BoingBoing: New iPods Reengineered to Block Synching with
Linux
“The latest iPods have a cryptographic ‘checksum’ in their song
databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with
the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be
used with operating systems where iTunes doesn’t exist–like Linux,
where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners
to load their players.“Notice that this has nothing to do with piracy–this is about
Apple limiting the choices available to people who buy their iPod
hardware…”
ipodminusitunes: We’ve Won!
“Thanks to some inspired work by a few heroes, we’ve managed to
work out how to get everything working again.“This is what we’ve found out: the hash at 0x58 is the one that
matters. And we know how to generate it…”