I drive through downtown Indianapolis, just so you know that it's probably not like your area. The central area is determined by 2 interstates boxing in the area on 3 sides. All of the streets are one way and there are 4 main streets that lead to highway ramps. All of these streets are perfectly timed so that you can set the cruise control at the speed limit after you pass the first light. It's fun to watch other people accelerating hard out of a red just to brake again at another red as I coast through to the highway. If the combination of road sensors and timing algorithms work well together it's possible to encourage people to drive the limit by preventing speeders from getting there faster.
The lights in the direction of the emergency vehicle turn green so people can move out and away instead of blocking the intersection. I've seen people at regular 'dumb' intersections sit in front of a fire truck and block it because he thought he would get in trouble for running a red to let them through. Also, I'm not sure if it's lke this everywhere, but around here if something comes through such an intersection the light goes from green to red with no yellow warning at the exact same time the other direction gets the green. That sould defiately cause some chaos if ignorant drivers decide to get selfish.
One thing people always forget is that speeding and runing reds rarely gets you there faster. People who dodge and weave through rush hour highway traffic are a whole 2 or 3 cars in front of me when I get to the off ramp. I've learned the timing of lights around my office and home so now I can actually get there faster by driving just few miles under the limit. Usually it's the impatient people that create traffic in the first place. The more that people obey speed limits the better the timing of intersections gets.
Now just tell me why it crashes every time I add a folder to my library like he did. I tried moving out the files crashing the program, but with a total size of over 6000 files, I stopped when I moved seperated over 1000 files. I also know I'm not the only one having this problem.
Actually mob rule is the basis of law in america. It just happens to be based on the christian mob. Since we all live in a country that is run by christians it's not considered mob rule, it's just the way it should be. There is a reason things like sodomy, adultery, abortion, and many other non-christian behaviors were (and some still are) illegal for so long. For some reason forcing women to wear cloth from head to toe in a muslim society is backward and wrong but sticking a man in jail for sodomy in texas is the good christian thing to do. The one constant in society is mans intolerance for people not like him. Get enough like minded people together and it stops being wrong and starts being 'just the way it is'.
You want an answer to the piracy problem: Meet half way. It's obvious people want more choices than the century old album, and it's just as obvious that the record companies want to keep their iron fist wrapped around peoples musical outlets as well as their wallets. Neither side is totaly right or wrong. In fact, I'd say both sides are just as stubborn and closed minded. There is some common ground.
The primary interest in business is profit. Many times innovation and advancements are not in the best interest of profit. Since the internet has been revolutionizing society and culture for the last 10 years, and will continue to do so at exponential rates, we don't need corporations governing such important parts of it. Imagine one day having to enter a code from under your Sprite bottle cap to access information that is otherwise not related to Coca-Cola. If this happens, the benefits are far outweighed by the negative consequences that can't even bee seen yet.
Broadcast flags don't mean jack. Anything that can be recorded and/or played with technology can be hacked with technology. Those flags that people set on internet media don't work. You can capture a live stream and process any flags in or out of it you want at a later time.
I've been waiting for a replacement for winamp for a while now. I downloaded and installed this and everyting looks nice. Almost a perfect clone of the mac version. There is one major problem for me. Every time I try to inport my music folder it crashes almost as soon as the first song is processed. I don't want it searching my HD for media because the only audio I want in my playlist is the stuff in one specific folder and I have more audio files outside of my media folder than inside. Any suggestions?
Mono could be used to port off of.NET into a linux or possibly bsd environment. I've never written a large or complex app before, so the comments I'm looking for would be for the following assumption: Now that the apps are in their new environment it would it be as hard of a step to get them off mono an into another simmilar language. Hopefuly people will remember why they ditched windows in the first place and make the next logical step in progression and recode the program. If not I say if they switch back to MS after this happens, let 'em. Linux existed before.net and mono and it will exist afterwards (maybe even at a larger market share than tosday).
That attitude is exactly why so many legitimate and possibly interesting projects are getting attacked- claiming to support freedom when what you really like is theft and lawlessness.
I think they stated this perfectly. By saying piracy is not condoned they admitt that there will be peope who will use it for illegal means, but they don't support it as well as there being legitimate reasons to use the hack. By the other side of the coin, if they say something like they support piracy they open themselves to possible criminal or civil charges. Either way they will inspire statements like yours. A $99 computer that runs linux with network access could be valuable to many people. The thing about being a consumer is that people feel like they should be the one who decides what to do with their investment. If these people didn't publish the hack, someone else would have, it's only a matter of time. That's why you should be upset with pirates and not the hackers. They are the ones breaking the law.
