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Is stripping DRM illegal?

Of course the easy answer is yes, and I know that when you buy DRM’d music (or even non-DRM’d CD’s) you technically don’t “own” the music. You just own the rights to play the music.
I thankfully have never bought a single song from iTunes but their announcement about paying to free your library of DRM got me thinking. If you can pay Apple to have your DRM removed and that is completely legal, why can’t you just remove the DRM yourself using freely available programs and not have the fear of the RIAA thundering down on your door with a search warrant.
Of course if you are not sharing the music you probably have no fears of a RIAA lawsuit (seeing as they don’t sue individuals anymore), but if you arn’t going to get sued why is it illegal? What problem is there with you playing the music on any device you choose? Why should there be DRM at all anymore? And why the hell would anyone pay Apple $250 for 1000 songs they already own just so they don’t have restrictive DRM?
I just don’t get it. Perhaps you can enlighten me in the comments. I still, to this day, have never purchased anything with DRM (excluding DVD’s, games, and Blu-ray movies of course) and I have had no problems finding any song I have ever wanted.
My guess is that DRM in music won’t be around much longer and I for one am glad to see it go. I am still not sure how subscription based services will survive.

My 2009 resolutions

I have never done this before either but I felt pretty good with my predictions so I want to make a few simple resolutions for this year.

1. Japanese lessons. I have the intro to Japanese with Rosetta Stone but I just haven’t put forth any effort into doing it. I plan on doing one section every other week until I am done with this CD.
2. Blogging. I have been content with how much I have been writing here on my site and I plan to keep it up in 2009. Three more things I want to put an effort into more though is micro-blogging with Twitter, podcasting with the mintCast team, and video blogging with my new camera.
3. Food. I want to make some changes to what and how I eat. I hope to try a new restaurant at least once a month, and I hope to eat more whole wheat/grain. If there is a option for wheat I plan on taking it and seeing if it has any effect on how I feel.
4. Be a better person. I don’t know how to do this just yet, but I feel like I could be doing better with who I am and what I am doing with life. Hopefully a year from now I will be able to say I am better than I am today.
5. Take a class. Currently I plan on taking a welding class in the spring but if for some reason I don’t take the class I want to do some sort of formal learning to help me grow.

That’s all. Let me know if you have any resolutions in the comments.

My 2009 predictions

I have never done this before but I thought I would take a swing and making some predictions at what I think is going to happen this year with technology.

Computers:
1. Smaller, faster, better. Duh. That is obvious but I think there will be some big improvements in “alternate” input for computers. Apple is rumored to release a multi-touch imac. Windows 7 has multi-touch support and is just waiting for hardware/software to take advantage of it. In 2009 I expect to see the biggest improvements in multi-touch software. Games will probably be first, with the iPod touch and iPhone helping with lots of ideas, and then we will get some cool browser and media solutions. I for one would love to see cooliris with some multi-touch support. After multi-touch will probably come touchless input but I don’t think that will gain a lot of ground in 2009.

2. GNU Linux will gain at least 1% (double) market share (putting it up to 2%) before the end of the year spearheaded by Ubuntu. At this point I believe every major computer retailer (except Apple of course) offers GNU Linux on at least 1 model line, and when people see the boot speed and stability improvements of the next Ubuntu release more and more people are going to start “giving it a shot”.

3. 2009 will be the year of Microsoft solutions. I know Apple is gaining on Microsoft’s market share and they still will for a good part of 2009. But I don’t think market share ever really tells a full story. All I hear about now is how Apple is the coolest thing since super cooled capacitors, but I sense a bit of a change in the wind. I think Windows 7 will launch in 2009 and will greatly restore faith in Microsoft as a company. I also think that the next version of Windows Mobile will finally catch Microsoft up in the mobile platform market. The Windows Mobile OS won’t surpass what is currently out with Android or iPhone but it will make it respectable in what it can do and how it looks. I also think that the Windows Home Server market will gain popularity and the Xbox line will continue to grow. Finally, I think Zune sales will skyrocket (mainly cause Zune media player will be in Windows Mobile 6.5). Right now the Zune is in spot 3 behind Scandisk and Apple. I think as more and more people become unhappy with their iPods but they don’t want to upgrade to iPod touches or iPhones they will turn to the Zune. Last I checked Zune had 5% market share, but by the end of the year I see that number doubling to 10% of the mp3 player market. A big jump but it is truly a worthy mp3 player in my book.

