Great, have fun not having the advantage of auto-filling the music player with specially designed playlists.
Ugh, no thank you. I have my entire CD collection ripped and on my Archos player... that's around 2300 tracks. I like to be able to find things when I want them. I don't want some application automatically moving things to and from it.
I wouldn't be able to stand that.
Besides, iTunes doesn't work on Linux.
I can fill my iPod with highest-rated songs, or songs of a certain decade, etc. You're missing the whole point of a metadata-based jukebox application.
Not at all.
I have every song from every CD I own on my Archos Gmini. With the "Arclibrary" app on the player itself, I can browse through things by genre, by release date, by artist, or by album. I can create playlists on the fly with just about any computer-based music player I have seen, and load them on my player, or I can use the player itself to create playlists.
My player does have metadata. If I don't want to view things by folder view, I have the option on it to use the included on-board app that scans through the music folder on it and categorizes things by artist/genre/album via the ID3 tags contained within the music files.
There is no reason, however, why Apple couldn't have made the iPods capable of handling things on a file/folder level as well though. Archos managed it pretty well on their player. It is just as easy to load a playlist on the Archos Gmini 400 as it is on an iPod.
The difference is, I'm not forced to use any one app to manage the files on it.
Damn skippy. I thought iPods were pretty nifty until I found out how restrictive they are. I'm not installing iTunes just to load my mp3 player. Screw that.
One main thing kept me from buying an iPod when I was MP3 player shopping.
The fact that you need to use an app (like iTunes) to load music onto it that you want to listen to.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
I don't like paying that kind of money for a device and feeling restricted.
Which was why I took my $300 and went with a different player. What I ended up with actually does more, as it turns out, than the iPod, and does it cheaper and it works the way I want it to.
Drag, drop, play. Simple. No annoying applications necessary, no annoying and unnecessary compulsory synchronization with my computer.
Personally, I think the iPods are pretty slick, but that one thing is enough to make me unwilling to shell out my bucks for it.
I have an Archos Gmini 400 (the model just previous to the Gmini 402 mentioned in TFA) and it works fine in Slackware with no additional drivers or apps. I plug it in USB, mount it like any hard drive, and drag and drop what I want to listen to on it via whatever graphical file manager I happen to be using at the time (lately Konqueror).
It used to be that KDE was horribly bloated, but GNOME is no longer a lightweight alternative. Of course there are less resource-intensive desktops {my favourite, which I will be using in my own distro, is WindowMaker}...
Fluxbox is pretty slick too. That's what I use on my older machines with fewer resources. It's lightweight, like blackbox, but a bit shinier and just as tweakable.
The only upside to $1/track that I can think of is that you can buy just one track. If you just like one song, you aren't forced to buy the whole album.
That, I suppose I can see. Pay a buck and get exactly one song. The DRM would still be a turn-off for me though.
That, and the fact that if you buy a song via iTunes Music Store, the label is getting money from the purchase.
I don't purchase music in any way from which any RIAA affiliated labels profit directly. It's used CDs or nothing for me.
Yeah, I know. Somebody had to purchase those CDs to begin with in order for me to get them used, right?
Sure. But I don't see any reason to supply the RIAA with any more money than what they got from that original sale. They'll only use it to sue 12 year old girls and disabled people, after all.
I suppose you could take all your CDs and transfer all of them to DVD... That would at least keep the quality but would take up about 1/4 the physical space, since you can get about 4 times the data on a DVD than you can a standard CD.
But you're still looking at storing a physical disc somewhere then.
While I do agree with you I think their reason was to limit the quality of audio that makes it to the internet. Are the WMA files full CD quality? If you burn from their software is it just 128bps mp3 quality music? If so, then ripping the cd and sharing it would have a significant impact on the quality of the music.
No, you've got it right. That's exactly it. The broken WMA files on these defective CDs are at 128kbps, and after burning and then RE-ripping to MP3 or AAC (so you can play them on an iPod) they'll be of even lower quality.
Which is precisely why Sony's "workaround" isn't even a valid solution. What you end up with after that procedure they recommend is almost surely a pretty crappy audio experience.
Actually, the correct term is not "copy prevention".
This does nothing to stop people who really want to copy anything.
The correct term is "bait and switch".
"Hey! Here's a Compact Disc containing high quality digital audio tracks of your favorite songs! PSYCH! IT INSTEAD ONLY LETS WINDOWS USERS HAVE CRAPPY, DRM-INFESTED WMA OR ATRAC FILES! AAAAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"
It's true though. All this kind of idiocy (i.e., copy protection schemes) does is encourage piracy and drive people away from legitimate purchases.
