Windows Media Player for Linux

[Mike Coleman]

"Prof. Jerry Place" <place at modeling.cstp.umkc.edu> writes:
>    Does anyone have any thoughts about listening to windows streaming
> media on a Linux system?  My RealPlayer 8 works OK but I'd like to
> listen to windows streaming media, too.

My technical thoughts are that this isn't currently possible, short of using
some kind of Windows emulation like Wine or VMWare.

My political thoughts are that it's your funeral.  The Windows Media format is
another Microsoft Roach Motel; in this case, music checks in, but it doesn't
check out.  Specifically, AFAIK, it's difficult and probably illegal (under
Microsoft's current licensing and/or the DMCA) to translate a WM file/stream
into a (relatively) open format like MP3, or the even more open Ogg Vorbis
format.

In a Microsoft/Real/SDMI/DMCA/RIAA future, you won't be able to listen to the
music you want, when you want, in the way that you want, and you won't be able
to exercise your constitutionally enshrined fair use rights, either.

For those in academia, here's a link to a story about how SDMI is trying to
use the DMCA to exercise prior censorship over an academic publication by a
research group at Princeton.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/21/1319251&mode=thread

If you're interested in learning more, the EFF's CAFE initiative is a good
place to start

    http://www.eff.org/cafe/

and if your worried about the kind of future we're headed for, the EFF would
be a good organization to consider joining.

--Mike

-- 
Mike Coleman, mkc at mathdogs.com
  http://www.mathdogs.com -- problem solving, expert software development