[Sussex] LINUX Format

[Geoff Teale]

Morning again ;)

Got home last night to find thie months LINUX format was through the door.

[Paul, Angelo] I've cross posted this to you because it may be of interest
to a Red Hat 8.0 user

Couple of interesting points about it:

1/
The little business supplement they do features a nice piece on SOAP.


2/
They head to head review Red Hat 8.0 and SuSE 8.1.  From this I gathered
some information that explains one of the most annoying things about Red Hat
8.0 - it won't play Mp3's on MPEG videos.  Infact it turns out that
applications like XMMS and such like have been specifically crippled to stop
you doing this because Red Hat fear the legal implication of providing
software that can play illegally obtained media. 

Of course you could remove the orignal package and install one from the web
to resolve this.  (There is a good URL for decrippling Red Hat 8.0 with
RPM's at http://psyche.freshrpms.net this site also has apt for Red Hat).

On this subject, I can see their point, but I've yet to see a court of law
hold up the idea that providing a mechanism that can be used in a criminal
manner makes you liable for someone who choses to use it in that way
(assuming that mechanism also has a legitimate purpose).  As Swaine points
out in this months DDJ - in the USA they have a large, well armed, body who
have succesfully stood against the notion than the mechanism is in any way
responsible for the crime.  Swaine goes on to suggest that he'd just love to
see a showdown on this concept between the RIAA and NRA!  

Remember, if you get the opportunity, please press home to you MP that you
are against the reduction of your civil liberties by the implimentation of
digital right management purely so that big record and film companies can
implement pay-per-view/listen on all forms of media (yes that's right folks,
the record companies don't like the fact that you only have to pay for a CD
once) and so Microsoft can find a "legitimate" mechanism to force their
competitors off the desktop.  

When you see media spokes people talking about piracy and the need for
digital right management please remember that _all_ independent research
(i.e. those commisioned by the EU, the US Government and several smaller
bodies rather than by the RIAA and MPAA) show a strong decline in Piracy in
the last 10 years.  Whilst it is true that most pirate distribution has
moved onto the internet the strongest driver behind this is still the sale
of pirated CD's in markets and bootsales.

3/
The LINUX expo coverage features the Giraffe (he made the cover!) but
unfortunately no any of the LUG member who were hangin out with the Giraffe
at the Microsoft stand ;)

-- 
GJT
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk




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