Moving To Ubuntu: Part two

After running the Ubuntu Live CD, to check the compatibility of my PC hardware (see part one), the next step is to clean up my XP installation to free up as much hard disk space as possible. I will be dual booting for the time being, mainly because I need to access my work PC via remote access. This is through a Cisco VPN, which is Windows only. Also, it doesn't hurt to have a backup system, as who knows whether everything will work OK.

I uninstalled most of the software on the XP installation, save for Firefox, Thunderbird, the Cisco VPN software, and a few other programs that I have paid for. I moved all my data onto an external USB hard drive. After deleting all the original files, I then ran the XP disk defragmenter.

This takes quite a few goes to properly defragment - there may be thrid party tools that do a better job, but as I was trying to clean the disk up, I didn't want to install anything else. After the deragmentation is complete, make sure you view the report - this can show up a number of files that have been left behind by programs that have been uninstalled. As an example, I uninstalled Google Earth, but the report in the defragger showed a 400MB Google Earth Cache file that it could not move. These type of files can be manually deleted, but of course you will have to defrag again afterwards.

Something else that will leave lots of unmovable files is the XP System Restore. You may want to delete all previous restore points except for the latest. After doing this, another 6GB of space was reclaimed on my drive. To delete all previous restore points, select the More Options tab on the Disk Clean Up utility, and press the button at the bottom to delete all except the latest restore.

After performing these steps, there should be a sufficiently clean hard drive to install Ubuntu. As long as the defragger shows everything as far over to the left hand side of the drive as possible, then it is time to run the install. It doesn't matter if there are a few small gaps shown in the defragger, so long as there are no large spaces you won't be wasting too much space.

The only thing left to do before running the install is to export my mail from Thunderbird. The Ubuntu Migration Assistant will import bookmarks and some other files, but I don't think it imports mail. Once that is done, it is time for the install...

Moving to Ubuntu: Part one

As I have decided to move to Ubuntu, the first step in this process is to check whether my current hardware is compatible. Handily, Ubuntu provide an easy way to achieve this - the installation CD doubles up as a 'live' CD. This means you can boot your PC from the CD, and it will run Ubuntu without installing it. Of course, running from the CD is nowhere near as fast as running from an installed system, but it is a great way to try it out and check if your hardware is compatible, and also if you like the Ubuntu way of working.

So, last night I booted from the Ubuntu CD, and very quickly the system booted into Ubuntu. My PC is 2-3 years old, so I wasn't entirely sure whether everything would work. But I'm relieved to say that not only did it work, it was no slower than my normal XP installation.

I even switched on the desktop effects, expecting to find my ultra cheap graphics card either wasn't supported, or couldn't handle it, but, again, it worked like a dream.

So, now that little test is out of the way I need to clean up my XP installation (remove all but the absolutely essential software to reclaim as much disk space as I can), and back up my data to an external drive. I've already got a list of applications I currently use, and what their equivalents will be in Ubuntu, and so far I haven't found any gaps.

This may sound incredibly 'geeky', but after trying out Ubuntu, I can't wait to install it and get it up and running properly.

Kroenke buying more Arsenal shares

Arsenal received notification yesterday that Stanley Kroenke now owns 12.19% of the club's shares.

There have been a number of small trades in the last week or so, with another small chunk of 50 or so shares changing hands today, driving the share price up, hitting £7,000 a share.

If the Arsenal board are as resolutely against a takeover as they say, then they need to start buying up some of these small chunks so that they have a majority share holding. Since David Dein's departure, they now own about 45% between them.

Cole's pathetic book sales

After that former Arsenal left back released his crappy book, it was obvious from looking at the bestseller charts on Amazon and other places that it was selling badly. I never saw it get higher than about 150 in the Amazon best seller list.

In a recent edition of Private Eye, they published the actual sales figures - 8983. Frankly I'm surprised it even sold as many as that. While it's great news that it sold sod all, unfortunately it makes little difference to Cole and his bank balance. He was reportedly given an advance of £250,000, so regardless of sales he is quids in.

