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Why the heck is the VLC media player icon an orange traffic cone??

One day, people from the VIA association (VIA is a students’ network association with many clubs amongst those is VideoLAN.) came back drunk with a cone. They then began a cone collection (which is now quite impressive I must say). Some time later, the VideoLAN project began and they decided to use the cone as their logo.

http://www.nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/

People close to the VLC project, at l'Ecole Centrale Paris collected traffic cones. Why? You might ask why Bertie Wooster collected policeman's helmets. If you want to make it sound less silly, you could probably argue that the videolan client manages the traffic of numerous media streams, but it's a strain.

> Why the heck is the VLC media player icon an orange traffic cone??

It comes from drunk students : http://www.nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/

Yes, DVD Jon has broken it for you:

http://nanocrew.net/software/justeport/

This is untrue. Some labels would prefer to have their music sold without DRM, but Apple doesn't permit this.

Please see the post here: http://nanocrew.net/2007/02/06/steves-thoughts-on- music/

By only selling DRM'd music and refusing to license Fairplay, Apple is using their DRM to lock people in to Apple music players.

Yes, hard to believe, until you realize that Steve is using misleading statistics. There may be 90 million iPods sold, but not all of them are currently in use. Furthermore, it's the number of iTunes Store customers and average sales per customer that's relevant, and Apple has never disclosed these figures.

Many iPod owners have never bought anything from the iTunes Store. Some have bought hundreds of songs. Some have bought thousands. At the 2004 Macworld Expo, Steve revealed that one customer had bought $29,500 worth of music.

If you've only bought 10 songs, the lock-in is obviously not very strong. However, if you've bought 100 songs ($99), 10 TV-shows ($19.90) and 5 movies ($49.95), you'll think twice about upgrading to a non-Apple portable player or set-top box. In effect, it's the customers who would be the most valuable to an Apple competitor that get locked in. The kind of customers who would spend $300 on a set-top box.

If anyone reads DVDJon's blog, he has an excellent point: if DRM was ever about helping the music labels, the RIAA's strategy failed miserably: now Apple wants it because it locks people into their services: http://nanocrew.net/2007/02/06/steves-thoughts-on- music/ Now Apple gets to play the good guy by releasing us from the control of the evil labels even though they have been supporters of it all along!

Nope, San Fransico. See http://nanocrew.net/2006/06/07/moved-to-san-franci sco/

Does anyone know if the DRM/encryption in BD/HD has been cracked yet? Is DVD Jon working hard on this

http://nanocrew.net/2006/01/08/deaacscom/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060116-5989 .html

http://nanocrew.net/2006/01/08/deaacscom/ ..."dvd john" registered deaacs.com a while ago... here's hoping something shows up there if bd/hddvd becomes more popular.

SharpMusique will let you access the iTunes store: http://www.nanocrew.net/?page_id=63

Someone else in this thread has already pointed out to me that you can in fact access the iTunes Music Store from Linux using a Linux app.

As to your response. Can you think of a more convoluted way of saying what you said? Would the average user care about DRM or why they couldn't connect to the iTunes Music store? I mean come on. Is there any way for me to point out how much of a pedant you sound like without getting modded down? This is exactly what regular folk are talking about when they say "Can you explain this to me in English?" DRM? GAHHH!

Simply put, if you can't do something you can't do it. Don't want to know the particulars. Just if you can or you can't. (It just so happens in this case you can but you get my point.)

Just so you know here's how you access the iTunes Music Store on Linux: http://nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/

..in various posts, let me summarize how the article's implication of poor ipod support is total bullshit and ipod works with linux just fine (in fact, better than with windows).

libipod ( http://libipod.sourceforge.net/ ) is the library that interacts with the database on the ipod that stores your music.

Several music players on linux like amarok ( http://amarok.kde.org/ ), rhythmbox ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/ ), gtkpod ( http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html ),( http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/juk.html ) etc have plugins/embeddings that can interact with the library seamlessly

Ipods are detected just fine by the USB mass storage driver with no probems in any modern linux distro.

