No, the 25 'free' songs are only for listening on your computer, you can't download them anywhere. You also can't download songs with a $9.95 plan (you can buy them for 99 cents a track, I think they are 192 kbps AAC files) and with 14.95 plan you can download most songs from their catalog to your Microsoft Janus-owned player (iRiver H10, Creative Zen something, Samsung and Gateway make them too)
Actually Rhapsody 2.0 was the most ad-free, unannoying, music service. It wasn't written by Real, of course. The new version comes with only one ad so far - Chrysler promotion to sign up for 25 free songs. So the ad capability has been built in and there are more ads to come.
Sorry to upset your hopes, but you don't get to download 25 tracks, you only get 25 'listens". So you can listen once to 25 different songs this month or you can listen to one song 25 times. You can get much more 'free and legal" music from radiostations this way.
I've been looking forward to a new version of Rhapsody for some time and was disappointed after trying it today. While the media indicates that Real is banking its whole business on Rhapsody, it did not invest nearly enough into developing the software and into testing it before release.
New features in Rhapsody 3.0 attempt to mimick iTunes functionality - now Rhapsody allows users to add music tracks from the hard drive to its library. Rhapsody crashed on the very first run when trying to conenct to my account, exhibits bad behavior when resizing windows, has very limited interface options. It does not match the even the functionality of iTunes and certainly not its ease of use. You cannot remove 2 second gaps in CD recordings made in Rhapsody, there is no cross-fading between tracks and there are no criteria for creating automatic playlists.
Overall it seems like a very last-minute update to the previous version which was done without much design effort going into it. I do not think that it will create any waves of excitement among users.
Mercedes is a bad comparison since their build quality and longevity has deteriorated so much that even patriotic german cab drivers primarily buy VW's instead. Let's make a more ample comparison to Lamborghini. Costs more and only drives on 25% of the roads.
I find that most people are very stingy when it comes to getting qualified or unqualified help in getting their computer fixed. They'll drop a thousand dollars to pimp out their car but won't buy a hundred dollar external drive for backup until all of their business records are wiped out. And its next to impossible to convince people that their Windows systems need regular upkeep, which will come out cheaper than feverishly fixing the systems after they failed.
I also had a gig providing free tech support for a small non-profit, and when I had to quit it, I looked for a paid support option for them. I have found highly qualified company that would support the network for about $120 per hour on a regular contract. But before them, I have talked to multiple organizations touting only slightly cheaper support options ($75-100) who were utterly incompetent.
Re:Other information should be used to prove ident
on
ID Theft Made Easy
·
· Score: 1
I sure don't want to be a victim of identity theft, but to have my DNA data encoded by the government? Sounds too much like Gattaca. Turning 250 millions of identities to the government is far worse than having a small number of crooks digging through the garbage bags.
If you dont give it out, someone else will
on
ID Theft Made Easy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A friend of mine works for a large retail chain. They just decided last week that it is NOT a good idea to throw ALL of their charge slips and former employee files into trash.
And I'm not just talking about some drone middle managers - this was a CORPORATE policy, for hundreds of stores nationwide.
as well as state-sponsored monopolies and heavy handshaking between business and government. It is lamentable that for all their French pride they couldn't even find a single French company, however incomparable to Google, to mention.
It seems you could make about 3 dual Athlon ~2GHz systems for the price of one 2x2.8 Xeon and that the cluster would outperform. Or maybe build, like, a 20-processor VIA C3 system that would perform the same and use less power.
I recall some years ago there was FIDONET, not very high-speed, but largely decentralized communication network that delivered electronic mail. So, for example, if you were a FIDO subscriber in Soviet Russia, somewhere in Siberia, and you sent a message to another subscriber in the Capitalist West, it would go to some other friendly person's computer in your town and when they coughed up to make a 9600bps modem connection to their friend in Moscow the message would get relayed there and in a few hours or days would reach the West.
Obviously I haven't used it and have no idea what i'm talking about, but it was a system relying on private voluntary provision of "ISP functions."
