taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

• Dabble DB : looks like a web-based version of good old Filemaker
  (tags: dabble-db databases web db spreadsheets analytics groupware)

• retrocomputing hackers reminisce about the 1541 diskette drive : skip to the comment thread, it’s fantastic. I used to know lots of this stuff (via Donncha)
  (tags: via:donncha commodore-64 hacks 1541 disks copy-protection drm hardware hacking history retro c64)

• MPLC racketeering Irish playschools : the ‘Motion Picture Licensing Company’ sent a letter to 2,500 Irish playschools, demanding a fee of EUR3 per child to cover license fees for the kids watching DVDs. However, it seems they themselves hadn’t registered as required by law, so were acting illegally in issuing demands… oh the irony
  (tags: mplc racketeering law ireland dvds movies mpaa licensing copyright legal children kindergarten playschools)

• Komplett’s new Dublin pick-up point is open : routing around the Irish couriers and An Post’s brokenness by allowing customers to pick up their items directly. a shame this is necessary
  (tags: an-post delivery couriers dublin ireland komplett components pc hardware)

Tags: 1541, an-post, analytics, c64, children, commodore-64, components, copy-protection, copyright, couriers, dabble-db, databases, db, delivery, disks, drm, dublin, dvds, groupware, hacking, hacks, hardware, history, ireland, kindergarten, komplett, law, legal, licensing, movies, mpaa, mplc, pc, playschools, racketeering, retro, spreadsheets, via:donncha, web

So Mulley mentions that Moviestar.ie are planning to offer downloadable movies. Great concept, but I can guarantee the execution will be crap on a stick. :(

First off, the content available:

‘When the service goes live on 1 May, customers will be able to avail of content from several Irish producers including Network Ireland Television, as well as Video International’s film library which includes films like The Little Shop of Horrors. The company is also seeking content from both the History and Biography Channels, which would mean a substantial back catalogue of documentary shows.’

Sorry, but: snore.

Secondly, the technology used:

‘Moviestar.ie content must be downloaded onto a PC or laptop but can then be transferred over to digital media players like the iPod Touch for viewing on the go. This service will be compatible with Apple Macs but only if the user downloads Windows Media Player.’

So in other words, it’s Windows Media. That means it won’t play on my TV through my MythTV box, on a USB stick plugged into a Philips DVD player, on my Linux laptop, or even on a normal DVD player using a burned DVD.

Too little, too late. Plenty of Irish consumers are already consuming downloaded video — as the popularity of the Philips DVP5960 demonstrates. For legal video downloads to work, they need to be somewhere remotely near as convenient and usable as BitTorrent.

Using DRM is just falling down the same rabbit hole that swallowed up downloadable music for 5 years. Nobody used that either, until gradually the companies involved realised that opening up was the only way to get customers, bringing us to where we are today — legal downloads using the MP3 format.

BTW, I know that’s the same DRM technology used by Channel 4’s “4oD” download service. Big deal — I don’t bother trying to watch that stuff either, for the same reasons. If Channel 4 jumped off a cliff, would Moviestar.ie jump after them?

(By the way, that Philips DVD player is a total success story. That’s a name-brand hardware manufacturer, making a low-end, $60 DVD player, with support for viewing downloaded XviD AVI movies on a USB stick. Apparently it’ll also play off USB hard disks, too. It’s immensely popular; for example, here’s a customer review of 10/10: “Best thing ever”. Several of my friends have them, and praise them highly. I’m coming up to DVD player replacement time, and I’m planning to get one too.)

Tags: downloading, dvds, dvp5960, ireland, movies, moviestar.ie, philips, video

Plug plug plug: next week is the 2007 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival — some great movies being shown, I’m looking forward to it. Most of all, though, I want to recommend Small Engine Repair, which I’ve written about before. It’s being shown in the festival at 6:20 PM on Wed 21st Feb in IFI 1 — tickets can be booked online here, at EUR 9 apiece.

