The only two solutions I know are the in-kernel OSS emulation, which does not work with alsa-lib's user-space software mixing; and the alsa-oss program which LD_PRELOADS a small library that replaces an app's attempt to write to the OSS sound devices with calls to the alsa-lib (IME screws up the audio, crashes a lot and requires the browser to be run via aoss(1) from the command line, not very user-friendly).:(
I don't have that problem. I do have other problems with their 'Linux' player besides the AV synch issue.
It uses the ancient and deprecated OSS audio interface instead of the modern ALSA. This means you have to buy an expensive sound card with hardware mixing, or put up with only one program being able to play/record sound at a time.
It is much slower compared to its Windows counterpart. This can't entirely be due to the inefficiency of X11, can it?
It's buggy, buggy, buggy. On average it takes out my browser after only three or four movie loads. Of course this is just as much a bug in Mozilla's ancient and brain-dead plugin model.
Until you need to deal with anything in an encoding other than ASCII. Or want to reference one file from another. Eventually the home-grown parser becomes more and more complex, evolving into an under-specified, buggy clone of Common Lisp.:)
No. 'sudo' (really, the mixing of code running with different priviliges in the same user session) has fundamental security flaws that Microsoft should have improved upon rather than slavishly emulating.
Ignoring the FUD you are furiously wafting towards GRUB...
No. The default installation CD for the latest Ubuntu releases *is* the live CD; and even if you only have the 'real' install CD, you can still boot off it, mount your root filesystem and do whatever you need to do to get it booting again.
Indeed, I should have said Free Software, not Open Source.
As to your question: other factors will determine it. The market fails to protect the rights of consumers in this case because there are not enough consumers who are aware that they have these rights and/or care to make use of them.
I'm not getting how Tivo is preventing you from adapting the source code, if they're providing you with it. They give you the source code, then improve it all you want. Knock yourself out. Build some Tivo-like hardware and install it on that.
You are ignoring the parts of freedom 1 that I highlighted for your attention. I will quote it again:
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Access to the source code in and of itself does not guarantee the ability to adapt the device to the user's needs! From the man himself:
You see, the Tivo is designed so that it won't run your changed versions, it refuses to even start and thus, nominally, Freedom number 1, the freedom to change the source code so that it will do what you want, nominally the users have that freedom but really the user does not have that freedom. You can change the source code so that it would do what you want, but then it won't do anything.
So this is called Tivoisation and this is what we're trying to prevent. But why are we so concerned with this? Well, why would anybody do Tivoisation? What is the motive? The reason is because they're putting malicious features into the code and they don't want the users to fix these deliberate problems. The Tivo has two kinds of nasty features.
[descriptions of spyware and DRM]
Now, I disagree with those features, I think they're unethical. Well, as long as people continue to have the full, the real enjoyment of Freedom number 1, I don't need to worry about those malicious features because people will take them out, they will fix them, but once the software is tivoised, the users can't fix it.
The rest of your post is beneath a response. Good day.
But you are ignoring a very real way in which it (or, at least general DRM) is being used to kill open source: Tivo's abuse of the works it builds upon and distributes which are licensed under the GPL.
This is a moot argument anyway. In twenty years time, the web will have indeed reduced whatever OS we use into a poorly-debugged set of device drivers. Try applying the Four Freedoms to Google or other web applications that you use.
There is NO PROBLEM for OOS if ALL Hardware have "Trusted Computing" chips, because there is no problem to execute OSS without harm for the DRM-Soft on the same Hardware.
It is a problem once my bank says, "for your security, you must have a Trusted Computing verified system to access your bank account online". It is a problem once my government says the same thing.
So they can lobby a law that all Hardware must have Trusted Computing without the possibility to copy DRM-Content
Which is a bad thing since it completely obliterates uses which, until now, were protected by the doctrines of fair use, fair dealing, and by the fact that in the non-digital world, utilisation and modification of a work does not require it to be copied.
but you can't lobby a law that all Software must DRM-cribbled.
There is no need to do so when the market grants extrodinaty leverage to a small number of producers, who can simply agree to all declare simultaneously that their consumers must use Trusted Computing verified hardware.
