Hari's Corner

After reading this article "Thoughts on Music" by Steve Jobs which has become quite popular online, I'm quite surprised when so many people assume that Apple are on the side of the customer in the DRM issue. A careful reading of this article made me more than sure that the real reason Steve Jobs wrote this article was to:

• Put the onus completely on the Music companies on the DRM issue and disclaim all responsibility for the consequences of the technology.
• Convince the customers of Apple that it's not "their fault."

To be sure, it's a thoughtfully worded article - a masterpiece in propaganda if there was ever one. Here's an extract from the article - an instance of what I'm talking about:

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

What's the big deal with throwing around these numbers? It's stating the obvious! Everybody knows Apple doesn't make the big bucks selling music. If they were, then they would obviously be a lot more pro-DRM. They can afford to take the popular anti-DRM stance. It's not a big sacrifice on their part at all. They make money on the hardware.

In particular, read the highlighted line carefully. They're trying hard to dispel the image that they're trying to lock in customers to their hardware - that is their real focus. Apple want to dispel that image badly. They have tacitly admitted that DRM music cannot be a success with their hardware. At the same time, if the Music companies had their way, DRM would be a success and nobody would be able to be able to listen to music without DRM. Apple want to immediately disclaim responsibility on that point. Sheer genius...

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Perfect, again. The highlighted point is the crux of the issue: the technical overheads required to create, operate and update a DRM system. Nowhere do I see any moral objection to the concept of DRM itself - as a means of limiting a paying customer from exercising his/her rights to fair use. It's an argument which essentially highlights an economic and technical reason to abandon DRM. While this might sound like music (no pun intended) to many customers' ears, the barrier might possibly be overcome at any point of time when DRM does become feasible. In that case, would Apple back the Music companies on the DRM issue? Nowhere does Apple commit itself to this issue and it's obvious why. If DRM does force more people to choose Apple hardware, why should they oppose it? Such a situation can be easily created through a deal between the Music companies and Apple if the right conditions arise. The question is whether those conditions will ever be created at all.

In other words, they're not interested in the other aspects of DRM - legal, social and ethical. And why should they be? They're a shrewd business entity... and their motive is profit and market-share. When they have both, why should they really worry about what are essentially peripheral issues to them?

More than anything, this line tells me that people who are against DRM cannot rely on Apple to take a firm stand against the technology. For Apple have clearly embraced DRM whether they say so or not. They want to have it both ways, for sure, but when it come to the crunch, they will not say "no" to DRM and risk the wrath of the music industry. Steve says so very clearly:

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.

Those unhappy with the situation? Clearly Apple aren't unhappy. In fact, they're laughing all the way to the bank after selling their iPods.

This article was clearly intended as an exercise in PR. And in reality, that's exactly what it is. Apple aren't against DRM. They will clearly embrace DRM if they see that it is to their benefit. The only reason I see for them to oppose DRM is for business reasons. And business reasons dictate that since the majority of iPod users are people who're playing copied music without DRM support they don't embrace it wholeheartedly. (a.k.a. continue playing ball with both sides)

So whose side are they really on? The simple answer - neither side. They're on their own side vigilantly guarding their interests.

Point out the music industry to the customer and the customer to the music industry and then wait and watch from a distance. Reminds me of the story where two dogs were fighting over a piece of biscuit and the monkey came between them to arbitrate. In the end, the monkey ended up with the biscuit... Oh yes, Apple are shrewd, all right.

I had a long standing problem which I solved today. For a long time, Python was broken on my system and every time I did an apt-get dist-upgrade there was a problem configuring python-2.4 and python-2.4-minimal as a result of which many applications were left unconfigured by the post-installation process.

I tried several things. At first I tried removing the old python-2.3 packages which were obsolete but remained on the system. It didn't resolve the issue. Then I tried dpkg-reconfigure from the command line. It didn't work either. I looked at the errors thrown up in the command line mode of Synaptic and then found that maybe the package spe was the problem. I removed it and then once again re-installed the python-2.4 and python-2.4-minimal package. This time it configured python correctly and reconfigured all the other broken packages.

Although the problem now appears to be solved, I'm not sure exactly where the problem lay in this instance. However, the tip here is that when there are several broken packages in a Debian installation, the core of the problem might be an underlying library or a base package which didn't get configured properly during an installation or an upgrade. It can be tricky to deal with.

However looking closely at the errors thrown up by the post-installation process in Synaptic or apt-get is definitely a good way to resolve broken packages in Debian. A long-running Debian system tends to get extremely cluttered over multiple dist-upgrades and occasionally you do get these problems. The good thing about Debian is that it's a self-healing system since the post-install process and configuration can be repeated on existing packages as many times as you wish.

My next cartoon character. Thavil Vidvaan, Senaththur Sethuraman.

Occupation: Playing the thavil at temple festivals and wedding ceremonies. Teaching thavil to young aspirants. Quote: "Idhu thavil aduchcha kai le! Thotta, thola urichuduven!" Favourite pastime: Chewing tobacco and playing cards under the village banyan tree with his troupe.

I must admit to succumbing to a temptation I've had for a long time. I went ahead and created a Blogger account for a new (experimental for now) Cricket blog, currently titled Forward Point. Since I already had a gmail account, it was just a matter of a single click and my blog was ready.

