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Ogg/Vorbis on Palm OS
loshwomp writes "We have built an audio player for Palm OS, and a public beta is available now. The beta includes support for Ogg/Vorbis audio, and a future beta will include plug-ins for more formats, as well as the plug-in SDK itself."
This should prove to be really usefull to me since i just converted all of my music to ogg. I can't wait to download it!
The Blade Itself
Are Palms high performance or has the OGG/Vorbis decoder gotten a lot less processor intensive, I wonder?
We should be seeing Ogg support on "dedicated" MP3 players soon, no?
Now I can listen to Beethoven's 9th Symphony for 24 straight hours on my palm. woot.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Noting the info on the page: 4-5 hours typical battery life on a full charge.
Frame rate: 1, maybe two per minute.
Color: Black. White is optional.
Sound: Screeching Square Waves
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
Why does it have to store ogg on the expansion card? I have space on my device, why can't I use it?
Can you really fit that much music on a palm?
I haven't looked at Palms in a couple years. How much storage space does your average palmOS machine contain these days? Anyone familiar with the topic want to give some approximate numbers?
but does it support ogg? Otherwise I don't...oh wait....
What is the license? Where is the source code? This isn't freshmeat.net so I hope there's something more significant than just a free ad for proprietary software.
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Now I can listen to AC/DC on my PalmOS device's crappy little speaker...
Just what I wanted...
[Sorry for the tangentially off-topic message here but it's somewhat related so I will post anyway...]
I just got a Sony Clie PEG-SJ20 tonight from my father. I would like to play OGG/mp3 on it but I'm unable to locate an 802.11 card for my handheld. Until I can come up with fast wireless access, music playback on this device is kind of pointless. I need to be able to access more than a handful of songs for this to work. Do any of you have one of these Clie things and if so, have you worked out wireless TCP/IP for it yet?
My comrade is named Ogg Vorbis!
Palm machines aren't exactly known for fast CPUs, at least by desktop terms. This chart shows clock speeds from 16Mhz (Zire) to 66MHz (Sony Clie T665C), with most current units at 33Mhz. Now, I know clock speed ain't everything, performance-wise, but it kinda looks like most current machines won't be able to play much. Maybe spoken word stuff, which can get by with much lower bitrate & sample frequency, but forget ditching your iPod just yet...
Port the player to Linux for the Zaurus and iPaq, or even Pocket PC, and then yer talkin'.
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
My music collection is about 50/50 mp3 and ogg... I want to convert them all to ogg.
Will the reencoding degrade the quality?? I'd think as long as I keep them the same bitrate it would be the same... But couldn't there be a slight loss ??
heh, thanks =/
but it's still good to see it on the palm as well.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
8mb ram
ogg support
ogg file 3-5 mb
so if i am lucky i get two oggs and the application
oh darn, that speaker's quality sucks.
You're advertising this on Slashdot as a Palm OS app, but admit that it only runs currently on the Tungsten T. Your website only has one page, with no detail as to whether your product is open source or not. I can't find info about you or your application anywhere, even at your personal site, where you host your "free ogeLib Palm OS library". Who are you, is this for real, and how did you get it posted on the main page of Slashdot?
As for my fellow readers, has anyone actually downloaded and run this app?
The arrival of a PocketPC in my mail is imminent. I already know that Ogg is better than mp3, seeing as how it offers at least the same quality for approximately half the filesize. But what I'm not seeing is media players with support for the format. Withmp3, which seems at first glance to be pretty decent, makes zero mention of Ogg, so.. so much for Withmp3. What should someone use on the PocketPC to play Ogg files? Thanks.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Do NOT convert mp3s to oggs, or oggs to mp3s, or any lossy format to any other lossy format. All you end up with is super crap, with super crappy artifacts from both encoders. Only encode from originals. If people start doing this, there will be tons of horrible ogg files and ogg will get a bad reputation.
