Steve Jobs: Apple would embrace DRM-free music downloads

In an unusual open letter, Steve Jobs (founder and CEO of Apple, Inc.) writes about the current state of legal music download services.

He starts off by explaining why music download services (including Apple's own iTunes Store) apply digital rights management (DRM) data to downloaded music. As you are probably aware, this isn't because Apple wants to be mean, but because the record companies (that hold the copyrights on the music) demand it. He says that Apple's contract requires strong DRM, and that if the DRM is broke, Apple must quickly fix it or the record labels can withdraw their entire catalog from the store.

This was news to me. I know the record labels require strong DRM, but it hadn't occurred to me that Apple's store can be completely shut down if a third party breaks the DRM in a way that Apple can't fix. I wonder if other music stores (like Microsoft's Zune store, or the numerous WMA-download stores) have similar terms on their licenses.

Jobs then proceeds to explain three possible futures for DRM content.

The first possible future, is to leave everything as it is. While many critics claim that this is a "lock-in", forcing iTunes Store customers to buy iPods, and forcing iPod customers to buy from the iTunes Store, Jobs points out several facts that contradict this:

• iPods can play several non-protected formats, including MP3 and AAC.
• The overwhelming majority of music on iPods is not purchased from the iTunes store. (Most is ripped from legally-purchased CDs.) It's hardly a lock-in if the majority of music on iPods is not restricted, and only a small percentage is restricted.

Jobs doesn't mention a third fact - that Apple's DRM allows customers to burn CDs with the purchased music. These CDs can be ripped into a non-DRM format, which can be played on any computer or portable player. So even iTunes purchases can be made portable, although with some degradation in quality.

The second possible future Jobs describes is an open-DRM standard. Specifically, he addresses those critics that want Apple's "FairPlay" DRM to become an open standard. So multiple stores can sell FairPlay tracks, and so non-Apple music players can play those tracks.

Jobs points out that Apple has a difficult time right now, meeting their contractual obligations to the record companies. FairPlay DRM has been broken a few times. Apple has repaired the damage by simultaneously updating the iTunes Store, the iTunes client software, and the iPod firmware. This coordinated effort is not easy to get right. It would be virtually impossible to coordinate this across dozens of music stores and dozens of music player manufacturers.

On top of all this, DRM systems all use secrets (encryption algorithms, encryption keys, etc.) When these secrets are shared among dozens of corporations, leaks to the outside world will be inevitable, undermining the entire concept.

Either of these scenarios (undermining DRM, or failure to quickly distribute updates) would result in the record labels shutting down music stores, which definitely would not be in the public interest. (Jobs also points out how even Microsoft is moving from an open DRM standard, "plays for sure" to a closed one on the Zune.)

Finally, Jobs proposes the third solution - eliminate DRM altogether. I am a proponent of this, and I know a lot of other people who are too. I was, however, shocked and awed that the CEO of Apple proposed it as a serious alternative.

He points out several facts that are well known, but seem to be ignored by the record labels that demand DRM from on-line services:

• 90% of music purchased is on CD, which has no DRM. Putting DRM on the 10% that is downloaded does nothing to prevent piracy, because the pirates can simply buy CDs.
• DRM is expensive and difficult to develop, implement, and maintain.
• DRM restricts consumer freedom
• DRM makes it hard for new players to enter the music-player and music-reseller markets.

Jobs then points out that most of the clamor for Apple to open up FairPlay is coming from Europe. Most of the record industry (the ones demanding DRM) are European (Universal/Vivendi is French, EMI is British, Sony/BMG is 50% German). Jobs suggests that European governments direct their pressure at the record labels, to eliminate DRM requirements altogether.

Finally, Jobs states that if the record companies will support DRM-free music downloads, "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly." This still amazes me.

I don't know if the record companies will ever wise up and realize that DRM is a waste of time and money (the way the software industry briefly understood the same about copy protection), but if anybody can convince them, it is Steve Jobs. Let's hope he can pull it off.

Colorado Governor: PETA "A Bunch Of Losers," "Frauds"

Just in case you thought PETA might actually believe their rhetoric, read the above article.

Thousands of cows and other animals are freezing and starving to death in Colorado, due to the massive snowstorms they have been having recently.

When asked if they would do anything to help these animals, PETA spokespeople said they would not. With respect to the cattle, they said it would be pointless to save animals destined to be eaten. With respect to wild animals, they declared it an "act of God" and chose to do nothing.