Hopefully, it will discourage other publishers from giving vast sums of money for crappy self serving books.

Bye Bye Windows

I have made a big decision - I am going to move my main desktop PC over to Ubuntu from Windows XP. Why am I going to do this?

Quite frankly, I have had enough of Windows. An organisation the size of Microsoft ought to be able to through enough resources at an OS to make it extremely robust and stable. Instead, I find things that just stop working, have to spend too long applying various anti virus and firewall patches, and constantly patch Windows itself.

I recently finished re-installing a friends XP machine that had been crippled with a virus that had wrecked the networking side of things, including internet connectivity. They had a Packard Bell computer, but lo and behold they had lost the XP CD that came with the machine. We tried different XP discs that we were able to get hold of, but none worked with their serial number printed on the label on the PC. Fortunately, another friend had a spare license from their Microsoft Action Pack subscription, so we were able to use that to rebuild their machine. This took more evenings than I care to count, trying all the different discs and serial numbers.

Now I find that my PC is going to need re-installing. The sound has stopped working, and no matter what codecs or drivers I install, nothing works. I have tried re-extracting the required Windows dlls but no luck. So the only thing I can see left to try is a re-install. But, lo and behold, I seem to have lost my XP CD as well! Despite being able to find every worthless bloody driver CD I have ever had, the time I need the important one, I can't find it.

So, I'm not going to bother. I have no intention of ever going to Vista - the prices Microsoft charge in the UK are way over the top for a system that seems focused on stopping you doing more things than it allows you to do. I recently installed Ubuntu on my music server to run Slimserver, and I like the look of that, so I have decided to kiss goodbye to Microsoft and their unreliable, insecure software, and say hello to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Who knows, perhaps it will be no more reliable than XP, but at least I will no longer have the worry about losing license keys or discs or worrying about how many times I can install it without breaching the license.

Ebay Account hacked

This week I received an e-mail from Ebay, informing me that my account password had been compromised and that they had therefore reset the password and locked down my account. The e-mail went on to say that this must have been as a result of me falling for a phishing scam, and giving my password to some third party.

Sorry guys, but I HAVE NOT given out my password. I have a bit more sense than to fall for some phishing scam, and have seen plenty of examples in my time. Indeed, I was highly suspicious of the Ebay e-mail, until I realised it contained no links. It was only after trying to log in to my account and finding it was locked that I realised it was genuine.

It seems a cynical ploy by Ebay to try and blame account holders for the problem, obviuosly to try and cover up their well known security problems. My password being compromised can only be as a result of Ebay being hacked, and after seeing this article on The Register, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. While they may get away with passing off this old baloney about phishing scams to the average user, it is clear they have an ongoing security problem.

The alarming thing is that it appears to have been ongoing for some time, with Ebay either unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

Stanley Kroenke owns 11.26% of Arsenal

According to a statement released by the Plus Markets group this morning, Kroenke holds 11.26% of Arsenal shares. 9.9% were obtained from ITV. According to the Statement, his company KSE holds 9.99%, with the remainder held by JP Morgan, of whom Kroenke is the indirect holder.

The full statement can be read here.

What a difference vinyl can make

One of my favorite bands is Depeche Mode. While I think their last album, Playing The Angel, is one of their best since Songs Of Faith And Devotion, I have always stuggled to listen to it. If that doesn't make sense then I'll explain.

My first impression when I bought the CD was 'Bloody hell, that's loud.' Despite repeated listening I'd always struggle to get to the end of the album - I found it very tiring to listen to, and would usuallly turn it off two thirds of the way through. I could never quite figure out why.

Then I found two web pages that describe the problem. Both pages describe how the album has been ruined by over compression, in a bid to make the album appear as loud as possible. Take a look at the diagrams included in the links, and you will see how over compressed the album is.

