NeoOffice is a Java port of OpenOffice.org that runs on Mac OS X without the need for X11.
This means that it uses Mac OS X's fonts and font rendering, which is a huge improvement over X11. It has Mac OS X menus, and will get Mac OS X dialog boxes "real soon now".
It's excellent, and it's been developed by two, count them two, programmers for the last couple of years.
According to the Copyright Act of 1976, the copyrighting of an original piece of music confers upon the copyright holder five distinct and severable rights which include:
1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords 2) to prepare derivative works 3) to distribute copies or phonorecords to the public by sale or rental 4) to perform the works publicly 5) to display the works publicly (17 USC 106)
Sorry, I had to get back to my college textbooks in copyright law and look that one up after my post.
The language is a bit opaque but the point is that when somebody creates a piece of music, they have the right to collect royalties separately and severably in each of the areas of physical recordings, printed sheet music, public performance, licensing for inclusion in radio programs, TV programs and films, and others.
17 USC 106 is United States law, and it reflects international law according to what is called the Bern Convention. Look it up.
"Amazing how you use a man who steals other people's music to attach his "poems" to as an example of why we shouldn't post lyrics to the internet."
No, Weird Al is a parodist, and parody is covered under the fair use doctrine in American copyright law.
Recording such a song is legal as long as Weird Al's record label pays the compulsory mechanical licensing fee provided for in United States and international copyright law--which they do.
What makes you think that what Weird Al does is stealing? You obviously don't know the first thing about international law concerning copyrights.
"Since the lyrics are as integral a part of the intellectual property as the music and the recording, when I buy a recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas, and part of my cost is royalties to Gilbert and Sullivan, I also have the rights to a copy of Gilbert's lyrics and Sullivan's sheet music."
Absolutely not. According to US and international copyright law, the creator has separate rights to sell sheet music and lyric sheets. It's a separate item from a recording. There are 7 different areas in which the creator of something musical has the right to grant licenses and collect royalties. 6 of them are currently recognized in US law. One of them, to collect royalties for recordings played over the PA system in stores, restaurants and bars, was abolished by the US Congress about eight years ago.
You guys don't understand what you are talking about.
I can't believe the posts I'm reading here, and how misunderstanding and unsympathetic you all are.
Song lyrics are poems. They are written by professional lyricists. A person who writes song lyrics holds a copyright on what he's written, and he needs to protect that copyright in order to earn a living. Lyricists for pop songs don't get paid salaries. Their only chance is to earn royalties from sales.
Weird Al Yankovic is an example. All of his hits are somebody else's music with Weird Al's lyrics. Lyrics are all he writes--well, he writes very little original music. For years he's had a message on his Web site urging his fans not to post his lyrics on Web pages, and not to read Web pages with his lyrics on them, because they violate his copyrights and reduce his ability to collect royalties on his work. If you want Al's lyrics, Al wants you to buy the CD with the lyric booklet in it.
One of the main reasons people buy CDs is so they get the booklet inside that contains the lyrics. In previous generations, people bought sheet music or collections of lyrics in books called "broadsides" if they wanted to read the lyrics. This is how lyricists made income.
If lyrics to copyrighted songs are posted all over the Internet, that's piracy. The person putting up the Web page is a pirate, and the people that read, download or copy those lyrics are committing piracy also.
From the tenor of the posts I've read here, it seems that all of you recognize that a song, and a recording of the song, are things that the artists have a right to own and protect, but you seem to think that for some reason lyrics are exempt from that. They are not. You wouldn't tell Gilbert and Sullivan that Sullivan had the rights to earn royalties from the music, but Gilbert did not, because he wrote only lyrics and those are free. Same with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Both the music and the lyrics are intellectual property, and each hold their own copyright.
"Runaway" by Dell Shannon? "Walkin' the Dog" by Rufus Thomas? "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton? "The Dogs of War" by Pink Floyd? A Snoop Dog medley? "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window", by Petula Clark?
Anybody remember Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation and their flagship product, Chandler?
It was supposed to be the personal information manager and groupware application that would trump everything, be free and run on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
I could never survive in Canada. I've spent my whole life in Georgia and Tennessee where it virtually never stays below freezing for more than a couple of days at a time.
