This points out why SCO's claims are so strained. Obviously, AIX forks from Unix back in the AT&T days (85 sounds about right). All of SCO's claims make reference to a more recent contract between IBM and SCO relating to developing technology that may or may not be in AIX still, but definitely isn't in Linux (well, extremely unlikely in any case). It makes you even wonder why IBM would have needed the later contract, since they would have already had the irrevokable rights to all of AIX, and it is doubtful that SCO had anything they couldn't easily create themselves.
It is beyond imagination that IBM would have signed a contract that openned them up to any of this. The only possible conclusion is that SCO is nuts.
No, definitely not that, but I think the following comment to this one got it right "Open System Foundation". Somehow that doesn't sound quite right, but the names may have been changed along the way as well.
DEC, HP and IBM were the big members, maybe SGI too.
A nitpick, I know, but the OpenServer product came out after AT&T got SCO to merge the Xenix fork back into Unix line. Unifying Unix was one of AT&T's big projects of the late 80s, with the SunOS -> Solaris change being the first one and SCO being the second. The rest of the Unix world meanwhile was standardizing under another banner, whose name escapes me at the moment. Something ending in "Consortium" as I recall.
In the end, there probably isn't much left from MS.
Well, you didn't really address my point about equivalence. The high limits for infringement do reflect that true IP "pirates" are going to be making thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but the prosecutor is going to have to present some evidence of the scale which will be part of the sentencing consideration. Same thing with theft, the scale does matter, but it does seem that it is easier to pull in the presumption that it is being done on a commercial scale. Before the internet, the scale of people trading bootleg tapes could never grow to the scale possible when you put 100 CDs on your server and make it available, so informal trading never was big enough to even go after, and now they (RIAA et al) are equating this sharing with pirating for profit. My point is that with theft crimes, they are sometimes part of an organized scheme, but it is still pretty difficult to make the case that any individual theft is more than just that, and I think we would both agree that the difference is how aggressive the content industries have been at pressing for many laws and high penalties.
Your final disclaimer paragraph is very good. I'm sure that most actual authors think more like you than the content industries. IMHO, taking the DMCA and DRM to their ultimate conclusion does in fact reduce the value of the products and discourages many potential consumers. WRT swapping music files, I strongly suspect that this actually makes the long term market for the products much bigger and more lucrative. There must be some good economic studies to this effect, but the industry is so intent on control that they don't see that it is their own actions that are killing their profits.
It would be more informative if you were more explicite about what you know about the letter of the law. It was always my understanding that "fair use" originated in judicial action, not the law, but perhaps they have codified some of this (backup copies, personal use on another medium, etc.). Obviously, we agree about the likely interpretations whether in the law as written or from cases past or future.
You are also correct that the RIAA and other commercial content interests want to make a big deal about the change to digital media. This is really on two levels, 1) digital versions can be copied infinitely without loss and 2) it's a new product "feature". The first is the basis for their legislative agenda that improperly seeks to inhibit technological progress with all the FUD about piracy and such, and the second is the smoke and mirrors to cover jacking up prices as the cost of copying goes down. Then they have the nerve to label college students swapping music a hardenned criminals while they commit crimes on a massive scale, and manipulate the law to get a slap on the wrist when they are caught (the price fixing judgement) or pay off legislators to enact highly restrictive and anti-competetive laws.
On the infringement vs theft issue, clearly most ordinary people are more concerned about the latter, so rhetorically labeling it theft of piracy is in their (RIAA's) interest. I don't think you have an agenda with this, but I wonder why you are pointing to the penalties this way. I have a hard time believing that taking vs. copying the same number of CDs would get a lighter sentence. If it does, then it just means that the content industries are better at pushing their interests legislatively (which is apparent on the other legal issues already), but theft and fraud are big problems for a lot of commercial interests too, so you'd have to find another reason for the difference.
I doubt I have the latest, but I have two others ("Joshua Judges Ruth", and "I Hate Everybody" or is that just one of the tracks, the discs are on the boat, so I can't check). He is a favorite of mine, even if he is one of the strangest looking guys around.
I haven't bought a CD in years, and I only have a small handful of CD/R dups. In the day, I would copy albums to tape, and I'm quite certain that I have bought many more LPs and CDs over the years as a result of this copying than I could possibly have bought back then. My first project when I finally purchase an OGG player/recorder will be to transfer all my old LPs to a hard disk for archiving and use. I'll have to get a working turntable as well. When I do buy music in the future, I'm sure to support the artists who make it easy to check out their work for free first.
