Broadly speaking, if you want to store digital audio, there are two ways to do the job:

1. Compress the audio (usually by throwing out parts of the audio information humans can’t hear) and store the rest.
2. Compress the audio without throwing out any part of the audio information.

The first alternative is called “lossy” because one loses information in the process. In exchange for fitting fairly high-quality audio into a tight space, the listener gives up quality. It’s common to find portable digital audio players that will play a variety of lossy compressed audio formats. Conversely, the second option is called “lossless” because you get out precisely what you put into the compression. People who care deeply about retaining the quality of the digital audio they listen to deal exclusively in lossless audio compression.

Ogg Vorbis and MP3 are examples of the first approach, FLAC is an example of the second approach.

Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are free for anyone anywhere to use for any purpose. In many countries MP3 is encumbered by patents; only those who can afford to pay the patent fee can use MP3 without fear of losing a patent lawsuit.

The Lossless Audio blog keeps up with developments in lossless audio compression. Here you can find a one-stop shop for learning about the latest developments in portable audio devices that play lossless audio formats and advances in compression Digital Citizen supports, including FLAC.

Edd Dumbill, a programmer, wrote about moving from a GNU/Linux system to MacOS X, a proprietary operating system. His complaints about GNU/Linux will resonate most deeply with the open source audience because a free software user will note the absence of software freedom discussion.

Dumbill notes that fonts look better on MacOS X. I find this to be chiefly a matter of taste, but it’s also worth noting that Apple holds patents on algorithms which prohibit free software users from rendering fonts in the same way (particularly at small sizes, like the sizes one uses on the desktop). Thus, competition is averted and Apple is hovering over any free software developer who dares to even activate routines which make fonts look the same (merely using software can put one in danger of losing a patent infringement lawsuit as Apple knows very well).

Which programs are better is also chiefly a matter of taste, but perhaps there is a need for a free software replacement for the programs Dumbill notes.

Hardware for Apple ought to work perfectly all the time because Apple has so little of it to “support” (quotes here because Apple has a history of not telling their users how to provide their own support for said hardware even when Apple stops manufacturing it, like in the case of the Apple Newton. I believe there is something comparable going on with making CDs that can boot straight into a non-MacOS system for so-called “old world” Mac hardware). This history ought to make anyone wary of buying Apple hardware.

Restricting playing movies fullscreen to those willing to pay seems funny to me because I’ve been playing movies fullscreen with free software. When Dumbill notes “video conferencing that works” he must not mean across platforms on open standards. Apple has a strong history of developing things that only work with other MacOS users (not including working between MacOS pre-X and MacOS X). When free software advocates develop software that only really works on free platforms, they’re accused of being insular and needlessly restrictive (usually by open source advocates). Funny how the same doesn’t seem to apply to proprietors. It’s almost expected or desired that they’ll make a system that only talks to itself.

Finally, the idea of using what’s best for one’s job is chiefly an open source argument—again freedom is left out of the debate entirely, one should pick among a restricted set of choices based on nothing more than one’s own immediate needs. No sense of building community need apply.

I think this is yet another illustration of how free software and open source advocates see things differently.

Robert X. Cringely blogs about the misuse of so-called “unlimited” usage. Entertaining so long as you’re not a Verizon customer. Apparently 5 gigabytes of data is the limit for their so-called “unlimited” plan. If you download more than that in a month, your connection is cut off and you’re expected to pay a fee for “early termination”.

This is actually two problems:

1. It’s easy to legitimately download more than 5GB in a month. Anyone who downloads free software operating systems and free media (as I encourage people to do) can accomplish this in a month. If you make media (another worthwhile activity), it’s even easier to generate more than 5GB of data in a month that you’d like to share with others, which requires uploading it to your server. Perhaps you don’t do this routinely, but as far as Verizon cares one infraction is enough to justify ending your service.
2. Paying a fee to the organization that cut you off for downloading too much is ridiculous on its face. This is akin to the logic a bully would use to try and justify beating you for disobeying capricious restrictions.

Years ago, I once had a similar dispute with a local ISP over this issue. I had a second telephone line I was willing to use exclusively for dialing into the ISP over an ordinary telephone modem. The ISP claimed I was using too much connection time, I told them that their plan indicated the usage could be “unlimited”. They claimed that this was subject to vague terms of using the service “too much” and cut off my access. They never even defined what “too much” was in any specific way, but even if they had it wouldn’t change the fact that their service plan was not “unlimited”.

