Generally, if you are new to unix in general, you should get a good unix reference. I'd suggest Unix Power Tools by O'Reilly.
There's no denying that the UNIX Power Tools book is an excellent book - but the fact is that it's orientated more towards the intermediate user who is prepared to resort to the shell prompt to get things done. The same can also be said for O'Reilly's "Classic Shell Scripting" and "Bash Cookbook" which are also truly great books for UNIX and Linux but again deal wholly with the shell prompt.
People starting off with Ubuntu do not want to be worried about the shell prompt any more than they want to worry about the command prompt under Windows. Yes, eventually, they may realise that to become a Linux power user, they need to put together piped commands and scripts, but one step at a time is fine for them.
Recent surveys indicate Microsoft's overall regard by college and university students has dropped over 40 points in relation to other, similar businesses since last year. Meanwhile, Apple was ranked #1 as having the most desirable image.
College students are also in that age range that suffers from acne, worries about their first sexual encounter and frets about being individual enough to stand out from the crowd yet not be too far removed from it. That age range has a huge amount of marketting targetted at it that basically says "Buy this or you are a complete wanker" because that kind of marketting plays on their fears about standing out from the crowd. It is this sheep mentality that is the reason why the mediocre Harry Potter books, for example, can be huge global bestsellers.
The fact is that it is not "cool" to like Microsoft and whilst fat blokes in their 40s like me hopped off the "Fashion Bus" 20 years ago and stepped into elasticated waist jeans without giving a toss about "cool", such is not the same for students.
I suspect a lot of them say Apple is cool because they like iPods (and please bear in mind that the success of the iPod is due to the fact that most people own "uncool" Windows PCs to download music to it) and know no better - the reality is that for poor students without rich mummies and daddies, Apple computers and phones are far more expensive than the more common equivalent stuff.
In other words, it's a meaningless statistic because at least here, in Europe, it's rare to see anyone with a Mac.
01 - A lot of music fans prefer to listen to entire albums from start to finish rather than picking tracks from an album to put into a playlist. Get used to it.
02 - A lot of music fans are happy to go and hunt down CDs at the cheapest prices possible which ultimately means it costs less for a CD than it does buying the tracks individually on iTunes. Get used to it.
03 - A lot of music fans prefer to buy their music on CD (even vinyl) to get what they believe is the best reproduction of that music on their hifi equipment rather than paying for lossy downloads. Get used to it.
04 - A lot of music fans find CDs excellent value for money. This is because they are discerning people who may break the law occasionally by downloading an album from BitTorrent or Usenet but ultimately buy the album if it is good. This means they never buy a bad CD meaning they are very pleased with CDs as a product and are more likely to go buy even more of them. Get used to it.
05 - Not all albums have only one or two good tracks on them. If you consider this justification for buying music track-by-track then knock yourselves out. However, by diligent selection, it is entirely possible to find wholly excellent albums that will keep you listening from start to finish. Get used to it.
06 - A lot of music fans are not politicians. If Sony, EMI or one of the big record companies release a good album, they will go buy it and enjoy it. They will possibly also go check out the product of small independent labels. If they are kept satisfied by good music and enough of it, they really don't care who marketed it. Get used to it.
07 - A lot of music fans feel they get more for their money by getting a plastic case, disk and some sleevenotes to read on the toilet rather than downloading it. Get used to it.
08 - A lot of music fans do own iPods and non-proprietary players in order to play the music they themselves have ripped from their own collections as a matter of portability and convenience and never once go anywhere near iTunes. Get used to it.
09 - A lot of CD-buying music fans hate music thieves because the former end up subsidising the latter by virtue of what they buy. Get used to it.
10 - By virtue of being a CD-buying music fan, it is perfectly possible to be an honest user of music whilst hating DRM and DRM-peddlars like Apple and iTunes. Get used to it.
Stop violating other people's rights and this won't be a problem.
I buy CDs... lots of them. The only music I have on any PC I own is ripped from my own personal legal CD collection. I'm not violating anyone's rights yet potentially, when CDs die, DRM will be forced on me.
Do not equate a hatred of DRM and iTunes with music theft.
I guess I am just smarter than you. I can stream my iTunes bought songs AND CD bought songs to my friends and to other rooms.
