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No WMA for HP iPod
finelinebob writes "In spite of Paul Thurrott's wishful thinking, Wired is reporting that HP will not support the WMA format in its version of the iPod. From the article, according to HP spokesperson Muffi Ghadial, "'We're not going to be supporting WMA for now ... We picked the service that was the most popular (Apple's iTunes Music Store). We could have chosen another format, but that would have created more confusion for our customers.' He added, 'Most customers don't care about the format they're downloading.'" Thurrott's singing a different tune lately, anyway...."
I have personally witnessed Apple replacing lost downloads due to a hardware failure (hd crash). They do keep records.
Crap. WMA may have DRM junk but at the same bitrate it sounds better than MP3. Numerous tests in addition to many people's ears (mine included) have proven this. When it comes to sound formats, sound quality is an important distinguishing characteristic in my book. Which is not to say I'm a great fan of WMA, I prefer Vorbis which sounds pretty similar to WMA, or even AAC (though the DRM'd version is just Apple's take on WMA). But MP3's ONLY advantage is that it's the lowest common denominator.
Still, it worked for GIF I guess.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
At a given bit-rate, every compressed/encoded song will be roughly the same size.
Now, what you're doing is encoding it at a lower bit-rate (probably an ear-numbing 64kb), and saying "Hell, *I* don't hear a difference its fine".
If you're happy at 64kb, congratulations...you have tin ears and that's a good thing because you'll fit four times as many songs on your player as a discerning person.
But WMA can't compress *better*. Its a physical impossibility.
I use my iPod with Linux, and have for over a year. In fact, it has never been used with any other operating system, and I have never used iTunes or Musicmatch (or whatever the windows thing is called) so I can't really compare.
Linux firewire support is experimental in 2.4, so getting it working requires your basic linux skills, but I haven't had any real problems. Most firewire cards and MBs use a standard driver, so it is just to compile the modules (and firewire harddisk support) and run. I have never gotten automatic hotplug support working here, but scanning the scsi bus manually isn't that big a deal (and others apparently have). With kernels before 2.4.20 I had a recurring hard lockup while transfering, which was annoying, but that is gone now. And I don't think the drivers are completely optimal so the transfers are slower then advertised (but still many times faster than USB).
I don't know if it is better with the new iPods that support USB2.0, since I have an old firewire only model. And I haven't tried the 2.6 kernel which is supposed to have better firewire support.
The best software for adding and removing music that I have found is gtkpod. It is a nice, easy to use, GUI program that allows you to select music, construct playlists, etc. The page also contains information for getting all the other stuff working.
I am happy with my iPod on Linux.
Yeah, it could be done as a firmware update, if Apple needed it. iPod is based around the PortalPlayer PP5002 controller chip, and WMA is one of the codecs that PP's reference firmware already supports. There are other questions, of course, like which iPod models would have enough available memory to make use of yet another codec and so on.
I am only using MP3 files, though I understand that gtkpod has some support AAC files as well:
.m4p files .m4a
NEW FEATURE: import of AAC files (.m4a) supported, provided the
mp4v2 library from the mpeg4ip project
(mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net) is available during the compilation of
gtkpod. Writing tags to AAC files is also supported.
can also be imported, but they are not played by the iPod.
files work fine.
BTW, never mind what I said about not getting hotplug to work, I just checked it now and got it working fine using the instructions in the gtkpod README file.
It's been a while, but I have Mr. AC. There's some really good quotes in there:
It is clear, however, that Microsoft has retarded, and perhaps altogether extinguished, the process by which these two middleware technologies could have facilitated the introduction of competition into an important market.
Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products.
By refusing to offer those OEMs who requested it a version of Windows without Web browsing software, and by preventing OEMs from removing Internet Explorer -- or even the most obvious means of invoking it -- prior to shipment, Microsoft forced OEMs to ignore consumer demand for a browserless version of Windows.
To the detriment of consumers, however, Microsoft has done much more than develop innovative browsing software of commendable quality and offer it bundled with Windows at no additional charge. As has been shown, Microsoft also engaged in a concerted series of actions designed to protect the applications barrier to entry, and hence its monopoly power, from a variety of middleware threats, including Netscape's Web browser and Sun's implementation of Java.
Eric Engstrom, a Microsoft executive with responsibility for multimedia development, wrote to his superiors that one of Microsoft's goals was getting "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows." Engstrom proposed achieving this goal by offering Intel the following deal: Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to not help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries. Engstrom's efforts apparently bore fruit, for he testified at trial that Intel's IAL subsequently stopped helping Sun to develop class libraries that offered cutting-edge multimedia support
I could continue, but you can just read yourself I think.
While we're at it, there's a smaller speech titled WHAT IS COMPETITION? by William J. Kolasky, Deputy Assistant Attorney General - Antitrust Division U.S. Department of Justice.
look up the definition of monopoly
This one? "The legal definition of 'monopoly power' is the ability to control prices and the ability to restrict output"