Itunes can be run thru wine (though I've never tried it), and Sharpmusique
( http://nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/ ) can connect with itunes, buy music, download and strip off the DRM so that the files can be played anywhere.

CD-ripping and transfer to ipod can be done seamlessly in amarok (if you have lame etc installed). It's easier than in windoze thru third party rippers and itunes where there are all sorts of restrictions and issues.

Both "pc-compatible" (fat filesystem) as well as "mac-compatible" (HFS filesystem) will work equally well on any linux box coz linux has drivers for both filesystems.

Last but not least, there is ipodlinux ( http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page ), where you can install linux firmware in your ipod itself. Advantage is that you can play videos in your nano, music management is thru filesystem rather than database so just treat it as a mass storage device in any OS, and a host of other linux stuff will work on it, and you can play any music format that can be played on linux, not just mp3's (ogm,wma etc). You can even play quake on it if you want.

My nano ran just fine with my Mandrake box with no probs. Anecdotally, I had more problems with it on windoze (usb connection to it acted wierdly, though the usb bus was fine; I didn't care enough to analyze what was up).

Sorry troll, your argument falls apart in two places.

First, Whether or not Evolution is an "Outlook clone" is irrelevant. It is possible for the copy to be better than the original, and whether or not you think that's the case here, if someone has a preference for one they are regardless not going to be as happy without it.

And Linux not being able to run iTunes has no effect on its iPod compatibility. I've been using my iPod with Linux for a long time now. Hell, if I want to shop at the iTMS with Linux, I can do that too. This means that the lack of a Linux iTunes port is at worst a minor inconvenience, not a "major shortcoming". There are Windows apps that aren't available for OS X (and vice versa), but when there are decent alternatives nobody rants about how the those platforms are "not ready for the desktop". The alternatives are there, and they work fine.

As far as iTunes, I haven't tried to pull down music from the music store. I'm assuming it's not possible right now.

I just hope you're right. Because using a similar analogy: Microsoft is already shooting themselves in the foot for decades with an endless series of severe security vulnerabilities. Sadly, the public just appears to swallow shit if pushed hard enough in their throat. I fear it's gonna be the same with DRM. People just want to watch television and surf the Net. So, the manufacturers will first make everyone buy HD-ready television sets and after the incubation period, the true virus (content) will attack their victim (customer). I think we're already screwed.

Disclaimer: I own Apple stock, but strongly oppose their DRM that get applied after iTMS downloads with iTunes. That's why I use SharpMusique only. I think this is me being realistic. I don't believe in revolutions. It will not happen. Just making a few bucks from the stupid public who doesn't realize they're digging their own consumer grave. It just amazes me that almost nobody knows what DRM is and what its dangers are ... Consumer rights are like democracy: you deserve what the majority votes for (or what they pay for in the economy).

DVD Jon has a program called Sharp(#) Musique that allows you to buy from the iTMS in Linux, and without DRM too. Unfortionatly, if you've used iTunes v6 it does not work for purchasing. However, there is a 3rd party patch floating arround that fixes this. #Musique is availible from http://nanocrew.net/

Try Hymm. There are mac and windows variants, as well as Java.

Or you can burn to CD, rip from CD, with no extra software required.

Or buy iTunes music through the Sharp Musique app, an iTunes store interface that simply skips the tawdry part where they encrypt and DRM the file.

Or use the older stuff, like QTFairUse, VLC Media Player, and PlayFair.

Not since iTunes 6.x, and it is no longer possible to purchase songs from the iTMS using earlier versions of the software. The software the old /. article talks about doesn't work anymore (that is, you can't download songs from the iTMS with it anymore).

  See what DVD Jon says about the situation.

If the DRM bothers you, there's always SharpMusique http://www.nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/.