Can anyone point to any cases where this particular fair use was put to the test? Specifically where someone has bought a legal copy of a digital work which is no longer usable for some reason, and they "fixed" the problem by making a copy of the identical work "borrowed" from someone else. I'm guessing it is not settled as a matter of law, but your speculation is likely true since I can't imagine a reasonable person finding anything remotely unethical about doing it.
All this talk about "License" actually misses the point. Traditionally, what you purchase is a copy of the original work, which gives you the right to do certain things with it under copyright law. There is a lot of case law about what is and is not "fair use" under copyright law, but the truth is that "fair use" is not a precisely defined concept, and legal rulings may change it, or clarify it for new situations. The RIAA guy is saying that it matters whether you make a copy of your purchased copy, or a different one as if it is a settled legal issue, but I'm quite certain it is not. There is an argument to be made that when a title is reissued on CD or other digital format, that it is actually a new edition with enhanced and added content. In reality, the differnce is probably more like the difference between a paperback and a hard-cover version of a book. Publishers are also trying to push the idea that the digital version of a book has significant new features (e.g. searchability), but the digital audio cases are more like a digital facsimile of the original.
There is also an issue with "enhancement" because once you have scanned an analog source to digital, you can apply digital techniques to enhance it (i.e. OCR the text so it can be searched, or digitally filter and enhance the audio signal to make it better than the source).
Finally, you gotta love the way he slipped in the theft analogy, even though it doesn't fit the situation at all. The true analog would be that I have a VCR tape that I purchased and my friend has the DVD, which I make a digital copy of and use instead of the analog I own. Again, the DVD may have new content not on my tape, and if I was really scrupulous I would not copy those parts, but even if I didn't go this far, I would only be guilty of infringement, not theft.
I see that a lot. I just don't see anything in the constitution about losing your right to free speech if you fail to exercise your right to vote.
No, you are still free to speak, my point is just that I won't be very interested in hearing your complaints. On the other hand, I don't really think that we can solve the worlds problems in the political domain. For me, voting and politics is to try and prevent the worst possible things from happening. At best they are somewhat inneffective, although now I fear the balance has been tipped toward "completely evil".
You'll need a search site which lists lots of music to download, preferably including lots of stuff that is legal for download along with the RIAA encumberred bait, and then you will need another to raise money for lawyers and websites and post information about how the great fight is going.
Also, you might want to tone down the "challenge" language if you really want them to take the bait. Of course, you can probably also recruit some fellow defendants from the small group of people already in the RIAA's crosshairs and make your legal defense group a bit broader. It does have the advantage of getting into the legal battles and getting some battlefield experience before becoming a target personally.
Sure, there are lots of problems with the political system, but if you don't vote, don't complain. True enough that voting doesn't necessarily change anything, but I can guarantee that if you don't vote, your voice will not be heard at all. An apathetic electorate only strenghens the hand of the commercial interests that hope to buy favors.
In my view, when things go wrong with a big expensive science project, it is misleading at best to blame the programmer or engineer who may have made a mistake, etc. As you point out, programmers vary as to ability, but it is the system of engineering checks and balances that ensures the quality of the entire project. If a junior programmer introduces a bug that eventually becomes a catastrophic failure of the project, then perhaps the task was too difficult, but any programmer will make some mistakes so the bottom line is QA processes (code reviews, good testing, realistic schedules, etc.) must be good enough for the situation.
We haven't seen software failures taking out manned missions, two shuttles failed from the high stresses of takeoff and re-entry. Just a guess, but the engineering standards are probably much higher for the manned programs, and more people review the code. Also, keep in mind that NASA has been experimenting with the idea of saving money with faster paced development which means some reduction in review and other QA standards, particularly on unmanned planetary missions. It may even be that this method is cost effective in spite of some high profile failures.
And it is finite as well, but I don't see anyone with a closed form solution to that either. Even with a very small, searchable code space for possible programs, it is not possible to completely characterize the program's behavior.
Theoretically, all programs have latent bugs, unless they are too simple to do much.
There's no need for name calling. They are not talking about low power exclusively, the review covers all spectrum.
If they are really interested in openning up the spectrum for more and varied uses, particularly at the low power end of the scale, they would not be talking about spectrum as a "limited" resource. Instead they would be talking more about Open Spectrum and finding more ways for more uses to share spectrum and make it effectively an unlimited resource.
