[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Sunday August 5, 2018

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

>      All of my tests today failed to find the internal hard drive,
>      I tried to fix the problem at the meeting in the last 45
> minutes but ran into a problem with being unable to see
> the internal SATA connector due to poor lighting.

Condolences.  It's often useful to have -- or have access to, at a
friend's home -- a test platform, a known-good machine where suspect 
hardware such as hard drives can be checked out.  

OTOH, if you were unable to verify that the SATA connector _and_ the
power connector are properly seated for lack of good lighting, that
would seem to be your _first_ problem.  (I find that small LED
flashlights are essential for electronics work.)

Oh, further down:

>      At home:
> So I put the hard drive in the Dell and one screw to hold it for travel.
> At home I got my little head lamp out and pulled the battery ,was able\
> to see the connector for the SATA dnve and carefully slid it into
> place, put the battery back in and was able to boot right up.
> Then I did some updates and when I got back to the Dell
> the screen would not work properly.  Wheeey!

There ya go!


>      One of the problems is that the SFPL seems to insist on
> on non-Linux programs to check out and read e-books.  Ken
>   is reported to have fixed this somehow and he may publish
> something about that.

Ah, I can confidently guess:  DRM problems.  The content barons (those I
refer to as Our Lords in Hollywood and their book-world publisher
equivalents) love MS-Windows because it is DRM-friendly and provides
handy features for corraling users and preventing them from getting
uppity.
  
It appears based on https://sfpl.org/?pg=2000005001 that SFPL has signed
up with an outfit called OverDrive for DRM-obscured e-books.  What is
DRM?  Digital Restrictions Management.  (That is not the official
acronym expansion, which I decline to adopt on grounds of it
deliberately obscuring what DRM is about.)  Handcuffs on materials,
basically.  

Last *I* heard, OverDrive used Amazon 'Kindle' DRM, thus it was removable
by legitimate purchasers using Calibre with the separately maintained
de-DRM plug-ins for Calibre.

Some recent sources claim OverDrive is using a variant version of
Adobe's ADEPT DRM on what would have otherwise been epub-format e-books.  
https://hackaday.com/2011/06/07/stripping-drm-from-overdrive-media-console-ebooks/

Strategies for dealing with these situations divide generally into two
broad categories:

1.  Strip the DRM.  
2.  Find complicated ways to apply the handcuffs, such as running the 
Digital Restrictions Management WIN32 software under WINE, CrossOver
(etc.) or MS-Windows in a VM.  Or an MS-Windows box.

Of those two solutions, one is a great deal more satisfactory and
requires a bit of technical competence, at least to the extent of
following canned directions.  Can you guess which?  ;->

https://sfpl.org/?pg=2000005001 suggests there are also other ebooks
that are published other than through OverDrive's auspices.  I haven't
yet researched those other providers (Axis 360 and others), but, more
often than not, the reason there's a sudden request that you download
and run some MS-Windows program amounts to:  DRM handcuffs.

> The next meeting will be on Monday, August 20, 2018 at the
> Cafe Enchante from 6-8 PM.

_But_ that's the final day that the Worldcon is in town, in San Jose:
https://www.worldcon76.org/