since neither Macs nor iPods support any form of WMA, much less the DRMed version, this article seems to be on apple.slashdot.org to start a flame war where the majority of people say: 1. It doesn't work on my iPod or Mac 2. I want to own my music, because Steve told me that I do.
" I, along with MILLIONS of people world wide, own an iPod (and an iPod Shuffle). They are, for my money, the best portable music players available. They sure aren't the cheapest - but I'm not a consumer for whom the prices is the main selling point.
That said, my players won't play WMA, which makes Yahoo's years of development a moot point.
I guess that the millions of 15-35 year olds who paid a premium price for our players aren't Yahoo's target market."
You should complain to Apple then if you really were interested in the Yahoo subscription. Yahoo is not in a legal position to make their service work with iPods.
" Steve Jobs has mentioned several times publically that if any other music store gains significant market share, they'll be interested in working with them. If Apple's figures are correct, this means that even if you took all the other music stores and made them twice as successful, they would still have less market share than Apple would. I wouldn't call that significant market share."
Bill Gate has mentioned several times publically that if any other office suite gains significant market share, they'll be interested in working with them. If Microsoft's figures are correct, this means that even if you took all the other office suites and made them twice as successful, they would still have less market share than Microsoft would. I wouldn't call that significant market share.
"this is the biggest load of BS ever. please explain yourself. why can't other people support mp3 constant, mp3 variable, AAC, wav etc. ?
the only thing that you can be sure of is that if you have DRM WMV the only people legally using your service are Windows users. seems like yahoo is the one denying support from people."
Apple iPod only supports their proprietary DRM (fairplay), which they will not license to anyone. Apple could license WMA, however, for the Mac and the iPod, but they refuse. It's pretty clear who is putting up road blocks for compatibility to lock in their customers.
" 3. All copying of a work is permitted so long as absolutely no money is made as a result of it (including ad revenue)."
I would then never need to pay for a book, movie, or song again in this case as long as someone bothered to put it on a p2p network. OK, maybe once in a blue moon to provide my fair share of shared media.
"Copyright is a kind of "default" contract. EULAs ADD restrictons to that default contract. The GPL SUBTRACTS restrictions from that contract."
You just made that up. Basically, the grandparent is right. This is just a "have your cake and eat it too" bs post. A licensing agreement is a licensing agreement. If EULA's are not allowed, then you could not legally distribute copyrighted code that you modified from the original GPL author, without getting his permission in person.
Copyright is meant to protect the rights of the author. If the author chooses not to disclose his work, he should not be forced to do so. All it means is that if the work does leak out into the public, he only has legal protection for the period the work is under copyright.
" As a good number of regular slashdot readers are no doubt aware, full source code to Linux, Apache, etc. is available to anyone and they are more secure than their counterparts for this reason."
From the article: "The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH."
Not sure which version of ssh, but this illustrates that Unix is no more secure by design than Windows or anything else written in c.
"1- The people at Cisco are not as confident with their source code as the people of Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD"
Why are Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD confident in their code? From the article: "The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH."
Yet more evidence to debunk the Linux is secure myth.
"But hey, I'll take Hilary's advice here and navigate over to walmart.com and see what I'm missing by not being able to buy music from there. But wait, what this? IE 5.5 required to buy music? Well, gee, I guess Walmart is the paragon of a quality music buying service, even though I can't use their service because they only support one browser!
This isn't about Apple's lockin with the iPod and the iTMS, this is about Apple's lockin vs. everybody else's lockin on Windows machines.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to have an approved player right now just to use Napster as well."
Apple has the only DRM format for audio that I am aware of that cannot be licensed. Your whole post is just spin. No one expects every music store to support all hardware and software, but consumers benefit from open standards, and Apple refuses to license their standard.
"Her complaint is the equivelant to someone opening up a hydrogen fuel station today and complaining that no one has cars that work with hydrogen. No shit, Shirlock. If they opened up a gas station they might actually make some money."
But they want to open up gas stations. Apple won't let them. Your analogy is shit. It's very simple. People want to sell songs with fairplay DRM. Apple refuses to license the format to anyone.
"I guess she wasn't aware of the fact that there is an option in the iTunes menu which says "Convert selection to mp3," instantly making your AAC files into cross-platform mp3s. And she probably didn't realize her statement that "even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" is invalidated by going to the Apple website and seeing that the base iPod shuffle costs $99."
From the article: "The new iPod my girlfriend gave me is a trap. Yeah, it is great looking and I really love the baby blue leather case but when, oh when, will Steve Jobs let me buy music from somewhere other than the Apple iTunes store and put it on my iPod?"
Who's the shill? She just wants to buy music online from somewhere else other than Apple and use it on her iPod. The sad thing is you're not even being paid to toe Apple's line.
"The actual truth, which Hilary Rosen would likely not be willing to acknowledge without the threat of slow torture death behind it, is that the iPod works with sample MP3s that you might legally download from a band's website or any one of a gazillion legal indie music MP3 sites"
Your dodging the issue. Only a very small percentage of music people listen to is of this type.