Video games:
1. The Wii will crash. They have enjoyed a crazy amount of sales for far too long and they haven’t come out with any good software for months. I am so glad this day will finally come because I haven’t liked the Wii from the start. They will quickly be outsold for a few months by the Xbox 360 and the Wii will drop in price (my guess is to ~$180). Either way it will be hard to recover and it will probably just die out until Nintendo unveils the Wii HD or something ridiculous. By this time the Wii will not be “the console to have” and most people will finally see the console for what it truly is.

2. The PS3 will jump in sales. I already see this at my work. Two of my co-workers who previously bought Wii’s finally want to either A. Play real video games again or B. Watch Blu-ray movies. Their obvious choice was the PS3. Although the price is a big jump, people will finally realize all the features you get out of a PS3 and will start buying them mainly for Blu-ray players and eventually for gaming systems. The PS3 will also start to gain popularity because the Xbox 360 will run out of juice (aka. storage space) and the PS3′s potential will finally start to be tapped into. Sony will begin to push out better programming tools and maybe even Valve will come to the dark side and program their own crap for the PS3.

3. Online systems will be key this year. Xbox Live is fantastic but costs money. More and more people are getting tight on money and Xbox Live will probably suffer because of that. The PSN has been mediocre at best, but at the cost of free I think more people will sign up for this than ever before. Also Nintendo will realize the error in their ways in not offering a online service and will make plans for it with the Wii HD.

4. I think the PS3 will offer 3D gaming to some extent. Most people don’t realize their Samsung HDTV can display the 3D content and the market is ripe for the picking. I think the PS3 will be the only console that can really handle the amount of power it will take and storage space to contain 3D content.

Other:
1. February 17th will be a very dark day for a lot of people. Best Buy will be crowded as hell, and people will be very upset their antenna doesn’t work anymore. The biggest impact will be in low income/minority neighborhoods. There will probably be some bill passed to make sure they are not forgotten about in the future. HDTV sales will continue to decline until after February 17th when they will get a small kick in the pants until the economy levels out.

2. Because of the DTV transition online television distribution systems will benefit. Hulu, Vudu, Boxee, Apple TV, Windows Media Center will all see a lot more users than ever before. It is going to be a big quantity over quality issue but the amount of free content online will win in the end. After online distribution systems gain some ground they will start to push better quality to the users.

3. Displays are going to rock. Not just TV’s either. Laptop displays, computer monitors, projectors are all going to improve. OLED will make a big push (“organic” isn’t just for your foods) and I think we will probably see some sort of built in projector for a laptop this year. Pocket projectors will also finally become something worth looking at.

4. The internet will have a new awesome site. There will be some new MySpace/Facbook site for 2009 and it will include all the other sites in one. It will finally truly be able to combine your online accounts (at least social accounts) in one place. I have a feeling this site will be run in some way by Google (or at least bought by Google in the end). I think the first step to this will be Google NOT buying Facebook. If they do buy them then there would be no point in making an all inclusive social site. Their new site will easily tie in with YouTube, Blogger, Google Calendar, etc. The next step would be for Google to buy Twitter.com. As more people don’t have time to blog, they will turn to Twitter to allow them to blog on the go.

Well that is it. I know it was a heck of a lot of reading and I thank you for reading it (or at least skimming it). I will hopefully follow up 1 year from today to see how these predictions were met.
Let me know your predictions in the comments or if you agree/disagree with any of mine.

Vantec NexStar MX enclosure review

So, when I bought my NAS I started transferring over everything I wanted to keep on it. But then I realized that 500 GB would not be enough room to store everything. Instead of returning the NAS and getting a bigger one, which I did not have money for, I decided to keep the 500 GB NAS for only the things that I really wanted to have available on my home network (pictures, music, and videos). The other stuff that was more just there for storage (program installs, backups) could be put on a external hard drive. So I headed back to Fry’s looking for a USB hard drive enclosure. Here is the one I ended up with.

