Das Gespräch dreht sich natürlich wieder um den State of the Union unabhängiger Medienproduktion und wir diskutieren “Personal Media Empires”: CTRP406 Personal Media Empires Strike Back. Bitte flattrn (dort).

Es war eine interessante Runde und zu Beginn habe ich ein wenig aus dem Nähkästchen zur Geschichte des Congresses geplaudert, später drehte sich viel um Aktivismus und zukünftige Entwicklungen. Insgesamt ein sehr interessantes Gespräch, dass ich gerne mit Euch teilen möchte.

Hacking at Random

  International technology & security conference. Four days of
  technology, ideological debates and hands-on tinkering.

  On August 13-16, 2009 the 20th anniversary event edition of the
  four-yearly Dutch outdoor technology-conference will take place near
  Vierhouten, NL.

What is HAR?

  Since 1989 the international community that builds the internet has
  been getting together on a series of conferences to discuss the state
  of contemporary technology, the future of it and the sociological and
  political consequences of their work. The participants vary from
  students and people with personal interests to researchers, scientists
  and entrepreneurs who are widely recognized as the best in their field.

  The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, the average level of knowledge
  is high and outside of the official lectures the site is buzzing with
  energy, ideas and projects. The New York Times likened the 1997 edition
  to a "Woodstock for Hackers". We do our best to keep that atmosphere.

  When these conferences first happened twenty years ago, the internet
  was like the Wild West, a new frontier to explore. That has changed,
  virtually every household in the Western world has access to the
  internet and, just as happened in the Wild West, new questions have
  risen. Questions of governance, sustainability, integration with
  existing power structures, shortage of IP space and energy, censorship,
  security, etc. The notion of hacking, to use a system in a creative way
  that was not thought of when it was invented, has also shown to be
  applicable to fields outside of ICT technology.

Where is HAR?

  The location (+52 19' 50.02", +5 49' 27.98") is near Vierhouten, a
  small settlement in the beautiful Veluwe area renowned for its culinary
  industry. The former socialist youth-camp [1]de Paasheuvel provides
  some good old-fashioned Dutch [2]gezelligheid. A variety of camping
  areas will cater to our broad range of camping and non-camping
  audience: varying from secluded spots in the foliage to larger fields
  for those of you who want to cluster together to form a village.

  There is a train-station nearby, in Nunspeet. From there it is a
  10-minute drive to the festival terrain. Some form of transport from
  the station to the terrain will be arranged, but the truly adventurous
  among you may choose to take a hike: it is definetely within walking
  distance and the surroundings will not disappoint.

Who is HAR?

  You, me and some hundreds (if not thousands) of other like-minded
  folks. In true spirit, there will be no visitors but only volunteers.
  In order to keep costs low, expect to lend a hand here and there. You
  might be operating the A/V-equipment in one of the lecture tents, sweep
  the floor in the bar tent, check in visitors at the entrance or pour
  drinks at the bar. A great way to discover new talents, or develop
  those hidden ones you never suspected you had!

  Of course, there is a somewhat smaller group of madmen and women that
  will lay (and have been laying) the groundwork for another great
  edition in the year leading up to the event. This event could easily be
  dubbed "the next generation". Because, yes, the original crew that has
  been working hard on these conferences have earned a relaxing holiday
  by organising the four preceeding events. A new generation is eager to
  take over, and continue their legacy. Not to say that the old farts are
  not interested, au contraire my friends. There is a healthy mix of new
  blood and experienced hands currently working on the necesarry
  preparations.

  In fact, this is reflected nicely in the foundation that was set up to
  handle all the paperwork and other legal requirements: [3]the Hxx
  foundation. Its board is a 50/50 mix of old and new: Aldert Hazenberg
  and Mischa Peters have been involved to a great extent in all past
  events, Koen Martens made his organising debut 3 years ago on WTH and
  Mathijs Schmittmann is our new kid on the block.

  In case you are wondering "but where is Rop Gonggrijp", no fears: he is
  right around the corner and [4]believes we "pesky new-generation
  event-hackers" are going to do just fine. He will help out where
  possible, but more on that below.

  Of course, HAR will not be happen without huge sums of money. We have
  tried to keep ticket prices low, even in these times of financial
  crisis, so we are attracting a number of sponsors and donors. But don't
  worry, HAR will not be called "Yoyodyne Inc. HAR2009" even if Yoyodyne
  coughs up millions of euro's.

And more..

