As you know from a previous post, we’ve been struggling through the process of buying our first home.
At approx 12:00pm today, we became the owners(*) of our own home!!!!!
Please feel free to pop around, no invite required, just give us a call to make sure we’re home (as if we wouldn’t be) and that the kids aren’t chucking a wobbly….
(*) Technically speaking the bank owns the house and are letting us live here while we pay them an enormous amount of money 🙂
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I read a couple of articles today, here and here detailing plans by four of the major studios to pressure Apple to tighten the restrictions in Apples "FairPlay" DRM as it applies to movie content.
Currently, as with music, you can authorize five computers to play content purchased by you and also download it to an unlimited number of iPods.
It is worth noting at this point that for music you can burn the content to a CD for playback in a standard cd player, you cannot however burn video content in any form other than as protected files on a data DVD for backup purposes.
Now, with the "unlimited iPods" scenario you have to basically wipe the iPod and sync it with your collection, so you can copy the files to a friends iPod but at the expensive of wiping their collection off. When they next sync their iPod with their own collection, your content will be removed and replaced with theirs. I believe they can copy the video into their collection, but, without your authorizing their machine ( and using up one of your five slots ), they will not be able to play it on their computer.
Now, to me, this seems to afford a sufficient level of control over distribution of video content, the studios disagree and want Apple to limit the number of iPods that can have the content downloaded to 5!!!
For the consumer this isn’t really going to be a problem, I mean, who has 5 iPods anyway??
What shits me about this is that the additional restriction is likely to do bugger all in the grand scheme of things but could have the potential to make the iPod/iTunes experience less pleasant and more complex for the consumer. Apple would have to include some way to deauthorize iPods, including deauthorizing lost/broken devices, as well so you don’t have problems with dud or old iPods using up your five slots. This means valuable engineering time at Apple wasted on adding complexity to a system that already works well and affords reasonable control over content that could otherwise be spent on new products or features…..
How long until we have mandatory MPAA/RIAA approved implants in our heads that make sure we pay for every use of every piece of their content…..
You may laugh, but I’m sure they would jump at the chance if the technology existed….
Technorati Tags: Apple, DRM, Movie, Piracy
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Last week the boys reached another milestone, we enrolled them in the local Daycare centre, which just happens to be across the road from our new house 🙂
We expected tears and tantrums when we dropped them off but were happily disappointed… Seth ran straight to a quiet corner and started playing with some toys and Cal wandered around looking for mischief.
When we picked them up at the end of the day, they were happily playing but were quite content to head on home with us.
We have them in care 2 days a week now which gives Viv a much welcomed break as well as providing the boys with opportunities to socialise with other kids. The experience has been great so far with the only downside being the cost, approx $50 / day / child.
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As some of you are no doubt aware we have, for the last few months, been working through the process of buying our first house.
Two weeks ago we moved into the new place, we’re paying the current owners rent for the rest of the settlement period.
We formally take ownership of the place in 8 days, and counting…
The process has been long, arduous and frustrating, but the prize makes it well worth the trouble.
Here is a picture of the place.
With a bit of luck we will be able to put down roots and settle in for a while.
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I know I’m starting rather late but I decided to show my support for "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" by changing my site to something a little more pink.
Please donate some money if you can, it’s such a worthy cause. |
My friends are doubtless tired of hearing me whine about the ridiculous amount of power that the content providers and their muscle, the RIAA & MPAA, have over us, the consumers.
We seem to be heading down a path where our use of content that we have purchased is being more and more tightly constrained and any concept of "fair use" seems to be going out the window.
Look at DVDs, until "DVD Jon" and friends brought out DeCSS, if you were using Linux and had a DVD drive in your machine then you were shit out of luck because there was no software on Linux that would allow the playback of DVD content.
Now, you have presumably purchased the DVD and a DVD drive, but, due to licensing issues you could not legally make use of the disc….
Now with the next-gen HD formats we have HDCP, which mandates that a secure, encrypted path must exist between the "player" and the "display device" in order to play full high-definition content. Too friggin’ bad if you own a high-def TV that doesn’t support HDCP, too bad if your computer has a graphics card that doesn’t support HDCP (mind you HDCP video cards are only just coming out now).
All of this crap is due to the absolute, gut wrenching, paranoia that the content companies have over piracy.
I just read a story about 32bit Windows Vista being forced to disable full HD playback due to concerns by our content overlords that there are too many security holes in 32bit windows to be sure that no program is sniffing the video stream on its way to the display.
Now Microsoft have gone to great lengths to implement HDCP in windows and even then that is not good enough!!!!!
So what will happen is that people wanting to use Vista to play HD content will have to use 64bit Windows which means they need to buy a new 64bit CPU, say a Core 2 Duo or AMD64 and of course a new motherboard, maybe new RAM depending on their current system, perhaps a new power supply…
Screw it, just buy a whole new PC.
All in the name of Piracy!!!!
The scary thing is that Piracy seems to justify anything in the consumer space in much the same way as Terrorism is used to justify anything in the legal/political sphere…… Think about it….
NOTE: For the less internet savvy readers, Pwned is not a typo…
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In my previous post I mentioned that I was selling my PSP and K700i to fund the purchase of a new toy!!
Those of you who remember me buying the PSP, know that it was primarily intended for watching videos, in particular TV Shows downloaded from the Internet.
The PSP plays video quite well BUT you have to convert the video to a format that is acceptable to the PSP, this is quite doable with one of many packages freely available on the Internet, but it’s a pain in the ass.