And if one of those friends says "Ooh, I like that track, can I borrow a copy?", what happens then Mr "Smarter than me"? I can just run upstairs to my study, fetch the CD off of a shelf and say "Here you go then."
And if you serious bought $12,000 worth of DRM protected music AND you dislike DRM, your simply a fool. But I think you are exaggerating.
It's a shame you're not smart enough to read my comment fully before acting on gut reaction, isn't it? Because had you read my comment, you would have seen that I own 1200 CDs (and not one godeforesaken iTunes track) which roughly equates to 12000 tracks of music (at say an average of 10 tracks per CD.
Therefore my point was that an iTunes user who has paid for and downloaded 12000+ tracks from there can then talk to me at an equivalent level about supporting the music industry on the basis he/she is getting a bit closer to the money I myself have spent on legal music.
Like I said in another post, do not equate someone who hates DRM and iTunes to someone who does not pay for and enjoy music. If anything, because I have the patience to sit down and thoroughly enjoy an album or two from start to finish, rather than mess about with playlists and compilations, it probably makes me a better listener of music.
You make some very good points but with a few bad assumptions.
Firstly, like you, I never buy any music unless I've heard it first and if it means that I occasionally go to Usenet or BitTorrent to download and listen to an album before I buy, then so be it. It doesn't make it right but then I have 1200+ original CDs because I believe in paying for the stuff I like and I like something tangible with some sleevenotes to read also. If I download it and like it, I buy it - if I don't like it, I delete it. But likewise, as a result, I never buy a duff album, I always source each one as cheaply as possible, I listen to music far more than I watch TV or movies and I believe each music CD is great value for money as a result. I would suggest that if you were buying albums with only one or two good tracks on, then you weren't listening to good music.
Secondly, I will never ever pay for downloaded music. If nothing else, my current CD collection will last me for the rest of my life anyway, but I will not pay more for something that is lower quality. If and when CDs bite the dust, then you can guarantee that so will DRM-free downloads and I won't support DRM, or any company that supports it, either. I've listened to music seriously for 30+ years now, that love of music has developed from lending and borrowing music between friends and DRM stops that.
Thirdly, music pirates are as bad if not worse than those who support DRM. Not only do I subsidise their listening on the basis that I buy all my music, but the fact that they do what they do means that it gives complete justification to those who would force DRM on us. No, DRM is not just about stopping pirates, it's actually about screwing more money out of honest users by ultimately forcing them to rent their media, rather than own it, and to make them buy it on multiple formats.
Fourthly, the so-called "independent artist" revolution that everyone is expecting will only fragment music, if not kill it almost completely. Yes, the idea that a musician can make and sell their own music via a web site may seem an ideal situation but, in reality, what happens about Joe Public hearing about that artist in the first place? The record companies have huge budgets to spend on marketing and whilst most of what they promote is utter dross, the fact that they send out a lot of review copies to specialist web sites and magazines means that it's much easier to hear about a potentially good piece of music. And personally, I consider music to be entertainment, not political - if I can buy a CD that sounds good to me, then I'm happy and the fact is that because I listen mainly to hard/progressive/psychedelic music from the late 60s and early 70s, the record companies are doing an absolutely fantastic job of rereleasing and remastering a lot of very obscure albums from that era currently, to the point where I can't spend my "music money" fast enough on CDs at the moment. Yes, I too am sympathetic to the record companies (and no, I don't work for any of them or anywhere in the music industry).
Fifthly, not that I care about "pay-per-download" but if the music companies are taking steps to stop the iTunes stranglehold, then I say good on them. Far too many people are moaning about the "big 4 record companies" and running to the "big 1 music download company" in the belief that it will somehow save music. It won't, it'll just end up with Apple being the Microsoft of the music distribution world. There is no question that once CDs die, every downloadable track will be DRMed to the hilt.
So please do not create an argument that automatically ties the honest use of music either to paid downloads or iTunes, they are pretty much mutually exclusive.
You forgot to mention that you can also lend CDs to friends and family - you can, of course, also lend them an iTunes track provided that you also lend them your iPod.
Apple's iTunes let you share your playlist to several computers.
It's just a shame you can't share your playlist with friends.
