I don't understand people's issues around DRM. Sure... it's pointless... but all you have to do is buy it, download it, burn it to CD, and then rip the CD to your format of choice (e.g. 192kbps VBR mp3) and *wha-la* - yer DRM-free.
I'm a huge Rhapsody fan - by far the best subscription available, especially with the new support for portables (incl. iPod) and local files.
My new 20GB iPod is loaded up with 3100 tunes, all of which were ripped to MP3 from my personal CD collection or purchased online thru Rhapsody. I have never used iTunes and don't intend to. The wonderful MediaCenter from J River interfaces with the iPod quite nicely.
Avoiding DRM is real simple. Use Rhapsody to purchase music online which goes straight to CD. Then rip the CD to MP3 which can then be uploaded to any portable on the market today.
Even if you don't want to use Rhapsody, simply burn a CD of your iTunes/Napster-purchased DRM-infected files and then rip it to MP3. Case closed.
All of that not-withstanding... I am always amused at the/. crowd who worship at the alter of Apple even though their practices are more monopolistic than Microsoft's. At least Microsoft licenses their DRM technology. The result.....
How many portable players can you play Windows Media protected files on (such as those purchased from Napster) ? Dozens.
How many portable players can you play iTunes-purchased files on (the Real hack aside) ? One.
I understand the intentions behind this - keep the fatcats from padding their wallets. However, this really punishes those companies that do share the wealth, such as the one I work for. Companies which reward options throughout the ranks will be much less likely to do so now and that really penalizes the little guy. Options will become only a tool of the well to do now.
.. and let me add that Jabber is, like most (not all) things OSS, nothing but a watered down, slowly progressing, copy of a commercial service. I use AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber (all via Trillian) and Jabber is by far the most featureless of the three. Where's video or audio IM, buddy icons, etc. ? I've tried some of the Jabber client (e.g. GAIM) and they are awful compared to Trillian or even AIM or Yahoo's native clients in terms of both ease of use and functionality.
will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
Only as much as anything on Mac has a share on any market. What's Apple's market share of the desktop now ? Other than digital music, have they made more than a ripple in a pond ?
Someone explain to me why this is something to be celebrated. iTunes downloads can only be played on software and hardware SUPPLIED BY ONE VENDOR ! Isn't this what we call a MONOPOLY ?
I'm no fan of any DRM scheme, but at least WMA downloads (ala Napster) can be played on a wide variety of software and hardware devices and it's licensable technology.
I'd love for someone to explain to me how Apple escapes the criticism that Microsoft gets for being "proprietary" and a "monopoly". Seems to me that Jobs&Co. are much more guilty of these practices.
... everyone here would be screaming about it and a full scale justice dept. investigation would ensue. Why is it "cool" for Apple to be a monopoly and awful for Microsoft ?
As I pointed out earlier, calling AAC "proprietary" was WAY off base. And I should've differentiated iTunes vs. iTMS. My comments were all aimed at iTMS, nit iTunes as a player.
By streaming, I should've clarified about the ability to stream online content (which you haven't purchased), not your local content as the iTunes player can within a LAN.
And as far as portables go.... you can use Windows Media Player to upload Napster-purchased content to any SDMI-compliant MP3 player, not just the Samsung Napster player. The Samsung device is the only one supported directly by the Napster client at the moment. I'm curious about the one poster's comment that he could upload AAC to the Nomad since it only supports MP3 and WMA.
Alright... slap my hand.... AAC is not propietary. The point I meant to make was that Apple selected a format that has next to no industry support outside of Apple. Flames away.
One thing no review has touched on is the fact that there is a Napster 2 version for Media Center PCs. Now, put aside all the M$oft/OGG/DRM crap for a minute and think about having a Media Center set top box attached to your TV and stereo. For $10/month you have a completely programmable internet jukebox w/ half a million tracks available for on deman streaming.
I've come real close to buying a Prismiq media player because some people have come up with a way to run Rhapsody thru Shoutcast and get it play this way. But the Napster/MC combo looks like the real deal.
As a s/w developer who sits in front of his computer all day, I'm a big fan of the online streaming services and a huge Rhapsody advocate. I consider it the best $10 that I spend a month and use it for at least 6 hrs a day M-F. I've also ripped my entire CD collection to a FireWire drive connected to a fileserver I have setup in my home network. In total, I have about 7000 mp3s ripped at 192kbps VBR which take up about 37GB of storage.
But Rhapsody has it's shortcomings.....
