It is a legitimate alternative because they provide an excellent selection of legally licensed music downloads at a reasonable price. The quality of the recordings is universally superior to what is found on peer-to-peer networks, and the files can be encoded in nearly any format I choose, without cryptographic restrictions.
I support bands by going to performances -- that is, of course, where musicians make their living. Selling CD's and downloads is merely an affordable (and sometimes even marginally profitable) advertising venture.
It doesn't matter that they're using LAME code to detect and disable LAME. It matters that they are distributing LAME code without offering the source code.
Under the LGPL, they must offer us the source code. This protects our ability to rebuild the DRM rootkit for different versions of the LAME library -- so that it can detect newer LAME libraries, or our personal modified copies of the LAME library, and disable those as well.
if you need to prevent them from altering it, that's easy. put it on read-only media (a CD, not just mount -o ro).
if you want to give them root and prevent them definitively from reading it, you're going to need to come up with a better plan.
with a debugger (which i presume they'll have and understand, since these are obviously CS students of some flavor) they'll be able to attach to the process with an all-seeing-eye, so running it on the system where they've got root is just not what you want.
depending on what sort of script this is, could you store it on a different, restricted box, and only let them interact with it over the network? if they have no need to alter it or read it, then what need is there to even store it on the same machine? if the script needs access to the filesystem, you could export it through your favorite network FS to the restricted machine running the script.
encryption and obfuscation are rarely going to be as effective -- and will usually be more of a headache -- compared simply moving it to a more controlled box.
All-in-One Gestures Download Statusbar (best download manager yet!) Image Zoom Linkification (turns plain text URLs into links) Adblock Web Developer (Ctrl+Shift+T) Google Toolbar (with Gmail Notifier in place of the built-in Gmail button)
I also have:
Tabbrowser Preferences Favicon Picker BugMeNot User Agent Switcher hideBad Firesomething (always set to Mozilla Hypnotoad) Add N Edit Cookies (a good complement to the Web Developer ext.)
Of course, if you want to ensure compatibility in the future, you need to purchase songs that don't rely on proprietary restrictions management or encoding formats. the question of "which DRM" is a silly one to ask -- if you're purchasing cryptographically restricted music, then you should not have any expectation of being able to use it freely, either today or in the future.
Your list of technologies and dates is marginally impressive -- but I do not see how it relates to the issue at hand.
Since the Linux community has clearly not provided a system that matches your needs, I will again ask that you do not attempt to interfere in its development by advocating changes that could end up dumping binary drivers on us. We do not want them. We do not want what they will bring to our system.
I am glad your experience with Windows XP has been so positive. Hopefully you will continue to use it rather than attempt to subvert the Open Source movement with your incompatible agenda.
Users don't care about the source code. Users want a working machine and OS.
When the source code is available for modification, *everyone* benefits, whether they're reading it, hacking it, or just using precompiled binaries. When I need something new in software, I may not be able to code it myself, but I can put it in bugzilla, where others in the community can discuss it, assign it, and eventually implement it.
Of course the process is not perfect. It is a human process. That is part of its appeal -- the community supports its own software, rather than relying on a company to pump out binaries... who may not be around next week.
There is nothing elitist about saying that I am perfectly satisfied with what Linux provides, and there is nothing wrong with valuing the freedom that its open nature gives to all users -- remember, those freedoms benefit them whether they read the code or not.
From this user's point of view, the extra freedom, stability, and community that Linux provides are well worth the wide selection of ordinary hardware -- at ordinary prices -- that I choose to run it on. For me, the value of an operating system is that it provides a platform which offers freedom to me and to my community while we do our work. Putting off-brand generic wireless cards with quick-hacked binary-only drivers into a system does not help me do my work -- even on "supported" systems, that has usually just given me a headache and required a trip back to the shop -- and it would probably force some compromises in the freedom we value.
For you, it seems that an operating system is nothing more than a collection of software to be used unmodified and unexamined, while you do other tasks, without the need for a community to support you if you need to change it. Those needs are perfecly valid, and perfectly incompatible with the Free Software movement. I would be happy to help you select and purchase such a system from one of the many vendors who will sell it to you. You'll be able to plug cheap hardware with crashy drivers into it 'til your heart's content. For support, you'll be able to call the company, whom you'll soon find have invested even less in support than they did in the cheap hardware.