What I find most amazing is the band letting the album be released like that. After spending a good few months recording and mixing the songs, I would have thought they would immediately notice how the CD mastering had ruined all their hard work.

Fed up with the CD, I resorted to downloading a FLAC rip of the vinyl version of the album - what a difference! It is now possible to hear the detail in the songs - as vinyl cannot cope with the extreme levels used on CDs, it has been mastered at a much more sensible level without all the compression.

I don't normally download music torrents, but I made an exception in this case - after having paid for an unlistenable CD, I don't feel I am ripping anyone off by downloading another copy of the same album.

EMI remove DRM

Following yesterdays announcement from EMI that they are to remove DRM from their entire digital download catalogue, and initially make the DRM free versions available on iTunes (at a higher bit rate, and at a higher price), a few questions remain.

1. Apple will continue to sell the DRM, low quality versions as they do now. What is the logic in implementing DRM on low bitrate files? Numerous sites offer unprotected sound samples in lower bit rates, the whole point being that the sound quality isn't good enough to bother copying it.

2. I hope that the following statement means some sites will soon start offering officially sanctioned lossless downloads:

EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice.

3. Why won't Apple make the files available in MP3 format? While it is not the best format around, it is the widest used - there are plenty of players out there that do not support AAC. I guess we will have to wait and see who else will carry the DRM free files.

4. Can we now expect Apple to remove the DRM on the Independent music they carry, that is available elsewhere without DRM?

While this is a good first move, we will need to see how things pan out over the next few months, and what other record labels, if any, follow EMI's lead. Personally, I feel the price rise is a bit much, even though I accept that bandwidth costs will increase with the bigger file sizes of the higher bit rate downloads - in the UK, the existing iTunes offering is overpriced for what it offers.

Arsenal Share Holdings

With news of Ken Friar transferring 152 shares to Peter Hill-Wood on 27th March, and Danny Fiszman selling 659 shares on 14th March, it is reassuring to know that not all the board members are selling. Sir Chips Keswick bought 20 shares at £5300 per share on 1st March. He now owns 40 shares.

Whether he did this in the hope of making some quick cash from a possible takeover or for a long term investment is unknown.

So the breakdown of known Arsenal share holdings of the board members is:

Danny Fiszman - 15000 shares (24.11%)
Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith - 9893 shares (15.9%)
David Dein - 9072 shares (14.6%)
Richard Carr - 2722 shares (4.4%)
Peter Hill-Wood - 500 shares (0.8%)
Lord Harris of Peckham - 63 shares (0.085%)
Ken Friar - 47 shares (0.07%)
Sir Chips Keswick - 40 shares (0.064%)
Keith Edelmen - 25 shares (0.04%)*

*Held as nominee for Danny Fiszman

Other major shareholders are:

Granada - 9.9%
Lansdowne Partners - 2.7%

Where do Arsenal go from here?

After Arsenal got dumped out of the Champions League by PSV, there has been the usual mixture of reasoned debate and over reaction.

Some have called for big money signings to improve the team. Firstly, there is no guarantee signing anybody would make any difference at all. Wenger's history of big money signings is not great, and Julio Baptista has proved that no matter how long you chase a potential player, they can still be a huge disappointment when they get into the team. I was one who thought he would bring a different dimension to our game, someone who could compete physically when it mattered. Not only has he not done that, his finishing has been woeful. At this stage, only Wenger knows if he will sign him permanently, but in my opinion he wouldn't be a great loss if he left.

Regarding the forward line, Wenger needs to decide what will happen with Bendtner when his loan at Birmingham finishes. If he brings him back to Arsenal, Baptista or Aliadiere will have to go to make room for him. Regardless of who goes or stays, we desperately need to improve our finishing. Time and again we have anything up to 20 shots on goal, but come out of the game having scored 1 or less. Our midfielders aren't scoring, which is a major loss after years of Pires and Ljungberg providing 10 or more goals each. This then puts the onus on our strikers to take their chances, which they regularly fail to do. I like Adebayor, who has scored plenty of important goals, but sometimes his finishing is abysmal. I have lost count the number of times he has been through one on one and missed.

