Furthermore, back to the original point (and I admit I did misword what I originally meant to say), the open letter states the following:
Drop DRM on iTunes for independent artists
Has Mr. Jobs done so? I'm sure the independent artists who are on iTunes “by Apple's good graces” would like their tracks DRM-free. I'm sure they've even asked Mr. Jobs & Co. to do just that. However, AFAIK, nothing has still been done about this.
The DefectiveByDesign team is not sending Mr. Jobs that jester hat they promised. Instead, they're sending him a thank-you letter. IMHO, he escaped by the skin of his teeth, and did the bare minimum to back up his words. Again, as I said earlier, this move is a positive one, and I'm looking forward to more like it in the future. However, as I again said, there's much more that could be done. This Apple/EMI deal is a bit weak at best. There's no logical reasoning behind charging more for DRM-free tracks, even if they are encoded at higher bitrates. Just eradicate EMI's DRM all together, and “upgrade” people at no additional cost.
What's sad about this is that it's being called an ”upgrade“, when in actuality it amounts to little more than another way to make extra money on goods that people have already paid for. “We know you already bought a defective version of this track, so we're offering a fix to this problem. At your expense, of course.” If I ever bought a defective product in any other industry, it would be replaced with a product of better quality at no additional cost to me, usually with an added incentive (coupons, free stuff) to remain a customer. But now, just because this relates to the recording industry, people have to pay for bugfixes, when the bugs were included intentionally? If you ask me, Apple's coming out well on top with this deal. USD $0.30 may not seem like a lot, but if 1,000,000,000 (one billion) tracks are upgraded at USD $0.30 each, that's USD $300,000,000 (three hundred million), just on “upgrades”.
Call me a zealot if you want, it doesn't phase me. If being angered by scams masked as good-faith efforts amounts to nothing more than zealotry in your mind, then I feel sorry for you.
(Attn Moderators: I care not about/. karma, so mod me as you will. I refuse to let fear of others' opinions of my views inhibit me from expressing them freely.)
If iTunes really is free, then show me where I can view, modify, and redistribute the source code. Oh, what's that? I can't do that? Then it's proprietary.
The high-level languages include "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET".
not
The high-level languages are "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET".
The original summary quote gives examples of some languages. It's a subset of what would be covered by the patent. If I said, “Slashdot users include CmdrTaco, smcdow, and cparker15,” while that is technically true, that doesn't mean that there are only three users on/..
If you paid any attention at all to the anti-DRM campaign that was focusing on Steve Jobs's comments against DRM, you would have seen that it was led by the Free Software Foundation's DefectiveByDesign group. The FSF, Microsoft lap dogs?? Your powers of observation and reasoning simply astound me.
Granted, the DRM-free option announced by EMI is a good move, but it would be virtually effortless to sign the independent labels on in addition to the EMI deal. There's absolutely no reason why Mr. Jobs can't enable independent labels to sign up as iTunes vendors.
AAC is an open standard. Sure it is patent encumbered, but so is MP3.
A standard can't be both “open” and “patent encumbered” at the same time. When a standard is “open“, it means that anybody can use it in any application without fear of retaliation from the myriad patent holders that could claim infringement on an implementation of the standard.
This is a definitely a step in the right direction. What they should be doing, though, is removing the DRM-infested tracks from iTunes and replacing them with DRM-free versions. That way, you'd have two tiers of DRM-free tracks: the “standard” quality $0.99 tracks and the higher-quality $1.29 tracks.
However, I will not yet be able to directly benefit from this announcement, because:
I only use free software, and iTunes is proprietary.
Even if I were willing to use the proprietary iTunes, it doesn't run on any of my GNU/Linux systems.
Again, this is good news, but it seems to me that Jobs and his cohorts are taking the tiniest baby steps possible.
If iTunes were available for a GNU/Linux distribution (without using Wine), and if iTunes tracks were available in a free format, such as Ogg Vorbis, then I might even consider making an exception and using iTunes on my system.
Gaim 2.0 has a plug-in that does this on purpose. When someone starts typing to you out of the blue, a window pops up and says, “You feel a disturbance in the force.”
I once had an acquaintance of mine believing that I'd read her thoughts and that we were psychically “in tune” with each other.
