zhasper.com

Dear Mr Palmer,

A) Either your blog's comment feature is broken, or navigation links to it have been misplaced. Please fix, so that I don't have to continue commenting here.

B) You are a spammer. You admit that you merrily sent spam on its way into around five user's inboxes - spam that you know appears to come from you, spam that you know is definitely unsolicited and unwanted. This makes you a spammer. The fact that you seem to think that sending this spam to users was somehow getting back at either the authors of the spam, or the writers of the spam blocking tools, only makes this worse.

C) You complain that "but the people whose job it is to write, maintain, and run spam software don't [know that source addresses are forged and there's no point replying to them]". If you'd take two seconds to think instead of sending spam and then blogging while enraged, you'd realise that this is patently false. The authors of these tools are trying to ensure that, in the case they've blocked legitimate email, it can be allowed through. This *requires* that they assume the From: address is not forged.

Please stop and think next time before you angry-blog.

The first and most obvious problem here is that Islam is not a race; its more usually categorized as a religion. Second problem is that there are people of just about every race you can imagine that consider themselves Muslims. That means ... the label of "racist" is simply wrong.

Yep, that's definitely the best way to respond to an accusation of being racist - argue that you're not racist, because your irrational hatred crosses racial boundaries.

Well done, sir.

(That said, he's - technically - right, on this point at least - but even such an inveterate foot-in-mouther nows that arrant pedantry is not usually an effective way to get people on your side).

In the meantime, the MediaFork project started as an independant effort to add features and enhancements to the latest HandBrake codebase and provide users with updates...

Let’s be clear that MediaFork is not a concurrent project. I am glad someone else did what I couldn’t find the time to do, and our intent is to join efforts and resources from now on - stay tuned.

This is why Open Source means that an application can continue to be useful. The original author was busy, and didn't have time to work on Handbrake any more. If the app had been closed source, that would mean that development had ceased. Even worse, if the application had been shareware/trialware/commercial at all, it would have meant that those users who paid money found themselves with an unsupported, dead, application.

Because it was Open Source, other people who did have time were able to run with the project and develop it.

In other news, breating air is good (especially when it contains about 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen). Water is good to drink, and also to swim in - but try not to drink water that other people have been swimming in. Unless you're a fish, that is...

A few weeks ago, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to no-one in particular, proclaiming that (loosely paraphrased), he really wished he didn't have to put DRM on music in iTMS, but the big labels made him do it. He also said that he wished DRM schemes could be interoperable, but they can't.

At the time, I had a rant on a mailing list, but didn't post here. My major point to the rant was that it's *not* the labels who force DRM on the iTMS, it's iTMS forcing DRM on the labels.

In particular, I cited Naxos, who quite happily sell their music without DRM on emusic. Since then, various other labels have openly given Steve/Apple permission to sell their music without DRM - but Apple's only response has been silence, and the continued forced adding of DRM to all songs they sell. So, that takes care of that phony claim.

The other major claim, that interoperable DRM is impossible, has been shown to be just as phony. The Coral Consortium have written an open letter back to Steve, in which they state that:

We have been wrestling with the issues around interoperability for some years and have concluded that it is not so much a technology problem as a business problem. We have completed the development of a suite of technical specifications for interoperability and these can be downloaded from our website, http://www.coral-interop.org/. We think that your engineers will find it very straightforward to integrate this framework into your iTunes service. This technology would enable you to interoperate immediately with Microsoft based Janus devices and services, and with OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) based devices and services. Of course the secrets in Fairplay remain safe - adopting the Coral technology does not require you to share them with anyone else.

Of course, it's very easy to write off the Coral Consortium as being some small group making grandiose claims they can't back up. It's easy to assume that Apple might not have heard of them, that their technology is perhaps not quite as good as they claim, or that maybe they don't have support from industry players. I can't comment on any of the rest, but the latter isn't true: their membership page lists Sony as just one "Promoter Member" of several, and EMI, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, the MPAA, the RIAA, and Sony BMG are just some of the "Contributor Members".

So, in summary: Steve claimed that the labels force him to use DRM. Possibly true for some - but many have requested that he doesn't put DRM on their songs, and he still does. Steve claimed that interoperable DRM isn't possible - but not only is it possible, it has the backing of the same major record labels that Steve claims force him to use DRM.

I stand by what I wrote in that email; Steve's letter is FUD and nothing more. Well, except maybe it's good marketing as well.

On 09/02/07, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> I'd just like to point out that the author of this comment appears to suffer
> from a severe frontal lobe bypass disorder.
>
> <snip>
>
> Only the utter preposterousness of the original proposal could explain this
> stunningly weak analogy in its defense.

It's unfortunate that it's written about me, but it's such a beatifully written flame. I don't think I've seen writing that smooth and polished since - well, I've never seen a flame that beatiful at all, that I can recall. I think it's what Miss Read would have written, had Miss Read discovered the internet, FOSS, and mailing lists.