1. Leprechauns are from the Republic of Ireland which is part of the British Isles not the UK.
2. Hobbits were captured recently on film in New Zealand but not in the UK.
3. The Oasis brothers hail from Manchester but all those of us in the UK outside of Manchester do not consider Manchester as part of the UK - it's merely a buffer zone to stop the Liverpudlian Scousers from stealing our cars.
4. David & Victoria are far too busy whoring themselves to advertising companies trying to sell us Police sun glasses and "Posh crisps" to find the time to go to computer school to learn to code HTML properly so you leave them out of it. I will have nothing bad said against our illustrious "new Royal Family" - at least this new lot don't have big ears like that other bunch of Germanic in-breds.
I am actually beginning to believe that this might actually be a ploy to get DRM through the door much easier...
In other words, MS make it as difficult as possible for legitimate users to do what they need to so that when DRM rears it's ugly little head, everyone flocks to it open-armed...
I've found no piece of hardware yet that doesn't have drivers for or install under Windows 2000 plus XP has a bloated interface that you have to spend some time stripping out to get it working in anything near a decent fashion.
And please don't talk to me about firewalls & Windows Security Centre in XP SP2 - the money you spend upgrading to XP would be better spent on a broadband router which makes software firewalling redundant anyhow.
Ebay is only good these days for collectors who want hard to find items and are prepared to pay a premium for them.
The other thing to remember is that a lot of people on Ebay just clear out junk on there. As they do this, they accrue positive PayPal balances as sellers pay them but that balance, to me at least, never feels like "real" money anyway.
There's been a few times when I've paid more for a piece of computer hardware on Ebay than via a reputable online seller purely because I've had enough balance in PayPal to cover the item rather than resort to a credit card with the reputable seller.
The other thing to note is that here in the UK, it takes 7 working days for PayPal transfers to appear in your bank account - consequently, someone has that money and is earning interest on it for a whole week before you see it.
Unfortunately, some people just don't have any common sense.
I've sold a lot on Ebay, not as a permanent seller but just clearing out a lot of role-playing games rules and CDs from my collection.
One guy I sold a book to left me neutral feedback because the book had been damaged in transit (the wrapping paper had been torn) before even contacting me.
To me, the book was a piece of worthless junk and I would have refunded the guy his money and let him keep it, just like you. I emailed him, gave him the option of a refund or an additional similar book I had, he took the additional book as settlement, but I'd already got the neutral feedback.
Unfortunately, too many buyers are too quick to believe they are dealing with deliberate crooks on Ebay rather than just using common sense, accepting that sometimes things do go wrong beyond the seller's control and actually emailing the seller first to try to reach a compromise.
Sorry, but I've no sympathy for victims of phishing. If you're stupid enough to fall for a phishing attack then you either need to get yourself some computer training or put your PC on Ebay and stick to pens and paper.
If you simply remember the rule that no legitimate organisation will ask you for any secure information via email, then no phishing attack can ever work against you.
There's been enough warnings about this already and if people took the time to read those, and the "Policy" areas of online sites they deal with, they would not be victims.
Im not saying that virii arent in existance for unix or linux
Let's dispel these myths about UNIX & Linux virii:
1. An attack on Linux and UNIX usually happens because an intruder manages to buffer overflow a daemon application, break in as root and start messing with the system. It's a directed attack aimed at a specific machine.
2. A program on UNIX has to be compiled for the specifically for the UNIX variant and hardware platform being used - consequently, if you write a program on UNIX that attacks a security hole in Acme FTP Server v2.1.4 on Solaris on the SPARC architecture, then you will probably be able to get that program to attack other machines running that same program on Solaris on SPARC. However, if the Acme FTP Server is not running as root in the first place, any causable damage will be limited.
3. Windows virii spread as a result of being run automatically without too much or any user intervention - for example, simply viewing an email. There is NO equivalent facility in UNIX. If you get an executable attached to an email, the user would need to specifically run it and, even then, any damage to the system would be at the user's access level - consequently, the user might lose his files on the system but nothing else would be affected.
