It's not really valid HTML though. I assume that IE looks in comments and parses stuff inside them ([If IE]...[endif]).
Yes, I cheated so I could pass W3C validation. They're called conditional comments. If I wasn't using conditional comments, the code would not validate, but IE would still crash, and other browsers would not crash (although they would show a form field, defaulting to type="text").
g IMAP), and then again the next step would be to make email-servers stop receiving messages with the forementioned subject feature to receivers who have enabled the feature.
The SMTP protocol does not allow this; once a mail server has agreed to accept a message, it MUST accept the ENTIRE message. The Subject header, like all other headers, is part of the same block of text as the message body. The receiving server can only reject the connection based on 1) the sender's IP address, 2) the HELO string, 3) the envelope from address, or 4) the envelope to address. Once it says OK to that, it must accept the rest of the message.
However, although requiring tagged subject lines will not decrease bandwidth usage, it will make filtering trivial, which will make it mostly pointless to send spam with tagged subject lines because nobody will even see it. This will discourage people from sending spam, which should decrease bandwidth usage.
Legislation mandating (as is the case here) that senders preface spam by adding "ADV: in the first four characters in the subject line or ADV: ADLT if it contains adult material" miss the point.
This is a START. And it's a good start. They have limited resources. It's a good way to make it EASY for the state to prosecute violators. If ALL spam contained ADV: in the subject line, the situation would be better than it is now, even if there was twice as much of it. Once that's taken care of, THEN we can work on stopping the rest of it.
Microsoft: But file extensions are confusing, and at Microsoft we stole^h^h^h^h^h learned a trick from Apple: Anything that confuses the user should simply be hidden.
The sad irony: Apple stole it back. File extensions are hidden by default on Mac OS X. Bastards.
- kajillions of machine banging on M$'s machines (hell, why should I always do it myself...)
And when Microsoft gets a law passed making spamming illegal, we'll all have you to thank, which will be nice for you when you're serving your 1,320-year prison sentence.
Thanks, I'd heard a rumor that such a thing existed but hadn't seen it. It plays, but it seems to skip occasionally, iTunes visualizations don't work, and there's no cute little icon. Besides all that, simply the fact that it's not listed on Apple's web site is enough to get Slashdotters pissed off.
None of these annoying playlists that intrusively store all your MP3 in an obscure/home/lib/songs/mp3/wherami/ directory. None of these grotesque 'features' that copy mp3's from a CD ROM to my hard drive automaticlaly.
The default path is/Users/(username)/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, and the default behavior is to copy songs into that directory when you open them (and then automatically rename/move the files as you update the ID3 tags), which I also find a bit bizarre. Fortunately you can turn these option off.
I completely agree that playing MP3s on a CD-ROM is very awkward in iTunes, unless the CD was burned in iTunes (so it has a hidden iTunes database file), but then it won't play in my portable MP3 CD player, so that doesn't work for me.
When i want to play an mp3 file, i open it. Not some database pointer that opens a copy of a file i never knew was copied.
Turn off the copying, and you'll get used to the database. It's one of iTunes' best features, although it's certainly not perfect (yet).
I also hope it themeable because by default the color it pretty ugly. I don't know that much about ITunes, but one thing I do know is that unless it obeys XP themes or like I said is themeable, its going to stick out like a sore thumb.
I'm sure it will stick out just as much as QuickTime does. It will not be themable. QuickTime Player is sort of themable in a way (the movie can contain a theme, which of course only works while you're playing that movie), but nobody uses this, and iTunes won't do it.
btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?
You haven't been paying attention? I won't rehash it here.
That'll be right after Apple releases a Linux version of QuickTime, I'm sure.
And if that ever happens, then I can't wait 'til they start offering vorbis downloads (or even mp3 would be fine).
The iTunes Music Store will never offer Ogg Vorbis or MP3 downloads. Ever.
However, I would really like to see support for playing Ogg Vorbis files in iTunes. Mostly just so Slashdotters will shut up about it, since the rest of the world doesn't care.
