something we should all know

[Lance]

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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051101-5514.html
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[Drakkenmensch]

Wasn't Sony once threatened a few years back to lose the right to use the "CD" protected trademark on its records if it didn't stop producing purposefully DAMAGED cds that would always refuse to play in computers and would often jam outright in car cd players?

[kaiotheforsaken]

well that sure is a bitch, i'm so picky about what goes on my comp these days i would hate to accidnetally put this crap on my machine. Sony is sure cracking down on the anti-piracy thing, which i can understand, but at the same time how much more money do they need? the articla made me think of the newest batch of psp games (gta is the biggie) that require the firmware update to play at all, well quite frankly i like my homebrew apps, and while i haven't pirated any i do like ripping games off my umds onto my mem stick so i dont have to carry around the little umd case things. not a huge deal, but still i'm bummed i cant play gta.

[eLhabib]

yeah, lance, tell me about it. last week I bought a new mp3-player, and I picked a sony one because it looked fancy and was quite cheap. when I came home I plugged it into my PC via USB to put some mp3s on it, drag and drop, all good. then I tried to listen to the music - NOTHING.
Thing is, I had to install a program by Sony (CD included), which then allows me to upload my mp3 library into the program (messing up the names and order completely because it goes by file tags and not file names), and then it CONVERTS those mp3s into ATRAC3 format, giving them names like FOOS0100000034 and puts them on my stick. OH GREAT! :blarg
this way it took me an HOUR to get all my songs sorted on the new player, instead of easy drag and drop as I was used to.
Brought the player back to the store and bought a no-name product instead - back to good ol' drag&drop :D

[Thruster2097]

two such albums are Good Charlotte - Chronicles of Life & Death (both versions) and Kasabian.
Both very much protected.

[Mano]

eLhabib:

Creative has some nice drag and drop flash players, from the description it seems you are using flash players, am i right?

I have a Muvo V200 and its very practical, even has its own in-unit USB plug so i dont need to carry a cable when i take it around for moving data, the Muvo TX line is good too i hear and both have FM radio, and voice recorder.

Iriver has some really good flash players the IFP-799 is drag and drop and sounds a lot better than the creative line.

Now i use an Ipod nano, great sound quality and has a huge storage space (for a flsh player, but doesnt even compare to HDD players), 4GB; its not drag and drop, but the software (itunes) is awesome for managing music; and i have heard of a program that runs inside the ipod that converts it into drag and drop, but i cant confirm this.

Now getting back on topic, this privacy violations should be severely punished, i think fighting piracy is good but not when you are intruding PCs which carry very important personal information.

Also Sony music software is very very bad, its interface compatibility and practicality is on the lowest of the scale compared to others; i have a couple of HiMiniDisc units from Sony and its a PITA to use SonicStage, now they have switched over to sony Connect and i hope its better, but iTunes totally stomps Sony software.

Sony has its brilliant moments (Playstation, Wipeout, the walkman and discman era, and the times when they made top quality electronics) but right now they are loosing ground really fast; well at least they have one of, if not the strongest position in video games.

[eLhabib]

thanks Mano for the info.

I am more interested in 'small' players tho, 512MB is really enough for me on the fly. So I got myself a 'Pro-vision' 512 meg player. nothing fancy, but sound is good and it allows subfolders, that's all I need. (cheap as all hell, too - 39 Euros!)

[Mano]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4430608.stm

[Roger]

Good to see that they're backing down. Anything else would have been commercial suicide, what with all the negative publicity this has generated.

[Drakkenmensch]

When a company folds faster than silk paper in the hands of a japanese origami master, that can only mean that the corporate lawyers smelled an impending lawsuit of gargantuan proportions in the works :twisted:

[Lance]

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i think a specific class action suit had already been filed, or at least announced before Sony took this action
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[jospicy]

looks like they have taken some proper action...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4441928.stm

[Lance]

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yes, they have. but given their history, we can expect more excesses of attempted usurpation of purchasers' rights in the future
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