And if your needs should change, our community will still be here, and we'll be glad to help you find a system that meets them.
In that case, I would prefer that you use some other OS and not try to influence the direction of Linux development. I am quite happy with the driver situation exactly as it is, and I am not interested in giving up any ground to closed-source drivers -- it is far better to have a choice of three wireless cards with open software than thirty with closed software.
As a user, the last thing I want is hunting down drivers that will work with the X or Y kernel version.
Having to "hunt down drivers" is an artifact of the old third-party binary driver world. When hardware specifications are available to developers, those developers can add the hardware support to the kernel -- which means it ships with the distribution.
If there's one thing you'll guarantee by providing a binary-only driver interface, it's that you'll have to spend a lot of time hunting down drivers.
The thing you need to realize is that the free market IS our society. It is an inherent part of humanity -- not something we could change, like being bipedal.
Think of the market like weather. Then you will realize how silly people sound when they describe the market as if it were constructed -- like madmen trying to shout down a hurricane.
We have laws against playing music too loud, or walking down the street screaming like a lunatic, or against being a drunk and disorderly asshole
yes, indeed we have a lot of silly laws. I think it would be only a pale shadow of the human experience without loud music, crazy men in the streets, and drunk and disorderly assholes.
Smoking is only a drain on your medical system when it has been set up in such a shortsighted way that everyone is made to bear the cost of the illnesses of others.
bans on smoking in public places tend to be based on the annoyance an essentially selfish mob -- despite the lack of any evidence to suggest that there are any detectable consequences to periodic outdoor exposure, or occasional indoor exposure to secondhand smoke.
(when you ask the "smoking ban" crowd about the major reasons to support their proposals, it usually has something to do with not liking how their clothes smell when they get back from a bar.)
smoking bans are centered mostly around "getting rid of the smokers", and not around any sort of logically conceived rationale. certainly, those who spend most days indoors with a smoker are exposed to harmful levels of secondhand smoke, but the "smoking ban" mob has twisted those studies quite dishonestly, applying them to situations, such as public parks and bars, where the exposure is so limited that it has not been possible to prove any health consequences except for the smoker.
merely living in los angeles, for example, is far, far worse than sitting next to someone at the bar who's smoking a cigarette. driving five miles in an SUV, i've read, produces the same amount of airborne toxins as something like twenty packs of cigarettes.
it is natural that the tobacco industry should try to produce a less harmful cigarette for those who do choose to smoke, or find themselves unable to quit. it is, however, entirely unrelated to the recent trend of smoking bans enacted rather dubious reasons.
Considering that the vast majority of oxygen production takes place near the surface of the ocean, I would be rather worried about ocean life thriving unexpectedly on what could only be called a fresh breath of CO2.
should it even matter if it's your fault? if you have a rootkit installed, you are a risk to the in-game economy. and... honestly... if you have a rootkit installed, you're a risk to any network you're on.
the idea that having a kernel rootkit on your system is somehow "okay" either because it's made by Sony, or because you didn't know it was there, or because you're not using it for evil... that's a dangerous security precedent.
blizzard -- like any network administrator worth his salt -- needs to establish a zero-tolerance policy for detectable rootkits. there is NO place in our internet for systems that are compromised at a kernel level, regardless of who's responsible or what their intentions are.
apple has failed year after year to deliver an ipod i would consider buying. the ipod does not play any of the formats of music i prefer, does not support any of the operating systems i use, does not have the features i require, is overpriced compared to the competition, and comes from a company with no apparent interest in supporting the open-source community in correcting the ipod's insufficiencies.
on top of that, they seem to truly convinced of the idea that 5GB... or 4GB... or 1GB is even in the neighborhood of the amount of storage space i need -- with only a couple of notable expansions to the "large size" ipod in recent memory.
apple is not even in this market. as far as i'm concerned, they have an uphill battle against neuros and iaudio if they're going to try to sell me my next mp3 player.
perhaps neuros audio do not have a business plan that will get them in bed with the big music labels, or line the pockets of ten thousand stockholders with cash, but one does not need to sell a million units in order to turn a profit.
you'd have to be pretty stupid (or lying) not to get music to come out of your neuros. the thing is so easy to use that if you sincerely had trouble getting it to work, i am honestly amazed that you can make posts on a web page.
