I Made It I (A Zune Mod)

Poor grammar of the title aside, after picking up a refurbished mocha-colored Microsoft-made media player (known as "Zune") from Woot!, I am pretty satisfied with owning a fully functional yet unnecessary piece of commodity: Although my cell phone does pretty much all of what it does, having a dedicated player not draining your cell phone battery is nice.

Since it is colored in mocha, it is now lovingly named "Turdis", a music dork reference to a line in one of Radiohead's songs, and the apparent color of a certain type of organic matter. It plays most of my songs (My library is 60+ GB), it never crashes (hahaha), and it showcases album art proudly.

After the update today, it gained a very nice and graphic (i.e. flat) interface with big fonts, and a formidable section dedicated to podcasts, which means "Portable O-something Device Casts".

I was fine with the mocha color for a while, and it was a delight once in a while to see a subtle green glow around the border, when the device is shone in the bright rays of dawn. That effect is known as "double-shot".

However, that's all the moments when the player actually look good.

Unlike the iPod, this Zune is deeply discounted. And unlike the iPod, it does not have a shiny surface - being flat and matt is a nice aesthetic, too. Since it costs less than a hundred, it does not hurt to experiment and modify. So last weekend I decided to spend a morning modifying it.

I posted the process on Instructables if anyone are interested.

I am pretty satisfied with the result. I now have a player of my own, and it is not even available in Zune Originals. It is nice that we have alternatives that do not look way too pristine to be modified or touched, so that I can ruin it any way I want.

Yourself versus Your Zombie-Self

This is not about Halloween. It is about a strange world with a bizarre copyright system and record industry: Your own work can be used to compete with your own work.

 

Here's news: It's Radiohead versus Radiohead! While Radiohead had previously announced to release their new album "In Rainbows" on their own on December 3rd, their previous record company decided to release all the previous Radiohead album, which they own the rights of, as a box-set just 7 days later, as an aggressive response to the fact that Radiohead decided not to continue the contract with them.

Can an ordinary person tell the difference? Can even a fan tell the difference? In fact, can a fan even be zealous enough to follow through the band's principles, i.e. not support their previous record company by not buying the box-set, instead of succumbing to their own desires?

Of course, it's not like Radiohead will lose money in this case. It's still their work. The difference is, in the former case they earn 100% of what they created, while in the latter they earn perhaps less than 10%.

A record company is supposed to be simply a company that helps an artist to advertise, reproduce and distribute his work. Back in the days, it was necessary because it would be impossible for an artist to raise money to get their own record reproduction equipment, and to get a crew to advertise and distribute their records. And of course, after decades of lack of negotiation skills, artists lose their grounds to entrepreneurs, and nowadays artists only earn less than 10% of what they created, and get locked into long "six album deals". Six albums is most band's or singer's lifetime, if they are lucky enough to release two.

I can foresee this happening to anybody, including myself, because I hardly own any rights to my current works either. Say, if my company were bought, I would own nothing more, despite 100% of the artwork and user interface design comes from my hand.