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Ever tried Ogle? It's an excellent DVD player.

Mine (Inspiron 5000) refuses to read disks marked as DVD+R, but has no problems with disks marked as DVD-ROM, even though they are the same in every other respect.

See "DVD+RW/+R for Linux" for more details.

First point - All DVDs contain a field which identifies to the player the type of media. This field is called the "booktype". There are a handful of players which will refuse to play a disc if it is not tagged with one of the "acceptable" booktypes, even though the player would physically be able to play it. From the various searching around I've done, it appears that from a physical point of view, there should be very few players that can play a -R disc that can't play a +R disc (e.g., they both have very similar reflectivities, etc.).

Most DVD writers have the ability to let you force the writing of a certain booktype field. Many of the players in the test which failed to read +R discs are likely to have done so because their firmware refused to play based on the booktype field. Setting the booktype of a +R disk to DVD-ROM or DVD-R would probably narrow the compatability gap significantly.

An excellent technical discussion of this and other issues appears on this page, near the bottom of the page.

Second point - DVD+R/RW is becoming more popular because, outside of just compatability, there are some other subtle (or not-so-subtle, depending on your application) technical advantages. The biggest one is the ability to do fine resolution (a few bit-times) lossless linking in all recording modes.

Again, the above page has an excellent technical discussion of this near the bottom (section labeled "What does the + in DVD+R/RW stand for").

The bottom line is that due to the way lossless linking is performed in DVD-R in DAO mode (the most video-compatible mode), compatibility is dependent on linking data being "corrected away" by the ECC, whereas in +R/RW, the links are physically so small that a +R sector with a link is logically indistinguishable from a DVD-ROM sector.

The primary importance of all this is that it allows real-time low-bitrate MPEG data, say from a capture card or from the internet (which will inherently cause buffer underruns due to it's low bitrate), to be directly written to DVD with compatability as high as if the data were first all written to a file and then written to DVD at once. Companies like Dell, etc., must feel that this will become a big consumer advantage because of the large amount of disk space and added inconvenience required to first store the MPEG in files and then write them to DVD.

There are also some other subtle techincal advantages which can be seen from the above document.

So, for consumers who want to do things like capture video from their camcorders and copy it to DVD in a simple manner, +R may be the best choice as long as their player is compatable (which it likely is since the compatibility gap isn't that big), whereas for someone who is producing DVDs which are to be distributed to many people with no knowlege of which player they have, -R may be better, although they could always increase compatability of +R by using the booktype field.

Some other helpful sites:
Unofficial DVD+RW site
linux dvd+rw info and tools

Some choice quotes from linux info page:

The key feature of DVD+RW/+R media is high [spatial] frequency wobbled [pre-]groove with addressing information modulated into it. This makes it possible to resume interrupted [or deliberately suspended] burning process with accuracy high enough for DVD[-ROM] player not to "notice" anything at playback time. Recovery from buffer underrun condition in DVD-RW/-R case in turn is way less accurate procedure...

As already mentioned, DVD+ groove has "addressing information modulated into it," ADIP (ADress In Pre-groove). This gives you an advantage of writing DVD+RW in truly arbitrary order, even to virgin surface and practically instantly (after ~40 seconds long initial format procedure). In addition, DVD+RW can be conveniently written to with 2KB granularity(***). DVD-RW in turn can only be overwritten in arbitrary order. Meaning that it either has to be completely formatted first (it takes an hour to format 1x media), or initially written to in a sequential manner...

I guess my question must have seemed really off topic on Slashdot.

So I took you up on your suggestion and found the following links. Maybe one other reader might find this of benefit:

How to use XCdroast on Linux:

DVD+RW and utils on Linux

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered "*BSD is dying" troll community when IDC confirmed that "*BSD is dying" market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all trolls. Coming on the heels of a recent Sporks 'R Us survey which plainly states that "*BSD is dying" has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. "*BSD is dying" is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive troll test.

You don't need to be a Vulcan to predict the future of the "*BSD is dying" troll. The hand writing is on the wall: the "*BSD is dying" troll faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the "*BSD is dying" troll bec

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered "*BSD is dying" troll
community when IDC confirmed that "*BSD is dying" market share has dropped yet again,
now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of
all trolls. Coming on the heels of a recent Sporks 'R Us survey which plainly states
that "*BSD is dying" has lost more market share,
this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. "*BSD is dying" is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by
failing dead last
in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive troll test.

You don't need to
be a Vulcan to predict the future
of the "*BSD is dying" troll. The hand writing is on the wall: the "*BSD is dying" troll
faces a bleak future. In fact there won't
be any future at all for the "*BSD is dying" troll because the "*BSD is dying" troll is
dying!. Things are looking very
bad for "*BSD is dying" trolls. As many of us are already aware, "*BSD is dying" continues
to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

"FreeBSD is dying" is the
most endangered of them all, having
lost 93% of its core trolls to the GNAA community. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time
"FreeBSD is dying" trolls developers Anonymous Coward and Mike Smith only serve to
underscore the point
more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: "FreeBSD is dying" trolls are dying.

Let's
keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

"OpenBSD is dying" troll Theo states that there
are 7000 trolls actively posting "OpenBSD is dying" trolls. How many trolls pushing "NetBSD
is dying" are there? Let's see. The number of
"OpenBSD is dying" versus "NetBSD is dying" posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1.
Therefore there are
about 7000/5 = 1400 "NetBSD is dying" trolls. "BSD/OS is dying" posts on Usenet are
about half of the volume of "NetBSD is dying" posts. Therefore there are about 700 trolls
of "BSD/OS is dying" variety. A recent article put
"FreeBSD is dying" at about 80 percent of the "*BSD is dying" market.
Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 =
36400 "FreeBSD is dying" trolls. This is consistent with the number of "FreeBSD is dying" Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal attempts at first post and so on,
"FreeBSD is dying" trolls cease to exist and have been in fact converted to GNAA trolls.