Open standards are the best solutions for standing the test of time. Proprietary solutions are at the mercy of the owner. The birth of the moden internet is usually marked as the time the protocol was switched to TCP/IP. Imagine something as wide reaching as the internet being able to function at the level it does if more than one concurrent standard would be in use. Every day people find use for the internet. THe internet is the modern swiss knife. With one tool you can research papers, buy anything, get porn, music or art, and read even the craziest fanatic's ramblings. And now it's poised to revolutionize voice conversation. Because of this I back Robertson. There's nothing wrong competition, but the true advantage of market competition comes from a level playing feild where players win by making new features and technilogical advances.
The US government has begun freely advertising anti-American and terrorist websites to a massive audience who probably would have otherwise not heard of them.
There's more to cloning a PC than reverse engineering a BIOS. I know Intel didn't RE the x86 processor. They were contacted by IBM to produce them and then they got too many orders and Intel contracted AMD which lead to AMDs clones of the 386 and 486 processers. The ISA an PCI buses weren't patented like IBM did MCA on the PS2. If the processor and architecture are not patented or not enforced then cloning the BIOS is relatively easy since most of the work is already done.
I also know that windows OEMs compete with Apple, but I was talking specifically about competion in the PPC market (ie. a specific market). As far as I know there is none, at least in comparison to the x86 market.
Ford WOULD have a monopoly in the car market if, say, they were the exclusive makers of SUVs or internal combustion engines. But again, my point is missed. In the PC market, for example, Dell is PART of the PC market. In the PPC market, Apple IS the market. That's my point, nothing more.
I find it amazing that with such focus and emphasis on security by Microsoft that its products are still as insecure and vulnerable as ever. Maybe people accept talk of action and press releases as actual movement in that direction. As far as I'm concerned talk is just talk. Maybe they can earn my respect when they actually DO something instead of drafting press releases or issuing last minute 'duct tape' fixes.
I know it's hard for Mac fanatics to make a reply without insults, but please calm the hell down. The DVD player analogy is flawed because you can buy many brands of DVD players that all play at least a standard DVD and will interface through one or more standard connectors. While Apple may not be a monopoly by traditional definition, they are not PART of a market like PC hardware manufacturers. They ARE the market for Apple and Mac hardware. With a few historic exceptions, Apple holds and enforces all copyrights and patents on their hardware and anything that interfaces with it; which is the opposite of the x86 architecture that IBM and Intel allowed others to clone freely. I haven't heard the word thrown around much, but that's what PCs were referred to as in specifications; PC XT or clone. I remember working in a repair shop years ago when one of the Apple technicians spent almost a week fixing a non-Apple dual G2. The same thing happened with the PC market too. Non-standard configurations lead to problems with hardware and software. That's one reason they like to remain the exclusive manufacturers hardware.
I can't help but say that if people would read between the lines they might realize the point of the topic instead of simply what was stated. I do not like writing shot essays to explain myself nor do I like writing disclaimers at the end of all posts. Everything I stated can be found in books about the evolution of the personal computer. You can debate opinion, and you can debate fact, but you can't debate history.
I hope none of these parents use cordless phones, TVs, microwave ovens, chlorinated tap water, computers, or folding chairs at home. God knows WiFi is 100 times worse than that healthy radiation comming from the TV or monitor.
It isn't a Slashdot discussion on DRM, P2P, or piracy until someone incorrectly uses an analogy comparing piracy and theft.
If you use a slim-jim you are probably committing theft. If you use a marker or shit key you are probably exercising your Fair Use rights or committing piracy. If you own a car that a slim-jim still works on, I suggest either a good insurance plan or a new car that's smarter than a thin peice of metal with a notch in the side. If you use DRM, I suggest using some that can be bypassed with more than 1 cent worth of ink. If you don't, you deserve what you get.
I've been eagerly waiting years to invest in a DRM provider that develops real solutions to real problems. I've spent some time researching your company and was considering investing until I read an article about how your technology worked. As it turns out, it was built on a very unstable factor. It requires that users have the autorun feature enabled on their computer in order to work. It also turns out that a user can either hold the shift key down or disable the autorun feature through various windows configuration points. Also, a user could easily press control-alt-delete and manually terminate the process. This type DRM, while functional at a basic level, cannot and should not be relied upon in the market.
