Saturday, August 14, 2004
News
Jahil Nelson: Animating For The Super Bowl
Xserve RAID gives us tremendous versatility to access our media in real time, which lets us take on big projects and do them fast. We don't have to wrry about the technical issues — we can concentrate on the work itself."
Net Publishing Made Profitable
After 13 years of experimenting, veteran Net publisher Adam Engst has finally stumbled on a good busines model — fast-turnaround e-books.
For Ciggies And Spliffs
Hardware Matti Lampila is an enterprising soul. He turned a dead Apple mouse into an ashtray — with a prominent Apple logo, of course.
Apple Will Attend MacExpo London
Apple has confirmed that it will attend MacExpo in London this November.
Opinion
Further Your CS Development With Mac OS X
Mac OS X offers the best combination to satisfy your inner geek and get your day-to-day tasks out of the way. Sometimes you want to explore, other times you just want to avoid hassles and get your work done.
The Apple Store Price-Matching
While the end user may benefit from lowered prices, it is a well-known secret that prices of Apple products are controlled, so what can we gather from this latest marketing move? Is this a case of "Do your part in the fight against resellers, report any suspicious prices!"?
Review
4th Time Is Charm For Apple's iPod
For Personal Reasons, Focus Is On Micro-Level
Dueling Music Boxes
This week I've been playing with three new products designed to bring your digital music library into your home stereo system.
James Bond 007: NightFire
Although certain parts of it got a bit tediously repetitive, on the whole I found it great fun.
Sidetrack
JHromadka, in Slashdot: Jobs takes a month off on medical leave, and they try to sneak the Newton back. :-)
What Was Actually Broken In AirPort Express' Music Streaming
There seems to be a great confusion out there in the world of armchair critics *cough*slashdot*cough* about what is actually being broken in the latest Great AirPort Express hack... so, here' s my attempt at summarizing (and simplifying) what's going on, based on what I understand.
In the ideal scenario as envisioned by Apple engineers and lawyers...
Step 1: iTunes decrypt songs purchased from iTMS. This step is omitted if the songs are not protected (e.g. MP3s that you rip from your CDs.)
Step 2: iTunes encrypt the output from Step 1, using a "secret" algorithm so that only AirPort Express know how to decrypt.
Step 3: iTunes send the output from Step 2 to AirPort Express.
Step 4: AirPort Express receives the output from Step 3 from iTunes.
Step 5: AirPort Express decrypts the output from Step 4, using a "secret" algorithm.
Step 6: AirPort Express send the output from Step 5 to your speakers.
Now, what was broken? Only Step 2. Which means that other applications besides iTunes can now encrypt audio streams that the AirPort Express will decrypt will play.
Please note that the decryption algorithm in Steps 1 and 5 are not broken in this hack. So this hack is not about removing the DRM protection in songs protected by iTMS (i.e. Step 1), nor is this hack about allowing other devices or applications to hijack (and play or record) songs that is meant for AirPort Express (i.e. Step 5).
Having said that, everyone is still expecting Apple to come down hard on this hack.
(P.S. Yes, I know I'm simplifying a little. It's not the algorithm that is "secret", but the public and private keys.)
(P.P.S. I am no expert on this, so please do correct me if I've gotten anything wrong, or if someone else has a better summary.)
