Slashdot Mirror
Nokia To Use Microsoft Digital Music Software
BCMM writes "From an article on Reuters: 'The world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets ... Nokia agreed to put Microsoft's music player software into its handsets.'" (The BBC covers the deal as well.)
"The articles don't mention what sort of DRM or licensing will be involved." jfanning writes "Two new Series 60 phones were also announced that ship soon and support WMA, the 6680 and 6681. I haven't seen it mentioned clearly yet, but also the Media Transfer Protocol has been licenced, so that could mean the phone will show up as a media device in Windows Media 10." jfanning mentions also that Nokia has licensed the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol for business phones.
I want my mobile to be able to stream music. And for that matter, I also want my car stereo to be able to receive streaming audio. Downloading is so yesterday, who wants to pay per song? As a Rhapsody subscriber, I'd love to access my playlists through my phone or my car - Get on it, guys!
Despite conventional wisdom, I've discovered you can blame a guy for trying. It's called "attempted murder".
It does make sense that the media companies (i.e. MS, Apple, Napster, etc.) are trying to lock up license agreements with cell phone makers but why wouldn't these companies go after the cell phone providers instead? I mean, if Apple came up with an agreement with Verizon to be their exclusive provider of music, wouldn't it force the cell phone makers to engineer apple's DRM and iTunes into their future phones? And put another way, if I were a cell phone carrier, wouldn't I want a piece of the action and the opportunity to control media standards?
Nokia is a type of PHONE
T-Mobile is a type of NETWORK
Sheessh - If you're gonna make up random things to get FP, at least make them vaugley techincally correct.
Anyway... As for Nokia - The rest of my devices running MS stuff crash - Why Oh Why would I want my phone to crash as well??? I can just see it now. "Hello Bob, I need you to look up error code 61023... Bob? Bob?... damn - my phone's rebooted."
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Palm also licensed the MS ActiveSync (Outlook/Exchange protocol). Now Nokia. How does an open source project, like Open-Xchange, license a product like that? Beyond the legal issues of GPL on software that depends on a (very) proprietary license (which can be overcome by partitioning the licensed SW over IPC APIs), how does the project negotiate with MS, and be trusted to honor the agreement? How to pay? If this is all doable, what are we waiting for?
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make install -not war
... and why doesn't the story reflect that? Motorola reportedly showed off their new iTunes-compatible phone today, too!
The dirt on the Motorola E1060 - Engadget - www.engadget.com
i am a soviet space shuttle
Why would you need to buy another computer? iTunes and iPods work fine on Windows or reasonably well on Linux. Fair enough if you don't want to buy an iPod - why not just rip the songs to MP3 and put them on your phone? Then you don't need to go paying again for music you own. If you really want to pay for downloads rather than hard copies you can also use hymn to strip the DRM from legally purchased iTunes songs which can then be used with any standard FairPlay-incapable MP4 software that'll run on Symbian on your phone, without any restriction hassle.
I'd like to know if there's anything I've missed here, but if I were you I wouldn't be giving my money or approval to a big evil setup designed to make the big bosses richer while giving you less rights.
And regarding batteries, i have a charger at home and at work. Most of my friends have nokia phone chargers. If listening to music through my phone reduces the battery to, say, 5 hours, then i probably won't care.
I find it really bizarre how the slashdot community has so many neo-luddites. Just because this technology is not perfectly set up for how YOU listen to music, or how YOU use your phone, it doesn't mean it isn't good for others. Sometimes i get the feeling that my grandparents are more adaptable to change than the average slashdot reader.
In other news (Score:2, Funny) SonyEriccsson reported sales increases of its handsets rose
That got modded "funny" but I'm dead serious.
I've been thinking about switching to a non-Nokia phone for my next cellphone upgrade. This clinches it.
It's bad enough that some of the existing phones are subject to attack over bluetooth. Can you imagine them with Microsoft code inside?
Maybe Microsoft WILL clean up their act here. But even if they do, given their track record I won't be able to trust them.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way