The announcement that you plan to sue a college student who reminded people how to disable the autorun feature is completely ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider such a flimsy piece of protection something the DMCA would protect. I find it interesting that your company has decided to make a legal statement that they wish to separate a college student from his tuition yet refuse to sue Microsoft for adding not only the ability to disable the autorun feature, but providing instructions on how to do so in the help files bundled with its' OS. I feel that this law suit is the equivalent of suing Consumer Reports. Your customers and investors should know the exact viability of your service, and now they do.
Since your company has decided to follow such a misguided legal attack as retribution against someone who alerted the public to your technological short comings, I feel that I can never invest in your company. I only have interest in backing technology firms. Since you company is now a litigation firm, I believe that SunnComm will share the fate of many other technology-gone-litigation companies, and will not return to their values or principals. If you wish to prove that SunnComm is truly interested in technology, this suit should be dropped and a real DRM solution should be pursued.
That's very true. For the longest time that was the one greatest advantage Mac had over PC. If you bought a peice of hardware or software and your setup met its requirements, you could be assured that it will most likely work. Anyone who suffered through the days when PnP truly meant plug and pray and jumpers, [E]ISA, and VL-Bus made you want to scream, would have thought a Mac was a childs toy because it was so easy to add on to.
These days its beginning to mean less and less though. PnP is finally comming of age and standardized hardware protocols are helping to ease much of the old tension. If you build a new computer and don't cut corners by using old, used, or off-name hardware you are much safer to assume there won't be conflicts. Sometimes people build Frankenboxen by using hardware from the dead along with some new stuff. Their computing days are filled with frustration because they have yet to learn that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean you should. Now, the one major advantage Mac has over any other type of consumer level hardware is its protection and support plan.
So exactly how many PPC manufacturers can you choose to buy motherboards or processors from when you build you own Mac? x86 people have many such as asus, abit, aopen, epox, gigabyte, msi, fic, chaintech, soltek, dfi, shuttle, intel, and soyo (just to name a few). Then you can chooses between intel, amd, cyrix, or via for processors. For OS's you have the single greatest x86 monopoly of MS Windows, or Be, Linux, and still OS/2. There may be one monopoly in the PC market, but you still have a choice to not be a part of it if you wish. If you have a Mac, because of the closed and protected nature of its hardware, you have only Apple to buy new hardware from or maybe a handful of after market add-ons from licensed vendors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only install Mac OS or OSX or yellow dog.
But I digress; if Apple is the only company that makes Macs, how is that NOT a monopoly? Would it be a monopoly if you could buy new PC hardware from IBM? Microsoft may be THE monopoly in the PC market, but you can erase your hard drive and pick another OS. What's the solution if you don't want a monopoly dominating your Mac hardware the way MS dominates the desktop OS market? Easy, don't buy a Mac.
How are Mac users any less "stuck" than windows users? From my understanding Apple has a monopoly on Mac hardware and software while Microsoft has a monopoly on software. That sounds like a "double stuck" to me.
Imagine if artists couldn't or wouldn't be tied to a particular label by exclusive contract anymore.
Remember George Clinton? He did that. Back durring the funk explosion he created band after band, many using different combinations of the same people, and sold them to different labels. It was a successful strategy that secured his financial security for life. He was also smart enough to keep most of his rights to the music. I know he isn't the only person to have done anything like this beofore, but I just watched a show on TV about Clinton.
I don't own a mac, but I have worked with and sold them before. I must say that iTunes is about the best peice of software I've seen bundled with an OS before. It doesn't have a plethora of options like other media players/managers, but it's very adequate. It's the best blend of power, functionality, and ease of use I've seen with that type of program. I can't wait to give it a try on PC. I just hope it's a lot better than quicktime for PC.
I'm no psychic, but I think I might understand the "logic" behind the suits. Since the RIAA dominates the popular music market, they probably think it's safe to sue some people without losing too many customers. I mean, where else is little Cindy going to go for that latest Brittney Spears record? It's just a shame that more people don't know, or don't care, about small labels and independent artists. I guess some just find it hard to beleive that there are people out there who love making music more than their love of outright profit.