Keep in mind DRM only came about because you'd rather steal media than buy it.
I own 1200+ original CDs. At an average of 10 tracks per CD, when you've downloaded a paid for 12000+ iTunes tracks, you and I can then talk on the same level about putting money into the music industry.
Please do not be blinded by your love for Apple - someone who hates DRM and iTunes is not automatically a music thief.
It's all about combining your various music file collections into one virtual collection. This device is cool because it can merge all your disparate collections into one big playlist, regardless of format (and regardless of whether some of the content is DRM'd).
Fact: I already do this and I own no Apple products. It's called MPD (Music Player Daemon), it runs on Linux and it plays any and every track that I own in one big playlist or in as many playlists as I like. I can use MP3, OGG or any other non-DRM format I want, I can put the tracks on any device I like, copy them where I like, burn them how I like.
BTW, it is *not* helpful to keep blaming DRM for everything and anything. It only dilutes the argument against DRM when your claims are false, giving ammunition to its defenders.
Fact: I can take a CD or a memory stick/CDROM with a few MP3s on it and let a friend listen to it - not possible with an iTunes track. If my PC hard drive crashes, I can just buy a new one and re-rip any CDs I need to without needing to log into anywhere and redownload anything.
Additionally, please do not forget that DRM allows for the expiry or limited plays of media which ultimately means you end up renting music and movies and the supplier of that media gets a nice monthly rental charge from your bank account.
It's convenient because you can buy one computer and one sound card and have music in three rooms, instead of buying multiple computers or really expensive Sonos appliances.
Erm, perhaps I'm being a little stupid here but in each room, or carried upon your person, you will presumably need some kind of appliance (web client?) that can access the central server over wireless so you can select tracks, turn it on and off, etc.? That still entails having an appliance to do that.
And I hate to say this but unless you live in a particularly big (or sound-proofed) house, playing music simultaneously in more than one room is a bit pointless due to overhearing.
And doesn't this therefore negate the need for an iPod which is designed to be carried around with you in whichever room, or other place, you go to?
If I want to listen to an MP3 or iTunes download away from the computer it is currently located on, I can copy it to my ipod, connect the ipod to my receiver, and I am good to go. Or I can copy the song to another computer in another room (iTunes DRM allows you to authorize 5 computers). I can burn that music to a CD and play it in any cd player, anywhere. I can stream it to a wii or a xbox using freely available software.
I can buy a CD in a nice plastic case with nice sleeve notes that I can arrange on a shelf with other CDs. I can take that CD and play it on any one of the CD players or PCs in my house or car, or indeed a friend's house or car. I can use freely available software to rip that CD to MP3, OGG, WAV, whatever I want at whatever quality rate I want.
I can buy a low end PC for a few quid, load on Linux and a server streaming application, and play that MP3 on any other machine on my home network. I guess I can also stream it to an XBox or Wii also.
I can play that track, in MP3 format, on any portable music player anywhere.
I don't need to burn the tracks to a CD because I already have the CD.
I'm not sure I understand what you're original argument is but there's no harm in my demonstrating why I believe CD is the most portable and useful format for music currently.
I actually find it very difficult to understand why, based on the flexibility I've demonstrated, people are happy to pay for downloaded tracks when they are no cheaper, of a lower quality and have more DRM (if bought from iTunes) than a CD does.
The only logical argument that anyone puts forward for paid downloads is the fact that it's possible to choose specific tracks - however, if the music artist does not have the skill to put together an album that is good from start to finish then you really need to be listening to some better music - or you're probably not the music fan you think you are if you cannot give a 60 minute album your entire attention for that long.
It's actually not a bad document collaboration tool without all that endless mucking about with email attachments and mapped network drives - not to mention some "quick and dirty" PDF conversion to boot.
And I can't for the life of me work out why so many people whine about tools that are basically free to use. If you've paid to use something and it's not very good, you've every right to complain - but if it's free then it can only be of benefit if you use it and absolutely no loss to you whatsoever if you don't.
First of all, where's your citation for this? I suspect you have none; you just made it up. Invented statistics have no validity.
