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RMS Protest Song On Gitmo
An anonymous reader tipped us to a protest song RMS has written and recorded (while visiting Cuba) and is hosting on stallman.org. It's a sort of parody, although it's too serious really to be called that, in Spanish of the song "Guantanamera," in which a Gitmo prisoner talks about his experiences and mourns his fate. RMS wrote the lyrics in 2006 after learning what "Guantanamera" actually means. The lyrics are moving, and the recording, in Ogg, is competent — RMS sings well and he's got some amateur musicians from Cuba backing him up. Here are the lyrics and an English translation.
I wonder what you are talking about. Contrary to popular belief, it is totally legal to visit Cuba (up to X times per year, [IIRC X is one]). There are also controls on how much currency you can bring with you, but to a certain extent, it is perfectly legal to vacation in Cuba (this is, in fact, common for citizens of Cuban descent).
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Crudely Drawn Games
Tourist travel is not possible under U.S. law. Business-related travel is restricted to persons engaging in or arranging for permitted export sales, such as the sale of medicines or medical equipment, or for food or agricultural goods to non-governmental entities.
http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2001/fsjulydec/
With the proper http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=itunes+ogg&bt nG=Google+Search/ plugin, it seems you can easily enable itunes to play ogg.
Xiph QuickTime Components (XiphQT) is, in short, the solution for Mac and Windows users who want to use Xiph formats in any QuickTime-based application, e.g. playing Ogg Vorbis in iTunes or producing Ogg Theora with iMovie. It lets you do exactly what you want to do, play Ogg in iTunes.
I wonder how he managed to visit Cuba without violating the federal law that prohibits US citizens from trading with our enemies.
There are several exceptions to the restrictions on travel to Cuba.
I would imagine that RMS went there for a conference on free software. This would fall under an exception which doesn't require special permission from the State Department.
Ogg is a completely open format. Ogg is the encapsulation format used for vorbis audio. Ogg is fully documented in RFC 3533. Similarly, the Vorbis specification is also readily available. It is unencombered by patents and the source code to the reference libraries is available under a BSD-like license and is free to use in both commercial and open-source software. RFC's are about as official as you can get for an open standard.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
O'Reilly published a pretty good book by Stallman: 'Free as in Freedom' if you're interested in learning more about the man.
"The Ogg Vorbis specification is in the public domain. It is completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that commercial developers may independently write Ogg Vorbis software which is compatible with the specification for no charge and without restrictions of any kind."
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"Again, there are no licensing fees for any use of the Ogg Vorbis specification. As a commercial developer, you are free to create and sell (or give away) open or closed source implementations of Vorbis encoders, decoders, or other tools. However, if you use our software rather than writing an independent implementation, you must respect the terms of the license. Our libraries are available under our BSD-like license and can be used whole or in part by closed source applications."
Took me around five seconds to find this. There's no excuse for such laziness. Ogg Vorbis is anything but proprietary - it is the exact opposite of proprietary.
Both aac and mp3 are patent encumbered.
There are multiple implementations. There is a fixed-point implementation designed for use in hardware playback devices which is supported by some of them. Samsung, Rio, Neuros Technology, Cowon and iRiver support it natively in their digital audio players. Also, there is at least one other implementation. Given the free nature and high quality and ease of use of the reference libraries, most programs make use of those and there is little reason to rewrite the library since the original code is very portable and easy to use. It is widely used in a number of commercial software packages, notably games like Unreal Tournament, Grand Theft Auto and others, due to the lack of licensing costs. Many free software packages include support for Vorbis as well. According to Wikipedia there are other independent implementations of Ogg used in Real Player and DirectShow.
Note that there are two formats in use. Ogg is the container format and Vorbis is the audio codec.
It is also used by some commercial Internet radio stations and supported by Shoutcast. As I said, it's about as open a standard as you can get.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
It's still far, far more free than, say, Cuba or China. Vastly more free. But it's trampling its own principles in stunning, alarming ways, reducing democratic rights and principles and rule of law and freedom, all of these essential things taking second stage in the holy war against terrorism, this war against a featureless monster that serves as an excuse for anything.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
The Justice Department is an *executive* agency. The firing of federal attorneys is well within the purview of the White House. The *Judicial Branch* is still just as separate as it has been in a century (more spineless maybe, but that's not an institutional function).
Executive appointments serve at the pleasure of the president. He can fire them whenever he wants. What's wrong here is that they tried to lie about WHY they were fired to avoid bad press and his already miserable cronyism. There's a mile-long list of reasons to impeach the son of a bitch, but this is about as back-burner as they get.
Seemingly ridiculous, indeed, save for one point: If ever they find you gave money to some "terrorist" group or were involved with some "communist" organization, they can deport you. Not because giving your money to some "terrorist" group or having "communist" friends is illegal (it may not be), but because you lied on your immigration forms, and entered the country thus on false pretenses. That's sufficient to deport you, without the hassle of formally accusing you of dubious crimes.
The reason they put those questions on the form is so that should any of those things later turn out to be true (nazi war criminal, blah blah), they can kick you out of the country for lying on your immigration form.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I know many people who, so to speak, have a strong prejudice against US citizens, even though they may know not everyone voted Bush.
One bad choice is excusable, but the US has earned its reputation over many, many years, and the image we have of your country influences the image we have of you. In Argentina, the term 'Yanqui' (Yankee) is used to refer to North Americans in a slightly derogative way. It's not terrible, but you hear the word 'Yanqui' much more often than 'North American'