I think the watershed development is not bootable flash drives (although those are intriguing) but rather tiny handheld computers with flash memory and no hard drive at all. Palms and Dell Axims and the like have been around for many years, but the big breakthrough has just happened--devices that can access 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of affordable flash memory. The first commercial device to exhibit this potential is the Apple iPod nano, which was made possible by a special deal between Apple and Samsung where Apple essentially gets the flash memory at a steeply reduced cost.
This can't only be to the benefit of music or media players. This technology is bound to break out in fully functional sub-notebook computers running Windows, Mac OS or Linux, without a hard drive. These devices would be lighter, more durable, and run for more hours on the same battery charge due to flash memory needing less power than a spinning hard drive.
As Apple and Intel are promoting things, it's all about computing power per watt of electricity.
So I look forward to a new generation of devices bridging the Palm space, cell phones, and the notebook computer space, relying on flash memory and not a hard drive. I think with the new flash memory developments, we are much closer to carrying around our whole computing experience in our shirt pockets rather than our briefcases.
If your sister's main need is musical optical character recognition, then you need to ask the company that makes the musical recognation software! Don't bother with recommendations from Slashdot readers.
Most scanners are suitable, although ones supplied with WIA drivers are recommended since you will then be able to use the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces in PhotoScore 4 (if you have Windows Me/XP). The latest Epson (e.g. Perfection series) and HP (e.g. ScanJet series) scanners generally work very well.
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
Mac OS X
It is advisable that the scanner is supplied with a Mac OS X TWAIN driver (a classic TWAIN driver will not do), otherwise you will not be able to scan directly into PhotoScore (although you can still scan and save suitable TIFF files using your scanner's software, which PhotoScore can then open). Unfortunately many scanners are not supplied with these. We recommend in particular Epson (e.g. Perfection series) scanners as these also work with the Automatic and PhotoScore scanning interfaces (v4 only). Please note, there appear to be some compatibility issues between Epson drivers and Mac OS X 10.4 with regards to use of the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces (although the TWAIN interface should still function with no problems).
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
All copies of all wedding photos should be free, just like all music and all movies, over any and all P2P networks. Screw the professional wedding photographers!
If I understand the tradition correctly, an individual can buy and use an inexpensive printed, mass-produced copy of the Torah, even a bi-lingual one that puts a page of Hebrew next to an English translation. No problem.
But a synagogue or temple has to own a hand-written exact copy of the Torah on parchment rolls, for use in worship services. The rabbi is to read to the congregation from a perfect hand-made copy of the Torah. If he wants to elaborate on it, or translate it into English or whatever is the local language, fine, but he always needs to quote the real thing in the original language from an authoritative copy.
In contrast, in Christian churches, the pastor or priest can read to the congregation from whatever translation or paraphrase of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic that the congregation wants to use. The congregation will never hear the original Hebrew and Greek, and it's not considered important that they learn those languages. The exception is the Greek Orthodox Church, in which the Old and New Testaments are read aloud in a Greek translation (old testament) and in the original Greek (new testament).
In the Catholic Church, worldwide, for hundreds of years they only used a translation of the old and new testaments into Latin. Only forty years ago they decided to use translations in whatever the local language of the congregation is.
In the Hebrew tradition, there are a small number of scribes whose careers consist of making new perfect hand-written copies of the Torah for new synagogues and to replace worn-out ones, which are solemnly destroyed once it is confirmed that they are replaced by a proper hand-written replacement.
In this fashion the Jews have made sure that the original text of the Torah has not changed at all for several millenia. The very oldest fragments of written Torahs only differ from the ones made in this generation by a few alternate spellings of place names.
It doesn't make much sense to us in the information age, but it's worked for thousands of years, and there is no similar body of literature or group of documents from antiquity which has survived intact, without editorial changes or typos, like the Torah has.
All of the works of philosophy and theater written from 3,000 to 2,00 years ago in ancient Greece or the Roman Empire which we have today are known only from copies that date to the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. And these copies have obviously suffered some alteration and editing by the scribes that copied them thousands of years after they were composed. We have no way of knowing or proving if the words of Socrates that we find printed today bear any actual resemblance to what Socrates wrote 2,500 years ago (or however long it was). Not so the Torah!