Slashdot Mirror
I drive through downtown Indianapolis, just so you know that it's probably not like your area. The central area is determined by 2 interstates boxing in the area on 3 sides. All of the streets are one way and there are 4 main streets that lead to highway ramps. All of these streets are perfectly timed so that you can set the cruise control at the speed limit after you pass the first light. It's fun to watch other people accelerating hard out of a red just to brake again at another red as I coast through to the highway. If the combination of road sensors and timing algorithms work well together it's possible to encourage people to drive the limit by preventing speeders from getting there faster.
The lights in the direction of the emergency vehicle turn green so people can move out and away instead of blocking the intersection. I've seen people at regular 'dumb' intersections sit in front of a fire truck and block it because he thought he would get in trouble for running a red to let them through. Also, I'm not sure if it's lke this everywhere, but around here if something comes through such an intersection the light goes from green to red with no yellow warning at the exact same time the other direction gets the green. That sould defiately cause some chaos if ignorant drivers decide to get selfish.
One thing people always forget is that speeding and runing reds rarely gets you there faster. People who dodge and weave through rush hour highway traffic are a whole 2 or 3 cars in front of me when I get to the off ramp. I've learned the timing of lights around my office and home so now I can actually get there faster by driving just few miles under the limit. Usually it's the impatient people that create traffic in the first place. The more that people obey speed limits the better the timing of intersections gets.
Now just tell me why it crashes every time I add a folder to my library like he did. I tried moving out the files crashing the program, but with a total size of over 6000 files, I stopped when I moved seperated over 1000 files. I also know I'm not the only one having this problem.
Actually mob rule is the basis of law in america. It just happens to be based on the christian mob. Since we all live in a country that is run by christians it's not considered mob rule, it's just the way it should be. There is a reason things like sodomy, adultery, abortion, and many other non-christian behaviors were (and some still are) illegal for so long. For some reason forcing women to wear cloth from head to toe in a muslim society is backward and wrong but sticking a man in jail for sodomy in texas is the good christian thing to do. The one constant in society is mans intolerance for people not like him. Get enough like minded people together and it stops being wrong and starts being 'just the way it is'.
You want an answer to the piracy problem: Meet half way. It's obvious people want more choices than the century old album, and it's just as obvious that the record companies want to keep their iron fist wrapped around peoples musical outlets as well as their wallets. Neither side is totaly right or wrong. In fact, I'd say both sides are just as stubborn and closed minded. There is some common ground.
The primary interest in business is profit. Many times innovation and advancements are not in the best interest of profit. Since the internet has been revolutionizing society and culture for the last 10 years, and will continue to do so at exponential rates, we don't need corporations governing such important parts of it. Imagine one day having to enter a code from under your Sprite bottle cap to access information that is otherwise not related to Coca-Cola. If this happens, the benefits are far outweighed by the negative consequences that can't even bee seen yet.
I'm not importing, I'm telling it to add a folder to my library. The import function seems to look for a text file by default.
I did that, I ended up moving at least 50 files and it still keeps crashing. Out of 6000+ files I'm thinking I will have to move to many.
Broadcast flags don't mean jack. Anything that can be recorded and/or played with technology can be hacked with technology. Those flags that people set on internet media don't work. You can capture a live stream and process any flags in or out of it you want at a later time.
I've been waiting for a replacement for winamp for a while now. I downloaded and installed this and everyting looks nice. Almost a perfect clone of the mac version. There is one major problem for me. Every time I try to inport my music folder it crashes almost as soon as the first song is processed. I don't want it searching my HD for media because the only audio I want in my playlist is the stuff in one specific folder and I have more audio files outside of my media folder than inside. Any suggestions?
Mono could be used to port off of .NET into a linux or possibly bsd environment. I've never written a large or complex app before, so the comments I'm looking for would be for the following assumption: Now that the apps are in their new environment it would it be as hard of a step to get them off mono an into another simmilar language. Hopefuly people will remember why they ditched windows in the first place and make the next logical step in progression and recode the program. If not I say if they switch back to MS after this happens, let 'em. Linux existed before .net and mono and it will exist afterwards (maybe even at a larger market share than tosday).
That attitude is exactly why so many legitimate and possibly interesting projects are getting attacked- claiming to support freedom when what you really like is theft and lawlessness.
