Obama's "ZuneGate" 608
theodp writes "Barack Obama supporters were left shaking their heads after a report surfaced that the president-elect was using a Zune at the gym instead of an iPod. So why would Mac-user Obama be Zune-ing out? Could be one of those special-edition preloaded Zunes that Microsoft bestowed on Democratic National Convention attendees, suggests TechFlash, nixing the idea that the soon-to-be Leader of the Free World would waste time loading Parallels or Boot Camp in OS X just to use a Zune."
Re:so? (Score:1, Informative)
Only 4 things matter when most people buy a player:
1) Plays MP3s
2) Good audio quality
3) Decent storage space
4) Low cost
Almost every single no name MP3 player fits these criteria. That's why they vastly outsell iPods.
Re:so? (Score:2, Informative)
BTW, the Zune works fine with Songbird, so the Zune can be used natively on any platform.
Correction: The Zune works fine with Songbird under Windows, so the Zune can be used natively on Windows. Songbird is available for other platforms, but MTP support is only available in the Windows build for some reason.
Re:so? (Score:5, Informative)
The Samsung YP-U[123] (BTW, don't import one from the US; the US firmware has no support for Ogg Vorbis) devices seems to be quite easy to get hold of all over Europe; I bet you can find that one in Italy as well. But I'd recommend trying to find a Cowon iAudio instead (possibly by ordering it online). Less bugs in the Ogg Vorbis support plus support for Ogg FLAC.
Re:Zune sighted in real world! (Score:5, Informative)
F*ck your right, I think we all missed that one.
An other observation: it seems he got it for free, so this one had never seen the inside of a store.
Conclusion: no1 buys these things.
Re:Why not use a phone (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the battery is there for running a moderate output transmitter, its not surprising that playing music pretty much has bugger all effect on battery life if you are involved in a call a day. (My W350's battery is barely scratched by playing music as opposed to normal standby).
If you read the GSM spec, you'll find when your phone is idle its transmitter is switched off. It listens to the closest towers, and when it notices its switched area (as in group of towers) it wakes up, notifys the BSC and goes back to sleep. Considering then its mainly a non-transmitting device like an iPod - I doubt the health issues are from anything but hippies. (I mean come on, its got a tiny battery - just how much energy can it deliver to your balls without flattening it? :P)
Me too. Thats why I bought outright every phone I have owned.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World" (Score:4, Informative)
In the interest of full disclosure: I'm dutch.
Yeah, I'm afraid you have a point. Dutch tolerance is more a sort of institutionalised indifference.
However, you must take into account that right up until the 1950's, most Dutch people had only seen foreigners as pictures in a book. Even I at 27 years can recall watching TV in primary school, and half the class starting to scream and yell profanities because the announcer was black.
That's not an excuse, it's just how it is: people that are "different" are scary. In the Netherlands it used to be the Turkish Dutch, now it's the Moroccan Dutch. In the US it's the gays and potheads.
Re:Why not use a phone (Score:4, Informative)
Well, yes in a certain very distorted sense of the word there is more evidence coming out that carrying a cell phone isn't very healthy, I mean as time passes we do see more studies claiming connections between negative health outcomes and cell phone use. However, we also see more studies disputing this link.
Could cell phones be somewhat unhealthy? Sure, but there are some careful studies [arstechnica.com] suggesting the opposite and most importantly any theoretical basis for the supposed effect is at best pretty speculative [arstechnica.com].
First of all ask yourself if you were a cell phone company would it make sense to go out and suppress the science with some organized cover up? For starters given that lots of smart people who have read the research aren't convinced it's likely that your biases as a cell phone exec would virtually guarantee that you didn't believe the health claims. But in that case you would want to fund the most reputable scientists and perform the most respectable study possible rather than funding less influential rent-a-studies. Even if these execs have been convinced of the link by a unpublished stream of compelling evidence the lawsuit against the tobacco companies should have taught them that you shouldn't cover up the science and risk liability when you can just use advertising to associate your product with healthy living in the mind of the public despite the science.
