Zune's Wireless Almost Totally Worthless 442
mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."
Re:obligatory (Score:1, Informative)
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Re:Custom Firmware (Score:3, Informative)
Rockbox [rockbox.org] then?
That Makes my Cellphone a Better MP3 Player (Score:3, Informative)
Sure my phone cost a couple hundred bucks more than the Zune (So did my iPod when I bought it) but I can also use it as a phone, browse the Internet through T-Mobile's data service or wifi if there's a node in range and use it to connect my laptop to the Internet. And use it as a camera or a video camera. And get a GPS fix from any nearby bluetooth GPS...
We're going to be seeing more and more of these smart phones in the USA within the next couple of years and they will make everything the Zune promised to do possible without the odious DRM restrictions from Microsoft. Those will be the devices Apple really needs to worry about.
The hacker potential... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:1, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple may not have a nice gui for copying songs back off your ipod, but that doesn't matter. They don't *stop* you from doing it, not on a mac, not on windows, that's the point. There are no secret drivers with hidden APIs that override the system ones. They are just in a folder marked "invisible". Nor do they encrypt all songs when you transfer it to your ipod. They just copy them exactly.
--Sadly, text alone cannot convey the depths of my sarcasm.
Re:It won't take long... (Score:4, Informative)
Not true; Apple didn't do anything at all to prevent this, they just didn't write software to do it. The files are stored on the iPod in their original form, but with a database index as the name. The database isn't at all difficult to read.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:2, Informative)
I can't speak for Lord_Dweomer, but this [myspace.com]is the band I've been working with, and we'd be happy for you to have a listen to our music. Come and see us if you're ever in Perth.
Re:Almost totally useless _for users_ (Score:3, Informative)
It's exactly the same thing great for everyone, and by everyone I mean Microsoft and all the major IP holders.
Not so great (actually pretty shit) for anyone that actually wants to buy and use the product.
Funnily enough this seems to be a pretty common theme for products that revolve around DRM.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:2, Informative)
I'd also suggest:
http://www.myspace.com/livegirlsknockyouout [myspace.com]
http://www.myspace.com/triplesevens [myspace.com]
http://www.myspace.com/thefairiesband [myspace.com]
http://www.myspace.com/thepill [myspace.com]
Downloads available for all of them, and everyone but The Fairies (London) play regularly in NYC.
Or does my sarcasm-o-meter need new batteries...?
DN
Re:So? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:3, Informative)
We'll really never know.
Believe it or not, there are some real admirers of Paris and that is a disgusting indicator of our society.
I happen to be in a position where I am privy to teenage essays and you'd be disgusted at the percentage of teenage girls that idolize her.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:2, Informative)
This is P2P propaganda that is unsupported by reality. Some bands, like "The Dead" maybe make most of their money from touring. Most bands, contrary to Slashdot rumor, do not make a killing on the road. The more popular the band/artist (Madonna, The Eagles, Phish) the more they can make. The smaller the band (Interpol, Deathcab For Cutie, Sigur Ros) the less potential they have to make a reasonable sum of money on the road.
Just like major label record deal, playing a live concert introduces contracts, fees and complications that tend to sap money out of lesser artists. Coco from Man or Astroman once posted a great article (can't find the link) on the subject on the bands website. In short, as they became more popular and played larger venues to more people, they made less money touring.
Jumping from the bar circuit to the larger club circuit doubled or tripled the fees they were responsible to pay. So, on top of their transportation costs, food costs, lodging costs, maintenence costs, managerial fees, they were now responsible for advertising fees, booking fees, security fees, insurance and a host of other miscelleanous fees and expenses that nickle and dimed them to death. His conclusion was that they made slightly more playing to an audience of 150 in a bar than they did playing to 600 people at a club. This is true for many indie bands and less than platinum selling acts playing medium sized venues.
On the other hand, synch royalties is where its at for smaller artists, which is why you are seeing Deathcab for Cutie, Sigur Ros et al on so many TV soundtracks and in advertising these days. One commercial, one TV show or one movie can make a smaller artists year and it boosts their sales, which in turn brings them more mechanical royalties.
Kind of... (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with the current implementation is it only copies music from ITMS, not just burned stuff - I'm not lableing this feature complete until it can backsync the whole iPod.
They are afraid of getting sued for propogating the stuff they do not know if users bought...
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bridgeclubmusic.com/ [bridgeclubmusic.com] -website
http://www.myspace.com/bridgeclubyo [myspace.com] - Myspace page
See you at the next show, it is on the 7th at the Uptown Bar. We are headlining, so we will probably go on around 12. Thanks for the interest.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Also trying to point out that the vast majority of Slashdotters, including the one to whom I replied, produce nothing in the way of copyrightable content, let alone make it their primary occupation, yet want to sit on the sidelines and offer advice as to how the actual producers should conduct themselves in their business.
Hi, I'm a professional content creator. The majority of my income is from creating copyrighted works. Does that somehow make my opinions more logical or factual?
All the while we the producers are happy with the current arrangement, as are most normals.
Are you joking? Most of "we the producers" are not happy or sad or much of anything because we're long since dead. The majority of copyrighted works are not available to the public, at all. They are not for sale. Take a look at motown records, for example. I think something like 5% of their catalogue of copyrighted music is available for sale, and they own the majority of the works in an entire genre of American music. I don't know about you, but I doubt those artists would be too happy about that and those of us that would like to listen to it sure aren't.
As for the previous poster, he's entirely right. Copyright costs most musicians money, rather than makes it for them. In order to reach a mainstream audience they have to go through the RIAA, and for most artists that means they pay money for the privilege of handing over all their copyrights. They make their money with live performances and merchandise. For the average musician, no copyright at all would probably increase their revenue.
The point of all of this is not to say that copyright is not a useful incentive in some cases, it is to make you aware that the current implementation of copyright in conjunction with cartels that have monopolized the distribution channels is broken and needs to be fixed.
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about your player, but my iPod uses HFS+, which is not rudimentary at all. However, even crappy little no-name flash-based players I've used still kept the same filename that was on the computer, give or take a few special characters. The iPod, on the other hand, randomizes them on purpose, in order to obfuscate them so that it's harder to get the files off in a useful way.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
And if you copy those 4343ddacs332.aac back to another copy of iTunes, iTunes will automatically rename the file based on the ID3 tags in it. (Which the iPod does not change in any way.) So it still works fine in any player that accepts that file type and uses ID3 tags instead of file names to organize files.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:2, Informative)
KFG
You don't know shit, TROLL (Score:4, Informative)
If I plug my iPod into someone elses PC and try to access the library, I will get a friendly iTunes prompt asking if I want to attach my iPod to that PC
iTunes will ask you if you want to use iTunes to automatically sync the strange iPod you connected. You decline and now you are free to move any and all songs from the PC (including Apple DRM'ed ones) on the iPod.
Thanks for playing!