If you had issues with previous versions of the Linux UVC driver for the Apple iSight, particularly errors when loading the firmware (”test: 1: ==: unexpected operator”), then try this new release (0.0.1-e; patch). It depends on glib (for GMappedFile) and gcrypt (for sha1sum checking) - this shouldn’t be an issue, everyone has those installed. Other than that, it supports the same firmware versions as the previous release.

(Sorry for the dutch intermezzo; the below is a post about the dutch elections this november. For practical purposes, the post is in dutch. In short: there’s a dutch test - see link below - to see how much you agree with each political party on a select number of questions, and the results are as expected; regardless, as previously, I will vote for the liberal party VVD.)

Dus, deze herfst gaan we weer stemmen. Zelfs in het buitenland kun je tegenwoordig via internet je stem kenbaar maken. En bij stemmen hoort een vernieuwde stemwijzer. Zelfs als je al weet wat je wilt stemmen, altijd interessant om te zien bij welke partijen je in de buurt zit met je ideeen (althans, op de gebieden waar ze vragen over stellen). Mijn uitkomst was, ietwat verrassend, als volgt:

• Aan kop met een vrijwel gelijk percentage (in volgorde als gegeven in de stemwijzer): EenNL, Fortuyn, VVD en Wilders,
• Dan met een ongeveer half percentage vgl. met de eerste vier: SGP (!),
• En de enige andere partij met een positief percentage, zij het vrijwel nul: CDA.

Niet verrassend dat ik in de rechterhoek zit, maar dat de SGP daar tussen staat, daar kijk ik toch even van op. Overigens moge het gezien mijn verleden duidelijk zijn dat ik VVD zal stemmen.

Dear lazyweb,

what library, that every decent GNU-loving person has installed (in the range of libm, libz, etc.), could do sha1 encoding for me? I hate to ship sha1.c or sha1sum.c in every single package I make. Reason is that the output of system(”sha1sum $file”); appears to be shell-dependent, and that breaks my firmware-loader for several people. Using a C library/function would fix that.

And whoa!, apparently an airplane just crashed into a building just near where I work and live.

As previously, the newly released 0.1.0-d update (patch, tarball) contains support for two more firmware versions, those with sha1sum c6c94dd77b864f8bd231abf3cb2de4c9d139e1bf and sha1sum 01e291d529e7c18deea2eba252d18114e096276e (provided in the latest OS X 10.4.8). This should make it work again for everyone.

If your firmware is not recognized, please do not just say that it is not recognized. Please send me a copy of your firmware file so I can make it work. Eventually, I hope to be able to redistribute the relevant part of the firmware so I don’t need to jump through those hoops, but right now, this is the only way that I can think of to make it work without getting in big legal trouble.

Dobey, you have some interesting remarks. However, in the end, you are wrong. You are saying that not DRM, but iTunes (or insert some other term here) prevents me from using my music the way I want it to. This is blatantly false.

A gun is meant to shoot people. Not to be used as a teddybear replacement, try it, your son will shoot himself eventually. Similarly, DRM can be argued to not be restrictive, but that is purely theoretical. For all practical purposes, mostly due to political blabla such as laws preventing circumvention and explicit denials to remove DRM from said music, DRM is restrictive. I cannot copy my iTunes-purchased Britney Spears song to my mp3 player because of DRM and its politics. This is not just a flaw in iTunes, but a flaw in the business model. A serious flaw which makes us worry about DRM and its surrounding politics.

And now don’t say that it is not because of DRM, because without those politics, DRM would not be pressed upon us by the industry and would thus not exist.