Well I did say "in my experience", to be fair. But I do a hell of a lot of PC repairs for close and distant family members & friends & you can guarantee that if a teenage kid has been anywhere near any one of those PCs, then it's packed full of MP3s I'm pretty sure they don't own. (If anything, the usual reason for my repairing the PC in the first place is a result of some virus or malware they downloaded through one of the countless P2P clients they have installed.)
As a teenager, I had no money. Having no money means I couldn't buy CDs even if I wanted to.
Well, I never listened to the sort of music you'd put in on "mix tapes" but in my teenage years I certainly borrowed albums from other people and taped them so I take your point - but I did also buy a lot of LPs as well.
I do agree that neither of us would've probably bought any of those copied albums or tracks in the first place. But I'd counter that by saying that these days there's a lot more disposable income about & most households seem to be able to afford iPods, new PCs and equip everyone in the household over the age of 10 with a new mobile phone.
Yes, I'm not denying that there are also genuinely poor people who cannot afford to buy music - but the people I come into contact with regularly definitely can.
But to be fair, I am not aware of anybody yet who has been successfully sued (or even dragged into a courtroom in the first place) for format-changing their own CDs, DVDs, etc.
In my case, you're entirely correct because that's precisely how I buy my music. I'll even qualify your argument by saying that because I can preview my music first, I only ever buy ones that are worth the money - therefore CDs, in my view, are an excellent value product (based on the importance of music in my life anyway) and I do keep buying them as a result.
However, I am in a minority of P2P/Usenet downloaders because, in my experience, most of them use it as an alternative to paying for their music by legal means.
Therefore, by implication, the fact that I buy a lot of CDs subsidises those who do not - therefore those thieves are as bad as the record labels or the RIAA for making the cost of music so high.
And yet, the *AA have attempted to show that this doesn't matter at countless colleges and universities by forcing the burden of proof upon these institutions. "We know you have a thief among you, find them for us" is not how a case should be built.
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Right. And I already said that the RIAA are overly heavy-handed.
Afraid not. You pay more for your music because the record labels and the RIAA wish it to be so.
Again, right. But the fact is that music thieves give the record labels and the RIAA the justification they need to make those prices so high. If people didn't steal music, they wouldn't be able to justify keeping prices so high by blaming it on "the amount of CD sales we lose". Do you see my point?
The fact is that sales have risen during these years where "piracy" has run rampant. I would link to statistics, but I am at work and don't have time to find them. I'm sure someone else will do it at some point.
I don't have the facts either but I suspect the truth is somewhere in between - namely that if there is a drop in CD sales, then its probably more due to the amount of truly turgid music being made these days.
I will admit that whilst I rarely buy CDs in the rip-off high street stores here in the UK, I do wonder how they manage to stay in business based on the prices they charge whenever I do go for a browse in them - which are consistently 33%-50% more than most online retailers.
Well, hopefully, the RIAAs of the world would realize that their business model isn't something most people are interested in funding. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like paying $15 for a CD that has one or two interesting tracks and 10 garbage tracks, and that's what they are forcing me to do in most cases. Services like iTunes allow me to bypass this antiquated way of doing business, so I use iTunes where I can.
If you're coming across CDs that have one or two good tracks on them, then you are not listening to the right kind of music - it's that simple.
Music is my most important past-time, far more than TV, movies, gaming, etc. I do research my music well and, yes, because I won't buy an album before I know it's worth the money, I do occasionally download from Usenet or BitTorrent to preview it; but then, I buy it if I like it and add it to my collection of 1200+ official CDs or just delete the tracks as it's not even worth the disk space.
For me, services like iTunes would only allow me to download music at probably a higher cost than I can source a CD for (online or secondhand on eBay) at a lower quality rate with DRM restrictions. And I find it difficult to believe how someone who believes in the free distribution of music would ever subscribe to iTunes in the first place?
Incidentally, I don't deny my own slight hypocrisy for using Usenet of BitTorrent in the first place - my only defence is that the obscure rock and psychedelia music I do enjoy doesn't get played on radio (particularly here in the UK) and if the RIAA were to check my hard disk, they'd only see MP3s on it which were also on the original CDs in my collection. However, by doing things this way, I never buy a CD that I don't consider to be not worth the money I paid for it - that in turns means I'm very satisfied with CDs as products and I therefore go and buy more of them as a result.