- no portable support
- no way to play local media files
- purchased music can be burned to a CD once and then it's gone
- no one click album purchase
I live with most of these by simply ripping the CDs I burn from Rhapsody which allows me to mix them with my local tracks and upload them to my Samsung YP-30SH MP3 player. I have also purchased the licensed version of RealOne (w/o all the subscription crap) to manage my local files. I'm not a big fan of Real the company but RealOne has great ID3 and file management capabilities. I've tried all of the others (e.g. MusicMatch) and I simply can't find another media player which does what RealOne does for me. I should mention that most of these capabilities came from RealJukebox which has then merged with RealPlayer to form RealOne. Unfortunately, it is now bordering on considerable bloatware and I fear that since Real has purchased listen.com (i.e. Rhapsody) they are planning on merging the Rhapsopdy client into it which will likely result in both clients becoming less usable.
When iTunes for Windows launched, I checked it out from a curiosity perspective. The U/I is very well done as one would expect from Apple and the purchase process is seamless. Apple has made it very easy for people to spend money:) I also like the notion that my purchased music are simply DRM-protected local files and I can play/manage them along with my local files.
But iTunes has it's shortcomings......
- iPod-only support
- no streaming service
- AAC format which has very limited industry support
I have seen so many messages blasting M$oft and WMA and DRM, and the same people giving accolades to Apple and iTunes. But from my perspective, iTunes/AAC is 10x more proprietary than WMA and Apple has not been anywhere near as forthcoming with developers as M$oft has been over WMA. There are at least a dozen MP3 players on the market supporting WMA and only one supporting AAC. It seems that since Apple is "cool", it's OK for them to be signicantly more proprietary than the "uncool" Microsoft.
As far as DRM is concerned - yes, it's a pain, but get over it - it's not going away.
So given my views on Rhapsody and iTunes, I was eagerly awaiting the launch of Napster 2. The advance information available seemed to indicate that it had everything I like about Rhapsody and more (e.g. portable support). I had decided that if it actually was what it's PR made it out to be, I'd bite the bullet and get a WMA-capable MP3 player.
But boy was I wrong......
I downloaded the Napster 2 client first thing yesterday morning and immediately felt a sense of deja-iTunes-vu. They seemed to have attempted to replicate the iTunes interface in almost every way but in a way that seems much more "scattered-brained". At this time, I'd like to say a word about these services' U/Is. Perhaps it's my old way of thinking, but I really like Rhapsody's album and artist-orientated U/I. Everything is laid out very logically and navigation among artists, albums, genres, related artists, etc. is v
The move to x86 and the rebranding were all underway before Bozo came to SGI. The only thing he did was get SGI to drop the ball on OpenGL's momentum in the PC market in favor of the ill fated Fahrenheit, which M$osft had no intention of ever delivering. And then M$oft gave him a fat paycheck and job for essentially ensuring that OpenGL remained a niche, in favor of DirectX/3D taking over the gaming community.
This is nothing but a rebranded of listen.com's Rhapsody service. I am a subscriber to this service on listen.com and I love it. I sit at a computer 8+ hrs a day and this gives me an enormous catalog to listen to and customize. Yes, it's only streaming and no.. you can't burn. But for $10/mth I can listen to exactly what I want,during most of my waking hours, and easily discover new music. I can create custom playlists from music I already have in my CD collection w/o having to spend the time to burn all them. And the Rhapsody client is a great study in ease of use.
I am shocked it's taken someone this long to do this. All it takes it for someone to drop a file called something like CrackedPhotoshop7Installer.exe which removes every file on your hard drive into their Kazaa folder to cause "mass hysteria , dogs and cats sleeping together".
The lesson: never, ever download something executable off of a public P2P network like Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.
Re:SGI's engineering team had nothing to do with i
on
The Age of Nvidia
·
· Score: 1
You hit the nail on the head re: nVidia's success - SGI. nVidia's success is actually a result of taking the best characteristics of Sun and SGI and leaving the worst behind.
Sun knew how to develop good quality products with features that customers wanted and used with the exception of 3D h/w and s/w.
SGI knew how to develop high performance 3D h/w and s/w, but often at the cost of quality. And many products were often delayed for years because they were overloaded with features which 90% of software vendors and end users would never use (e.g. O2). Not to mention that SGI's engineers were notorious for abandoning products after v1.0 in order to go work on the "next cool thing" and leaving many products released but unfinished (e.g. Optimizer). And I'm not sure that/. has enough disk space to discuss how Microsoft took advantage of SGI's weakened condition to sabotage OpenGL w/ the boondoggle that was Fahrenheit.
nVidia was borne largely from Sun but didn't become successful until they shamelessly purged SGI of it's engineering talent. They blended the best aspects of Sun's solid product development process w/ SGI's technical expertise and dominated an industry quicker than anyone thought would be possible.
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LOL.
I don't understand people's issues around DRM. Sure... it's pointless... but all you have to do is buy it, download it, burn it to CD, and then rip the CD to your format of choice (e.g. 192kbps VBR mp3) and *wha-la* - yer DRM-free.