I mean let's be serious, the idea that the cell phone companies are engaged in some intentional plan to cover up the evidence about cell phone harm just isn't plausible. But while it isn't as sexy we know that publication bias exists and can have a substantial effect. Scientists want to spend their time on papers that will bring recognition, grants and employment not ones that say "we didn't find any statistically significant correlation in the groups we examined." This means we are a lot more likely to hear about data sets showing a link than those that don't. After all 5% of studies should end up with an effect at a 95% significance.
Moreover, it's hugely difficult to run a randomized trial for this kind of claim meaning that any effect could be nothing more than an unrecognized prior cause. People who use cell phones are far more likely to use a wide range of other products and probably correlates with a ton of genetic and socio-economic factors. Even studies linking which ear people used for their phone to later cancer occurrence aren't definitive. It's certainly plausible that our dominant hemisphere is more active/different and thus runs a greater risk of cancer.
The truth is that these sort of weak statistical links between an item an ill health effects are frequently wrong and need to be examined carefully. If, as we see in the cell phone study, not only do the studies go both ways but the more careful positive studies show a weaker effect and we lack any firm theoretical foundation for expecting an effect we should conclude it's probably just an artifact of publication bias or common causation.
Of course given that people are so conviced radiation is evil that they falsely convince themselves it makes them sick [arstechnica.com] I don't expect this kind of reasoned consideration to have much impact on the public at large. However, if you are that afraid of "radiation" you should find another website.
Re:so? (Score:3, Informative)
The Cowons are excellent - I've had both the M3L and the X5L from petty much right after their release. Excellent sound, battery life, and support for just about every audio format I could throw at it and both took daily abuse for years (the X5s video support is a bit of a joke). The M3L was stolen in NYC (why I got the X5L) and the X5L now stays at work. Unfortunately, they haven't really come out with a successor with larger capacity, which is why I move to the Archos 5 but it annoys me with the number of codecs and extras one has to get to use features that ought to be standard (FM tuner, aac, m4a, hi def video, battery dock...) but it also plays Ogg and FLAC out the box with the current firmware. I imagine all of them are readily available in Italy.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World" (Score:3, Informative)
The usa just voted in its first black president, in the netherlands people went nuts when rotterdam recently got its first morrocan born mayor. Dutch tolerance is a myth.
Make that "European tolerance is a myth" and you're closer. I've lived in Europe and all around the US. Germans, Brits and the rest of Europe are some of the most openly racist people I've ever met. The only place I've lived that was worse for racism is Japan.
But then many stereotypes are blown away if you actually pay attention. A close friend of mine will be the first person to stand up and tell you she experienced more racism directed against her while living in California and Oregon than she ever has when she lived in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama (where she now resides).
Re:so? (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't mind a small "REFURB" engraved in the case, consider something like a refurbished Sandisk Sansa C2xx or E2xx, likely among the cheapest Rockbox compatible players out there. Regardless of what an mp3 player is designed for, if it can run Rockbox (and is not an Archos) it will play Ogg Vorbis and mp3 files, as well as a number of other file formats [rockbox.org]. Woot [woot.com] features players like this often enough that it has become a sort of running joke; if you're patient you might get a good deal there. I got my refurbished 2GB Sansa C250 at Woot for $15 + $5 shipping, then added a 2GB MicroSD card I had picked up elsewhere for around $5.
Rockbox, on any supported player, allows far more customization than the built-in software. You can even write your own programs (plugins) to run on it, or modify the Rockbox software itself, if you're so inclined. Rockbox is open source.
Re:so? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know if Sandisk sells products widely in Italy, but the Sansa Fuze with 1.01.15A firmware or later supports ogg and flac just fine. Most players shipped now do it out of the box, but some old hardware need a firmware update which is easy to do. Also, music transfer is done by plain old USB mass storage. If you're just using it for audio, it's extremely open-source-OS friendly.
Video on the other hand is a nightmare. It uses some absurdly specific and proprietary format that only their own Windows-only converter can create. If you like headache-free portable video, avoid the Fuze at all costs.