Information culled from the MySpace Wikipedia entry.
Musicians’ rights and the user agreement
Former MySpace user agreement fine print:
“You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services.”
Revised fine print of the user agreement:
“MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, ‘Content’) that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose.”
Good news for indie musicians on MySpace and those who care about retaining control of the re-distribution of their creative works. Bands on major labels are just as screwed as they have been for years.
I finally got around to trying Rockbox and iPodLinux, two open source projects that allow the iPod to be used in new and exciting ways.
Rockbox
Rockbox, the open source jukebox firmware for music devices, sounds like it would be a great fit if only it had an installer for OS X.
One of the primary features that drew me to Rockbox was the inclusion of a better audio equalizer than Apple’s paltry presets. I also like the support for open source visualizer and audio plugins. I can’t fault its inability to play music purchased at the iTunes Music Store, as Apple doesn’t yet allow it, but it sure would be nice to be able to play the unprotected AAC files and higher-bitrate MP3s I tend to listen to. According to the FAQ, Rockbox currently supports only low-bitrate MP3 files. I usually rip new CDs to either Apple Lossless, 320kbps AAC or 320 kbps MP3 and RockBox for iPod can’t yet play any of these.
Installation was no picnic. I dealt with the number of command-line instructions on the RockBox.org page How to install Rockbox on your iPod from Mac OS X and ended up with a dead iPod flashing ‘contact Apple Support’. Understandable, given the number of issues a Mac owner has trying to set this up.
To be used with Rockbox, the iPod needs to be formatted as a Windows iPod and set up with Apple’s FAT32 iPod firmware for Windows users. For those without a PC in the house, the instructions for ‘Converting an iPod from HFS to FAT32′ are pretty dangerous for regular users to be attempting. One slip-up with the disk device number [mine is 3 in this mount output: /dev/disk3s3 on /Volumes/Treble Clef (local, nodev, nosuid)] and you could rewrite the partition table on your own system drive. There also isn't any guarantee that people are going to download the correct partition map for their model of iPod.
Beyond all that, there are still a number of steps required to get the Rockbox bootloader on the iPod and get it working manually. I went through the rest of the instructions, and, as I mentioned, ended up with a dim-witted iPod.
Installation of Rockbox, at least on a 4th-gen iPod, is barely workable at the moment. However, the Rockbox promise of a bright new day (with proper EQ) will hopefully be fulfilled soon enough. My advice is to wait until there is a bit more work done on the iPod version and an installer is made available.
Once the iPod was restored to factory settings with iPod Updater 2006-01-10 everything seemed to be back to normal.
iPodLinux
Shortly afterwards, through the iPodLinux Wiki, I found Jeffrey Nelson’s iPodLinux Installer for Mac OS X. iPodLinux is a customized port of the uClinux kernel which includes a number of applications and calls its interface ‘podzilla’.
The installer worked quickly and painlessly, installing iPodLinux and setting it as the default OS in a matter of minutes. It also permits booting into the Apple iPod OS if you happen to own a lot of purchased music or Apple Lossless files.
Once I got the backlight turned on and scroll wheel sensitivity adjusted (something I really wish Apple would add) I tried out the supplied applications, including a few games Apple doesn’t provide and a few visualizers. The file browser includes a working music player, which played the test MP3 file (192kbps) without issue.
Things seemed great until I booted back into the regular Apple OS, which appeared to have forgotten its chosen language as well as the backlight and clicker settings. I set everything back up and assumed the settings would stick after a reboot.
Sure enough, all settings seem to be consistently forgotten when changing from iPodLinux to the iPod OS and back. In other words, no matter which OS I boot into, I immediately have no backlight. This sure gets annoying quickly in the muddy darkness where I thrive. Another tour ’round the interface and I was finished with it. Restored with iPod Updater, and things were back to normal.
iPodLinux does not officially support the fourth generation click-wheel iPods as of yet, so that may have contributed to the problems I was seeing. The experience has not soured me as it might a lesser man, however, and I am looking very forward to trying a future release of this project.