I'm a huge Rhapsody fan - by far the best subscription available, especially with the new support for portables (incl. iPod) and local files.
My new 20GB iPod is loaded up with 3100 tunes, all of which were ripped to MP3 from my personal CD collection or purchased online thru Rhapsody. I have never used iTunes and don't intend to. The wonderful MediaCenter from J River interfaces with the iPod quite nicely.
/. crowd who worship at the alter of Apple even though their practices are more monopolistic than Microsoft's. At least Microsoft licenses their DRM technology. The result.....
Avoiding DRM is real simple. Use Rhapsody to purchase music online which goes straight to CD. Then rip the CD to MP3 which can then be uploaded to any portable on the market today.
Even if you don't want to use Rhapsody, simply burn a CD of your iTunes/Napster-purchased DRM-infected files and then rip it to MP3. Case closed.
All of that not-withstanding... I am always amused at the
How many portable players can you play Windows Media protected files on (such as those purchased from Napster) ? Dozens.
How many portable players can you play iTunes-purchased files on (the Real hack aside) ? One.
Be sure to pack a towel.
I understand the intentions behind this - keep the fatcats from padding their wallets. However, this really punishes those companies that do share the wealth, such as the one I work for. Companies which reward options throughout the ranks will be much less likely to do so now and that really penalizes the little guy. Options will become only a tool of the well to do now.
.. and let me add that Jabber is, like most (not all) things OSS, nothing but a watered down, slowly progressing, copy of a commercial service. I use AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber (all via Trillian) and Jabber is by far the most featureless of the three. Where's video or audio IM, buddy icons, etc. ? I've tried some of the Jabber client (e.g. GAIM) and they are awful compared to Trillian or even AIM or Yahoo's native clients in terms of both ease of use and functionality.
Only as much as anything on Mac has a share on any market. What's Apple's market share of the desktop now ? Other than digital music, have they made more than a ripple in a pond ?
Someone explain to me why this is something to be celebrated. iTunes downloads can only be played on software and hardware SUPPLIED BY ONE VENDOR ! Isn't this what we call a MONOPOLY ?
I'm no fan of any DRM scheme, but at least WMA downloads (ala Napster) can be played on a wide variety of software and hardware devices and it's licensable technology.
I'd love for someone to explain to me how Apple escapes the criticism that Microsoft gets for being "proprietary" and a "monopoly". Seems to me that Jobs&Co. are much more guilty of these practices.
... everyone here would be screaming about it and a full scale justice dept. investigation would ensue. Why is it "cool" for Apple to be a monopoly and awful for Microsoft ?
... early in the morning ;) And I deserved it.
As I pointed out earlier, calling AAC "proprietary" was WAY off base. And I should've differentiated iTunes vs. iTMS. My comments were all aimed at iTMS, nit iTunes as a player.
By streaming, I should've clarified about the ability to stream online content (which you haven't purchased), not your local content as the iTunes player can within a LAN.
And as far as portables go.... you can use Windows Media Player to upload Napster-purchased content to any SDMI-compliant MP3 player, not just the Samsung Napster player. The Samsung device is the only one supported directly by the Napster client at the moment. I'm curious about the one poster's comment that he could upload AAC to the Nomad since it only supports MP3 and WMA.
Alright... slap my hand.... AAC is not propietary. The point I meant to make was that Apple selected a format that has next to no industry support outside of Apple. Flames away.
One thing no review has touched on is the fact that there is a Napster 2 version for Media Center PCs. Now, put aside all the M$oft/OGG/DRM crap for a minute and think about having a Media Center set top box attached to your TV and stereo. For $10/month you have a completely programmable internet jukebox w/ half a million tracks available for on deman streaming.
I've come real close to buying a Prismiq media player because some people have come up with a way to run Rhapsody thru Shoutcast and get it play this way. But the Napster/MC combo looks like the real deal.
Here's my review, which I attempted to post as a new topic but got denied....
:) I also like the notion that my purchased music are simply DRM-protected local files and I can play/manage them along with my local files.
Below is a short review I have done of the three legit online music services I have tried - Rhapsody, iTunes, and Napster 2.
Rhapsody
As a s/w developer who sits in front of his computer all day, I'm a big fan of the online streaming services and a huge Rhapsody advocate. I consider it the best $10 that I spend a month and use it for at least 6 hrs a day M-F. I've also ripped my entire CD collection to a FireWire drive connected to a fileserver I have setup in my home network. In total, I have about 7000 mp3s
ripped at 192kbps VBR which take up about 37GB of storage.
But Rhapsody has it's shortcomings.....