Dont kill Nextel yet. In Chicago that's the only cell provider that consistently works in the city and near suburbs. (Compared to Sprint, ATT GSM, TMobile and Verizon)
Now that there is growing talk of gene therapy for humans, these cases will be of more consequence than IP and agriculture alone.
Suppose your body has been subjected some years from now to patented gene therapy. a) what kind of usage restrictions would companies dare to claim on their IP? Will it be possible that they'll ask you to remove the patented gene from your body if, for example, you stopped paying them monthly treatment fees? More likely, will they introduce combinations of "gene therapy+required antibiotics" similar to what happens with crop seeds [when you buy a GM crop because it is resistant to an, also patented, herbicide]. The implications would be that your survival could be at risk if you stop taking the supplemental medications that make it possible for you to live with the "therapeutic" gene. By raising the prices of the supplement a pharmacorp could "drive out of business" gene therapy patients who no longer could pay for the supplement or (more likely) loot the treasury if the patients are on Medicare. Would any representative dare to vote against dishing out funding for the supplement if this vote threatens lives of current patients? b) What if the therapeutic genes find their way into your children (even if they weren't supposed to). Would your children have to pay fees to the pharmacorp? Would you have to pay a license fee to have children?
In case-based judicial systems current developments in GM patent cases will set the stage for what scale of wrongdoing will be allowed in the future when GM touches us even more personally.
I agree with apple on setting 128kbps as the default bitrate, although it would be very nice to have option to download in higher quality (Audible.com provides 5 different compression formats for their audio books). Its a nice speed for portable players - allows to fit plenty of music and doesn't affect quality when you're listening on earbud headphones.
Hopefully they'll move to multiple bitrates when their service picks up. Right now the service is well suited for people who listen primarily on computer/iPod, but they could easily expand it to include those who'd like to download audio in better format to burn a cd.
I'd also like to see bundled sales of traditional CD (with booklet et al) and digital rights to download. Amazon has been doing some of it, but not on the high enough scale. That is I'd like to buy the physical CD for $13 and immediately download 128kbps files to my mp3 player.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the 25 'free' songs are only for listening on your computer, you can't download them anywhere. You also can't download songs with a $9.95 plan (you can buy them for 99 cents a track, I think they are 192 kbps AAC files) and with 14.95 plan you can download most songs from their catalog to your Microsoft Janus-owned player (iRiver H10, Creative Zen something, Samsung and Gateway make them too)
Actually Rhapsody 2.0 was the most ad-free, unannoying, music service. It wasn't written by Real, of course. The new version comes with only one ad so far - Chrysler promotion to sign up for 25 free songs. So the ad capability has been built in and there are more ads to come.
Sorry to upset your hopes, but you don't get to download 25 tracks, you only get 25 'listens". So you can listen once to 25 different songs this month or you can listen to one song 25 times. You can get much more 'free and legal" music from radiostations this way.
I've been looking forward to a new version of Rhapsody for some time and was disappointed after trying it today. While the media indicates that Real is banking its whole business on Rhapsody, it did not invest nearly enough into developing the software and into testing it before release.
New features in Rhapsody 3.0 attempt to mimick iTunes functionality - now Rhapsody allows users to add music tracks from the hard drive to its library. Rhapsody crashed on the very first run when trying to conenct to my account, exhibits bad behavior when resizing windows, has very limited interface options. It does not match the even the functionality of iTunes and certainly not its ease of use. You cannot remove 2 second gaps in CD recordings made in Rhapsody, there is no cross-fading between tracks and there are no criteria for creating automatic playlists.
Overall it seems like a very last-minute update to the previous version which was done without much design effort going into it. I do not think that it will create any waves of excitement among users.
Mercedes is a bad comparison since their build quality and longevity has deteriorated so much that even patriotic german cab drivers primarily buy VW's instead.
Let's make a more ample comparison to Lamborghini. Costs more and only drives on 25% of the roads.
EOM
I find that most people are very stingy when it comes to getting qualified or unqualified help in getting their computer fixed. They'll drop a thousand dollars to pimp out their car but won't buy a hundred dollar external drive for backup until all of their business records are wiped out. And its next to impossible to convince people that their Windows systems need regular upkeep, which will come out cheaper than feverishly fixing the systems after they failed.