This is quite an achievement. That's why the tradition of hand-copying the Torah and only accepting perfect copies for corporate worship and study will continue.
You gotta respect those Jews. They got it right and they kept it right, across millenia and unbelievable historical, political and cultural changes, and a diaspora that took them out of Palestine and all over the globe.
Why by a "fucking dumb ass mac when you could get an AWESOME PC" for the same money?
"What can you POSSIBLY do that you CANNOT do on a regular PC?" Many things. I'll tell you.
I guess I'm using my computer for different things than you are using your computer for.
There is no way to get anything even remotely approaching the functionality, power and ease of use of GarageBand 2.0.1 on a PC, at any price. If composing and recording music is a priority for you, and it's the main reason I'm buying a new computer, an iMac is a huge value. GarageBand 2.0.1 is FREE.
Not to mention iMovie and iPhoto. How much extra money would you have to pay to add a program as good as iMovie HD to your PC? It's free on the Mac. Would your PC come stock with a FireWire port (the big-plug kind) with power-over-FireWire? That would cost you extra money. All models of Mac have them stock.
Then there's the little fact that you don't have to worry about viruses or spyware on a Mac. They don't exist. Besides, the OS is secure enough to keep such threats away. How much money and time and grief do you spend defending your Windows PC from these scourges? I don't give them a single thought.
The operating system of the Mac has much better and more readable on-screen display of fonts, and better scalability when you want to zoom in. I consider the ease on my eyes and lack of fatigue, and more precise display, as big plusses. There is no way to get these on a Windows computer regardless of the graphics hardware or monitor being used.
I could go on, but you're an inarticulate troll who can't use decent language to discuss something you obviously have no clear concept of in your clouded little mind.
Go ahead, buy a Mac for once in your computing career. You'll enjoy it. You might actually get some work done. We won't tell your friends at the bowling alley. We won't call you a sissy, or tell your mother. We promise.
Yes, but as far as I know, all those Acid remix contests involved two track mixdowns and not individual master tracks before mixdown. And generally they only offered excerpts from the two track mixdowns.
So this is the first time that anybody's put up all the separate tracks and loops to an entire song. This is an important distinction.
I've just been called a moron by an anonymous coward. If I were to call someone a moron I would at least have the self-respect to sign my name to it.
Yes, technically viruses for Mac OS X exist, but I have never actually encountered one, and I have never met anyone else who has actually encountered one. I'm a Mac professional and I have come across hundreds of other Mac users in recent years. No viruses.
The practical, real-world reality is that there are absolutely no viruses that affect Mac users. None. Zilch. Nada. You can talk all you want about the existence of experimental proof-of-concept viruses on Macs, but in the real world there are none, and Mac users have, in all these years, never needed to worry about them.
Oh, yeah. I use Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux every day of my life. I'm technically competent on all three. You have to be in order to consider yourself educated and well-rounded. So I'm expressing an informed opinion here.
I am more productive in Mac OS X because I don't have to give a single thought to viruses, trojans, spyware eradication, pop-up ads, or whether or not my firewall is working, or whether or not my anti-virus definitions are up to date, and especially I don't have to worry about whether or not my Web surfing, Usenet or email-attachment-opening habits are compromising the security of my machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they sue anybody who uses BitTorrent to distribute illegal, pirated copies of music? That might make a positive contribution to the world.
NeoOffice is a Java port of OpenOffice.org that runs on Mac OS X without the need for X11.
This means that it uses Mac OS X's fonts and font rendering, which is a huge improvement over X11. It has Mac OS X menus, and will get Mac OS X dialog boxes "real soon now".
It's excellent, and it's been developed by two, count them two, programmers for the last couple of years.
http://neooffice.org/
They are separate from OpenOffice.org and they've done what nobody at OpenOffice.org was willing to do.
I use NeoOffice every day (word processing and spreadsheet). I made a donation to them last week.
Hmmn. $25-75 billion? We could completely storm-proof New Orleans for less than that.