All major surveys show that "*BSD is dying" posts have steadily declined in
posting share. "*BSD is dying" is very sick and
its long term survival prospects are very dim. If "*BSD is dying" is to survive at all it will
be because of a last hour bailout by the GNAA community. "*BSD is dying" continues to decay.
Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes,
"*BSD is dying" is dead.

Fact: "*BSD is dying" is dying.

The GNAA, IN SOVIET RUSSIA, and "Stephen King is dead" raiders are already rushing in to take
first posts, moderator status, and all other benefits the "*BSD is dying" trolls formerly
had.

• Will the CPU speed of the computer used for the task matter? (Not for the development task, but for computing task results.) Will people with just a 166-MHz machine be disadvantaged against people with current hardware?

  Give me a faster computer anyday. I can't see a situation in which a faster machine would not be some advantage. However, the speed of your CPU will not directly influence your placing.

They just want their movies to work on Uncle Bob's DVD player, puchased 3 years ago... it ain't gonna work with DVD+RW.

This just plain isn't true. If you browse through sites like dvdrhelp.com, which I did recently, you will find two things: 1) the user reports of compatability vary considerably even within the same DVD player model, and 2) if you average the results (which you must do because there is so much "noise" in them), there is very little difference between the two formats in terms of compatability. If one is better than the other, it is by only a few percentage points at most.

I have played +R disks in many players made during the last 5 years, and have not had any problems. The surface reflectivities of the two types of disk are very similar, and a player which is physically capable of playing a -R will almost always play a +R, at least in my experience. Some players might refuse to play a disk which is tagged as a +R, but there are utilities available which will let you change the so-called "book type" field to get around this problem.

I agree that end users will not have any issue with the two types of DVD-R/RW, but there is one difference that probably will make a difference to some consumers. DVD+R/RW is capable of recording with lossless linking in the mode which is the most compatable with video DVD players (see this page (near the bottom) for a technical description of this issue). What this feature means is that with +R/RW, you can stream variable bitrate MPEG directly to the DVD and have the resulting disk be more compatable with video DVD players than with -R/RW, which wasn't designed with this in mind. My hunch is that this is one of the reasons M$ has decided to put its weight behind +R/RW (along with the Mt. Rainier stuff).

The bottom line is that for all users who don't need to stream MPEG directly to the DVD (which probably includes most Linux users), there is very little practical difference between the formats. Both formats have the support of some heavy hitters and neither one is likely to go away anytime soon.

DVD-R/RW is backed by the DVD Forum, as well as a long list of hardware manufacturers. A few months ago, this would have given this format the edge. Microsoft, however, has recently thrown its weight into the +R/RW camp along with the many hardware manufacturers which were already supporting it. This sort of evens things out.

I assume the reason MS decided to back +R/RW is because of its ability to provide lossless linking in the recording mode that is the most compatable with video DVD players. This feature allows realtime streaming of low bitrate MPEG directly to video-compatable DVD which is something MS probably figures many consumers will want to do.

The fact that both formats have strong backing probably means that we will have to live with both formats for longer than we previously thought unless one camp or the other suddenly backs down, which is unlikely.

As for me, I have a +R/RW, and am so far very happy with it. It is well supported in Linux through the growisofs utility, and I haven't had any problem with compatability of the +R media in video DVD players.

The growisofs webpage mentioned above has a good technical discussion of the lossless linking issue and why this is supposedly an advantage for +R/RW (look near the bottom of the page), although I personally don't do realtime MPEG streaming to DVD.

Until today, both ML and Haskell had a common problem: a lack of commercial and real world interest in it and therefore a lack of real-world libraries and supporting frameworks. But now things are going to be changed.

First Ericson came with Erlang, an excelent essence of FP, LP, scripting and networking. Now M$ (I know - evil, but anyway) came with F# bringing OCaml to the real world saving from being forgotten somewhere in Inria.

What next? I think that would be Haskell, the language even more suprior to ML, with already OOP, Parallel and Cuncurrent extensions. Also I like its Functional-Logical dialect - Curry. But who will bring it to the real world? IBM?

Great call.

But you know, I'd be very surprised if the disc didn't play in Ogle, mplayer or Xine.

Perhpas we should start 'returning' crap DVD software too.

I particularly like this link that you posted:

http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~bengt/petition.pdf

It's a petition by 31 prominent european computer scientists outlining in clear and concise language why software patents are a bad idea. (Here's some news coverage)

Basically what it boils down to are two things:
- patents aren't needed because software is protected by copyright (unlike other patentable inventions, which can't be copyrighted)
- patents on software will affect emphemeral methods and thoughts, culture and society ... ... well I can't explain it well. Read the letter it's only one page in plain english.

simon

It would be much better if, when the JURI committee meets on May 22nd to vote, they choose the CULT amendments, or the ITRE amendments, or those proposed by some of the Greens and Socialists, rather than the ones this letter is calling for.

For example, CULT recommended that only systems involving "the use of natural forces to control physical effects beyond the digital representation of information" should be patentable - essentially the caselaw in Germany and many other European states in the 1970s and 1980s.