In other words, PETA only cares about animals when they are being used to benefit humans. When animal suffering is not caused by humans, is costing farmers a lot of money, and is serving no meaningful purpose, PETA doesn't care one whit.

The true cost of content "protection"

Peter Gutmann, in the above-linked article, describes many of the insane requirements that Microsoft and movie studios are making in order to try and prevent piracy of HD content. He points out that the requirements are draconian, vague, physically impossible, extremely expensive, and will make you want to throw out your computer and go back to using clay tablets.

But if you want to play any "Premium Content" (DVDs, HD movies, SACD audio discs, etc.) on Windows Vista, you will be forced to go through all this BS. This means buying new, very expensive hardware, running software that no currently-shipping processor can run at full speed, and watching/listening to it only in a highly-degraded form. And if any software on your computer tries to bypass this, Microsoft can disable all of it without notice, leaving you with a box that may not even be able to boot again.

Sounds too stupid to be true? It does to me, but Mr. Gutmann backs up all his claims with primary source documents straight from Microsoft. This is real. And your only way of saying no is to refuse to play any HD content on your PC (refusing to upgrade to Vista would also be a good idea.)

DVD burning - not all media is created equal

None of this will come as any kind of surprise to those of you who have experience burning CDs and DVDs, but it is interesting nonetheless.

This past week, I bought some software on DVD-ROM. I wanted to make a backup copy (the discs are not copy protected, and no I am not giving any copies away to anybody else, so this is perfectly legal). There is 7G of data on each disc, meaning dual-layer media is required to hold the backup.

I went to a local store and bought a 10-pack of generic "Windata" brand media. I chose this brand mostly it was the least expensive brand in the store ($10 for a 10-disc spindle), and they were rated for 8x speed (My Plextor PX-716A can burn dual-layer media at up to 6x). I knew that this was a no-name brand, but it has the "DVD+R" logo printed on it, so it should conform to the specs for +R media and work fine in my drive.

Anyway, using this media was a colossal failure. I tried several methods to make the backups (copy with Toast, make an image and burn it with Disk Utility, copy the files to my hard drive and burn a new disc, etc.) and they all failed. Each time, I got weird errors from the drive, usually about buffer underruns, even though the drive has underrun protection. I even tried installing a firmware update from Plextor, which didn't help.

I also noticed that software was only reporting 4x capability.

Strangely enough, however, burning a 1.8G data set (which only uses one layer) worked fine on this media. Thinking there might be some kind of copy protection, I tried burning a disc with 7G of my own data - that also failed.

After doing some web searching, I found a lot of report of people having problems with Windata media and Plextor drives. Everybody recommended Verbatim.

So I went back to the store and bought a spindle of Verbatim media ($30 for 20 discs - a bit more expensive, but not too much more so). This time, everything went flawlessly. Software reported 6x burn capability, and I was able to make my backup. I made image files from both discs using Disk Utility. I burned one with Disk Utility and the other with Toast. No problems at all, and I got my drive's full 6x speed.

At this point, any reasonable person would conclude that Windata media is just junk. I did too.

Seeing my problems, my housemate, who had also bought a spindle of Windata media at the same time, decided to return his package (unopened) to the store. Just for kicks, I decided to see if I could make my backup on his computer (a generic Asus PC, with a Samsung 8x OEM drive, Windows XP and the Nero Express program that came with his drive) using some of my leftover Windata media. It went perfectly, generating no errors, and burning at full 8x speed.

So apparently Windata isn't complete junk. They're incompatible with my system (Mac and Plextor drive), but they seem to work just fine on my housemate's PC. (He kept his spindle of media.)

Conclusion: DVD media is not much different from CD media here. Although the trademarked logo may ensure that the disc is up to spec (assuming it wasn't used illegally), it doesn't guarantee compatibility with all drives. And media that doesn't work on one drive may work just fine on another drive.

The truth about the Seattle Menorah fiasco

I'm sure that everybody has heard of the "Seattle Menorah" incident. According to the press, a rabbi went to the owners of Seattle's airport demanding that they put up a menorah, was rejected, and threatened a lawsuit. The airport responded by removing their Christmas trees. The rabbi then changed his mind and the trees went back.

Although I'm certain members of the press truly believe their version of the story, it is hardly what happened.