It does literally nothing to hinder piracy, but it greatly inconveniences legitimate, law-abiding consumers who pay good money for a product that doesn't work and violates their fair use rights.
1. Give the CD to a friend who uses a Linux or Mac machine, which won't recognize the autoplay app that hijacks Windows into seeing only the data section of the disc and not the audio section.
2. Have that friend use their Linux box or Mac to burn a new CD of the raw audio files from your defective purchased -- er, "copy protected" -- disc, NOT the atrac or WMA files.
3. Rip whatever you want, however you want from the burned CD.
Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.
Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher (or another fully compatible player that can playback secure WMA files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp). You can then burn the songs to a standard Audio CD. Please note that in order to burn the files, you will need to upgrade to, or already have, Windows Media Player 9 or 10.
Once the standard Audio CD has been created, place this copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would any normal audio CD.
What a load of crap!
So what they're saying is, copy those 128kbps WMA files off the data section of the CD, burn a low-quality bitrate audio CD out of those files to dump the DRM... and then RE-RIPeven LOWER quality MP3 or AAC files out of them?
Low quality encoded file -> decoded to lower quality CDA file -> re-ripped to still lower quality encoded file
That's going to end up sounding like a chihuahua being molested by a cheese grater.
What if you want to actually enjoy the music you put on your portable digital music player, and not listen to a low-level, tinny, distorted pile of shit?
Screw that. This isn't a solution. A solution would be to send you instructions on how to get at the raw CDA files on the audio section of the disc, not how to burn and re-rip the already crapped-up WMA files on the data section.
I pay on average $3-$8 for used CDs in "like new" condition, via Amazon.com.
No low-quality downloads, no DRM, no overpriced songs I can't play where I want, on whatever device I want. No bullshit.
Why in the world would I ever even consider paying a dollar per TRACK of the same music, only to have harsh restrictions placed on me as to where I can play it, and how many times I can copy it to other devices?
Screw that. As long as I can still buy CDs used, that's the route I'll take. If iTunes Music Store goes the way of the dodo, I guess it won't bother me.
Between you, me, and the dodo, though, the RIAA's dumber than a sack of hammers to let a potential cash cow like this die.
Free money. For a product they already have. Being sold by someone giving them a cut. For something they otherwise wouldn't be selling at all.
What collossally stupid people must they be, those in charge of the major labels. These are potentially the best years to get in on the ground floor of the internet music revolution, and here they are, trying to stamp it out and drive themselves out of business.
Heh.
And I thought music execs liked money. I guess they don't.
That's the same reason I actually ordered my copy of Slackware 10.1 from the Slackware Store, even though it was available free for the taking.
The way I see it, I got more than a year's worth of use out of Slackware 9.1, and I didn't pay anything for that (being the first version of Slackware I tried). I figure I got way more than $39.95's worth of use, so I showed my support by actually purchasing the next release I wanted to have.
I don't have an aversion to paying for quality software.
How about people who think it's just plain stupid that you have to install a bunch of extensions and go making lots of changes in about:config just to get FireFox usable?
Oh you ain't joking there, bucko.
Firefox out of the box is a fricking mess. For just ONE example, tabbed browsing is broken, plain and simple, without at least two extensions.
I'm sorry... I understand the "philosophy" of a "back to basics" browser with only the bare essentials. I grok that. Really. I do.
But this is part of Firefox's core functionality (tabbed browsing, that is), and if you're going to make it that way, it should WORK CORRECTLY without having to resort to one or more extensions to make it behave in a consistent, sane manner.
You know what my biggest bitch is about Firefox though?
It's a petty one, but it's legit.
Back on their 0.8 release, it allowed you to hot-switch themes, but it was buggy, and caused goofy things to happen to your toolbars if you didn't restart the whole browser after switching themes.
Their response to that? Rather than fix the buggy theme-switching, they just force a restart of the browser.
What a copout.
I mean come ON, guys... even Opera can manage switching themes without having to restart the browser, and up until very recently, Opera was a flaky POS on most of my machines.
I want to love Firefox. I really do. But they make it so hard.
The RIAA affiliated labels did their best to drive me away, and I am what you would qualify as an "avid music fan". I buy 3-5 times more CDs than the "average" person, and there is hardly a minute out of any day that I do not have some sort of music playing in my presence.
Since they clearly demonstrated, however, that they no longer desire my discretionary funds, that money now goes elsewhere.
Here is my process now.