I was amazed before the 2nd leg against PSV when we heard Arsenal had started to practice corners. We all know how little we take advantage of them, but to virtually admit that they are not part of our game exposes a major weakness - opposing teams know they are unlikely to come under pressure from us at corners. To me it seems a huge waste of the effort put in by our forwards. After the Carling Cup semi Final against Tottenham, I commented on the number of corners Aliadiere won for us, as he never gave up on a lost cause. He might as well have not bothered and saved his energy. We need to improve at corners straight away, as not taking advantage of them must take 10-15% out of your game. It is no disgrace to get a headed goal from a corner - it won't betray our footballing principles!

The other surprise for the PSV game was playing Gilberto at centre half. Why this was the case when we had Djourou on the bench is a mystery. As a result we had 2 19 year olds playing in central midfield. As good as Denilson looks, I would have preferred the experience of Gilberto for this game. Of course, it's impossible to tell if this would have made any difference, but it seemed a huge risk to take in such an enormous game.

Now we must make sure we get as much out of every league game as possible. It's probably too much to ask to return to the days of killing teams off in the first 20 minutes at the moment, but we must make sure we qualify for the Champions League next season.

Who knows where Wenger expected us to be at this stage in the teams development, in public he would never admit to having a 'transitional' season. We can't afford to have another season without a trophy (literally - if crowds start to wane at the new stadium, we will be in the shit).

Lets see how ruthless Wenger is in the summer...

Music Review: Onetwo, Instead

Instead is the first album from Onetwo, who are Paul Humphreys and Claudia Brucken. Brucken is ex-Propaganda, and Humphreys ex-OMD, so they both have a bit of a pedigree behind them.

The whole album has a very lush and polished finish to it - whatever Humphreys has been up to since he left OMD, he has honed his engineering skills brilliantly - he is credited with the engineering on the album, with the mixing by Bob Krushaar.

The album begins with a short intro, 'The Theory of Everything part1', which then leads into part 2. Although part 1 is short, part 2 is a bit of a surprise as part 1 has a dark feel to it, which is nowhere to be found on part 2. Part 2 wouldn't be out of place on Radio 2.

The first great track is track 3, 'Sequential', which has a great mood and a good guitar hook for the main melody. 'Signals' is a fine example of lush Electronica, which precedes one of the stronger tracks on the album, a cover of Pink Floyd's 'Have a Cigar'. In places this sounds as if Trevor Horn has produced it, but it is a good example of how strong Claudia Brucken's vocals can be. This leads straight into 'I Don't Blame You', which is the only track to feature Humpreys on lead vocals. This is a slower track and is a fine contrast to 'Have a Cigar'.

The lead single from the album, 'Cloud Nine' comes up next, which features Martin Gore of Depeche Mode on Guitar, who also co-wrote it. Although not the strongest track on the album, it is a fine showcase, and is a good example of how the album sounds overall. 'Kein Anschlub' is a classic piece of German Electronic music, with Brucken singing in German.

Overall, the album is more 'Propaganda' than 'OMD', and as mentioned previously, it sounds fantastic. A good album, infinitely better than most of the dross on the radio, it's just a shame it is unlikely to get the recognition it deserves.

How to get a Wii

Nearly 3 months after release, it is still difficult to find anywhere that has the Wii in stock.

You could pay over the odds at E-Bay, or spend all day trawling round the online suppliers hoping to get lucky.

I used a website that does the hard work for you, WiiPreOrder. They track all the online suppliers and pop up notifications when the Wii is in stock. You have to be quick, as even now some of the retailers sell out in 5 minutes, but it worked for me. I don't have any association to that site, but they provide a useful service.

