There has been a lot of GPLv3 discussion on tech sites. Perhaps predictably, a lot of it has missed the point or miscategorized the changes.
If you read the history of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Public License, you discover that it all came about because Richard Stallman found himself having to use broken software that he wasn’t allowed to fix. The entire purpose of the GPL is to ensure that everyone who uses a piece of GPL-licensed software can change that software, use the changed version, and distribute it to other people.
A lot of blather about the video iPod has missed the point. No, I don’t think that many people are going to want to buy 320×240 copies of TV shows and music videos at $2 each, that they can’t even burn to a DVD. That’s not why the video iPod matters.
You’ll notice that the new video iPod is still almost exactly the same as the old iPod, because it’s still primarily a music player.
Time Warner turned up yesterday and hooked up the Internet. We now have a nice, reliable high-speed connection again. There seems to be nobody in WiFi range who has a wireless access point; either that or they’re not broadcasting SSIDs. Reception is fabulous throughout the house. The modem and router are in the office, and I have the music server up and running again.
It turned out that Time Warner have some kind of lock on their back-end systems to restrict the allowed set of MAC addresses for cable modems.
Well, according to an article on Slashdot, VIA just released the source for video drivers for the CLE266 / Savage / EPIA M-series systems. The improved drivers support the onboard hardware acceleration for MPEG/DVD playback and OpenGL, de-interlaced video, TV out, and hardware video overlay. Supposedly mplayer has already been updated appropriately.
So, here’s the new plan for a media PC:
Cooler Master ATC620 case, possibly with the fan ripped out because I’m using an… EPIA M-9000 or M-10000 motherboard Seagate Barracuda hard drive LiteOn LTR-52246S CD-RW (currently rips any CD, even supposedly “copy-protected” discs, faster and more reliably than a Plextor) (Later:) DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive (Later:) Maybe a Hauppage WinTV card, or a Sound Blaster card for better audio Not sure which Linux distribution yet.