I hope to see both of these projects continue gaining momentum, developers, and beta testers over the next while.
Creative Mac - MacBook, MacBook Pro and Power Mac G5 Benchmarks in Final Cut and Motion
These benchmarks show a new 13″ MacBook 2.0 beating a Dual 2.0 G5 in most Final Cut tests. It even edges out the MacBook Pro in some instances.
Granted, all three machines had 2 GB of RAM, and although I get the impression that the G5 would spank most anything if it was maxed out at 8 or 16 GB, the FCP and Motion tests performed focused mainly on the performance of the processor and internal video. Nothing they tested would have probably used more than a gig. Weren’t we told MacBooks won’t run FCP because of the lack of dedicated video card? Seems that may be the sales pitch to push for MacBook Pro machines.
The way I see it, Apple has considerably narrowed the gap between their two lines of portables. The lack of an internal audio-in jack has long been a sore point for iBook users, having to purchase USB audio devices that may or may not have buggy drivers. Now that Apple has added digital audio in and out, a built-in iSight, Gigabit Ethernet, standard Airport and Bluetooth, the Apple Remote with Front Row, and a bigger trackpad with all the two-finger tricks it may just be time to get a new laptop.
The performance reports I’m seeing all over indicate that Apple has dropped the ages-old tactic of hobbling their lower line to increase perceived value of the Pro machines. These MacBooks smoke.
Black MacBook photoset on Flickr
I predict the 13″ MacBook (doesn’t matter which one, but probably the slower of the two simply because of price) will become Apple’s best-selling Mac of all time. I expect a large influx of Linux gurus (the one in early 2001-2002 due to OS X was good but more is always better) and Windows power users due to the ‘pure drool combined with performance’ of these things. Lots of current Mac owners are gasping for one. (one hardcore Mac user, Rob Griffiths, already got his) Many people haven’t owned their first Mac yet, and there’s no good reason why this shouldn’t be it. We’ll see how things pan out.
Oh yeah, Season 5 DVD of Trailer Park Boys kicks ass.
Picked up a Palm Z22 a few weeks ago, and so far it seems like it was a good choice.
note: This is a stock photo. I don’t have any kids.
The USB connection has been convenient enough up to this point, and since the Palm also charges when it’s connected to the computer I have yet to see the battery drop below 100%. I also have a few spare cables for this particular size of mini-usb left over from an old thumb drive.
So how about the included Palm Desktop software? It’s crap. The Apple iSync conduit? It works once before corrupting the user’s preference file. It didn’t take me long to purchase the program many others swear by - The Missing Sync.
Missing Sync is working great for syncing with Address Book and iCal under 10.4.4. The lack of categories for items in iCal forces me to use different calendars as my categories, but that seems to work fine as well. Unexpectedly, it copied my Address Book’s custom user pictures to the Palm’s address book as well. Nice touch. On top of stable syncing, the software also supports iTunes syncing, something this model of Palm does not support. (again, a feature more than covered by my iPod)
As far as the capabilities of the thing go, it does everything I needed a PDA to do and more. My To Do list is always up to date and I can read ebooks on a nicer screen than my iPod. Since my iPod works fine, i had no reason to consider looking at PDAs with MP3 capability - they most likely wouldn’t support AAC/MP4 or Apple Lossless, and I know they wouldn’t play iTMS-purchased songs. Most of my digital music is in MP4 at this point, so anything that doesn’t offer support isn’t on my shopping list.
It would be nice, after all, to be able to use Bluetooth to transfer images and books instead of USB, and to be able to surf with WiFi access. However, these features seemed to significantly increase the price and lower the battery life.
I like having all the information on my Palm password-protected, just like my phone. Even though there are programs available to crack the password, it’s better to have some protection than none at all.
Although my index cards won’t fall completely into disuse, the Z22 is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I’m very happy with it so far, and will post an update if anything starts to wobble or melt.
Old shot of myself on a 23″ Cinema Display, while being displayed on iChat through an iSight.
March 13th, 2006 in
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