  As this is being written, the last work is undertaken on the
  ticket-webshop, which we hope to have online early december. At the
  same time, the program committee, led by the more than qualified Rop
  Gonggrijp, is preparing the call for papers and otherwise developing a
  solid lecture program that'll make your mouth water (even if you have
  visited every single conference between WTH and now and seen em all).

  Of course, planning has started on an in-promptu power infrastructure
  and intranet, with uplink to the interwebs. And naturally, there will
  be various foods and beverages.

Subscribe

  If you want to receive the latest news on HAR2009 as it happens, be
  sure to subscribe to the relatively low-volume announcement list. Send
  an email to [5]announce-subscribe@har2009.org or visit
  [6]www.har2009.org and enter your email in the subscribe form.

  Perhaps you're thinking "hey, I want to help!". If you have some time
  in the next months and are prepared to make a commitment, send an email
  to [7]help@har2009.org.

  The wiki is available at [8]http://wiki.har2009.org/.

  Potential sponsors can mail directly to [9]sponsoring@har2009.org.

  Press inquiries can be sent to [10]press@har2009.org.

References

 1. http://www.paasheuvel.nl/
 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezelligheid#Similar_words_in_other_languages
 3. http://www.stichtinghxx.nl/
 4. http://har2009.org/index.php?p=66
 5. mailto:announce-subscribe@har2009.org
 6. http://www.har2009.org/
 7. mailto:help@har2009.org
 8. http://wiki.har2009.org/
 9. mailto:sponsoring@har2009.org
 10. mailto:press@har2009.org

I will be there. And so should you.

For all of you looking for a great IM client providing access to almost all avilable networks on this planet, check out the duck. It is your friend.

I will proceed to Belgrade, Serbia the day after and as it is my first time there I am really looking forward to this. I will try blogging a bit and hopefully doing additional podcasts if possible.

If you are going to cover 23C3 as well in you blog, please use the “23c3” tag to annotate your posting so that others have a chance to find you. Overall intensity has been slightly going up in the last month but I am sure this is not all there is to it.

You might also want to put your blog in the list of blogs covering the event in our 23C3 Public Wiki system (which is also the official web site this year).

I am going to give a talk in the context of the “Crime and political aspects in Digital Art” seminar presenting CCC culture, some general thoughts and of course a little bit of Blinkenlights.

End of November I will be heading to Bangalore to join FOSS.IN – India’s premier conference on free and open source technology – to give two extra presentations, including the closing keynote. FOSS.IN is organized by Atul Chitnis, who will also be a speaker at 23C3. This is my first trip to India at all so there is a lot to learn for me.

Oh yes, and India has voting computers too.

However, that they address backup as a primary feature shows how far ahead Apple is when thinking about their stuff. And it really shows they care about users and think from the top to bottom. That’s what I like about their work.

One thing I didn’t like was that Apple stopped distributing the kernel source code with the introduction of the Intel platform (for the Intel platform – the PPC version was still available). But surprise, surprise: it’s back! The xnu kernel is now hosted on the new Mac OS Forge site that acts as a replacement to the recently deceased OpenDarwin project site. And they have added new source code for Bonjour, the incredible launchd and the new Darwin Calendar collaboration server (this looks like a real opportunity for project work).

Update: Apple does not use ZFS. It is still all HFS Plus. From what I was able to find out, Time Machine does use Hard Links for storing incremental backups. Surprise, surprise. Why hasn’t anybody thought of this before? What a cool way to do it! I wonder how they are determining the “changed” items. If they just walk through the file system they might be prone to race conditions (what if I move a file from folder B to A while A has already been processed but not B?). I still think they might have quietly introduced snapshots to HFS, but I have no confirmation for that.

So if anybody can give me hints on what to see or who to meet in Tokyo or Kyoto I would be glad to get a comment here or (for more private suggestions) e-mail at tim at ccc dot de.

So it is out now. The price is disappointing: 149 US$. Let’s see how it turns out.

The programmers have been very responsive and hard at work at the same time in the recent weeks and I think they can be proud of their new tool. It is a very elegant approach to the problems of a private podcaster and I think they will be rather successful with it.

Here’s why I think Übercaster is cool: it works along the lines of the typical workflow: prepare, record, cut and release. This is a very intelligent approach. Also, it it integrates really well into Mac OS X and makes use of the latest and greatest features of both the UI and the Core Audio subsystem. It also makes recording of Skype, Gizmo Project and iChat conversations really easy. There is also an “insert mode” for recording which makes “adding stuff later” a breeze.

