[12:41:02] bucko(tank) ~$ scp test.jpg repo_up:
test.jpg                                    100%  110KB 110.3KB
Uploaded test.jpg (112971 bytes)

bucko@tank$ ssh-keygen -f ~bucko/.ssh/abhor_upload

#!/bin/sh
if [ "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" != "scp -t ." -a "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" != "scp -d -t ." -a "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" != "scp -r -t ." -a "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" != "scp -r -d -t ." ]; then
    printf "Can't login, noob. Command was: $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND\r\n" >&2
    exit
fi
cd /home/repo/incoming
printf '\000'
while read MODE SIZE NAME; do
    case "$MODE" in
        C*)
            printf '\000'
            MODE=C0644
            SIZE16=$(echo $SIZE 16384 / p|dc)
            SIZEREMAIN=$(echo $SIZE $SIZE16 16384 \* - p|dc)
            FILENAME=$(basename $(tempfile .))

            if dd of=$FILENAME count=$SIZE16 ibs=16K 2> /dev/null && dd of=$FILENAME oflag=append conv=notrunc count=$SIZEREMAIN ibs=1 2> /dev/null; then
                echo "Uploaded $NAME ($SIZE bytes)" >&2
                dd ibs=1 of=/dev/null count=1 2> /dev/null # null char
                # Magic to queue the image into the archiver
                printf '\000'
            else
                rm "$FILENAME"
                printf '\002Failure!\n'
            fi
        ;;
        *) # Ignore D, E and T messages, as we don't care!
            printf "\000"
        ;;
    esac
done

no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty,command="/home/repo/bin/ssh_incoming_upload" ssh-rsa KEYFINGERPRINTHERE bucko@tank

Host repo_up
HostName abhor.co.uk
User repo
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/abhor_upload

Inspired by a game which I saw mentioned in David Mond's Maths of Climate Change talk (actually, I read it rather than watched it), I've started a new competition. The aim is to save the planet!

Outline

There is a bot in #SaveThePlanet, on IRC server irc.uwcs.co.uk which listens for commands (rough protocol docs are available). It maintains a world state in which you have to, well, save the planet.

It's not always possible; you may be doomed. In fact, if you're playing against a number of evil entities intent on destroying the world, the world will be destroyed.

Climate badness is modeled by "chance of a disaster per tick", and is initially random. You can donate money per tick and hold industries. The more you donate, the better it is for the climate, and the more industry, the worse. The actual factors involved are picked at random per game, as is your initial industry count (more industry means more influence, but more likely to get disastered).

Should you save the world (read: restore climate to 0), the player who gained the most industry wins. Should you melt down the world, the player who donate the most wins. (See protocol document for specifics.)

Competition

The game will be running until the end of term. Each game will score points for the players who came out on top, and those points will be summed up over the day to produce a total. This orders the players for the day and gives points (6 for first place, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth). Points are again aggregated over a week, and the weekly winners get prizes. Next week is a warmup (I'll use it to tweak the scoring and the game in general).

Each game, the bot picks between 2 and number of players asking to participate, and kills off the rest (players who've been in more games recently will be killed off more often) with no penalty, in order to give variation in the type of game you face.

The first competitive week runs from 00:00 Sat to 00:00 Sat over Week 9. The final week runs only until 00:00 Fri Week 10, to give me time to work out who won and present prizes at the CompSoc LAN. The final week will have £30 to the winner, £20 to runner up and £10 to third place. Prizes for the first week are undecided.

Sample code

Current version of the game bot is at: http://www.bucko.me.uk/competitions/SaveThePlanet/game.pl.txt

A sample bot (actually, 3), written in Perl, is at: http://www.bucko.me.uk/competitions/SaveThePlanet/sample.pl.txt (passwords are read from a separate file).

A Java sample using pIRCbot, is at: http://www.bucko.me.uk/competitions/SaveThePlanet/jarvur.

Win Data

You can get XML data about recent games:

• Last few games
• Last 10 games
• Today's games

Other stuff

I'll update this post as I tweak the algorithm until the start of the first week. The above code will be updated, too.

Prize is open to anyone I know and any member of CompSoc, plus anyone I feel like allowing to get the prize. If you wish to not be included in the prize giving, you can still compete, but let me know.