Yes, UNIX and Linux have security issues that allow buffer overflows & SetUID script attacks to work if a cracker knows what her/she is doing - but the feasibility of a virus actually spreading through UNIX is so minimal that it's not even worth writing one.
Do not think that you have any degree of protection from PayPal either.
A friend of mine was robbed of £400 after he made a PayPal payment to a seller for a PC. He never received the PC and PayPal took absolutely no interest in refunding the money.
The excuse PayPal gave? The seller didn't have enough credit in his PayPal account to refund the money - and has since been kicked off of Ebay.
Neither PayPal or Ebay care about you being fiddled of money, they take their percentage for basically doing nothing.
If you consider music a "product" - like a watermelon - then you're buying it because it's value for money.
If you consider music an "art" - like I do - then you buy it because you appreciate it, not necessarily because it presents value for money.
For example, I have a number of CD albums I paid £15 for. Break that down into the constituent components of who gets what part of that £15 (record company, musician, record store, etc.) and it would be quite clear that someone somewhere was making a unfair profit at that price - however, I would happily have paid twice that amount for those CDs.
This is no different to an art collector paying thousands of pounds for a painting he or she appreciates.
You treat music as product, I treat it as art, that's the difference.
I've never cared about albums as a whole. I also spent a good chunk of my life as a musician, but by your logic, I'm not real.
So, as a musician, have you ever performed live? And if you have, you can't be that much of a musician if you can't entertain an audience for at least 45 minutes.
I don't mean to be facetious here - if you can truly stand up in front of an audience and perform then I respect you for that even though I might not like what you play or sing about.
But please don't try to call yourself a serious musician if you've only 1 or 2 songs to your repetoire.
I guarantee it would *kill* (whatever that means) music if the only *real* way to listen to it was to sit in a chair by yourself.
No, you misquote me. I said that you *cannot* appreciate a piece of good music fully until you give it your full attention. So you mean to tell me that you, as a musician, would be happy stood up performing in front of an audience who were all reading paperback books or texting on their mobile phones while you were playing? Get real...
Someone who treats music as odd tracks that they happen to play in the background while they do something else is not *appreciating* the music fully.
Last I checked, the concept of music was both entertainment and art form, neither of which are held captive by such silly constraints.
Sorry, how closely does an art critic scrutinise a picture he or she loves?
How many people just sit in a quiet room and just sit and read a book? If it's a loved book, how many times might that person have read it?
Why's it not the same with music?
And if you're still convinced that the essence of the music is only contained in a full album.......the idea of an album is just packaging for distribution.
I am saying that music appreciation is not about simply throwing together a heap of popular songs by different artists. It's about attention span and having enough time to be drawn into the music properly in order to appreciate it. This is not possible with single tracks.
Sorry, but take a look at the Live 8 concerts, for example. Sure, each artist is performing for charity but will end up doing one, maybe two, songs on stage due to the number of artists that are appearing at each event.
Now, take Pink Floyd who are playing at the London concert. Do you really believe that someone new to Pink Floyd will be able to understand and appreciate their music fully based on the one or two songs they do on the day? No, of course not.
I don't buy it that the people who are only interested in purchasing one or two tracks are the sort of people who were funding the sort of "classic albums" that you like to listen to.
Sorry, when did I say I was being funded? I said that I "appreciate" music because I treat a lot of my music collection as *albums* I sit and listen to and do *nothing* else but listen.
Yes I have music I play in the background at the gym or in the car but I am not truly appreciating that music then... the smell of brewing coffee in a room gives a nice ambience but you don't appreciate the coffee till you taste it, same analogy.
And I don't buy the argument that bands that are primary live acts are beholden to the whims of the downloaders -- how does that work ?
I thought I already explained this but I'll justify it in more depth.
An artist starts their career on the strengths of an initial album release that can be played live in almost it's entirety - otherwise, how does an artist have a set long enough to entertain an audience for long enough? Music downloaders who buy their music by the song are probably not people who go to see specific bands perform live - it just isn't worth paying for a concert ticket to hear the two or three tracks you like performed.