I bought the Vantec NexStar MX HDD enclosure from Fry’s for 3 reasons.
1. The price: I got the unit for $30. Not sure if it was a sale or if they were making way for the new NexStar with eSATA. Either way I feel like it was a good price for the features.
2. Dual SATA enclosure. Most enclosures I found in this price range would either only hold 1 hard drive, or would only use IDE hard drives. I had 2 SATA drives sitting in my closet that I needed to use. So this would let me use both of them without buying two enclosures.
3. Build quality. The whole unit is brushed aluminum and the enclosure alone seemed thick enough to stop a bullet. Well maybe not bullet proof but it felt good enough to hold my monthly backups.

I don’t feel like re-inventing the wheel with the review so I am just going to link to a couple much more thorough reviews than I could have ever done and tell you my thoughts.
Here are a few reviews for you to read on your own time. Virtual-Hideout, thinkcomputers, and futurelooks.

Overall, I am completely satisfied with my purchase. The drive is a little bit loud but I rarely have it plugged in anyway because it is only for occasional backups and long time storage. If you are looking for something that you want on all the time I would spend the extra money for a unit with more than just USB and something quieter. But if you have a couple extra SATA hard drives and need some long time storage than this is probably the device for you. The software it comes with is Windows only so I didn’t care for it but I was surprised to get any software at all for $30. The price on amazon is $70 and that is probably more than what I would pay for this enclosure. I feel the enclosure is easily worth $50 though if you can find it in that price range.

Compile Lirc on an AOpen mp945-dr with Ubuntu

I recently traded in my Mac Mini for a AOpen mp945-dr to see if it would work any better with MythTV and Boxee. I started off with Ubuntu 8.10 installed but found some random problems with video not displaying every time the computer would start so I went back to 8.04. On problem I had with both installations was that the remote sensor did not work out of the box. I did some digging and found that Lirc does work with this machine but the latest development branch was not included in Ubuntu for stability reasons. Here are the steps I had to take to get the remote sensor working.

As a overview we are going to:
1. Download the tools needed to compile software in Ubuntu.
2. Download the latest version of Lirc using CVS
3. Compile Lirc source
4. Test it real fast to make sure it works.

If you have Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) see the notes at the bottom.

1. Download the needed compiling tools.
sudo su
apt-get install libtool autoconf automake linux-headers-`uname -r`-generic cvs
This will download and install the compiling tools.

2. Download Lirc
First lets make a folder to put it in

mkdir ~/lirc
cd ~/lirc

Then we will download the newest source from sourceforge. We are using a tool called CVS to read more about it check out here.
cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/lirc login
cvs -z8 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/lirc co lirc
Because we ran that command while in the ~/lirc folder everything downloaded there so we just need to run the commands to configure everything before we build it.

./autogen.sh
./setup.sh

In the graphical interface I selected Driver config > USB > mceusb2 (new)

Then continue with compiling

make
make install
modprobe lirc-mceusb2

Because Ubuntu does things slightly different we need to copy a couple files to where Lirc expects them to be.

cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_dev.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_dev
cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_mceusb2.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_mceusb2

Then we can continue with installing the new Lirc into the running kernel.
rmmod lirc_mceusb2
rmmod lirc_dev
lsmod|grep lirc
/etc/init.d/lirc restart
Everything should be compiled and in place now.

4. To test it out run
irw
and then push some buttons on the remote. You should see the commands you press displayed in the terminal. If you see that then you can just push Ctrl+C to stop irw and you should be all set to go.

I had to change this tutorial slightly from where I originally posted it in the Ubuntu forums so that it would be more universal. If you have problems please leave a comment and check out the original thread here.

I hope this helps.

For Jaunty (9.04) I did not need to install the headers (it actually failed because it was already the newest version) I also needed to install “dialog” and “build-essential”. I had to create the “/lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/lirc/” folder before I could copy the configurations, and the folder I created also changed slightly to cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_dev.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_dev
cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/lirc_mceusb2.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_mceusb2
More updates as I find them.