As to being international, don't you think that a lot of value can be had from international coordination of this sort of effort? At the very least, coordination might prevent situations where wireless equipment needs to be customized for each region. Even if this is strictly a configuration issue for flexible hardware, it introduces unnecessary complications and cost.
I'm just sick and tired of the sanctimonious tone taken about the American government, when, for all intents and purposes it is dramatically better than just about any other government on the planet.
That's nice, but it doesn't help your argument. I said nothing about any actual comparisons between governments. You may have had a point if you were replying to a representative of the Indian government, but there is no suggestion that this is the case, unlike the Mexican example in this reply.
Personally, I don't know much about Indian politics, but from what I do know about U.S. politics, this statement isn't very defensible:
Is the US perfect? Absolutely not -- but its flaws are well known, well talked about, and even the leadership class is willing to do something about many of them.
Living in a country with corrupt politics doesn't disqualify someone from commenting on corruption wherever and whenever they see it. You speak as if rooting out corruption was as simple as taking a stand against it as an individual. Your Nazi party analogy is less than worthless as you are equating an entire nation with a sub-group that self-selects for intolerance. Nazis are intolerant because this is their philosophy and they encourage all members to be this way is in no way equivalent to: India is corrupt because all Indians are corrupt. No, the Indian government may be corrupt, but that in no way suggests that all or even most Indians are corrupt. Even the idea that their government is more corrupt than the U.S. is dubious, therefore your entire comment has no point.
Yes, activism must start at home, but there is no reason not to share insights and approaches globally. Often it is easier to sort out the issues from an alien perspective, just as we often have more clarity about our friend's problem than our own.
Remotely connecting this to the topic, I claim that the widespread adoption of the OSS development model can only be a positive example in terms of transparency and openness. Both of these are very good habits for a society trying to reduce the impact and scope of corruption.
Novell appears to be very interested in the community good will generated by being a good corporate citizen of the open/free source world. I'm surprised it took them so long to comment (the lawyers probably had to mull everything over for a while first).
If the truth is as it now appears that SCO really has very little IP interest in the original Unix core, and Novell actually owns what IP remains, then of course they can release any possible legal liabilities for Linux as it is and even release versions of their Sys V property under a free license. Novell would be very wise to do something like this because there isn't much commercial value remaining in this IP. I claim that the commercial value would actually increase after they released all the old stuff under GPL or compatible license. Anyone wanting to create a commercial derivative product still has to come back to the original owners for a commercial license, and the GPL branch will bring experimentation and resources to both.
Yes, I've noticed a few comments here and on their site about this. It isn't completely clear what part of the OGG space they are covering initially. Vorbis and FLAC, encode and decode? One comment seemed to indicate that the decode side is fairly well integrated for both, so that might be available soon. Another said that FLAC encoding still requires some floating point but that it shouldn't be too hard to fix that.
It is interesting that the early comments in their forum were careful about not saying definitively that they would have OGG as a purely software update, but they appear to have gotten past that. I still couldn't find anything for sure about decoding or FLAC. I suppose it is partly a matter of whether the existing hardware has enough processor power to keep up at sufficient bit rates.
I don't know about this saving Sun or not, but there is nothing weak or behind in any way about Solaris. Solaris has been a rock-solid server and workstation OS for a long time, and it is a lot more mature than Linux, so you probably don't hear as much about it these days. Solaris/x86 probably hasn't gotten as much attention from Sun, although I can't really comment on this variant from personal experience.
On the hardware side, Sun's hardware engineering and field support are far superior to most PC systems, so the only reason they might trail in a head to head competition is price. Again, no personal experience with Sun x86 platforms, but as long as they don't fall far below their quality on the SPARC platform, I would have no problem recommending these systems, particularly if cost isn't the highest rating element.
That said, I think it is pretty ironic that Sun is probably suffering the most right now from the rise of Linux (and Dell is probably the benneficiary of this movement). They have been the most "Open" of the Open Systems vendors (not to be confused with Open Source). On the other hand, they probably will survive all of this and emerge as a leaner, meaner competitor and deliver even better system solutions at even better prices. Personally, I think they are making a mistake by not fully embracing Linux, but they have a lot of people and resources working on Solaris, so it is hard to change. They may be forced to by economics, though.