Like this ?

Does this work?

From DVD Jon:s blog http://nanocrew.net/2005/10/21/moved-to-san-diego/

As you might have read, I've moved to San Diego. I've joined a great team at MP3tunes and will be applying my expertise to a project called Oboe. That's about all I can say at this point.

On my way to San Diego I stopped by San Francisco. I met up with some of the people at the EFF and Seth Schoen demonstrated the research they've been doing into printers that spy on you. Unfortunately I did not have much time in San Francisco, but I did get to visit the Exploratorium.

I will try to get back to everyone who has emailed me recently. If you haven't received a response by Monday, feel free to resend your email.

Interesting.

RMS started his crusade long before anyone heard of Microsoft when a printer manufacturer wouldn't give him the source code for a printer driver so he could fix the bugs that were preventing it from working on the computer he was using. RMS is about preventing artificial limits on a computers ability to meet the needs of its users.

Over the years the artificial limits have included the unavailability (hoarding in RMS-speak) of source code and patents. Adding DRM is the next logicial addition.

Grab a copy of SharpMusique, And use TCPMP to play it on your Palm, PocketPC, or Windows box. Or, grab a copy of VLC for your platform of choice..

I'm curious, what Google software bundles VLC?

AFAIK, VLC is not (yet) illegal. It was some time ago when I installed the Google video plugin, but I think their EULA mentioned VLC. Link + another link.

Secondly, if Google becomes a monopoly in its field (which it definitely is striving for), would you support them bundling a particular media player, making it harder for others to compete?

I don't follow how bundling some open source software makes it harder for others to compete.

As others have said, only open source codecs are used, so it won't be supported until the ffmpeg guys are done. It can, however, be built in using the VC1 reference decoder as described by Jon Johansen. Personally, though, I just use Flip4Mac; it works well, but I have a fairly high spec machine and it does slightly stress the processors, so I don't know how it would fare on something like a Mac Mini or iBook.

I read the blog of DVD Jon. He lost out on getting a job because of similar numbers on his resume. If the potential employer had been reading the news, they would have had no doubt that he is qualified!

Seems this rootkit has opensource code. I am sure many of you will recognize this blog. http://nanocrew.net/2005/11/16/sony-drm-rootkit-sa ga/

He knows

I think we should take up a collection and buy one of these for DVDJon!

They are reverse engineering iTunes. I'd be willing to bet on it.

Hulk'in Halloween Display/Webcam is up

Nothing really special about it when compared to Debian

Uhhhh, is this true for Debian?

And ?

Hehe, I loved the Mandriva (former Mandrake ) one

Or what about Red Hat?

Or for Linuxp-anti-SCO zealots: Caldera

You can see others at nanocrew

SharpMusique works just fine here.

I wonder, though... has anyone yet written an iTunes replacement that behaves exacatly the same except for not encrypting your music?

DVD Jon has a donations page on his site.

For me at least,the main advantage to iTunes was an accessible and convient way to download music and $1 is the price of convinience more than anything. I could go to any P2P network and find and download the music for free, but the time it takes usually is worth more than $1 (at least for me). So if there was a site that you can get your music in plain mp3 or ogg or other non-DRM-crippled format, I would pay $1 just to save time. I don't know how they can do it with a P2P network though, but the underlying mechanism doesn't matter as long as I can get my songs faster.

I would love to buy my music off the iTunes Music Store

We're already there, but without Rhythmbox's clunky interface. amaroK already supports podcasts and iPods, while SharpMusique supports iTMS.

The site is here (no html hyperlink, copy and paste if you want):

nanocrew.net/?page_id=59

WTF?! it took you longer to type that disclaimer than it would have to wrap the link in html tags. Here, I'll do it:

nanocrew.net/?page_id=59

Download: nscdec.c (MD5: 7c81ca49bc68c2b8671d00f0cdf960e3)

His latest post has instructions on how to compile VLC with WMV3 support.

