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Slashback: Drives, Pods, OEMs
Drive-n to strong drink and harsh words. Kenneth Yu writes: "You might recall the overwhelming response to a recent 'Ask Slashdot' regarding the abnormally high failure rates of IBM 75GXP Hard drives, and the pulling of all 75GXP from Pair Networks' Servers. A class action lawsuit has been filed by Michael Granido, Jr., on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated. You can view the complaint in PDF format at http://www.sheller.com/IBM_complaint.pdf. This story was initially reported by Tech Report (http://www.tech-report.com)."
Apropos that, jriskin writes: "Storagereview.com has its new reliability database up and running. I have no affiliation with the site, but it only benifits the community to have as many people contribute as possible. The database is a listing of hard drives and whether or not they have failed, when they were purchased, etc. So get over there and put in all your HD data!" Things like this could help eliminate the anecdotal-only nature of many of hardware complaints, especially if people who are happy with their hardware bother to report it.
Falling far from a tree has nothing to do with it. Majik writes "A quick correction - the iPod has *10* gigs of storage, not 5 (or 6 like the Nomad). And with the Firewire interface you can move an entire CD in under a minute. Although I admit I was hoping for more out of the product announcement, it's still pretty darn cool ... "
On the other hand, jchristopher writes: "Love it or hate it, Apple's new iPod digital music player is here. Yesterday, many people commented that "at least it has no copy protection" and praised Apple's attitude toward digital music. Unfortunately, this may not be the case - according to this New York Times article, the iPod does indeed have copy protection - MP3 files copied to the iPod from one Mac to the iPod CAN'T be offloaded onto a different computer. Ouch!" That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.
Unorginal Equipment Makers. An Anonymous Coward writes: "This is a follow-up on a previous story posted to Slashdot about Microsoft's anti-competitive OEM contracts." It's a report by German journalist Erik Möller (hi, Erik!), who too an extremely thorough look at the details of OEM bundling deals, and what they mean to customers. Möller's conclusion: "No operating system will ever be able to compete with Microsoft Windows on the desktop market as long as OEMs cannot legally install it besides Windows without losing their license."
'Technical meaures' covers a pretty broad swath. Robotech_Master writes "The RIAA has responded to the 'license to virus' story, calling it a false Internet rumor and explaining their side of the story." So the RIAA officially does not want a license to hack, at least on paper.
Also see the Oct. 25 entries on the Mac Resource Page.
From what I've read, you CAN transfer MP3s from one Mac to another, by transferring them by hand instead of doing the iTunes auto-sync. The NY Times article was just wrong, which won't be the first time for the fluff-a-minute "Circuits" section.
sulli
RTFJ.
Allow me to translate (I speak evil):
Contrary to what you may have seen, read or heard the recording industry never lobbied congress to give us the ability to hack into PCs, plant viruses, destroy MP3 files on people's computers, and worse. That is complete nonsense, and totally untrue.
We don't want to make laws so we can haX0rZ j00.
in fact, a number of companies have developed the technology for these technical measures. Some of them may already be in use, but at RIAA, we've been analyzing the law to make sure that using these technical measures would be completely lawful.
We just want to watch you. This may involve sending you some packets. And HaX0rzING j00! f3WL!
when we looked at it, we found that one of the provisions in this massive bill would have changed existing law in a way that would prevent us from using technical measures that would otherwise have been perfectly lawful.
Senate F3wLz wanted to outlaw our HaX0rZing.
The provision wasn't aimed at anything we were doing or thinking of doing.
Senate f00lZ didn't know who they were MESSIN WID!
this change in the law would have prevented us from using technical measures to protect copyrighted works.
Congress got all scared, goofed, and forgot which side their bread was buttered on, by passing a law that would keep us from HaX0ring evil pirate thieves who are costing us billions by not buying cds! Every song ripped to mp3 everywhere would have been obtained by a legally purchased $20 cd, because no one would just copy songs they don't listen to just to have a "big mp3 collection". That's crazy talk.
The staff confirmed that the effect on us was inadvertent, and asked us to propose a fix, a "patch" to eliminate the problem for our industry.
When we stepped up, F3Wlz realized they'd better let us HaX0r you or else!
There is nothing unusual about what happened here
We buy these people all the time. We have assurances from them that no matter what we do to consumers, we are immune to prosecution.
It's one thing to be criticized for what we do - that's fair game.
Ya, ya, we're Satan.
But to be vilified for what we don't do - that's very disheartening.
We can't imagine being more evil than we already are, and we're upset that someone has a more creative imagination than us.
Half of what is written about us is just plain wrong.
Half of what is written about us true, and the other half is true too but we're spending billions to convince you otherwise.
Sincerely, the well paid evil people.