Are you retarded? The FSF owns the copyright for everything I credited as "GNU Project". If you have proof stating otherwise, I'd like to see it, O Wise Coward.
I've had pretty decent experiences with XMMS2 for playing music from my library and MusicBrainz Picard for organizing it.
One of my requirements is the ability to add an SMB share directly to the media player's library, as my entire music collection is stored on a media server (Maxtor MSS Plus) and accessible via an SMB share. Amarok is unable to add an SMB share directly to its Collection, and requiring root access to mount an SMB share is just stupid, IMHO. Rhythmbox is capable of using GNOME's solution to the problem, the "Network Places" shortcuts, which are GNOME-specific connnection configuration settings saved in GConf and represented as "shortcuts" on the desktop and within Nautilus (and applications that use Nautilus in them). However, as we're all aware, Rhythmbox totally blows chunks.
XMMS2 even runs efficiently on low-end hardware. I turned an old Dell OptiPlex GXM 5166 I dug out of storage (specs, picture) into a headless XMMS2 box. I control it using TurboX2, which is also installed on the old OptiPlex. Playback is perfect, even with a 166 MHz!! clock speed.
I have a little over a month's worth of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MOD tracks in my music library right now, and I'm adding more on an almost weekly basis (I <3 Used CDs).
Funny you should mention this. I walked into my living room a couple days ago and saw a big trail of brown smear on the floor. I have three cats, and I guess one of them thought they were being funny by letting one drop in the middle of the room.
You'd think these sophisticated consumer robots would be built to avoid situations like this. Don't they have sensors on the bottom? They should be sensing objects too large to vacuum up (like cat toys or cat feces) or liquid spills (water, juice, milk, cat urine) and moving around them. Instead of cleaning my floor, my Roomba vandalized my home. On top of it all, the insides of the thing are all gunked up, and I'M going to be the one cleaning it out and/or throwing parts away.
I've also noticed that it doesn't do well with transitioning from hardwood floors to carpets (doesn't seem to comprehend the idea of different thickness levels on the floor) or bathroom rugs (it tries to eat them). Doesn't the Roomba have spring-loaded offroad tires on it for a REASON? When picked up off the floor, these things pop out maybe an inch and a half!
I have one carpet with a checkered pattern on it, and the edges of the different checkers in the pattern confuse the Roomba, and it refuses to move across some of them, despite there being no difference in thickness or consistency of the fabric. I'd credit this phenomenon to a poor quality depth sensor, which probably, in actuality, looks for variances in light levels. Stupid.
In all, my Roomba Scheduler has been the worst purchase I've ever made.
Personally, I'd rather have gNewSense pre-installed than Ubuntu. It has the benefits of Ubuntu (being derived from it) but it also has the benefit of being 100% free. Having gNewSense installed on Dell machines straight from Dell would show us that Dell is truly committed to our freedom. If gNewSense were the/a Dell-supported distribution, then that would ensure all of the drivers for any given installation would be free.
In any event, if Dell cooperates with the free software community by providing free drivers for all of the hardware for these "Linux" machines, then I will definitely be buying Dell in the future.
That's not counting all of the libraries, GNOME, or GUI tools (Nautilus, et al.). If you count--at minimum--GNOME and X, then you may add GNOME (GNU Project) and X.org (X.Org Foundatio
So if i compile and install all of those nifty GNU utilites on my OpenServer, does it become GNU/SCO openServer
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: If you replace every single component of your SCO operating system (why you would be using an SCO product is beyond me) with a comparable component of the GNU operating system, except for the kernel, then you wouldn't be using an SCO operating system anymore. You'd be using GNU, which would be running on top of the SCO kernel. So, yes, your particular operating system could be accurately called "GNU/kOpenServer" or something similar.
I'm wondering if these figures only pertain to the RIAA. I make it a point to not buy CDs from any RIAA labels. Ever. Most artists on these labels aren't worth my time, anyway. Whenever I come across an artist I do like that's on a RIAA label, I usually say, "Oh, well!", shrug my shoulders, move on, and forget about the artist. Sometimes, artists in this situation end up changing labels, and I show support for them by buying their (RIAA-free) albums, but that ends up being a rarity.