Nintendo Wii review

Released on Dec 8th in the UK, and sold out out straight away, it has taken me until the middle of Feburary to get hold of a Wii. In fact, it is nearly 3 months since it was released, and all retailers still sell out as soon as they get their hands on a few units.

Bundled with Wii Sports, a 5 sport game, it retails at £179, which is a bargain as far as I'm concerned. Nintendo decided to go for mass market rather than high end graphics, and it looks like that has paid off for them. Sales figures for January show that the Wii sold 436,000 in the US, compared to 294,000 XBox 360's and 244,000 PS3's. In Japan, the Wii outsold the PS3 by 3 to 1 in January. No fgures are avilable for the UK.

Everything about the Wii package smacks of Nintendo. The Mii Channel, where you create mini lookalikes is great fun, and classic Nintendo. My kids think this is the best thing about it, and like going to the Mii parade to watch everyone mill about (we created Mii's for everyone in the family). The warnings to take a break during Wii Sports are a bit annoying, but again, that is a very nintendo thing to do.

The fact that Wii Sports uses the Mii's you have created in the games is the icing on the cake. Although to me the Mii's don't look like any of us, the kids seem to think they do and think it is hilarious watching 'themselves' swing a golf club or tennis racquet on the TV!

Wii Sports itself is fairly simplistic, and is a good demo of what fun can be had with the motion sensing controller. None of the games have any great depth, but they are all good fun (OK, except for Baseball, but that's Baseball I suppose). There is no great depth in the graphics, indeed some of the design strikes you as being a bit odd - none of the spectators in Tennis have any arms or legs, in fact the players don't appear to have any arms either, with a the racquet swinging around in mid air! Similarly in Boxing, the boxers don't have any arms, just a set of gloves swinging around in mid air as well. While this seems odd at first, it seems to suit the 'caricature' nature of the gaming, with your Mii being used as the player.

The Golf is quite difficult, as it seems to be quite hard to get any repeatability in the swinging action, but you do eventually get there. You need to underhit rather than go for power. There is a fair bit of aliasing in the trees and rough in the golf, but you get the feeling that the whole lack of detail in Wii Sports is more down to the rush to get it out there to show people what it can do, rather than the hardware's capabilities. It will take a while before we truly see how far the console can be pushed graphics wise.

All in all the Wii is great fun, and Nintendo have been successful in making the thing appeal to a wide audience, far beyond what a normal console generally has. Even the Wife has got up and had a go with Wii Sports, and believe me, that is some feat.

Carling Cup Final

Like the guy who books a wedding or something a year in advance, only to find it ends up clashing with an England World Cup semi final (as unlikely as that is), I have managed to arrange to move house the week of the Arsenal v Chelsea Carling Cup final. The chances of seeing the game were reduced anyway as it's on BSkyB (shitehawks); the fact I'm moving means I can't even slope off down to the pub for the afternoon to see the game. It will be one of those frustrating occasions of having to tune into the radio to listen to it.

It would be a fantastic achievement to win the cup, having used a second string side throughout the competition, but I'm confident we can do it. I'm sure Aliadiere can run rings around Essien, & Carvalho is bound to give away a few free kicks around the box if put under pressure, like he usually does.

I don't think we will have any problems being motivated for this game; we have been guilty in the last couple of games of looking like we only need to turn up to win, and putting in poor performances as a result.

Come on boys, bring that trophy home!

Are Blackburn as bad as England?

After the exciting, and, OK, nerve wracking FA Cup replay at Bolton, we were subjected to one of the worst games I have ever witnessed at home against Blackburn. Some reward that was for winning the nail-biter. It wasn't quite as bad as an England friendly, but then again, I gave up watching those ages ago, so I may be wrong.

Why Blackburn played the way they did in a cup game is a mystery, and frankly it's no surprise the number of fans in the away end was as low as it was if that is what they have to put up with on a regular basis. Don't they realise fans pay good money to go and watch these games?

