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Sony and Universal Prohibit Sharing Via Zune
ack154 writes "Engadget has a story about Sony and Universal Music apparently denying Zune owners the ability to 'squirt' songs by certain artists to other Zune users. That's right, if you've actually purchased songs from the Zune marketplace and happen to run into another Zune owner, you're prohibited from sharing certain songs. From the article: 'In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.'"
Yawn...one of the most idiotic discussions I've seen so far on Slashdot. DRM is DRM is DRM and it all stinks. What - you think you *own* the crap you buy from Apple? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA. Of course you don't. The Marketplace is a piece of shit, I'll grant you. But who's fooling who here? I used my 14 day free pass, downloaded everything I wanted and then used Tunebite to convert everything to .mp3 with no DRM (yeah thats right - like none of you Apple Fanboys have never heard of Tunebite). Add to that, my entire collection of music I had my 30G 5G iPod that I HAPPILY sold to pay for the Zune.
.wmv but if you buy a Zune and have vids you already converted for use on the iPod, the Zune software will convert them for you as is. IMToo has a nice tool set for conversion and you can get excellent quality vids with high quality stereo audio.
OMIFGOD, you say! That's right - I SHIT-CANNED the iPod for this beauty. We already have a sweet, elite "social" (yeah, sucky fucking name) community where I work and we send each other shit all the time, including movies.
Wi-Fi broken? The FUCK you say! Go get an education at Zunescene or the other dozen or so Zune Forum sites. The sharing problem was CRACKED a long time ago - so CATCH UP TO REALITY friends. I can send anything I want via Zune's Wi-Fi anytime I want - movies, music, docs, software, you name it.
Now I'm not a fan of the Marketplace business concept of having to pay a monthly fee to keep your tunes "alive". But, since I like DRM even less, I simply do away with it. Oh yeah - and that INCLUDES the 3-day limit on Wi-Fi transfers, also easily by-passed.
Now boys and girls, go and type-in "ipod vs zune" or similar into Google and look at the tech comparisons. Zune audio is superior to 4th and 5th Gen iPods, period, end of story, not that I still don't covet the 3rd Gen iPod which was a masterpiece of both technical excellence and beauty. I don't miss the click-wheel though. Dialing up a song in the car is a pain in the ass and you know it, unless you have something like "iPod Car" or similar which transfers the control to your steering wheel controls or other dashboard function.
The Zune interface is a dream come true. Yeah, its a modification of Media Center Mobile but its gorgeous and extremely functional. Once you experience navigation in Zune, you'll never want to go back to the iPod model. Yeah, yeah..."no clock, calendar, no contacts - not a single luxury"! That shit's coming soon, plus games. Like the XBox, the Zune is exceptionally hackable and infinitely upgradeable.
http://www.zunescene.com/forums/
Go check out the "Hacks" section.
Video? YEAH, BABY!!! I'm a video junkie and the Zune's Video gives me a stiffie while I was always disappointed in the iPod due to size and format. I was a big fan of Cucusoft's video converter for the iPod but their Zune converter leaves a lot to be desired. IMToo does a great job.
The trick of course, is NOT converting directly from DVD. You'll get beautiful video even on the iPod by converting your DVDs to the Mpeg4 flavor of your choice, then using a video converter such as described. OR, try out Handbrake (originally designed for Mac). The Win32 GUI isn't worth a crap but its rocks on the command line. My method is DVD Decrypter, then AutoGK in which the resulting XVid goes to my Media Center and then gets converted to my Zune.
I'm not a great fan of
Let's talk about the case. Take a look at every other contender to the iPod. What are they? Clones. Nothing original to see here folks, move along. No thanks, I don't want yet ANOTHER Scratch-Pod. The Zune case is functional, aesthetically pleasing and is NOT a grease and scratch magnet. No need for a protective case other than I went ahead and invested $2.00 in a screen protector (I was a big fan of the McCally protectors for the iPod - best $5.00 you'll ever spend). The Zune is UNIQUE in this aspe
Yawn...one of the most idiotic discussions I've seen so far on Slashdot. DRM is DRM is DRM and it all stinks. What - you think you *own* the crap you buy from Apple? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA. Of course you don't. The Marketplace is a piece of shit, I'll grant you. But who's fooling who here? I used my 14 day free pass, downloaded everything I wanted and then used Tunebite to convert everything to .mp3 with no DRM (yeah thats right - like none of you Apple Fanboys have never heard of Tunebite). Add to that, my entire collection of music I had my 30G 5G iPod that I HAPPILY sold to pay for the Zune.
.wmv but if you buy a Zune and have vids you already converted for use on the iPod, the Zune software will convert them for you as is. IMToo has a nice tool set for conversion and you can get excellent quality vids with high quality stereo audio.
OMIFGOD, you say! That's right - I SHIT-CANNED the iPod for this beauty. We already have a sweet, elite "social" (yeah, sucky fucking name) community where I work and we send each other shit all the time, including movies.
Wi-Fi broken? The FUCK you say! Go get an education at Zunescene or the other dozen or so Zune Forum sites. The sharing problem was CRACKED a long time ago - so CATCH UP TO REALITY friends. I can send anything I want via Zune's Wi-Fi anytime I want - movies, music, docs, software, you name it.
Now I'm not a fan of the Marketplace business concept of having to pay a monthly fee to keep your tunes "alive". But, since I like DRM even less, I simply do away with it. Oh yeah - and that INCLUDES the 3-day limit on Wi-Fi transfers, also easily by-passed.
Now boys and girls, go and type-in "ipod vs zune" or similar into Google and look at the tech comparisons. Zune audio is superior to 4th and 5th Gen iPods, period, end of story, not that I still don't covet the 3rd Gen iPod which was a masterpiece of both technical excellence and beauty. I don't miss the click-wheel though. Dialing up a song in the car is a pain in the ass and you know it, unless you have something like "iPod Car" or similar which transfers the control to your steering wheel controls or other dashboard function.
The Zune interface is a dream come true. Yeah, its a modification of Media Center Mobile but its gorgeous and extremely functional. Once you experience navigation in Zune, you'll never want to go back to the iPod model. Yeah, yeah..."no clock, calendar, no contacts - not a single luxury"! That shit's coming soon, plus games. Like the XBox, the Zune is exceptionally hackable and infinitely upgradeable.
http://www.zunescene.com/forums/ [zunescene.com]
Go check out the "Hacks" section.
Video? YEAH, BABY!!! I'm a video junkie and the Zune's Video gives me a stiffie while I was always disappointed in the iPod due to size and format. I was a big fan of Cucusoft's video converter for the iPod but their Zune converter leaves a lot to be desired. IMToo does a great job.
The trick of course, is NOT converting directly from DVD. You'll get beautiful video even on the iPod by converting your DVDs to the Mpeg4 flavor of your choice, then using a video converter such as described. OR, try out Handbrake (originally designed for Mac). The Win32 GUI isn't worth a crap but its rocks on the command line. My method is DVD Decrypter, then AutoGK in which the resulting XVid goes to my Media Center and then gets converted to my Zune.
I'm not a great fan of
Let's talk about the case. Take a look at every other contender to the iPod. What are they? Clones. Nothing original to see here folks, move along. No thanks, I don't want yet ANOTHER Scratch-Pod. The Zune case is functional, aesthetically pleasing and is NOT a grease and scratch magnet. No need for a protective case other than I went ahead and invested $2.00 in a screen protector (I was a big fan of the McCally protectors for the iPod - best $5.00 you'll ever spend). The Zune is UNIQUE in this aspect.
Y'know what I