The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘drm’

I was pretty bullish on the One Laptop Per Child program for quite some time, and even participated in the ‘Buy One Give One’ program.

Continued here: 
One Kindle per child: who are they helping?

Exciting news, people who watch TV! CNN will finally go fully HD sometime this spring! This is a great day for news junkies and people who constantly need to be reading a ticker. The network first launched its HD channel two years ago, but only programming emanating from its New York studios were done in HD; Atlanta- and D.C.-based programming was still in boring ol’ SD. But no more! Starting this spring, it’s HD 24 hours a day~! Among the shows that will gain several lines of resolution: Rick’s List with Rick “from the barrio” Sanchez.

More here:
CNN will finally go full HD this spring. Maybe we’ll see Rick Sanchez vs. East Side Dave in 720p?

After pre-selling 120,000 iPads last week, an Venezuelan analyst named Daniel Tello estimated that Apple iPad pre-sales fell to 1,000 per hour on Sunday. Tello believes that the first boost was all about “pure overexcited fanboism” and the demand will fall over the next week. To put this into perspective, however, I doubt any one Nokia phone sells 1,000 units an hour, let alone an untested, unseen device sold only in the American market

Read more here:
Sad clown: Some dude in Venezuela estimates that iPad orders dropped sharply this weekend

HP keeps the fun rolling with its MediaSmart Windows Home Servers. It’s called the HP MediaSmart Expander for TiVo, but don’t let the name fool you, it doesn’t directly increase your TiVo’s storage. The app, however, still has some nice features and might be a worthy replacement for the TiVo Desktop program.

Here is the original post:
HP MediaSmart Windows Home Servers gets a TiVo companion app

A Japanese robot manufacturer called BL Autotec has developed a remote-controlled robot hand [JP, PDF] that’s able to grip and turn doorknobs. Once connected to a emergency robot, it can safely open doors at disaster sites, for example in collapsed buildings without putting humans in danger.

Read the original post:
New emergency robot is wearable, opens doors at disaster sites

The Linux.com store is open for business! Nice looking shirts, hats, and onesies are available for Linux users of all ages.

See original here: 
Linux.com store adds more clothing options for your geek lifestyle

Exciting news about Apple’s iTunes LP : apparently it’s a bit of a bust! The fine folks at GigaOM had the foresight to talk to people in the music industry to ask them, six months on, how’s iTunes LP doing? Not so great, is the answer .

More:
The rise and fall of iTunes LP (cue dramatic music)

Right around the time the world’s financial markets started to collapse, back in 2008, RealNetworks, the folks behind RealPlayer, released RealDVD . It was a short-lived piece of software that made making DVD movie backups fairly painless— too painless for Hollywood, which immediately took RealNetworks to court, claiming all sorts of copyright infringement hokum

The rest is here:
RealNetworks settles RealDVD lawsuit: Has to cough up $4.5 million, stop supporting the software

In theory there would be a huge advantage to having a bookstore that was not locked to one device. Historically the music industry was caught on the hop when Apple launched the iPod. Because it could play MP3s the iPod was the perfect companion to the Napsters/Kazaas of this world. That was a business for Apple, but not for the music industry, which later found itself locked into the the Apple store. Eventually online stores started offering DRM-free MP3s for sale, but as we know, the slow-to-react music industry has not recovered since.

The same is true of books. Why lock down books to one device? But of course Amazon is trying to do exactly this with the Kindle. So it makes sense then to disrupt them faster, with a service which syncs across platforms and devices. Step forward Kobo Books.

Kobo is a cloud-based book store, previously only available in the US but today launching in the UK in a first push into Europe.

Looks like Apple didn’t learn its lesson with the whole iTunes DRM thing. I suppose that they might consider some things worth DRM-ing and some not, but I think it’s more along the lines of they’ll do it whenever they think they can get away with it.

Originally posted here:
Apple’s e-books to br fettered by our old friend, FairPlay DRM