Arsenal needed to show more guile, and it was only the introduction of Clichy, Rosicky and Adebayor late in the second half that made us look like we would put Blackburn under pressure. We only made two clear cut chances during the game - early in the first half when Justin Hoyte played a nice chip into Henry, and then late in the second half when Friedel saved from Henry & Hoyte in quick succession. We should have had a penalty when Aliadiere was blatantly tripped, and you wish the ref had given it, if only to save everyone the misery of having to watch Blackburn again. Then again, we would probably have missed it.

Now we have got Man City at home in the next round, if we win the replay.

In other news Arsene Wenger has been speaking about the quality of young English players coming through. he says:

"When I started, I wanted to produce a team with 60 per cent English players. We've ended up with 80 per cent or more foreign players because I haven't found enough quality among the English. But something amazing is happening. There is real quality among the English, in the under-16 and under-14 groups. We have to be patient. But the attitude of English players is changing and you no longer have the problem with alcohol - not like 20 years ago.''

The full article can be read here.

New Linux Server results

After recently completing the installation of my new server to run SlimServer, I thought I would post some results.

My requirements were for a quiet, low-power consumption machine that would be easy to manage. I opted to build my own machine, based around a Jetway J7F2 mini-ITX motherboard. This uses the low power VIA C7 1.2 Ghz processor. The board is a fanless design, satisfying my requirement for low noise. As I will be using the server to house my music files, I opted for a large 320Gb Western Digital 3.5" drive. These are very quiet in operation. The system was built into a Noah mini-ITX case. I installed the maximum 1GB memory that the board supports.

The case has a fan, which is fairly quiet, and is the only source of mechanical noise in the system (apart from when the hard drive is reading/writing). I may yet remove the fan, but I need to see how hot the hard drive runs without it.

The ideal situation would have been to have a drive for the OS, and a separate drive for the music files, but the Noah case doesn't have room for this. An external drive wasn't really an option, with three kids running around the house leaving a trail of destruction in their wake ;->

For the OS, I decided to go for the Ubuntu variation of Linux. This was mainly because it was free, and a number of people on the Slim Devices forums were successfully running SlimServer on Ubuntu.

I was a bit apprehensive as I had no experience of Linux, but the install went smoothly. The install of SlimServer was equally straightforward, using the Slim deb package.

As I intend to run the machine headless (without a monitor/keyboard), I needed some way to control the machine from my main Windows XP desktop. This was easy, as Ubuntu has a VNC based remote desktop facility built in, so it was a simple case of installing the free edition of RealVNC on the Windows machine, and setting the preferences in Ubuntu.

Sharing the music files on the Linux machine with the Windows machine was a bit more involved, but I found some instructions on how to do this here, using Samba.

Now it is all up & running, the performance of the machine is very good. Considering it is a low speed processor by todays standards, it has no problems running SlimServer. When it is streaming music to the Squeezebox, the CPU runs at 15-30%. The system is using about 190MB of memory, out of the 1GB installed. I'm not sure why, but the interface on the Squeezebox is a lot quicker than when it was running from my much higher spec Windows machine. I think MYSQL runs a lot better out of the box on Linux compared to Windows, but I don't have any figures to back that up.

There are still one or two things to fine tune in the setup. The board supports ACPI power management (which means you can set the machine to do a safe shut down when pressing the power button, for example), but I need to fine tune this as at the moment Ubuntu pops up the standard shutdown dialogue, rather than just shutting down.

In the end, there was no need to worry about using Ubuntu, it all installed very well. The machine is a lot quieter than my noisy Windows desktop machine (an Acer), so I'm very happy with the results.