Good luck!

Delightful. I've been encoding some DVDs recently, and twice I've left it going on one job and returned to find my system was off, after logging the following:

May 21 06:14:35 tank kernel: [24200.843888] ACPI: Critical trip point
May 21 06:14:35 tank kernel: [24200.843888] ACPI: Unable to turn cooling device [ffff8101af06f8b0] 'on'
May 21 06:14:35 tank shutdown[27159]: shutting down for system halt
May 21 07:51:14 tank syslogd 1.5.0#5: restart.

The second time, the encode jobs appeared to have finished (I had a valid and complete AVI file), yet the system still cut out. They were simultaneous and of different lengths, so they would have finished at different times.

Further, I've been checking on sensors - the ACPI thermal_zone temperature at /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature reports the same value as the w83627ehf device - specifically, 22C at idle, maybe 55C max at load. This seems pretty normal to me. The core temperatures are more worrying, at 45C idle, 82C load.

I've got a stock HSF on an E6600 at default clock. When at load, I've also got a noisy 120mm fan pointing directly at the HSF with the case open.

Are these numbers normal? If so, what's going on? Internet won't even tell me normal coretemp numbers...

Some people probably know I'm going through a password reset period right now. Included in this is my banking passwords for NatWest, Alliance and Leicester and Egg.

I have made some worrying observations to this end. Firstly, NatWest and Egg (at the least) ask for individual characters on login. This practice reduces the user's ability to add security by pre/app-ending a long known phrase to their password as an unguessable salt, but on the plus side makes it harder to keylog a password. More worrying, however, is the following bizarre password policies employed by the banks:

As you can see, there's some fairly arbitrary restrictions here. Why aren't I allowed to use symbols? Why does 2 digits and one letter make a password secure (considering, say, may12, meets this criteria)?

Do any banks let you use hardcore passwords? It'd be great if people could play around and let me know various banks' policies on passwords.

I frequently have to send messages to large numbers of people, namely the leaders of clans on the KGS Clans System. This is tedious work as the client has an awful non-keyboard navigable UI. In fact, the minimal path to send a message turns out to be:

1. Start CGoban
2. Send space to press the default activated logiin button (return doesn't work).
3. Press return twice to log in with saved user/pass.
4. Wait for the rooms box to pop up.
5. Click the menu bar (can't use a keyboard shortcut...).
6. Navigate to the User menu. Press up to get to "leave message".
7. Press tab, as it defaults to having no widget in focus.
8. Type the target user.
9. Press tab or return.
10. Type the message.
11. As you are now unable to keyboard-navigate from the input box, click "OK".

I dread to think how the author would respond were some poor disabled person to explain how painful it is to operate that monster.

Today I coded a hack/fix for this problem. I have a shell script which automates this process using xvfb, xwininfo and xte. It is now fully integrated into my admin system so that I can message various groups of clan leaders.

Java is slow, meaning there are frequent "sleep" calls to ensure things happen. Also, xte does not seem to enjoy the company of xvfb. Specifically, "key colon" produces a semicolon unless surrounded by "keydown Shift_L" and "keyup Shift_L". This happens with capital letters and many other symbols. Additionally, "key :" works on my X server but apparently not on xvfb, and "str :" works locally but gives an X error on the remote. I am unsure as to how to fix the xte problem, and have left a kludge in the script to use Perl to manipulate a string into something it'll like. It only accepts a small number of symbols.

A humongous 2 entries to this one. There was a clear winner:

Zed0

Perl, filename must be '278951438'.

sub p{print 1+int$_/3,-1-$_%3;die}@_=map{(/O/?99:/X/?1:-1)*chop$0}split/\n?/,<>.<>.<>;map{$a=@_[$_];map{$b=@_[$_];$a*$b<0|$a+$b-@_[$_]-15||p for@z}0..$_-1}@z=0..8;@_[$_]<0&&p for@z

I can't pretend to understand what it does, but it does pass all of my tests. Total length is 181. I'm informed that the filename is a magic square which is solved to find possible lines.

Rupert Swarbrick

Once again attempting to golf in a non-golfable language. This one (factor) has compulsory whitespace, compulsory non-evaluation brackets, but at least no nasty angle brackets for me to quote in my HTML.

