The Null Device

2003/8/18

An interview with Richard M. Stallman, the head of the Free Software Foundation. In it he states his opposition to the Intel/Microsoft "Trusted Computing" system (or "Treacherous Computing", as he calls it), calls for web browsers to automatically send complaints to webmasters about Flash-based web pages (which, when you think about it, is not such a bad idea), and reveals that Debian has fallen out of favour because they tolerate the existence of a ghetto of non-free software. As well as the usual broadside at the Open Source movement (who, in rms's view, have more in common ideologically with Microsoft than with the Free Software movement). (via Slashdot)

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The MacOS X softsynth landscape is set to look slightly less austere, now that Muon are finally porting the softsynths (CM101, SR202 and DS404) they wrote for the Computer Music magazine cover discs to MacOS X. That's 3 fewer things I'll have to do without when I finally end up taking the plunge (probably when I have A$900 to spare and nothing better to spend it on). Hopefully by then Pluggo will be out for OSX as well.

Of course, this doesn't resolve the massive VST/AudioUnits uncertainty that's balkanising the OSX digital audio world. But that's another issue.

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I just deleted about 3 comments from a 5-comment-long screed someone posted to the comments in this blog, about their views on what was "cool" and how their musical preferences had evolved to their present state of eclectic enlightenment. (Give yourself a pat on the back; you've made it. It's just too fucking bad you had to post your accomplishments to my blog comments from where I deleted them.)

A word of advice: there is a reason why the maximum length of comments in this blog is limited. Comments are intended for short, to-the-point comments on the blog item at hand, not lengthy exercises in therapeutic writing or off-topic rants about corporate mind control, the sound ethical basis of your porn-viewing habits or what was on TV the other night (and you know who you are). If you wish to rabbit on about such things, by all means, knock yourself out. Just don't do so in my blog comments.

If you wish to start a blog of your own, here are some places you can do it: Blogspot; Typepad; LiveJournal. Or if you have a web server with CGI capabilities, you can download Movable Type.

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