Why Linn do not use DRM

Thanks to 'The Smokester' on the Slim Devices forums for pointing this out on Linn Records web site. Linn, to their credit, do not use DRM on their digital downloads If ever there was a reason needed for music companies to avoid using DRM, this is surely it:

"...We have been testing the only known commercially available system (Microsoft WMA-DRM) and come to the conclusion that it is neither robust nor "developed". The faults and problems we have encountered are:

The "system" is a two part handshake license agreement that requires Linn and the customer to meet certain technical requirements. These requirements include for Linn:
Check the computer that is downloading the music is "compliant". This means that we must check that the computer that is downloading the music has not been hacked (Microsoft DRM has been hacked quite recently and not for the first time) to remove all DRM information and capability.
We need to interrogate the downloading computer via our web connection and to do this the contact has to be via Internet Explorer (only) which needs to have both ActiveX and cookies turned on. (If customers don't have these system requirements they won't be able to receive the licence to play the music they have bought).
By doing this, Microsoft will then be able to update the customer's computer to remove the hacked files.
There are versions of Windows Media Player in use and only the most recent ones can be checked. If a customer doesn't have this, they will need to download an up to date version of WMP before being able to play their music.
There are many operating systems in use and only some are supported in the test code. Once all three variables (the browser, Media Player and Operating system) are considered it is easy to imagine that we will only be able to download music to a very small subset of contacting customers.
Once we implemented the new system we tested it and it fails to deliver files with the correct "rights". The files we tested did not operate as intended.
Microsoft has dropped support of WMA (the only audio file format that can have the DRM applied) on the Mac platform. (7% of our customers are Mac users). Plug-ins are available but they require considerable user knowledge and skill. These Plug-ins only work on recent Mac operating systems and are third party support rather than Apple or Microsoft.
Microsoft DRM does not wok on a Mac meaning that any music downloaded to a Mac will not play in iTunes even when the Plug-in is used.
WMADRM'd files downloaded to a PC cannot be imported to iTunes for PC meaning that customers cannot add their legitimately purchased music to their iPod. The files only work when imported into Windows Media Player.
There is no other platform independent DRM systems that are commercially available.
As you can see from the above it is our opinion that the Microsoft DRM system does not work and that until such time that something does work our best endeavours to protect our artists' music will be to include the usage rights as above and ask our customers to agree to these rights when making a purchase..."

New server for SlimServer

Up till now I have run Slimserver from my main desktop Windows PC. While it has run OK, I have always been a bit uncomfortable with having to have the PC running and consuming anything up to 190W of electricity just to play some music. I thought about a NAS solution, but wasn't happy with the current NAS solutions. Instead, I decided to build a mini-ITX based system. These have the advantage of low power consumption (around 25W flat out), plus the board I chose (a Jetway J7F2) has no onboard fan, so it would also be quiet.

Initially I was going to stick Windows on the new machine, but in the end decided to go for Ubuntu, a flavour of Linux. I was a bit apprehensive, as I had no prior experience of using Linux (or building my own PC for that matter), but it all went rather well.

Initial impressions are that the interface on the Squeezebox is a lot snappier than when run from my higher spec Windows machine. But I will spend some time trying more things out before I come to any firm conclusions.

There were one or two Linux related pitfalls along the way, which I will document later, but it was a good learning expereince, which now has me tempted to run Ubuntu on my main machine...

Who is Steve Jobs trying to kid?

In a recent open letter, the Apple CEO Steve Jobs called for the Music Industry to relax their stance on DRM. While the record companies may have insisted that DRM be in place before they would license their catalogue to Apple, it was Apple themselves who have placed the greatest restriction on the music bought on iTunes - that you can't play it on any non-Apple devices.

Jobs then went on to claim it would be a bad idea to license their 'Fairplay' technology so the files could be played on other devices, saying:

"The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players. "

Sorry mate, but in case you hadn't noticed, your 'Fairplay' DRM system has already been cracked numerous times, check out http://hymn-project.org/ for starters.

It seems Apple would rather the record labels change their stance on DRM in general, rather than Apple have to license their technology to others. This currently seems unlikely, with the RIAA urging Apple to license their DRM technology to others.