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...Treos and Archos Jukeboxes for substance.

And actually, for all of the Apple community's masturbatory self-petting, I just don't get it. To me, style is more than chrome and colors.

1. I find it decidedly UN-sexy to be chained to a gagillion nerd boxes. Give me my feature-packed calendar, awesome phone-homer, excellent portable gamer, 512 MB SD card-toting, OGG/MP3 playing, keyboard wielding, 70 kbps always-on Internetting, pocket-fitting Treo 600 for most of the hours in most of my days.

2. When I make the ergonomic investment to tote around a decent quantity of tunes, I want a decent device. I might even pay, =GASP=, $300 for it! But the thing should kick ass. Like my speedy Archos Jukebox running the sweet Open Source Rockbox OS.

Expensive, proprietary, no-feature iPod?! Hahahahahaha....

Archos and Rockbox, slashdotted before, by the way.

I just thought I'd write in with my personal experience with another MP3 device, the Archos Jukebox Studio 20. Now, don't think I'm trolling on an "Apple Sucks, Archos Rocks" trip, because I'm not. If I had the money, I'd definitely get myself an iPod, as the on-device interface thoroughly kicks the ass of my 2-line text display (although much love goes out to the hackers at Rockbox for making the Jukebox orders of magnitude more elegant and usable), and a firewire connection is certainly prefferable to USB 1.1 (and it is my understanding that both devices are now supported in Linux, so there you go).

With all of that said, I have to say that Archos' support has been first class. I'll be honest, I used to charge my Jukebox in a rather precarious position. It was prone to getting its cord yanked, and thus falling several feet to the floor. Amazingly, the unit survived this punishment many times. After about 18 months, however (interesting timeframe, eh?), the hard drive began failing. Bad sectors and the like. I called up Archos, who were content with nothing more than my confirmation page from Thinkgeek as a reciept, and gladly replaced my harddrive (for all I know they sent me a new unit, actually) for FREE. Since that time (which was the summer before last), I've continued using the Jukebox with no ill effects (although I learned my lesson to be more gentle with it).

This thing really, really rocks.

Rockbox is an Open Source replacement firmware for the Archos Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder and Recorder V2 MP3 players.

woot!!

http://rockbox.haxx.se/mail/archive/rockbox-archiv e-2003-11/0304.shtml

From Rockbox FAQ
17. You mention supporting Ogg Vorbis and other file types on your list of ideas. What is the status on that?

Pessimist's Answer: At the current time we believe this is not very likely. The Micronas chip (MAS3507) decoder in the Archos does not natively support decoding and there is very little program space in the player to implement it ourselves. The alternative would be to write a software decoder as part of the Rockbox firmware. However, as much as we love our players, the computing power of the Archos (SH1 microcontroller) is not fully sufficient for this need.

Optimist's Answer: We can play any format if only we can write code for the DSP to decode it. The MAS 3507 (and 3587) are generic DSPs that simply have MP3 codecs in ROM. We can download new codecs in them and we will be the first to celebrate if we can get OGG or FLAC or anything into these DSPs. Unfortunately, we have no docs or tools for writing new MAS DSP code and Micronas is very secretive about it. If anyone can help, please get in touch!

The recent release of Tremor (integer Ogg decoder) indicates it uses around 100 KB for lookup tables. That's not unreasonable for a decoder, but we only have 4 KB for both code *and* data. So the grim reality is that Ogg will never be supported by the Archos Players and Recorders.

I wholeheartedly recommend the Archos Recorder 20. I've had mine for about 6 months now and have been nothing but pleased with it after replacing the default firmware with Rockbox. Plus, you can find it for as little as $170 with rebate occasionally.

I've got an Archos Jukebox Recorder (the older, pre-video model), and am very happy with it. It's a USB2 mass storage device, which means I can mount it and copy files to/from it without using any proprietary software, and it also does recording (and did so a year or two before Apple added recording to the iPod). The internal firmware is nothing to write home about, but there exists open-source replacement firmware for it which is excellent. Also, its batteries are standard NiMH AA batteries which are easily replaced when they wear out.

I haven't looked at the new Archos units, but, IMHO, Archos tend to be first in terms of adding features (look at the plug-in modules for the Gmini, for example), and tend to have fairly sensible design.

I used to own a Riot and I assure you it is WAAAY too big. It's about the size of a thick paperback book (think "Shogun") with the case on it. The user interface was quite nice, with a large display, but you have to use Rio-supplied software to get stuff into it, and USB 1.1 at that. I was getting unhappier by the day when I accidently knocked it off an airline seat (while playing) and it never worked again. I returned it to Circuit City who refunded my money which I used to buy a 20 GB Archos Recorder.

