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Microsoft Reader Format Cracked
Anonymous Coward writes "Pocket PC Addict has a cool story about how some guy named Dan Jackson is distributing an unfortunately named program that will remove the security from Microsoft Reader ebooks. Once the security is removed, it then allows the book to be converted to html, text or any other format."
Betting pool. I predict that the DMCA takedown notice will occur 34 hours from the first posting of this story on ./
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
e-Books are one of the last remnants of the Internet hype. People already discovered that you can easily copy the contents of the e-book displayer window. There was a story on /. about a company or a person that wrote a program to automagically copy a whole e-book that way. I can imagine that MS will sue this guy but that will only be one more example of the stupidity of the DMCA.
-- Cheers!
from the article:
Other Internet hackers have already captured this code and provided a Windows 9x front-end that illiminates the need to know and understand command-line functions. This addition is called cuntlits.exe and contains nude buttons and offensive language.
I have no problem with nudity or offensive language, but all in proper context. The above paragraph just makes the whole thing sound like a stupid joke.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
LOL
then one would expect that you would read the frucking article and know that the guy says he didn't write it !
"One of the people I met while MUD'ing suggested that since I live in the UK, I could act as an agent for programmers who wish to remain anonymous but still want to release their software. "
Plus no-one's not cracked a program, someone has cracked the file DRM level so that data files can be converted.
It gets better.
"The way the laws are now, it's safer for someone to rape a 5-year-old boy and admit it then to crack a program."
Pure hype. Do you read the Daily Mail by any chance?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Any form of media that goes via light or sound is impossible to protect. All you can do is play cat and mouse but in the end that is to expensive, both to the companes and the customers purchasing the products. I think most companies know this but they havent figured out how to stop widespread pirating.
One good start would be to NOT alienate customers and make it feel better to pay for the goods. That ofcourse means reasonable prices and good customer relationsships. Social protection is the only thing that helps fighting pirates in the long run.
Start working on getting better PR and treat people nicer. Work with tha customers in getting better products instead of fighting them all tooth and nail. Make it shameful to fool those nice media companies. Then pirates will exist but at a much much lower scale.
HTTP/1.1 400
Democracy comes from two Greek root words, Demos, the people, and kratein, to rule or be strong. The idea is, the majority decide what goes. Is this actually any different from "mob rule"? Or is "mob rule" an idea put about by those in power who have a vested interest in seeing that the people do not in fact rule?
The Athenian democratic system allowed all citizens to vote on all laws - granted, their cities were smaller then & their definition of a citizen was basically a free, able-bodied male who would fight for the city if it was attacked, but these days we have the technology to enable the much larger numbers of citizens in our cities to all vote. Remember also that the ability to vote doesn't neccessarily mean the voter will vote either - they'll tend to vote only on matters that concern them directly, much as US Senators and UK MPs do now, but at least then we'd have proper democracy - rule of the people by the people, instead of rule/(mis)representation of the people by a privileged minority.
I purchased an eBook that I downloaded from bn.com from one of my favourite authors. It was a Microsoft eBook, in .lit format. I didn't get a chance to read it right away, and about a week or so later when I went to open it, the MS reader software told me that I didn't have rights to open the book!
This was a book that I had *paid* for. I paid $8 for the book, and it was only available in this format, as the author (who lost a lot of credibilty in my view) only released the book in that format. Imagine, after paying for it, that I wasn't allowed to read it!! It has been on my girlfriend's computer now for six months, and I should now be able to read it, finally.
But what if this program hadn't come along? I would have had to call MS tech support to figure out why it was that their program was denying me the right to read a book I purchased. Can you imagine having to do that for every book you wait a week to read?
No, this is not a troll - it is a true story. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this happen, either. And before you say "You should have read it right then and there..." - I had purchased physical books that I read first. Besides, I should be able to read it at my convenience - clearly something the format wouldn't let me do.
libertarianswag.com
Actually that isn't quite true. Under the Athenian system of government, a lottery was drawn every few years where approximately 5000 of the citizens of Athens were selected to be the governing body. This governing body met regularly (and its members were paid to attend) so that they could pass legislation by popular consent. Although this true democracy does depend on the desire of the majority, its structure of representative governance holds a key difference. Such a system is, however, not what we think of as democracy today, as it is too much a pure implementation.
Additionally, the definitian of an Athenian citizen was not as altruistic as merly being loyal and able to fight for Athens, rather, to be a citizen elegible to take part in the governance of the city-state, one must have both of their parents be Athenian citizens.
