How to get round DRM issues with e-books in Linux (epub)

What a hassle this post was.  You'd think that in this 21st century world that we live in, there would be less issues with using any kind of media.  Sadly, no.  Ebooks are still possibly the number one reason why I can find myself in the situation where I am likely to throw my computer across the room.

Downloading ebooks and using them via Linux is a diabolically difficult, stupid and possibly legally dangerous situation.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that the reason is merely the reality that desktop Linux users are the one percenters and that the system is biased towards Windows and OSX users, but it's actually more insidious than that – copyright has sabotaged any kind of simplicity here.

This is a joke.  Only in the land of intellectual property law (and possibly high end encryption) does one find that the world is actually getting more complicated, rather than simpler.

I've just spent the best part of the last couple of days attempting to try to load my computer with the usual fixes to ensure that my computer can have the DRM cracked off it, which is necessary for using Linux with DRM-protected ebooks.  It's a time-consuming and wasteful job, and it's made worse by the fact that I totally fluked it the last couple of times and then didn't write the steps down.  Oh sure, there are plenty of web pages out there that have the steps, but no one seems to have the order right.

15 things to do after installing Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE

Edit 30/12/2013: 12 things to do after installing Linux Mint 16 (Petra) XFCE is now available here.

When I did the last one of these after installing Maya, I got way more traffic to that post than pretty much most of this blog any time ever.

For those of you who are visiting for the first time, I don't actually normally blog about tech stuff.  I blog about politics, religion, consumer affairs, pretty much stuff that is totally un-tech.

But I've just installed Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE on my little old Eee PC, so enjoy my guide to the first 15 things to do after installation.  Please excuse the liberal copying and pasting from the previous version.

This time, for fun, I did an update to my father's netbook as well.  Things went swimmingly for both and I'm pretty happy with how things turned out.

Fixing the news

It's been a little while since the Finkelstein report came out, and we've since seen the Leveson report come out in the UK.  We've also seen the response to Leveson by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The same thing is pretty much happening here with Finkelstein.  Thanks to articles like this, the hysterical reaction pretty much ensures that any government that wants to enforce standards on the news media will be considered to be recklessly trampling free speech beneath satanic jackboots in an Orwellian orgy of dictatorial facsism by the time that media is finished with them.

I don't support this at all.  Leaving aside regulation for a moment, no one seems to have twigged that the problem is with news itself.  In short, we don't really get it any more.  We get something that looks like news, but is quite slanted and biased and, as I alluded to in my previous posts, we now are getting some pretty second-rate product that we, as consumers, don't really deserve.

In other words, the market is not providing and therefore, there is market failure.  Which, in other industries, means that it's time to regulate.

So, I thought I'd have a good think about this.  What is is that we would like a news service to provide us with?  What is it that we, as consumers, think of when we think of news?

16 Things to do after installing Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE

Edit 30/12/2013: 12 things to do after installing Linux Mint 16 (Petra) XFCE is now available here.

You may have just installed Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE.  What next?

This is a list of stuff I did to get my Eee PC into a state that I can use after installing Mint XFCE.  It might not necessarily work for you, but hey.  It's a kind of sequel of sorts to a post I did earlier today, and again, it's unlikely to appeal to anyone except Linux converts.

One of the things that has struck me about Mint XFCE since I installed it on this machine is its sheer reliability.  XFCE has been around for a little while, now.  While some have regarded it as a bit of a poor man's GNOME, it doesn't have the baggage that GNOME is presently dragging around.

So here are 16 things I did after installing Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE on my Eee PC.

Linux Mint 13 XFCE. Why?

This post is not going to provide any searing insight or anything like that. It's merely a documentary record, for me, if not necessarily anyone else. It's probably only going to appeal to the Linux curios, a diverse group who I can truthfully (and happily) say have completely different ideas about what an operating system should be. So consider yourself warned.

I've just installed LinuxMint 13 (Maya) XFCE onto my aging Eee PC. I have the Eee PC 1008HA Seashell, which is the model (together with the 1008HA) that started ASUS on the path to be a bit more adventurous in their design.

The PC has aged pretty well, although the single core Intel Atom processor and the 1GB of DDR2 RAM hasn't. But after sitting back and watching the bloatware that Ubuntu became with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), I needed to investigate other options.