Smaller is always nice, but the feature set of this player well justify the size. Besides the OGG format and the Linux support, the built in FM transmitter is very cool. You could just stick this thing in a waist pack and get one of those headphone/radio receivers and your totally wireless. As a biker and non-jogger, this setup is really better anyway, although you still need a way to get to the controls more easily.
On their forums, the feedback was very strong in support of the OGG format, and probably they will make a lot of sales based on this. Since these pure digital audio devices are pretty geeky things to begin with, I would think that any surveys of current and near term potential customers would show very strong support for OGG in general, so it is puzzling to see how slowly it is being adopted. There are many MP3 players, probably a number of small ones like you want, but apparently none for OGG. For the same reason that this product gets a strong positive responce on/., the first company to add this to a very small device will have an immediate market for a good number of these. In general, I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for digital audio, and it is mostly amound early adopter types who are geeky enough to hold off on the next purchase until the formats and features they want and need are supported. Many of these people already have one of more devices that they consider adaquate and won't purchase until they see the features they are lacking, and maybe even more, like myself, who are holding off on the first purchase for similar reasons.
Personally, if I had the budget for it, I would get one of these immediately. I need the FM transmitter so I can easily adapt it to my boat stereo (CD and radio with no aux inputs). Radio shack has an FM adapter for around 30-40 bucks, but built-in beats this easily. Plus mike and line recording, and I'd almost be ready to buy without the OGG stuff. The Linux sync support is also key for me as I have rather limited Windows resources at home.
I hate to respond to trolls, but I think it is important to make the case that the use of Open Formats as promoted by Bruce Perens (at sincerechoice.org) is really the key issue.
and because all commercial apps will be geared to work with the MS-Linux desktop, the users of the other distibutions (read ALL of them) will still have their 4th rate "alternative" apps, and not the quality MS-Linux ones.
If Bill and company were to give in to an GPLed kernel and core system, and just port their crappy desktop apps to a Linux base, nothing would really change. Yes, the core OS is primary for security and stability, but for long term usability of your digitally encoded materials, whether audio, visual or text, it is the application formats that matter. At some point (now or in the near future), you will probably need an open source app just to convert obsolete MS word processor files and spreadsheets to something usable.
The reason this won't happen is that if the core OS was Linux, this would vastly lower the barrier for high-quality commercial applications from vendors other than MS as well for Free applications. Further, the most important security vulnerabilities of MS systems is really applications related, not OS, so they would just be porting their insecure apps to Linux and nothing would change.
OGG vs. MP3 is yet another "format" debate, and I fully expect that in the long run, the most open and capable formats will win. As others here and in some of the Neuros forums have pointed out, you want to have record capability for a lossless format for source recordings and archives so you can convert easily to whatever compact format you need. OGG-FLAC combined with OGG-Vorbis seem like a really hot ticket. I gather that the OGG-FLAC encoding hasn't been adapted for integer only devices like this one, but that hurdle shouldn't be too tough.
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I don't know what they call the OS of AS400, but I'd bet they still get way more revenue from that than all the *NIX stuff combined.
It is beyond imagination that IBM would have signed a contract that openned them up to any of this. The only possible conclusion is that SCO is nuts.
DEC, HP and IBM were the big members, maybe SGI too.
In the end, there probably isn't much left from MS.
Your final disclaimer paragraph is very good. I'm sure that most actual authors think more like you than the content industries. IMHO, taking the DMCA and DRM to their ultimate conclusion does in fact reduce the value of the products and discourages many potential consumers. WRT swapping music files, I strongly suspect that this actually makes the long term market for the products much bigger and more lucrative. There must be some good economic studies to this effect, but the industry is so intent on control that they don't see that it is their own actions that are killing their profits.
You are also correct that the RIAA and other commercial content interests want to make a big deal about the change to digital media. This is really on two levels, 1) digital versions can be copied infinitely without loss and 2) it's a new product "feature". The first is the basis for their legislative agenda that improperly seeks to inhibit technological progress with all the FUD about piracy and such, and the second is the smoke and mirrors to cover jacking up prices as the cost of copying goes down. Then they have the nerve to label college students swapping music a hardenned criminals while they commit crimes on a massive scale, and manipulate the law to get a slap on the wrist when they are caught (the price fixing judgement) or pay off legislators to enact highly restrictive and anti-competetive laws.