I don't suppose iTunes would be compatible with anything but the iPod? Yeah, my fiancee has one, and they're small and cool and all, but goddamn if they're not expensive. So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad. Does anybody know if there'll be any way to get iTunes songs onto it?
I doubt there will be built-in support, so it won't be as easy as working with an iPod, but you can just add your existing MP3 collection to the iTunes Library, and continue using your Nomad as you have been.
However, songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store will not work. They're not MP3s, they use AAC encoding and DRM called Fairplay. If the iTMS becomes hugely successful, it's possible Apple may license Fairplay to Creative and others, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I know Windows has the larger market share, but what about Linux? Surely, it cannot be that difficult to port from OSX (BSD-based) to Linux.
This is a common myth. The command-line user-space environment is FreeBSD-based, but the GUI is proprietary. iTunes is written with the Carbon APIs, which do not exist anywhere but Mac OS X, classic Mac OS, and a partial implementation in QuickTime for Windows.
No, the QuickTime movie players for Linux don't count; QuickTime is far more than a movie player.
If it were written with Cocoa instead, it might be possible to port it to GNUstep with some work.
By the way, I specifically said user-space; the kernel is also completely different which means hardware drivers are completely different. Don't expect that porting Linux or FreeBSD drivers to Mac OS X should be trivial either.
The RIAA won't let them. They couldn't offer the selection they do if they didn't use DRM. However, read the terms of service - once you download the DRM-restricted file, you can burn it to an unrestricted audio CD. Or several audio CDs. In addition to copying it to one or two other Macs, or streaming it across the LAN, or copying it to an iPod, etc. Compare this to other DRM schemes.
2) Unlimitted downloads
You can download as many as you want, for $0.99/track. Or play 30-second previews for free (I don't even have an account, and I do this all the time, to see whether I like something before placing a hold at the public library). There are no subscription fees.
3) Wide selection (including indie music)
They have something like a quarter of a million tracks, with more being added, and they want to add as much indie music as possible (Apple will only deal with record labels, but cdbaby.com is a record label and will accept just about anybody). Building their selection takes time.
4) At least some top40 music
They've got that.
5) An easy way to find browse for music you're not familiar with (perhaps integrating a user rating system)
They've definitely got that. Look at an album, and get links to other albums that people who've bought this album have also bought. Plenty of stuff on the home page, all chosen by Apple's staff, not placed there by advertising dollars. Navigation is excellent - better, in fact, than browsing your own MP3 collection (I hope they implement the little arrow buttons next to Artist & Album in iTunes 5...).
Today's Top Songs:
Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne Hey Ya! - OutKast White Flag - Dido Fallen - Sarah McLachlan The First Cut Is the Deepest - Sheryl Crow Where Is The Love? - Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake Baby Boy - Beonce & Sean Paul Hey Ya! (Radio Mix) - OutKast Fallen - Sarah McLachlan Bad Day (Amended Album Version) - R.E.M.
Can someone explain to me what the difference is between the two versions of "Fallen"? One is 3:51 and the other is 3:47, and the previews sound the same to me.
I get a Mac, then find out that the iTunes Music Store (iMS) is US-only.
The usual abbreviation is iTMS.
and hopefully I can play all my.m4a files on my Win machine without having to rename them all.
Rename them? That's a really bad idea - the extension suggests what format the file is, and changing it leads to confusion. If your media player is capable of playing them, you should simply associate that file extension with your preferred player. If that doesn't work, renaming probably won't either.
Slashdot Mirror
I just get kernel panics for no apparent reason. Oh, and SecurityAgent crashes every time I authenticate for anything.
Similar at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this summer; over half the laptops were iBooks/PowerBooks.
It's not really valid HTML though. I assume that IE looks in comments and parses stuff inside them ([If IE]...[endif]).
Yes, I cheated so I could pass W3C validation. They're called conditional comments. If I wasn't using conditional comments, the code would not validate, but IE would still crash, and other browsers would not crash (although they would show a form field, defaulting to type="text").
Crash
g IMAP), and then again the next step would be to make email-servers stop receiving messages with the forementioned subject feature to receivers who have enabled the feature.
