Slashback: Drives, Pods, OEMs

Slashback tonight with a look at Microsoft's OEM practices, the true nature and size of the Apple iPod, IBM drives (and hard drives in general), and the RIAA's alleged lobbying efforts for a license to invade machines looking for copyright infringement. All below, all now.

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.

Comments

the post-microsoft world

[Shoeboy]

Hate is a great uniter. Hate makes you strong. Every movement must have someone to hate.

If Microsoft played by the rules, what then? If you think KDE vs. Gnome is bad now, just wait until they aren't competing against Microsoft anymore.

I don't support Microsoft's tactics, but I really don't want to see KDE extremisist parading Miguel de Icaza's severed head around on a pike with a banner reading "The Konquered Kompetitor." I really don't want to see UC Berkely burned to the ground by BSD hating Linux zealots.

So what's needed is an enemy that's wholly evil, but doesn't have a crushing competetive advantage (that's krushing kompetitive advantage for you KDE users).

My suggestion: Break up Microsoft and create a small, federally funded software development house called evilsoft. Evilsoft will have a mandate to create unpleasant software and market it in unwholsome ways, but it will be limited to 50 employees. This will give Sun, Oracle, Apple and the OSS community a common foe while also allowing fair competition.

I know /. readers are suspicious of government involvement, but I really see this as the only option. Unfortunately, the answer to "can't we all just get along?" is "only if we all hate the same thing."

I urge you to write your congressperson today, if you aren't a US citizen, pick a congressperson at random and claim to be overseas military personell.

It's our last, best hope.

--Shoeboy

Re:10 Gigs?

[corebreech]

Both of your complaints about hard drive size are Apple claiming a LARGER size than what was delivered.

And you would expect somebody to complain because the hard drive size delivered is SMALLER?

The point, moron, is that Apple cannot be trusted to accurately relate the size of the storage media they sell.

There is no way of knowing for certain exactly what the capacity is until you actually get the thing and find out for yourself.