It therefore follows that fans of entire albums or just the band go to the concerts - they buy the tickets, that's how the musician makes a living from their art.
If most of their money is made playing live, I doubt they'll suddenly make more money with the download model.
Precisely what I said, you obviously need to read my posting again. It's the album buyers that make the musicians money, not the legal downloaders.
the ipod/mplayer cardio bunnies not only aren't listening to the music you're interested in, they never were.
Sorry, how do you *know* this? I never once mentioned any specific artist I enjoy listening to from an album perspective. We could well enjoy the same artists, you because of a few songs, me because of entire albums.
This has nothing to do with actual musical taste, it's about your own personal perception of the importance of music to you. And I maintain that if your attention span is so short that all of your music listening is "track by track" while doing something else rather than "album by album" while doing nothing but giving the music your full attention, then you do not appreciate real music.
A few people in other threads have mentioned that musicians (specifically those signed to record labels) only make their money from live performance, not from CD sales. If this is the case, then it follows that legal downloads will kill "true" musicianship.
Putting aside the manufactured boy/girl band claptrap or record company puppet whores like Britney Shite, real musicians and bands generally alternate CD releases and concert tours (in order to promote those releases).
So, a band that is starting out after their first release probably gets a supporting slot on a tour with a more major artist - whereupon their set list is probably about 45 minutes long containing most of the songs from their first album and a few cover versions.
Go forward in time after three or four releases and that same band is probably headlining their own tour, playing most of the tracks of their latest CD release intersperesed with the "firm favourites" from their earlier CDs.
However, we're told by fans of legal music downloading is that they like downloading music because they no longer need to buy the entire CD but only the tracks they like.
Now, that's fine for the manufactured pap artists that only ever churn out plastic chart single music but where does it put the *real* musicians?
What onus will there be for real artists to go into a studio to record an entire album if the downloaders only like 3 or 4 of the tracks from that CD?
How does that affect a band's ability to play live, to create interesting and good set lists for live performance?
Believe me, there is nothing I hate more than buying a CD that contains two good songs and the rest being filler tracks but *real music* is about *albums*, not single tracks.
If I buy a CD by an artist then what I am getting is a *snapshot* of how that artist was feeling at the time, perhaps the emotions in the songs on that album are influenced by external events that happened to that artist. And if I *truly* enjoy the music of that artist then I'm going to take that into account when I listen to that particular CD.
What I'm really trying to say here is that I have albums in my collection that I deem as *classic* pieces of music but I probably play them maybe once or twice a year when I'm in the mood to play them - and at that point, I sit down in a comfortable chair in fromt of a good hi-fi and *do nothing else* but *listen* to that music.
So let's not equate iPods and MP3 players to *music appreciation* because they are mutually exclusive. I use an MP3 player full of my favourite tracks when I work out in the gym - but only because it gives my mind something to focus on (away from the pain of working out) and because it covers the pop crap blaring over the gym speakers - but I am *not* truly appreciating the music at that time.
Unfortunately, people who do *all* their music listening on portable players while doing something else and who do not buy entire albums will kill real music by real musicians that are appreciated by real music fans.
Apple and Microsoft will eat them for breakfast and I for one can't wait to see it happen.
Right... so let me get this clear...
You're more than happy to hand over the freedoms you currently have over music sharing (albeit restrictive ones) to Apple and Microsoft who will use software controls via DRM to further restrict your freedoms...
The RIAA is a representive organisation paid for by money-grabbing record companies whilst Apple & Microsoft are money-grabbing software companies.
1. Pay $10 a month for a decent Usenet account like Easynews.
2. Search Usenet, if it's not there request it.
3. Download it with an NNTP client or web browser.
4. Listen to it.
5. If you like it, buy the CD.
6. If you don't, delete it - it's not worth the hard disk space.
No spyware or nagware filesharing clients, pretty much untraceable unless someone goes through ISP logs & far superior download speeds to any P2P crap.
Oh, and by the way I spend hundreds of dollars on music each year, there's nothing like a REAL physical music collection:)
Agree 100%, my attitude also - you can't beat sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a half-decent hi-fi system listen to the contents of a physical CD spinning in a player.