Enable “path view” on top of Finder window

I saw this at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and thought it was nice because I hate that you can’t see what folder you are in by default.
Open a terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

And you have your location at the top of the window. I don’t even have a Apple anymore but this still may be useful in the future. Only works in OSX 10.5.5+

Open files as root (the easy way)

I ran across a couple of tips in Linux to open a file as root without having to use a terminal. The first is a shortcut on your desktop. To make this one just right click on your desktop and then select “Create Launcher…”. When the dialog box pops up you can put in whatever you want for “Name” and “Comment” but for “Command” just put in the following command.

gksudo “gnome-open %u”

Now to open a file as root all you have to do is open the file location and drag the file to that shortcut. The system will probably ask you for your root password and then open the file as root.

A easier way is to browse to ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ and create a new file called “Open as root”. Edit the file and put

#!/bin/sh
gksudo “gnome-open $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS”

inside the file. Right click on the file and go to properties -> permissons then check the box that says “Allow executing file as a program”. Now all you have to do is right click on a file you want to open as root, go to scripts and click “Open as root”.

I just wanted to pass these along cause I thought they were very helpful.

How I stay digitally organized: media files

As a follow up to my “How I stay organized post” here is how I keep my music, pictures, and videos organized.
First I need to talk about where/how to store important files like media files. All of my media files are stored in one place as a master and multiple other places as copies. I keep my master copy on my home NAS and then I have secondary copies on my laptop, desktop, and MythTV. I also keep a backup of the master on one of my USB hard drives and a second backup on my webhost (no you can’t have access). This is the ideal way to keep this information backed up for me. If I ever find a file that is labeled wrong I change it on the master copy and eventually it will filter down to the copies. Storing everything in one place has helped my organization habits more than anything.
My music folder is organized with the following folder structure.
Artist
Album
Songs
In order to keep all of that organized I had to make a standard naming scheme for all my files too. Here is what I chose. My album folders are named %Artist% – %Year% – %Album% and my songs are named %Artist% – %Album% – %Track% – %Title%. I chose this naming scheme so that if a file gets lost somewhere where it does not belong, which they often do with this many computers, I can easily find where it goes. Two extra things that I make sure all my music folders have is every album folder has a folder.jpg file of the album cover art and every artist folder has a copy of the folder.jpg named after each album I have. For example I have the artist Bush. Inside of that folder I have two folders for the two albums I have and two pictures for those albums. This way when I view the artist folder I can see what albums I have without even opening the folder. This doesn’t work so well in OSX or Linux but works great on my Windows machines and Xbox Media Center.
I have used TagScanner to edit all of my songs by hand. Yes it has been very tedious but I have yet to find a automatic tagging system that did well for me. I also use TagScanner and Album Art Downloader to embed album pictures into all of my songs. This took a while but is worth it when you see the album art in XBMC, on an mp3 player, or any other player that supports viewing album art from within the ID3 tags.
My pictures are stored in folders with the “Date (Event)” so Halloween is “2008-10-31 (Halloween)” This sorts my pictures by date taken, and then with a description of what the event was. If the event is multiple days I use the first day for the date and then I have sub folders for day 1, day 2, etc. I keep a few category folders for folders I don’t want to have to sort through every time I view my pictures. Some of the main folders I have are Automotive, Desktops, Misc, Downloaded, and folders for Beth and I. Desktops and Automotive are pretty obvious but Misc is for 1-2 pictures for a event, screenshots, icons, and drawings. Downloaded is for fun pictures online that I have found. The user folders are for project pictures and other misc stuff that Beth and I want to keep.
Finally, videos are stored by type. Not filetype but more source type. Movie, TV, Web, Shot are the main categories I have. Most of my shot video is actually in my pictures folder with the event it is tied to.
Once all my media is organized on one source it is fairly easy keeping it maintained (so long as I am the only one writing to the NAS). Got any tips or questions just let me know in the comments.

Well that was stupid…easy MythTV fixes

Just a real quick tip for anyone having problems watching live TV or recording shows in MythTV. After a fairly fresh install I could not watch live TV. My screen would go black for a second and I would be kicked back to the main menu. I also was not able to record shows. The recording would show up on the schedule but nothing would happen when the time to record would actually come. So my tip is check your log files!!! They are stored in /var/log/mythtv (at least they are in ubuntu). You should have mythbackend.log*, mythwelcom.log, and mythfrontend.log* in that directory. The log files are incremented making the highest number the oldest file and the one without a number your newest file. So check the newest file first.
As for my problem I checked my frontend log first, but I didn’t see much information besides the fact that I changed skins. So I decided to check the backend. Here is what I found.

