Wow… I am writing this on a Win95 computer I setup to do voice chat… well, I am sorry to say the Linux Yahoo Messenger client doesn’t do voice. In other news, I have dial up piped in to my Redhat 9 box, and this computer… How exciting! Anyhow, I am having trouble with the “dial up on demand” function of my router… when I request a connection it “should” connect… right now I have to go into the web administration and force a connect… definitely not the best solution. Difficulties lie ahead of me… :-( I see lots of networking in my future… oh boy!
Monthly Archives: October 2003
Online Music
In the midst of my quest to find music in the mp3 format, I have stumbled on (well, I remembered it actually) Mp3.com. (update 6-3-2004: Mp3.com does not exist as it did when this article was written, it was bought out awhile back). Some of their advertisements are without good taste, but ignoring those and paying attention to the music you can find some -really- good Christian Music there. Both for streaming and download… for free. I saw Phil Joel on the list and remembered he is with the Newsboys, so I downloaded his one and only song for free download on there, “The Man You Want Me To Be”, and it is awesome… in particular this line is pretty cool…
“I have swallowed lies that tasted true,
the plans I thought were sent from you,
but all you wanted was for me to be still.
Jesus, make me the man that you want me to be”
Another good artist is Shawn McDonald.
Linux, DRM, WMA, and MP3
Well, I downloaded the song FFH – So Is His Love from the MusicMatch service. However I was a little dissappointed. It wasn’t until after I had paid for the song, that the message appeared in the software, that it was Windows Media Audio with Digital Rights Management.
TOTAL BUMMER!
It just so happens my portable MP3 player also supports WMA, however not with DRM. The only way I was able to listen to the song on my portable (and for that matter my Linux computer) was to loop the output on my soundcard into the input (mic) and record it while playing it in MusicMatch. Of course all of you in the digital sound arena would know that if I did what I just described… you get quality loss. It irritated me that something I payed for wouldn’t allow me to use it how how I wanted. I suppose there will need to be huge changes in the legal music download services before old-school digital media users like me want to actually use them. Needless to say, I complained to MusicMatch about my troubles in the Non-Windows world, and they refunded my 99 cents… and I deleted the music file. I guess I’ll have to buy the FFH CD.
However, if you are a Windows user, there is not a better service than MusicMatch… yet.
IE and Viruses
All of these hack attacks due to terrible programming in Internet Explorer. Browser incompatibilities, Windows only webpages, and a host of other nonsense should force a market economy to break free from being slaves to viruses, and a Windows dominated world. If you support capitalism and democracy download MozillaFirebird. Oh, by the way, it’s available for Windows too! How could you say no now? :-)