I think we're "singing off the same hymn sheet" here in as much as we're both happy to pay for music - it's the distribution method that we disagree about.
It would be very easy to demonstrate to a judge in a court room that in the case of most ISPs, IP addresses are dynamic and do not stay fixed on a particular PC; I'm sure even the most basic of ISP logs would clearly show this.
Not that I'm in the US anyway, but whilst I believe the RIAA is unduly heavy-handed with people, the fact is that they are stealing music - that means that legal CD purchasers like me pay more for our purchasers and end up subsidising the thieves.
If everyone chose to steal their music, what would happen then?
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...anyone who goes into Starbucks and pays £2.50 for a cup of ground beans in a bit of hot water and hot milk, must have a screw loose!
There's no denying that the UNIX Power Tools book is an excellent book - but the fact is that it's orientated more towards the intermediate user who is prepared to resort to the shell prompt to get things done. The same can also be said for O'Reilly's "Classic Shell Scripting" and "Bash Cookbook" which are also truly great books for UNIX and Linux but again deal wholly with the shell prompt.
People starting off with Ubuntu do not want to be worried about the shell prompt any more than they want to worry about the command prompt under Windows. Yes, eventually, they may realise that to become a Linux power user, they need to put together piped commands and scripts, but one step at a time is fine for them.
College students are also in that age range that suffers from acne, worries about their first sexual encounter and frets about being individual enough to stand out from the crowd yet not be too far removed from it. That age range has a huge amount of marketting targetted at it that basically says "Buy this or you are a complete wanker" because that kind of marketting plays on their fears about standing out from the crowd. It is this sheep mentality that is the reason why the mediocre Harry Potter books, for example, can be huge global bestsellers.
The fact is that it is not "cool" to like Microsoft and whilst fat blokes in their 40s like me hopped off the "Fashion Bus" 20 years ago and stepped into elasticated waist jeans without giving a toss about "cool", such is not the same for students.
I suspect a lot of them say Apple is cool because they like iPods (and please bear in mind that the success of the iPod is due to the fact that most people own "uncool" Windows PCs to download music to it) and know no better - the reality is that for poor students without rich mummies and daddies, Apple computers and phones are far more expensive than the more common equivalent stuff.
In other words, it's a meaningless statistic because at least here, in Europe, it's rare to see anyone with a Mac.
02 - A lot of music fans are happy to go and hunt down CDs at the cheapest prices possible which ultimately means it costs less for a CD than it does buying the tracks individually on iTunes. Get used to it.
03 - A lot of music fans prefer to buy their music on CD (even vinyl) to get what they believe is the best reproduction of that music on their hifi equipment rather than paying for lossy downloads. Get used to it.
04 - A lot of music fans find CDs excellent value for money. This is because they are discerning people who may break the law occasionally by downloading an album from BitTorrent or Usenet but ultimately buy the album if it is good. This means they never buy a bad CD meaning they are very pleased with CDs as a product and are more likely to go buy even more of them. Get used to it.
05 - Not all albums have only one or two good tracks on them. If you consider this justification for buying music track-by-track then knock yourselves out. However, by diligent selection, it is entirely possible to find wholly excellent albums that will keep you listening from start to finish. Get used to it.
06 - A lot of music fans are not politicians. If Sony, EMI or one of the big record companies release a good album, they will go buy it and enjoy it. They will possibly also go check out the product of small independent labels. If they are kept satisfied by good music and enough of it, they really don't care who marketed it. Get used to it.
07 - A lot of music fans feel they get more for their money by getting a plastic case, disk and some sleevenotes to read on the toilet rather than downloading it. Get used to it.
08 - A lot of music fans do own iPods and non-proprietary players in order to play the music they themselves have ripped from their own collections as a matter of portability and convenience and never once go anywhere near iTunes. Get used to it.
09 - A lot of CD-buying music fans hate music thieves because the former end up subsidising the latter by virtue of what they buy. Get used to it.
10 - By virtue of being a CD-buying music fan, it is perfectly possible to be an honest user of music whilst hating DRM and DRM-peddlars like Apple and iTunes. Get used to it.