Reward the honest labels. They're just doing their part to get good music from their artists to your ears. Ignore the predatory ones. They'll eventually just shrivel up and blow away.
GNOME (guh-nome) originally stood for “GNU Network Object Model Environment” and is a part of the GNU project. It is the only official GNU desktop environment. Some distribution vendors may (and often do) decide to use alternative environments, such as KDE, Xfce, JDS (based on GNOME), LXDE, Enlightenment (yes, can function standalone), CDE, et al.
Indeed. There are plenty of independent labels and artists that don't play these dirty anti-consumerist games. Why rip them off when they've had nothing to do with rootkits, DRM, etc.?
Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. Kernels don't have GUIs. I think you mean GNU/Linux (the GNU operating system running on top of the kernel called “Linux”), which does have a default GUI--called GNOME--although you most certainly can use a GNU/Linux system without a GUI. Most server installations of GNU/Linux have no GUI installed on them.
Well, I'm aware of the 64-bit Unices, however I'm not aware of their density in the field. Do installations of 64-bit Unices really outnumber 32-bit now? I've not yet made the jump from 32 to 64 (lack of need).
I wouldn't call it “talking down”. What he did was reflect upon the unfortunate social/managerial situation in which the Debian project now finds itself, after his departure. Ian merely pointed out that a purely democratic software development venture is bound for problems because of a lack of strong leadership, which is true. There's a reason Debian is known as being a distribution that is chronically lagging behind the rest. That's the very reason why Ubuntu even exists today.
However, the fact that Ubuntu does exist says something positive about Debian (Ubuntu is Debian, just with additional attention to staying current), and Ian also makes note of this in his interview with Linux Format:
I think that's part of the reason why Ubuntu has done well: there is a strong leader, and that strong is empowered. [...] You know, pure democracy... It looks a lot better on paper than it ends up in practice. [...] One has to remember how completely groundbreaking Debian was. [...] The whole notion that Ubuntu is Debian done right somehow implies that Debian is done wrong, which I think is wrong-headed. [...] [Ubuntu] have had a tremendous impact on the number of people worldwide using Debian (I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian).
Debian's current infrastructure issue has nothing to do with the actual software or the superior package management system that glues it all together. (Again, it's this same software--for the most part--and package management system that comprises Ubuntu.)
Whether or not you're a Debian fan (all of my servers run Debian stable), you have to admit that the majority of the packages in Debian stable being multiple versions behind, hence causing Debian stable to lack key mainstream features commonly found elsewhere is a problem.
(That's why all of my desktops and laptops run the current Ubuntu release (as of this writing, 6.10 (Edgy Eft)). That does not, however, mean that I'm going to migrate all of my servers over to Ubuntu server, because I've generally found Debian stable to be pretty, well, stable; much more so than any “stable” Ubuntu release I've used so far. I need a stable, reliable system for my servers that I can count on not having serious bugs that could affect uptime. On my desktop, a little downtime every now and then isn't the end of the world, so I can tolerate up to a certain level of instability in order to stay “current”.)
Slashdot Mirror
The DefectiveByDesign team is not sending Mr. Jobs that jester hat they promised. Instead, they're sending him a thank-you letter. IMHO, he escaped by the skin of his teeth, and did the bare minimum to back up his words. Again, as I said earlier, this move is a positive one, and I'm looking forward to more like it in the future. However, as I again said, there's much more that could be done. This Apple/EMI deal is a bit weak at best. There's no logical reasoning behind charging more for DRM-free tracks, even if they are encoded at higher bitrates. Just eradicate EMI's DRM all together, and “upgrade” people at no additional cost.
What's sad about this is that it's being called an ”upgrade“, when in actuality it amounts to little more than another way to make extra money on goods that people have already paid for. “We know you already bought a defective version of this track, so we're offering a fix to this problem. At your expense, of course.” If I ever bought a defective product in any other industry, it would be replaced with a product of better quality at no additional cost to me, usually with an added incentive (coupons, free stuff) to remain a customer. But now, just because this relates to the recording industry, people have to pay for bugfixes, when the bugs were included intentionally? If you ask me, Apple's coming out well on top with this deal. USD $0.30 may not seem like a lot, but if 1,000,000,000 (one billion) tracks are upgraded at USD $0.30 each, that's USD $300,000,000 (three hundred million), just on “upgrades”.