The SMTP protocol does not allow this; once a mail server has agreed to accept a message, it MUST accept the ENTIRE message. The Subject header, like all other headers, is part of the same block of text as the message body. The receiving server can only reject the connection based on 1) the sender's IP address, 2) the HELO string, 3) the envelope from address, or 4) the envelope to address. Once it says OK to that, it must accept the rest of the message.
However, although requiring tagged subject lines will not decrease bandwidth usage, it will make filtering trivial, which will make it mostly pointless to send spam with tagged subject lines because nobody will even see it. This will discourage people from sending spam, which should decrease bandwidth usage.
Legislation mandating (as is the case here) that senders preface spam by adding "ADV: in the first four characters in the subject line or ADV: ADLT if it contains adult material" miss the point.
This is a START. And it's a good start. They have limited resources. It's a good way to make it EASY for the state to prosecute violators. If ALL spam contained ADV: in the subject line, the situation would be better than it is now, even if there was twice as much of it. Once that's taken care of, THEN we can work on stopping the rest of it.
I pity the spammers.
I don't.
Microsoft: But file extensions are confusing, and at Microsoft we stole^h^h^h^h^h learned a trick from Apple: Anything that confuses the user should simply be hidden.
The sad irony: Apple stole it back. File extensions are hidden by default on Mac OS X. Bastards.
- kajillions of machine banging on M$'s machines (hell, why should I always do it myself ...)
And when Microsoft gets a law passed making spamming illegal, we'll all have you to thank, which will be nice for you when you're serving your 1,320-year prison sentence.
Try SpamCop, it's only $3/month and includes spam reporting tools as well. They won't host your web site though.
Neat! I'll have to try that.
Thanks, I'd heard a rumor that such a thing existed but hadn't seen it. It plays, but it seems to skip occasionally, iTunes visualizations don't work, and there's no cute little icon. Besides all that, simply the fact that it's not listed on Apple's web site is enough to get Slashdotters pissed off.
:-)
Still, very cool.
Good question. I haven't heard, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. We'll find out next week.
None of these annoying playlists that intrusively store all your MP3 in an obscure /home/lib/songs/mp3/wherami/ directory. None of these grotesque 'features' that copy mp3's from a CD ROM to my hard drive automaticlaly.
/Users/(username)/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, and the default behavior is to copy songs into that directory when you open them (and then automatically rename/move the files as you update the ID3 tags), which I also find a bit bizarre. Fortunately you can turn these option off.
The default path is
I completely agree that playing MP3s on a CD-ROM is very awkward in iTunes, unless the CD was burned in iTunes (so it has a hidden iTunes database file), but then it won't play in my portable MP3 CD player, so that doesn't work for me.
When i want to play an mp3 file, i open it. Not some database pointer that opens a copy of a file i never knew was copied.
Turn off the copying, and you'll get used to the database. It's one of iTunes' best features, although it's certainly not perfect (yet).
I also hope it themeable because by default the color it pretty ugly. I don't know that much about ITunes, but one thing I do know is that unless it obeys XP themes or like I said is themeable, its going to stick out like a sore thumb.
I'm sure it will stick out just as much as QuickTime does. It will not be themable. QuickTime Player is sort of themable in a way (the movie can contain a theme, which of course only works while you're playing that movie), but nobody uses this, and iTunes won't do it.
btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?
You haven't been paying attention? I won't rehash it here.
I can't wait 'til the Linux version.
That'll be right after Apple releases a Linux version of QuickTime, I'm sure.
And if that ever happens, then I can't wait 'til they start offering vorbis downloads (or even mp3 would be fine).
The iTunes Music Store will never offer Ogg Vorbis or MP3 downloads. Ever.
However, I would really like to see support for playing Ogg Vorbis files in iTunes. Mostly just so Slashdotters will shut up about it, since the rest of the world doesn't care.
I don't suppose iTunes would be compatible with anything but the iPod? Yeah, my fiancee has one, and they're small and cool and all, but goddamn if they're not expensive. So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad. Does anybody know if there'll be any way to get iTunes songs onto it?