I buy CDs... lots of them. The only music I have on any PC I own is ripped from my own personal legal CD collection. I'm not violating anyone's rights yet potentially, when CDs die, DRM will be forced on me.
Do not equate a hatred of DRM and iTunes with music theft.
And if one of those friends says "Ooh, I like that track, can I borrow a copy?", what happens then Mr "Smarter than me"? I can just run upstairs to my study, fetch the CD off of a shelf and say "Here you go then."
And if you serious bought $12,000 worth of DRM protected music AND you dislike DRM, your simply a fool. But I think you are exaggerating.
It's a shame you're not smart enough to read my comment fully before acting on gut reaction, isn't it? Because had you read my comment, you would have seen that I own 1200 CDs (and not one godeforesaken iTunes track) which roughly equates to 12000 tracks of music (at say an average of 10 tracks per CD.
Therefore my point was that an iTunes user who has paid for and downloaded 12000+ tracks from there can then talk to me at an equivalent level about supporting the music industry on the basis he/she is getting a bit closer to the money I myself have spent on legal music.
Like I said in another post, do not equate someone who hates DRM and iTunes to someone who does not pay for and enjoy music. If anything, because I have the patience to sit down and thoroughly enjoy an album or two from start to finish, rather than mess about with playlists and compilations, it probably makes me a better listener of music.
Firstly, like you, I never buy any music unless I've heard it first and if it means that I occasionally go to Usenet or BitTorrent to download and listen to an album before I buy, then so be it. It doesn't make it right but then I have 1200+ original CDs because I believe in paying for the stuff I like and I like something tangible with some sleevenotes to read also. If I download it and like it, I buy it - if I don't like it, I delete it. But likewise, as a result, I never buy a duff album, I always source each one as cheaply as possible, I listen to music far more than I watch TV or movies and I believe each music CD is great value for money as a result. I would suggest that if you were buying albums with only one or two good tracks on, then you weren't listening to good music.
Secondly, I will never ever pay for downloaded music. If nothing else, my current CD collection will last me for the rest of my life anyway, but I will not pay more for something that is lower quality. If and when CDs bite the dust, then you can guarantee that so will DRM-free downloads and I won't support DRM, or any company that supports it, either. I've listened to music seriously for 30+ years now, that love of music has developed from lending and borrowing music between friends and DRM stops that.
Thirdly, music pirates are as bad if not worse than those who support DRM. Not only do I subsidise their listening on the basis that I buy all my music, but the fact that they do what they do means that it gives complete justification to those who would force DRM on us. No, DRM is not just about stopping pirates, it's actually about screwing more money out of honest users by ultimately forcing them to rent their media, rather than own it, and to make them buy it on multiple formats.
Fourthly, the so-called "independent artist" revolution that everyone is expecting will only fragment music, if not kill it almost completely. Yes, the idea that a musician can make and sell their own music via a web site may seem an ideal situation but, in reality, what happens about Joe Public hearing about that artist in the first place? The record companies have huge budgets to spend on marketing and whilst most of what they promote is utter dross, the fact that they send out a lot of review copies to specialist web sites and magazines means that it's much easier to hear about a potentially good piece of music. And personally, I consider music to be entertainment, not political - if I can buy a CD that sounds good to me, then I'm happy and the fact is that because I listen mainly to hard/progressive/psychedelic music from the late 60s and early 70s, the record companies are doing an absolutely fantastic job of rereleasing and remastering a lot of very obscure albums from that era currently, to the point where I can't spend my "music money" fast enough on CDs at the moment. Yes, I too am sympathetic to the record companies (and no, I don't work for any of them or anywhere in the music industry).
Fifthly, not that I care about "pay-per-download" but if the music companies are taking steps to stop the iTunes stranglehold, then I say good on them. Far too many people are moaning about the "big 4 record companies" and running to the "big 1 music download company" in the belief that it will somehow save music. It won't, it'll just end up with Apple being the Microsoft of the music distribution world. There is no question that once CDs die, every downloadable track will be DRMed to the hilt.
So please do not create an argument that automatically ties the honest use of music either to paid downloads or iTunes, they are pretty much mutually exclusive.
Maybe you wouldn't need to stream music to three separate rooms if you could just loan the people in those rooms the CD instead?
If you stream non-DRMed music, your comment does not even come into any consideration.