Podcast: YR415 God Hates Embryos (MP3, 38,7 MB, 01:24:27)

Podcast Feed für The Lunatic Fringe.

I will fix this mess when I find the time.

Disclaimer: Blinkenlights is not going to be at HOPE No. 6.

The interview is a look behind the curtain of the project and explains a variety of details regarding technical aspects and philosophy of The Pirate Bay and the related pirates. I really enjoyed talking to Peter (and the rest of the pirate crowd that was at reboot) and you will have your laughs during the podcast. Just make sure you hear it until the end when Peter describes the police raid. You will also learn about Internet prices in Sweden. I am seriously considering to emigrate now :)

No. I am not serious. But I really hope there will be a chance to get to Sweden sooner or later. It is the only remaining scandinavian country on my travel schedule so far.

You might notice that, I actually posted episode 9 before I posted episode 8 which is already done. I just didn’t finish editing it but I wanted to make sure the Pirate Bay interview sees the light of day as soon as possible. But you should look forward to number eight which is an extensive interview with Whitfield Diffie, one of the fathers of public key cryptography.

Later on they also report on somebody stating that “hackers” are also know to get “inside buildings via the Internet” using the internal lighting to play Tetris on the buildings facade. LOL. 2600 advises us to get to the Canadian magazine to make them redeem the statement, but right now nobody seems to know who the real originator of this statement was.

Podcast: Hacking Traffic Signs and Criminal Blinkenlights (MP3, 8.7 MB, 09:32 min)

Podcast Feed für The Lunatic Fringe.

The latest update (0.15) now includes Theora support as well effectively bringing free audio and video media codecs to the Mac throughout the system (read: all applications) including iTunes and all Web Browsers. I love the QuickTime framework for making this so easy and do appreciate the work of the Xiph team to have taken up on this task. With the Mac being the premier platform for doing media work, this is a wise move. It makes free media formats available on commercial grade systems which can lead to a wider acceptance.

The component seems to work fine for both playback and export which makes it easy to convert Theora content for the iPod or other uses. Unfortunately, the component does not yet contain the proper importer functionality so I can’t use it to create Theora content using standard QuickTime export which is sad. That way any video producing app could directly export to Theora without any additional processing.

Podcast: TLF005 Cruising Amsterdam with Bicyclemark (MP3, 51,8 MB, 00:56:30)

Podcast Feed für The Lunatic Fringe.

Two weeks later, I will attend the Podcastday in Cologne (24.05.06), spend a day at the Information Security Summit 2006 in Prague (25.05.06) for a talk and from there i head back to Berlin to attend ph-neutral (26.05.06 to 28.05.06).

Beginning of June, I head off to reboot in Copenhagen and on June 11th I will visit Zagreb, Croatia for the first time meeting the people at the Multimedia Institute. Later that month, Froscon is on my list.

If you will be at any of these events, feel free to let me know (tim at ccc dot de).

Have a look for yourself: Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera (MPEG-4 H.264, 5:28 min, 30.4 MB)

The recording was provided by Memri TV (The Middle Easte Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project). Too bad the recordings are only available in WMV, but Memri TV provides an interesting view on the Arab world. There is a special section on Al Qaeda as well.

However, if I enter tags to a URL posted to del.icio.us I have to separate tags using spaces. On the web however, separating keywords with a comma is much more common.

Main problem in Israel seems to be that Microsoft doesn’t care about localizing Microsoft Office in Hebrew on the Mac taking away incentive for people to buy Macs. Macs are really rare round here and those who chose that platform anyway have a hard time. Even worse, I haven’t seen a single Linux system running on any computer where I have been.

So here it is: the Kinnernet 2006 Podcast

I am sure photos will eventually show up on Flickr in the kinnernet2006 tag cloud.

Hat tip to Andreas and Hannes (where is your blog?) who have been doing great work on Dylan lately and continue to impress me with their progress.

Truly wonderful the mind of a Dylan programmer is.

It’s my first time at Kinnernet and the photos of the 2005 event look promising. Lots of gear and crazy people. Yummy.

However, I am still looking for proper accommodation in Tel Aviv on March 29/30th and April 1st/2nd/3rd. If you have any hints or connections leave a comment or write me at tim at ccc dot de.

I still don’t get how they are doing it but I can only hope they find a way to continue. Although I can recommend some episodes here the only way to get into things is following it for a while. Once you get the basic parameters of the story, you’re hooked.

