I just downloaded a .WMA file from mtv.com and when I loaded it up in media player, it first contacted some website to "register" me for a license to play that song. Now that I've registered, it lets me play the file.

My question is how does Empeg Car 1.1 handle this "registering for a license" thing? Does Emplode get the license and then hand off the license to the Car player?

This was completely unexpected for me, so perhaps someone else can do some sniffing and find out what sites the .WMA file is accessing on the net. I can imagine that each downloaded file has a unique id so that the copyright owners can track media distribution. I can also imagine that the .WMA file will stop playing after x plays or after x/x/x date.

-Hoagy.

We're not going to support DRM locked WMA files in 1.1 - only unlicensed files.

DRM is a whole can of worms which we may support in a future build.

Rob

On a related note...

If anyone ever runs into any trouble being able to play "locked" files like that, there is a work around. Actually, I'm sure there are several work arounds, but here's one that I know about.

This work-around assumes that:

A) you can't get the song in any other format besides the "locked" format, and,
B) because of (A), you're willing to live with the possible artifacts that can be induced by re-compressing an audio stream a second time.

What you do is get a cool piece of software called Total Recorder. It installs itself as an audio driver in Windows, in between your apps and the actual sound card's real driver. It intercepts all data sent to your sound card and streams it to the hard disk. You can save it as a .WAV file and then re-encode it in any format you like (or leave it as a WAV file if you like).

I've used it to rip the audio track of DVDs, and streaming media.

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Tony Fabris

this is a little off topic, and probably should have it's own thread.. but I figgure people around here would apreciate it.. (i even have a copy of the talk on my empeg)

The IMA (who I work for) sponsored a public lecture by Bruce Schneier. I put up a copy of the talk in several bitrates of mp3, besides our normal realaudio publication of the lecture. (apropriate, considering the subject matter)
His talk covers a ton of info about digital copy protection.

you can download the mp3's from our site:

http://www.ima.umn.edu/talks/workshops/2-12-16.2001/index.html

it's the red highlighted bit in the middle of the page.

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

Excellent lecture. I'm only about 15 minutes into it, and this guy is great. He knows what he's talking about, and is saying all the things I've been saying all along.

I said "YES!" out loud when he brought up European satellite television, since I've studied that as well, and how it relates to DirecTV's card system.

Anyone who's remotely interested in digital copy protection issues should listen to this. And don't be put off by the first voice you hear on the recording- that's not the speaker. He's just introducing the main speaker, who's much more eloquent and more interesting to listen to.

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Tony Fabris

hahaha.. that's wilard miller, he's the director of the IMA.. softspoken, old math professor.. nice guy if you actualy talk to him. he's retiring soon, which means i get a new boss.. whee!

bruce is awsome.. it's too bad I didn't think to grab another wireless mike or see if the lecture hall we used had overhead mic's because the audience was great.. all kinds of crazy ACM members behind me.

the funniest part of the talk was when his laptop poped up a dialog on the 60 foot wide projection TV (huge U of M lecture hall) telling him his battery was charged.. he asked "anyone know how to shut that thing off?" i don't think you can hear it, but the response from someone in the audience was "install linux" ;)

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

Yeah, I heard the comment about the popup box, and the response. My only question was going to be "what was the popup box?", and you just answered it.

I'm not a laptop user, so let me get this straight...

Windows has some battery-management features when running on laptops. One of those features is an annoying popup box that grabs the focus and tells you when the battery is done charging?

Now, laptops are often used to present slide shows. And sometimes people plug their laptops into a wall socket during the show to make sure the poor thing doesn't die if the show runs long. But then you get a stupid "done charging" message in the middle of the slide show? This stupid message box isn't smart enough to know that another app has the focus and that it's impolite to grab the focus from an app like that? Especially for an inane non-critical message.

Somebody remind me why this company is so wealthy?



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Tony Fabris

I've never seen this dialog on my laptop running 98, ME, 2000, or XP. Must have been a 3rd party program. The power managment will warn when it's low and needs to be charged though if so configured (default is to warn around 10% to allow enough power to either sleep for a while or be plugged in)

With my notebook, the only time it shows a message like that is when the battery is getting very low (along with an audio warning). But that can be turned off. Sounds like one of those Compaq or Dell programs! :-)

12gig Mk. II BLUE
Detroit, MI USA
www.PfeifferBeer.com

Typicially theres 2 things at work here. The BIOS and the OS.

Windows has completly customizable warnings when the power hits a certain percentage. One for the warning, and a second usually configured to drop the system into sleep or hibernation. The warnings can be just a sound, a text box with a generic warning, or a program can be ran.

Then the BIOS usually has warnings as well. My BIOS will beep 3 times via the PC Speaker, and flash the power LED to let me know power is a bit low and unless I do something, it'll probably power off very soon. It beeps some more as it's closer, then finally will power off.

As far as the program saying it's charged, perfect reason to reload any system you buy right from the factory with an as standard as possible Windows load. Just like the one on my laptop that told me when the disk was getting full and had a nice phone number right there for sales for a drive upgrade.