Call me a zealot if you want, it doesn't phase me. If being angered by scams masked as good-faith efforts amounts to nothing more than zealotry in your mind, then I feel sorry for you.
(Attn Moderators: I care not about
If iTunes really is free, then show me where I can view, modify, and redistribute the source code. Oh, what's that? I can't do that? Then it's proprietary.
If you paid any attention at all to the anti-DRM campaign that was focusing on Steve Jobs's comments against DRM, you would have seen that it was led by the Free Software Foundation's DefectiveByDesign group. The FSF, Microsoft lap dogs?? Your powers of observation and reasoning simply astound me. Granted, the DRM-free option announced by EMI is a good move, but it would be virtually effortless to sign the independent labels on in addition to the EMI deal. There's absolutely no reason why Mr. Jobs can't enable independent labels to sign up as iTunes vendors.
This is a definitely a step in the right direction. What they should be doing, though, is removing the DRM-infested tracks from iTunes and replacing them with DRM-free versions. That way, you'd have two tiers of DRM-free tracks: the “standard” quality $0.99 tracks and the higher-quality $1.29 tracks.
However, I will not yet be able to directly benefit from this announcement, because:
Again, this is good news, but it seems to me that Jobs and his cohorts are taking the tiniest baby steps possible.
If iTunes were available for a GNU/Linux distribution (without using Wine), and if iTunes tracks were available in a free format, such as Ogg Vorbis, then I might even consider making an exception and using iTunes on my system.
Gaim 2.0 has a plug-in that does this on purpose. When someone starts typing to you out of the blue, a window pops up and says, “You feel a disturbance in the force.”
I once had an acquaintance of mine believing that I'd read her thoughts and that we were psychically “in tune” with each other.
Are you retarded? The FSF owns the copyright for everything I credited as "GNU Project". If you have proof stating otherwise, I'd like to see it, O Wise Coward.
I've had pretty decent experiences with XMMS2 for playing music from my library and MusicBrainz Picard for organizing it.
One of my requirements is the ability to add an SMB share directly to the media player's library, as my entire music collection is stored on a media server (Maxtor MSS Plus) and accessible via an SMB share. Amarok is unable to add an SMB share directly to its Collection, and requiring root access to mount an SMB share is just stupid, IMHO. Rhythmbox is capable of using GNOME's solution to the problem, the "Network Places" shortcuts, which are GNOME-specific connnection configuration settings saved in GConf and represented as "shortcuts" on the desktop and within Nautilus (and applications that use Nautilus in them). However, as we're all aware, Rhythmbox totally blows chunks.
XMMS2 even runs efficiently on low-end hardware. I turned an old Dell OptiPlex GXM 5166 I dug out of storage (specs, picture) into a headless XMMS2 box. I control it using TurboX2, which is also installed on the old OptiPlex. Playback is perfect, even with a 166 MHz!! clock speed.
I have a little over a month's worth of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MOD tracks in my music library right now, and I'm adding more on an almost weekly basis (I <3 Used CDs).
Funny you should mention this. I walked into my living room a couple days ago and saw a big trail of brown smear on the floor. I have three cats, and I guess one of them thought they were being funny by letting one drop in the middle of the room.
You'd think these sophisticated consumer robots would be built to avoid situations like this. Don't they have sensors on the bottom? They should be sensing objects too large to vacuum up (like cat toys or cat feces) or liquid spills (water, juice, milk, cat urine) and moving around them. Instead of cleaning my floor, my Roomba vandalized my home. On top of it all, the insides of the thing are all gunked up, and I'M going to be the one cleaning it out and/or throwing parts away.
I've also noticed that it doesn't do well with transitioning from hardwood floors to carpets (doesn't seem to comprehend the idea of different thickness levels on the floor) or bathroom rugs (it tries to eat them). Doesn't the Roomba have spring-loaded offroad tires on it for a REASON? When picked up off the floor, these things pop out maybe an inch and a half!
I have one carpet with a checkered pattern on it, and the edges of the different checkers in the pattern confuse the Roomba, and it refuses to move across some of them, despite there being no difference in thickness or consistency of the fabric. I'd credit this phenomenon to a poor quality depth sensor, which probably, in actuality, looks for variances in light levels. Stupid.