I also had a gig providing free tech support for a small non-profit, and when I had to quit it, I looked for a paid support option for them. I have found highly qualified company that would support the network for about $120 per hour on a regular contract. But before them, I have talked to multiple organizations touting only slightly cheaper support options ($75-100) who were utterly incompetent.
I sure don't want to be a victim of identity theft, but to have my DNA data encoded by the government? Sounds too much like Gattaca. Turning 250 millions of identities to the government is far worse than having a small number of crooks digging through the garbage bags.
A friend of mine works for a large retail chain. They just decided last week that it is NOT a good idea to throw ALL of their charge slips and former employee files into trash.
And I'm not just talking about some drone middle managers - this was a CORPORATE policy, for hundreds of stores nationwide.
Yes, it is possible for a village of 8,000 to broadcast TV on demand to everyone worrying much about the distribution infrastructure.
Just wait until their little village TV server gets Slashdotted.
as well as state-sponsored monopolies and heavy handshaking between business and government. It is lamentable that for all their French pride they couldn't even find a single French company, however incomparable to Google, to mention.
It seems you could make about 3 dual Athlon ~2GHz systems for the price of one 2x2.8 Xeon and that the cluster would outperform. Or maybe build, like, a 20-processor VIA C3 system that would perform the same and use less power.
I recall some years ago there was FIDONET, not very high-speed, but largely decentralized communication network that delivered electronic mail. So, for example, if you were a FIDO subscriber in Soviet Russia, somewhere in Siberia, and you sent a message to another subscriber in the Capitalist West, it would go to some other friendly person's computer in your town and when they coughed up to make a 9600bps modem connection to their friend in Moscow the message would get relayed there and in a few hours or days would reach the West.
Obviously I haven't used it and have no idea what i'm talking about, but it was a system relying on private voluntary provision of "ISP functions."
Dont kill Nextel yet. In Chicago that's the only cell provider that consistently works in the city and near suburbs. (Compared to Sprint, ATT GSM, TMobile and Verizon)
How about launching that money into developing more attack-resistant public network structure? Or working on improvements in server software?
I'm feeling uncomfortable with execs trying to stir up public funding for their non-public industry.
Now that there is growing talk of gene therapy for humans, these cases will be of more consequence than IP and agriculture alone.
Suppose your body has been subjected some years from now to patented gene therapy.
a) what kind of usage restrictions would companies dare to claim on their IP? Will it be possible that they'll ask you to remove the patented gene from your body if, for example, you stopped paying them monthly treatment fees?
More likely,
will they introduce combinations of "gene therapy+required antibiotics" similar to what happens with crop seeds [when you buy a GM crop because it is resistant to an, also patented, herbicide]. The implications would be that your survival could be at risk if you stop taking the supplemental medications that make it possible for you to live with the "therapeutic" gene. By raising the prices of the supplement a pharmacorp could "drive out of business" gene therapy patients who no longer could pay for the supplement or (more likely) loot the treasury if the patients are on Medicare. Would any representative dare to vote against dishing out funding for the supplement if this vote threatens lives of current patients?
b) What if the therapeutic genes find their way into your children (even if they weren't supposed to). Would your children have to pay fees to the pharmacorp? Would you have to pay a license fee to have children?
In case-based judicial systems current developments in GM patent cases will set the stage for what scale of wrongdoing will be allowed in the future when GM touches us even more personally.
I agree with apple on setting 128kbps as the default bitrate, although it would be very nice to have option to download in higher quality (Audible.com provides 5 different compression formats for their audio books). Its a nice speed for portable players - allows to fit plenty of music and doesn't affect quality when you're listening on earbud headphones.
Hopefully they'll move to multiple bitrates when their service picks up. Right now the service is well suited for people who listen primarily on computer/iPod, but they could easily expand it to include those who'd like to download audio in better format to burn a cd.
I'd also like to see bundled sales of traditional CD (with booklet et al) and digital rights to download. Amazon has been doing some of it, but not on the high enough scale. That is I'd like to buy the physical CD for $13 and immediately download 128kbps files to my mp3 player.