Ogg/Vorbis and all is great. But what I want to know is, can it play mp3's? :p
If you mean reencoding from the original source (CD's) to ogg, well then ogg should be as good or better than mp3's.
If you mean reencoding your mp3's to ogg's, well then you're going to degrade them by a huge amount. The artifacts you had from the mp3 encoding won't magically dissapear just because you reencode to ogg - you lose information with every pass. So in the best case you'll have lost all the info that the mp3 and the ogg encoding throws away. But it's probably going to be even worse than that.
It's taking a jpeg and compressing it again in your favourite photo editor. It'll look like shit.
So, if you do it, be aware of it. And don't give those oggs to other people, since that way they'll get the impression that oggs sound intrinsically worse than mp3's.
As one of many Clie owners (N760C) that visited that page, I am curious as to why I need to email some guy at Sony to be able to use this player. As far as I understand programs written for Palm 5 today are still compiled for RISC ISA, and the sound API on Clies is documented, so what's the holdup?
Let's clear up some things to stop the inundation of amazingly stupid posts. This software DOES NOT work on Palm's running OS 4 or below. It only runs on the new Tungsten T, which uses a 200Mhz ARM processor, and runs OS 5.0. The Tungsten T also includes expansion for memory cards, and has a headphone jack, making it quite useful for music. In fact, Palm is expected to release some sort of MP3 player for the device, but did not include one because it was not something "the target audience wanted."
So please no more of the "wow, decoding music with a 33Mhz processor would never work," "wow, I can hold two songs in my 8MB of RAM," etc., etc. comments. You are right, the old Palms WILL NEVER play music files; it is simply infeasible.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those...
I think it sounds pretty cool and would love to try it, but it does not give any specs needed to run the player... Like what versions on Palm, processors.. etc etc
Only new palms can do audio at all...
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Sex - Find It
Eh? Why wouldn't we? I pretty much always carry my Clie with me (which has built-in MP3 support, and a 128MB memory stick), so it's always right there in my pocket when I feel like listening to my favourite tunes.
-Enfors-
With a good memory card (like the 128meg one I use for medical references) and a good speaker (like my Handera 330's) or an earphone jack, there isn't any problem at all.
Of course, one would be able to store a heck of a lot more with a processor fast enough to decode compressed music, but it and the colour screen the thing would inevitably have would sap the battery life so much that it would be "infeasible" to finish playing all those music files.
Now I can listen to AC/DC on my PalmOS device's crappy little speaker...
Just what I wanted...
Teen1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.
Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen1: I don't even know anymore.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
It's true that traditionally Palm's own PDAs have been associated more with "productivity" than "multimedia", but that doesn't mean that adding in multimedia features makes it a toy. For me and for many others PalmOS is simply the superior platform to PocketPC2002 because of speed, speed, speed.
A month or so ago I contemplated upgrading from my Palm m505 to either the Tungsten T or a PocketPC. I borrowed a PocketPC from a (generous) friend of mine since I hadn't used a PocketPC device before and wanted to know first-hand what it was like. Suffice to say I wasn't blown away.
Sure it was nice to play DivX videos while commuting, but for REAL use - the stuff *I* do every day with my PDA - PocketPC simply felt too.. weird. At times it was slow and most of the time I had to go through more loops than on Palm to get something simple done. I used third party PIM software, mind you, just like I do on my Palm.
For ME, Palm simply works better. And if in the end both PocketPC and Palm devices can be used for the same things (PIM, multimedia, games), why would I choose the platform that gives ME less satisfaction?
Hell, that goes for EVERYONE. If Palm devices don't "do it for you", would you still buy them? I wouldn't. I'm just glad I got to try the PocketPC first hand, because before that the only information I had on the platform was what I had read elsewhere. NOTHING beats hands-on experience. Even if that experience isn't quite what you had imagined.
My Palm M100 has 2MB of RAM, more expensive models have 8MB. Why should I waste so much memory for one mp3^H^H^Hogg file?
