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jonadab writes "The Open Clip Art Library project (hosted at freedesktop.org) is announcing their first widely-publicized release, dubbed 0.8, containing over two and a half thousand unique vector images (in SVG format), sorted into categories. All of the images are released into the public domain and may be used as royalty-free clipart. You can browse the collection through the web interface or download the entire thing as a gzipped tarball. (Mirrors are welcome.) The library is also always soliciting more contributions, and holiday-themed images would be particularly appropriate this time of year. Thanks to everyone who has contributed artwork to the library already. "

jonadab asks: "I'm a heavy sleeper. I wake up gradually. Sometimes it takes quite a bit to get me cognizant in the morning. I've been known to sleep through alarms entirely, or shut them off before fully awake and later not remember doing so. It's not that I don't get enough sleep (I go to bed at night when I get sleepy), but my body tends to want a day longer than 24 hours, and I have to use an alarm to keep myself on a constant schedule with the rest of the world; otherwise, I get up a little later each day and pretty soon I'm sleeping till noon. So I'm always in search of a better alarm clock. Maybe some of you have experience with alarm clocks that you particularly like"

"Here are some features I'd particularly like to have (though anything that's good at waking a heavy sleeper is worth mentioning, even if it doesn't have all these features):

• Gets progressively louder until snoozed. Starts louder with each successive snooze.
• Max volume slightly painful, but not physiologically dangerous. An air compressor and train whistle is probably overkill.
• Easy to snooze, but hard to accidentally turn off completely. Bonus points if turning it off means being cognizant enough to operate a screwdriver or tool of some kind.
• Snooze time gets geometrically shorter each iteration (e.g., half as long as the previous) so that there's a maximum total snooze time that can be approached assymptotically.
• Has battery backup so that it will operate during a power outage, at least to keep time. (I _could_ just stick it on the UPS, but do I really want to spend a UPS outlet for an alarm clock?) This is a feature my current clock has (takes a nine-volt battery), but even better would be a rechargeable that will even operate the alarm during a power outage.
• Can be set to always go off at the same time every day, so I don't have to remember to set it at night unless I need to get up at a different time than usual.
• Has some kind of cool feature with geek appeal -- but not binary time display; I need to be able to read the time when mostly asleep.

Cost does matter, but I'm willing to pay somewhat more than the going rate for an ordinary alarm clock, because this is obviously a bit of a specialty item. But I don't want to pay a totally outrageous sum; at worst I could build one out of commodity computer parts and a nice set of speakers for probably three hundred bucks or so, so please, nothing more expensive than that. Bonus points if it's more like $50-75."

If you were going to go the route of building a cheap computer to do this, what software would you use to do it?

jonadab writes: "Microsoft Typography has for years provided a set of very nice True-Type fonts for free-as-in-without-monetary-cost, including the excellent Andale Mono (the only scalable fixed-width font I really like). They are gone. Here is the Microsoft page where they formerly were, which now tersely explains that they're not available any longer. There is an article about this on extremetech. According to the article, Microsoft says the withdrawal of the fonts at about the same time as the LinuxWorld is coincidence. The article also references a Debian package that has been removed from the distro because of this. If I understand my rumours correctly, it was a package that downloaded the fonts from MS, displayed their EULA, and allowed the user to extract and install the fonts. It was possible to do the same thing using other distros. Guess it's time for the OSS people to make some decent-looking scalable both-screen-and-printer fonts (preferably TrueType). At minimum, we need nice-looking serif proportional (to replace Verdana), a sans proportional (to replace Georgia), and a mostly-sans fixed (to replace Andale Mono), all with good language support. This should have been done a long time ago, since the MS fonts were, albeit $0, not licensed in an open fashion. We always knew we were relying on MS Typography's generosity, and that these could disappear at any time. But now the need is more urgent."

Doctor_D writes "Well it looks like Intel has done it again. They have absorbed more processor engineers, this time from HP. Alpha is gone, PA-RISC is going, what's going to be left? MIPS? SPARC? AMD? Crusoe? "

declan writes: "The Clinton administration is siding with the entertainment industry to shut down Napster. It just filed a 37-page amicus brief (WP file) in the court case, saying Napster can't use the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 as a legal shield. The brief says 'the activities of Napster's users do not even arguably come within the terms of the statute' and the district court's ruling should be upheld. The Justice Department, the Patent and Trademark Office, and the Copyright Office signed the brief. By way of possible explanation, a colleague has compiled this handy list of entertainment industry contributions to Democrats. :)" While that's a clever jab, it hardly seems fair to lay the blame at the political party involved here. Seems more like a question of Establishmentarianism -- politicians in office like to remain there, and know about both corporate bread-buttering and the importance of appearing reassuringly normal.

From the brief mentioned above comes this convenient view of reality:

" ... Neither a personal computer nor its hard disk constitutes "a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium. Napster itself does not suggest otherwise."

They can make that claim not because it's true in a larger sense (obviously, your computer can make a fine recording device -- ask at any music store), but because, as the brief goes on to say,

"The terms 'digital audio recording device' and 'digital audio recording medium' are specifically defined in the Act. A 'digital audio recording device' is defined, with exceptions not relevant here, as any machine or device 'the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use.' 17 U.S.C. 1001(3)"

If you define your terms correctly, black is white and 2+2=5, too.

The strange bedfellows clause seems in full effect at the moment; remember that just weeks ago, an industry group including AT&T and other unexpected Napster allies filed their own amicus brief favoring the other side, on the reasonable basis that the controls the courts would be declaring acceptable under the DMCA would soon if not already impinge on activities of nearly any large digital carrier.

