Installing Amazon MP3 Downloader on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

I was looking to buy a few albums from Amazon today, when I found out that they only provide their mp3 downloader in a 32-bit package. Moreover, it requires other packages that are not available in the Lucid repositories.

Why do I want the Amazon downloader? Well, you can download individual songs/files from Amazon without the downloader, but in order to get whole albums at once (as well as some goodies that are sometimes packaged only with albums), you need the downloader.

I found a post that addresses this issue in a slightly earlier version of Ubuntu, but it didn't work immediately for me.  So, here's what I did:

1. First, I backed up my /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Then, in the original /etc/apt/sources.list file, I replaced all instances of "lucid" with "karmic". There are packages that the downloader needed that are available in the Karmic repositories, but not Lucid. Specifically, these are the 1.34 versions of Boost libraries:
   
   
   • libboost-filesystem
   • libboost-date_time
   • libboost-iostreams
   • libboost-regex
   • libboost-signals
   • libboost-thread
   I got the idea to use the Karmic repositories from http://www.hilltopyodeler.com/blog/?p=294.
3. Use synaptic to refresh your package list, and to install the above packages as well as libglademm-2.4-1c2a (you can do it from the command line, but I used synaptic).
4. From here, follow the instructions at http://www.ensode.net/roller/dheffelfinger/entry/installing_amazon_mp3_downloader_under (look in the comments for the current location of getlibs.deb). While installing amazonmp3.deb, if it tells you that there are other dependencies missing, go ahead and install those as well.
5. After you've finished, don't forget to restore your /etc/apt/sources.list from the backup you made in step #1.

Hope this helps someone else.  Thanks to the two sites linked above for their prior work on the issue.

Am I an Entrepreneur?

I'm having a bit of trouble recently understanding what I'm doing.

I'm not working for anyone else right now. No steady paycheck (no real paycheck's at all, yet). But I'm not unemployed. More and more I'm hearing the word entrepreneur. Of course, I've known the word, but never though it'd be applied to me. I've though about starting a business, other organizing endeavors, etc., but never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I think, as I'm coming to understand it, there's nothing inherently that I have against entrepreneurialism. I think this is just another instance where I am deeply frustrated by the game we're playing.

Dictionary definitions of "entrepreneur" are usually similar to: One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. But the dictionary definition isn't really what I'm referring to here. It's rather the concept of what an entrepreneur is in my mind. For me, the concept of entrepreneur smacks too strongly of capitalism for me to be completely comfortable with it. It sounds like someone trying to make a buck. It sounds like the infinite creativity of humans directed toward financial gain.

Being around all of the independent workers, free agents, and self-proclaimed entrepreneurs that I have been recently, I'm realizing that they don't all share my feelings about the concept. I'm learning that entrepreneurialism is multifaceted, complicated (as most things are). According to a video by Grasshopper, which Cameron Herold showed in a TED talk, "entrepreneur" is just a relatively new word for "thinker", "doer", and "innovator". In a presentation that he gave at the European Creative Cities Conference, Blake Jenelle says that, to him, entrepreneurialism is "The art of building something that has never existed before.

I like Blake's definition, but that's not what an entrepreneur is to me. For me, an entrepreneur is someone who devises a way to make money off of something, whether it existed before or not. And maybe that's why I like the concept of missioneur, so far, which Jenelle has been evangelizing lately. For me, the appeal of missioneurialism is not any affinity for entrepreneurship, but instead because I see it as a tool with which to move money from the center. As such, I do not see it as entrepreneurship, though.It's entrepreneurialism as much as grassroots community organizing or non-profit work. By definition, each of those activities may be entrepreneurial, but they are not considered in the same vein.

To do: Write (and post) my mission. This is what will guide me, more than labels of entrepreneur or missioneur.