BTW Check http://www.freewarepalm.net/ and see what can be created in just few kilobytes. That is true software, not that bloated monsters available everywhere.
Since this is only for the Tungsten T, this will only be available to the early adopters.
As for my Palm, I currently have no intention of getting rid of my Palm IIIxe. I know that alot of ppl are waiting for the Tungsten T to gain that "killer app" that they can't find on their old Palm (or in some cases Pocket PC)...
One of the biggest hurdles for the Tungsten T to overcome is the fact that HackMaster is not compatible with the new hardware. ~80% of the current PalmOS apps will work with the Tungsten T...or to put it another way, ~20% of the apps will not work with the Tungsten T...you can bet that 20% includes all of those popular hacks currently available for the Motorola-based Palms.
The price is also about $100 more than the same speed iPAQ with about twice the memory (4M ROM and 16M RAM vs. 32M ROM and 64M RAM)...This comparison was not valid when palms had 180x180 displays and low-quality sound...but with these new features (faster processor speed, 320x320 resolution, Color, and "high-quality" sound), owners will demand use of the higher resolution, Color (already available on some Motorola-based Palms) and higher quality sound...all of which slows the system and increases application size...
So, what's all of this mean??? I'm pretty sure that 16M is going to start looking pretty small when the new apps come along...
...as a test, I converted a bunch of my MP3's (typically 128kbit/s) to ogg. It sounded fine.
The only people who complain about the sound from converting like this are uptight audiophiles, typically the same wankers who complain that CD sound isn't as "full bodied" as the sound from vinyl.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
You can mark me offtopic. I accidentally selected Underrated for a particular comment that was obscene. I am posting this to delete all moderations in this article.
Take it easy and may Ogg Vorbis supersede MP3!
" I hope there's something more significant than just a free ad for proprietary software."
You mean like the fileformat we all know and love finally getting some attention?
If this sells than corperations as a whole might take Ogg seriously, Which is undeniably a GoodThing(tm).
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Pony up some cash, then maybe you can whine about source code and such. But when someone gives you a free gift, you don't complain. EVER.
Until then, fuck off.
Admittedly, this is getting fairly OT, but I post this every time there's an Ogg article, and I believe its a very important issue, so here goes.
Does anyone (someone from the vorbis team?) know if there have been really improvements made? I last checked in RC3, and the sound quality was _definitely_ worse than MP3 at high bitrates. Ogg certainly wins when it comes to low ( 128kbps) bitrate (hence a popular choice for game developers etc), but at high (tested up to 320kbps) quality, I noticed substantial high frequency loss (compared to both MP3 and the source file). The resulting sound was flat and really lacking in 'presence'.
Note : My speakers aren't really that great. I've just got an SBLive, and although I appreciate good sound, I wouldn't call myself an audiophile.
It was really just _that obvious_.
Can anyone comment on the quality of the Palm audio hardware ? Is the DAC/Amplifier etc of hifi quality, or just good enough computer sounds ?
How does it stack up for audiophile use ?
Why not read the Ogg Vorbis FAQ about this?
There's your problem, right there. RC3 had a shallower bitrate curve for the lowpass filter setting because it screwed up the SBR a bit (a bug, since fixed).
Ogg Vorbis 1.0 (xiph.org libVorbis 20020717) is dramatically better than the previous versions, right across the bitrate range.
It handles low bitrate (q0 - nominal 64kbps) often better than anything else (mp3pro is sometimes better for classical music, but that's it, aac and wma9 blow goats in comparison - mpc is a contender only at high bitrates). Medium bitrate (q3-4 - nominal 112-128kbps) is the best of breed, too, for many people and sources it is CD-transparent (though not always) - the difference isn't as big but Ogg still wins out.