On the infringement vs theft issue, clearly most ordinary people are more concerned about the latter, so rhetorically labeling it theft of piracy is in their (RIAA's) interest. I don't think you have an agenda with this, but I wonder why you are pointing to the penalties this way. I have a hard time believing that taking vs. copying the same number of CDs would get a lighter sentence. If it does, then it just means that the content industries are better at pushing their interests legislatively (which is apparent on the other legal issues already), but theft and fraud are big problems for a lot of commercial interests too, so you'd have to find another reason for the difference.
I haven't bought a CD in years, and I only have a small handful of CD/R dups. In the day, I would copy albums to tape, and I'm quite certain that I have bought many more LPs and CDs over the years as a result of this copying than I could possibly have bought back then. My first project when I finally purchase an OGG player/recorder will be to transfer all my old LPs to a hard disk for archiving and use. I'll have to get a working turntable as well. When I do buy music in the future, I'm sure to support the artists who make it easy to check out their work for free first.
Can anyone point to any cases where this particular fair use was put to the test? Specifically where someone has bought a legal copy of a digital work which is no longer usable for some reason, and they "fixed" the problem by making a copy of the identical work "borrowed" from someone else. I'm guessing it is not settled as a matter of law, but your speculation is likely true since I can't imagine a reasonable person finding anything remotely unethical about doing it.
There is also an issue with "enhancement" because once you have scanned an analog source to digital, you can apply digital techniques to enhance it (i.e. OCR the text so it can be searched, or digitally filter and enhance the audio signal to make it better than the source).
Finally, you gotta love the way he slipped in the theft analogy, even though it doesn't fit the situation at all. The true analog would be that I have a VCR tape that I purchased and my friend has the DVD, which I make a digital copy of and use instead of the analog I own. Again, the DVD may have new content not on my tape, and if I was really scrupulous I would not copy those parts, but even if I didn't go this far, I would only be guilty of infringement, not theft.
The parent is funny, this is not.
Which, I guess, explains why they are always trying to gut public and higher education.
No, you are still free to speak, my point is just that I won't be very interested in hearing your complaints. On the other hand, I don't really think that we can solve the worlds problems in the political domain. For me, voting and politics is to try and prevent the worst possible things from happening. At best they are somewhat inneffective, although now I fear the balance has been tipped toward "completely evil".
Also, you might want to tone down the "challenge" language if you really want them to take the bait. Of course, you can probably also recruit some fellow defendants from the small group of people already in the RIAA's crosshairs and make your legal defense group a bit broader. It does have the advantage of getting into the legal battles and getting some battlefield experience before becoming a target personally.
Good luck.
Sure, there are lots of problems with the political system, but if you don't vote, don't complain. True enough that voting doesn't necessarily change anything, but I can guarantee that if you don't vote, your voice will not be heard at all. An apathetic electorate only strenghens the hand of the commercial interests that hope to buy favors.
We haven't seen software failures taking out manned missions, two shuttles failed from the high stresses of takeoff and re-entry. Just a guess, but the engineering standards are probably much higher for the manned programs, and more people review the code. Also, keep in mind that NASA has been experimenting with the idea of saving money with faster paced development which means some reduction in review and other QA standards, particularly on unmanned planetary missions. It may even be that this method is cost effective in spite of some high profile failures.
Theoretically, all programs have latent bugs, unless they are too simple to do much.
If they are really interested in openning up the spectrum for more and varied uses, particularly at the low power end of the scale, they would not be talking about spectrum as a "limited" resource. Instead they would be talking more about Open Spectrum and finding more ways for more uses to share spectrum and make it effectively an unlimited resource.
As to being international, don't you think that a lot of value can be had from international coordination of this sort of effort? At the very least, coordination might prevent situations where wireless equipment needs to be customized for each region. Even if this is strictly a configuration issue for flexible hardware, it introduces unnecessary complications and cost.
That's nice, but it doesn't help your argument. I said nothing about any actual comparisons between governments. You may have had a point if you were replying to a representative of the Indian government, but there is no suggestion that this is the case, unlike the Mexican example in this reply.
Personally, I don't know much about Indian politics, but from what I do know about U.S. politics, this statement isn't very defensible:
Is the US perfect? Absolutely not -- but its flaws are well known, well talked about, and even the leadership class is willing to do something about many of them.
Yes, activism must start at home, but there is no reason not to share insights and approaches globally. Often it is easier to sort out the issues from an alien perspective, just as we often have more clarity about our friend's problem than our own.