I LOVE my Archos. Well, OK, I love it once I installed the excellent RockBox software on it. The Archos is under $250 nowadays and even tho it's a bit bulky (still fits in a shirt pocket tho!) and lacks codec support (MP3 only) it's a great value. I record my MP3s at max quality VBR MP3 and they sound great! The USB 2.0 harddrive it great - just drag-n-drop (from Windoze).

that cnet arkle is a stinkin' troller!

ipods are only expensive if you are foolish enough to pay full retail for bleeding edge - granted, that's most of the mac zealot market.

but for the rest of us, $170 for a refurb 2nd gen 10gb is not expensive. i paid that at retail for my archos recorder 15gb. i feel i got a better deal cuz it records, it's a usb2 HD, i can _easily_ upgrade the batteries (or carry spares), and i hack on and compile my os (rockbox). i can even rock that weak chicago font if i'm feeling nostalgic.

considering the chances of breaking or loosing a portable player i can't see why any price conscious person would not buy ipod refurb, especially considering it's first party apple refurb.

for the adventurous, get a used archos and upgrade to an 80gb drive. about $200 parts and smarts.

and yeah, jogging is really bad for you, ask your doctor. ``so don't do that''

• They are much cheaper than all the competition. I mean real cheap.
• They look flimsy, but are a lot more resistant than they look.
• They can record music (at least, the Jukebox Recorder models can). Bootleg concerts, here we go!
• You can change the battery they use.
• They sound great.
• You can do very cool stuff with them

I have a large MP3 collection all sorted into directories by Genre/Artist/AlbumName/Tracks. I just want to move up and down the directories and select a starting point to play at and just go.

MJ has had the "make a playlist out of query parameters" feature for years, but takes it further: you can define custom fields in the database and search on them (though to be fair, iTunes already includes the things I used those custom fields for.) More importantly, its notion of (non-dynamic) playlists is much more flexible -- you can use a song's presence on a static playlist as a query parameter for a smartlist. I've come to think of playlists as a way of attaching attributes to songs. It's a much more flexible, nuanced way to represent things like genre, where multiple values can easily apply to a song.

You don't even need PUT support if you hack up a small PHP script to write POSTed data into a file. Just make sure you use Digest, NTLM or GSS-Negotiate to authenticate the connection instead of Basic authentication (which uses unencrypted passwords). Recent versions of curl support all those authenticated methods.

This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"

Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...

Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?

35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).

But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.

Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).

And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).

I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.

And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.

A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.

But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.

Use the --nogaps option in lame to create gapless mp3 tracks. Of course you also need a player that actually plays the frames back-to-back, and doesn't insert artificial pauses between tracks. I've heard conflicting reports about the Ipod in this regard.

well a dandy way to reduce load is to mirror servers
i suggest we all start mirroring it for them RIGHT NOW

p.s. it uses cURL

The Archos Jukebox Recorder 20 just kicks iPod (and all others) Ass. Lessee:

• HD known to be upgradeable to 60G (voids 90 day warranty, no biggie)
  
• 3d party, OPEN, kickass firmware (RockBox)
  
• Cost ~$280 US
  
• Uses replaceable, upgradeable AA NiMh Cells
  
• Kicks ASS
  
• Did I mention you get the source to RockBox?
  
• Fast disk operations via USB 2.0
  
• Workee fine w/ Linux
  
• Records as well as plays back
  
• Digital and analog input and output
  

Try this : www.archos.com and the open source version... http://rockbox.haxx.se/

Here's a mod for the Archos Jukebox. It seems to be the same basic idea, and is probably doable with any HD based MP3 player. Also for archos owners who may not have it yet, Rockbox is a great replacement for the crappy firmware that came with the thing.

Love the Neuros backpacking and built-in transmitter though. Great ideas.

• hmm stupid noob question i guess... but what are some ways to download through http sans a browser?

The hardware is ruggedly built, and I'm pleased with it.

But the Archos firmware is wholly disappointing. Even the Archos font is lacking -- it's got no true descenders ("g", "y", "p").

There's an excellent GLP'd replacement, Rockbox (rockbox.haxx.se). It's literally an order of magnitude faster in displaying directories, and has a plethora of additional features.

The only "problem" with the GPL'd replacement is that, due to Archos's paranoia over its IP, the replacemnt had to be built up by labourious reverse engineering.

I'll buy new products from Archos when they release their specifications and sample code. Not before.

The hardware is ruggedly built, and I'm pleased with it.

But the Archos firmware is wholly disappointing. Even the Archos font is lacking -- it's got no true descenders ("g", "y", "p").

There's an excellent GLP'd replacement, Rockbox (rockbox.haxx.se). It's literally an order of magnitude faster in displaying directories, and has a plethora of additional features.

