Dowloading of podcasts etc. - anyone have a HOWTO?

[Bill Sconce]

I hope this doesn't mean I'm becoming a podPerson, but...

Does anyone have a pointer to a HOWTO for, or know how to,
download Web files offered for "streaming" so that they can
be staged for ripping to e.g. a portable player?

(I've looked on TDLP, searched the HOWTOs list, even read Eric
Raymond's stuff.)  No joy.

podPerson'ly yrs,
Bill


The goal restated:
  HOWTO download audio file(s) and/or video file(s), *not* for
  watching as streams in a browser, but for processing/staging
  onto e.g. USB flash devices?

(A good LUG program, hint, hint?)


Background:
__________________________________________________________________
Encouraged by certain other contributors to this list, I've begun
to enliven my hours on the road with interviews and other programs
downloaded from the Web.  An interview with Guido, for instance,
and the one with maddog on FLOSS Weekly which was discussed here
recently(*).

Some of the programs (e.g., FLOSS Weekly) are advertised with an
explicit URL ("Download MP3 file"), which makes it easy to wget
them directly.

Some other programs (e.g., NPR) are advertised with a URL which
downloads a piece of text (a ".ram" file) whose contents are a URL
(such as "http://archives.wamu.org/dr/07/04/r1070403.rm") which,
again, is easy to wget(**).

But still other programs are advertised with still other streaming
mechanisms.  (I don't want streaming.  I'm not interested in
listening/watching in a browser.  I want to download, rip to Ogg,
and listen from a USB drive in the car.)

For instance, today's exercise happened to be a hearing on voting
system standards. which advertises
    "Click here for the archived Committee event webcast.[link1]
    You will need the free Real Player[link2] to view this webcast."
    
[link1] reads
    http://boss.streamos.com/real/science/sci06/071906.smi
which can be fetched by wget, but inside is what looks like HTML
(which I presume contains instructions for Real's BLOB to display
the webcast in a browser).

*grumble*  It's OUR House of Representatives, the webcast contains
public information.  (We *are* allowed to download the transcript
of this hearing as a PDF, but I can't drive, use the cellphone, and
read a PDF all at the same time...  :)

(*) maddog's interview: easy to download, but MP3  :(
(They *used* to make Ogg available as well.)

(**) .rm easy to wget: converting it to Ogg is NOT easy!  It took
me three days to download the necessary pieces and Google for the
command-line steps to rip to .wav and thence to .ogg.  *whew*