1) Search Amazon.com for music I want
2) Look under "used only"
3) Purchase used CDs from 3rd party vendors that sell via Amazon.com (usually for $4-$7 a CD... quite a bargain for full, DRM free albums in "like new" condition, complete with liner notes)
4) Rip 192kbps MP3s on my Slackware machine using Grip
Actually, iTunes and the various iPods that require its use in order to load them (either that or WMP -- blecch) is the main reason I won't buy an iPod.
I should not have to use a proprietary app just to put songs on what is basically a portable hard drive.
I should be able to drag and drop, or use a fricking command shell if I want even.
I wouldn't have a problem with the iTunes functionality being available with iPods... that's all well and good.
I use RealVNC all the time on Linux and Windows and I don't have problems at all with speed. I use it to hit my Slackware box at home (and I'm on a cable connection at home, T1 at work, so I know the home connection is the bottleneck) and I can't say I've run into any issues with connection speed or stability.
Granted, I usually keep the number of colors low or else it IS pretty laggy, but RealVNC does that by default anyway.
Firefox for Linux doesn't seem to do that in my experience, though I have encountered that in Windows as well.
In fact, Firefox in Windows seems so sluggish and flaky I have gone completely back to Opera. I still use Firefox in Linux, because it seems fast and stable, but in Windows it drives me nuts.
I got a little off topic there. For the most part, I understand the philosophy behind the project too, i.e., presenting people with a basic, core functionality and providing extensions (or at least the capacity for extensions) for any other functionality people want to add on.
That's all well and good. But there are some pretty lame deficiencies in the "core" functionality of Firefox as a browser (not so much Thunderbird) that should be addressed, IMNSHO before that can really be fulfilled.
Until that happens, I think FF will likely never reach double-digits in terms of marketshare percentage. Most users will try it, find some deficiency (like the broken tabbed browsing), not understand that if they install a couple of extensions that can be fixed, and just go back to IE.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, have fun not having the advantage of auto-filling the music player with specially designed playlists.
:-)
Ugh, no thank you. I have my entire CD collection ripped and on my Archos player... that's around 2300 tracks. I like to be able to find things when I want them. I don't want some application automatically moving things to and from it.
I wouldn't be able to stand that.
Besides, iTunes doesn't work on Linux.
I can fill my iPod with highest-rated songs, or songs of a certain decade, etc. You're missing the whole point of a metadata-based jukebox application.
Not at all.
I have every song from every CD I own on my Archos Gmini. With the "Arclibrary" app on the player itself, I can browse through things by genre, by release date, by artist, or by album. I can create playlists on the fly with just about any computer-based music player I have seen, and load them on my player, or I can use the player itself to create playlists.
I'm not missing a thing, trust me.
But that's my point... I shouldn't need to use a specialized utility to put music files on what basically amounts to a portable USB hard drive.
If the player can't play files simply dragged and dropped onto it, it's broken.
My player does have metadata. If I don't want to view things by folder view, I have the option on it to use the included on-board app that scans through the music folder on it and categorizes things by artist/genre/album via the ID3 tags contained within the music files.
There is no reason, however, why Apple couldn't have made the iPods capable of handling things on a file/folder level as well though. Archos managed it pretty well on their player. It is just as easy to load a playlist on the Archos Gmini 400 as it is on an iPod.
The difference is, I'm not forced to use any one app to manage the files on it.
No lock-in.
Damn skippy. I thought iPods were pretty nifty until I found out how restrictive they are. I'm not installing iTunes just to load my mp3 player. Screw that.
I prefer "Draconian Usage Management". "DUM" sounds a lot better, and more accurate to me.
One main thing kept me from buying an iPod when I was MP3 player shopping.
The fact that you need to use an app (like iTunes) to load music onto it that you want to listen to.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
I don't like paying that kind of money for a device and feeling restricted.
Which was why I took my $300 and went with a different player. What I ended up with actually does more, as it turns out, than the iPod, and does it cheaper and it works the way I want it to.
Drag, drop, play. Simple. No annoying applications necessary, no annoying and unnecessary compulsory synchronization with my computer.
Personally, I think the iPods are pretty slick, but that one thing is enough to make me unwilling to shell out my bucks for it.
I have an Archos Gmini 400 (the model just previous to the Gmini 402 mentioned in TFA) and it works fine in Slackware with no additional drivers or apps. I plug it in USB, mount it like any hard drive, and drag and drop what I want to listen to on it via whatever graphical file manager I happen to be using at the time (lately Konqueror).
It used to be that KDE was horribly bloated, but GNOME is no longer a lightweight alternative. Of course there are less resource-intensive desktops {my favourite, which I will be using in my own distro, is WindowMaker}...