Vorbis 1.0 hits CD-transparency for virtually everything at around q5 - nominal 160kbps. q6 (192kbps) provides a safety margin for extremely difficult material according to the plots, but I totally fail to hear the difference in ABX tests. I've got diskspace, so I rip at q7 - Ogg Vorbis audio is "peelable", so you can reduce the bitrate, without transcoding, to the quality it would have been had it been encoded at that bitrate, and no less (something no other widely used audio codec can do, and possibly the start of a revolution in bandwidth-adaptive, buffering-free streaming, beyond Icecast).
Please always use the quality mode, not the managed bitrate mode unless you are actually streaming. You shouldn't have any quality complaints with Vorbis 1.0 unless you want to encode 6 channel audio (i.e., AC3 transcoding)... and that will be fixed in time, too.
Ogg 1.0 contains many improvements over RC3, not only in terms of quality but speed. The hi-fi forum hydrogenaudio.org has a running poll which shows most Ogg users encode at -q 6. This averages out at ~192 kbps and generally is indistinguishable from the original [unless you are of the monster-ear audiophile species.] You certainly won't miss anything with your sound setup.
Get the optimised win32 binaries [and OggdropXPd] from John33's website.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
but a much better toy and more powerful than the Windows based crap.
Anyone that would own a handheld PDA that runs anything microsoft based is a complete idiot for buying a fisher-price toy....
for $500 I can get the palm zire and a 10gig iPod. i'll just wait until the iPod supports ogg. With 10 gigs of space, just encode your music at 320kbps to get the same quality as ogg.
Does the integer-only decoder (theoretically, at least) provide the same audio quality or is there a trade-off?
Not everyone is a programmer. Some folks recognize the value of good proprietary software that does what it says it will do and comes at a reasonable price.
Remember, software licenses aren't grounds for holy wars for most folks.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Ogg will never gain the usage that mp3 has seen, simply because it is too much like mp3. The common user doesn't care that the music sounds marginally better. Ogg would overtake mp3 if things stayed as they are now, but with hard drives getting bigger, connections getting faster, and all that, then I think there will be a shift to a less lossy compression scheme. I dunno if something like shn will ever fill that space, since its still a huge file, but, who knows.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
Palm's do not have the same processing power as Pocket PCs. The fastest Palms are around 66MHz, while my iPaq is 206MHz, and other Pocket PCs are around 400MHz. My Sony T665C(I think thats the model...) play's mp3s and videos horrilbly compared to my iPaq. I would think that they would port it to a platform that has the most processing power. Regardless, I can't wait for it to come out for Pocket PCs... it maybe time to invest in that 1GB Microdrive....
The Tungsten has a 175Mhz processor clocked down to 145Mhz (not 200Mhz as you stated). Just FYI. ;-)
This is for Palm OS 5 and currently is targeted for the only OS 5 PDA out right now--the Tungsten. The Tungsten has a 175Mhz processor and can handle mp3s and OGG fine.
But that's just the problem: only the proprietor really knows everything that proprietary program is doing. One cannot truly judge how good the program is without knowing what it does or having someone you trust know what it does. There's no way to assess the trustworthiness of proprietary software. One need not be a programmer to understand the dangers of secrecy.
I would not be so quick to dismiss the importance of Free Software. Slashdot readers have seen significant failures of proprietors who care more about their bottom line than your privacy and the integrity of your system.
Digital Citizen
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Sure you can decode, but I want an encoder too. How else am I going to listen to my songs???
Music in my pocket? Of course. I have a couple albums in Ogg format on the CF card in my Zaurus. All I had to do was grab the plugin for the onboard media player and load it into the system, not on a removable card. It was only a few 'kb' so I'm not worried about the space it takes. I can listen to music and still type or play chess so I can drain my battery faster than the average user. And that my fellow posters is my 2 cents. Enjoy.
But since this dude did it for FREE, on his own dime, you have no right to demand anything. Money is the ultimate buyer of rights, anything else is just being whiny, on top of being afflicted with a case of liberal entitlement.
