Linux DVD43 and AnyDVD Alternatives

It’s a bit like “how does one prevent viruses on linux” or “How does one replace the distributor cap on a diesel”? It simply does not apply. In the corporate licensed (locked) world, Windows cannot and will not afford the cost of unlocking DVD’s for every potential user and purpose, so it falls to individual applications to decode DVD’s for playing. Much of the cost of PowerDVD and its ilk comes from proprietary CSS libraries that are incorporated into the program itself. Newer DVD’s require installation of a special program to handle this on a disk-specific basis.

AnyDVD and DVD43 remove CSS protection so that ideally any software package will have access to the contents of any disk. If encryption is updated, only your decryption program needs to be updated, and only a small part of it, not the collection of other programs you’ve got installed already.

This is clearly the simplest solution, though ultimately expensive and legally muddy. The makers of these programs are daily faced with the decision of paying protection fees to content owners to reassure them that they’re being reimbursed for the possibility of illegal DVD copying, or just ignoring their protecion fees altogether, and risking litigation ala DeCSS.

Under Windows, Microsoft retains ultimate control, and no one risks going rogue because along with lawsuits, content owners can simply require Microsoft to shut down a particular program in its next Windows Update. Linux has no such central authority. There is, generally speaking, no one to sue, no one to file an injunction against, no one to threaten. Having a centralized decryption library makes the most sense, and is the simplest solution for DVDs.

libdvdcss accomplishes this, so once it’s installed, it’s as though DVD43 or AnyDVD is always running. By the same token, without libdvdcss, all encrypted dvd’s will appear broken in all programs. We don’t worry about some Hollywood movie conspiracy making a virus to disable libdvdcss, because the thought of allowing anyone else to run our systems, including a virus, is just silly. Additionally, so is the notion of having to install anything proprietary to do anything else.

Actually, you’ll find Ubuntu a good starting place, if nothing else because there’s a simple how-to for just about everything. And everyone is terribly kind about posting commands to use. They’re governed by a community of people who want you to succeed because they want Ubuntu to succeed, so malicious users are few and far between, and rigorously persecuted.

The short of it is that if you’ve got linux on your system and want to [make coffee automatically, change the channel on your tv, send an email] there’s a means of doing so and a how-to as well.

Except for DirectX gaming.

Chapter I

I’d like to believe my story is one to inspire amazement, insight, or even moral fortitude. But these are not things I control, because mine is not to read the story or understand its impact. Mine is merely to write it, and put myself into it sincerely and honestly. I know that glossing over ones faults doesn’t make a story more glorious, and glorifying my mistakes wouldn’t make it more compelling. Inventing details or integrating parables won’t accomplish anything except to confuse me as I recount not only the events, but my understanding of them.

I’ll not set down a chronicle or cold sequence, nor wallow in emotional drivel. It is what it is.

But to me, it is compelling. To me, life is insightful, morally demanding, and above all, interesting.

Make no mistake, we are not free, in this “free country” of ours. The plow horse cannot help but feel the tug of the bridle at each step, and whether it chooses to chafe at it or not, it cannot help but taste the bit in its mouth, and feel the rein on its neck. Much care has been given to making ours a comfortable slavery, to camouflage our trappings and imprisonment, but make no mistake, we are bound nonetheless. This part of my story will probably occupy much of my attention for some time.

Blogging Pitfalls

It’s depressing, sucks the life out of my desire to write, to come home and find that the three-quarters finished posting I’d started has been closed out by someone else using the computer. Like a lazy moron, I’ve grown lax with modern conveniences like autosave, and almost completely abandoned my paranoid failsafe techniques, such as writing and saving a posting to a text file locally, and only copying and pasting the finished post in its entirety.

The internet allows me to be long-winded, which perhaps is what I really need. Is it sick and sad that more than a need to be heard, I have a need to talk? In my brighter, happier moments, I’d like to think I’m a bit of a prophet, attuned to the fabric of the cosmos around me, and able to help and heal those I speak to by knowing precisely what they need to hear. Or more often, having no direct knowledge of what I’m supposed to be saying, no personal understanding of the advice I’m giving, except to try to articulate the energy around me into words. At darker times, I wonder if a prophet is simply someone with the instinctual need to talk who merely adopts wisdom and forethought as coping mechanisms for functioning in polite society.

It really doesn’t help that everyone around me is so darn accommodating, and that some of the things I say actually seem to help. The two folks I’ve helped work on a particular area of performance at work are doing rather well lately, enough of a tease to make me suspect just for a moment that I actually know something of value. But realistically, and terrified of the manifold dangers of hubris, I know deep down that I am who I am because I’m standing in this particular spot at this very moment, and as soon as I move to a different spot, will cease to be useful in this way, replaced by whomever else comes along. It is a blessing to serve.

I do have an instinctual need to write, a buildup of pressure not unlike sexual tension that has to be released once in awhile for my head to stay clear. Last night’s post was brilliant and unique, or at least it felt inventive, and the thought of starting it over from scratch is draining, dismal, and oppressive, which abates the urge not in the slightest.

Thus, I trifle with this jot, in hopes I can clear my mind, and be able to take a leaner, more well-reasoned approach to the idea next time I can’t stand to be in the same room with my ideas for another minute.

And maybe I’ll save my unprintable work next time.