I think they stated this perfectly. By saying piracy is not condoned they admitt that there will be peope who will use it for illegal means, but they don't support it as well as there being legitimate reasons to use the hack. By the other side of the coin, if they say something like they support piracy they open themselves to possible criminal or civil charges. Either way they will inspire statements like yours. A $99 computer that runs linux with network access could be valuable to many people. The thing about being a consumer is that people feel like they should be the one who decides what to do with their investment. If these people didn't publish the hack, someone else would have, it's only a matter of time. That's why you should be upset with pirates and not the hackers. They are the ones breaking the law.
Open standards are the best solutions for standing the test of time. Proprietary solutions are at the mercy of the owner. The birth of the moden internet is usually marked as the time the protocol was switched to TCP/IP. Imagine something as wide reaching as the internet being able to function at the level it does if more than one concurrent standard would be in use. Every day people find use for the internet. THe internet is the modern swiss knife. With one tool you can research papers, buy anything, get porn, music or art, and read even the craziest fanatic's ramblings. And now it's poised to revolutionize voice conversation. Because of this I back Robertson. There's nothing wrong competition, but the true advantage of market competition comes from a level playing feild where players win by making new features and technilogical advances.
The US government has begun freely advertising anti-American and terrorist websites to a massive audience who probably would have otherwise not heard of them.
There's more to cloning a PC than reverse engineering a BIOS. I know Intel didn't RE the x86 processor. They were contacted by IBM to produce them and then they got too many orders and Intel contracted AMD which lead to AMDs clones of the 386 and 486 processers. The ISA an PCI buses weren't patented like IBM did MCA on the PS2. If the processor and architecture are not patented or not enforced then cloning the BIOS is relatively easy since most of the work is already done.
I also know that windows OEMs compete with Apple, but I was talking specifically about competion in the PPC market (ie. a specific market). As far as I know there is none, at least in comparison to the x86 market.
Ford WOULD have a monopoly in the car market if, say, they were the exclusive makers of SUVs or internal combustion engines. But again, my point is missed. In the PC market, for example, Dell is PART of the PC market. In the PPC market, Apple IS the market. That's my point, nothing more.
I find it amazing that with such focus and emphasis on security by Microsoft that its products are still as insecure and vulnerable as ever. Maybe people accept talk of action and press releases as actual movement in that direction. As far as I'm concerned talk is just talk. Maybe they can earn my respect when they actually DO something instead of drafting press releases or issuing last minute 'duct tape' fixes.
I know it's hard for Mac fanatics to make a reply without insults, but please calm the hell down. The DVD player analogy is flawed because you can buy many brands of DVD players that all play at least a standard DVD and will interface through one or more standard connectors. While Apple may not be a monopoly by traditional definition, they are not PART of a market like PC hardware manufacturers. They ARE the market for Apple and Mac hardware. With a few historic exceptions, Apple holds and enforces all copyrights and patents on their hardware and anything that interfaces with it; which is the opposite of the x86 architecture that IBM and Intel allowed others to clone freely. I haven't heard the word thrown around much, but that's what PCs were referred to as in specifications; PC XT or clone. I remember working in a repair shop years ago when one of the Apple technicians spent almost a week fixing a non-Apple dual G2. The same thing happened with the PC market too. Non-standard configurations lead to problems with hardware and software. That's one reason they like to remain the exclusive manufacturers hardware.
I can't help but say that if people would read between the lines they might realize the point of the topic instead of simply what was stated. I do not like writing shot essays to explain myself nor do I like writing disclaimers at the end of all posts. Everything I stated can be found in books about the evolution of the personal computer. You can debate opinion, and you can debate fact, but you can't debate history.
I hope none of these parents use cordless phones, TVs, microwave ovens, chlorinated tap water, computers, or folding chairs at home. God knows WiFi is 100 times worse than that healthy radiation comming from the TV or monitor.
It isn't a Slashdot discussion on DRM, P2P, or piracy until someone incorrectly uses an analogy comparing piracy and theft.
