects. Tojin analysed the economic aspect and he says --- There are so many people working in the proprietary software industry and if there is only FOSS out there so many people are gonna lose jobs. Now both proprietary and free software needs service and so the effects cancels. The jobs of developers will not be there and the economy suffers. He argues that only if the money changes hands the country benifits. Also he thinks it is sinister about the way GNU/Linux is distributed, he says it has made so complx that they need to go to experts everytime. He is not thinking about the obvious advantages. In a country like India we cannot afford to pay a huge amount of money on softwares. They are completely ignoring the points of technical fitness of the software developed. They still think of the FOSS as something like this >> A company develops a product and give away that for free (download) and asks how the developers get money ? They completely ignores that FOSS is a process not a product in which lots of people around the world and it is centered around the end user. Other argument is that anyway we are getting windows and linux free (pirated in case of windows) and all things that could be done with windows can be done with windows and there is no point in moving away from windows. They don't think piracy is not a problem, as long as they don't come to you and arrest they think they are safe. It is like you don't hesitate to steal if you are sure you won't be cought. Also they neglect the social aspect (but the former point nullifies this). Anyway you are ready to give it to your friend so the social aspect doesn't matter anymore. the discussion continues .... Some one give me an answer to the economic aspect (the loss of jobs and affecting the economy) PS: You can join the discussion at LJ http://www.livejournal.com/~pravi/7240.html -- "There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com My Weblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Fsf-friends February 2005