"Other ridiculous ideas in the blog entry include: "He [Steve Jobs] is as laconically casually cool as Bono" and the idea that the iPod constitutes a monopoly."
I guess it's ridiculous to say that MS has an OS monopoly as well then.
Huh? Am I reading Orwell? War is peace. Lock-in is freedom. How does fairplay give consumers freedom? No company can license it to sell music online. How does an iPod give me freedom, since it only supports fairplay DRM and DRMless formats?
"Ironically, she appeals to consumer rights and anti-monopoly tactics."
When has any music distributer had a monopoly on music? Having a particular song that someone cannot copy and sell is not a monopoly, except in the most specific sense, such as Toyota has a monopoly on Prius. Apple, however, has a near monopoly on both selling music online and selling music players. By not licensing fairplay to other companies, and by not supporting any other DRM standard, Apple is leveraging their monopolies to support each other. I have no problem with this, but when MS does this sort of thing, most people on/. think the govt should step in.
with links to objective sources that give balanced stories of the pros and cons of a national ID. That way we can think for ourselves rather than merely participating in/. groupthink.
One perceived problem with OSS is that software given away for free would lower the monetary value of the programmer's work. The fact that most programmers are paid to work on Linux shows that successful OSS projects with be embraced by businesses as a shared resource worth investing in time and money for development.
" You've obviously never used OO... maybe not even M$... I've used both and for 90+% of the tasks OO is as good or better.... Sure there might be some obscure thing that M$ supports, but I can't think of it right now....
OO works, M$ Works.. OO does'nt cost me 300-400$"
Most people where I work hate OO. We're going back to MS Office.
"Maybe schools want to pay money for Microsoft's programs for every computer because they *think* the quality of it will be better than the open-source because it costs money, and you get what you pay for. Though this certainly isn't really the case."
Have you ever used Open Office? MS Office is much better.
" So are we supposed to like or dislike this so-called "mega-patch"?"
Lets see, company == Apple, so I guess we should like the mega-patch and praise them for closing the security holes. Note that if company == Microsoft, then we criticize their software for poor security and complain because the patch breaks our apps.
Slashdot Mirror
since neither Macs nor iPods support any form of WMA, much less the DRMed version, this article seems to be on apple.slashdot.org to start a flame war where the majority of people say:
1. It doesn't work on my iPod or Mac
2. I want to own my music, because Steve told me that I do.
Guess what. You're not their target market.
" I, along with MILLIONS of people world wide, own an iPod (and an iPod Shuffle). They are, for my money, the best portable music players available. They sure aren't the cheapest - but I'm not a consumer for whom the prices is the main selling point.
That said, my players won't play WMA, which makes Yahoo's years of development a moot point.
I guess that the millions of 15-35 year olds who paid a premium price for our players aren't Yahoo's target market."
You should complain to Apple then if you really were interested in the Yahoo subscription. Yahoo is not in a legal position to make their service work with iPods.
" Steve Jobs has mentioned several times publically that if any other music store gains significant market share, they'll be interested in working with them. If Apple's figures are correct, this means that even if you took all the other music stores and made them twice as successful, they would still have less market share than Apple would. I wouldn't call that significant market share."
Bill Gate has mentioned several times publically that if any other office suite gains significant market share, they'll be interested in working with them. If Microsoft's figures are correct, this means that even if you took all the other office suites and made them twice as successful, they would still have less market share than Microsoft would. I wouldn't call that significant market share.
"this is the biggest load of BS ever. please explain yourself. why can't other people support mp3 constant, mp3 variable, AAC, wav etc. ?
the only thing that you can be sure of is that if you have DRM WMV the only people legally using your service are Windows users. seems like yahoo is the one denying support from people."
Apple iPod only supports their proprietary DRM (fairplay), which they will not license to anyone. Apple could license WMA, however, for the Mac and the iPod, but they refuse. It's pretty clear who is putting up road blocks for compatibility to lock in their customers.
"Maybe if Apple would put a keyboard-containing lid (and a briefcase-style handle) on the 20" iMac, a market for car-battery backpacks would emerge."
Can't post a story about Dell without mentioning Apple?
" 3. All copying of a work is permitted so long as absolutely no money is made as a result of it (including ad revenue)."
I would then never need to pay for a book, movie, or song again in this case as long as someone bothered to put it on a p2p network. OK, maybe once in a blue moon to provide my fair share of shared media.
" I would ask for very strong copyright laws and abolishment of patents."
Congratulations, you just severely crippled pharmaceutical research.
"Copyright is a kind of "default" contract.
EULAs ADD restrictons to that default contract.
The GPL SUBTRACTS restrictions from that contract."
You just made that up. Basically, the grandparent is right. This is just a "have your cake and eat it too" bs post. A licensing agreement is a licensing agreement. If EULA's are not allowed, then you could not legally distribute copyrighted code that you modified from the original GPL author, without getting his permission in person.