• Faulty Logic
• Reconstructive Therapy
• Sleepwalker
• Meta (so cool)
• Porn Flick (crazy)

jadelr’s notebook is a blog that provides a look behind the scenes of the Chasing Windmills production that you might want to follow once you’re hooked. They also provide some clips off the scene while shooting like this one. The whole music soundtrack is produced by a single guitar just playing some chords. Here is another background video that explains that.

I think I could go on and on on this one. You really have to check it out for yourself. An to Jadelr and Cristina: you totally rock. Love your stuff.

Democracy Now is difficult to follow as it is a full hour of news every day. But it is well-worth diving in every now and then especially in times of global disaster. Democracy Now is pure news, information from the real sources. Amy Goodman is one of the leading figures of the intellectual resistance in the USA and a very impressive person.

Democracy Now! is also known for showing video coverage in pure unedited form. Recently they showed videos of vistims of american soldiers using chemical weapons in Iraq among other stuff. But it is the real news. If you have been looking for it, here you might find it.

Mark calls himself a “Portuguese-American, radical, activist-blogger, podjournalist, and citizen reporter” and produces 2 to 3 shows a week of around 25 minutes length. In it, he presents views on international affairs, policitics and cultural developments. Mark lives in Amsterdam. Some episodes are just spoken by him, but many times he interviews people with in-depth views on various issues.

Recommended episodes:

• bm114 Freud, Luntz, and the longterm effects of political manipulation
• bm110 GI Joan on the Military, Iraq, Disaster Recovery, and Powerlessness
• bm107 John Aravosis of Americablog on Ports and the World Bank
• bm106 WTO Force Feeds Europe
• bm99 Behind Wikipedia
• bm98 GI Jane off to Afghanistan

This podcast is very high on my list and one of those where I try to not miss a single episode.

What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?

• La Linea 01
• La Linea 02
• La Linea 03
• La Linea 04
• La Linea 05

[via Régine]

Eris, Goddess Of Chaos, Discord & Confusion

I am going to review english podcasts in English and German podcasts in german.

I am already quite pissed about the situation and I think all affected users should get into second gear now. Suggestions?

Update: Apple Insider reports about the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4.5 update:

According to tipsters and reports already present on the Internet, Apple this week seeded the fourth external build of Mac OS X 10.4.5 for PowerPC Macs. The build, reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.4.5 8H14, is said to address issues with multi-application audio support.

Hope.

Update: According to the original tech article the problem should finally be solved by installing the just released 10.4.5 update. I installed it. So far no loops but to be sure I have test this for a couple of days.

I find more and more reports of iPods destroying headphones (you might want to digg the related report on digg.com) and must say I noticed something ’round here as well. I am still not absolutely sure but it is now the third headphone in a row that exposes weird distortion sounds on the left ear after having it used with my 5G iPod with video for a while. I start believing it might indeed be related to the iPod.

I am not listening to music very loud. Actually, most of the stuff I listen to is speech. So there must be something terribly wrong with this device. I recommend NOT buying this device until further notice.

How many of these did Apple sell? Millions! This could be a very expensive party for Apple.

The Raw Story has a transscript of the speech (Washington Post has one as well) and Madge Weinstein managed to get her hands on a full recording of the speech (MP3, 1:06:35, 45.71 MB) and published it on the Yeast2 podcast.

Here are some notable excerpts of the speech:

“Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is “yes” then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?”

He also relates to surveillance technology itself:

“…we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.”

Furthermore he addresses the overall state of the legal and judiciary system in the US.

“Moreover, in the Congress as a whole-both House and Senate-the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.”

He also gives examples on the suppresion of free speech by threatening NASA scientists:

“To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and control his discussions of global warming.”

He adds the any “telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information … without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this … illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens”. And, even more important, he relates to freedom of speech on the Internet in particular:

“Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy. It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.”

All in all, a very impressive speech. Take your time and listen to it.

Also, there might be personal podcasts coming up here. The “Podcast” category will mark these entries and you can subscribe to the Podcast feed with your podcasting client (URL of Podcast feed).

In the coming days, I am going through my recent posts and will get rid of the “General” category in favour of properly moving them to the English category. A “General” category does not seem to be very useful anyway. I should use tags anyway, damn. Will do. Will do.

Mac programmers did not have much time to adopt the new platform. Apple originally targeted June 2006 (or at least they said so). Moving the code to the new system is easy for some, but hard for others. It will take time, nevertheless, before the signifikant amount of programs runs without let or hindrance. Until then it’s just the power users, chronic early adopters and the programmers who will flock to the new machines. So there is a reason that the MacBook is built the way it is: it attracts primarily programmers.