USING: arrays kernel math combinators io sequences namespaces assocs prettyprint ; IN: A SYMBOL: z : s swap ; : a 32 s index ; : b [ 1 + ] bi@ z get { { 1 [ s ] } { 2 [ dup rot 1 = [ ] [ 4 s - s ] if ] } [ drop ] } case "," s pprint write . ; input-stream get lines dup dup [ flip ] [ dup reverse [ [ s ?nth ] map-index ] bi@ 2array ] bi 3array >alist [ first2 s z set [ [ [ 88 = ] count 2 = ] [ a ] bi and ] find a dup [ b t ] [ drop ] if ] find [ 2drop ] [ drop 0 z set [ a ] find [ a b ] [ 2drop ] if* ] if

Total length: 517 bytes. It's over half a kibibyte! Rupert has outdone himself on this one.

More amusingly, his co-ordinates are backwards, meaning it fails half of the tests if I don't reverse them. :)

I think Rupert's aiming for the "points for participation" award, perhaps...

So, today I nipped into town and got myself some mobile broadband. I went with O₂, as their PaYG package is basically the same as most contracts (with shorter period options - £2 for a day or £7.50 for a week) -- with no minimal period, and you only pay for it it you want to use it! Of course, you have to spend £30 on the modem, but that's not such a hard hit to take.

Let's get the plus out of the way: When it's connected properly, it works. It's fast, it doesn't seem to drop out (yet); it just works.

Now, the software it comes with is atrocious. It hangs for a minute every time you connect or disconnect. It minimises to tray, and can't be told not to. It's a skinned region window. It often gives little feedback about what it's up to. And finally, they committed the ultimate crime: They didn't use a standard interface to do a standard thing. It's hardly common to O₂; my dad's got a dongle, too, and it uses some godawful software with similar problems. Seriously, XP/Vista provide a dialup service; why can't you use it?

Coverage seems somewhat iffy. I played with it a few times on the train to Edinburgh, and found it often would get a signal, but refuse to connect to it (including when stationary in a station). It worked fine both at home and in my guest house room.

I also seem to be connected through some transparent proxy on crack. It's chopping off some of the end of HTML documents, resulting in XHTML parse errors from Opera. Refreshing the pages in question always makes it work fine - it seems like it only does it on the first page view of a page, and in the case of my image repository, always immediately after the "http:" of an URL (original: '<a href="http://blah">http://blah</a>(moreHTML)'; O₂: '<a href="http://blah">http:</body>(newline)</html>(endofdoc)'). The worrying thing is that it's not a 100% chop; it's still giving a </body> and a </html> - it's not closing anything else, though.

Summary, so far: It's pretty OK, but I think I'm glad I'm on PaYG.

David Bewick

Entry in Perl, command line perl -Mbigint dbewick-entry:

$n=<>,$d=<>;map{$d/=$_ while$d%$_<1}2,5,$n>1?$n:2;7while$n%$d>0&10**++$_%$d>1;print

Score is 7 + 84 = 91. I have to say, I'm impressed by the optimisation here (ie. I don't understand it!). The code appears to first eliminate the terminating expansions and then compute expansion length. At first I thought I could shave some score with few quick modifications (use perl -p change $n=<>,$d=<> to $n=$_,$d=<>;$_=0), but alas it's score-neutral. Of the submitted solutions, this is the shortest, so is the winner.

whythehell

Entry in False (interpreter at http://wouter.fov120.com/files/lang/false/False12b.zip or http://kahneman.dyndns.org/ -- commandline false_int filename.f $a $b):

b;c;[$@$@/@*-]m:$[$1=~][[2O1Om;!2O2Om;!+0=][@1O/@2O/@]#1-]#@@[\[$2Om;!0=][1O/]#\%]$@5@!2@!1$[10*2Om;!$1>][\1+\]#%.

Score is 115, and I won't pretend to know how it works. Interestingly (and quite annoyingly for wth), False does not have a remainder operator, which is what he implemented in the first square-bracketted section. I presume the code first eliminates the terminating expansion case, then computes the length by long division.