ITRE proposed that "inventions involving computer programs which implement business, mathematical or other methods, which inventions do not produce any technical effects beyond the manipulation and representation of information within the computer-system or network, shall not be patentable".

Also, that "the production, handling, processing, distribution and publication of information, in whatever form, can never constituate direct or indirect infringement of a patent, even when a technical apparatus is used for that purpose."

In contrast the amendments drafted for JURI by Arlene McCarthy, which the letter recommends, are much looser, in many places not well drafted at all, and contain none of these clearly defined restrictions.

The letter in fact is even worse, because unlike even Arlene McCarthy it supports "program claims" -- ie making the publication of source code on a disk or a website a primary patent violation (Compare that under ITRE's amendments such a publication would be free speech to be protected, not even an indirect violation).

There is much much more information on the FFII website, including

• their critique of the letter.
• their analysis of the McCarthy draft amendments for JURI
• their analysis of the CULT report and proposed amendments
• their analysis of the ITRE report and proposed amendments

Also worth reading is this open letter from 20 distinguished European professors of Computer Science about why software patents would be a bad thing:

http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~bengt/petition.pdf

Till today it supported any DVD I inserted in my laptop and played them smoothly.

maybe,

I have heard that a "private" version of this scanner was deleivred with an interactive exploit against OpenBSD machines.

can anyone confirm this?

Here is the proof:


NSA cheif f*#$d by hackers

Lisp has one of the best object-oriented paradigm implementation, Meta-Object Protocol among languages with both scripting and bytecompiling capabilities.

Scheme has been proved as a good language for GUI and configuration: GIMP, Sawfish, TeXmacs.

OCaml has all the power as Lips, just in syntax conviniect for many Java/C-poisoned brains to read faster. No wonder there are many real-world applications on it.

Haskell... I just love how it demonstrates that OOP is not everything (and even not enough) :)

Sun works for telecom industry - why not consider Erlang?

And don't ignore Mozart - it's multi-paradigm pradigm might be just what we all will thing as the best in 3-5 years.

The list is not complete, of course. And it's inspired by Functional Programming.

My main point here is: each of above languages, would it be in hands of Sun marketed instead of Java (with all that money invested to), would have quality of implementation much better than Java.

In fact, I am impressed how such poorly designed language as Java succeed so far on the market. It wouldn't without so much money behind. And without so many classes written by Sun to compensate the poor design of the core language itself.

Would Sun invest so much efforts and money to FP language then the result would be much better. Because quality is why FP matters.

Lisp has one of the best object-oriented paradigm implementation, Meta-Object Protocol among languages with both scripting and bytecompiling capabilities.

Scheme has been proved as a good language for GUI and configuration: GIMP, Sawfish, TeXmacs.

OCaml has all the power as Lips, just in syntax conviniect for many Java/C-poisoned brains to read faster. No wonder there are many real-world applications on it.

Haskell... I just love how it demonstrates that OOP is not everything (and even not enough) :)

Sun works for telecom industry - why not consider Erlang?

And don't ignore Mozart - it's multi-paradigm pradigm might be just what we all will thing as the best in 3-5 years.

The list is not complete, of course. And it's inspired by Functional Programming.

My main point here is: each of above languages, would it be in hands of Sun marketed instead of Java (with all that money invested to), would have quality of implementation much better than Java.

In fact, I am impressed how such poorly designed language as Java succeed so far on the market. It wouldn't without so much money behind. And without so many classes written by Sun to compensate the poor design of the core language itself.

Would Sun invest so much efforts and money to FP language then the result would be much better. Because quality is why FP matters.

Same way, manual operations with memory ponters must be prohibited. And they are prohibited in languages with garbage collectors and automatic memory allocation: Java, Python, Perl, Ruby.

GC, automatic memory allocation and disabled GOTO, such methods limit programmers (in a positive way) and help to avoid very critical mistakes. But not all mistakes. Changing the variable (object) value is another source of common mistakes, which must be eliminated. It's solved in Functional Programming languages, such as Lisp, Haskell, ML, Oz, Mercury and Erlang.

Changing the value of the variable is not less bad habit. It's like goto (changing the address pointer) is bad.

Use Functional Programming instead.

and it's still one of only a few compilable languages (excepting gcj == java) that have a gc.

There is nothing special about a "compilable language" (whatever that means) using GC. Lisp has been doing it for decades (and yes, most Lisp systems are native code compilers, such as CMUCL, Allegro, CormanLisp, SBCL, etc). Oberon-2 compilers use GC, including the open source OOC and Oberon System3 from ETH. Ada was designed such that GC could be implemented, but it rarely is. Many FP languages use GC, such as Haskell. Haskell compilers, such as GHC, NHC, and HBC all use GC.

If you haven't gotten the point yet, there is nothing special about implementing languages using garbage collection, and furthermore, there was nothing innovative when Meyer decided to use it for Eiffel.

I recompiled Ogle plus the libraries like libdvdread and dvdcss to ensure the code was P3 optimised, installed the ATI x driver from source forge (with the xvideo extensions) and the performance is as good as PowerDVD under Win98 (no jumps). The kernel is RH 2.4.18-18.8 with the low latency stuff enabled.

If only they would fix the GUI, then I would be very happy.

For Windows, there's the full-featured FusionsSoft DVD Player which is described as published under the GPL license, but where is the source? The indicated home page of the project is constantly over its monthly bandwidth quota. The last version available seems to be from July, 2002, version 5.0.0.1.

The binaries for FusionSoft DVD Player can be found here. Gut again, since it's GPL, the sources should be somewhere. The program itself is multilingual, although you may have to do some german to download it and some french during the installation.

