You're talking about software licensing, which is not the same as buying media (music/video/etc).

When I buy music, I have the right to make a backup copy, or to transfer it to another medium. The copyright laws were written before software was a consideration, so they don't tend to mention it specifically and therefore it's handled differently in some ways (e.g different licenses), but it's generally accepted that by extension this also holds true for digital media - e.g I'm allowed to take all my old C64 disks, convert them to disk images on my PC, and run them in an emulator. Any term in a license agreement which tries to stop you from doing so is an unfair contract condition and unenforceable, at least where I live. Sucks to be you if the US is different.

Wow, you have a short memory!

I've seen this firsthand, so don't try to tell me it never happened: 100th window by Massive attack. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactus_Data_Shield

Early Ipods would format themselves if you plugged them into your second computer. I've seen this firsthand, too.

The first-gen DRM was quite draconian - the only reason they don't try to stop you doing these things now is that they realised very quickly that by doing things like installing rootkits they were making enemies and encouraging people to just download the version with no crap attached that was free and available on the web about 18 nanoseconds after the release - it was a far superior experience to using their crapware.

you seem to be implying that you're quite happy to just settle for whatever rights the license holders decide you can have, regardless of whether they're reasonable or not? You think all the terms in those license agreements are enforceable in every jurisdiction? lol. When apple show up to turn you into a human centipad and say that you agreed to it, you'll just go with them?

Ummm, No: What rights you have depends on your local laws. Sounds to me like you should read up on your rights.

It has never been considered copyright infringement to make a backup of something or to transfer it to another medium. DRM attempts to prevent exactly this. this is established all over the place. For me, the following excerpt from wikipedia seems relevant:

What DRM really does is two things: 1) waste resources on your computer providing absolutely nothing desirable and nothing that can't be bypassed in seconds, shortening its lifespan and increasing its energy consumption, and 2) piss off legitimate users who want to do things they're legally allowed to do, turning their customers into their enemies. Good job!

You shouldn't be - it's propaganda - this line of argument diverts the discussion away from the more serious issues.

That's exactly what it's intended to do, by the way, it's a classic trick of the trade - Goebbels would be ever so proud.

I would argue that the unrealistic stance to take is that spying is necessary - let me ask you this: why is surveillance necessary? why do you need foreign intelligence?

Are you worried about an invading army showing up on your shores tomorrow? who? You don't think you'd detect them with your radars, sonars, satellites, etc?

Maybe you need to spy so that you can get the competitive edge in business - you know, get mcdonalds into antarctica and secure those lucrative jet fighter contracts for boeing. You don't think that the US and US companies could just get along by playing fair with everyone else? You don't have a reputation for superior engineering and good manufacturing - you need to play dirty to survive? Having a reputation as "the country that always plays fair" wouldn't be worth anything at all in financial terms?

Aha, I've got it! you're worried about a sudden nuclear attack - those pesky french could always nuke Washington tomorrow, so you need to spy! You don't think that making a noble gesture like proposing a total blanket ban on nuclear weapons worldwide and offering to completely dismantle your stockpile would help relieve tensions? You really think the North Koreans would bother nuking you if you dismantled your entire stockpile? I think you'd find they just might dismantle theirs and start feeding their people a little better or risk revolution when the amazing and unprecedented news that the US just disarmed gets through to the people. Of course we'd need to send in weapons inspectors to make sure that you weren't being sneaky.

Oh, I know - it's the same answer as everything else - you're worried about terrorists killing thousands of your civillians!

Assuming that this is a real threat (something of which I've seen absolutely no evidence ever), has it not occurred to you that there might be other ways of addressing the issue that don't involve taking morally repugnant actions?

Maybe you could ask them "why do you hate our freedom?" and they'll explain that it's not your freedom they hate, it's the fact that you aid their enemies and topple their governments so that you can get cheap oil. If you guys stopped being assholes, this "problem" would go away all by itself. A great way to start having this conversation would be to start talking about redressing crimes committed by previous administrations - the terrorist threat you foam at the mouth about would lose a metric fucktonne of momentum overnight if you'd charge dubya for the war crimes he committed, for example. "Terrorist problem" solved, zero new evil done.

History does not suggest that we cannot better ourselves.

OK, I'll bite.

Lol, I love this argument so much.

I love the way these people focus entirely on the legal issues - there's nothing in the constitution preventing the NSA from running pervasive global surveillance, therefore it's ok - it's only when they're spying on americans that there's any kind of issue. Let's just completely ignore any moral issues or questions of whether it's a good thing or not to live in a world where orwell's wildest nightmares are everyday occurrences and where all communications are monitored by blanket surveilance.

So, as an american who is unconcerned with the activities of the NSA overseas, let me ask you this: how do you feel about the "enemy" intelligence agencies monitoring everything you do and say? Ever cheat on your significant other? Maybe you're into BDSM? Or maybe you just have erectile dysfunction? How do you feel about a pakistani intelligence officer laughing at you about it? Oh, that's right - you're the one person on this planet who has nothing at all to be embarrassed about, ever.