OK, I have to amend that. It's five rights:
According to the Copyright Act of 1976, the copyrighting of an original piece of music confers upon the copyright holder five distinct and severable rights which include:
1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords
2) to prepare derivative works
3) to distribute copies or phonorecords to the public by sale or rental
4) to perform the works publicly
5) to display the works publicly
(17 USC 106)
Sorry, I had to get back to my college textbooks in copyright law and look that one up after my post.
The language is a bit opaque but the point is that when somebody creates a piece of music, they have the right to collect royalties separately and severably in each of the areas of physical recordings, printed sheet music, public performance, licensing for inclusion in radio programs, TV programs and films, and others.
17 USC 106 is United States law, and it reflects international law according to what is called the Bern Convention. Look it up.
"Amazing how you use a man who steals other people's music to attach his "poems" to as an example of why we shouldn't post lyrics to the internet." No, Weird Al is a parodist, and parody is covered under the fair use doctrine in American copyright law. Recording such a song is legal as long as Weird Al's record label pays the compulsory mechanical licensing fee provided for in United States and international copyright law--which they do. What makes you think that what Weird Al does is stealing? You obviously don't know the first thing about international law concerning copyrights. "Since the lyrics are as integral a part of the intellectual property as the music and the recording, when I buy a recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas, and part of my cost is royalties to Gilbert and Sullivan, I also have the rights to a copy of Gilbert's lyrics and Sullivan's sheet music." Absolutely not. According to US and international copyright law, the creator has separate rights to sell sheet music and lyric sheets. It's a separate item from a recording. There are 7 different areas in which the creator of something musical has the right to grant licenses and collect royalties. 6 of them are currently recognized in US law. One of them, to collect royalties for recordings played over the PA system in stores, restaurants and bars, was abolished by the US Congress about eight years ago. You guys don't understand what you are talking about.
I can't believe the posts I'm reading here, and how misunderstanding and unsympathetic you all are.
Song lyrics are poems. They are written by professional lyricists. A person who writes song lyrics holds a copyright on what he's written, and he needs to protect that copyright in order to earn a living. Lyricists for pop songs don't get paid salaries. Their only chance is to earn royalties from sales.
Weird Al Yankovic is an example. All of his hits are somebody else's music with Weird Al's lyrics. Lyrics are all he writes--well, he writes very little original music. For years he's had a message on his Web site urging his fans not to post his lyrics on Web pages, and not to read Web pages with his lyrics on them, because they violate his copyrights and reduce his ability to collect royalties on his work. If you want Al's lyrics, Al wants you to buy the CD with the lyric booklet in it.
One of the main reasons people buy CDs is so they get the booklet inside that contains the lyrics. In previous generations, people bought sheet music or collections of lyrics in books called "broadsides" if they wanted to read the lyrics. This is how lyricists made income.
If lyrics to copyrighted songs are posted all over the Internet, that's piracy. The person putting up the Web page is a pirate, and the people that read, download or copy those lyrics are committing piracy also.
From the tenor of the posts I've read here, it seems that all of you recognize that a song, and a recording of the song, are things that the artists have a right to own and protect, but you seem to think that for some reason lyrics are exempt from that. They are not. You wouldn't tell Gilbert and Sullivan that Sullivan had the rights to earn royalties from the music, but Gilbert did not, because he wrote only lyrics and those are free. Same with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Both the music and the lyrics are intellectual property, and each hold their own copyright.
How about selecting a ring tone for your dog?
"Runaway" by Dell Shannon?
"Walkin' the Dog" by Rufus Thomas?
"Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton?
"The Dogs of War" by Pink Floyd?
A Snoop Dog medley?
"How Much Is That Doggie In The Window", by Petula Clark?
The possibilities are endless.
Anybody remember Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation and their flagship product, Chandler?
It was supposed to be the personal information manager and groupware application that would trump everything, be free and run on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
http://www.osafoundation.org/
It was supposed to do everything that Exchange/Outlook and Evolution could do, only in a much more intuitive and user-friendly fashion.
Where is it now?
If you want to integrate Mac OS X computers into your existing Windows server infrastructure, be sure to check out http://macwindows.com/
This site is dedicated to enabling Mac OS X computers to coexist in the enterprise environment.