2008-11-23 10:26:22.432 TFW, Error: Opening file '/media/mythtv/recordings/1941_20081123102621.mpg'.
eno: Permission denied (13)
2008-11-23 10:26:22.436 TVRec(1) Error: RingBuffer '/media/mythtv/recordings/1941_20081123102621.mpg' not open...
2008-11-23 10:26:22.437 TVRec(1) Error: CreateLiveTVRingBuffer() failed
2008-11-23 10:26:22.438 TVRec(1) Error: Failed to create RingBuffer 1

Now this may not be too obvious to most people but take a look at “Permission denied (13)”. DOH! I forgot to give my user permissions to the directory I set up to record my shows in (as well as my live TV folder).

sudo chmod 777 /media/mythtv/*

and now I am able to watch live TV and record whatever shows I feel like.
Just thought I would save you the hassle if this happens to you.

How I stay digitally organized: downloads and files

I was inspired by download squads post on getting a hard drive organized and I thought I would post how I keep all my many computers organized. I hope to follow this up with a couple other posts about how I keep my cloud life organized and how I keep my media files organized but, first lets tackle local files.
To explain how out of hand my files can get, here are the computers and storage devices I use regularly: work laptop (with 2 OS’s), work desktop, home desktop, MythTV computer/NAS, wife’s laptop, wife’s desktop, numerous memory cards, 2 external hard drives, a home NAS, network drives at work (8), backup CD’s, a original xbox (which stores more than you’d think), and obviously this website/server and more email addresses than I want to admit to (or even know exist).
So lets start with how I keep my files organized on the computers I use the most. My work laptop and work desktop.
The first thing I always try to remember on my work computers is anything and everything on my work laptop and work desktop are counted as files I can lose at any time. I do not keep them backed up as often as I should because I use these computers mostly for work purposes. If I lost my job or either of my hard drives failed all of the files would be gone and I am fine with that because all of my important files are backed up somewhere else. Both of my work computers are running Windows Vista and I had to create some extra folders in my user profile to stay organized.
The first folder I make is install. This is where I keep my most used program installers that are not updated too often. Programs like Firefox, Filezilla, and Pidgin are all updated far too often for me to keep installers for them but more random/large installers I want to keep around for future use so they go in this folder. Inside my install folder I have the following subfolders: Backup, Game, Hardware, Operating System, Software, and Windows Mobile. The backup folder is not where I store backups from the local computer but usually backups for other computers/memory cards. This folder structure is almost identical to one of my external hard drives. The external hard drive keeps a much more permanent set of installers and backups but my laptop is just for programs I install often. The other folders in my Install folder are pretty self explanatory.
The second folder I create is a scripts folder inside my user folder. I have debated naming this projects because it is where I keep scripts/programs I am writing and general tools that I make for myself. For now though I just put scripts in that folder.
The last folder I make is my work folder under documents. This folder is simply for work related documents (pdfs, spreadsheets, etc.). I don’t keep a lot of work documents on my laptop because they are generally stored on my network drives at work. This folder is just for documents that relate specifically to me such as expense reimbursements, system logs, and checklists.
The last set of folders I make are in my downloads folder. Inside downloads I create a Firefox, torrent, FTP, and dropbox folder (the desktop and Starcraft folders in the screenshot are only specific to my laptop and are there for quick access). I then tell each appropriate program to put the freshly downloaded files in the correct directory (dropbox is a writable samba share folder). Once I have all the folders created I add a toolbar to the Windows taskbar for easy access because this is probably my most used folder. This is also usually my biggest place of disorganization because I download things frequently. I have found, however, with this organization it is very easy for me to go through old files and delete them with ease. I used to use Belvedere from Lifehacker but I found I did not like my files moving on their own.
My linux computers/partitions have similar folders in the home directory and my wife’s computers she keeps organized as she wishes but usually keeps important files on the NAS at home. I will go over organizing media files next.