The code has the drawback that the interpreter spams its interpreter message on every run - and since the stack is nonempty on exit, spams an error also. Both of these are on STDOUT and thus break the spec. Appending 3 % signs removes the error at the cost of 3 extra points (118 total). The former is an interpreter issue, so is forgiven.

Michael Tandy

Entry in Perl (commandline only; parameters at end of commandline):

perl -e 'sub L{($a,$b)=@_;$g=$a;for($i=1;$i<10000;$i++$g=($g*10)%$b;if($g==0)return 1;}if($g==$a%$b){return $i;}}return L($g,$b);}print L($ARGV[0],$ARGV[1]);'

1 command line bit, 149 chars in the quotes makes a score of 150. The code doesn't work, but a slight modification does:

sub L{($a,$b)=@_;$g=$a;for($i=1;$i<10000;$i++){$g=($g*10)%$b;return 1 if($g==0);if($g==$a%$b){return $i;}}return L($g,$b);}print L($ARGV[0],$ARGV[1]);

(A score of 152 including the -e). The code executes corrently on my test data set of (1, 2), (2, 7) and (7, 7). Further analysis of Michael's code reveals it will fail to terminate when fed (1, 10007), due to the odd looking recursion. Removing the central test in the for() and the recursive execution fixes this bug - and shortens the code! Using this and some other simple changes the code can be reduced to correctly executing code with a score of 107.

Rupert Swarbrick

Entry in postscript (command line echo "$a $b" | gs -dBATCH -q entry.ps):

(%stdin) run /a{{dup 3 2 roll dup 4 3 roll mod 0 eq{exch dup 3 1 roll idiv exch}exit}ifelse}loop exch pop}def /d{dup 3 2 roll dup 4 1 roll}def d d ge{exch}if pop 2 1 3 2 roll{{3 1 roll d 5 4 roll dup dup 7 1 roll 4 1 roll mod 3 1 roll exch mod add 0 eq{3 2 roll dup dup 5 4 roll exch idiv 4 2 roll idiv 3 2 roll}{3 2 roll pop exit}ifelse}loop}for exch pop 2 a 5 a dup 1 le{pop 1}{dup 1 10 4 3 roll mod{dup 1 eq{pop exch pop exit}{10 mul exch 1 add exch 3 2 roll dup 4 1 roll mod}ifelse}loop}ifelse stack

504 bytes of source, plus 7 characters in the commandline, so a score of 511. At least it was under half a kibipoint! As this submission was not near winning, I will forgive the transgression of requiring the input to have no newlines. The code appears to work on a random variety of examples. It was apparently written non-golfed and then had some disgusting emacs function reduce it to a shorter example. I'd give negative marks for not using vim, but I only have his word for it. The code removes all 2 and 5 divisors, and then finds the multiplicative order of a, mod b.

David Buckley

Entry in dc, the GNU reverse polish calculator (input on stdin; commandline dc entry.dc):

??dsb[r10*lb%r1-d0<g]dsgx+dsa[d10*lb%dla=dd0=flex]dse[zd1-nQ]sd[1nzQ]sfx

73 bytes source, commandline comes free, so score of 73. Yeah, I know, entering my own competition, I couldn't resist giving the entries a good thrashing! In pseudocode, sets $c to $a, then repeatedly does $c = ($c * 10) mod $b, firstly $b times, putting the result in $a, then until the result is either 0 or $a. In the former case, outputs 1, in the latter case outputs the number of iterations, which it tracks using the stack size (it leaks into the stack deliberately). It's probably improvable, but it's still a good quick effort.

Edit: Seems I made a bad assumption - my original code will only reliably compute 1 / b. Thanks, DBewick. Code updated to take this into account.

Watch this space for a new competition soon.

The Problem

A little simpler than the last one. Given two positive integers a and b, it is well known that there exists a decimal expansion for a÷b. For example, 17÷3 = 5.6666666666666666…. Any terminating expansion is assumed to have an infinite number of trailing zeros. Your task is to compute for any two inputs a and b the length of the repeating part of the decimal expansion. We will call this l(a, b).

To illustrate further, l(17, 3) = 1, l(3, 1) = 1 and l(1, 99) = 2.