I could never survive in Canada. I've spent my whole life in Georgia and Tennessee where it virtually never stays below freezing for more than a couple of days at a time.
So what is Bruce Willis supposed to do in this scenario?
I think the watershed development is not bootable flash drives (although those are intriguing) but rather tiny handheld computers with flash memory and no hard drive at all. Palms and Dell Axims and the like have been around for many years, but the big breakthrough has just happened--devices that can access 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of affordable flash memory. The first commercial device to exhibit this potential is the Apple iPod nano, which was made possible by a special deal between Apple and Samsung where Apple essentially gets the flash memory at a steeply reduced cost.
This can't only be to the benefit of music or media players. This technology is bound to break out in fully functional sub-notebook computers running Windows, Mac OS or Linux, without a hard drive. These devices would be lighter, more durable, and run for more hours on the same battery charge due to flash memory needing less power than a spinning hard drive.
As Apple and Intel are promoting things, it's all about computing power per watt of electricity.
So I look forward to a new generation of devices bridging the Palm space, cell phones, and the notebook computer space, relying on flash memory and not a hard drive. I think with the new flash memory developments, we are much closer to carrying around our whole computing experience in our shirt pockets rather than our briefcases.
And not in my backyard.
If your sister's main need is musical optical character recognition, then you need to ask the company that makes the musical recognation software! Don't bother with recommendations from Slashdot readers.
Most likely it's Neuratron Photoscore
http://www.neuratron.com/
Their FAQ says the following:
Which scanners work best with PhotoScore?
Windows
Most scanners are suitable, although ones supplied with WIA drivers are recommended since you will then be able to use the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces in PhotoScore 4 (if you have Windows Me/XP). The latest Epson (e.g. Perfection series) and HP (e.g. ScanJet series) scanners generally work very well.
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
Mac OS X
It is advisable that the scanner is supplied with a Mac OS X TWAIN driver (a classic TWAIN driver will not do), otherwise you will not be able to scan directly into PhotoScore (although you can still scan and save suitable TIFF files using your scanner's software, which PhotoScore can then open). Unfortunately many scanners are not supplied with these. We recommend in particular Epson (e.g. Perfection series) scanners as these also work with the Automatic and PhotoScore scanning interfaces (v4 only). Please note, there appear to be some compatibility issues between Epson drivers and Mac OS X 10.4 with regards to use of the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces (although the TWAIN interface should still function with no problems).
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
[Troll alert!]
All copies of all wedding photos should be free, just like all music and all movies, over any and all P2P networks. Screw the professional wedding photographers!
If I understand the tradition correctly, an individual can buy and use an inexpensive printed, mass-produced copy of the Torah, even a bi-lingual one that puts a page of Hebrew next to an English translation. No problem.
But a synagogue or temple has to own a hand-written exact copy of the Torah on parchment rolls, for use in worship services. The rabbi is to read to the congregation from a perfect hand-made copy of the Torah. If he wants to elaborate on it, or translate it into English or whatever is the local language, fine, but he always needs to quote the real thing in the original language from an authoritative copy.
In contrast, in Christian churches, the pastor or priest can read to the congregation from whatever translation or paraphrase of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic that the congregation wants to use. The congregation will never hear the original Hebrew and Greek, and it's not considered important that they learn those languages. The exception is the Greek Orthodox Church, in which the Old and New Testaments are read aloud in a Greek translation (old testament) and in the original Greek (new testament).
In the Catholic Church, worldwide, for hundreds of years they only used a translation of the old and new testaments into Latin. Only forty years ago they decided to use translations in whatever the local language of the congregation is.
In the Hebrew tradition, there are a small number of scribes whose careers consist of making new perfect hand-written copies of the Torah for new synagogues and to replace worn-out ones, which are solemnly destroyed once it is confirmed that they are replaced by a proper hand-written replacement.
In this fashion the Jews have made sure that the original text of the Torah has not changed at all for several millenia. The very oldest fragments of written Torahs only differ from the ones made in this generation by a few alternate spellings of place names.
It doesn't make much sense to us in the information age, but it's worked for thousands of years, and there is no similar body of literature or group of documents from antiquity which has survived intact, without editorial changes or typos, like the Torah has.