See this story in Chabad's online magazine for their side of the events. It is a very different story.

The local Chabad rabbi was trying to arrange a meeting with the airport's people to arrange to have a menorah set up. The owners, for whatever reason, were dead-set against the idea. But they wouldn't just say "get lost". Instead, they decided to resort to bureaucratic BS - refuse to return phone calls, cancel meetings, etc.

The rabbi's lawyer mentioned the possibility of legal action, probably as much over the obnoxious treatment they were receiving as over the menorah itself. At no time did anybody ask that the Christmas trees be removed. The airport, reacting to their own imagined threats, instead of reality, reacted by removing the trees and then telling the press that the Jews made them do it. (Spurring volumes of hate-mail sent to Jewish organizations nationwide.)

So, instead of a lawsuit-happy rabbi with an anti-Christmas agenda, we now have a picture of an pig-headed airport administration engaging in a campaign of character-assassination in "retaliation" for an offense that never took place.

But you probably won't read about this story in any news outlet, will you?

Thermionic energy conversion

Thermionic energy conversion is a mechanism for generating electricity from heat without bulky equipment like steam turbines and generators.

So far, it has been impractical, but one company, Eneco, claims to have solved some of the key problems and will soon be shipping a solid-state energy converter with an efficiency of 20-30%.

The idea is that one of these can be installed in a computer, which can use waste heat (that is currently just blown out the exhaust fans) to generate power that can be used by the computer itself.

Clearly, this can't be a perpetual motion (that's impossible), but if it can reduce power consumption (and therefore battery life on laptops) by 20-30%, then this will be a very important piece of tech.

According to AppleInsider, Apple and Dell are in talks with Eneco about getting these used in their products.

NAS/RAID for dummies

On another forum, someone asked about a basic primer regarding RAID drive arrays and NAS (Network Attached Storage) systems. For the benefit of the rest of the world, here is my response (paraphrased to be more generic, since the original post was to a Mac forum.)

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NAS basics

First off, despite the way they are marketed, a NAS is not an external hard drive. It is what the name implies - Network Attached Storage. The NAS has a special-purpose computer built-in. It appears to your computer as a file server on your LAN. You attach it to an Ethernet hub/switch (which your computer will also be attached to.)

If it works properly, your computer should see the NAS as a network file server. On Mac OS X, you should be able to click on the Network icon in the Sidebar of a Finder window, locate it and mount its volume(s) on your desktop. On Windows, you should be able to open the Network Neighborhood/My Network Places icon, locate it and mount its volume(s).

Once the drive is mounted, it should behave like any other volume (hard drive, flash card, etc.), except, of course, that you probably won't be able to boot from it. It's still a network server, not a local hard drive.

When selecting an NAS, be sure it has good support for your operating system's network protocol. For Mac OS, this is AppleShare. For Windows, this is Windows File Sharing. For UNIX, this is NFS. Most operating systems can connect to "foreign" servers, but they won't work at peak efficiency, and may end up operating with some quirks (like not supporting your OS's entire range of characters in filenames.)

Expect an NAS to be slower than a local hard drive. 100M Ethernet is significantly slower than ATA, SATA and FireWire drives. It might even be slower than some USB drives. If your NAS supports Gigabit Ethernet (and your LAN is GigE, of course), then you might not notice a significant speed difference.

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RAID basics

When people speak of RAID, they are typically referring to one of the following technologies:

Name	Description
RAID-0	RAID level 0, aka "striping"
RAID-1	RAID level 1, aka "mirroring"
RAID-5	RAID level 5 - striping with distributed checksums

RAID levels 2, 3, and 4 are rarely used, and will not be described here.

RAID-0, aka "striping" is not really a RAID system, because it provides no redundancy. Your data is spread across all the drives in the array. If any drive fails, you've lost all the data in the array. (In other words, the overall reliability of the array is less than that of a single drive!) RAID-0 has the advantage of maximizing the storage capacity of the array, and increasing performance (since each drive only has to read/write half the data), but at the cost of reduced reliability.

RAID-1, aka "mirroring" does just what the name implies. Every piece of data is written to both drives - one is an identical copy of the other. If one drive fails, it is automatically removed from the array, and the remaining drive is used instead. RAID-1 offers redundancy (making the reliability of the array greater than that of a single drive), but at the expense of 50% of your storage capacity, since all data is written to both drives.

