{"id":11,"date":"2003-07-16T12:26:24","date_gmt":"2003-07-16T16:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/2003\/07\/16\/mz-n707-considered-harmful\/"},"modified":"2003-07-16T12:26:24","modified_gmt":"2003-07-16T16:26:24","slug":"mz-n707-considered-harmful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/2003\/07\/16\/mz-n707-considered-harmful\/","title":{"rendered":"MZ-N707 considered harmful"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We own a Sony “NetMD” mini-disc walkman, model MZ-N707. I tried using its handy “microphone jack” to record Phil Malone’s lunch lecture yesterday (thank you Whitney for the nice mic!). The recording is fine, I guess – or at least it sounds good on headphones. <\/p>\n

But despite the logo promising MP3 compativility [sic] and the USB port, there is no way<\/em> to get data off the recorder in a digital format. The only way to talk to this walkman is through the Sony-provided “OpenMG Jukebox” – a DRM-encumbered monster which only allows you to “check out” songs from your hard drive to the walkman. Once they’ve been “checked out” to the walkman, there’s nothing you can do with them except “check them back in” to the “OpenMG”. And you can’t “check in” anything you didn’t “check out”. So the digitally recorded audio sits there on the walkman and the only way to get it out is through the headphone jack.<\/p>\n

That’s wicked useless!<\/p>\n

We had a good laugh up here about the irony of the name “OpenMG” for such very closed software. And about “NetMD” – you’d think that might have something to do with sharing out information over some sort of “network” but you’d be wrong. But many others have made the same mistake, as googling “mz-n707 broken” or “mz-n707 drm” will quickly tell you.<\/p>\n

The moral: don’t use this stupid dumb device! Many of the bitter things people have written about this deliberately broken device suggest useful products you can buy instead, if you’re in the market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We own a Sony “NetMD” mini-disc walkman, model MZ-N707. I tried using its handy “microphone jack” to record Phil Malone’s lunch lecture yesterday (thank you Whitney for the nice mic!). The recording is fine, I guess – or at least it sounds good on headphones. But despite the logo promising MP3 compativility [sic] and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/geekroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}