Implementation

Your code will be run with decimal encodings of a and b seperated by newlines on standard input, or a then b as the first two command line parameters, or both (please specify or I'll assume the latter. That is:

$ (echo $a; echo $b)|$yourcommandline

$ $yourcommandline $a $b

$ (echo $a; echo $b)|$yourcommandline $a $b

Your code should output l(a, b), as a decimal number, on standard output. It may also output a single newline ("\n", "\r" or "\r\n" but no others) after this. No other output is allowed.

As input lengths are often a problem, a will be between 1 and 93744, and b will be between 1 and 75283. Your code need not behave correctly with inputs outside of these ranges, but must behave correctly inside them.

Submission

Your submission should contain: Firstly a source file (optional if you are using perl -e or similar), and secondly a command line with which to run the source file. This will replace $yourcommandline in the example above. It may also contain any number of extra files which your code needs to run.

Completed entries should be sent to: progcomp20081021@bucko.me.uk by the end of Sun 2 Nov 2008 (BST). Multiple submissions are allowed (and encouraged if they're in different languages/different algorithms).

Scoring

I apologise for this section being long, but some people always try to abuse missing clarifications.

Your score will be the total length of your code. This is the character length of your command line, plus the character length of all of your filenames, plus the byte length of all of your files. Certain things are available for free:

The command line may consist of the name of an executable on my Debian GNU/Linux system and your source file name (which I may alter, so don't try to cheat by encoding your solution into the file name) for free. It may also contain any number of switches to the executable, of which the switch symbol ("-", "--" or "/") is always free, but switches must always contain at least one character other than the switch symbol. There may only be one command on your commandline. If you want pipes etc., you must use a soure file. Your source file name is also free.

You may submit compiled code with source, provided it will compile on my Debian GNU/Linux system. In this case, your source length is deemed to be the smaller of my compiled executable and your source file, and the compiled executable's filename is free. The length of your compiler command line is added to the length of your execution command line (though the latter will probably be zero), and is scored in the same way.

For example, suppose that Jack Jones submits the command line perl -wp progcomp.pl The answer is and source file progcomp.pl with content use warnings; print "@ARGV[0..2] 4";. Besides the fact that his submission does not count, since he failed to solve the problem, his command line is free except for "wp", "The", "answer" and "is" (total length 13), his source file name is free, and his code length is 36. His score is thus 49. The parts which cost are underlined to better illustrate.

If multiple entries of a similar nature (same algorithm or same language, etc.) are recieved, they will be grouped as such when scored, so that there may be multiple 'category' winners. There will also be a winner for shortest overall code.

In the event of a tie, the lowest number of alphanumeric characters will break the tie. If this ties also, similar tiebreaks will be invented until one of them breaks the tie.

Hints

Hints at http://www.bucko.me.uk/progcomp_hints.html, for if you get stuck on how to implement the problem. But please have a go at figuring it out before you read them.

Edit: Clarified the means your application will recieve input.

Michael Tandy

$ perl -lpe'$s--;$_.=$_>4?">N":$_<4?"<N":die$s'

$ echo '$s--;$_.=$_>4?">N":$_<4?"<N":die$s' > 'Guess N, 0<N<99 short'
$ perl -lp 'Guess N, 0<N<<9 short'

perl -lpe'BEGIN{$s=6}1/$s--;$_.=$_>34?">N":$_<34?"<N":die"score $s"'

perl -lpe'BEGIN{print"Guess N,0<N<99"}$s--;$_.=$_>34?">N":$_<34?"<N":die"score $s"'

Faux

whythehell

sed 's,.*,look &|grep ^&$,e;:;s,.,,p;t'|wc -c&sleep<&-10

mulletron

import System.Posix.User

main=getLoginName>>= \x->putStrLn$x++", You just lost the game!"