Remotely connecting this to the topic, I claim that the widespread adoption of the OSS development model can only be a positive example in terms of transparency and openness. Both of these are very good habits for a society trying to reduce the impact and scope of corruption.
If the truth is as it now appears that SCO really has very little IP interest in the original Unix core, and Novell actually owns what IP remains, then of course they can release any possible legal liabilities for Linux as it is and even release versions of their Sys V property under a free license. Novell would be very wise to do something like this because there isn't much commercial value remaining in this IP. I claim that the commercial value would actually increase after they released all the old stuff under GPL or compatible license. Anyone wanting to create a commercial derivative product still has to come back to the original owners for a commercial license, and the GPL branch will bring experimentation and resources to both.
It is interesting that the early comments in their forum were careful about not saying definitively that they would have OGG as a purely software update, but they appear to have gotten past that. I still couldn't find anything for sure about decoding or FLAC. I suppose it is partly a matter of whether the existing hardware has enough processor power to keep up at sufficient bit rates.
On the hardware side, Sun's hardware engineering and field support are far superior to most PC systems, so the only reason they might trail in a head to head competition is price. Again, no personal experience with Sun x86 platforms, but as long as they don't fall far below their quality on the SPARC platform, I would have no problem recommending these systems, particularly if cost isn't the highest rating element.
That said, I think it is pretty ironic that Sun is probably suffering the most right now from the rise of Linux (and Dell is probably the benneficiary of this movement). They have been the most "Open" of the Open Systems vendors (not to be confused with Open Source). On the other hand, they probably will survive all of this and emerge as a leaner, meaner competitor and deliver even better system solutions at even better prices. Personally, I think they are making a mistake by not fully embracing Linux, but they have a lot of people and resources working on Solaris, so it is hard to change. They may be forced to by economics, though.
On their forums, the feedback was very strong in support of the OGG format, and probably they will make a lot of sales based on this. Since these pure digital audio devices are pretty geeky things to begin with, I would think that any surveys of current and near term potential customers would show very strong support for OGG in general, so it is puzzling to see how slowly it is being adopted. There are many MP3 players, probably a number of small ones like you want, but apparently none for OGG. For the same reason that this product gets a strong positive responce on /., the first company to add this to a very small device will have an immediate market for a good number of these. In general, I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for digital audio, and it is mostly amound early adopter types who are geeky enough to hold off on the next purchase until the formats and features they want and need are supported. Many of these people already have one of more devices that they consider adaquate and won't purchase until they see the features they are lacking, and maybe even more, like myself, who are holding off on the first purchase for similar reasons.
Personally, if I had the budget for it, I would get one of these immediately. I need the FM transmitter so I can easily adapt it to my boat stereo (CD and radio with no aux inputs). Radio shack has an FM adapter for around 30-40 bucks, but built-in beats this easily. Plus mike and line recording, and I'd almost be ready to buy without the OGG stuff. The Linux sync support is also key for me as I have rather limited Windows resources at home.
and because all commercial apps will be geared to work with the MS-Linux desktop, the users of the other distibutions (read ALL of them) will still have their 4th rate "alternative" apps, and not the quality MS-Linux ones.
If Bill and company were to give in to an GPLed kernel and core system, and just port their crappy desktop apps to a Linux base, nothing would really change. Yes, the core OS is primary for security and stability, but for long term usability of your digitally encoded materials, whether audio, visual or text, it is the application formats that matter. At some point (now or in the near future), you will probably need an open source app just to convert obsolete MS word processor files and spreadsheets to something usable.
The reason this won't happen is that if the core OS was Linux, this would vastly lower the barrier for high-quality commercial applications from vendors other than MS as well for Free applications. Further, the most important security vulnerabilities of MS systems is really applications related, not OS, so they would just be porting their insecure apps to Linux and nothing would change.
OGG vs. MP3 is yet another "format" debate, and I fully expect that in the long run, the most open and capable formats will win. As others here and in some of the Neuros forums have pointed out, you want to have record capability for a lossless format for source recordings and archives so you can convert easily to whatever compact format you need. OGG-FLAC combined with OGG-Vorbis seem like a really hot ticket. I gather that the OGG-FLAC encoding hasn't been adapted for integer only devices like this one, but that hurdle shouldn't be too tough.
Just rip it out of the side of Flanders' house, don't bother to cover you tracks and deny it when Ned comes over to ask about it.