Credit where credit's due

Andrew Bolt (Hun/Tele/Advertiser) had a blog post pulled on Monday.  Mainly due to the fact that his post could have been interpreted as muckraking by making a big song and dance about a fraudulent Glenn Milne article in The Oz.  An interesting part is that some are suggesting that Bolt might have posted after Milne’s column was pulled.  Not only that, but News left the post online for a considerable amount of time after Milne's article was removed.

Milne, of course, is best known for attempting to blue Stephen Mayne one year on stage at the Walkley Awards.  I had absolutely no need to mention that, but I'm hedging my bets in case Bolt is correct about his post being 'fair, accurate and in the public interest'.

Today, in his column, he’s got me in stitches by squealing “censorship”.  The problem with Bolt’s brand of satire, is that it’s often lost on his audience, who see his character’s flagrant racism and bullying as being the real deal.  And this is where the problem starts.

I’m aware that Bolt’s blog is a bit of a testing ground for his wilder humour.  What goes out there gets tested amongst the comments from the fruitcakes that dominate his readership and the eventually worked on a little harder.  Eventually, Bolt creams off the stuff that’s silly enough to outrage and amuse, yet the stuff that’s too ‘out there’ gets forgotten about.  What’s left gets written up as ‘proper’ copy in his columns in News’ south eastern newspapers.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 2

 In our first part, we heavily criticised News Corp for just being a bad news organisation.  By that, I mean that as a news organisation, they are bad.  Incredibly bad.  (I didn’t mean that they just produce bad news, oh heavens to Betsy, no)

It should be pointed out, though, once again, that I was only singling out News as the worst of what appears to be a very bad bunch.  I listed a whole bunch of crimes committed by the media in part 1, some of which were also committed by other media sources as well.

A really good example of disgraceful media practice that is committed across the board, is the tendency of the financial media to regurgitate media releases from companies, without any sort of objective research.  Media Watch appears to have strangely left financial journalists alone to date, but will pursue other journalists who regurgitate press releases.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 1

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen some rather interesting stuff in the media involving the media. We’ve seen all hell break loose in the UK with what appears to be becoming known as ‘Hackgate’. We’ve seen the Herald-Sun publish a call to assassinate the Prime Minister. We’ve also seen the media circuses around the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan and Casey Anthony where the media essentially judged these folks guilty before their cases had even been heard. In Anthony’s case, they then screamed hysterically about the jury being wrong, even publishing questionable articles where jurors allegedly disclosed a preference for going home rather than finding someone guilty.

I think I'll avoid the issue about concentrated media ownership – it’s probably outside the realm of what I want to blog about here, but what I will add is the sheer, unmitigated bias that passes for journalism in anything that comes out of News Corporation.  Although, it's fair to say that 2UE are probably much worse.

Here we go again...

Hope that you’re all having a great new year, folks.

Like a festering wound, this one has been annoying me for a bit, but I thought I’d put this out there and see who bites. With Wikileaks now relegated to the pages in the middle of the newspaper (at least where it doesn't relate to Julian Assange's extradition problems), I thought I’d come back to a subject that I really don’t understand at all: Freedom of Speech.

Yes folks, Freedom of Speech.

One of the things that I find interesting about this topic is the sheer unmitigated drivel that people utter whenever this topic comes up. Me included. But I live in the forlorn hope that someone will find something to correct me on this. So far, it has been a stretch.

My Christmas mix tape

Hi folks. I hope that you're all enjoying the time of year that's upon us.

You know, originally, Christmas time was a bunch of different pagan festivals, most notably Yuletide, that got co-opted by Christians keen to embrace stuff that future audiences would love.

These days I acknowledge that Christmas has morphed into a secular display of undignified commercialism and gluttony. Naturally, of course, I love this.

But there is a more serious side to the season. I talk about the unmitigated drivel that pours from speakers all over shopping centres at this time of year. There's only so much "Jingle Bells" or We Wish You a Merry Christmas" that I can take. And if it's not those pepped up and insanely cheerful American odes to capitalism, it's those thoroughly unfathomable one hit wonders Slade and Wizzard. Or those horrid efforts from Cliff Richard or George Michael.

Yes folks, Christmas songs blow dog.