Slashdot Mirror
Cracking iTunes' DRM with JHymn
comforteagle writes "Howard Wen has interviewed 'FutureProof' of the JHymn project, a DRM removal application for iTunes song files laden, or 'crippled' as some say, to prevent filesharing. FutureProof tells us how Apple's DRM works, how to rip it out using JHymn, how they build on the work of 'DVD' Jon Johansen, and how to upgrade to that brand new iShuffle safely."
Manual for the Modern Slashdotter
Golden Rule: You must base your worldview entirely on Slashdot headlines. You must ignore the innaccuracy and editorial shortcomings of the Slashdot staff. You must buy into the groupthink of the comment threads. This is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE.
- Post the lamest, most obvious, and most unfunny jokes imaginable. They will be modded up "+5 Funny." Even Malda couldn't stand it any longer and made Funny mods not count toward karma.
- Everything involving Linux is flawless and perfect.
- Anything involving Mozilla is flawless and perfect. Ignore that Mozilla marks security flaws as "confidential" and keeps them secret. Ignore that this is something Microsoft is endlessly bashed for. Ignore that Firefox has had several severe security flaws, especially for a browser used by so little of the market (1% according to Google Zeitgeist).
- Whenever someone has a criticism of the current moderation system, refer to Taco's "future moderation system."
- You must lean left. You must obsess over George W. Bush and make Bush jokes whenever possible, no matter how irrelevant to the topic. In political articles, you must upmod anti-Bush comments and downmod independent or pro-Bush comments. Use the "Overrated" moderator whenever possible. Remember, Taco is going to fix this in "the future moderation system."
- Use the term "FUD" religiously in everyday conversation. When someone puts out something that disagrees with your worldview, call it FUD matter-of-factly as a way to dismiss the points it raises. Demonization is far easier than debating the issues.
- Whenever Linux Torvalds says anything, it is newsworthy and infallible. Linus does not make mistakes. When he says he doesn't bother looking at the source code of competitors like Solaris [slashdot.org] because he's not interested, herald it as the "wonderful attitude of Linus" even though such a comment coming from a Microsoft employee would get flamed as an example of their arrogance and closed-minded attitude.
- Believe articles like "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," based entirely on the idea that Microsoft is evil because Windows is used by the government there. Ignore the fact that China has its own custom Linux distribution called Red Flag Linux. Slashdot is unbiased and holy.
- Ignore that Slashdot is corporate-owned, by a company called OSTG that employs Rob Malda and makes money off selling OSS products. Ignore the conflict of interests in running a "tech news" site that coincidentally posts articles critical of competitors. Ignore that if Microsoft owned a tech news site that did the same, it would be criticized for it.
- Pretend that Linux is ready for the desktop, even though it took you two hours to set up your soundcard, mouse scroll wheel, and 3D card. Ignore that the real reason you refuse to acknowledge that Linux sucks on the desktop is because you don't want to diminish your sense of accomplishment in getting it up and running. Make sure to confuse this sense of accomplishment with the feeling that you have "more control" in a Linux system compared to a Windows system.
- Pretend there's nothing wrong with endless submissions accepted from Roland Piquepaille, who makes several thousand thanks to Slashdot linking to his blog that links to the original article, rather than Slashdot just linking to the original article and cutting out the pointless middle-man. It's okay for Malda to shrug it off as though Slashdot should never consider ethics or morals.
Please redistribute this at will.
Way to go, mods! Give him an "overrated" because you're terrified of how persuasive he was. That way his opinions are silenced and you don't have to deal with the wrath of metamod.
It's an abuse of the mod system and it wouldn't be hard to fix. Just make it impossible to mod "overrated" anything which isn't rated at all. But you know how on top of things Slashdot is. We'll see Longhorn and Duke Nukem Forever long before we see this fixed.
What's troubling, and yet so typical for slashdot, is that the moderator both lacked the intellectual capacity and the intellectual integrity to argue the point. Totally lame.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.