- no portable support
- no way to play local media files
- purchased music can be burned to a CD once and then it's gone
- no one click album purchase
I live with most of these by simply ripping the CDs I burn from Rhapsody which allows me to mix them with my local tracks and upload them to my Samsung YP-30SH MP3 player. I have also purchased the licensed version of RealOne (w/o all the subscription crap) to manage my local files. I'm not a big fan of Real the company but RealOne has great ID3 and file management capabilities. I've tried all of the others (e.g. MusicMatch) and I simply can't find another media player which does what RealOne does for me. I should mention that most of these capabilities came from RealJukebox which has then merged with RealPlayer to form RealOne. Unfortunately, it is now bordering on considerable bloatware and I fear that since Real has purchased listen.com (i.e. Rhapsody) they are planning on merging the Rhapsopdy client into it which will likely result in both clients becoming less usable.
iTunes
When iTunes for Windows launched, I checked it out from a curiosity perspective. The U/I is very well done as one would expect from Apple and the purchase process is seamless. Apple has made it very easy for people to spend money
But iTunes has it's shortcomings......
- iPod-only support
- no streaming service
- AAC format which has very limited industry support
I have seen so many messages blasting M$oft and WMA and DRM, and the same people giving accolades to Apple and iTunes. But from my perspective, iTunes/AAC is 10x more proprietary than WMA and Apple has not been anywhere near as forthcoming with developers as M$oft has been over WMA. There are at least a dozen MP3 players on the market supporting WMA and only one supporting AAC. It seems that since Apple is "cool", it's OK for them to be signicantly more proprietary than the "uncool" Microsoft.
As far as DRM is concerned - yes, it's a pain, but get over it - it's not going away.
Napster 2
So given my views on Rhapsody and iTunes, I was eagerly awaiting the launch of Napster 2. The advance information available seemed to indicate that it had everything I like about Rhapsody and more (e.g. portable support). I had decided that if it actually was what it's PR made it out to be, I'd bite the bullet and get a WMA-capable MP3 player.
But boy was I wrong......
I downloaded the Napster 2 client first thing yesterday morning and immediately felt a sense of deja-iTunes-vu. They seemed to have attempted to replicate the iTunes interface in almost every way but in a way that seems much more "scattered-brained". At this time, I'd like to say a word about these services' U/Is. Perhaps it's my old way of thinking, but I really like Rhapsody's album and artist-orientated U/I. Everything is laid out very logically and navigation among artists, albums, genres, related artists,
etc. is v
He he...
The move to x86 and the rebranding were all underway before Bozo came to SGI. The only thing he did was get SGI to drop the ball on OpenGL's momentum in the PC market in favor of the ill fated Fahrenheit, which M$osft had no intention of ever delivering. And then M$oft gave him a fat paycheck and job for essentially ensuring that OpenGL remained a niche, in favor of DirectX/3D taking over the gaming community.
Funny how a site advocating electronic freedom is running on a Micro$oft platform. Micro$oft is going out of their way to develop DRM technologies.
Shawn Fanning - The Rock
Hilary Rosen - John Goodman
Lars Ulrich - Paul Reuben
This is nothing but a rebranded of listen.com's Rhapsody service. I am a subscriber to this service on listen.com and I love it. I sit at a computer 8+ hrs a day and this gives me an enormous catalog to listen to and customize. Yes, it's only streaming and no.. you can't burn. But for $10/mth I can listen to exactly what I want,during most of my waking hours, and easily discover new music. I can create custom playlists from music I already have in my CD collection w/o having to spend the time to burn all them. And the Rhapsody client is a great study in ease of use.
I am shocked it's taken someone this long to do this. All it takes it for someone to drop a file called something like CrackedPhotoshop7Installer.exe which removes every file on your hard drive into their Kazaa folder to cause "mass hysteria , dogs and cats sleeping together".
The lesson: never, ever download something executable off of a public P2P network like Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.
You hit the nail on the head re: nVidia's success - SGI. nVidia's success is actually a result of taking the best characteristics of Sun and SGI and leaving the worst behind.
/. has enough disk space to discuss how Microsoft took advantage of SGI's weakened condition to sabotage OpenGL w/ the boondoggle that was Fahrenheit.
Sun knew how to develop good quality products with features that customers wanted and used with the exception of 3D h/w and s/w.
SGI knew how to develop high performance 3D h/w and s/w, but often at the cost of quality. And many products were often delayed for years because they were overloaded with features which 90% of software vendors and end users would never use (e.g. O2). Not to mention that SGI's engineers were notorious for abandoning products after v1.0 in order to go work on the "next cool thing" and leaving many products released but unfinished (e.g. Optimizer). And I'm not sure that
nVidia was borne largely from Sun but didn't become successful until they shamelessly purged SGI of it's engineering talent. They blended the best aspects of Sun's solid product development process w/ SGI's technical expertise and dominated an industry quicker than anyone thought would be possible.
There are many Disney puns in Shrek. Note that the midget king rules over a kingdom with turnstyles at the entrances.