In other words, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Either take it, or leave it.
newtons can do anything plam and their cronies can do, and do it better. Ogg vorbis streamed wirelessly on campus played through homebrew headphone adapters from a webcast in japan is just too cool to think about without drooling. or maybe somebody could just emulate a palm on a newton, yeah, that's the ticket.
ramble ramble, newton
karma: ouch!
Come on dude, they even have Ogg Vorbis ported to the thong
Wow, does anyone bother to try software before ripping on it? Here's my $0.02
I do in fact own a Tungsten T. I pulled down the PRC, (134k nice size) Dropped it on my Palm then tried dropping various songs on a tiny 16M SD I have from work. Found out quick that encoding with -b 64 was a no-no (crashed every time, but reset nicely by tapping 'reset' button on error window), but -b 96 works fine. Given this is a beta I can't say too much about the interface (could be a little sleeker)It read the Song title/artist OK. There is an option to blank the screen after 10 or 60 seconds (good) although once it blanks, I can't quite figure out how to get it back on (without stopping it, no so good) For those who don't know, the Tungsten T does have a headphone jack. The stereo worked fine. My only qualm is that the audio is rather muffled. (Not sure if this is Palm or the software.)
All and all, a nice first try. Fix the audio. Add an equalizer. Spiff up the look, and ship it! It is important to note that as an early Tungsten user/developer (I had a demo unit weeks before release) Palm has not, to date, been extremely easy to deal with when it comes to specs and the like. Working with ARM native code is still not very developer friendly. This is the first app I've seen that stresses the audio hardware (and the chip for that matter) and I think credit should be given where credit is due. Bravo for making this an OGG decoder and bravo for the early release. Keep the betas comming! (I myself have a reason to buy that 64M SD now!)
It appears you and at least one moderator have grossly misinterpreted my parent post. Also, to address your concern directly, I am not demanding anything. I am encouraging people to continue to consider the pitfalls of becoming reliant on proprietary software. This is hardly a new line of argument, I admit, but it continues to be relevant.
In your words, I am suggesting people "leave it" because it suffers the same problem as any other proprietary software. I appreciate the widespread use of Ogg Vorbis but I do not want to give up my software freedom to use Ogg Vorbis and I don't want to encourage my friends to give up their software freedom either. I think it's unfortunate that some Slashdot participants are all too eager to throw away their freedom when someone dangles the right thing in front of them (e.g., when Sony, an MPAA member, releases a new notebook computer they'll buy one even though there are plenty of other good notebooks out there; if someone releases proprietary Ogg Vorbis software they'll buy and/or use it even though there is Free Software to do the same job). I encourage people to think beyond their immediate desires and not support those who try to work against what you know is better for you in the long run.
Digital Citizen
I use what works best, whether it be OSS or proprietary. I would rather pay for proprietary software IF it was superior over a free OSS app.
My needs are quality. FIRST. JOB ONE. Whether it is OSS or not, that doesn't matter. My checklist consists of only one box.
I don't care about the future, my needs are to be met NOW. Don't tell me what you can do for me in the future, that means nothing to me when I have work that needs to be finished RIGHT NOW.
I have no probs against OSS. But it seems OSS is real long on promises, and short on actual "put up or shut up" results. That is the main pitfall of OSS. You can't depend on it. I'm not saying closed source is perfect, but those guys have an incentive, money. And for the most part, they deliver a whole lot more than the OSS community. The OSS scene really has no incentive to provide solutions. It's basically a communism model, and you all know how well communism works. Eventually someone says "screw it, I'm just gonna leech off everybody's labor." Then someone else notices that and follows suit, etc.
Let's follow through on your exhortation to "leave it". OK, nobody bothers getting this guy's app. Result = nobody can listen to their mp3s on Palm. That really solved the problem, eh?
