A beginning is a very delicate time. Know, then, that it is the year two thousand seven. The known interblag is ruled by the... Vista Emperor... William the Gates... my... oh hell with it.
Last week, in a totally not unprecedented step in a years-long, time- and money-wasting tug of war, geeks everywhere let out an audible "kekeke" at the news that an elite h4X0r had cracked the DRM of Microsoft's Zune Marketplace -- the weird irony being that the two groups most affected by this news are Slashdot-reading technophiles and Zune Marketplace shoppers, forming a nice little well curve (against an x-axis of snobbery). The crack seems to have been achieved by the same guy who cracked Microsoft's DRM last time, and the time before that, and from whom Microsoft dropped a lawsuit earlier this year, on the basis that they knew nothing about him other than his totally rhombus handle, Viodentia.
Microsoft had developed this particular DRM technology to force its music shoppers to play purchased music on Zunes and Zunes only -- expecting, I suppose, that people would choose a digital music store before they chose a portable device? At any rate, they also began a "PlaysForSure" campaign, essentially offering shiny stickers to any devices that promised to play nice with Microsoft, particularly Vista, their new OS. Can this be construed as hypocrisy, or is it just a vague dicking over?
I don't know, I can't even think straight about it anymore. Honestly, if you had asked me yesterday, I'd have guessed that this happened months ago. Point is, with a little know-how, that Sting album you bought at the Zune Marketplace will play just fine on your iPod, at least until the next laughably brief DRM patch/crack do-si-do.