I doubt there will be built-in support, so it won't be as easy as working with an iPod, but you can just add your existing MP3 collection to the iTunes Library, and continue using your Nomad as you have been.
However, songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store will not work. They're not MP3s, they use AAC encoding and DRM called Fairplay. If the iTMS becomes hugely successful, it's possible Apple may license Fairplay to Creative and others, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I know Windows has the larger market share, but what about Linux? Surely, it cannot be that difficult to port from OSX (BSD-based) to Linux.
This is a common myth. The command-line user-space environment is FreeBSD-based, but the GUI is proprietary. iTunes is written with the Carbon APIs, which do not exist anywhere but Mac OS X, classic Mac OS, and a partial implementation in QuickTime for Windows.
No, the QuickTime movie players for Linux don't count; QuickTime is far more than a movie player.
If it were written with Cocoa instead, it might be possible to port it to GNUstep with some work.
By the way, I specifically said user-space; the kernel is also completely different which means hardware drivers are completely different. Don't expect that porting Linux or FreeBSD drivers to Mac OS X should be trivial either.
1) NO DRM
The RIAA won't let them. They couldn't offer the selection they do if they didn't use DRM. However, read the terms of service - once you download the DRM-restricted file, you can burn it to an unrestricted audio CD. Or several audio CDs. In addition to copying it to one or two other Macs, or streaming it across the LAN, or copying it to an iPod, etc. Compare this to other DRM schemes.
2) Unlimitted downloads
You can download as many as you want, for $0.99/track. Or play 30-second previews for free (I don't even have an account, and I do this all the time, to see whether I like something before placing a hold at the public library). There are no subscription fees.
3) Wide selection (including indie music)
They have something like a quarter of a million tracks, with more being added, and they want to add as much indie music as possible (Apple will only deal with record labels, but cdbaby.com is a record label and will accept just about anybody). Building their selection takes time.
4) At least some top40 music
They've got that.
5) An easy way to find browse for music you're not familiar with (perhaps integrating a user rating system)
They've definitely got that. Look at an album, and get links to other albums that people who've bought this album have also bought. Plenty of stuff on the home page, all chosen by Apple's staff, not placed there by advertising dollars. Navigation is excellent - better, in fact, than browsing your own MP3 collection (I hope they implement the little arrow buttons next to Artist & Album in iTunes 5...).
Today's Top Songs:
Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne
Hey Ya! - OutKast
White Flag - Dido
Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
The First Cut Is the Deepest - Sheryl Crow
Where Is The Love? - Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake
Baby Boy - Beonce & Sean Paul
Hey Ya! (Radio Mix) - OutKast
Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
Bad Day (Amended Album Version) - R.E.M.
Can someone explain to me what the difference is between the two versions of "Fallen"? One is 3:51 and the other is 3:47, and the previews sound the same to me.
I just don't see how iTunes can integrate smoothly into my constant lockups and reboots that have come with my latest critical updates.
Don't worry, they've got it covered. I seem to get kernel panics on my Mac every couple of weeks.
Gotta wonder what it's like to be a Windows developer working at Apple. Do they have to come in a odd times so they don't get lynched?
I'm sure this isn't an issue; everybody knows they get paid to do a job.
Do they feel unclean, sullied?
Undoubtedly. Wouldn't you?
Or does Apple farm the development off site, so as not to worry about such things?
No, it's all in-house, as far as I know.
I get a Mac, then find out that the iTunes Music Store (iMS) is US-only.
.m4a files on my Win machine without having to rename them all.
The usual abbreviation is iTMS.
and hopefully I can play all my
Rename them? That's a really bad idea - the extension suggests what format the file is, and changing it leads to confusion. If your media player is capable of playing them, you should simply associate that file extension with your preferred player. If that doesn't work, renaming probably won't either.
Sorry, I didn't believe it was true, I just thought it was funny. Thanks for the link though.
Something I think I saw in somebody's sig (paraphrased):
The United States spent billions of dollars to develop a pen that would write properly in zero-g, so their astronauts could use it in space.
The Russians used a pencil.
It's a reference to a movie. That's why he even put it in quotes. You should go watch Office Space; it's funny.