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Slashback: ITunes, Debian, ATMs
Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box. This evening Apple released iTunes 7.0.1, which "addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more." iTunes users, especially those on Windows, have been complaining loudly about iTunes 7.0 since its release.
Wal-Mart threatens studios over iTunes sales. camperslo writes, "Playlist reported that Walt Disney President and CEO Robert Iger said that 125,000 downloadable movies had been purchased in the week since Apple's debut of movies on the iTunes Store. That sales level generated $1 million in revenue for Disney, which works out to $8 per movie. They also state that 'Iger told attendees of an investment conference in New York on Tuesday that Disney anticipates seeing about $50 million in revenue from the venture during its first year.'"
Proposal to fund Debian sparks debate. lisah writes, "Debian Project Leader Anthony Towns is now facing a recall vote over his involvement with Dunc-Tank, something Towns himself is willing to explore. Not everyone agrees that such a move is necessary, or even acceptable, and fur is beginning to fly as one community member asks, 'So, just to be clear, you want to punish a Debian developer for their activities outside of Debian? Now that we're in crazy-as-batshit land, who do you want to bring up on charges next?'"
Googling for ATM master passwords. bagsc writes, "Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com strikes fear into another ATM manufacturer. This time, Triton ATMs had their super-secret master codes revealed by simple Google searches. Tranax was the most recent company with this problem, but probably not the last."
Annoying for me ..maybe this can help.
itunes by default stores stuff in a folder called "iTunes" under your user "My Music" folder, and th library itself in "iTunes Music" which is a folder under the iTunes directory.
You can make your "My Music" folder be the same for all your accounts, and then you don't have to worry about different libraries. use TweakUI to change the default location of your "My Music" folder.
Since the story submitter decided to display only one side of the argument here, I should point out that this objection is somewhat irrational. Several Debian developers have been forcibly kicked out of the project for actions that had no direct connection with the project. The details of names and events are usually considered private, but to pick one example that's already public knowledge - at one point a developer was an operator on the Freenode IRC network (then called OPN), abused this privilege in some fairly juvenile prank, and was promptly kicked out of Debian on the basis that they coudn't be trusted.
It is already expected that Debian developers will conduct themselves appropriately in all circumstances, not just ones relating to Debian. This is interpreted fairly liberally (the project doesn't care if you're an arse, it's primarily only interested in abuse of powers), but it is apparent that the current complaint is of this nature. Whether or not it is upheld by the project is for them to decide, but there's plenty of established precedent for this sort of thing. They're currently arguing about whether or not to uphold it; there appears to be little question as to whether developers should be held accountable in this manner.
ObBio: I'm an ex-developer who quit for personal reasons that had nothing to do with the project.
I upgraded to iTunes 7 (which runs on my PowerMac). Then I noticed that rhythmbox (the default GNOME music player) running on my laptop would no longer recognize my shared iTunes Library. It was doing so just fine before with iTunes 6. And it's not just rhythmbox: closed source software is having problems with this as well. And not just with DAAP sharing, either.
So I downgraded to iTunes 6 immediately. Apple penalizes you for doing so: iTunes 6 cannot read iTunes 7 shares (but iTunes 7 can read iTunes 6 shares). Talk about a forced upgrade. It seems that the change to DAAP was fairly trivial and avoidable, which brings up the question of whether they did it with the sole intention of breaking compatibility with the other software out there that reads the v6 DAAP protocol.
It's just a music player, but now I'm getting a little taste of what Richard Stallman means when he tells you to refrain from using closed source software. Even when you think a closed source vendor has good intentions, there's always a chance that they'll turn on you and slap you with an upgrade that breaks compatibility with your other software.