Availability=creativity?

Audacity is definitely my favorite application we've utilized in this class. I've used it before, but I never realized what a fully featured program it is. It's so great that something like this is available for free. It gives access to people who want to create music for recreation or for more serious uses. It reminds me of another program that I learned about when I was doing my minor in linguistics. Praat is a free scientific software program for analyzing speech sounds in phonetics. This program can run on several operating systems, and it is updated frequently. High level researchers as well as students and armchair linguists can use it and understand the data it produces. It's really amazing to me that one of the most used programs in the study of linguistics is completely free and so user friendly. Having software that is available for use by anyone is a huge advantage for any field of study (or hobby!). Apple has made a great move providing the iLife suite as part of their operating system for this reason. Anyone can be a musician, photographer, or web designer. That sparks interest in the public and ultimately (hopefully) contributes to the health of the creative community.