What I want to know is when VLC's going to get WMV3 (aka Windows Media Player 9) codec support on non-windows platforms. Our good friend Jon demonstrated it in November 2004, yet playing those files on a Mac was, for a long time, impossible and even now requires a paid for Quicktime plugin (only $10 or so, but even that took it's own sweet time to be released).

http://nanocrew.net/software/nscdec.c

"VLC should have NSC support in the near future."

Previous link Linus on /. is interesting.

>Linus Torvalds in a recent LKML posting:

Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

Quoted for truth.

"is better to work on creating something done right, or to object to it on moral grounds?"

Open-source developer support or not, I don't think it matters.

http://raop-play.sourceforge.net/ or http://nanocrew.net/?page_id=115

Almost correct. It can't (AFAIK) play WMV3 or IV50 on OSX though, which is damn annoying sometimes (I refuse to install Windows Media Player on my Mac). It looks like DVD Jon got WMV3 running in VLC on Linux back in November last year, but I still haven't seen a build anywhere for Linux or OSX that's actually being distributed.

You can skip the articles they don't tell you much other than what is in the Slashdot Summary. However, the blog entry has the code part on it. Here are all the articles including code entry...

Story:

Ryan Naraine - PC Magazine Tue Jun 28,10:49 AM ET

Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen has cracked the lock on Google's new in-browser video player.

Johansen, also known as 'DVD Jon' for his work on decrypting DVD security codes, has created a patch for the Google Video Viewer--less than 24 hours after the search giant shipped the video playback plug-in, a tool based on the open-source VideoLAN media player.

The patch, released on Johansen's 'So Sue Me' blog, effectively disables a modification Google made to the VideoLAN code to prevent users from playing videos that are not hosted on Google's servers.

Johansen said the patch, which requires the .Net run-time framework, will remove Google's restriction and allow the playback of video files that aren't on the video.google.com server.

The 21-year-old hacker, who faced two trials in Norway in 2002 and 2003 for his role in the release of the
DeCSS decryption software, is a hero to many for his efforts to defeat DRM (digital rights management) mechanisms built into media player technology.

He has been involved in a public cat-and-mouse game with Apple Inc., releasing several tools to bypass the DRM software used to encrypt music sold on the iTunes Music Store. LINK TO: PyMusique Unlocks iTunes Copy Protection. Again. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1779526 ,00.asp

Johansen has also cracked Apple's AirPort Express's encryption and released a proof-of-concept program that allows
Linux users to play video encoded with Microsoft's proprietary WMV9 codec. The proof-of-concept is based on the VideoLan code.

Addict3d.org more details:

Jon Lech Johansen, "DVD Jon", took just one day to build a crack to allow you to play video on your website using Google's VLC-based player.

This means you can publish video that will play on your webpage and will work for anyone who has Google's player installed.

Johansen, also known as 'DVD Jon' for his work on decrypting DVD security codes, has created a patch for the Google Video Viewer--less than 24 hours after the search giant shipped the video playback plug-in, a tool based on the open-source VideoLAN media player.

Crack can be found here -

http://nanocrew.net/wp-content/GVVPatch.exe

http://nanocrew.net/?p=114

Blog Entry:

Google has released Google Video Viewer, a browser plugin based on VLC. Here's one of the features they've added:

+ // Google mods
+ const char* allowed_host = \"video.google.com\";
+ char * host_found = strstr(p_sys->url.psz_host, allowed_host);
+ if ((host_found == NULL) ||
+ ((host_found + strlen(allowed_host)) !=
+ (p_sys->url.psz_host + strlen(p_sys->url.psz_host)))) {
+ msg_Warn( p_access, \"invalid host, only video.google.com is allowed\" );
+ goto error;
+ }

This "feature" prevents you from playing videos that are not hosted on Google's servers. Download and run this patch I wrote to remove this restriction. Running the patch requires a .NET runtime.