You forgot to mention that you can also lend CDs to friends and family - you can, of course, also lend them an iTunes track provided that you also lend them your iPod.
It's just a shame you can't share your playlist with friends.
Keep in mind DRM only came about because you'd rather steal media than buy it.
I own 1200+ original CDs. At an average of 10 tracks per CD, when you've downloaded a paid for 12000+ iTunes tracks, you and I can then talk on the same level about putting money into the music industry.
Please do not be blinded by your love for Apple - someone who hates DRM and iTunes is not automatically a music thief.
Fact: I already do this and I own no Apple products. It's called MPD (Music Player Daemon), it runs on Linux and it plays any and every track that I own in one big playlist or in as many playlists as I like. I can use MP3, OGG or any other non-DRM format I want, I can put the tracks on any device I like, copy them where I like, burn them how I like.
BTW, it is *not* helpful to keep blaming DRM for everything and anything. It only dilutes the argument against DRM when your claims are false, giving ammunition to its defenders.
Fact: I can take a CD or a memory stick/CDROM with a few MP3s on it and let a friend listen to it - not possible with an iTunes track. If my PC hard drive crashes, I can just buy a new one and re-rip any CDs I need to without needing to log into anywhere and redownload anything.
Additionally, please do not forget that DRM allows for the expiry or limited plays of media which ultimately means you end up renting music and movies and the supplier of that media gets a nice monthly rental charge from your bank account.
Actually, from what I've heard of Dragonforce'a music, I would end up emptying my bowels in the shower tray.
I'm older than you, wiser than you, and therefore entirely correct to declare AC/DC as shower room air-guitar kings.
Erm, perhaps I'm being a little stupid here but in each room, or carried upon your person, you will presumably need some kind of appliance (web client?) that can access the central server over wireless so you can select tracks, turn it on and off, etc.? That still entails having an appliance to do that.
And I hate to say this but unless you live in a particularly big (or sound-proofed) house, playing music simultaneously in more than one room is a bit pointless due to overhearing.
And doesn't this therefore negate the need for an iPod which is designed to be carried around with you in whichever room, or other place, you go to?
I can buy a CD in a nice plastic case with nice sleeve notes that I can arrange on a shelf with other CDs. I can take that CD and play it on any one of the CD players or PCs in my house or car, or indeed a friend's house or car. I can use freely available software to rip that CD to MP3, OGG, WAV, whatever I want at whatever quality rate I want.
I can buy a low end PC for a few quid, load on Linux and a server streaming application, and play that MP3 on any other machine on my home network. I guess I can also stream it to an XBox or Wii also.
I can play that track, in MP3 format, on any portable music player anywhere.
I don't need to burn the tracks to a CD because I already have the CD.
I'm not sure I understand what you're original argument is but there's no harm in my demonstrating why I believe CD is the most portable and useful format for music currently.
I actually find it very difficult to understand why, based on the flexibility I've demonstrated, people are happy to pay for downloaded tracks when they are no cheaper, of a lower quality and have more DRM (if bought from iTunes) than a CD does.
The only logical argument that anyone puts forward for paid downloads is the fact that it's possible to choose specific tracks - however, if the music artist does not have the skill to put together an album that is good from start to finish then you really need to be listening to some better music - or you're probably not the music fan you think you are if you cannot give a 60 minute album your entire attention for that long.
Jeez! That DRM gets everywhere!
It's actually not a bad document collaboration tool without all that endless mucking about with email attachments and mapped network drives - not to mention some "quick and dirty" PDF conversion to boot.
And I can't for the life of me work out why so many people whine about tools that are basically free to use. If you've paid to use something and it's not very good, you've every right to complain - but if it's free then it can only be of benefit if you use it and absolutely no loss to you whatsoever if you don't.
You mean she actually let you keep the PC???
Well I did say "in my experience", to be fair. But I do a hell of a lot of PC repairs for close and distant family members & friends & you can guarantee that if a teenage kid has been anywhere near any one of those PCs, then it's packed full of MP3s I'm pretty sure they don't own. (If anything, the usual reason for my repairing the PC in the first place is a result of some virus or malware they downloaded through one of the countless P2P clients they have installed.)