Call me old-fashioned but music downloading to me is handing over money so as to have the heads of my hard disk move in a certain way to put lots of 1s and 0s in the correct order on part of the surface... no thanks, I need tangible, sleeve notes and a nice hard case.
35% of music listeners are using legal download services, and that the percentage will soon surpass illegal downloads, currently at 40%.
So 35% of music listeners are using legal download services but are they doing so exclusively?
It's all very well admitting to downloading, say, 10 legal tracks a month but are you going to admit to also downloading 100 illegal tracks per month from a P2P source.
Most people I know with iPods have a small percentage (if any) of legally paid for music while the rest of their collection is taken from file-sharing.
The GPL is about releasing source code into the public domain and keeping it within the public domain.
However, I'm talking about the preservation of old software in its original format by taking it from the commercial domain and putting it into the public domain.
The problem with much old games software is that nobody knows who actually owns the copyrights to a lot of it because of the number of software houses that have folded, merged or been bought up.
If it passes to the public domain automatically, then it will get preserved due to the number of enthusiasts who will host it on web sites, etc.
If you were ever involved in the Amiga (or other home computer platform) public domain scene, you'd know that this encompassed shareware and freeware pre-compiled programs. Only occasionally would the source code be made public also.
That's true with a lot of emulators but a few, like UAE (Universal Amiga Emulator) for example, has problems with some (mainly AGA) software where the emulation of the original hardware isn't perfect.
There are a number of Amiga demos that won't play on UAE, no matter what you do.
Unfortunately, unless you have been given express permission by the author/owner of the software to distribute the program freely, then the only way you can keep a copy of the program is to have the original intact also.
Personally, I believe that if there's no chance of a piece of software making the owner any more earnings then it should be released into the public domain automatically, say after 15 years or so. (Incidentally, I'm not necessarily talking about source code also, just the program).
At least then the genuine people who want to preserve the old games and software can do so openly without fear of legal action.
It's not so much that data is held in an "old" format, it's more that the media that it's stored on like tapes and floppy disks of varying shapes & sizes will degrade much quicker than, say, optical media.
The BBC here in the UK did a radio program about getting music and video from old recordings and vinyl, even old 78 RPMs. The problem, once you've got the data off, is how you store it on a media that won't degrade over time. Even CDs are thought to have a limited lifespan of possibly only up to 100 years.
The only practical solution for "permanent" data storage currently are huge RAID hard disk arrays where you can replace a drive as it goes faulty.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Leprechauns are from the Republic of Ireland which is part of the British Isles not the UK.
2. Hobbits were captured recently on film in New Zealand but not in the UK.
3. The Oasis brothers hail from Manchester but all those of us in the UK outside of Manchester do not consider Manchester as part of the UK - it's merely a buffer zone to stop the Liverpudlian Scousers from stealing our cars.
4. David & Victoria are far too busy whoring themselves to advertising companies trying to sell us Police sun glasses and "Posh crisps" to find the time to go to computer school to learn to code HTML properly so you leave them out of it. I will have nothing bad said against our illustrious "new Royal Family" - at least this new lot don't have big ears like that other bunch of Germanic in-breds.
Idiot.
In other words, MS make it as difficult as possible for legitimate users to do what they need to so that when DRM rears it's ugly little head, everyone flocks to it open-armed...
And please don't talk to me about firewalls & Windows Security Centre in XP SP2 - the money you spend upgrading to XP would be better spent on a broadband router which makes software firewalling redundant anyhow.
Ebay is only good these days for collectors who want hard to find items and are prepared to pay a premium for them.
The other thing to remember is that a lot of people on Ebay just clear out junk on there. As they do this, they accrue positive PayPal balances as sellers pay them but that balance, to me at least, never feels like "real" money anyway.
There's been a few times when I've paid more for a piece of computer hardware on Ebay than via a reputable online seller purely because I've had enough balance in PayPal to cover the item rather than resort to a credit card with the reputable seller.