The other problem is that I only have a 1GB Memory stick in the PSP so space is really limited. The PSP has no output options other than staring at the screen.
Now, the new toy is the Topfield TFP20 PMP, a long winded name indeed.
This wicked little doo-dad is primarily a media player, here is the info from Topfield Australia’s website.
PORTABLE MEDIA PLAYER with Widescreen LCD, holds up to: 400hrs of Movies, 10,000 Songs, 100,000 photo’s or 10million E-book pages. Record directly from your TV or CD player, you can even set a timer record like a PVR. Connects direct to your Digital Camera or USB Memory stick via USB OTG Host. Small enough to fit in your pocket.
and here is the feature list
These puppies retail for ~ $800 but I am getting this at a bargin price due to my employers close ties to Topfield.
Now I will be able to bring episodes of my favourite shows to friends places and watch them on the TV instead of the PC, Mr B, this means you!!!
I expect the new toy to arrive today or tomorrow, expect more info then….
technorati tags:Topfield, tfp20
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Man I hate these Nigerian 419 scammers, on the weekend I (well, really Viv) listed my PSP and my old Sony-Ericsson K700i, in both cases we received a request for a “Buy it now” price, we decided to put one on. A little later both items were snapped up for the buy it now price by people in….. Have a guess!!!!
Nigeria
And of course in both cases they wanted to pay by direct deposit so they needed us to send them our full address and bank details. Now this info alone is not too helpful, and, as we allow direct deposit for local buyers our bank details are already available in the listing.
I said to Viv, I bet if we continue with the sale they will say something like
“I am having trouble getting my bank to send the payment, can you give me your drivers licence number or passport number to confirm the details”, and then you can watch as your bank account is mysteriously sucked dry….
Of course we relisted the items without a buy it now price and moved on, but what a pain in the ass…
I said to Viv, imagine if the buyer was some poor bastard who really lives in Nigeria and is continutally frustrated by his inability to buy anything on Ebay 🙂
More info on the reason for flogging my toys later…
technorati tags:PSP, K700i, Nigeria, 419, Scam
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I don’t post often enough about two of the most important people in my life…
"The Boys"
Seth’s speech has really started to take off, he still rambles alot and most of it makes no sense at all, but, when he wants to say something he is very clear. We’ve been working on manners, so now when you give him a drink he says "Thank you Mummy" or "Thank you Daddy" as appropriate, the thank you sounds more like "et tu" but it’s getting close.
When Seth is watching TV and the News finishes he says "Bye News" in a clear and audible way.
When I get home from work he runs to the door to let me in calling "Daddy’s Home" as he goes. It melts your heart let me tell you.
I can ask him to do things like clean up his toys or hand him something and ask him to give it to Mummy or to Callum and have a reasonable expectation of him doing it…
Seth spun me out on the weekend, I was in the lounge and he was sitting on the floor next to me and I heard him clearly saying "KMart", I looked around and he had a receipt in his hand from KMart. I took the receipt from him and asked him "what is this?", he pointed straight at the KMart logo and said "KMart", Viv has repeated the test with a Coles receipt and another KMart receipt and he got them both right.
Callum is getting ready to start walking, he will stand upright for 10-15 secs at a time and take 2 or 3 consecutive steps. He’s saying Mummy and Daddy all the time now but not a lot else as yet.
Callum is just a crazy bundle of joy, in the morning when you go to get him out of bed he is always standing up in the cot, as soon as he sees you he starts bouncing up and down laughing and smiling so much that you think his face will split in half.
On the other hand though when he’s upset or sick he has a scream that can curdle your blood, Viv calls him "Little Feral" and I think she’s right on the money.
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I’ve been playing around with VoIP for a while at home to try and cut down the size of our phone bills.
When I signed up with iiNet I got the Belkin F1PI241ENau which is an ADSL2+ Router/ATA, I found it to be quite ordinary as an ATA, one thing in particular pissed me off and that was the fact that although you can (in theory) configure the two phone ports to access two different VoIP accounts, you can in fact only use two accounts with the same VoIP provider!!
The Belkin died a few months ago in a storm so I replaced it with a ZyXel 660RU ADSL2+ modem without VoIP functionality.
A little later I picked up a ZyXel P-2002/L ATA which was almost identical featurewise to the ATA functionality in the Belkin, except that
1) The phone ports can indeed be totally independent with respect to VoIP provider
2) The PSTN overide code (this allows you to dial a prefix to force the call to go to PSTN) actually works
Unfortunately all was not smooth sailing with the ZyXel, I still got random drop outs from the VoIP provider, I tried two and had problems with both. A little reading on whirlpool led me to a post from a guy who claimed to only be able to get reliable performance from his ZyXel when he used it to talk to an Asterisk machine. I had been thinking of playing with Asterisk but didn’t have a compelling reason to until now.
Rather than hand roll an Asterisk setup I looked around and found Trixbox (formerly Asterisk @ Home), this is a purpose built distro that installs a fully working Asterisk setup with AMP (Asterisk Management Panel, a nice web based configuration system for Asterisk), the Flash Operator Panel, Sugar CRM etc
The distro was a piece of piss to install and getting a basic setup running took a little over an hour.
I have had this running for nearly a month now and the results are excellent, I have had virtually no trouble with it and only lost connectivity twice, once from the VoIP provider being down and once from an internet outage.
I would highly recommend anyone with an inclination towards propeller headedness 🙂 give it a go.
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