The only "problem" with the GPL'd replacement is that, due to Archos's paranoia over its IP, the replacemnt had to be built up by labourious reverse engineering.

I'll buy new products from Archos when they release their specifications and sample code. Not before.

So, with the AV300, I worry whether or not we'll see a version of Rockbox or something similar, or whether the firmware that comes in box will be at least serviceable this time around. If not, at that price tag, this device will try and fail to compete with both the smaller laptops and the portable DVD players.

However, the Archos suffers from some incredibly flaky firmware.

Check out Rockbox, The Open Source firmware replacement for the Archos. Far and away superior to the default firmware.

The Archos is the way to go.

After a lot of research, I recently both the Archos Recorder 20, and I love it. The software in ROM isn't so great, but that's OK, as there is Rockbox, an open-source project that has very good software that is getting better all the time. When you plug it into your computer, it's just a USB hard drive, so you can manage your music with whatever you want (I just use rsync to sync from my main box to the portable).

The price also seemed great to me; the 20 gig model was circa $200 from Harmony. And even if I never do it, the fact that if somethings annoys me enough I can just go in and fix the code myself is a damned good feature.

Another option is the Archos Jukebox. The 20GB recorder model is ~$225, and you can upgrade the drive to 60GB.

One of the best things about the Archos is the OSS Rockbox firmware at http://rockbox.haxx.se/. New features are continually being added that make the Archos a very cool device. Plus, if you aren't happy with the way it works, just hack it yourself! The Rockbox source is very well written and easy to hack. Plus it has games.

Yeah the Archos is pretty good deal, I found my with $50 rebate (check other story ) settling it to $200. The decent firmware and terrible manual can be immediately fixed by Rockbox, an opensource firmware project for the player which kicks a lot of butt. The only problems are that you can only record and play in the mp3 format due to the hardware and also the built-in mic is right above the harddrive of the unit, recording every whiz and click it makes when writing to the disk instead of the buffer. Really bad design flaw, but fixed by using your own mic which is a good idea anyway. But its great for recording classes

The Archos Recorder is another MP3 player that has a recording function. It has a built-in mic, about 10 hours uptime per charge, and the 20GB model can be had for less than $250.

The interface to a PC is simply a USB HDD, so it can be used with just about any OS, unlike the iPod.

It doesn't run Linux, but there is an open-source replacement firmware available, Rockbox.

So they eventually got around to porting Doom to the Archos, which is nice, and unexpected. Oh yeah, and Rockbox 2 was released, with lots of new features.

So they eventually got around to porting Doom to the Archos, which is nice, and unexpected. Oh yeah, and Rockbox 2 was released, with lots of new features.

So they eventually got around to porting Doom to the Archos, which is nice, and unexpected. Oh yeah, and Rockbox 2 was released, with lots of new features.

Well, for contrast, my Archos Jukebox Recorder (running Rockbox) has 5 navigation, 2 power, and 3 menu buttons. It's been modded to 60Gb, and I've got 12Gb free, with nearly 10K legal MP3s. upgrading from the standard 1500mAh to 2000mAh batteries, and I can listen from coast to coast without hearing the same song twice, and still have enough power to make it from airport to hotel before plugging in.

I love my AJR+RockBox. It makes the iPod look like something from the early '90s by comparison -- in terms of functionality and cost/feature.

If they'd just use Curl's libraries, they'd support HTTPS and a dozen other protocols.

The latest Archos jukebox products (recorder, FM recorder) work with no special drivers - they are USB storage compliant and work great with usb-storage under Linux.

Even the older jukebox will work under Linux, you just have to add a readily available driver.

The nice thing about having a USB storage compliant device is when you plug it in, it just becomes a drive on your system. You can copy anything to or from it as if it was a local HD (it's just alot slower). Nice not having to use any proprietary software or DRM crap.

Then, put Rockbox, the open source firmware for the Archos on it, and it makes for a very nice solution. On the go, it's a portable MP3 player; plugged into your system, you just play your MP3's with xmms right off the device. Good stuff!

s/Linux/other_OS/ and s/xmms/other_player/ as appropriate.

Check out Rockbox for an open source alternative firmware for the Archos Jukebox. One of the long-term goals of the project is the implementation of vorbis decoding (and other formats), which they claim may be possible provided they are given more information on the decoding chip.

Can I use the Archos as an USB harddisk to store data from my PDA/ digital camera/phone etc. No. USB is a master/slave protocol, and both the Archos and your device are slaves. Two slaves cannot communicate without a master (usually a PC). (An upcoming extension called USB On-The-Go will let slaves communicate without a master, but current Archoses will not be able to support that.)