The other thing to note is that here in the UK, it takes 7 working days for PayPal transfers to appear in your bank account - consequently, someone has that money and is earning interest on it for a whole week before you see it.
I've sold a lot on Ebay, not as a permanent seller but just clearing out a lot of role-playing games rules and CDs from my collection.
One guy I sold a book to left me neutral feedback because the book had been damaged in transit (the wrapping paper had been torn) before even contacting me.
To me, the book was a piece of worthless junk and I would have refunded the guy his money and let him keep it, just like you. I emailed him, gave him the option of a refund or an additional similar book I had, he took the additional book as settlement, but I'd already got the neutral feedback.
Unfortunately, too many buyers are too quick to believe they are dealing with deliberate crooks on Ebay rather than just using common sense, accepting that sometimes things do go wrong beyond the seller's control and actually emailing the seller first to try to reach a compromise.
If you simply remember the rule that no legitimate organisation will ask you for any secure information via email, then no phishing attack can ever work against you.
There's been enough warnings about this already and if people took the time to read those, and the "Policy" areas of online sites they deal with, they would not be victims.
Let's dispel these myths about UNIX & Linux virii:
1. An attack on Linux and UNIX usually happens because an intruder manages to buffer overflow a daemon application, break in as root and start messing with the system. It's a directed attack aimed at a specific machine.
2. A program on UNIX has to be compiled for the specifically for the UNIX variant and hardware platform being used - consequently, if you write a program on UNIX that attacks a security hole in Acme FTP Server v2.1.4 on Solaris on the SPARC architecture, then you will probably be able to get that program to attack other machines running that same program on Solaris on SPARC. However, if the Acme FTP Server is not running as root in the first place, any causable damage will be limited.
3. Windows virii spread as a result of being run automatically without too much or any user intervention - for example, simply viewing an email. There is NO equivalent facility in UNIX. If you get an executable attached to an email, the user would need to specifically run it and, even then, any damage to the system would be at the user's access level - consequently, the user might lose his files on the system but nothing else would be affected.
Yes, UNIX and Linux have security issues that allow buffer overflows & SetUID script attacks to work if a cracker knows what her/she is doing - but the feasibility of a virus actually spreading through UNIX is so minimal that it's not even worth writing one.
A friend of mine was robbed of £400 after he made a PayPal payment to a seller for a PC. He never received the PC and PayPal took absolutely no interest in refunding the money.
The excuse PayPal gave? The seller didn't have enough credit in his PayPal account to refund the money - and has since been kicked off of Ebay.
Neither PayPal or Ebay care about you being fiddled of money, they take their percentage for basically doing nothing.
Virus detection programs on UNIX or Linux are usually deployed on mail servers that kill the viruses before they hit Windows-based mail clients.
Therefore, cutting support puts Windows mail clients connected to UNIX mail servers at threat.
Stupid, stupid decision from a company that claims to be serious about security.
If you consider music an "art" - like I do - then you buy it because you appreciate it, not necessarily because it presents value for money.
For example, I have a number of CD albums I paid £15 for. Break that down into the constituent components of who gets what part of that £15 (record company, musician, record store, etc.) and it would be quite clear that someone somewhere was making a unfair profit at that price - however, I would happily have paid twice that amount for those CDs.
This is no different to an art collector paying thousands of pounds for a painting he or she appreciates.
You treat music as product, I treat it as art, that's the difference.
So, as a musician, have you ever performed live? And if you have, you can't be that much of a musician if you can't entertain an audience for at least 45 minutes.
I don't mean to be facetious here - if you can truly stand up in front of an audience and perform then I respect you for that even though I might not like what you play or sing about.
But please don't try to call yourself a serious musician if you've only 1 or 2 songs to your repetoire.
I guarantee it would *kill* (whatever that means) music if the only *real* way to listen to it was to sit in a chair by yourself.
No, you misquote me. I said that you *cannot* appreciate a piece of good music fully until you give it your full attention. So you mean to tell me that you, as a musician, would be happy stood up performing in front of an audience who were all reading paperback books or texting on their mobile phones while you were playing? Get real...