There are several great features I found in the new Blogger (which is no longer beta). I must admit that it's rich in features and extremely easy to use. Push-button publishing it definitely is. Here are some of the enhancements from the older blogger which wasn't integrated with the google account:

• Tags or labels for posts. In effect these act as categories - something that was missing in the old blogger and which I thought was a huge limitation.
• Straightforward tempate editing. Users no longer have to mess with HTML and CSS to make layout and colour customizations on their blogs. To edit a theme, you now have a visual layout editor and a colour picking palette. Most lay people will love this feature and even advanced users will appreciate the easy and rapidity with which a theme can be modified.
• Custom layout elements/widgets. This is definitely a way of adding and enhancing the informational and interactive features of a blog. Although I haven't experimented with it much, it looks quite promising. It even features AdSense, so any blogger can easily display google ads on his blog without messing about with copy/pasting JavaScript code.
• Integration with other google services. I suspect this will be the biggest selling point for the new Blogger. Any person with an existing google account can easily create a blog in addition to so many other rich web services available - gmail, google pages, google documents and spreadsheets, Picasa and so on. In short, almost everything you need from google is available with a unified login system.

Add to all this a huge and active community and you get a complete picture. There's no doubt that google are extremely eager in maintaining their dominance in the blog world and it's fairly easy to see why almost everybody has a blogspot address these days. The user-friendly features may look a bit silly to the technically more proficient users, but they're fun tools to use (particularly the instant template editing) and definitely enhance the blogging experience.

The only downside (as far as I can see) is the lack of a large number of pre-built templates. However, because of the template editing features every blog can be fairly customized with a little effort. Full HTML editing is still available for the more advanced users.

Even though I will continue to hold to my opinion that WordPress is the best blogging platform for the more experienced (in terms of sheer customizability, size of the support community and availability of a huge number of themes and plugins), I think Blogger definitely will remain the most popular blogging tool for the less geeky crowd.

Sudipta recently talked about a subject that's always of interest to people: dreams. So I thought I'd write about one of my strangest dreams, which, surprisingly enough, occurred early this morning.

I usually don't have clear, focussed dreams. Usually the dreams usually disappear in the mists of my sleep or remain blurred and confused. They are also usually nonsensical. But early this morning I had a dream which was not only strangely realistic, it somehow remained sharp in my mind. Maybe illness has a way of focussing the mind. I certainly didn't sleep too well because of my throat infection.

Here's how it went.

I'm in a classroom at college. The lecturer is collecting the homework/assignment from the students. He tears and flings out the notebooks of those who haven't completed the homework and asks them to get out. Strangely enough, I find that my own homework hasn't been completed. Apart from a momentary feeling of dismay, I really don't feel any fear. Rather I'm increasingly irritated by his high-handed behaviour. It culminates when I finally rise up dramatically from my seat, declare that I haven't done my homework and stomp out in a rage, no doubt causing a mild sensation.

I then immediately head to the staff room (set in a strange location: my old school) and then walk in boldly amidst protests from other teachers. In scathing terms I complain about his behaviour in scathing terms to nobody in particular. The teachers look strained and confused. I have the impression that most of them are not even listening to me. However, having established my high moral ground, that scene came to an end.

In the next scene, I'm back for the next class of that lecturer. His attitude has undergone a strange transformation and to my own surprise, I stand up and apologize - not sincerely, but in an absolutely pompous, defiant and self-righteous manner. Strangely he acts most humbly and says that I needn't apologize for anything. He treats me in a most humble manner through the rest of the class. The lesson continues and I sit in class, radiant and filled with a sense of my own importance and an attitude of defiance, yet strangely relieved that I had not got into deep trouble over my behaviour.

This was a dream that actually highlighted two of my characteristics in real life - a strong sense of right and wrong and a rebellious streak. For whatever reason, I felt disturbed in this dream and strongly felt that the lecturer was acting in an unbecoming manner. In my own defiant behaviour, I was exhibiting my real-life rebelliousness.

Surprisingly, this dream is probably a twist of a real-life incident where I acted in a similar defiant manner before one of my lecturers shocking some of my friends. However, be that as it may, I thought it would share it here since it was somewhat realistic and had an underlying theme. Usually dreams disappear into the mists upon waking, but this one (maybe because I had it just before I woke up) stood very clearly etched in my mind.

I've decided to store small bits of useful, but random, information that I usually gather from day-to-day experience as "tidbits." This is my first tidbit...

I was recently trying to get my digital camera (Canon Powershot S50) to work in my laptop and was repeatedly frustrated because gphoto2 refused to detect it. In trying to resolve this problem I logged in as root and by chance I issued the gphoto2 --auto-detect command and found that the camera was detected after all! Turned out that it was a permission problem with the /dev/bus/usb/ folder. Adding the plugdev group to my user account resolved the issue which had been perplexing me for a while. While the solution was absurdly simple and the problem sounds so obvious, I spent hours simply scratching my head wondering why my camera stopped working and even went to the extent of changing the USB cable to see if that was the problem.

So the moral of this story is - if something suddenly stops working in Linux (and particularly if you know it works or it had worked before) it might just turn out to be a simple permissions problem. In this particular case, I suspect that a Debian dist-upgrade had broken the permission which prevented me from accessing the camera. I spent hours on this problem groping around in the dark and googling frantically until I accidentally hit upon the solution which was hinted at in a mailing list archive.