The machine lacks a lot that creative professionals need. VJs for instance can’t really use that machine at all. But their software will probably take long to arrive anyway so it doesn’t really matter. They wouldn’t switch now anyway. So they go for the PowerBook for the time being.

The programmers however will like it: it’s got all the necessary networking, basic USB and FireWire support and it has brand new stuff as well: the ExpressCard slot directly targets developers – software and hardware developers alike.

1. Create a cause
2. Love the cause
3. Look for agnostics, ignore atheists
4. Localize the pain
5. Let people test drive the cause
6. Learn to give a demo
7. Provide a safe first step
8. Ignore pedigrees
9. Never tell a lie
10. Remember your friends

It’s business oriented list but lists at least five things I would consider the building ground of any evangelism. It might apply to religion as well but haven’t thought about that.

Discordianism – being a cause you can love as much – would add at least one other fundamental principle: “An Evangelist is Prohibited from Believing What he reads”

Then an idea hit me: why not deliver the whole 22C3 documentation on an iPod video? We would use 50 GB for video and the remaining 5-6 GB for the audio-only versions, additional footage, photos and such. The iPod would be perfect in size and would have the player built-in. We could also laser engrave the 22C3 logo in the device and everything would be just perfect. Well, but there is one more thing…

The problem is Apple and it’s “don’t steal music” paranoia. If we would copy the videos to the iPod so that you could just take it after delivery and hook it up to your projector, TV set or whatever, the data would be in danger once you connect your iPod to your computer for the first time. From what I know, iTunes would come up, detect the new iPod device and asks you to DELETE all your files because this device is not yet sync’ed to the computer. If you’re smart enough you could hit the right button and prevent from getting your payload erased but there is no easy way to first sync the computer with the iPod’s content.

Well, we could use the iPod as a simple hard disk as well. But then you wouldn’t be able to play the videos without further action because the iPod wants to have all the files in it’s own library directory structure and doesn’t display videos that are “just” normal files in a normal folder.

Well, let’s be fair and say that delivering the videos on the iPod as simple files is sort of okay. Then you would be forced to

1. Copy the files from the iPod to the computer (to iTunes)
2. Sync the files back to the iPod

Managable, but a pain the ass. However. What do you think of this idea? Would you be tempted to buy an iPod for – let’s say – EUR 500 with a cool laser-engraved logo and get it with the whole 22C3 AV documentation on disk? Would you expect the files to come on DVD as well in the same package? Or would you prefer the files to come on DVDs only instead?

Performance seems to be good as expected. The new Core Duo processors seem to be screamingly fast. But let me point you to what is GONE:

• No more FireWire 800 ports: so where should VJs connect their external RAIDs to? And even nastier: this means there is only one FireWire on that machine. Not cool.
• No modem: Okay. I guess it is safe to rely on a USB modem these days. But I like built-in stuff as it is always there when you need it.
• No more S-Video: what? How should I hook up the machine to a TV set then? The DVI port does not have pins left for S-video so it is totally unclear what this move means. Again, VJs will complain. Update: Looks as if there will be an adapter for DVI delivering S-Video. This still prohibits using an external monitor and video at the same time however.
• No more PC Card: well, the move to ExpressCard might be right. But I was just thinking of getting an UMTS card that would need a type 2 slot. I doubt ExpressCards will be here soon but I am not sure on this.
• No more PowerPC processors: rest in peace. PPC wasn’t able to win the race on portable devices so this move is understandable. I do not expect huge problems with the transition but it is not going to be very fast for some.
• No Dual Layer DVD burning: WTF?
• Update: Apparently the new Intel Macs support 802.11a. This is definitely very good news!

I am tempted by the speed but it will take some time for applications to follow. Ableton Live – the program I currently most rely on and that can use any available extra performance – is not made for more than one processor and as such can’t make use of the new Dual Core.

In case you are listening to Chaosradio, there is a Chaosradio Frappr Map as well.

I have been suffering from a bug that affects my brand new 15″ PowerBook machine and it seems to affect this machine only as I haven’t experienced that bug on any of my other Macs and I know quite a few people with the same model that recently ran into exactly the same problem. Here is a short sample of the bug that I accidently recorded in my Chaosradio Express 003 podcast episode (german only and a really weird one a it was all about testing things ;). Here is another example I found in an ongoing discussion in Apple’s forums.

