Wednesday, May 23, 2001

CD Ripper/MP3 Encoder -- 10:29 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been digging around for a nice Windows CD ripper/MP3 encoder. The software that came with my burner, ahem, sucks. I think I've found one in Audiograbber. It automatically gets the disc and track names from Freedb, rips them, normalizes the level, and encodes them to MP3s, either through the internal codecs they have or an external encoder like Bladeenc. I've been ripping my CDs to MP3s and then burning them to CD-Rs so I can have sort of a poor-man's CD changer. Now all I need is a car in-dash MP3 player.

The downloadable version is mildly crippled in that it will only rip half the tracks at any given time and the tracks it will rip are randomly chosen at start-up. That's pretty easy to work around though. Still, not a bad deal at all for $25.

Bleh -- 8:32 am CST, Update by The Master

Okay, check this out: College Dropout Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Video Games. (not for the easily offended)

This is a parody, but I'm waiting for the day this actually happens. I remember an awful lot of people in college who whined about IRC causing them to fail classes. Heck, a few of them got "married" over IRC. How disgusting.

Today's User Friendly was a good chuckle too :-)

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

Piracy Figures -- 6:37 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This story on CNN's site claims that 37% of the software in use around the world is pirated. My big question is this: exactly how do they determine that figure? The stats come from the Business Software Alliance which is not a government agency but an organization controlled by the major software companies to fight piracy. So naturally statistics like these make their pleas seem viable. I believe the stats are impossible to verify. The article basically uses this as a justification for WinXP and Office XP's copy protection schemes. But like all copy protection schemes, this one will be easily circumvented. The only people who will be affected are legitimate users who have to put up with extra garbage just to use software they paid for.

I believe that warezers and other pirates should be kicked directly in the forehead. It is theft, pure and simple. However, it is a major jump to consider anyone with a CD burner to be a thief. Some of us find them rather handy for Linux distributions :)

The Master comments: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

J.t.Qbe comments: But A.T., Microsoft does consider Linux to be theft: theft of profits! You're right, though--you can't trust the BSA's piracy statistics. This is something which is impossible to measure, but can easily be used to justify it's strongarm tactics and any wacko kind of copy protection M$ wants to put into place. (Just got a CD burner today; will be burning the new FreeBSD tomorrow at work).

Linux Q3A Status -- 1:16 pm CST, Update by The Master

Timothee Besset sent a letter into LinuxGames, indicating that he was taking over the maintenance of the linux ports of Q3A and Team Arena. Here's the letter:

I see that Loki Software's announcement that they are no longer in charge of Linux Quake III Arena and linux Quake III: Team Arena generated a lot of buzz and questions. I'll try to clarify a few things:

• there will be a linux beta point release for Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena shortly after the win32 release.
• Id always supported linux gaming actively, and they hired me as a contractor to maintain the linux side of things.

This said, here is a quick rundown on the status:

The win32, Mac and linux versions are now living in the same source tree. The linux version which was maintained in a seperate tree by Loki has been merged back in. It runs great as far as I've been testing it. When the new beta binary is out we will probably run a public bugtracker to help sort out remaining issues.

A.T. Hun comments: Sweet news! I'm not sure if Loki just dropped the ball or exactly what happened there. At any rate, I'm glad to see Linux Q3A/Q3:TA getting the attention it deserves. The beta patch that was released a while back runs quite nicely with Q3A (about as fast as Windows 98). Q3:TA needed some work though. Timothee is the man behind GtkRadiant, so I'm sure he'll do a fine job.

Past Two Days' News

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