As a teenager, I had no money. Having no money means I couldn't buy CDs even if I wanted to.
Well, I never listened to the sort of music you'd put in on "mix tapes" but in my teenage years I certainly borrowed albums from other people and taped them so I take your point - but I did also buy a lot of LPs as well.
I do agree that neither of us would've probably bought any of those copied albums or tracks in the first place. But I'd counter that by saying that these days there's a lot more disposable income about & most households seem to be able to afford iPods, new PCs and equip everyone in the household over the age of 10 with a new mobile phone.
Yes, I'm not denying that there are also genuinely poor people who cannot afford to buy music - but the people I come into contact with regularly definitely can.
But to be fair, I am not aware of anybody yet who has been successfully sued (or even dragged into a courtroom in the first place) for format-changing their own CDs, DVDs, etc.
However, I am in a minority of P2P/Usenet downloaders because, in my experience, most of them use it as an alternative to paying for their music by legal means.
Therefore, by implication, the fact that I buy a lot of CDs subsidises those who do not - therefore those thieves are as bad as the record labels or the RIAA for making the cost of music so high.
. Right. And I already said that the RIAA are overly heavy-handed.
Afraid not. You pay more for your music because the record labels and the RIAA wish it to be so.
Again, right. But the fact is that music thieves give the record labels and the RIAA the justification they need to make those prices so high. If people didn't steal music, they wouldn't be able to justify keeping prices so high by blaming it on "the amount of CD sales we lose". Do you see my point?
The fact is that sales have risen during these years where "piracy" has run rampant. I would link to statistics, but I am at work and don't have time to find them. I'm sure someone else will do it at some point.
I don't have the facts either but I suspect the truth is somewhere in between - namely that if there is a drop in CD sales, then its probably more due to the amount of truly turgid music being made these days.
I will admit that whilst I rarely buy CDs in the rip-off high street stores here in the UK, I do wonder how they manage to stay in business based on the prices they charge whenever I do go for a browse in them - which are consistently 33%-50% more than most online retailers.
Well, hopefully, the RIAAs of the world would realize that their business model isn't something most people are interested in funding. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like paying $15 for a CD that has one or two interesting tracks and 10 garbage tracks, and that's what they are forcing me to do in most cases. Services like iTunes allow me to bypass this antiquated way of doing business, so I use iTunes where I can.
If you're coming across CDs that have one or two good tracks on them, then you are not listening to the right kind of music - it's that simple.
Music is my most important past-time, far more than TV, movies, gaming, etc. I do research my music well and, yes, because I won't buy an album before I know it's worth the money, I do occasionally download from Usenet or BitTorrent to preview it; but then, I buy it if I like it and add it to my collection of 1200+ official CDs or just delete the tracks as it's not even worth the disk space.
For me, services like iTunes would only allow me to download music at probably a higher cost than I can source a CD for (online or secondhand on eBay) at a lower quality rate with DRM restrictions. And I find it difficult to believe how someone who believes in the free distribution of music would ever subscribe to iTunes in the first place?
Incidentally, I don't deny my own slight hypocrisy for using Usenet of BitTorrent in the first place - my only defence is that the obscure rock and psychedelia music I do enjoy doesn't get played on radio (particularly here in the UK) and if the RIAA were to check my hard disk, they'd only see MP3s on it which were also on the original CDs in my collection. However, by doing things this way, I never buy a CD that I don't consider to be not worth the money I paid for it - that in turns means I'm very satisfied with CDs as products and I therefore go and buy more of them as a result.
I think we're "singing off the same hymn sheet" here in as much as we're both happy to pay for music - it's the distribution method that we disagree about.
It would be very easy to demonstrate to a judge in a court room that in the case of most ISPs, IP addresses are dynamic and do not stay fixed on a particular PC; I'm sure even the most basic of ISP logs would clearly show this.
Not that I'm in the US anyway, but whilst I believe the RIAA is unduly heavy-handed with people, the fact is that they are stealing music - that means that legal CD purchasers like me pay more for our purchasers and end up subsidising the thieves.
If everyone chose to steal their music, what would happen then?
Thanks for the detailed explanation and I am no games developer - but hasn't just about the same thing been said for every new iteration of DirectX?