At the start of each month, you should set aside some time to revisit long term goals, and see if there are any tasks that you need to do to achieve them. Maybe some of them were wrong, a review helps you keep on track.

I took some risks and put in some hard work at the start of year, and they're starting to pay off. That home studio, working with a creative team and more time with family is getting closer as long as I keep on track.

Now I need to get to a MyOSS meetup and get my time management book back from Fenris, so I can share it with others. That book is worth reading for stressed out IT types to regain control of their lives.

Life can be like this...

Playing DVDs was not an issue, but I found problems doing DVD backups, dvdrip basically hung and tzcat went crazy. Looking for command line, I found dvdbackup. Still no go, finally I found out that you needed libdvdcss form this blog post.

Funny that this is not in repositories, but you need to run a script to install it. FreeBSD has this in ports by the way.

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

And it'll fetch and install a deb package.

Usually when we mention TPM, it's Technology Park Malaysia, but in this case it refers to "Technology Prevention Measures". Of course these have been proven time and time again to be broken. So what do they do? Evil big media (through US government) have already pushed for these laws to be implemented in Malaysia.

This is something I keep spreading awareness of.

By downloading that library and making a copy of a "legally bought" DVD, you can report me to the police and under Malaysian law I could be sentenced to jail for 5 years, fined RM100,000 or both (as I recall). If Malaysia signs an FTA with the US, they want similar laws to be more inclusive with stiffer punishments. They (US government and their local proxies) actually compared drug penalties (death) with copyright penalties, and say it's too light.

By making a backup of a legally bought DVD for my daughter, so that she can continue seeing her favourite shows even if she scratches the original DVD, her dad can be sent to jail for 5 years! Am I that harmful to Malaysian society to be locked up for making a copy of Elmo's Favourite Songs?

Citizens define the laws, by electing law makers. Are our law makers representing the rights of citizens in this case or the interests of powerful foreign media corporations?

In the US most of the elected lawmakers are on the side of corporations. I wonder if local elected MPs are willing to look after the interests of Malaysians for IPR related issues whether they are from BN or the opposition.