I really like ogle! Command line or gui! Suh-weet!

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/

Or check out #ogle on irc.openprojects.net. They seem like really nice guys. I once mentioned to them it would be nice to be able to pass a command line option for full screen so I could make it stupid-easy for my wife and daughter to watch DVDs (you know... pushin 'f' is hard). They were very cool and said they'd add support in for that (CVS). I'm not sure if they've done it yet (I haven't checked), but their attitude towards my suggestion was very positive. Other projects are not nearly as cool about that (i.e. a player that starts with m).

It's a good app. It has no problems playing any of my DVDs (region 1 or 2). Cool.

TCP doesn't send an ACK for every packet.

Try this link for more info

Cheers

http://paud.sourceforge.net/

I was going to look at your homepage to see what type of background you came from, if you might mean only graphical stuff as a desktop environment. However, I was immediately confronted with a warning that "The contents of this page may not be copied without my written permission." As looking at your page in a web browser makes a copy of it, I hastily hit the back button and cleared my cache. Please don't sue me, and I'm posting AC just to be sure.

Were I work (I can't say where... I've signed papers...)

Are you referring to this part of your CV?

Gardening
Juli 7 - 27 1986 i managed a group of tomato plants.

However, they also seem to be contributing to this disturbing trend of ``un-freeing'' free books. This book used to be free at the author's web page. If you click on the link, you'll find that it no longer exists. The book is no longer free, and you can only get the electronic version through Safari.

Here (ogle)
This relies on libdvdcss to play encrypted DVDs.
Happy viewing!

vandy

The trouble is, that functional languages, while they may be more powerful, are much harder to write well in, generally taking you far longer to get to the finished state you want.

But don't take my word for it:

• Prototyping Real-Time Vision Systems: An Experiment in DSL Design (1998) Abstract: We describe the transformation of XVision, a large library of C++ code for real-time vision processing, into FVision (pronounced "fission"), a fully-featured domain-specific language embedded in Haskell. The resulting prototype system substantiates the claims of increased modularity, effective code reuse, and rapid prototyping that characterize the DSL approach to system design....
• Four-fold Increase in Productivity and Quality: Industrial-Strength Functional Programming in Telecom-Class Products (PDF) Abstract: The AXD 301 ATM Switch is the flagship in Ericsson's line of Datacom products. A fault tolerant and highly scalable backbone ATM switch, AXD 301 has enabled Ericsson to take the lead in the migration of public telephony networks to becoming true multiservice networks, offering both quality voice and broadband data services on the same backbone.... This paper demonstrates how the development of such systems is supported by the Erlang/OTP technology. The Erlang [functional] programming language was developed by Ericsson specifically for the purpose of building fault tolerant, distributed and complex systems.... The paper demonstrates how Erlang supports the characteristics mentioned, while offering unusually high productivity.
• Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. Awk vs. ... : An Experiment in Software Prototyping Productivity: Abstract: We describe the results of an experiment in which several conventional programming languages, together with the functional language Haskell, were used to prototype a Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) requirement for a Geometric Region Server. The resulting programs and development metrics were reviewed by a committee chosen by the Navy. The results indicate that the Haskell prototype took significantly less time to develop and was considerably more concise and easier to understand than the corresponding prototypes written in several different imperative languages, including Ada and C++.
• Functional languages in microcode compilers (ACM Digital Library). Abstract: This paper discusses the advantages of using high-level languages in the development of microcode. It also describes reasons functional programming languages should be considered as the source language for microcode compilers. The emergence of parallel execution in microarchitectures dictates that parallelism must be extracted from the microcode programs. This paper shows how functional languages meet the needs of microprogrammers by allowing them to express their algorithms in natural ways while allowing the microcode compiler to extract the parallelism from the program.

OCaml is functional, you give the computer rules and then point it in the right direction.

That's not what "functional language" means. The magic of functional programming comes from the (sometimes typed) lambda calculus, in which functions can be passed as parameters. In this vein, we also have easier polymorphism (functions can take a type as a parameter) and fewer "side effects," which could mean fewer bugs.

See Why Functional Programming Matters. For the theoretically inclined, I enjoyed An Introduction to Polymorphic Lambda Calculus with Subtyping.

(Both links can be found on the pages I link to; I don't link to the articles because I don't know your document format of choice.)

I use and like MPlayer for playing media files, but I've found it awful for playing DVDs (in my case anyway). As the movie progresses, the sound drops up to 2 seconds out of sync with the picture. This is on a 2000+ Athlon with UDMA enabled.

And I don't want to have to sit with my fingers on the 'increase lag' 'decrease lag' keys while watching a movie.

Ogle however works great, and it supports menus.
The CVS version has full AC3 surround for multichannel cards like the SBLive 5.1 too!

Off topic, but try Ogle for a DVD player. Works great on my IBM Thinkpad 600E (PII 366) running RH 7.3

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Hari Seldon

What you should do is to send the file to some government official in Sweden. That way it will become public property and anyone can request a copy of it.

That happened when someone filed most of the entire top secret bible of the Cult of Scientology to the local government office in Stockholm.

The CoS had to send people there to keep the copies occupied and spam the government office with requests for copies.

