News for Wednesday, 4 October 2006

DVD Jon, the well known creator of DeCSS as well as the favorite hackers of Apple DRM, aka Fairplay, has decided to turn his hacking systems into business.
Via a company named DoubleTwist Ventures, he is going to develop systems for online music stores allowing them to propose songs in iPod-compatible format.
Of course with the recent introduction of iTunes Store, it is not only about music that this FairPlay compatible systems can be applied, DVD Jon is probably also thinking about iPod compatible VOD.
If we are requesting the most flexible DRM, allowing a maximal interoperability, seeing DVD Jon launching a company aiming to support DRM; while he was bypassing them, is a bit weird...

Reports from Clément

With my MacPro 3.0GHz, I have performed numerous benchmarks, running Photoshop filters with 10.4.7 and 10.4.8, times for completing the test are respectively 269s and 249.7s, just behind the value obtained with a PM G5 dual 2.5, 228.7s.
Results are compiler hereafter (in French) :
http://blog.clemmm.com/2006/04/10/macintel-et-photoshop-cs2/
When running the same benchmarking script via Bootcamp or parallels, the results are respectively 140.7s and 165.2s. If Parallels is an attractive solution, the Wacom tablet is unfortunately not supported
I still need to find ways to calibrate my display while running Parallels and set a dual screen system.

Jean-François is back and has established a new record with 7HDs installed in a MacPro: 6 SATA HDs set as a RAID 0, and 1 PATA HD hosting the system

So I have decided to buy an ATA Seagate 250GB/ 16MB cache as a bootdisk, and 2 additional SATA Seagates 750GB/16MB cache. Results are amazing: RAID 0 with 5 disks = 360MB/s read/write, and with 6HDs = 400MB/s (430MB/s read and 420MB/s write)! In total, I have a 4.1TB RAID 0 system



I had to remove the optical drive, and prepare a holder to install 3 HDs. I have also installed a small fan in order to cool-down those 3 HDs.

Very nice work, such mod turns the MacPro into a excellent HD video working station.

It is now official: the Macworld will indeed start with a keynote presented by Steve Jobs himself. It is very good news for that event, which will take place between January 8-12 2007 in San Francisco, and also for Macfans worldwide, because as his appearances have become more and more rare, you can bet he wouldn't bother coming if it weren't to announce a load a new "amazing" stuff - and maybe even some new product(s).
It is also the best way for Apple to kill in the egg all the gossips concerning Jobs' gradual withdrawing from the mythic company he himself created.