All of the works of philosophy and theater written from 3,000 to 2,00 years ago in ancient Greece or the Roman Empire which we have today are known only from copies that date to the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. And these copies have obviously suffered some alteration and editing by the scribes that copied them thousands of years after they were composed. We have no way of knowing or proving if the words of Socrates that we find printed today bear any actual resemblance to what Socrates wrote 2,500 years ago (or however long it was). Not so the Torah!
This is quite an achievement. That's why the tradition of hand-copying the Torah and only accepting perfect copies for corporate worship and study will continue.
You gotta respect those Jews. They got it right and they kept it right, across millenia and unbelievable historical, political and cultural changes, and a diaspora that took them out of Palestine and all over the globe.
I, for one, welcome our new incredibly dense overlords.
Why by a "fucking dumb ass mac when you could get an AWESOME PC" for the same money?
"What can you POSSIBLY do that you CANNOT do on a regular PC?" Many things. I'll tell you.
I guess I'm using my computer for different things than you are using your computer for.
There is no way to get anything even remotely approaching the functionality, power and ease of use of GarageBand 2.0.1 on a PC, at any price. If composing and recording music is a priority for you, and it's the main reason I'm buying a new computer, an iMac is a huge value. GarageBand 2.0.1 is FREE.
Not to mention iMovie and iPhoto. How much extra money would you have to pay to add a program as good as iMovie HD to your PC? It's free on the Mac. Would your PC come stock with a FireWire port (the big-plug kind) with power-over-FireWire? That would cost you extra money. All models of Mac have them stock.
Then there's the little fact that you don't have to worry about viruses or spyware on a Mac. They don't exist. Besides, the OS is secure enough to keep such threats away. How much money and time and grief do you spend defending your Windows PC from these scourges? I don't give them a single thought.
The operating system of the Mac has much better and more readable on-screen display of fonts, and better scalability when you want to zoom in. I consider the ease on my eyes and lack of fatigue, and more precise display, as big plusses. There is no way to get these on a Windows computer regardless of the graphics hardware or monitor being used.
I could go on, but you're an inarticulate troll who can't use decent language to discuss something you obviously have no clear concept of in your clouded little mind.
Go ahead, buy a Mac for once in your computing career. You'll enjoy it. You might actually get some work done. We won't tell your friends at the bowling alley. We won't call you a sissy, or tell your mother. We promise.
I for one welcome our new Time Overlords.
Anybody want to buy my ultra-rare, highly collectible Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox with its 6GB hard drive?
I'm not sure what makes it rare or collectible, but the article says it will be some day.
Weighs a bit under one pound with the four AA rechargeable batteries.
Yes, but as far as I know, all those Acid remix contests involved two track mixdowns and not individual master tracks before mixdown. And generally they only offered excerpts from the two track mixdowns.
So this is the first time that anybody's put up all the separate tracks and loops to an entire song. This is an important distinction.
I've just been called a moron by an anonymous coward. If I were to call someone a moron I would at least have the self-respect to sign my name to it.
Yes, technically viruses for Mac OS X exist, but I have never actually encountered one, and I have never met anyone else who has actually encountered one. I'm a Mac professional and I have come across hundreds of other Mac users in recent years. No viruses.
The practical, real-world reality is that there are absolutely no viruses that affect Mac users. None. Zilch. Nada. You can talk all you want about the existence of experimental proof-of-concept viruses on Macs, but in the real world there are none, and Mac users have, in all these years, never needed to worry about them.
Oh, yeah. I use Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux every day of my life. I'm technically competent on all three. You have to be in order to consider yourself educated and well-rounded. So I'm expressing an informed opinion here.
I am more productive in Mac OS X because I don't have to give a single thought to viruses, trojans, spyware eradication, pop-up ads, or whether or not my firewall is working, or whether or not my anti-virus definitions are up to date, and especially I don't have to worry about whether or not my Web surfing, Usenet or email-attachment-opening habits are compromising the security of my machine.
You use a "reputable" service that facilitates your stealing other peoples' property?
That's an oxymoron.
If you trade pirated media on the service, then neither you nor it are "reputable", by definition.
Gertrude Walton must have been a fan of death metal.