• Why Functional Programming Matters
• Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming Second Edition
• FAD: A Functional Analysis and Design Methodology
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
• CLOS Meta Object Protocol

So, still keeping some Java projects, I've decided to try something else. First I've tried was Python, which I used for while in OS automation scripts, but now I've tried to use it for a bigger scope: "servlets", UI, JMS-like messaging, XSLT, text processing, RDF, and finally in some AI stuff using FP, which is poor in Python, but at least it is there. By the way, OOP in Python is also far away from being perfect. It is slow on massive calculations, although it is fast enough for script -based OS automation, UI, "servlets" and XML processing (but not on huge files). it is dynamically typed and it has lazy evaluation - both very important features for messaging. Python is less known, comparing to Java, but its community is not really tiny as Perl and other *n*x hackers usually know Python.

After Python I've tried Erlang, Oz, OCaml, Haskell. I think Erlnag is ready for distributed messaging and for OS automation. The others are not - the lack of libraries. Although, each of them, Oz, OCaml and Haskell, has a very great potential if some big corp will do support. Any of these three may need just 10% of Java marketing to collect a crical mass and become recognized.

Before Java I had an experience also in C, Perl, Scheme, Lisp and Tcl, in few projects each. C is very "crashy" in you hands if you don't use it every day. Tcl does not handle well big enough apps. Perl is a "write-only" self-obfuscated lang. The only choice left is Lisp and Scheme. Lisp is very power for big standalone apps, Scheme is convinient for being embedded somewhere.

So, in the finals I've got Python, Erlang, Scheme and Lisp. Not a bad choice.

Coming back to UML. It does same help for Python programming as for Java. As for Lisp/Scheme and Erlang, I think that things like UML are too primitive to fit. On serious languages you need a serious math, and usually diagram is just an iluustration in the math article, not a whole article.

So, if you tired from kid pictures get the math in your hands :)

This is what you get when news gets filtered down from a research report to a popular science magazine article and then, through a couple of clue-less journalists, to a sensationalist press release.

Here is the actual Research web-page

I found this myself, Krister Wolff was the other guy mentioned in the Reuter's article, here's his homepage. It contains some interesting publications, like the one on Sensing and Direction in Locomotion Learning with a Random Morphology Robot. Worth reading!!

I found this myself, Krister Wolff was the other guy mentioned in the Reuter's article, here's his homepage. It contains some interesting publications, like the one on Sensing and Direction in Locomotion Learning with a Random Morphology Robot. Worth reading!!

I'm trying to mirror the site but it's going slow. Only 2 of the images so far.

http://razor.hemmet.chalmers.se/garote.bdmonkeys.n et/notebook/

Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may decide not to play.

Go ahead and think twice about using the internet, even think about it three times, if you like. I don't think I would even mind all that much if you don't "decide to play."

We have already seen US law, in the form of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability. US-promoted 'anti-censor' software is routinely provided to enable citizens of other countries to break local laws; and US companies like Yahoo! disregard the judgements of foreign courts at will.

Instead of complaining about the DCMA, why don't you complain about the EUCD, the European Union Copyright Directive, the equivalent EU legislation to the DMCA? Do you believe that it won't be used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability? And as for the anti-censor software, heaven forbid if a few Chinese are actually able to read the BBC News, in violation of their local laws. You are right, that is a terrible thing.

Congressman Howard Berman's ridiculous proposal to give copyright holders immunity from prosecution if they hack into P2P networks is the latest attempt by the US Congress to pass laws that will directly affect every Internet user, because no US court would allow prosecution of a company in another jurisdiction when immunity is granted by US law.

This isn't law yet, and probably will never get passed, but even if it did, I am sure this power would only be used on machines within the U.S., since those activities would be illegal in those countries.

Unless we can take back the Net from the libertarians, constitutional lawyers and rapacious corporations currently recreating the worst excesses of US political and commercial culture online, we will end up with an Internet which serves the imperial ambitions of only one country instead of the legitimate aspirations of the whole world.

Rapacious corporations? Don't you think that is a slight over-statement of the situation? How would a whole corporation actually rape you anyway, some sort of giant cluster-fuck?

While this would greatly please the US, it would not be in the interests of the majority of Internet users, who want a network that allows them to express their own values, respects their own laws and supports their own cultures and interests.

US domination has been going on for so long that many see it as either inevitable or desirable. 'They may have their problems but at least they believe in democracy, free speech and the market economy', the argument goes. Yet today's United States is a country which respects freedom so much that if I, a European citizen, set foot there I can be interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret.

Yes, that is our standard operating procedure for handling all European tourists. First, you get to see the Statue of Liberty. Second, you get to go to Disney World. Third, you are interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret. It is a very popular bundle deal, available from any good travel agent.

It has a government which respects free speech yet tries to persuade postal workers to spy on people as they delivered their mail. Its Chief Executive illegally sold shares when in possession of privileged information about an impending price crash. ICANN, the body it established to manage DNS, had to be ordered by a court to let one of its own directors examine the company accounts for fear he may discover something untoward. And elected representatives -like the aforementioned Howard Berman -are paid vast amounts by firms lobbying for laws which serve their corporate interests.

Heads are rolling from all of the stock market mess, and I am sure many more will. What you accuse Bush of doing, if it is true, will most certianly bring him down. As for ICANN, they were ordered to release the records. If they weren't, then there would be a problem.

These are clearly not the people who should be setting the rules for the Net's evolution. Unfortunately today's Internet, with its permissive architecture and lack of effective boundaries or user authentication, makes it almost impossible to resist this technological imperialism.

Who trusts you, baby?

Fortunately the technology itself - in the form of trusted computer architectures, secure networks and digital rights management - can be used to rescue the Net from US control.

These developments, reviled and criticised by those inside and outside the continental United States who hold on to an outdated and unrealistic view of what the Net was or could become, are the key to its future growth and usefulness. Whatever the libertarians say, they must be defended, promoted - and properly controlled.

