[PD] "I'm on unix, I'm much better than windows users!" (was Pd-extended 0.42.5 release candidate 6 released!)

[Ricardo Cedeño]

HI, 
I'm a linux user since more than one year and I teach at a South American university in design and arts faculty. 

Before I was on Win or Mac depending on the hardware I was using. I think nowadays people cannot decide easily what OS to use because of market pressures. One responsibility of teachers in media, design, and arts subjects is to provide students with alternatives to these systems. Reasons have been largely expressed in this mailing-list and thousand of forums of free software. But still, I believe if at universities and educational institutions the dominant platforms for media productions are still based on closed and proprietary systems, then future generations of designers and artists all around the globe would not see other options. 

Today students barely have the choice to experiment with software to media production as almost everything has been coded and packaged in nicely looking interfaces. These interfaces do not allow them to think out-of-the-box. Software companies allow them/us to produce what is supposed to be produced, nothing less nothing more.

Teaching that free software do exist, that free software is a worth alternative to proprietary software (adobe, microsoft, apple, autodesk, and the like), that free software enables you  to control what the machine does it is a moral duty in educational academies today. What is at stake is the property of knowledge production because knowledge has become mediated by the computer. Free software stands then for the freedom to access the knowledge and its production.

Ricardo Cedeño Montaña
dRNn1076

> > > (and the most "coherent" is that they always rebel
> > against windows, but not against mac, which in these days is
> > more commercial and bigbrothery than windows ever was -
> > acording to some comments from friends that use mac)
> > 
> > Microsoft has got 90% of the computer market by the balls.
> > They don't really need any other tricks than that (such as
> > DRM or whatever). For Apple or any company, it's a lot
> > easier to expand themselves in a place where Microsoft isn't
> > already. I think that you understand that Microsoft got its
> > 90% not just by selling quality software, and that you
> > understand why so many shops absolutely refuse to sell a
> > computer without Windows even though there's a market for
> > it. Isn't this the most damaging thing going on every day in
> > the industry ?
> 
> Maybe, but to get around that problem you just do what Yves was 
> talking about and help someone switch to a free os.  Regarding 
> music specifically, however, Apple's actions are more worrisome 
> to me.
> 
> Apple is involved deeply in getting computer files to behave 
> less like "pure data" and more like old media formats.  Actually 
> it's worse than that, because with an audio cassette player you 
> could record as many copies of an album as you could afford.  You 
> can't even make your own personal copy with Apple's aac files 
> from Itunes (and if you do it's illegal in the U.S.).
> 
> Unlike Microsoft users, who usually have a healthy dose of 
> animosity toward the os, Apple users love their software.  To me, 
> this is one of the biggest problems in the industry because it 
> means that people aren't asking really obvious questions in 
> response to DRM.  (For example: why is fair use _shrinking_ when 
> technology is making the cost of copying/distributing music next 
> to nothing?  Instead, it should be expanding, right?) If in 10 
> years sharing my music files with you isn't as easy as touching 
> you on the shoulder, you'll mainly have Apple and the RIAA to thank.
> 
> Another obvious question: if I'm buying an entire album of music files in a restricted format that locks me into using Itunes and 
> makes it nearly impossible (AFAICT) to transfer over my music 
> library to GNU/Linux, shouldn't I be paying _substantially_ less for those files than if I bought the album on CD?
> 
> -Jonathan
 		 	   		  
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