Writer and director, Niall Heery, won the Breakthrough Talent Award at this year’s Irish Film and Television Awards at the weekend. Nice one Niall!

Go see it if you get a chance — it’s a fantastic movie, in my opinion. And be sure to vote for it for the festival’s Audience Award…

Tags: awards, dublin, film, friends, ifta, ireland, movies, niall-heery, small-engine-repair

Last Friday, I visited the Galway Film Fleadh to see the Irish premiere of a new feature-length movie called Small Engine Repair, which was directed by a mate of mine called Niall Heery.

I loved it — funny, extremely black comedy, reminded me a lot of The Deer Hunter in visual style, but unmistakably Irish at the same time. (Blog movie reviews seem to be out of favour right now, so I’ll leave it at that.)

Here’s hoping it picks up wider distribution very soon — it deserves to be big, I think. Nice one, Niall! Happily, the voters of the Fleadh agreed – it went on to win the Best First Feature award.

Actually, it’s been a good year for friends and family at the Fleadh — I note that my cousin, Eoin Ryan, picked up first prize for Best Irish Short Animation with his excellent short, Demon. cool!

Tags: awards, demon, eoin-ryan, family, films, fleadh, friends, galway, movies, niall-heery, small-engine-repair

Movies: Hacking Netflix, via torrez.

Jason Kottke points out a great quote on a Friendster cross-site scripting attack — this great quote: ‘We have a policy that we are not being hacked.’

He also speculates that Google used the GMail invite-network data for whitelisting — but whitelisting based on email address alone is trivially exploitable, so I’d doubt it.

I’m just back from a trip over to Cape Cod to meet family (halfway between here and Ireland, y’see ;) — lots and lots of luvverly lobster and sundry shellfish — and after a 6 day trip, had 5000 spams and a couple of thousand nonspam mails to deal with. Thankfully SpamAssassin dealt with the spams (only about 5 false negatives, no false positives I could spot) – but I’m going to have to do something about that volume of mail. drowning in the stuff. argh.

Tags: attack, friendster, gmail, google, hacking, movies, netflix, policy, quote, torrez, trip

Movies: Lightning strikes Jesus on Gibson’s Christ film set:

The incident, in which The Rock and The Count of Monte Cristo star Jim Caviezel did not sustain an injury, is the second bolt to hit the set of the movie in Italy. ‘I’m about a hundred feet away from them,’ producer Steve McEveety said, ‘when I glance over and see lightning coming out of Caviezel’s ears.’

Tags: bolt, christ, film, gibson, incident, injury, jesus, lightning, movies, set, star

Movies: Inhabitants of San Francisco! Or people nearby who fancy watching a great documentary! According to the SFGate.com Morning Fix, the Castro theater will be showing the amazing documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised between Oct 24-30.

I’ve blogged this before, but quick recap: it’s an incredible movie documenting what happened in the Venezuelan Presidential Palace on April 11th 2002, when President Hugo Chavez was briefly deposed by a coup d’etat. It covers the entire period, and amazingly has pretty-much full access to everything that Chavez, his cabinet, and his loyal soldiers did and said. A sample:

‘On the day of the coup, we only began realising what was actually going on when the state TV signal was cut. Up until then, people had been shot and there was a terrible sense of confusion, but still the reality of what was taking place hadn’t exactly sunk in. Then later that night, the media started saying that Chavez had fled to Cuba and that he had resigned, when in fact he was in the palace — and so were we. It became clear then that something very calculated and sinister was unfolding.’

Really, it’s well worth watching. Due to its comments on the actions, and spin, of the current US administration, Harry Knowles reckons it’ll never get a public release in the US outside a film festival (and I’d agree) — so you’re going to have to watch it in a lefty theater or nothing.

(BTW the website needs some work though — it uses the horrible ‘reinventing the scrollbar’ DHTML trick, urgh.)

Tags: com, coup, documentary, fix, inhabitants, morning, movies, palace, sfgate, theater, watching