You were just complaining about the DMCA, but now you are in support of digital rights management? That is rather contradictory. Something you seem to fail to realize about libertarians is that, above all, the seek personal liberty, hence their name. A popular quote for libertarians that sums up nearly all of their beliefs is "better to die a free man than to live a slave." They will never be "properly controlled".

I believe that the time has come to speak out in favour of a regulated network; an Internet where each country can set its own rules for how its citizens, companies, courts and government work with and manage those parts of the network that fall within its jurisdiction; an Internet that reflects the diversity of the world's legal, moral and cultural choices instead of simply propagating US hegemony; an Internet that is subject to political control instead of being an uncontrolled experiment in radical capitalism. It is time to reclaim the net from the Americans.

For you to reclaim something, you need to have had a claim on it to begin with. The American claim to the Internet (it was developed by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Administration, originally for the U.S. Department of Defense) is tenous at best, but the European claim is non-existant.

This will not be easy. In order to do this we have to reject two beliefs that underpin our current understanding of the Net, and these beliefs, although wrong, are dear to many.

The first is the idea that the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. If I phone someone in Nigeria and suggest a money-laundering fraud then it is obvious to all that I am breaking the law in two countries, not in 'phonespace'. Nobody has ever suggested that the content of the telephone network -all those voice calls -should be somehow privileged and treated as outside the normal world.

Why, then, do we act as if our interactions with screen, mouse and keyboard are different? If I send an email suggesting that I am in possession of $50m and will hand it over in return for your bank details, why can't it just be that I also am breaking the law in two countries, not in some mythical 'cyberspace' with its own legal system?

If you were to do this, even via e-mail, you would be breaking the law in two countries, and if that e-mail message were found, you would be convicted, regardless of the message being e-mail. Where did you get the idea that you wouldn't?

Losing the idea of 'cyberspace' simplifies things greatly.

Quite correct, losing ideas, in general, simplifies things greatly.

The other thing we need to lose is the ridiculous belief that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. We need to reject the philosophical bullshit which argues that there is an equivalence between being simultaneously a 'citizen' of Maine and of the United States and our co-existence in the real world and the online world *, and accept instead the mundane reality that nobody has any real form of existence online - either now or in the foreseeable future.

How is this idea any different from the first? Idea 1: the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. Idea 2: that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. They sound like the same idea to me.

This makes our discussion a lot simpler because we no longer have to grapple with the idea of having two forms of existence - the one that involves breathing, pissing and fucking and the one that involves typing. We don't have to stretch our legal or constitutional thinking to cope with the apparent contradiction of being in 'two places' with different standards of behaviour at the same time.

We can also deal with the problems of jurisdiction for online activity in the same way as we deal with it elsewhere: in the UK we're perfectly happy to prosecute someone for war crimes committed fifty years ago in another country, so why are there problems if the crime involved the Internet? Under English law a sex tourist can be prosecuted here even if he has sex with a child in Thailand: surely prosecuting someone for promoting racial hatred on a US-hosted website can't be that different?

You were complaining about the possibility of being tried and convicted in the U.S., for committing a capital offense (one great enough to warrant the death penalty), yet you think Americans should be tried and convicted in England for presenting a dissenting viewpoint in a public venue?

This is not to claim that these issues are all simple, resolvable and determinate, just to point out that we already have legal systems - admittedly imperfect - in place that can deal with them mostly adequately, most of the time. In general the few exceptions are not allowed to be used as arguments for making bad law. We must not allow the Net to be the biggest exception, creating the worst law of all.

Brave Old World

This is hard for many old-time Net users to accept, because we like the idea that being online takes us into a new space, a new world. But it is simply not the case: we are not creating a brave new online world out of our electrons and pixels. It is all one world - the only difference is that we currently lack the ability to map our online activity onto our real-world lives with any degree of certainty. The result is that cyberspace appears somehow to be divorced from the physical world - but this is just an artifact of our current technologies and not a fundamental principle.

Actually, the program Xtraceroute can show where a computer is physically (in 3D), and show the route your data is taking to get there, rather easily.

Once we clear our minds of these erroneous beliefs we can see that the US has no right to determine how the whole Internet is run. Each country should decide for itself. All we need to do is to mark out the network, using trusted computers and secure networks to locate servers, hosts, networks and people within geographically-defined areas - or nation states as they are usually known - and let the countries get on with it. We can establish the rule of law, national sovereignty and local values in those parts of the network that fall within the jurisdiction of a particular country, and let normal diplomatic, cultural and commercial channels deal with the interaction between countries.

This would not stop the US treating its Constitution as the only true source of wisdom or framing their discussions in terms that draw only from the US political and economic tradition. But if they decide to run their part of the Net according to the principles laid down two hundred and fifty years ago by a bunch of renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners they would not be able to force the rest of us to follow suit.

My ancestor at the time was both a renegade merchant and a rebellious slave owner, not just one or the other. I guess he was something of an over-achiever.

If they want a First Amendment online, or to let some gun-toting nut argue that writing viruses is the online equivalent of carrying a concealed weapon and so counts as a constitutionally protected right then they can go ahead - the rest of us can do things differently. ('Viruses don't trash hard drives - people trash hard drives.')

Why don't you just use an operating system that doesn't get viruses? I personally recommend FreeBSD. Oh, and that reminds me, I need to clean my rifle.

A cyberspace in which each machine is 'within' a jurisdiction and where actions can be mapped onto physical space will be very different from today's Internet.

