Friday July 25, 2008

- Yahoo Music to close down: DRM matters - Lionel - 22:23:06

Source : ARS Technica

Yahoo suddenly announced to its clients that its music store was about to close down. Nothing much serious except their DRM licenses management servers will switch off this september 30.
This deadline passed, the purchased music will be unusable unless one was cautious enough to burn CD's out of it. If you do so, be aware that the double encoding from AIFF and then to MP3 or AAC will cause quality loss. .
It is the third time this problem is raised after Sony and Microsoft online stores shut down. Once again to notice that the DRM are only a bother for honest people who didn't want to steal music but end up swindled, not to say robbed.
It's about time that the market players who sell protected Music commit themselves to carry on their license contract service at least for X years, for people to decide whether or not to buy regarding if that length of time is enough to ensure them a sufficient investment.
Banks and other financial companies require guaranties for them to continue to exist. It should be just the same for online music stores clients.
Easiest way would be to get rid of the protections once for all but if that's the way to follow, why not following through when a significant amount of music is still DRM protected on the iTunes Store?


[translation by Goulwen]

- Google Maps for Pedestrians Soon - Lionel - 09:38:53

If the integrated GPS provides a useful feature to the iPhone 3G, its usage is mostly interesting for pedestrians than in a car as there is no real guiding application able to benefit from the integrated GPS currently available for the iPhone. In addition, Google Maps keeps calculating optimal journey for a car to go from A to B, it ignores the pedestrian’s area while taking care of one-direction streets!
This might change as Google is currently working on a guiding feature dedicated to pedestrians; currently in beta test it should soon be available to the public. However, it will require for the iPhone to be updated in order to be able to select the transport mode (feet, bike, cars, etc.) before calculating a journey

[translation by Linathael]

- First Blu-ray 8x Burner - Lionel - 09:38:14

Source : CDR Info

The burner manufacturer Buffalo just announced its first blu-ray burner able to write on the corresponding media at 8x. The model is based on a Panasonic SW-5584 BD burner. In addition it can toast double layer BD-R media at 2x DVD at 16x and CD at 48x. This external device will feature a double SATA/USB2 interface, however when plugged via the USB port, the max burning speed will be limited to 6.5x to avoid running into buffer overflow and burning failure.

[translation by Linathael]

- Nehalem Already in September? - Lionel - 09:37:32

Officially, the new Intel processor known as Nehalem should only arrive by the end of the year. However, according to sources at motherboard makers quoted by Digitimes, some of Intel's Nehalem-based processors will be introduced in September, with products based on the corresponding CPUs and motherboards available early October. If this will most likely be too late for unveiling new MacBook Pro models, it nevertheless speeds up the release of the new Mac Pro/Xserve.

[translation by Linathael]

- Info about Velociraptor - Eric - 09:36:12

Source : WDC

The new high-end HD from WD, aka the Velociraptor, is a 14 mm thickness 2.5" HD format featuring a large heatsink turning it into a 3.5" HD size wise. In addition the location of its SATA port makes it incompatible with all rack-mounted servers. Today, WD announced a heatsink-less Velociraptor model aiming to define the new high-performance HD for rack-mounted server with SATA connection.

In the meantime, Maxupgrades released an adaptor for installing the original heatsink-loaded Velociraptor into the HD bays of a Mac Pro



Despite, the small heatsink included in this 48.50 USD adaptor, we are not sure that the HD would not heat more than originally defined by WD, we would need to get such adaptor for a test, as the hottest part of the Velociraptor is located on the controller card side where there is no cooling system. One will need to check it carefully by monitoring the temperature of the Velociraptor thanks to the sensor integrated in it. According to Barefeats, the HD are not getting hotter than when installed in their original heatsink.

For those not willing to invest in such adaptor, we published a month ago a way to install 2 Velociraptor into a Mac Pro without requiring additional kit while maintaining the HD into appropriate thermal working range (here)

- A little spyware on the AppStore [updated] - Lionel - 09:27:57

Source : FrenchiPhone

Apple has just made an urgent withdrawal of the game Aurora Feint from the AppStore. This game sends to the server of the game editor the entire contents of the address book of the user.
The developers had had this good idea with the goal, according to their information, to be able to inform your contacts that you were busy playing.
But not only was this " possibility" not well documented, but, the contact information was forwarded unencrypted over the network, which could have been easily intercepted.

Notice, this advertisement is good for Apple, being able to serve as a warning with those which would download applications elsewhere than the AppStore. If it could let pass this software in spite of their supposed very strict screening, it will be simple for pirates to hide behind good software a pile of undesirable things.

[Update] the software is being returned to the AppStore, purged its indiscreet functions.

[translation by crispin]