The more accurate consideration when examining democracy of today would be to look to Rousseau or Locke, both philosophers of the 17th century. Under Rousseau's model, upon which much of the US system today was based, the body politic is ruled by the desire of the collective body not for individual gain but rather the good of the people as a whole. This is substantially different from mob rule in which each individual acts rashly for their own benifit.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
his homepage
download page for gui
follow the discussion in:
alt.binaries.e-book
alt.binaries.e-book.d
alt.binaries.warez.pocketpc.lit
some have claimed that the macro posted here broke lit a long time ago, not so. It only worked on unprotected lits (if copy/paste was disabled in the reader, it wouldn't work.
This is better in the sense that it will work with secure lits that have copy disabled. Also it retains all formatting (exporting to html) while the previous script could only capture text (and poorly at that)
The one major limitation is that you must be able to view the lit on your computer. If your copy of ms reader can't open the file, neither can this program
Surely though in this age of education for all, where there are publicly funded schools, cheaply available newspapers and 24 hour news coverage, with freedom of the press & of speech, there's more reason than ever to assume everyone voting has at least adequate means of understanding the issues.
I'm not so sure. Anyone who makes a habit of reading the Guardian has pretty much abandoned any claim they might have had on independent, rational thought - but fortunately, so has anyone who makes a habit of reading the Daily Mail, and the two groups should hopefully cancel each other out. But two equal and opposite groups of idiots don't equal one larger group of sensible decision-makers.
Parliament has bungled so many times, they cannot truly be regarded as experts in rule. What, then, is the value in handing the controls over your life to a group of people who will only ask your opinion on things every few years, and whose interests rarely coincide with yours? Surely that's as unstable as running things yourself directly?
I'm basically a libertarian, with a bit of plutocrat and a bit of timocrat. My basic political belief is in the absolute minimum of government, and that decisions about spending public money should be made by the people who paid the money, not those who receive it. I consider New Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems to be no different from one another - they differ only on the details, all three are about government controlling every aspect of a citizen's life, supported by heavy taxation.
There need to be hard limits on what a government can and cannot regulate, but as we have seen in the US, a Constitution isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The British House of Lords is a good thing, IMHO, because those people plan in terms of their grandchildren, not in terms of the next election. Anyone desiring to become a professional politican has automatically disqualified themselves.
What we really need are a small group of civil servants to administer the country, but with no direct political power, and the political power to rest in the hands of people who are already accomplished in their own professions, and who can only serve one term. Perhaps politicians should be randomly chosen from a pool of people who have taken courses in history, economics, etc. The current system, i.e. "I'm voting the way I've always done" or "I'll vote for that Tony Blair, he's got a nice smile" is fundamentally broken, and will collapse under its own weight if it isn't destroyed by the libertarian-plutocrats beforehand.
What about a cam pointed at the monitor? Either from the same computer or another one? Or just videotape separately as the ebook scrolls by, then have some ocr software decode it.
I'm just having a hard time figuring out how ebooks will ever enjoy the same "practical" protection that wood books do.
Er, if you need to take a visual of the text and then process it, the ebook DOES have the same "practical" protection that wood books do.
A sharp knife and a sheet-fed scanner will get you an electronic format of your book in no time flat.
IMHO this program originated in the US, was exported to the UK, changed, and (re)published.
Correct, except for the "changed" part. It's the same old US version that was posted on an anonymous server first.
This is going to end like the DeCSS debacle: the real author is going to remain anonymous, and the unlucky bastard who hoped to become famous by putting it on his website is going to be dragged though the mud (or sued for "writing" it).
Ooh! Ooh! I've got another one! Imagine a mountainous island nation, with limited farmland, an inhospitable climate, and primitive agricultural technology. The only way to survive is by forming small communities, and preserving the copmmon good at all costs. Failure to sacrifice individual freedoms for communal welfare results in death--not just for the individual, but for the community that supports that individual in spite of such uncooperativeness. Anyone who doesn't put the community ahead of themselves is exiled, and almost certainly doomed to die during the next harsh winter (and all the winters are harsh, on this island). This makes perfect sense, since everyone has the liberty to live like an individual. The only restriction is that they also get to die like an individual. The communities, meanwhile, thrive and grow, and technology advances, and one day the community can afford the luxury of individual liberties. This is, of course, after many generations of eschewing those liberties in favor of communal well-being.
Are these people giving up their liberties because they're delusional, or because they're clear-headed pragmatists? Is the extreme individualist truly any more laudable than the extreme conformist?
Edmund Burke's statement is absolute (note the use of the word "never"), and therefore logically unsound. It is also, I think, provably untrue.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.