In the mapped network we will not have the absolute freedom of speech which cyberlibertarians claim they want, but neither will we get absolute oppression, absolute free market capitalism or even absolute communism. We will instead get compromise, and regional or national variation, just as in the real world.

Heaven forbid an internet with absolute free speech. It is a good thing you came up with a solution to that problem.

Many will see this as a loss of freedom, but the freedom they value so much is also the freedom to act irresponsibly, to undermine civil authorities and to escape liability. It is the freedom to release viruses, abuse personal data, send unlimited spam and undermine the copyright bargain. It is not a freedom we need.

It is easy to see why this approach will be resisted by US activists, of whatever political persuasion, who see the 'one world, one cyberspace' approach as a convenient way to establish an online constitutional hegemony. It will also be resisted by many of those who see any attempt to create trusted software running on secure processors as the network equivalent of the arrival of the black helicopters from the UN World Government Army.

However their position is untenable, because the vast majority of Internet users need and want a secure network where they can use email, look at Websites, shop, watch movies and chat to friends, and they are happy to accept that this is a regulated space just as most areas of life are.

To quote one of those renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners, Ben Franklin, "He who gives up a little liberty in order to gain security, deserves neither liberty nor security." Do you actually think that your ability to shop online is more important than my freedom of speech?

Even if we don't act we will still get a regulated network, because the commercial interests which dominate the US know that it is a prerequisite for a digital economy. However the shape of that network will be entirely determined by US interests, just like today. It is therefore vital that a different approach to the development of the Internet is proposed -and I believe that Europe is the place for it to start.

Bring it back

Europe is the birthplace of the Web, with a wealthy, technically literate population, a network infrastructure that rivals that of the US and a rich cultural and political tradition which can counter US constitutional imperialism.

The U.S. is not under constitutional imperialism, that would require an emperor supported by a constitution, similar to England's constitutional monarchy. However, we dislike monarchs greatly.

An important factor in Europe's favour is that we retain a belief that governments are a good thing, that political control is both necessary and desirable, and that laws serve the people. These beliefs are now lacking in the United States, rendering it incapable of acting to create any sort of civic space online or allowing its government to intervene effectively to regulate the Net.

Does this mean that the broad control of the Internet by the U.S. government that you were talking about earlier will never happen, since we would hang our Senators before even half of it was put in force?

The recently-agreed .eu ccTLD could be a rallying point for a serious attempt to extend the EU online, adopting new standards for trusted computing, regulating their use within EU countries and establishing a European dataspace which would grow over time to become a major node in the emerging trusted network that will replace today's Internet.

It will take political will and technological skill to do this, and it will not be achievable overnight. But if we are to escape a world where corporations build systems which are only capable of supporting US-style online government, or where trusted software is a trojan horse carrying the US constitution into our online life when we neither want nor need it, then we need to act now.

That's right folks, all software written in America secretly contains the entire text of The U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. For example, in Microsoft Word you can access this dangerous material by pressing Control-Alt-U, Control-Alt-S, Control-Alt-A.

A trusted network will not stop the Americans - or anyone else - opting out and remaining with their existing unregulated Internet. Just like the survivalists heading out to Oregon with their assault weapons and dried food, those who don't want to be part of the great online civilisation could establish their own enclaves, where they would be free to run the code of their choice.

Do you mean like an isolated enclave from the "great internet civilization" for all of Europe with methods in place to avoid pesky freedoms like freedom of speech?

But inside Europe our values, our principles and our legal system can determine how our part of the Net is run. Personal data would be protected by law, and those who abused the information provided to them by individuals would be prosecuted. Data flows into and out of Europe would be properly regulated and controlled to ensure that neither spam nor viruses came in, and that no personal data went out without explicit consent.

This would, of course, work wonderfully, because there are no spammers or virus-writers in Europe.

In Europe our copyright laws allow lending of material, and so media players licensed for use within the dataspace would not restrict personal copying or lending, although they would respect other rights.

So that you can "lend" American media content to your friends?

In Europe community standards for freedom of speech differ substantially from those of the United States, where any sensible discussion is crippled by the constitution and the continued attempts to decide how many Founding Fathers can stand on the head of a pin.

Yes, standards for freedom of speech do differ substantially in Europe. They apparently seem to be rather lacking. As for Founding Fathers standing on the head of a pin, 27 will fit, exactly.

Over here, human rights legislation, interpreted by judges who are able to use their intelligence instead of just relying on textual analysis of the Bill of Rights, gives us a much better chance of tying online action to the real world and integrating cyberspace with real space in way that benefits both.

In the end, William Gibson was wrong: cyberspace is not another place, it's just part of this space. There is no 'there, there' : in fact, it isn't really there at all. The illusion is, in the end, only an illusion, however consensual it may be. Not only does 'meatspace rule', but 'meatspace rules rule' - the laws and regulations that govern the Net, whether they are legal, social, architectural or code-based, will all come from the real world, where judges, lawyers, programmers, politicians and - in some way -citizens get to decide how our online activities and our real world lives mesh and are linked.

The United States is incapable, for the reasons I've described, of understanding this or of escaping its constitutionally-determined destiny to attempt to establish hegemony over cyberspace.

It cannot be allowed to succeed, and so those of us within Europe need to begin to work now to extend our culture onto the Net in all its complex glory. We need to build our borders online and offer our citizens protection within those borders, and escape from America.

If the U.S. is incapable of achieving it, then why does Europe need to go out of it's way to make sure the U.S. doesn't succeed? Is anyone making Europeans go to American wevsites, or do they just provide better content?