Someone who treats music as odd tracks that they happen to play in the background while they do something else is not *appreciating* the music fully.
Last I checked, the concept of music was both entertainment and art form, neither of which are held captive by such silly constraints.
Sorry, how closely does an art critic scrutinise a picture he or she loves?
How many people just sit in a quiet room and just sit and read a book? If it's a loved book, how many times might that person have read it?
Why's it not the same with music?
And if you're still convinced that the essence of the music is only contained in a full album... ....the idea of an album is just packaging for distribution.
I am saying that music appreciation is not about simply throwing together a heap of popular songs by different artists. It's about attention span and having enough time to be drawn into the music properly in order to appreciate it. This is not possible with single tracks.
Sorry, but take a look at the Live 8 concerts, for example. Sure, each artist is performing for charity but will end up doing one, maybe two, songs on stage due to the number of artists that are appearing at each event.
Now, take Pink Floyd who are playing at the London concert. Do you really believe that someone new to Pink Floyd will be able to understand and appreciate their music fully based on the one or two songs they do on the day? No, of course not.
Sorry, when did I say I was being funded? I said that I "appreciate" music because I treat a lot of my music collection as *albums* I sit and listen to and do *nothing* else but listen.
Yes I have music I play in the background at the gym or in the car but I am not truly appreciating that music then... the smell of brewing coffee in a room gives a nice ambience but you don't appreciate the coffee till you taste it, same analogy.
And I don't buy the argument that bands that are primary live acts are beholden to the whims of the downloaders -- how does that work ?
I thought I already explained this but I'll justify it in more depth.
An artist starts their career on the strengths of an initial album release that can be played live in almost it's entirety - otherwise, how does an artist have a set long enough to entertain an audience for long enough? Music downloaders who buy their music by the song are probably not people who go to see specific bands perform live - it just isn't worth paying for a concert ticket to hear the two or three tracks you like performed.
It therefore follows that fans of entire albums or just the band go to the concerts - they buy the tickets, that's how the musician makes a living from their art.
If most of their money is made playing live, I doubt they'll suddenly make more money with the download model.
Precisely what I said, you obviously need to read my posting again. It's the album buyers that make the musicians money, not the legal downloaders.
the ipod/mplayer cardio bunnies not only aren't listening to the music you're interested in, they never were.
Sorry, how do you *know* this? I never once mentioned any specific artist I enjoy listening to from an album perspective. We could well enjoy the same artists, you because of a few songs, me because of entire albums.
This has nothing to do with actual musical taste, it's about your own personal perception of the importance of music to you. And I maintain that if your attention span is so short that all of your music listening is "track by track" while doing something else rather than "album by album" while doing nothing but giving the music your full attention, then you do not appreciate real music.
Putting aside the manufactured boy/girl band claptrap or record company puppet whores like Britney Shite, real musicians and bands generally alternate CD releases and concert tours (in order to promote those releases).
So, a band that is starting out after their first release probably gets a supporting slot on a tour with a more major artist - whereupon their set list is probably about 45 minutes long containing most of the songs from their first album and a few cover versions.
Go forward in time after three or four releases and that same band is probably headlining their own tour, playing most of the tracks of their latest CD release intersperesed with the "firm favourites" from their earlier CDs.
However, we're told by fans of legal music downloading is that they like downloading music because they no longer need to buy the entire CD but only the tracks they like.
Now, that's fine for the manufactured pap artists that only ever churn out plastic chart single music but where does it put the *real* musicians?
What onus will there be for real artists to go into a studio to record an entire album if the downloaders only like 3 or 4 of the tracks from that CD?
How does that affect a band's ability to play live, to create interesting and good set lists for live performance?
Believe me, there is nothing I hate more than buying a CD that contains two good songs and the rest being filler tracks but *real music* is about *albums*, not single tracks.
If I buy a CD by an artist then what I am getting is a *snapshot* of how that artist was feeling at the time, perhaps the emotions in the songs on that album are influenced by external events that happened to that artist. And if I *truly* enjoy the music of that artist then I'm going to take that into account when I listen to that particular CD.