Slashdot Mirror
I support bands by going to performances -- that is, of course, where musicians make their living. Selling CD's and downloads is merely an affordable (and sometimes even marginally profitable) advertising venture.
Under the LGPL, they must offer us the source code. This protects our ability to rebuild the DRM rootkit for different versions of the LAME library -- so that it can detect newer LAME libraries, or our personal modified copies of the LAME library, and disable those as well.
if you want to give them root and prevent them definitively from reading it, you're going to need to come up with a better plan.
with a debugger (which i presume they'll have and understand, since these are obviously CS students of some flavor) they'll be able to attach to the process with an all-seeing-eye, so running it on the system where they've got root is just not what you want.
depending on what sort of script this is, could you store it on a different, restricted box, and only let them interact with it over the network? if they have no need to alter it or read it, then what need is there to even store it on the same machine? if the script needs access to the filesystem, you could export it through your favorite network FS to the restricted machine running the script.
encryption and obfuscation are rarely going to be as effective -- and will usually be more of a headache -- compared simply moving it to a more controlled box.
My favorites are:
All-in-One Gestures
Download Statusbar (best download manager yet!)
Image Zoom
Linkification (turns plain text URLs into links)
Adblock
Web Developer (Ctrl+Shift+T)
Google Toolbar (with Gmail Notifier in place of the built-in Gmail button)
I also have:
Tabbrowser Preferences
Favicon Picker
BugMeNot
User Agent Switcher
hideBad
Firesomething (always set to Mozilla Hypnotoad)
Add N Edit Cookies (a good complement to the Web Developer ext.)
Of course, if you want to ensure compatibility in the future, you need to purchase songs that don't rely on proprietary restrictions management or encoding formats. the question of "which DRM" is a silly one to ask -- if you're purchasing cryptographically restricted music, then you should not have any expectation of being able to use it freely, either today or in the future.
Since the Linux community has clearly not provided a system that matches your needs, I will again ask that you do not attempt to interfere in its development by advocating changes that could end up dumping binary drivers on us. We do not want them. We do not want what they will bring to our system.
I am glad your experience with Windows XP has been so positive. Hopefully you will continue to use it rather than attempt to subvert the Open Source movement with your incompatible agenda.
Because Kansas voters have exerted subtantial influence on the curriculum.
When the source code is available for modification, *everyone* benefits, whether they're reading it, hacking it, or just using precompiled binaries. When I need something new in software, I may not be able to code it myself, but I can put it in bugzilla, where others in the community can discuss it, assign it, and eventually implement it.
Of course the process is not perfect. It is a human process. That is part of its appeal -- the community supports its own software, rather than relying on a company to pump out binaries... who may not be around next week.
There is nothing elitist about saying that I am perfectly satisfied with what Linux provides, and there is nothing wrong with valuing the freedom that its open nature gives to all users -- remember, those freedoms benefit them whether they read the code or not.
From this user's point of view, the extra freedom, stability, and community that Linux provides are well worth the wide selection of ordinary hardware -- at ordinary prices -- that I choose to run it on. For me, the value of an operating system is that it provides a platform which offers freedom to me and to my community while we do our work. Putting off-brand generic wireless cards with quick-hacked binary-only drivers into a system does not help me do my work -- even on "supported" systems, that has usually just given me a headache and required a trip back to the shop -- and it would probably force some compromises in the freedom we value.
For you, it seems that an operating system is nothing more than a collection of software to be used unmodified and unexamined, while you do other tasks, without the need for a community to support you if you need to change it. Those needs are perfecly valid, and perfectly incompatible with the Free Software movement. I would be happy to help you select and purchase such a system from one of the many vendors who will sell it to you. You'll be able to plug cheap hardware with crashy drivers into it 'til your heart's content. For support, you'll be able to call the company, whom you'll soon find have invested even less in support than they did in the cheap hardware.
And if your needs should change, our community will still be here, and we'll be glad to help you find a system that meets them.
