The most famous blunder of all time, according to Vizzini from the Princess Bride, is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” but the most famous blunder, I think, for a geek is not to research fully the geek tech they are going to buy.

I treated myself to an 16Gb iPod Touch yesterday, I’ve been meaning to get an iPod for a few years and being a user of iTunes at home for my music collection it was a logical step. The iPod Touch is a great little device, not too heavy and has a great screen but hey you already know that because “we” geeks have read all the reviews, and if lucky enough to have a nearby Apple Store we’ve had a play with one.

So late yesterday afternoon I took a spin down Pitt Street here in Sydney to Next Bytes (Apple Reseller) and purchased my iPod Touch, I even bought a nice silicon protector for it. I resisted the urge to open it and play with it on the trip home and ripped the packaging off once I was in front of my PC.

(more…)

Amazon launches DRM-free music sales (in beta) with 2 million songs available at US$0.99 each (cheaper for top hits).

Unfortunately when they say it’s “Play Anywhere”, they mean “anywhere in the USA”… the Terms of Use reveal:

As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States.

And given I logged in for a look with an account attached to an AU shipping address and an AU email address, I’m not sure why they didn’t proclaim that point loudly, rather than hide it away in the Terms. Otherwise, they wait until you try to buy before prompting you: Amazon MP3 Purchases are limited to U.S. customers.

Drat.

Cory Doctorow writes on Boing Boing that it looks like the newly released iPod models have a checksum in them that prevents third-party applications from synching with them, which impacts people on Linux. Nice.

Oh well, we’ll just have to wait a week or two for someone to crack it, I guess.

I can think of two examples where digital media has limitations which affect the fidelity of playback in a major way: with music it’s gapless playback, often noticeable on MP3 players and with CDs on some players. With DVDs it’s layer changes, again, worse on some players than others.

This shouldn’t be the case, of course. Digital media of course is meant to be better than analogue, in every respect. I don’t know if there are standards mandated in the relevant formats, but perhaps there should be… or at least some documented workarounds, such as recommending where DVD authors place layer-changes.

After all, these kinds of things can ruin the enjoyment of a movie or piece of music if handled badly.

Video hosting

Buzzmachine has a quick look at various online video hosters, and while he doesn’t come to any definite conclusion, does say blip.tv is one of the best for picture quality.

What I notice is that Motionbox won’t work without Adobe Flash Player 9, which effectively rules it out if you want corporate types to look at your stuff.

And Brightcove was not only complicated for Jeff to use, but gives me dire warnings about lack of bandwidth.

Personally I’ve used Google Video and YouTube. Both seem okay, but I’m looking for ease of use, not necessarily best quality.

iPods

Jeff Atwood tells us why he’s not buying an iPod.

It should be obvious why iPod doesn’t support WMA… because then you wouldn’t have to buy your online music from the iTunes Music Store.

The AU government gets with the programme, proposes to make ripping CDs to MP3 players legal, as well as taping off radio or TV for domestic purposes… though you’ll be legally obliged to wipe the tape after watching it. Uh huh.

“Hey did you catch Monday night’s Six Feet Under?”

“Yeah but it’s on too late, so I taped it and watched it the next day.”

“Can you lend it to me?”

“I’d love to but the copyright laws say I’m not allowed to.”

• Attorney General web site: details and FAQ

Meanwhile the Brits have trained sniffer dogs to detect DVDs, for the purposes of fighting piracy.

Not-quite-legal, not-quite-illegal site AllOfMP3 introduces the “AllTunes” music browser. ArsTechnica also reports on the current legal status of the service, which is not illegal in Russia due to a loophole in their copyright laws (which apply to physical media only), but is unlicenced.

The iPod has claimed it’s first victim.

Seriously, does anyone really believe this is a risk uniquely presented by iPods?

If you haven’t totally banned purchases from Sony due to the rootkits, you can at least now buy Sony BMG music tracks via the iTunes store; they’ve backed-down on refusing to have their artists available there.

Meanwhile Apple is under fire for including a “phone home” feature that’s turned on by default in the latest version of iTunes (the Mac version only so far?).

Update Friday 7am: EFF: Apple backs down on the “phone home” feature.

A new vulnerability, in Sony’s other copy-protection software, has been found. Sony’s vendor Suncomm has already issued a patch.

Meanwhile Sony has also issued an update and (finally!) removal of the XCP rootkit. Without needing to jump through hoops, this time.

Turns out Sony has a Mac version of DRM, too.

Meanwhile, Texas is suing, possibly for $100K per violation… times 2.1 million CDs sold??? (Thanks Lana)

Jeff “Llamasoft” Minter contributed some of the visualisations in the XBox 360 media player.

Research at the University of British Columbia has come up with stitching software that many say out-performs that provided with digital camera software.

Sony has said they will stop using the XCP copy protection software so derided for its sneaky (but clumsy) cloaking mechanism. But they haven’t said they’ll offer replacement CDs to those who’ve got lumbered with it. Apparently it was only ever applied to CDs sold in the USA, though some of these may have gone to other parts of the world courtesy of Amazon and the like.

As for Sony’s uninstaller… Ed Felten is about to reveal why that too is flawed.

Meanwhile Microsoft has set XCP in its sights, and (quite rightly) said their Anti-Spyware package will remove it.

As if the rootkit sneakery wasn’t bad enough, the EFF has studied the EULA and notes the protected CDs have a licence precluding copying the music onto business computers (eg computers not owned by you). It also requires you to delete the copied music if your CD is stolen, or if you file for bankcruptcy!

And the chorus of people calling for an all-out Sony boycott continues to grow.

I stand by what I said. Pack of evil bastards.

PS. The flaw in the uninstaller is revealed: Sony uses an ActiveX control (known as “CodeSupport”) as part of the process, which is marked “Safe for scripting” and left on your computer, leaving it wide open to attack from dodgy web sites. What a pack of idiots.

They are, however, recalling the affected CDs.