In all, my Roomba Scheduler has been the worst purchase I've ever made.
Personally, I'd rather have gNewSense pre-installed than Ubuntu. It has the benefits of Ubuntu (being derived from it) but it also has the benefit of being 100% free. Having gNewSense installed on Dell machines straight from Dell would show us that Dell is truly committed to our freedom. If gNewSense were the/a Dell-supported distribution, then that would ensure all of the drivers for any given installation would be free.
In any event, if Dell cooperates with the free software community by providing free drivers for all of the hardware for these "Linux" machines, then I will definitely be buying Dell in the future.
Components of one of my GNU/Linux installations, their functions, and their sources:
That's not counting all of the libraries, GNOME, or GUI tools (Nautilus, et al.). If you count--at minimum--GNOME and X, then you may add GNOME (GNU Project) and X.org (X.Org Foundatio
And calling it Linux is just feeding into Linus's.
Long answer: If you replace every single component of your SCO operating system (why you would be using an SCO product is beyond me) with a comparable component of the GNU operating system, except for the kernel, then you wouldn't be using an SCO operating system anymore. You'd be using GNU, which would be running on top of the SCO kernel. So, yes, your particular operating system could be accurately called "GNU/kOpenServer" or something similar.
They still do. bordersstores.com
I'm wondering if these figures only pertain to the RIAA. I make it a point to not buy CDs from any RIAA labels. Ever. Most artists on these labels aren't worth my time, anyway. Whenever I come across an artist I do like that's on a RIAA label, I usually say, "Oh, well!", shrug my shoulders, move on, and forget about the artist. Sometimes, artists in this situation end up changing labels, and I show support for them by buying their (RIAA-free) albums, but that ends up being a rarity.
Reward the honest labels. They're just doing their part to get good music from their artists to your ears. Ignore the predatory ones. They'll eventually just shrivel up and blow away.
Sources:
You should look into putting your music up on Last.fm, if you haven't already.
Indeed. There are plenty of independent labels and artists that don't play these dirty anti-consumerist games. Why rip them off when they've had nothing to do with rootkits, DRM, etc.?
Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. Kernels don't have GUIs. I think you mean GNU/Linux (the GNU operating system running on top of the kernel called “Linux”), which does have a default GUI--called GNOME--although you most certainly can use a GNU/Linux system without a GUI. Most server installations of GNU/Linux have no GUI installed on them.
Well, I'm aware of the 64-bit Unices, however I'm not aware of their density in the field. Do installations of 64-bit Unices really outnumber 32-bit now? I've not yet made the jump from 32 to 64 (lack of need).
Aren't most Unix installations still 32-bit?
I wouldn't call it “talking down”. What he did was reflect upon the unfortunate social/managerial situation in which the Debian project now finds itself, after his departure. Ian merely pointed out that a purely democratic software development venture is bound for problems because of a lack of strong leadership, which is true. There's a reason Debian is known as being a distribution that is chronically lagging behind the rest. That's the very reason why Ubuntu even exists today.
However, the fact that Ubuntu does exist says something positive about Debian (Ubuntu is Debian, just with additional attention to staying current), and Ian also makes note of this in his interview with Linux Format:
Debian's current infrastructure issue has nothing to do with the actual software or the superior package management system that glues it all together. (Again, it's this same software--for the most part--and package management system that comprises Ubuntu.)
Whether or not you're a Debian fan (all of my servers run Debian stable), you have to admit that the majority of the packages in Debian stable being multiple versions behind, hence causing Debian stable to lack key mainstream features commonly found elsewhere is a problem.
(That's why all of my desktops and laptops run the current Ubuntu release (as of this writing, 6.10 (Edgy Eft)). That does not, however, mean that I'm going to migrate all of my servers over to Ubuntu server, because I've generally found Debian stable to be pretty, well, stable; much more so than any “stable” Ubuntu release I've used so far. I need a stable, reliable system for my servers that I can count on not having serious bugs that could affect uptime. On my desktop, a little downtime every now and then isn't the end of the world, so I can tolerate up to a certain level of instability in order to stay “current”.)