Recently, the same bug occured to Adam Curry in episode #309 of his Daily Source Code podcast. I wrote an e-mail to Adam and he talked about it in episode #311 two days later. Another podcaster provided an audio comment on the same issue as well.

Update: I have filed a bug with Apple (Problem ID: 4402288). If you have an ADC account (which is free) you might want to refer to that bug.

Update 2: The update to Mac OS X 10.4.4 and QuickTime 7.0.4 did NOT solve the problem. Damn.

Update 3: Apple has posted a tech support Article #302978: “PowerBook G4 (Double-Layer SD) audio stutters or skips”. For my part I can say that the problem occurs even when I am only running Ableton Live with no other applications running at the same time whatsoever. At least Apple has confirmed there is a problem and it actually seems to be tied to the 15″ PowerBook G4 only as expected. The document closes with “This document will be updated as more information becomes available”. Well, Apple, we keep an eye on that.

Update 4: So far I thought the problem is related to sound being sent to the built-in audio port only. But I recently encountered the audio loop problem in a setup where Ableton Live sent audio to QuickTime Broadcaster via the Soundflower virtual audio port. This seems to indicate the problem is related to software instead of hardware as the built-in audio port was not used in this setup. However, it might still be related to some kind of internal timing-related hardware.

Update 5: There is a new activist site dedicated to the problem at http://powerbookdefect.info/ (or http://maclantic.com/powerbookdefect/The%20Defect.html if you don’t like frames). If you have the same problem, you can add yourself to the list. The story has been dugg. Digg it!.

Update 6: HardMac.com is taking up on the story. Please let all other news sites know about this as well. The list of affected users on powerbookdefect.info has grown to more than 800 now.

Update 7: ZDNet.com is summarizing the disaster so far adding well-known display and DVD problems to the list. I haven’t had any of the display and DVD problems but I haven’t done so much DVD stuff recently as well so it might well be that more problems are ahead.

Update 8: According to a posting at Macintouch, an Apple employee at an Apple Store promised a solution to the problem “within a week”. We’ll see. Obviously the problem has received at least some attention at Apple.

Others have been reporting about the bug as well:

• PowerBook G4: Audio Problems (was: Macintouch: PowerBook G4 (Part 37): Audio Problems)
• I’m Having the “Audio Echo” Problem with My New PowerBook
• A Possible Fix for the 15-inch PowerBook “Audio Echo” Problem (the fix didn’t work for me)

I know the Ableton tech support guy is suffering from the same problem.

So what is it all about?

This is what happens: Out of the blue, the Mac suddenly starts looping all the audio that goes out to an audio device. This usually last for around five seconds, effectively adding all audio being sent to that device playing everything over and over again at the same time increasing overall volume and creating a crazy and confusing mix that disappears after five seconds.

The bug seems to be related to CoreAudio as this is the subsystem managing audio devices. It does not seem to be tied to a certain application as I noticed the bug using iTunes, Ableton Live, QuickTime Player and other programs. There is no obvious event that triggers the bug, it just happens. Sometimes the event repeats within minutes two or three times and then again the bug is not coming at all for days. It is so annoying.

My configuration is the following:

• Most recent Macintosh 15-inch PowerBook G4 (1440×960 display, optical audio)
• Mac OS X 10.4.3
• 2 GB RAM (I doubt the bug is related to RAM as the recent WLAN stability bug was)

Apple does not really promote a distinct name for the PowerBook generation introduced in October 2005 but I refer to it as the PowerBook with “Optical Digital Audio” as it is the first Apple laptop to feature optical audio input and outputs. Read about it on Apple’s developer site. The most visible difference is of course the bigger screen size.

Main problem here is reproducing the problem. I haven’t found a way to do that so far and I am open for any suggestions. I think is related only to audio output as I haven’t experienced the bug when recording audio so the bug seems to not be affected to audio input. I only have been able to record the bug while producing audio feedback during the above session because I had loudspeakers running during the recording (as I did not have extra headphones for my guest).

So what can be done? I’d be happy if you would share your experiences with me here in this blog. I am going to reintegrate all feedback in this post to make the description as complete as possible.

Really bad self-introduction to the podcasting scene, Creative. Better quit now before it’s too late. Nobody is buying your ugly players anyway.

Update: It seems as if they have given in and changed the behaviour. Zencast now hands out the original feed as it has to be. Good boy.

Best thing about BT is that it splits up the file in smaller chunks that are each secured by a checksum. So downloads can be done incrementally and (more or less) securely.