$ runhaskell Progcomp.hs 
Progcomp.hs: getLoginName: invalid argument (Bad file descriptor)

Debian Etch currently does not (and presumably never will) install on an ASUS P5QL Pro motherboard, and presumably related boards. I have succeeded in getting an AMD64 install in the following way (warning; kludge to follow):

1. Spend ages tweaking an AMD64 chroot install on a partition using your existing AMD64 machine. I did this since I didn't yet have the board and wanted something to do.
2. Fail to boot the system using this.
3. Turn on AHCI disk access in the BIOS.
4. Obtain an Ubuntu 7.04 i386 Alternative DVD (apparently the graphical one broke with my card).
5. dpkg --force-architecture --install the deb for the latest (2.6.27-5 at time or writing) AMD64 kernel
6. Use grub to boot your chroot with the initrd and kernel above, with init=/bin/sh as a boot option.
7. From the prompt, chroot into your new system, and install the kernel packages (actually, if you weren't as stupid as me, you might have done this first).
8. Boot properly into this new system, copy the config-whatever file to the source for the newest kernel from kernel.org, and make-kpkg, install the deb, etc. (the Ubuntu one needed a mewer libc6 than in Lenny)

Of course, most of this wasn't required in hindsight. Key points, though:

• You need 2.6.27 (maybe 26) for the atl1e driver for your network card. My suggestion is to use a chroot system like I did, but do it properly first time. Note that the driver supplied on-CD compiled fine under Ubuntu, so if you can get your system installed by other means, you may be OK.
• You need to set AHCI disk access in the BIOS, or nothing works (more specifically, generic.all_generic_ide was the only way to get things recognised, and I got random hangs while transferring data; I may have needed irqpoll, too...).

Sound card is hda-intel and works fine, contrary to linux-tested's opinion. They admittedly were probably using older kernels and different distributions.

PATA support is pretty dodgy; my CDROM drive seems to think it's got no media in often when I mount it (but I've successfully mounted it a few times under Ubuntu at least, to install packages); ejecting works fine. Eventually gave up and just bought a SATA CDROM, ridding myself of IDE forever.

Following the advice from Alf Høgemark and using modprobe w83627ehf force_id=0x8860 resulted in working sensors.

Task

Submissions

Judging

Submissions

I'm slowly coming to the realisation that mainstream media is finally waking up to the fact that traditional media sales are going to collapse any year now and are taking ventures into online sales. Not only that, but a lot of them are realising that DRM isn't the greatest of marketing tools.

At this late stage of the game (I've been able to download DivX movies for about 8 years or more, now, and MP3s for longer), let's look at a brief survey of the offerings, and compare them to traditional media and the illegal filesharing alternative.

Music

I'm currently registered with eMusic, which is a subscription service offering medium quality DRM-free MP3 downloads. They are VBR and average around 190kbps (their FAQ explains that it's VBR 192kpbs, presumably stretched over an album). The cost per track is about 25-30p, so for an album with around 13 tracks, which seems to be the average, it will cost around £4 at the most. You can download for as long as you keep paying your subscription.

Amazon.com have MP3 sales also, although the media companies handing out the contract (or perhaps Amazon itself?) have for some reason seen fit to allow only US customers to purchase the music. The selection is reasonable. Songs cost $0.99, and the cost per album is anywhere between about $5 to $10, and anywhere between 1/3 and 9/10 of the album price; I suspect there's a standard formula relating # tracks to cost per album. This works out at around £3 to £6 per album at the current exchange rate. US physical albums seem to be no more expensive than $16, which is about £9. Amazon explains in its FAQ that its MP3s are 256kbps. They don't appear to allow repeat downloads.

By far the most popular, and largest online purchasing system (who knows why?) is iTunes from Uncle Steve. The only information I seem to be able to find without downloading iTunes is the (typical?) cost per song and per album and a rough guide as to "has this artist" using the online search facility. Their own FAQ suggests they only offer DRM-locked 128kbit AAC (equivalent of 160kbit MP3) downloads. Songs on iTunes cost £0.79, according to their site, which may or may not include the premium for 256kbps DRM-free songs ($0.30 in the US). Albums cost £7.99, and apparently DRM-free ones normally cost the same. While it appears that the store keeps track of your purchases (you can "upgrade" albums to DRM-free at a price), they do not allow repeat downloads.

Finally there's Napster which is effectively two sites, as it offers DRM WMA subscriptions and DRM-free MP3 downloads. Their website offers apparently no information and refuses to let me in with Opera/Linux. Apparently the cost per download is £0.99 per track, or £0.79 if you're paying the £10/mo sbscription, and per album is £9.99 or £7.95 under subscription. You can get 128kbit or 256 kbit MP3s, and the selection is reasonable. They have a link to "download again", which presumably means you can.