For small RAID arrays (those with only two drives), RAID-1 is the only possible mechanism for providing redundancy. For larger arrays (with more drives), it is inefficient and RAID-5 should be considered instead.

RAID-5 is what large RAID arrays typically use. Error-recovery data is generated for all your data, and the combined data (your data and the recovery data) is striped across three or more drives. If any single drive fails, the entire array remains functional. If two drives fail, however, all data in the array is lost. The capacity of a RAID-5 array is the total capacity of all-but-one of the drives.

For example, suppose you have five drives in a RAID-5 array. When you write data to the array, 25% of your data will go on each of four drives, and error-recovery data will be written to the fifth. (Which drive gets each piece of data is irrelevant. It actually rotates across all the drives in the array, in order to maximize performance.)

Now suppose a drive in this array has failed and you try to read the data back. If the failed drive is the one with the error-recovery data, the array can get your data from the remaining four drives (since they are the ones that actually contain it). If the failed drive is holding data, the data on the remaining three drives, combined with the error-recovery data, can be used to reconstruct what was on the failed drive.

In addition to these RAID levels, there are also two common "hybrid" RAID levels: RAID-0+1 and RAID-1+0. These, as the names imply, involve both mirroring and striping, to provide increased capacity with redundancy.

RAID-0+1 is a mirror of a striped drive array. Your data is striped across a set of two or more drives (a-la RAID-0), then the striped-set of drives are mirrored to another set of identical drives (a-la RAID-1). If a single drive fails, its entire striped-set gets hosed, but the mirror of the striped-set keeps on working. If multiple drives fail, and they all belong to the same striped-set, the array can keep on working. If multiple drives from different striped-sets fail, the entire array is lost.

RAID-1+0 is a striped set of mirrored drives. Each drive is mirrored against a matching drive. Your data is striped across all of the mirrored-pairs. If a single drive fails, its mirror-partner drive keeps the array working. If multiple drives fail, but each is in a different mirrored-pair, the array keeps on working. If multiple drives fail, but two are in the same mirrored-pair, the entire array is lost.

While these hybrid RAID levels are often used for inexpensive software-based RAID arrays, they are wasteful of storage, because of all the mirroring. RAID-5 is much more efficient, and is preferable, where possible.

It should be noted that with all of the RAID levels that support redundancy (all but RAID-0), you can replace a failed drive with a new, blank drive, and the RAID controller will rebuild its contents from the data stored on the other drives in the array. Good RAID systems will allow you to do this without turning off the power or even interrupting service to users on the network (a feature known as hot-swappable drives.)

Of course, when a drive fails, even if the array remains operational, it will be operating without any redundancy - an additional drive failure can trash the entire array. So it's very important to keep a spare drive on-hand. This way, when one fails, you can quickly swap it for the spare. This practice is known as keeping a "cold spare".

This is compared to a "hot spare" drive. A hot spare is a spare drive that is attached to the RAID controller. It is not part of any configured array, but sits idle (and possibly powered-off) until a drive in the array fails. When this happens, the RAID controller immediately removes the failed drive from the array and starts using the hot-spare in its place.

The point behind a hot-spare drive is that when there's a failure, the amount of time the array goes without redundancy can be reduced to the absolute minimum amount of time.

Of course, once this happens, you will still want to replace the failed drive, in order to make another hot-spare available, in case another drive fails. Because ordering new drives may take a week or two, some large RAID systems will allow two or more hot-spare drives.

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Capacities

Clearly, the overall capacity of a RAID array will be a function of the number of drives, the capacity of the drives, the number of drives used as hot-spares, and the RAID level configured. Some examples follow:

An array of only two drives can not support RAID-5. It must be configured as either RAID-0 (no redundancy) or RAID-1 (mirroring.) If the drives hold 500GB each, the RAID-0 array will be able to hold 1TB, and the RAID-1 array will be able to hold 500GB.

An array of 3 drives can be used either as RAID-0, or RAID-5. Using our example of 500G drives, the RAID-0 array will be able to hold 1.5TB (but remember, there's no redundancy, so if any one of the three fails, all data is lost!). The RAID-5 array will be able to hold 1TB (remember, the overall capacity of RAID-5 is that of all-but-one of the drives.)

An array of 4 drives can be configured in four different ways: RAID-0, RAID-0+1, RAID-1+0, or RAID-5. Using 500G drives, RAID-0 will provide 2TB (but with no redundancy), RAID-0+1 and RAID-1+0 will provide 1TB, and RAID-5 will provide 1.5TB.