If you use a slim-jim you are probably committing theft. If you use a marker or shit key you are probably exercising your Fair Use rights or committing piracy. If you own a car that a slim-jim still works on, I suggest either a good insurance plan or a new car that's smarter than a thin peice of metal with a notch in the side. If you use DRM, I suggest using some that can be bypassed with more than 1 cent worth of ink. If you don't, you deserve what you get.
end transmission
I've been eagerly waiting years to invest in a DRM provider that develops real solutions to real problems. I've spent some time researching your company and was considering investing until I read an article about how your technology worked. As it turns out, it was built on a very unstable factor. It requires that users have the autorun feature enabled on their computer in order to work. It also turns out that a user can either hold the shift key down or disable the autorun feature through various windows configuration points. Also, a user could easily press control-alt-delete and manually terminate the process. This type DRM, while functional at a basic level, cannot and should not be relied upon in the market. The announcement that you plan to sue a college student who reminded people how to disable the autorun feature is completely ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider such a flimsy piece of protection something the DMCA would protect. I find it interesting that your company has decided to make a legal statement that they wish to separate a college student from his tuition yet refuse to sue Microsoft for adding not only the ability to disable the autorun feature, but providing instructions on how to do so in the help files bundled with its' OS. I feel that this law suit is the equivalent of suing Consumer Reports. Your customers and investors should know the exact viability of your service, and now they do. Since your company has decided to follow such a misguided legal attack as retribution against someone who alerted the public to your technological short comings, I feel that I can never invest in your company. I only have interest in backing technology firms. Since you company is now a litigation firm, I believe that SunnComm will share the fate of many other technology-gone-litigation companies, and will not return to their values or principals. If you wish to prove that SunnComm is truly interested in technology, this suit should be dropped and a real DRM solution should be pursued.
That's very true. For the longest time that was the one greatest advantage Mac had over PC. If you bought a peice of hardware or software and your setup met its requirements, you could be assured that it will most likely work. Anyone who suffered through the days when PnP truly meant plug and pray and jumpers, [E]ISA, and VL-Bus made you want to scream, would have thought a Mac was a childs toy because it was so easy to add on to.
These days its beginning to mean less and less though. PnP is finally comming of age and standardized hardware protocols are helping to ease much of the old tension. If you build a new computer and don't cut corners by using old, used, or off-name hardware you are much safer to assume there won't be conflicts. Sometimes people build Frankenboxen by using hardware from the dead along with some new stuff. Their computing days are filled with frustration because they have yet to learn that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean you should. Now, the one major advantage Mac has over any other type of consumer level hardware is its protection and support plan.
So exactly how many PPC manufacturers can you choose to buy motherboards or processors from when you build you own Mac? x86 people have many such as asus, abit, aopen, epox, gigabyte, msi, fic, chaintech, soltek, dfi, shuttle, intel, and soyo (just to name a few). Then you can chooses between intel, amd, cyrix, or via for processors. For OS's you have the single greatest x86 monopoly of MS Windows, or Be, Linux, and still OS/2. There may be one monopoly in the PC market, but you still have a choice to not be a part of it if you wish. If you have a Mac, because of the closed and protected nature of its hardware, you have only Apple to buy new hardware from or maybe a handful of after market add-ons from licensed vendors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only install Mac OS or OSX or yellow dog.
But I digress; if Apple is the only company that makes Macs, how is that NOT a monopoly? Would it be a monopoly if you could buy new PC hardware from IBM? Microsoft may be THE monopoly in the PC market, but you can erase your hard drive and pick another OS. What's the solution if you don't want a monopoly dominating your Mac hardware the way MS dominates the desktop OS market? Easy, don't buy a Mac.
How are Mac users any less "stuck" than windows users? From my understanding Apple has a monopoly on Mac hardware and software while Microsoft has a monopoly on software. That sounds like a "double stuck" to me.
Imagine if artists couldn't or wouldn't be tied to a particular label by exclusive contract anymore.
Remember George Clinton? He did that. Back durring the funk explosion he created band after band, many using different combinations of the same people, and sold them to different labels. It was a successful strategy that secured his financial security for life. He was also smart enough to keep most of his rights to the music. I know he isn't the only person to have done anything like this beofore, but I just watched a show on TV about Clinton.
I don't own a mac, but I have worked with and sold them before. I must say that iTunes is about the best peice of software I've seen bundled with an OS before. It doesn't have a plethora of options like other media players/managers, but it's very adequate. It's the best blend of power, functionality, and ease of use I've seen with that type of program. I can't wait to give it a try on PC. I just hope it's a lot better than quicktime for PC.
I'm no psychic, but I think I might understand the "logic" behind the suits. Since the RIAA dominates the popular music market, they probably think it's safe to sue some people without losing too many customers. I mean, where else is little Cindy going to go for that latest Brittney Spears record? It's just a shame that more people don't know, or don't care, about small labels and independent artists. I guess some just find it hard to beleive that there are people out there who love making music more than their love of outright profit.