Fluxbox is pretty slick too. That's what I use on my older machines with fewer resources. It's lightweight, like blackbox, but a bit shinier and just as tweakable.
The only upside to $1/track that I can think of is that you can buy just one track. If you just like one song, you aren't forced to buy the whole album.
That, I suppose I can see. Pay a buck and get exactly one song. The DRM would still be a turn-off for me though.
That, and the fact that if you buy a song via iTunes Music Store, the label is getting money from the purchase.
I don't purchase music in any way from which any RIAA affiliated labels profit directly. It's used CDs or nothing for me.
Yeah, I know. Somebody had to purchase those CDs to begin with in order for me to get them used, right?
Sure. But I don't see any reason to supply the RIAA with any more money than what they got from that original sale. They'll only use it to sue 12 year old girls and disabled people, after all.
Actually, it isn't really "DRM". "Digital Rights Management" is a grossly incorrect term for this in practice.
It really should be "FURD". "Fair Use Rights Deprivation".
I suppose you could take all your CDs and transfer all of them to DVD... That would at least keep the quality but would take up about 1/4 the physical space, since you can get about 4 times the data on a DVD than you can a standard CD.
But you're still looking at storing a physical disc somewhere then.
While I do agree with you I think their reason was to limit the quality of audio that makes it to the internet. Are the WMA files full CD quality? If you burn from their software is it just 128bps mp3 quality music? If so, then ripping the cd and sharing it would have a significant impact on the quality of the music.
No, you've got it right. That's exactly it. The broken WMA files on these defective CDs are at 128kbps, and after burning and then RE-ripping to MP3 or AAC (so you can play them on an iPod) they'll be of even lower quality.
Which is precisely why Sony's "workaround" isn't even a valid solution. What you end up with after that procedure they recommend is almost surely a pretty crappy audio experience.
Whee.
Actually, the correct term is not "copy prevention".
This does nothing to stop people who really want to copy anything.
The correct term is "bait and switch".
"Hey! Here's a Compact Disc containing high quality digital audio tracks of your favorite songs! PSYCH! IT INSTEAD ONLY LETS WINDOWS USERS HAVE CRAPPY, DRM-INFESTED WMA OR ATRAC FILES! AAAAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"
People that buy these CDs have been suckered.
It's true though. All this kind of idiocy (i.e., copy protection schemes) does is encourage piracy and drive people away from legitimate purchases.
It does literally nothing to hinder piracy, but it greatly inconveniences legitimate, law-abiding consumers who pay good money for a product that doesn't work and violates their fair use rights.
Of course, that solution would be like so:
1. Give the CD to a friend who uses a Linux or Mac machine, which won't recognize the autoplay app that hijacks Windows into seeing only the data section of the disc and not the audio section.
2. Have that friend use their Linux box or Mac to burn a new CD of the raw audio files from your defective purchased -- er, "copy protected" -- disc, NOT the atrac or WMA files.
3. Rip whatever you want, however you want from the burned CD.
Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.
Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher (or another fully compatible player that can playback secure WMA files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp). You can then burn the songs to a standard Audio CD. Please note that in order to burn the files, you will need to upgrade to, or already have, Windows Media Player 9 or 10.
Once the standard Audio CD has been created, place this copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would any normal audio CD.
What a load of crap!
So what they're saying is, copy those 128kbps WMA files off the data section of the CD, burn a low-quality bitrate audio CD out of those files to dump the DRM... and then RE-RIP even LOWER quality MP3 or AAC files out of them?
Low quality encoded file -> decoded to lower quality CDA file -> re-ripped to still lower quality encoded file
That's going to end up sounding like a chihuahua being molested by a cheese grater.
What if you want to actually enjoy the music you put on your portable digital music player, and not listen to a low-level, tinny, distorted pile of shit?
Screw that. This isn't a solution. A solution would be to send you instructions on how to get at the raw CDA files on the audio section of the disc, not how to burn and re-rip the already crapped-up WMA files on the data section.
Damn skippy.
I pay on average $3-$8 for used CDs in "like new" condition, via Amazon.com.
No low-quality downloads, no DRM, no overpriced songs I can't play where I want, on whatever device I want. No bullshit.
Why in the world would I ever even consider paying a dollar per TRACK of the same music, only to have harsh restrictions placed on me as to where I can play it, and how many times I can copy it to other devices?
Screw that. As long as I can still buy CDs used, that's the route I'll take. If iTunes Music Store goes the way of the dodo, I guess it won't bother me.