Can I use the Archos as an USB harddisk to store data from my PDA/ digital camera/phone etc. No. USB is a master/slave protocol, and both the Archos and your device are slaves. Two slaves cannot communicate without a master (usually a PC). (An upcoming extension called USB On-The-Go will let slaves communicate without a master, but current Archoses will not be able to support that.)

No, not Curl, curl which is free, and in many cases works better than wget.

curl

• exactly the sort of people likely to get so excited over some networking functionality that they're likely to pay $400 for an otherwise merely adequate boom box.
• much more likely to have the permanent network connections and always-on computers that make a networked stereo more useful.
• the kind of local, informal expert that friends and family often turn to when trying to decide about a high-tech purchase.
• the same sort of person that friends and family turn to for tech support
• the kinds of people who will make all sorts of cool extra software for your consumer goods (e.g., see RockBox, open-source firmware for Archos MP3 players, or the bunch of stuff available for Turtle Beach's Audiotron.

I've got a standard Jukebox 20, and the wife has the FM radio version, both are really reliable little units and there's even open-source firmware available for it called Rockbox.

Well worth a look, and IMHO superior to the iPod - certainly the ones I've played with anyway.

This is indeed possible with many of the Archos mp3 players, which take standard 9.5mm 2.5 inch IDE drives. I don't know what the capacity limit of the device firmware is exactly, but 40 GB is possible and quite inexpensive (~US$130 for an IBM Travelstar the last time I looked). In fact, several vendors sell new Archos Recorders pre-modded with 40 GB drives (warantee voided, of course). This has been discussed in several Archos forums and on the Rockbox mailing list. I personally have a laptop with a 40 GB drive which is nearing capacity. When the price of 60 or 80 GB 2.5" drives drops some, I plan on buying one of these big drives, then putting the laptop's 40G into my Archos 20 which I never thought I'd fill...

It already works under Linux. It is accessed as a USB Mass Storage device using the ISD-200 chip with a VFAT filesystem. The driver is in the vanilla kernel, and the web site for it is here. Also, there is open source firmware (which Archos will be including on its CD-ROM with future players) located at this page. This firmware doesn't support recording yet, but it will very soon now according to the web site.

I have my whole MP3 collection on it, and it's great. Although I have to admit that it's not as visually pleasing as an iPod.

It already works under Linux. It is accessed as a USB Mass Storage device using the ISD-200 chip with a VFAT filesystem. The driver is in the vanilla kernel, and the web site for it is here. Also, there is open source firmware (which Archos will be including on its CD-ROM with future players) located at this page. This firmware doesn't support recording yet, but it will very soon now according to the web site.

I have my whole MP3 collection on it, and it's great. Although I have to admit that it's not as visually pleasing as an iPod.

Lastly, it protects my image content.

Referrer information may be annoying to you, but it's an extrememly useful tool. If taken away one restricts opportunities for the site operator to personalize and protect content on their site. Not a huge loss, but it isn't really as great a privacy issue as you seem to believe.

For instance, if a person goes from a Monster.com search page to his Yahoo mail account, Yahoo now knows where the person is looking for a job, what type of job he is looking for, etc. (it's all encoded in the URL). Yahoo also has access to his address book and all his email messages.

I see a scenario where Yahoo subtly threatens to email your boss to let him know you're thinking about quitting... unless you upgrade your account/add more storage space. It won't happen tomorrow, but Yahoo is sleazy enough to try something like that and they have the information... all they need is the technology to make that connection.

That's just one example, but it illustrates the point that referrer information is none of your business. You only want it because you can profit from it without any complaints from your audience.

Another example:

A lot of people apparently email the URL of my site to their friends. In my site logs, I often see the email addresses of the person who sent the message and the poor sap who clicked the link. These people have no idea they have divulged their email addresses to me via referrer info. If they wanted me to have that info, they would have given it to me. Sometimes I also see the subject of the message, which is particularly funny when it was sent by a competitor along the lines of "Have you seen what <insert_url_here> is doing?"

But as you said, "it isn't really as great a privacy issue as you seem to believe." It's worse than you realize.

Bottom Line

Companies will do just about anything to make an extra buck. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that they use technology against users to that end. But it's a two-way street -- people just need to wake up and start using technology to protect themselves.

there's always the archos, which has rockbox going for it (open source replacement firmware). being able to write code for my mp3 player gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside...

Björn Stenberg & Linus Nielsen Feltzing developed this language called the Shakespeare Programming Language

Check out the The Fibonacci drama

It even compiles !!!

The Archos Jukebox 6000 is a $199 6gig MP3 player and USB harddisk that has an open source linux driver and
open source firmware.

The Archos Jukebox 6000 is a $199 6gig MP3 player and USB harddisk that has an open source linux driver and
open source firmware.