It is like you can make a law that all streets must have mandatory attributes, but you can't make a law that only Cars from Ford and GM can use the street.
If the utilisation of Trusted Computing hardware requires the licensing of a patent then you can indeed make just such a law.
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The fact that I have not, and will never, buy a Tivo does not change the fact that Tivo are preventing end users from excercising freedoms 1 and 3, as intended by the owners of the code they build upon.
It is an important part of the fight. Isn't the phrase 'combined arms'?
Buy a Tivo. Ask the manufacturer for the source code (as is your right, granted by the GPL) and you will recieve it. But now try to modify it--you can't, because the Tivo's DRM takes away the freedom granted to you by the authors of the code to run modified code. This is what the DRM clauses of the GPLv3 aim to prevent.
Change [the corrupt political/legislative] system. Licence won't help us. Change customer's attitude. Organise boycots. Don't buy Macs. Don't buy ATI or Nvidia video cards. Seriously. Vote with your wallet. Vote with your attitude. Inform rest of the crowd.
The license will help us. These days I think the license is the only thing that can help us. I boycott a lot of products, and to be perfectly honest it makes no difference in the real world.
Stallman could have listen to Linus and allowed clearly several uses of DRM with GPLv3 licence.
What do you call the clarifications and changes made to the DRM clauses between the first and second drafts of the GPL?
Only Linus and the Slashbots who follow him seem to be spouting these claims. It is becoming harder and harder to attribute his comments to incompetence, rather than active malice.
From TFA, "Torvalds' comments should probably be read in the context of his statement that his particular concerns, notably the mention of DRM, have not been addressed. Yet, in fact, they have been. In an interview with NewsForge, Eben Moglen, who heads the revision process, specifically mentioned that some changes in the second draft were specifically made in response to Torvalds' concerns..."
I think that Linus is right and there is no problem with DRM because we have a marketplace. Yes, there will be Vendors that use GPL-Soft and forbid changed and therefore unsignd binarys to execute on there Hardware. Maybe you can call that Vendors Leeches, but sometimes there are good reasons for this behavior that benefit the Custumer. Think on Mission-Critical Hardware that should NEVER execute hacked binarys - in your best interest.
Fine, except it won't stop at that.
Monopoly holders such as Microsoft and the *IAA will lobby for laws making the manufacture, import, sale or use of hardware without Trusted Computing chips illegal.
If I, as a user, cannot make use of the source code I recieved under the GPL (see: Tivo) then the license has been subverted. This is the issue that the DRM clauses in GPLv3 want to solve.
Unfortunately most of the rest of the world seems determined to bury its head in the sand on this issue.:(
If you don't like DRM - don't buy products with it (Music CD and DVDs).
What am I to do once all computers come with these 'defective by design' chips? When I am no longer able to access my bank account, or government services, because my computer will be unable to validate itself to the remote servers? When it becomes illegal to manufacture, import, or operate hardware without Trusted Computing features?
Slashdot Mirror
No, they are not. They are textbook examples of the wrong use of Flash. The correct way to implement such functionality is:
<object data="/path/to/movie.mpg"/>
etc.
You were hallucinating. Using the Flash specification for anything other than creating authoring tools has always been forbidden.
Twats!
We'd love to do a proper port of the flash player to GNU/Linux. Unfortunatly Adobe refuse to make that possible.
The only two solutions I know are the in-kernel OSS emulation, which does not work with alsa-lib's user-space software mixing; and the alsa-oss program which LD_PRELOADS a small library that replaces an app's attempt to write to the OSS sound devices with calls to the alsa-lib (IME screws up the audio, crashes a lot and requires the browser to be run via aoss(1) from the command line, not very user-friendly). :(
My point was that the 'Linux' port of the Flash player is crap.
Almost certainly such an episode is part of CSI's continued campeign against geeks and gamers.
Obviously, I already have such a computer. No other program I have used has this issue.
I don't have that problem. I do have other problems with their 'Linux' player besides the AV synch issue.
It uses the ancient and deprecated OSS audio interface instead of the modern ALSA. This means you have to buy an expensive sound card with hardware mixing, or put up with only one program being able to play/record sound at a time.
