DRM for WMA has existed since Win ME. Currently, there are 3 or 4 online music stores selling DRM WMA files. Napster's subscription model allows unlimited amounts of music as long as you pay your monthly fee. Top it off with a group of people who spend all their free time hating microsoft and would love to embaress them. Yet their DRM hasn't been cracked yet. That's not to say it will last forever, but you might be underestimating them.
FWIW, this PlayFair utility doesn't crack the DRM. It decodes/re-encodes the AAC file, same as the 2 previous FairPlay hacks, but more automated, and not much different than burning to a CD and re-ripping.
So what will playfair do for you? The playfair program is quite simple. It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File
Do Rio, DAP, etc. play AAC/mp4? Anyhow, this isn't anything new, just slightly more convenient. You could use iTunes to burn a DRM file to CD and re-rip as mp3 (or aac) since day one.
actually, you can give up the right to sue. Almost all contracts with banks, credit cards, brokerages, etc. have a clause that, in the event of a dispute, you agree to use arbitration rather than filing a lawsuit.
That nitpick aside, it is refreshing to see an occasional slashdot poster who has some idea of what contract law is and isn't.
Re:they don't need that much disk space
on
Speculating About Gmail
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Also, most headers are standard (From:, Subject:, etc) so they could be tokenized down to 1 byte.
I would love to see that happen. However, like most people, federal (and state) taxes are deducted automatically before I'm even paid. I believe that's required by law.
If every company in a state would refuse to play along, it would be interesting.
Too true. Look at the post-9/11 airlines security. They have a DB of known/potential terrorists. If you happen to have the same name, you're fucked. The official suggestion from the feds is to have your name changed.
California's deadbeat dad database is just as bad. If you have the same name as a deadbeat dad, you're fucked.
The company I work for has millions in the bank and millions in revenue every year. They employ (pay) a few thousand poor people. Most companies are like that.
Or maybe you only meant wealthy people. How many wealthy people do you know that live in a studio apartment and hoard all their money? All the wealthy people I know spend money just like you or me, except even more so. However, most of their purchaes are luxury items (as opposed to necesseties). They have the extra money, so they buy gold-plated faucets for their home instead of stainless steel. Or they buy a new BMW/Lexus every 2 years instead of a cadillac every 5 years.
PS - housing shortages and ridiculous house prices are almost always caused by state/local gov't limiting new housing development.
PPS - lower classes aren't excited about tax cuts because they don't pay any income tax to begin with.
The feds usually can't directly tell a state what to do, but they control the purse strings. If your state doesn't have the recommended speed limits or recommended BAC for DUI they don't get highway funds. If they don't follow the "No Child Left Behind" (and other) guidelines, they don't receive educational funds.
The AMT was designed to catch rich people that paid nothing via taxes. However, due to inflation and an increase in other tax credits, most of the damage is on upper middle class folks.
Most rich people already pay so much in taxes that the AMT doesn't apply to them. (A lot of deductions phase out at higher incomes, and the AMT is designed to catch people with too many deductions).
However, if you're middle class and have high deductions from property taxes, medical expenses, etc, or if you cashed in stock options but held on to the stock after the crash, you're fucked.
The tax cuts from the last couple of years actually increased the number of people affected by the AMT since it increased the amount of deductions people can take. Of course, the AMT brings in lots of stealth revenue, so it won't likely be overhauled until every middle class taxpayer is affected.
illegal purchases wouldn't be taxed. However, the money enters back into the legal world sooner or later to buy legitimate goods. It would be taxed at that point.
People are already encouraged to save via tax-free retirement plans (401s, IRAs) and lower taxes on dividends and long term capital gains. Those haven't reduced the amount of stuff people buy.
Anyhow, why do you think people save money? So they can spend it later.
back in 1991 or so, Gearge HW Bush and the Democrats imposed a luxury tax on yachts and other expensive stuff. The tax was repealed the next year since rich people stopped buying yachts, or bought them down in the caribean for less.
The state I live in has no sales tax on clothing items less than $100 or food items in order to alleviate the regressive nature of a sales tax.
Of course, if people really were concerned about sales tax being regressive, they wouldn't tax alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are disproportionately used by poor people.
gov't regulation is an entity unto itself. Why? Everytime gov't regulates something, they interfere with market conditions and almost always have an uninteded consequence (aka gov't failure). The result is more and more gov't regulation to correct the problems imposed by gov't regulation.
There is, in fact, a corporate death penalty. Remember Arthur Andersen accounting? They were convicted of obstruction of justice. The punishment was corporate dissolution.
KMart went bankrupt. Am I liable because I didn't shop there?
MCI/Worldcom went bankrupt. Am I liable because I didn't use MCI?
If (when) SCO goes bankrupt, will it be our fault for not using UnixWare (and paying our $699 linux fees)?
Companies survive and prosper because they provide a good or service people are willing to pay for. If they can't manage to do that, it's ultimately their own responsibility.
How about doing something original, like weirdo moderation ("insightful" becomes "no shit", interesting becomes "word up", etc). or announce that slashdot will now be requiring all posters to subscribe in order to post comments, or "Kathleen Fent, please divorce rob and marry me!" posted by Hemos.
