The DRM Fight Continues

In an important volley some hack programmers released a tool called FairUse4WM which strips the protection from music files that have digital rights protection embedded.  There point is that if they paid to download the music, they should be able to listen to it in any medium they choose and rights management restricts that.  This is of course, a totally bogus argument, but the software is nifty if illegal.

In response, Microsoft patched the rights management software to not allow this.  Supposedly.

I in no way condone the stealing of music.  This is an important lesson however, that whatever one person can create, another can destroy.

All-You-Can-Watch TV

Finally a true all-you-can-watch deal from broadcast provider.  DirecTV is offering a new package called Titanium that gives you every channel, every pay-per-view, every movie, every sports package, everything they broadcast all for one fixed fee.

The cost for this feast of the senses? $7500 a year or about $625 a month.

To help you handle that much content, they provide up to 10 DVRs for your pad and 24/7 concierge service.  I'm not really sure what the concierge service might include. For this price tag I'm not sure I want to know either.

What about you? Interested?

Playing on the Plane

This past weekend, while stuck in a tin can at 30,000 feet, I had some time to kill.  Never one to waste a moment (who am I kidding?) I took the opportunity to familiarize myself with the workings of the new Sony Vegas Platinum.  So far, it's one of the coolest video editing tools I've ever used, and I have used more than a few.

Check out what a few minutes of screwing around will get you:

• High Quality (~38 Mbs)
• Medium Quality (~20 Mbs)
• Low Quality (~9 Mbs)

Okay, so it was more than a few minutes, but definitely less than a couple of hours. Now that I know what's possible and how easy it is to create these, I just might have to get my creative juices flowing and kick out a few more. Heaven knows I've got plenty of video that is just waiting for that special treatment.

Further and Further Downhill

An interesting tidbit was compiled by a tech site today (ARS Technica) that Microsoft is intentionally limiting the number of XBox 360 consoles that will be available. You can check out the article here. It just keeps on getting better and better...