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Zune's Wireless Almost Totally Worthless
mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."
Putting an alternative firmware on it to peer-share any and all your files and to sync with a computer wirelessly will happen and almost makes the Zune a tempting project. But I don't need a wireless backup hard disc that also plays movies and music. Yet.
The iPod's default format for ripped CDs is AAC, which is not proprietary.
"I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with Guess on it. I said, thyroid problem?" - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Apple's preferred format, AAC, is not propriety, it is a full standard. Try looking something up before you type, or stop spreading FUD. Just because a company chooses not to add AAC support to it's players doesn't make it propriety. It's probably as free as mp3, so I don't see your logic. Anyway, you can rip music into AAC, Lossless compressed, wave, aiff, and mp3. Oh my god, choices! Guess what, the ipod can play all those formats too.
Apple may not have a nice gui for copying songs back off your ipod, but that doesn't matter. They don't *stop* you from doing it, not on a mac, not on windows, that's the point. There are no secret drivers with hidden APIs that override the system ones. They are just in a folder marked "invisible". Nor do they encrypt all songs when you transfer it to your ipod. They just copy them exactly.
--Sadly, text alone cannot convey the depths of my sarcasm.
Look at all the trouble Apple went through to make getting songs off the iPod and onto a 'new' system impossible.
Not true; Apple didn't do anything at all to prevent this, they just didn't write software to do it. The files are stored on the iPod in their original form, but with a database index as the name. The database isn't at all difficult to read.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Also trying to point out that the vast majority of Slashdotters, including the one to whom I replied, produce nothing in the way of copyrightable content, let alone make it their primary occupation, yet want to sit on the sidelines and offer advice as to how the actual producers should conduct themselves in their business.
Hi, I'm a professional content creator. The majority of my income is from creating copyrighted works. Does that somehow make my opinions more logical or factual?
All the while we the producers are happy with the current arrangement, as are most normals.
Are you joking? Most of "we the producers" are not happy or sad or much of anything because we're long since dead. The majority of copyrighted works are not available to the public, at all. They are not for sale. Take a look at motown records, for example. I think something like 5% of their catalogue of copyrighted music is available for sale, and they own the majority of the works in an entire genre of American music. I don't know about you, but I doubt those artists would be too happy about that and those of us that would like to listen to it sure aren't.
As for the previous poster, he's entirely right. Copyright costs most musicians money, rather than makes it for them. In order to reach a mainstream audience they have to go through the RIAA, and for most artists that means they pay money for the privilege of handing over all their copyrights. They make their money with live performances and merchandise. For the average musician, no copyright at all would probably increase their revenue.
The point of all of this is not to say that copyright is not a useful incentive in some cases, it is to make you aware that the current implementation of copyright in conjunction with cartels that have monopolized the distribution channels is broken and needs to be fixed.
It's not "randomizing them", it's hashing them. And yes, it's on-purpose because it makes searching for the specific song faster. (Whether or not it actually IS faster or not might be debated, but the point is that's why it's done. It's not random, and it's not pointless, and it has nothing to do with obfuscating them.)
And if you copy those 4343ddacs332.aac back to another copy of iTunes, iTunes will automatically rename the file based on the ID3 tags in it. (Which the iPod does not change in any way.) So it still works fine in any player that accepts that file type and uses ID3 tags instead of file names to organize files.
Comment of the year
If I plug my iPod into someone elses PC and try to access the library, I will get a friendly iTunes prompt asking if I want to attach my iPod to that PC
iTunes will ask you if you want to use iTunes to automatically sync the strange iPod you connected. You decline and now you are free to move any and all songs from the PC (including Apple DRM'ed ones) on the iPod.
Thanks for playing!
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