I know of no other (legal) popular purchasing sites for MP3s, so let's go onto physical media. They contain 1.1Mbit raw audio. New recent albums cost around £10-£12, and older ones drop to around £5 within a few years. Second hand albums from Amazon marketplace/Playtrade come in at typically £3. Excepting copy protection (which I've never noticably encountered under Linux), these are DRM-free and better quality than any of the above.

Finally, copying. Most recent albums and a lot of older ones have active torrents, and obviously cost nothing, and increasingly the torrents are lossless, putting them on par with CDs. They're free (obviously), and DRM-free.

In summary, music downloads are now almost all DRM-free, and almost all cheaper than new, recent albums. Once an album gets a few years old, CDs seem to be both higher quality and cheaper. It seems like the market for one or the other of these will need to change. Additionally, the online stores are continuing to offer lower quality downloads than the illegal copiers.

Movies

There aren't too many services in this category. iTunes charges roughly the same as a new DVD for FairPlay DRM at (according to various non-Apple sources) 640x480, 1.5Mbit h.264 (about 1Gb per DVD?). I don't have any comparison between this and DVD quality, but I certainly notice artifacting at 3Mbit h.264 with my naive encoding techniques.

Neither CinemaNow nor ReelTime could find any specific movie I searched for. Both employ DRM and it's difficult to ascertain the resolution, bitrate or price for large movies when I can't find any.

The only other worldwide one I can find is ZML, which doesn't have pricing for its videos without signing up, but very clearly states resolution and format. It's normally fairly low res DivX at about 1Mbit, however they are allegedly significantly cheaper than DVDs.

For physical purchase, we have DVDs, which weigh in at anything from £3 for an older movie to £13 for a recent, popular one. Second hand DVDs can again be had for smaller prices. Blu-Ray typically comes with, roughly, a £3 premium. Blu-Ray will be crushingly good compared to any online store, and DVD probably also betters them. DVD is basically DRM free, though the user must have fun with telecine transforms and DVD CSS encryption to be able to play on any device. Blu-Ray is heavily DRM-ed, although it appears volume keys for most releases are known, meaning it's at least possible to decrypt them.

For illegal copying, it seems most movies are available in DivX at around a gigabyte, and many seem to be available in H.264 encodes are much higher sizes - for instance, Star Wars is available at 5GB per episode. On the whole, though, DVDs seem to win in quality over illegal copying.

Anime

As far as I'm aware, there are only two services offering online purchase of anime. Probably this is caused by the massive amount of copying that happens with anime. Both over DRM free content. Crunchy Roll offers 350MB DivX encodes (with noticable artifacting) and BOST TV offers smaller, but higher quality as best as I can tell, H.264 downloads. Both are hard subtitle (overlay, then encode) only, lower resolution than the filesharing alternative and cost around $3 per episode.

Physical media typically costs around $40 for a 13 episode series. There's a strong correlation there.

Games

Being the most automatically digital content of them all, games have been DRM infested for a long time. The only download service I've used is Steam, which offers identical content for normally slightly cheaper prices. You can download as many times as you like, install on as many machines as you like, and the only restriction is that you can only be online with your Steam account on one machine at a time. It even runs in WINE. That's pretty non-draconian compared to some of the above attempts.

Of course, copied games frequently allow even this to be removed. However, Steam is good enough that it really genuinely does compete. I champion the games industry (or just Steam) as being far and above the most sensible. However, they have the advantage of only needing to allow their content on internet-connected PCs (since everyone who games has them). Notably, what gets me to buy games on steam is ease of access, not price or their DRM.

In Summary

So, the industries are trying. But they really don't seem to be embracing online content at all - all of the services (bar games) offer content at slightly or significantly lower quality than the physical media alternatives, normally a not incomparible price (except for some cheaper but lower quality services) and in the movie case, also less universality due to the DRM. In almost all cases, they are not offering anything better than the filesharers.

Given I can already download, for free, better quality stuff than they're trying to sell, I'm not sure where they derive their strategy from. They're hardly denying the copiers a source to copy, and they're hardly offering an incentive other than the "moral" or "fear" ones.