What I'm really trying to say here is that I have albums in my collection that I deem as *classic* pieces of music but I probably play them maybe once or twice a year when I'm in the mood to play them - and at that point, I sit down in a comfortable chair in fromt of a good hi-fi and *do nothing else* but *listen* to that music.
So let's not equate iPods and MP3 players to *music appreciation* because they are mutually exclusive. I use an MP3 player full of my favourite tracks when I work out in the gym - but only because it gives my mind something to focus on (away from the pain of working out) and because it covers the pop crap blaring over the gym speakers - but I am *not* truly appreciating the music at that time.
Unfortunately, people who do *all* their music listening on portable players while doing something else and who do not buy entire albums will kill real music by real musicians that are appreciated by real music fans.
Right... so let me get this clear...
You're more than happy to hand over the freedoms you currently have over music sharing (albeit restrictive ones) to Apple and Microsoft who will use software controls via DRM to further restrict your freedoms...
The RIAA is a representive organisation paid for by money-grabbing record companies whilst Apple & Microsoft are money-grabbing software companies.
That's the only difference.
2. Search Usenet, if it's not there request it.
3. Download it with an NNTP client or web browser.
4. Listen to it.
5. If you like it, buy the CD.
6. If you don't, delete it - it's not worth the hard disk space.
No spyware or nagware filesharing clients, pretty much untraceable unless someone goes through ISP logs & far superior download speeds to any P2P crap.
Agree 100%, my attitude also - you can't beat sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a half-decent hi-fi system listen to the contents of a physical CD spinning in a player.
Call me old-fashioned but music downloading to me is handing over money so as to have the heads of my hard disk move in a certain way to put lots of 1s and 0s in the correct order on part of the surface... no thanks, I need tangible, sleeve notes and a nice hard case.
So 35% of music listeners are using legal download services but are they doing so exclusively?
It's all very well admitting to downloading, say, 10 legal tracks a month but are you going to admit to also downloading 100 illegal tracks per month from a P2P source.
Most people I know with iPods have a small percentage (if any) of legally paid for music while the rest of their collection is taken from file-sharing.
Goes nicely with Microsoft's Digital Rights Management record then...
The GPL is about releasing source code into the public domain and keeping it within the public domain.
However, I'm talking about the preservation of old software in its original format by taking it from the commercial domain and putting it into the public domain.
The problem with much old games software is that nobody knows who actually owns the copyrights to a lot of it because of the number of software houses that have folded, merged or been bought up.
If it passes to the public domain automatically, then it will get preserved due to the number of enthusiasts who will host it on web sites, etc.
If you were ever involved in the Amiga (or other home computer platform) public domain scene, you'd know that this encompassed shareware and freeware pre-compiled programs. Only occasionally would the source code be made public also.
However, there have been cases where ISP's and web hosts have been issued with takedown notices for certain web sites.
Technically, it *is* illegal although I don't agree that it should be where no financial loss can be demonstrated by the owner.
We are both on the same side of the argument here...
There are a number of Amiga demos that won't play on UAE, no matter what you do.
Unfortunately, unless you have been given express permission by the author/owner of the software to distribute the program freely, then the only way you can keep a copy of the program is to have the original intact also.
Personally, I believe that if there's no chance of a piece of software making the owner any more earnings then it should be released into the public domain automatically, say after 15 years or so. (Incidentally, I'm not necessarily talking about source code also, just the program).
At least then the genuine people who want to preserve the old games and software can do so openly without fear of legal action.
The BBC here in the UK did a radio program about getting music and video from old recordings and vinyl, even old 78 RPMs. The problem, once you've got the data off, is how you store it on a media that won't degrade over time. Even CDs are thought to have a limited lifespan of possibly only up to 100 years.
The only practical solution for "permanent" data storage currently are huge RAID hard disk arrays where you can replace a drive as it goes faulty.
2. Showered.
3. Brushed teeth.
4. Dressed.
5. Used Linux.
6. Read Theo's article.
7. Still using Linux.
8. Theo who?