If hot-spares are used, just don't count them when figuring out the array capacity.

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Conclusion

NAS and RAID terminology may be confusing to novices, but the concepts are not overly complicated. The important points to remember are:

• NAS devices are network file servers. They run a self-contained operating system, but are otherwise the same as a server you might set up on your own using a separate computer.
• RAID comes in three main flavors: RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-5
• RAID-0 maximizes the storage capacity of the array, but offers no redundancy. If one drive in a RAID-0 array fails, all your data is lost.
• RAID-1 mirrors drives. This increases reliability, but at the expense of storage capacity. The overall capacity of a RAID-1 array is 50% of the aggregate capacity of the drives. It is your only choice if you only have two drives and want redundancy.
• RAID-5 is a happy medium between RAID-0 and RAID-1, if you have three or more drives. Single-drive failures will not make the array fail, and the overall capacity is greater than RAID-1.

Keep in mind, however, that RAID systems are not a substitute for making regular backups of your system. RAID (all levels other than 0) will protect you against single drive failures, but backups protect you from many other things, including:

• Simultaneous failure of multiple drives (e.g. a bad power surge that fries the entire array.)
• Accidental (or deliberate) deletion or corruption of files.
• Software bugs, viruses, and worms
• Natural disasters (fire, flood, hurricane, etc.)

The reason for integration testing

I am a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to PCs. Nearly all of my PCs have been home-built. Well, not really home-built, since I don't solder chips, but home-assembled - I buy boards, drives, cases, etc., and assemble it into a system.

I do it because it's a hobby, and I enjoy doing the work. Sometimes, however, I read articles about people choosing to build their own PCs for professional work. Often because some corporate finance-type person thinks he can save money over buying complete systems from Dell or HP. (And the idea that you can save money by building your own systems hasn't been true for many years, but many people haven't figured this out yet.)

Similar principles apply (more frequently) to people who perform their own upgrades - adding/replacing memory, video cards or hard drives.

What these people fail to realize is that assembling a computer system for a production environment involves much more than simply slapping parts together. Even if there are no software-compatibility issues (not always the case), there are sometimes obscure problems that only become apparent after extensive integration testing. All the major PC manufacturers test their systems before offering them for sale. Very few hobbyists do much testing beyond what's necessary to get their favorite game up and running. And I doubt many corporate finance people realize the expense (in terms of time spent) needed to thoroughly test a completely custom-designed system.

(FWIW, many corporations have standardized software environments, and even this requires extensive integration testing as PC manufacturers introduce new systems. It may take a month (or more, if there are problems) to ensure that a new computer is compatible with corporate-standard software. Now imagine the time that would be required if the hardware itself also had to be thoroughly tested.)

But this is nothing new. I mention it simply because recent articles report of a problem that is an almost textbook case for why integration testing is necessary.

For the last several years, Apple's laptop computers have sported a "sudden motion sensor" (SMS) that senses acceleration and vibration. The system software uses this sensor to detect sudden motion (such as if the computer is dropped) and parks the hard drive heads, so the drive won't be damaged on impact.

Western Digital's new Scorpio line of hard drives also has a motion sensor, serving the same purpose as Apple's.

So what happens when you put a Scorpio drive in a MacBook? The two systems step on each other. When the computer is jostled, the drive parks itself, and the Apple SMS system sends the command to park the drive. The SMS system get an error back from the drive (the drive probably goes off-line while it is in this auto-park state), assumes that the drive has failed, and panics the OS kernel.

One perfectly good drive plus one perfectly good computer combine to form an unstable system. This is a problem that very few people could ever predict without actually assembling and testing a completed system. It is something that a manufacturer would (or at least should) test for as a part of deciding what brand/model drive to bundle, but is something the rest of us will not be able to figure out in advance while shopping for a new drive.

Junkscience.com -- 100 things you should know about DDT

This is a fascinating an eye-opening article.

It would appear that the worldwide decision to ban DDT was based almost entirely on political pressure and junk science. The scientific facts (both known today and what was known then) indicate that the alleged dangers do not exist.

But millions of children die from malaria every year as a result of the ban.

Quantum information teleported from light to matter - Yahoo! News

Read the linked Reuters article.

This is incredibly cool. And we're one step closer to Star Trek.