The recent 'Ask Slashdot' about MIDI support for Linux sparked some enlightening conversation about music, computers, and where Linux fits into the state of the art. Development of production-quality authoring, sequencing and notation software is moving ahead, but as in any artistic relationship, there's a symbiotic relationship between artists and the tools they use to ply their trade. Part I of a series.

Comparing music-authoring software on Linux with that available for other platforms isn't exactly a fair match-up. Dave Phillips, maintainer of the Sound and MIDI Software for Linux website, says "Don't bother with the odious comparisons: 'Rosegarden is no Cakewalk,' 'Brahms is no Cubase,' and so forth. We know. We're working on it, but we're working on better things, too."

I asked Dave about his current music set-up, and how he uses it with Linux. "MIDI-wise, there's not much you couldn't use. I have a Yamaha DMP11 MIDI-controllable mixer, two Yamaha TX802 synthesizers, an Alesis MIDIverb, and various other pieces. MIDI is MIDI.

Digital audio is another can of worms. Professional cards have only begun to see Linux support. Notable advances have been made by ALSA, particularly in the work led by Paul Barton-Davis. Digital audio boards from RME and MIDIman are now supported by ALSA, and OSS/Linux will be adding some more proprietary cards to their list later this year, I hope."

Free solutions are attractive to many musicians, who consider their music a labor of love, but can't spend money on equipment as if their music were a money-making venture. So, without big cash as a catalyst for the development of professional tools, how will we make that happen? Alex Young, digital composer and occasional musician, answers the question:

"We need competition. If you think about when the Amiga demo scene was big, different demo groups really competed to get the slickest code and the best tunes. As a side effect, many useful tools were produced. If Linux had a greater drive in multimedia than is commonly interpreted by onlookers onto the open source community, music tools would benefit. Maybe the increasing interest in Linux games will drive this, or maybe individuals interested in programming and music will. There are many things that could be done, maybe projects could even be funded by sales of music produced with such tools!

I think people need to be attracted to Linux itself. Considering that I still like using an Atari ST with Cubase, and some electronic musicians wouldn't give up their Atari even now, people don't see it as a platform for writing music. For that Aphex Twin sound, we need very advanced midi software. And for the kind of MoWax-style sound we need very good sample editors. I believe open source music software can be as good or if not better than the commercial counterparts, for the same reason as any other applications."

To many Linux-friendly musicians, how they license their music can be just as important as the music itself. I spoke to Jeff Alami, Linux.com editor-in-chief and weekend composer about this issue. "I'm not trying to make any money with my music. I may have to add some sort of license in the future if only to maintain that the music was originally created by me." The Design Science License has been developed by Michael Stutz as a method by which copyleft can be applied to things other than software. Written with a little help from Wendy Seltzer, an attorney at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, the DSL is a way of copylefting any work that is recognized by copyright law, including music and art. This is one tool you won't have to wait for; it's been available for the past few years. "From what I see right now," Jeff says, "the DSL would serve my needs, mainly because it works to maintain the attribution integrity."

It's true that Linux has no professional audio suite at present, but after speaking to some of the people who work with Linux as a music tool, the message is clear. We're getting there. Small bits and pieces of quality software are already available, but heavy hitters like Cakewalk and Mark of the Unicorn haven't made the cross-platform leap to Linux the way several big names in the graphics field recently have. A high-quality, open source audio suite is definitely high on the 'wish list' of Linux enthusiasts, and the increasing quality and openness of Linux sound-related device drivers is paving the way for Linux-based music production as more than hobby.

If software development for Linux proceeds as fast as it has over the past year or so, it won't be long till the killer audio app appears. Until that time, we still have plenty to talk about. Next week, we dive once more into the creative process, and discuss high-end audio mastering, low-bandwidth sound transport and using Linux as a tool for good old-fashioned synthesis.See you then.

carbondave writes "Apple has made an update for Open Transport and it is currently available for download at Apple's website. Here is the contents of the read me that comes along with it. OT Tuner 1.0 switches off an option in Open Transport that would cause a Macintosh to respond to certain small network packets with a large Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packet. This update prevents Macintosh computers from being the cause of certain types of Denial of Service (DOS) issues. " This is a follow-up to yesterday's coverage of OS9 machines being used in DoS attacks.

Zach Frey writes "Nicholas Petreley ^[?] 's latest column has an interesting side-by-side comparison of Linux installs vs. Windows installs. It's a data point in the "Linux is too hard to install!" war. The upshot? Current Linux distros installed in around 15 minutes and had no trouble autodetecting his hardware, Win98 took 40 minutes and failed to recognize his network cards. W2K took ... much longer. " The more interesting comments, IMHO, were the comments on Softway Systems, but the Linux install article is timely, in light of the CNN install nightmare story.Update: 09/30 10:27 by H :Check out an update from Nick posted in the comments regarding the version of Win2k.

Chad Myslinsky wrote in to let us know Nick Petreley is hosting yet another Linux forum over at Infoworld. Nick wonders if the fact that there isn't a strong anti-Microsoft feeling from any of the bigger names in the community, and therefore, no one to attack, has anything to do with the good press Linux has been receiving.

Jacob Hopkins writes "Replay Associates have put the EFF's book 'Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics & Chip Design' online in both HTML and zip archive Fun for the whole family. "

Chad Myslinsky sent us a link where you can read Nicholas Petreley's bit on what happened at NCWorld, and where things with NCs will be heading in the future. The whole story is at InfoWorld