(Ogg zealots can shut up right now...I have >10GB of MP3s on hand, and I'm not reripping/reencoding them.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
First, there are mp3 addon's for old Handsprings and Palm's for example . I'm sure there are smaller ones too.
Secondly, i'm not convinced that the base palm cannot decode mp3's the small memory footprint on the older palm's may be a problem, but I suspect that a mono 128k bit signal can probably be decoded on the 33mhz models. Look at Mayplay for an example of a mp3 decoder from the time when mp3s were just getting popular. I remember running it on a 486DX2-66 without any problems at all. I seem to remember it chewing up all my CPU time, but being able to decode stereo 128kbit mp3's.
The moderator was spot on. Life is short. Pretty soon AI's will emerge and computer usage will be completely changed forever. I don't want to waste what time we have left with the present PC paradigm waiting for open source applications to catch up to the features and quality that proprietary software has TODAY. I also don't want to get caught up in some quasi-legitimate political movement.
.005% of the world's population. Boo freaking hoo.
Couldn't geeks have found something better to support than "Free Software"? What was wrong with good old environmentalism or fighting against sweatshops in 3rd world countries? But now. Here in the rich west we have to fight for "Software Freedom". Something very few people care about now, and very few people will care about in the future. Its not like someday a statute to Richard Stallman is going to be erected in the future praising him for saving our rights to be programmers. MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT NOR EVER WANT TO BE PROGRAMMERS. Even if copy protection were to become successfully difficult to circumvent and become vastly wide-spread the overwhelming majority of people's lives would continue as they do today. No one is going to di if they can't copy a piece of software, a song, a video or a book. LIFE WILL GO ON, and it won't be bad. Except for the geeks that is. The whiny people who make up about one half of
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
How ironic it is then that you're talking about an Ogg Vorbis player--a patent-free encoding scheme invented to provide a competitive alternative to a patented scheme that can not legally be implemented in Free Software.
Peruvian Congressman Villanueva probably doesn't want to wait either, so he's working on Bill 1609 to put Free Software into public administration in Peru. The German government is funding a Free Software replacement for Outlook. These are just a couple examples of the things non-programmers around the world can do to help the cause of Free Software.
Nobody is saying you can't choose which software you want or that you will die if you pick proprietary software, those are straw arguments. I'm saying it is more reasonable to increase the number of people who are allowed to know what's going on with the software you run. We should hold all proprietary software to the same high standard we currently hold Microsoft's (overwhelmingly non-free) software to. Proprietary software, no matter what its ostensible purpose, can do things you would not like it to do. In order to keep the software from doing these undesirable things, we all need to develop and maintain a network of people who will inspect, share, and modify software to suit our needs. Keeping people from understanding how the software works helps these undesirable features stay hidden.
There is no need to choose just one cause. There are people working on Free Software, the issues you name, and many other socially progressive issues all at the same time. I happen to be adept with computers, I support the Free Software movement, and I work on multiple other socially progressive projects. I think these movements draw like-minded people because their opposites (anti-environment, pro-sweatshop labor, anti-Free Software) usually come as a result of putting more power into fewer unaccountable hands.
Another way in which the anti-sweatshop movement and the environmental movement are both like the Free Software movement is how they all encourage you to think beyond your immediate desires. Sweatshop labor produces cheap goods which are readily available. But sweatshop labor also means people are working very hard and not getting paid a living wage. The anti-sweatshop labor movement encourages you to think beyond buying goods strictly based on price and consider helping poor workers make a fair living. The environmental movement wants you to think more about the car you drive, your heating and cooling system, and the advantages of recycling (amongst other things). In the Free Software movement you are encouraged to think beyond your immediate desire for a particular piece of software (such as the Ogg Vorbis player in this thread) and consider using a Free Software replacement instead. All of these things take a little bit of foresight and a lot of hard PR work to get people to not blindly comply with the latest advertisement.