In that case, I would prefer that you use some other OS and not try to influence the direction of Linux development. I am quite happy with the driver situation exactly as it is, and I am not interested in giving up any ground to closed-source drivers -- it is far better to have a choice of three wireless cards with open software than thirty with closed software.
cool! now, how far are we from the point where I get paid to repeatedly hit the SNOOZE button?
Having to "hunt down drivers" is an artifact of the old third-party binary driver world. When hardware specifications are available to developers, those developers can add the hardware support to the kernel -- which means it ships with the distribution.
If there's one thing you'll guarantee by providing a binary-only driver interface, it's that you'll have to spend a lot of time hunting down drivers.
Think of the market like weather. Then you will realize how silly people sound when they describe the market as if it were constructed -- like madmen trying to shout down a hurricane.
We have laws against playing music too loud, or walking down the street screaming like a lunatic, or against being a drunk and disorderly asshole yes, indeed we have a lot of silly laws. I think it would be only a pale shadow of the human experience without loud music, crazy men in the streets, and drunk and disorderly assholes.
Smoking is only a drain on your medical system when it has been set up in such a shortsighted way that everyone is made to bear the cost of the illnesses of others.
bans on smoking in public places tend to be based on the annoyance an essentially selfish mob -- despite the lack of any evidence to suggest that there are any detectable consequences to periodic outdoor exposure, or occasional indoor exposure to secondhand smoke.
(when you ask the "smoking ban" crowd about the major reasons to support their proposals, it usually has something to do with not liking how their clothes smell when they get back from a bar.)
smoking bans are centered mostly around "getting rid of the smokers", and not around any sort of logically conceived rationale. certainly, those who spend most days indoors with a smoker are exposed to harmful levels of secondhand smoke, but the "smoking ban" mob has twisted those studies quite dishonestly, applying them to situations, such as public parks and bars, where the exposure is so limited that it has not been possible to prove any health consequences except for the smoker.
merely living in los angeles, for example, is far, far worse than sitting next to someone at the bar who's smoking a cigarette. driving five miles in an SUV, i've read, produces the same amount of airborne toxins as something like twenty packs of cigarettes.
it is natural that the tobacco industry should try to produce a less harmful cigarette for those who do choose to smoke, or find themselves unable to quit. it is, however, entirely unrelated to the recent trend of smoking bans enacted rather dubious reasons.
Considering that the vast majority of oxygen production takes place near the surface of the ocean, I would be rather worried about ocean life thriving unexpectedly on what could only be called a fresh breath of CO2.
the idea that having a kernel rootkit on your system is somehow "okay" either because it's made by Sony, or because you didn't know it was there, or because you're not using it for evil... that's a dangerous security precedent.
blizzard -- like any network administrator worth his salt -- needs to establish a zero-tolerance policy for detectable rootkits. there is NO place in our internet for systems that are compromised at a kernel level, regardless of who's responsible or what their intentions are.
patience, young padawan.
apple has failed year after year to deliver an ipod i would consider buying. the ipod does not play any of the formats of music i prefer, does not support any of the operating systems i use, does not have the features i require, is overpriced compared to the competition, and comes from a company with no apparent interest in supporting the open-source community in correcting the ipod's insufficiencies.
on top of that, they seem to truly convinced of the idea that 5GB... or 4GB... or 1GB is even in the neighborhood of the amount of storage space i need -- with only a couple of notable expansions to the "large size" ipod in recent memory.
apple is not even in this market. as far as i'm concerned, they have an uphill battle against neuros and iaudio if they're going to try to sell me my next mp3 player.
perhaps neuros audio do not have a business plan that will get them in bed with the big music labels, or line the pockets of ten thousand stockholders with cash, but one does not need to sell a million units in order to turn a profit.
you'd have to be pretty stupid (or lying) not to get music to come out of your neuros. the thing is so easy to use that if you sincerely had trouble getting it to work, i am honestly amazed that you can make posts on a web page.
simple -- they think they suck because they are getting old, and in their age they have become resistant to new things.
oh. my gaming machine runs debian.
I prefer Cingular. I also prefer not hearing people bark into their PTT phones like dogs when I am on the train or out walking.
now, if only someone would spring a sleeper patent and shut those bloody things off forever!
but we live on earth. for us, it is unusual.