undertakingyou

So it happened to me yesterday. That thing that all SysAdmins hate. You get that call that the server won’t boot, and when you look in the bios it doesn’t even see that there is a hard drive in the machine. And of course the noise coming from the machine makes banshee screams a welcome sound. Yes, yesterday one of our servers hard drives died and of course, there is no raid. I tried all I could to mount the drive but there was no hope getting data off of it. We have to rely on backup’s. But users see having to make backups as an annoying thing. To put in a blank CD every day, and some days two if it asks for it. What a pain in the butt. No, it is much easier to ignore the backup software and just panic when you need to have a current backup.

All of this said, I went out and bought a new 500GB SATA drive and put it in the machine and now had the joy of reinstalling Windows 2003 Server Standard. So, I ask my boss where the original media is for the Server and where is the license agreements for the CAL’s for terminal services. I don’t know he says. I don’t think that it shipped with it. Hmm . . . I have to have the server up today, so I call dell and ask if I can use any media and they say “Sure! You can even use the Windows 2003 Standard R2 disc if you want and we don’t see an order of extra licenses so it must be part of the OS.” Armed with this new hope I start it install using the R2 discs. I come to the point that I want to put in my serial number, taken from the side of the case and what do I get? A big ‘NO SOUP FOR YOU’ dialog box, and the instillation is at a halt. So, I need an R1 disc, I pull some strings and get the proper media. When to my surprise I put in the serial number off the side of the case and I get the ‘NO SOUP FOR YOU DIALOG’ box again! What, I own a license to this product, I have the media and I can’t install. So I research this strange new finding to only learn that the license is media specific. You can’t just use any CD with any license. Let me reiterate. I own a license to this product, I have the product media, but I can’t use it because they don’t have some magically matching hash somewhere. And then there is the question that when I activate the Terminal Server and install my licenses will I be told that I have fatal error?

Thus the beauty of Free and Open Source Software. With NFS, ldap, vino, ssh, or any other remote connection I don’t have to have licenses for everyone that may use it. I can just use it. I don’t have to worry about a serial number matching the install media, I can use whatever media I may have. I don’t have to drive all around town trying to find media I don’t have. All the media I may want is a click away. With FOSS I can use my computer without worry from the man, without extra headache of where I will get the disc, and I don’t have to worry about after I have the computer up can all my users get to it without having to buy more licenses. It just works.

So for Christmas my sister got a new iPod Nano. She was super excited and asked if we could put some music on it. Happy to do so, we came over to my house, where I only have Linux, and plugged the iPod in. Using amaroK she transfered a bunch of songs over, and after we ejected it we went to play some of this new music. It said that there was none. No songs, artists, albums . . . nothing. When I looked under the statistics tab on the iPod it said that most of the space on the device was used. I plugged it back in to the USB and looked at the music device with amaroK, RhythmBox, and GTKpod and all the same result. Everything was there on the device according to these programs but nothing was there to be played once the device was disconnected. In disgust we tried several things to get the iPod to rescan and rebuild the database. All ended the same, no soup for you. After borking the iPod we deleted the partition, recreated it, only to find that it wouldn’t mount be cause the ‘SuperBlock’ couldn’t be read. We gave up, went over to my moms and plugged the iPod in there. After installing iTunes we restored the iPod and went from there. What a pain in the butt, a royal pain. Another instance of DRM.

Now, DRM is more than just locking a song file that you bought. It also includes whenever you can’t use something with whatever software you wish, or in other words when you don’t have the freedom with what you bought to use it how you want. iTunes puts a lock file on the iPod, and when you try to use it with something else, such as amaroK, or GTKpod the iPod craps out. Once again, I don’t own the device, I just own the right to use it within the bounds the manufacturer has set. What a load.

I have always thought that iPods were pretty cool. But now I will never buy one, and I will encourage everyone I know to buy something that doesn’t have this issue. I have a Creative Zen and have been able to put music on it with any machine I come upon, and have never had anything corrupt or anything go wrong. It ‘just works’ and I can use it however I want with whatever software I want.