Copyright is meant to protect the rights of the author. If the author chooses not to disclose his work, he should not be forced to do so. All it means is that if the work does leak out into the public, he only has legal protection for the period the work is under copyright.
" As a good number of regular slashdot readers are no doubt aware, full source code to Linux, Apache, etc. is available to anyone and they are more secure than their counterparts for this reason."
From the article:
"The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH."
Not sure which version of ssh, but this illustrates that Unix is no more secure by design than Windows or anything else written in c.
"1- The people at Cisco are not as confident with their source code as the people of Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD"
Why are Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD confident in their code? From the article:
"The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH."
Yet more evidence to debunk the Linux is secure myth.
"But hey, I'll take Hilary's advice here and navigate over to walmart.com and see what I'm missing by not being able to buy music from there. But wait, what this? IE 5.5 required to buy music? Well, gee, I guess Walmart is the paragon of a quality music buying service, even though I can't use their service because they only support one browser!
This isn't about Apple's lockin with the iPod and the iTMS, this is about Apple's lockin vs. everybody else's lockin on Windows machines.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to have an approved player right now just to use Napster as well."
Apple has the only DRM format for audio that I am aware of that cannot be licensed. Your whole post is just spin. No one expects every music store to support all hardware and software, but consumers benefit from open standards, and Apple refuses to license their standard.
"Her complaint is the equivelant to someone opening up a hydrogen fuel station today and complaining that no one has cars that work with hydrogen. No shit, Shirlock. If they opened up a gas station they might actually make some money."
But they want to open up gas stations. Apple won't let them. Your analogy is shit. It's very simple. People want to sell songs with fairplay DRM. Apple refuses to license the format to anyone.
"I guess she wasn't aware of the fact that there is an option in the iTunes menu which says "Convert selection to mp3," instantly making your AAC files into cross-platform mp3s. And she probably didn't realize her statement that "even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" is invalidated by going to the Apple website and seeing that the base iPod shuffle costs $99."
From the article:
"The new iPod my girlfriend gave me is a trap. Yeah, it is great looking and I really love the baby blue leather case but when, oh when, will Steve Jobs let me buy music from somewhere other than the Apple iTunes store and put it on my iPod?"
Who's the shill? She just wants to buy music online from somewhere else other than Apple and use it on her iPod. The sad thing is you're not even being paid to toe Apple's line.
"The actual truth, which Hilary Rosen would likely not be willing to acknowledge without the threat of slow torture death behind it, is that the iPod works with sample MP3s that you might legally download from a band's website or any one of a gazillion legal indie music MP3 sites"
Your dodging the issue. Only a very small percentage of music people listen to is of this type.
"Other ridiculous ideas in the blog entry include: "He [Steve Jobs] is as laconically casually cool as Bono" and the idea that the iPod constitutes a monopoly."
I guess it's ridiculous to say that MS has an OS monopoly as well then.
"Gives you freedoms/etc at our expense: bad"
Huh? Am I reading Orwell? War is peace. Lock-in is freedom. How does fairplay give consumers freedom? No company can license it to sell music online. How does an iPod give me freedom, since it only supports fairplay DRM and DRMless formats?
"Ironically, she appeals to consumer rights and anti-monopoly tactics."
/. think the govt should step in.
When has any music distributer had a monopoly on music? Having a particular song that someone cannot copy and sell is not a monopoly, except in the most specific sense, such as Toyota has a monopoly on Prius. Apple, however, has a near monopoly on both selling music online and selling music players. By not licensing fairplay to other companies, and by not supporting any other DRM standard, Apple is leveraging their monopolies to support each other. I have no problem with this, but when MS does this sort of thing, most people on
The 9/11 commission essentially recommended a national ID card.
with links to objective sources that give balanced stories of the pros and cons of a national ID. That way we can think for ourselves rather than merely participating in /. groupthink.
One perceived problem with OSS is that software given away for free would lower the monetary value of the programmer's work. The fact that most programmers are paid to work on Linux shows that successful OSS projects with be embraced by businesses as a shared resource worth investing in time and money for development.
Altruism is a myth. People act in their own self-interest. Linux became usable when companies saw some self-interest in paying people to work on it.
" You've obviously never used OO... maybe not even M$... I've used both and for 90+% of the tasks OO is as good or better.... Sure there might be some obscure thing that M$ supports, but I can't think of it right now....
OO works, M$ Works.. OO does'nt cost me 300-400$"
Most people where I work hate OO. We're going back to MS Office.
"Maybe schools want to pay money for Microsoft's programs for every computer because they *think* the quality of it will be better than the open-source because it costs money, and you get what you pay for. Though this certainly isn't really the case."
Have you ever used Open Office? MS Office is much better.
"MS deserve to be pirated until they become fair. In my estimation, that means $30 Windows XP Home and $100 Windows XP Pro."
So is $129 for MacOS too much as well?
" So are we supposed to like or dislike this so-called "mega-patch"?"
Lets see, company == Apple, so I guess we should like the mega-patch and praise them for closing the security holes. Note that if company == Microsoft, then we criticize their software for poor security and complain because the patch breaks our apps.