HOWTO scrub iTunes' DRM off of your purchased music with QTFairUse

DRM sucks. A lot. Case in point: I just received a $25 dollar gift certificate from a loving relative who wanted me to buy some music. I summarily went to the iTunes Music Store and downloaded about twenty-five bucks worth of Cannibal Corpse songs. All was good, until I tried to play the songs on another music player. Surprise! The .m4p files are a iTunes-only, DRMed format. That is when I resolved to immediately blog about how to get around it (a mild form of protest, I know).

(Disclaimer: doing this may be violating the DMCA. But if you want to stick it to the man and protect your fair use rights, read on. Besides, the DCMA sucks, too.)

First, you're going to need Windows (sorry... I guess you could always use Wine or Virtualization inside Linux, but I don't have that set up yet -- I'm just dual-booting Ubuntu Edgy and Windows XP). Next, download QTFairUse which is a utility that will scrub the DRM from your music files. (There is also another utility for doing this called myFairTunes and an older one that doesn't work anymore called JHymn). Unzip the QTFairUse archive and launch the .exe file to start the program. Use the drag-and-drop interface to select which songs you want scrubbed and then click the button at the bottom to begin the conversion. You now have .m4a-format, DRM-free audio files!

UPDATE:
Neither of these programs work under Wine... neither are in the Wine Application DB... looks like I'll have to stick with Windows (ugh) for now...

QTFairUse throws a "ImportError: MemoryLoadLibrary failed loading win32api.pyd" when using the console version and an "ImportError: MemoryLoadLibrary failed loading win32gui.pyd" when using the GUI version

myFairTunes sets up fine but throws this error when I run the application under Wine: "install the Windows version of Mono to run .NET executables" ... searched Google and it seems like this is a long way from being fixed

UPDATE 2:

new links:

• itunes 6.0.4 windows xp download
• QtFairUse

Be sure your computer is 'authorized' to play 'protected' files on iTunes or this won't work.

Static IPs in Debian-based Linux

Here's a brief overview of how to set up an internet connection using a static IP address on Debian-based Linux systems. Most large networks nowadays use DHCP to get a user an IP address, but knowledge of static IP configuration can still be helpful in a lot of situations. First, edit the /etc/network/interfaces file as a superuser so that the entry for the desired interface looks something like this (replace x's with numeric values):

iface eth0 inet static # static, as opposed to dhcp... replace eth0 with desired interface
address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # ip address you want assigned to this computer
netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # subnet mask
network xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # optional
broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # optional
gateway xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # gateway (usually router/firewall) ip address

Once you have done this, restart your network interfaces with sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

The gateway can also be specified on the command line if it's not in the interfaces file: sudo route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx The command netstat -nr can show the routes, including gateways, that the kernel is currently using.

To explicitly release a dhcp connection, do something like dhclient -r eth0

If your computer and network is set up correctly, you should now be able to ping your gateway and access sites on the internet by IP address. However, in order to access sites by name you need the help of DNS. Add entries to the /etc/resolv.conf file as a superuser in this format (you can have as many as you want):

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Now, if you point your browser to a domain name like www.yahoo.com, you should be able to get there. Welcome to t3h 1nt3rw3b. You can also do all the above by accessing the System->Administration->Network menu.

Links:

• HOWTO Basic Network Troubleshooting An Ubuntu Forums post about basic networking... check out the great script towards the bottom of the first page
  
• HOWTO Ubuntu Linux convert DHCP network to static IP Explains how to do this, and much more, on the command line
• Ubuntu Networking for Basic and Advanced Users A visual guide to using the Ubuntu Networking GUI
  
• SearchNetworking.com A good, general-purpose networking resource
  
  

Update (in light of ubuntu-users post and responses):
For switching from one interface configuration to another (assuming eth0 and correct /etc/network/interfaces):

1. sudo ifdown eth0
2. edit /etc/network/interfaces
3. sudo ifup eth0

SIOCDELRT: No such process means something is screwy. You probably have the wrong number (i.e. gateway) somewhere. Haven't determined exactly what this means.

kiba-dock

kiba-dock (couldn't find the project page...) is an OSX-like dock that you can use to launch applications, and it also has some silly animations to go with it. I installed it on Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 using the instructions here. As the poster mentions, it only works properly after you try and install the second time. Strange, but it works. If you're not running some fancy compositor-window manager like XGL/Compiz or AIGLX/Beryl, it might look pretty ugly (black boxes around everything, sometimes text doesn't show up, etc.). I'm using Beryl and it looks fine.

To use kiba-dock, drag icons onto the dock to be able to launch them from the dock. kiba-dock is, of course, completely customizable (colors, position on screen, physics, etc.) so if it's not immediately to your taste, you can change it.

To launch kiba-dock at startup go to System->Preferences->Sessions and under Startup Programs add kiba-dock.

Here's a video of kiba-dock in all its glory:

Bash prompt customization

Using old UNIX machines is a pain sometimes. The 10-year-old features just don't mesh with the current ones, and it just doesn't feel right. Also, the prompt might not display any useful information. Heresy, I say! Follow these steps to make yourself feel more at home. Some information taken from this article.

To get an Ubuntu-like prompt (assuming bash is installed):

1. Edit the .bashrc file with an editor like vi
2. Add this as the last line: export PS1='\u@\h:\w$ '

Other prompt configuration options:

• \! History number of current command
• \# Command number of current command
• \d Current date
• \h Host name
• \n Newline
• \s Shell name
• \t Current time
• \u User name
• \W Current working directory
• \w Current working directory (full path)

To get easy access to some obscure directory: alias [name]="cd [absolute directory path]"

You can also edit the .login file, which executes immediately when you log in. (It might go by a different name depending on the shell... see here for details)

Use set -o emacs (the default) or set -o vi to set your command line editing mode of choice.

And remember kids, don't forget to write the other users if on a public machine! (Or maybe talk, or wall if you're the admin).

More links

• Prompt Magic
• The 256 Color Mode of xterm
• The exhaustive Bash Prompt HOWTO