It is much slower compared to its Windows counterpart. This can't entirely be due to the inefficiency of X11, can it?
It's buggy, buggy, buggy. On average it takes out my browser after only three or four movie loads. Of course this is just as much a bug in Mozilla's ancient and brain-dead plugin model.
When will it be possible to watch one of these youtubes where the audio will be in synch with the video?
Until you need to deal with anything in an encoding other than ASCII. Or want to reference one file from another. Eventually the home-grown parser becomes more and more complex, evolving into an under-specified, buggy clone of Common Lisp. :)
He knows about as much as 99.999% of the braindead coders who write software for the Windows platform.
No. 'sudo' (really, the mixing of code running with different priviliges in the same user session) has fundamental security flaws that Microsoft should have improved upon rather than slavishly emulating.
Ignoring the FUD you are furiously wafting towards GRUB...
No. The default installation CD for the latest Ubuntu releases *is* the live CD; and even if you only have the 'real' install CD, you can still boot off it, mount your root filesystem and do whatever you need to do to get it booting again.
Commitment to Free Software. I think they're even more hadline than Debian!
Indeed, I should have said Free Software, not Open Source.
As to your question: other factors will determine it. The market fails to protect the rights of consumers in this case because there are not enough consumers who are aware that they have these rights and/or care to make use of them.
You are ignoring the parts of freedom 1 that I highlighted for your attention. I will quote it again:
Access to the source code in and of itself does not guarantee the ability to adapt the device to the user's needs! From the man himself:
The rest of your post is beneath a response. Good day.But you are ignoring a very real way in which it (or, at least general DRM) is being used to kill open source: Tivo's abuse of the works it builds upon and distributes which are licensed under the GPL.
This is a moot argument anyway. In twenty years time, the web will have indeed reduced whatever OS we use into a poorly-debugged set of device drivers. Try applying the Four Freedoms to Google or other web applications that you use.
It is a problem once my bank says, "for your security, you must have a Trusted Computing verified system to access your bank account online". It is a problem once my government says the same thing.
Which is a bad thing since it completely obliterates uses which, until now, were protected by the doctrines of fair use, fair dealing, and by the fact that in the non-digital world, utilisation and modification of a work does not require it to be copied.
There is no need to do so when the market grants extrodinaty leverage to a small number of producers, who can simply agree to all declare simultaneously that their consumers must use Trusted Computing verified hardware.
If the utilisation of Trusted Computing hardware requires the licensing of a patent then you can indeed make just such a law.
The fact that I have not, and will never, buy a Tivo does not change the fact that Tivo are preventing end users from excercising freedoms 1 and 3, as intended by the owners of the code they build upon.
Buy a Tivo. Ask the manufacturer for the source code (as is your right, granted by the GPL) and you will recieve it. But now try to modify it--you can't, because the Tivo's DRM takes away the freedom granted to you by the authors of the code to run modified code. This is what the DRM clauses of the GPLv3 aim to prevent.
The license will help us. These days I think the license is the only thing that can help us. I boycott a lot of products, and to be perfectly honest it makes no difference in the real world.
What do you call the clarifications and changes made to the DRM clauses between the first and second drafts of the GPL?
Only Linus and the Slashbots who follow him seem to be spouting these claims. It is becoming harder and harder to attribute his comments to incompetence, rather than active malice.
From TFA, "Torvalds' comments should probably be read in the context of his statement that his particular concerns, notably the mention of DRM, have not been addressed. Yet, in fact, they have been. In an interview with NewsForge, Eben Moglen, who heads the revision process, specifically mentioned that some changes in the second draft were specifically made in response to Torvalds' concerns..."
Monopoly holders such as Microsoft and the *IAA will lobby for laws making the manufacture, import, sale or use of hardware without Trusted Computing chips illegal.
If I, as a user, cannot make use of the source code I recieved under the GPL (see: Tivo) then the license has been subverted. This is the issue that the DRM clauses in GPLv3 want to solve.
:(
Unfortunately most of the rest of the world seems determined to bury its head in the sand on this issue.