* Much as I like Lessig's work, he just goes too far here. I blame law school. Being a Cambridge philosopher manqué I tend to have a more brutal constructivist approach to this sort of thing.

I am sure Cambridge is real glad that you are serving as an example of what they will let graduate.

© Bill Thompson.

Should that copyright be viable outside of Europe? Can I "lend" your work to others in the U.S.?

Wow. I feel spoiled. I haven't seen an FBI warning for so long because the only movies I watch are on DVD using ogle. Come to think of it, I don't really miss those warnings ...

Hell, DVD playing is what drove me full time to Linux from my Windows/Linux dual boot. After re-imaging, I couldn't reinstall the DVD player because it didn't think it was going on the computer I bought. Ain't copy protection lovely?

Australia

ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brisbane)
Austria

ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Vienna)

ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Vienna)
Belgium

ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Costa Rica

ftp://ftp.ucr.ac.cr/pub/Unix/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Czech Republic

ftp://ftp.cesnet.cz/OS/Linux/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2 /i586/ (Brno)

ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)

ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Dist/Mandrake/m andrake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)
Denmark

ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Koebenhavn)

ftp://ftp.sunsite.dk/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aalborg)
Estonia

ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Finland

ftp://ftp.song.fi/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Espoo)
France

ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Nancy)

ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Angers)

ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake /8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/pub/linux/distributions/man drake/8.2/i586/ (Strasbourg)

ftp://linux.ups-tlse.fr/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Toulouse)
Germany

ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Esslingen)

ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.fh-giessen.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Giessen)

ftp://ftp.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/pub/os/linux/mandrak e/dist/8.2/i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Goettingen)

ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Muenster)

ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Munchen)

ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Chemnitz)

ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Clausthal)

ftp://ftp.uasw.edu/pub/os/linux/mandrake/dist/8.2/ i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (bayreuth)

ftp://ftp.uni-kassel.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Kassel)

ftp://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/systems/linux/mandrake/8 .2/i586/ (Mannheim)

ftp://ftp.vat.tu-dresden.de/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://ramses.wh2.tu-dresden.de/pub/mirrors/mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aachen)
Greece

ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Thrace)

ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Athens)
Hong Kong

ftp://ftp.wisr.eie.polyu.edu.hk/linux/mandrake/8.2 /i586/
Hungary

ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Ireland

ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Italy

ftp://bo.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Bologna)

ftp://ftp.edisontel.it/pub/Mandrake_Mirror/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/
Latvia

ftp://ftp.latnet.lv/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Netherlands

ftp://ftp.nl.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Man drake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Wageningen)
Poland

ftp://ftp.ps.pl/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Szczecin)

ftp://ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gdansk)
Portugal

ftp://ftp.dei.uc.pt/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8. 2/i586/ (Coimbra)

ftp://tux.cprm.net/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Russia

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
Singapore

ftp://ftp.singnet.com.sg/opensource/linux/Mandrake /8.2/i586/
Slovakia

ftp://spirit.profinet.sk/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Bratislava)
Spain

ftp://ftp.cesga.es/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Galicia)

ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Sevilla)

ftp://ftp.rediris.es/pub/linux/distributions/mandr ake/8.2/i586/
Sweden

ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.chl.chalmers.se/pub/Linux/distributions/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gothenburg)

ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dalarma)
Switzerland

ftp://ftp.pcds.ch/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Neuhausen)

ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Zurich)
Taiwan

ftp://linux.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/pub/Mandrake/mandrak e/8.2/i586/

ftp://linux.csie.nctu.edu.tw/distributions/mandrak e/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Turkey

ftp://ftp.ankara.edu.tr/pub/linux/dagitimlar/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Ankara)
United Kingdom

ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Canterbury)
United States

ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Georgia)

ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Florida)

ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/Mandrake/mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (NY)

ftp://ftp.nmt.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Mexico)

ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Oregon)

ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Virginia)

ftp://ftp.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Missouri)

ftp://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Indiana)

ftp://linux-cs.tccw.wku.edu/pub/linux/distribution s/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (WKU-Linux, Western Kentucky University)

ftp://mirror.aca.oakland.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Michigan)

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Wisconsin)

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Illinois)

ftp://mirrors.ptd.net/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Pensylvania)

ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/

ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/ftp.mandr akesoft.com/pub/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Hampshire)

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Hawaii)

http://mandrake.dsi.internet2.edu/Mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (For Internet2 academic institutions only)

It's obvious that these kind of services are doomed to fail. Kazaa and its ilk will coast on by, by the many people who love to download porn and such using it. Of course, as we all know, with the advent of DVD albums and the portable DVD player, it will be harder and harder for us to crak music. Celine Dion's CDs are among the first to be uncrackable and the coming of more can only mean that the MP3 sharing will decline into nothing. Who likes old music, anyway... digital or not, it's a well-known fact that music loses over 95% of its' popularity (online and offline) after approximately 8 months of release.
So, paying for music again is in order. Who cares? Well, Linux users. Linux, which has low quality DVD writing drivers will evidently not be the operating system of choice for the multimedia user. IF you all actually informed yourselves you'd know that the paid services provided by those music companies have the songs readily encoded in both CD-compatible and DVD compatible formats.

Here's a mirror of the image.

http://razor.hemmet.chalmers.se/CodeRedSpreading.g if

Er, have you tried Ogle? Menus and everything. See also xine. From an options standpoint, I couldn't even find a free DVD player for Windows...

Thank god I'm not in your shoes!

I can burn CDs, browse the web, watch a DVD (with menus and DeCSS and everything!), and play some games , too, all from my GNOME desktop on Linux!