I agree. I used to fool around in hypercard and enjoyed looking at other people's hypercard creation. It was a good introduction to programming, as you could usually see how a stack was made and easily test/modify what the script did.
Pudge won't miss HyperCard, CmdrTaco thinks the iPod is lame. At least Jon Katz got fired.
maybe they should spend less time adding new functions that don't work and fix up php's speed issues? Everytime php serves a page, it must parse the file, do syntax checking, convert it to bytecode, then interpret it. It should compile it to bytecode once and just run the bytecode. Perl, C#/.Net, jsp, csp, etc. all work that way, that's one reason they're serious languages for web devlopment and php is a toy.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, this PlayFair utility doesn't crack the DRM. It decodes/re-encodes the AAC file, same as the 2 previous FairPlay hacks, but more automated, and not much different than burning to a CD and re-ripping.
So what will playfair do for you? The playfair program is quite simple. It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File
Do Rio, DAP, etc. play AAC/mp4? Anyhow, this isn't anything new, just slightly more convenient. You could use iTunes to burn a DRM file to CD and re-rip as mp3 (or aac) since day one.
That nitpick aside, it is refreshing to see an occasional slashdot poster who has some idea of what contract law is and isn't.
Also, most headers are standard (From:, Subject:, etc) so they could be tokenized down to 1 byte.
If every company in a state would refuse to play along, it would be interesting.
California's deadbeat dad database is just as bad. If you have the same name as a deadbeat dad, you're fucked.
Or maybe you only meant wealthy people. How many wealthy people do you know that live in a studio apartment and hoard all their money? All the wealthy people I know spend money just like you or me, except even more so. However, most of their purchaes are luxury items (as opposed to necesseties). They have the extra money, so they buy gold-plated faucets for their home instead of stainless steel. Or they buy a new BMW/Lexus every 2 years instead of a cadillac every 5 years.
PS - housing shortages and ridiculous house prices are almost always caused by state/local gov't limiting new housing development.
PPS - lower classes aren't excited about tax cuts because they don't pay any income tax to begin with.
The feds usually can't directly tell a state what to do, but they control the purse strings. If your state doesn't have the recommended speed limits or recommended BAC for DUI they don't get highway funds. If they don't follow the "No Child Left Behind" (and other) guidelines, they don't receive educational funds.
Most rich people already pay so much in taxes that the AMT doesn't apply to them. (A lot of deductions phase out at higher incomes, and the AMT is designed to catch people with too many deductions).
However, if you're middle class and have high deductions from property taxes, medical expenses, etc, or if you cashed in stock options but held on to the stock after the crash, you're fucked.
The tax cuts from the last couple of years actually increased the number of people affected by the AMT since it increased the amount of deductions people can take. Of course, the AMT brings in lots of stealth revenue, so it won't likely be overhauled until every middle class taxpayer is affected.
People are already encouraged to save via tax-free retirement plans (401s, IRAs) and lower taxes on dividends and long term capital gains. Those haven't reduced the amount of stuff people buy.
Anyhow, why do you think people save money? So they can spend it later.
The state I live in has no sales tax on clothing items less than $100 or food items in order to alleviate the regressive nature of a sales tax.
Of course, if people really were concerned about sales tax being regressive, they wouldn't tax alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are disproportionately used by poor people.
some ideas suck. In fact, a LOT of ideas suck.
Water cooling!
have you ever heard of a tax being repealed (canadian or not)?
Real Audio has been renting music for about half a year now... has anyone cracked them? (other than capturing the raw audio stream).
gov't regulation is an entity unto itself. Why? Everytime gov't regulates something, they interfere with market conditions and almost always have an uninteded consequence (aka gov't failure). The result is more and more gov't regulation to correct the problems imposed by gov't regulation.
There is, in fact, a corporate death penalty. Remember Arthur Andersen accounting? They were convicted of obstruction of justice. The punishment was corporate dissolution.
KMart went bankrupt. Am I liable because I didn't shop there?
MCI/Worldcom went bankrupt. Am I liable because I didn't use MCI?
If (when) SCO goes bankrupt, will it be our fault for not using UnixWare (and paying our $699 linux fees)?
Companies survive and prosper because they provide a good or service people are willing to pay for. If they can't manage to do that, it's ultimately their own responsibility.
How about doing something original, like weirdo moderation ("insightful" becomes "no shit", interesting becomes "word up", etc). or announce that slashdot will now be requiring all posters to subscribe in order to post comments, or "Kathleen Fent, please divorce rob and marry me!" posted by Hemos.
Unless you're a girl. In that case, you'd be a "resident of Arkansas".
Pudge won't miss HyperCard, CmdrTaco thinks the iPod is lame. At least Jon Katz got fired.
no, he's saying putty and cygwin are 2 essential things to make windows usable, not that putty needs cygwin.
maybe they should spend less time adding new functions that don't work and fix up php's speed issues? Everytime php serves a page, it must parse the file, do syntax checking, convert it to bytecode, then interpret it. It should compile it to bytecode once and just run the bytecode. Perl, C#/.Net, jsp, csp, etc. all work that way, that's one reason they're serious languages for web devlopment and php is a toy.
It's only "free" if you don't mind turbotax knowing the details of your finances.