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Slashback: Solidity, Sneakiness, Recovery
Vivid Video, take note: NickElm writes: "The 3Dwm project, already featured twice before on Slashdot (the last time little more than a year ago), is still alive and kicking and making steady progress. This summer, we added CSG support, full VNC interaction, and our first real application (a 3Dwm clock). To top it off, Xybernaut recently donated two wearable computers to the project, perfect platforms for this kind of thing. 3Dwm packages have existed for Debian for quite some time, and we were just now adopted by Mandrake as well. What are you waiting for, download it and try it out for yourself! Still far from a complete user environment, but we're getting there..."
Do you want your iTunes iBack, little iBoy? pinqkandi writes "Apple has released some tips on getting back your data lost by the iTunes Installer for Mac OS X. If you haven't written to the partition where the loss occured, you should be able to get it back with Tech Tool Pro or Norton Utilities. Apple's tips warn to NOT use a Volume Recover feature in these utilities, but instead use their tools to recover lost data. Also, boot from a CD before recovering data, and also follow your utility's maker's directions. Unfortunately, no free utilities are listed for the recovery."
The sort of details you'll find on page 17 in small print. ARP writes "A while ago RatedPC brought us some scoop of HP's upcoming Digital Entertainment Center de100c. At first this unit seems to be a perfect addition to home theatre systems right? Well, you better forget about it if you think you are going to use it to share music or make your own CDs from your MP3 collection. What HP hasn't told us is they have been seriously whipped by DRM (Digital Rights Management). An internal FAQ has revealed that users will be unable to use CD-RWs to burn off their own CDs. You will need to buy "Digital Audio Discs" and royalties from these discs are distributed to artists via the RIAA. And you can't transfer your songs to your PC either. Without a doubt RIAA's foothold has extended much above just this. Don't be surprised if it won't play your MP3 collection because they are not digitally signed. The problem is that RIAA will be riding high on HP success with this product and their grip will be firmer when it comes to controlling what you will do with your music."
A similar problem affects the otherwise very cool-looking Terapin video recorder, which I would pick up in a heartbeat if it worked with regular CD-Rs. The HP website talks about burning tracks to CD, but makes no mention of such restrictions; I hope this is simply bad information, but it seems quite likely that "burning to CD" in this case will mean burning to industry-sanctioned CDs with their accompanying surcharge. Can anyone provide further information?
"Unfortunately, no free utilities are listed for the recovery."
Well, for what it's worth, us Mac users are already used to paying out the nose for stuff. I happen to have both Norton Utilities and TechTool Pro actually, and I don't know a Mac user who doesn't have one or the other. They're excellent resources in a pinch.
For those of you who claim that with "Apple's stuck-up attitude about it's OS" that it should come with these sorts of utilities, understand that Norton Utilities for the Mac is much different from Norton "Let's baby the infantile user" Utilities for Windows. TechTool Pro and NU bring out the power users in the Macintosh community. Oh...and IAAPOBIHAMAW. (I am a PC owner but I have a Mac at Work)
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
This is not a problem, it's a blessing, as at $1000 HP will sell few of these. Then we can all point to the RIAA's DRM component as the reason for lousy sales (it's certainly a major reason I wouldn't buy one, even at half the price). To make this work, everyone here should write HP a nice snail-mail letter politely telling them that you were interested in the de100c until you learned of the DRM crap.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Pros: Looks pretty and fits in with the rest of my entertainment system, neato little remote, able to d/l new music (marginal in my skeptical opinion)
Cons: I gotta buy a $6 (?)dollar blank disc so that Britney isn't robbed of her royalties, potentially "signed" format preventing me free movement of my files from the device, to my PC, to my iPod, whatever. Also, broadband link to my music collection, potentially showing them, what music I have, and what I'm listening to (marketing anyone?)
Here's my solution. Buy yourself a cheap old box (I a P3 350 on ebay for under $100), throw a big HD and a CD-RW on it, and hide it in your entertainment system. Not as pretty, sure, but cheap, and no big brother RIAA.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
...Which is precisely what they do with their printers. They give them away, sometimes even losing money initially, but wait... people need... toner! Yeah that's it, we'll charge an arm and a leg for finely ground plastic!
To be semi on-topic, I can't believe that HP's new mp3 device is so limiting. It seems that the old HP would have gone with what people really want, and not bow to the RIAA and all this digital protection crap. Look what happened with Napster: You used to have one mp3-sharing company to kill, now you have 50 small, flexible, and no-one-person-owns-me mp3 sharing networks/programs. They really shot themselves in the foot on this one!
Viva la resistance.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I know it's not the same, but it does feel similar to what the MPAA tried to pull with Divx. Divx of course failed because customers didn't want to buy crippled equipment, and rightly so. Perhaps HP will face a similar response here.
Region coding is another example of crippling for profit, but unlike say Divx, it didn't affect the majority of customers. In the major markets of US and Japan, only a few would seek to play DVDs from outside their native region. Europe was more badly affected, and DVD still hasn't taken off in Australia really, due to the paucity of region 4 releases outside the big titles.
HP's crippling though would become apparent everytime one tried to record on it. What is Digital Audio Media, other than a disingenuous choice of name? I'm presuming it's the same as the (expensive) CD-Audio disks, which or course are just CD-R with magic mark on it for the benefit of (presumably) the RIAA.
Similar shenanigans killed DAT as a home medium, but maybe the other features of the HP device will win out. Recording aside, it does look like a nice piece of kit.
these discs are distributed to artists via the RIAA
that is probably not exactly correct, according to this account at salon.com, the artists are the LAST people that are likely to see any of this money...
Ahhh... but you can crossfade with tracks! Just don't use audio padding.
The front page of 3dWM's website asks, "Why Not?" The reason not to is given by their own promotional material. They note that the command line is 1-D, the desktop is 2-D, and their product is 3-D. Well, not quite. It's still being displayed on a 2-D device (a monitor), and it's still controlled and manipulated by a 2-D device (a mouse). 3-D user interface paradigms hold promise when the parts that interface with the user are actually 3-D (think: volumetric displays; hand-mounted, motion-sensing pointing devices). Otherwise, getting things done becomes more difficult and less intuitive.
like all of you here who are so for the break up of MS. I don't like Bill Gates' business practices any better than you do, but what I hate is the federal gov't becoming involved in an industry that depends on inovation.
If you love something, set it free, if it comes back, it is yours forever, if the fed gets it, it never was.
Never has there been a bigger life sucking entity than the US Fed govt. They produce nothing, yet we gladly give them more money to produce even more nothing.
The bottom line is if they suceed in breaking up MS, then who knows what is next. Some lame ass congressman or senator finds out that Linux is free, and not subject to federal taxation, declares that it is evil on the basis of so and so.....
sound familiar, it should.
This country is founded on the free market system. Let the market work as it should.
If you think the HP device is a unique device, just wait. Before long, all consumer electronics will have to pass the "Copyright protection test" where the various industry leaders vote on how big a piece of the pie they are intitled to. Think back 30 or so years when the IBM clone first came out. If that where to happen now, it would be killed by legislation and copyright infringment litigation.
So the next time you start getting excited about MS being broke up, remember that your pet ox is the next one in the goreing queue.