if I just want something to play softly next to the bed is this cool or do I need to invest more than $5?

Iron Man hates Linux. Iron Man Armor Now Comes With Proprietary Software

Iron Man! He's not just the kinda guy who saves the world from supervillains and Jeff Bridges with a shaved head anymore! No, now he's the kind of guy who's off crusading against... Linux? Wait, that can't be right. The latest interview promoting movie tie-in comic The Invincible Iron Man seems to suggest a more software-based approach to the character than ever before, however.

According to series writer Matt Fraction, the battle between Tony Stark and new bad guy Ezekiel Stane is really just an allegory for the battle Bill Gates wages against smaller software providers every single day of his life:

Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist... He has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo. He doesn't want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop. He's the open source to Stark's closed source oppressiveness.

I'm designing a home network in my head, after reading through a product description for a Home Media Server, and thinking about stuff that you mentioned, tommy.

From reading up on Time Machine and the EMC product it seems that backup to hard drive is no longer a thing of the future, but a thing of the present. In addition to presenting space for me to save files on the server I can also present space to facilitate a system backup/restore for either my PC or Mac machine. If that's my goal, would it really matter what OS the server is running? And then I have the option to back the server itself up to a standalone drive or to optical media.

As shared storage goes, is there a way to have multiple iTunes installs pointing to the same library? I'd like my laptop and my desktop to be looking at the same songs, if not also the same playlists as each other. It's all mine, after all.

I guess I could also drop a shared printer off the server, but I'm guessing that hub/switch/router offerings these days are starting to have USB jacks for just that.

Does that sound plausible?

As shared storage goes, is there a way to have multiple iTunes installs pointing to the same library? I'd like my laptop and my desktop to be looking at the same songs, if not also the same playlists as each other.

I've never tried it, but can't you tell iTunes where the xml database is? If so, then put it on a shared drive and have your multiple PCs point to it. I doubt that you could get a Mac and a PC to share the same database though. Also, you may only be able to connect one PC at a time to iTunes.

Probably very stupid/basic question but, is there a site that lets you upload mp3s to share that is similar to the way Flickr and Photobucket host pics/video?

Try box.net.

is there a way to have multiple iTunes installs pointing to the same library?

I hope so, since it's a good part of my weekend plan.

I've never tried it, but can't you tell iTunes where the xml database is?

Yep.

I doubt that you could get a Mac and a PC to share the same database though.

I'm pretty sure you can -- it's all XML, and I know you can run the same iPod off both Mac and PC, and Mac/PC iTunes copies of iTunes can see each other in the shared libraries in the GUI.

Also, you may only be able to connect one PC at a time to iTunes.

Hope not. This could make our media server much less fun...

eta: old, but should be possible unless they've really changed the server architecture: [link] Versions are all surely out of date, but I think the basics should still work...

etaa: [link] much more recent, same protocols, better front end

Corwood posted about muxtape.com in music a while back as a way to share mp3s

Amy, that's brilliant! I'm trying to work out how to inch my way up to just the right home network (instead of just plonking down the money and buying it all at once), and being able to have a Linux box be an iTunes server (above and beyond just a file server) is a big deal. I wonder how that will play with Apple TV?

You're on your own with the AppleTV -- I've never actually played with one. But we finally dragged my little-used linux desktop across the room and hooked it up to the big TV (after, oh, years of saying, hey, we should set up a home media server! and all we need is these 42 new cards!... no, we actually just needed to drag the damn thing across the room).

But we've got all of our ahemming needs heading straight in to Miro, and all our tunes are already backed up onto that machine, so setting up the networking piece is really all we need to be able to share music across the house.