Apparently it’s too much to ask that people actually use the word “unlimited” for its actual meaning and sell Internet access plans with defined limits on how much one can stay connected (in the case of a phone connection) and/or how much data one may transfer over that connection. You know, actually spelling out the details and abiding by them.

Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine Advantage” is a push for encouraging users of illicitly licensed Microsoft proprietary software to pay for legally licensed copies. Microsoft sends out a program with system updates which checks over the entire Microsoft Windows system and informs the user if the program concludes that some Microsoft program is not “genuine”.

Of course, “genuine” is the wrong word to use here. Microsoft’s issue concerns whether the license is issued to the user and legitimately obtained (again, according to Microsoft’s records).

So what happens if Microsoft’s software is wrong? Apparently what happens is you either decide to continue to be treated this way by your proprietor, or you decide to switch to free software instead.

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MacOS X software is commonly distributed in an installer package file which allows the user to easily add new programs to their system by double-clicking an icon and dragging a program to the folder where applications are stored. According to various sources, there is a problem with the MacOS X installer program. Six weeks ago, Apple knew that certain MacOS X installer packages could be set up to do things that only administrative users ought to be able to do such as adding a new admin-level account on a MacOS X system, changing the MacOS X kernel (briefly, the lowest-level part of an operating system), or alter any file you want altered, all without prompting most MacOS X users for a password.

“biovizier” said that has been on Apple’s plate for a while (all spelling in context):

Re: Installer priviliges
Posted: Jul 28, 2006 6:53 PM

I heard back from Apple, and the bug report has been marked a “duplicate”. A note sent in parallel to product-security@apple.com received the response that the issue is “known” and is “being addressed”.

This means that the security issue dates back before six weeks and more than one person has reported this issue to Apple. As far as I know, Apple has not yet released a fix for this issue.

There’s even good reason to believe this has gone unaddressed because it was broken by design:

There exists a pretty significant interface problem with the Apple Installer program such that any package requesting admin access via the AdminAuthorization key, when run in an admin user account, is given full root-level access without providing the user with a password prompt during the install. This is even explained in Apple’s Installer documentation as proper behavior. The distinction between the AdminAuthorization and RootAuthorization keys is, simply, whether or not the admin user is prompted for a password; the end powers are exactly the same and it is up to the creator of the package as to if he will be kind enough to ask for a password.

Since many progressives insist on running proprietary MacOS X software, it’s worth asking: how’s your proprietor treating you?

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After much bad press about Apple’s hardware failing including causing two instances of minor burns to people handling the machines, Apple has issued a recall on a bunch of bad batteries in their customer’s iBooks. Mike Pinkerton mentions a colleague’s Apple iBook battery won’t be recalled and asks

The odd thing is that all the tech notes tell you that to find the serial number on an iBook, you have to pry open the machine and look under the keyboard (ok, pry is exaggerating, but you get my drift). In reality, all you have to do is look in the System Profiler app; the serial number is listed on the main Hardware tab. I copied and pasted and it validated the serial number as an affected model, so I know it’s correct. Why wouldn’t Apple’s detailed tech notes mention this very simple alternative?

It would be a good idea to accomodate those that can get the serial number in software, just as Pinkerton says. However, not everyone using an Apple iBook runs MacOS X. Some run MacOS 9, some run free software operating systems including OpenBSD and GNU/Linux which have been ported to run on PPC hardware.

Bad batteries are a hardware issue; bad batteries will adversely affect all users regardless of operating system. If the hardware is warrantied without exception to one’s OS (as it should be), it makes sense to give directions that all iBook users can use, not just those running MacOS X. It would be unwise to exclusively list the software method for determining one’s serial number because this method would be vastly different in OSes and not available in some OSes.

I’m starting a new tag with this article—Technical—where I’ll cover technical subjects with little or no explanation of the jargon. These topics are not intended for the novice or the uninitiated. Everyone’s free to read and participate in the discussion, of course, but sometimes I feel like getting to the heart of the matter more than I feel like setting up the discussion.

Chris Ilias quoted Giganews support on why XPAT isn’t supported on Giganews servers:

The XPAT command attempts to search through our entire spool of over 700 million articles, to match on a specific keyword, that is often found only in a handful of newsgroups. The command puts enough of a load on our servers, that several people using this at one time can affect the performance that all of our customers receive.

As one of the posters in that blog pointed out, this is somewhat misleading. XPAT only searches one group; a GROUP command must preceed an XPAT command. That reduces the number of articles being searched by a great deal. But what if it could be reduced further still?

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