Often, the Onion is closer to the truth than real news media. To paraphrase Stuart Lee: Now, that story about an apple user isn't true, but I feel what it says about apple users...

I don't think I've ever spent any time converting FLAC to AAC (which is what I use on my portable player - HTC Desire). I buy a CD, put it in the media player, and press OK on the remote control. Some minutes later, the CD pops out again. The media player music storage has a FLAC copy (which it plays just fine), the portable player sync folder has an AAC copy.

I don't see why I couldn't download a FLAC file, and have some service auto-convert it to AAC and put it in the appropriate place. Should be trivial on Windows or Linux.

If you have any DNLA media players, FLAC could be converted on the fly to whatever format they want, including any of the widely supported .lossless formats, like WAV, WMA Lossless, and Apple Lossless, etc.

Whether you think the difference in quality between mp3 & lossless is worth it is a personal choice. If you listen to a lot of classical, or actually know what a cymbal or violin sounds like, you might prefer FLAC. If you only listen to compressed to death pop through $0.50 earbuds on a clipped at 200Hz & 16KHz portable player while standing next to a busy road, then you're probably happy with mp3 :-)

But personal choice is what the article is arguing for - why not actually allow people the choice in music downloads, in an unencumbered music format, that anyone with a PC capable of downloading it can listen to?

(TBH, I expect the answer would be "personal choice in music formats does not make money for the vendor".)

Simon.

Ah, so essentially it's an argument amongst philosophers, rather than anything... constructive:

Philosopher Popper says the scientific method is X, see all these examples E, thus science is Justified in context Truth.

Physicists S go "WTF? Hey, Steve's just discovered the Top Quark!"

Philosopher Feyerabend says E are not examples of X, but of various K, therefore science is not Justified in Truth, but in Usefulness.

Physicists S go "WTF? Hey look, Bob's just built a giant superconducting supercollider!"

Etc.

They have ignored court orders. They publish whatever they like and people seem to automatically assume that everything they say is the absolute truth, despite they having no credible track record. WikiLeaks is not a wiki in the true sense, there is no collaboration, the only people allowed to post are their little Cabal. Wikipedia, despite it's problems allows people to challenge its decisions in a publicly accountable way.

I think you've missed the whole point of WikiLeaks.

It's designed to be immune to national court orders, because it's meant to report on abuses by governments and their legal processes.

It's also designed to be unaccountable because it's meant to be immune to pressure on individuals by governments and corporations.

The fact that wikileaks has to go to these lengths to ensure that reporting corruption and abuse is possible is a reflection on the societies we live in, not the organisation itself.