Between you, me, and the dodo, though, the RIAA's dumber than a sack of hammers to let a potential cash cow like this die.
Free money. For a product they already have. Being sold by someone giving them a cut. For something they otherwise wouldn't be selling at all.
What collossally stupid people must they be, those in charge of the major labels. These are potentially the best years to get in on the ground floor of the internet music revolution, and here they are, trying to stamp it out and drive themselves out of business.
Heh.
And I thought music execs liked money. I guess they don't.
Definitely.
That's the same reason I actually ordered my copy of Slackware 10.1 from the Slackware Store, even though it was available free for the taking.
The way I see it, I got more than a year's worth of use out of Slackware 9.1, and I didn't pay anything for that (being the first version of Slackware I tried). I figure I got way more than $39.95's worth of use, so I showed my support by actually purchasing the next release I wanted to have.
I don't have an aversion to paying for quality software.
How about people who think it's just plain stupid that you have to install a bunch of extensions and go making lots of changes in about:config just to get FireFox usable?
Oh you ain't joking there, bucko.
Firefox out of the box is a fricking mess. For just ONE example, tabbed browsing is broken, plain and simple, without at least two extensions.
I'm sorry... I understand the "philosophy" of a "back to basics" browser with only the bare essentials. I grok that. Really. I do.
But this is part of Firefox's core functionality (tabbed browsing, that is), and if you're going to make it that way, it should WORK CORRECTLY without having to resort to one or more extensions to make it behave in a consistent, sane manner.
You know what my biggest bitch is about Firefox though?
It's a petty one, but it's legit.
Back on their 0.8 release, it allowed you to hot-switch themes, but it was buggy, and caused goofy things to happen to your toolbars if you didn't restart the whole browser after switching themes.
Their response to that? Rather than fix the buggy theme-switching, they just force a restart of the browser.
What a copout.
I mean come ON, guys... even Opera can manage switching themes without having to restart the browser, and up until very recently, Opera was a flaky POS on most of my machines.
I want to love Firefox. I really do. But they make it so hard.
Likewise.
The RIAA affiliated labels did their best to drive me away, and I am what you would qualify as an "avid music fan". I buy 3-5 times more CDs than the "average" person, and there is hardly a minute out of any day that I do not have some sort of music playing in my presence.
Since they clearly demonstrated, however, that they no longer desire my discretionary funds, that money now goes elsewhere.
Here is my process now.
1) Search Amazon.com for music I want
2) Look under "used only"
3) Purchase used CDs from 3rd party vendors that sell via Amazon.com (usually for $4-$7 a CD... quite a bargain for full, DRM free albums in "like new" condition, complete with liner notes)
4) Rip 192kbps MP3s on my Slackware machine using Grip
5) Listen to 100% legitimate music on my portable player
6) Repeat
Ugh... Word in Office XP does the same thing and it drives me nuts.
Actually, iTunes and the various iPods that require its use in order to load them (either that or WMP -- blecch) is the main reason I won't buy an iPod.
I should not have to use a proprietary app just to put songs on what is basically a portable hard drive.
I should be able to drag and drop, or use a fricking command shell if I want even.
I wouldn't have a problem with the iTunes functionality being available with iPods... that's all well and good.
But making it the ONLY way to load songs onto it?
Screw that. That's broken, in my opinion.
I use RealVNC all the time on Linux and Windows and I don't have problems at all with speed. I use it to hit my Slackware box at home (and I'm on a cable connection at home, T1 at work, so I know the home connection is the bottleneck) and I can't say I've run into any issues with connection speed or stability.
Granted, I usually keep the number of colors low or else it IS pretty laggy, but RealVNC does that by default anyway.
Firefox for Linux doesn't seem to do that in my experience, though I have encountered that in Windows as well.
In fact, Firefox in Windows seems so sluggish and flaky I have gone completely back to Opera. I still use Firefox in Linux, because it seems fast and stable, but in Windows it drives me nuts.
I got a little off topic there. For the most part, I understand the philosophy behind the project too, i.e., presenting people with a basic, core functionality and providing extensions (or at least the capacity for extensions) for any other functionality people want to add on.
That's all well and good. But there are some pretty lame deficiencies in the "core" functionality of Firefox as a browser (not so much Thunderbird) that should be addressed, IMNSHO before that can really be fulfilled.
Until that happens, I think FF will likely never reach double-digits in terms of marketshare percentage. Most users will try it, find some deficiency (like the broken tabbed browsing), not understand that if they install a couple of extensions that can be fixed, and just go back to IE.