These causes are not unique in the amount of work it takes to make them practical: it's hard work to make people aware of things and aware of people beyond themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort to provide socially responsible substitutes (competitive fair-wage clothing, low-emission vehicles, and yes, complete free software operating systems). So each of these movements (and many others) want you to volunteer your time and expertise.
That is true, but most people do not want the private information on their computer leaked via a security hole, and most people are unhappy to discover that the secrecy of proprietary software allowed "spyware" (as it is called today) to execute on their machine. We aren't all scientists who understand the finer details of the things we use every day, but that doesn't mean we can't understand that gas hog cars, high pollutant exhausts, certain refrigerants, garbage landfills, and proprietary software are all bad in the long-term.
The Free Software movement has responses to the challenges they face and they target all computer users with their message. The Free Software movement can certainly use help in making their message clearer to non-programmers and getting their ideas out in front of the public. I hope you'll read what the FSF has to say and help them focus their message to reach a wider audience. After having worked on a congressional campaign, I have experienced first-hand how difficult it is to get the media's attention for an ethically-based message. I imagine helping the FSF get their message in front of the public is no easier.
Ask Lawrence Lessig how bad it will be. He knows a lot about the connections of copyright law, media access, and dissenting opinion. He champions what he calls "free culture", an idea that is well worth hearing. Preserving the freedoms to communicate and increasing these freedoms to allow more dissent to be heard are movements worth fighting for. Criticizing works can require copying portions of works, so if copying is made unavailable, critique and dissent are far more difficult. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to people who want to convey unpopular messages including: not wanting an infinitely long copyright term, not bombing Iraq, and stopping the war of sanctions against Iraq, and no more "software patents". I hope you'll become more politically aware and see the extant connections that govern your life.
Digital Citizen
...separate.
I don't see how stating your opinion on the Iraq situation requires the freedom to view source code. You can scream from the rooftops all you want and no one will stop you.
The reason why its hard to get media attention for ethical causes is because most people don't care about them contrary to what you think. I have a lot of friends who use computers. They are not however as computer literate as the people here on Slashdot. I've told some of them about the spyware on their computers and none of them care one bit about their info being collected or their surfing habits being monitored. Not a one. And I didn't just ask 5 people about it.
I am not saying Free Software will go extinct. It will continue to exist. However it will remain confined to corporate back end use, ironically helping a lot of the very corporations you probably rail against, academia, poorer nations/households and young individuals going thru their rebellious/counter-culture phases and of course political activists. All of those combined will result in Windows still maintaining a 97% marketshare.
Free Software, in the GPL on the desktop sense, will never go mainstream.
If you cannot get the mass public to leave MTV to support local musicians instead, what makes you think you can get them to use OSS?
If you cannot get Americans to drive small dinky vehicles instead of their mighty masculine SUV's or downsize their households from their massive McMansions what makes you think they'll use OSS?
I am well versed in the FSF's politics. I live in Boston where the FSF is headquartered. I've even seen the hairy beast himself a few times. (Stallman). I simply reject their policies. I use the software that works best when I need it. I make no distinctions between OSS or proprietary. There is no one on this planet who will look after me better than myself. My immediate concerns are pretty much my only concerns. Those sweatshop workers, who would not have a job or means to buy food without our companies giving them work, must fend for themselves. We did it once, so can they. As for the environmental movement, I care about the environment too. I just don't believe all of the science environmentalists use is fully sound. Saying bad things will happen without adequate, peer reviewed facts, is not the same as it being true.
If a piece of proprietary software does something I don't want it to do, then I'll just stop using it and begin using a competing product. Competition provides us with choices within the proprietary world itself, not just between proprietary and open source. Given enough proprietary choices one will not be forced to resort to the "Free amatuer" products that best describe so many OSS projects.
If I want politics, I'll turn on CNN or MSNBC. When I want a tech product to do the job, I'll choose the best in concerns to practicality and not in concerns to some social agenda led by the FSF.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
pr05t
"I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now ..."
when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still
-- Steven Wright
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