Which makes it OK! Duh!

So, what you're saying is that the only reason why it's not OK to use chemical and/or biological weapons or build a doomsday device is because there are laws against it? Anything that anybody else does is OK just as long as there's no law against it - the concept of us being better than them and not using "evil" tactics doesn't exist - there's nothing inherently wrong about ethnic cleansing or human experimentation, it's just illiegal.

Which enemies? What specific group? Terrorists? Snowden still hasn't revealed anything that a half-way competent terrorist wouldn't have assumed was in place already.

Your activities are arguably aid and comfort to the enemies of the united states: here's my case: every time I read this ridiculous argument I become a little more convinced that your government needs to fall.

1. log in every now and then (once per week is more than enough)
2. type 'sudo apt-get update'
3. type in your password
4. press Y

It usually takes me about 40 seconds. You can even set up a cron job to do it automatically if that's too much work. Setting it up properly isn't as easy as some make it sound though - if you don't know about things like Mail Transfer Agents and such it may take you a day or 2 of messing about, but the documentation is out there and it's not rocket science. If you do go with yout own box, you'll also want to set up SPF and DKIM so that google doesn't put everything you send to gmail users into spam.

There's lots of open-source audio production software out there. Ardour, mentioned by others, and for midi composition I quite like rosegarden. There's also a bunch of other software which follows a more unixy philosophy - it does one thing and does it well but it's designed to be chained together. For example, there's jack, a low latency audio framework designed for audio production. It has a nice patch panel which allows you to link the output of any jack-enabled software to the input of any other jack-enabled software, ad nauseum. There's also an insanely huge pile of LADSPA plugins available for any software which supports them (most open-source stuff). There are many, many open-source software synths: timidity and fluidsynth being only the tip of the iceberg. One which may be of interest is bristol - it's an emulator for many popular and famous old synths.

But when it comes down to it, I use FL studio. It's proprietary and not very highly regarded amongst some (snobby) audiophiles, but FL Studio runs quite well in wine, though it may require some tweaking to get it working smoothly. I like FL studio for its intuitive interface and bundled synthesizers. It's easy to use for a beginner with little audio production experience but it has enough knobs and dials that you're not lacking for options when you want to start getting more technical.

I highly recommend running FL studio in it's own wineprefix so that you can tweak to your heart's content and so that other wine programs don't interfere with it. Since wine and FL both support ASIO you can plug FL studio into jack and use all the awesome open-source jack-based tools out there in conjunction with FL.

For the open-source crowd, there's the inevitable open-source recreation: LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio). When I last played with it it was very new and immature but it did support using VSTs through wine and it looks like it has matured well - I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.

Because the length of time since episode 2 was released. Clearly the "episodic gaming" thing valve was pushing back then (i.e regular releases of smaller/shorter games) has not panned out, otherwise we'd be at episode 10 by now. I'm saying I expect a full game, not just an episode.

In this case, yes! the fact that the releases haven't been frequent kills the episodic gaming idea.

I think the real chance for dominance will be when the Playstation 5 and XBoxInconsistentlyNamedFourthModel come out.

Console gamer: "So, did you hear? the PS5 comes out soon!"

SteamBox gamer: "Yeah I saw. Noticed that it won't run any of your PS4 games. So I guess you'll be building an entirely new game library from scratch at AU$90/title, eh?"

Console gamer: "Well...yeah...but 'Call of Duty 27: Lets milk this for all it's worth' will be a PS5 exclusive! Your crappy 5-year old SteamBox wouldn't even run that!"

SteamBox Gamer: "Yeah, I'm going to have to take it to the shop and get it upgraded soon, I can't run Half-life 4. Should only be about $100. How much is the PS5 again?"

It won't be "SteamBox exclusive", it'll be "SteamOS exclusive". That means that if you don't want to hand over your cash for a SteamBox you could always just install SteamOS on your PC (for free). That's the beauty of an open system.

And it's not like there won't ever be a windoze version - you can bet that'll come out 6 months after the SteamOS version.

It better not be episode 3: after this long, I expect a full game which takes me 12+ hours to finish.

Sounds like you need to switch to a good ISP. Maybe one which will Stand for the users rights

Has any real research been done into their comparative viscosity? I'd dearly love to see a wolf/hyena drop experiment.

Agreed. I want the guy in charge of the kernel I rely on working the way he does - it makes the software better.

I've seen a few articles with titles like 'Linus explodes again!' over the years, and any time I've read on and looked at the reason why he's 'exploded' it seems to boil down to him saying "you made a stupid fucking mistake".

Being told you've made a stupid fucking mistake works - people do that extra bit of due diligence because they don't want to hear it again.

There was an article a while back about linus warning about profanity: this is his way of saying "don't make any stupid fucking mistakes!"

If I was a kernel dev, I'd be very careful about not making any mistakes - don't want to piss off Linus!

As an end-user who relies on the software they're producing on a daily basis, I'm happy when I see an article about Linus swearing at someone - the fact that he swears at people is part of the reason I feel confident when I do an 'apt-get update'