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Penn State and Napster Offer 'Free' Music?

w00t! i attend the wonderful pennsylvania state university!

but this deal SUCKS!

who would choose to use napster? i mean honestly----everything that makes iTunes great, napster is lacking. And everything that makes napster bad, apple doesn't have. I have converted many die-hard pc users to using iTunes for windows and they love it. This deal would be so much better if it weren't renting the songs. Penn State needs to broaden their horizons, think outside the box, think different....

where have I heard that?



WE ARE!
 
w00t!

PENN STATE!!!

😀

I am totally against this Napster thing with PSU. I really can't understand why we are not going with itunes. I have also converted many a pc user just because of my ipod or itunes. speaking of my ipod... every other person wearing headphones around campus has the tell tale white ear-buds. Useless with this Napster service. PSU really jumped the gun on this one and in my opinion it jumped off a cliff in the wrong direction.

I love sitting in the hub with my 15inch powerbook listening to my music or even buying it. 😀
 
ideas

I have a idea, that PSU could pay a certain amount of money, and have like 100 songs for each student a semester. This would cost PSU alone about 8,300,000. Now if that is more than what we are paying now, which I still believe that this is free and is a political thing to try and get Napster off the ground where it is after getting the **** kicked out of it, talking to Apple might get us some sort of deal. If all college campuses across the USA could buy 100 songs per student, at some reduced price, everyone knows that will bring in losts of money. Students would be more inclinded to use the iTunes service and get a song rather than download it with a file-sharing tool. Hell, you could make it 50 songs, then with the new file-sharing tool on campus here, we could legally trade them, keeping them in house here at PSU. Or then with the students having songs, dynamic sharing can be used to share files with iTunes like it already is. This would let the student that didn't download a certain song, listen to it. But giving the student the ability to do more that stream it from Napster, or have the song for a short time, is what needs to happen. I don't care if we go with the Walmart store. Just not this bull**** of a deal that seems to be a marketing skeem.

I'm still in the process of writing my letter, which I will give ideas for other ways of doing this using iTunes, or if another service has good quality too, which I don't see at the moment.

(8,300,000 is if we pay full price for it, with 100 songs per student, which is 83,000 students)
 
PENN STATE SUCKS

First off it doesn't matter because PENN STATE SUCKS hard at everything, especially football. I'm a little biased being a PITT student, but I l'm from a place right next to state and I just love being a hater. I actually rooted for Ohio State the other week when Penn State looked like they were gonna win a game. Anyway, this whole Napster thing just drives the point home. But from what I've heard the program is no good, so no matter.

Larry for Heisman!
P-I-T-T LETS GO PITT!!!😱
 
Re: PENN STATE SUCKS

can one of the mods shut this guy up plz before we get a college war here and this thread gets deleted
 
Dude, I didn't know there were so many other people at PSU with macs that visit this site. Kick ass. We should get together or some ****.

Anyways, catch my editorial in the collegian next week (if they post it, but they usually do). Although it's probably too late to change Spanier's mind, we still might be able to catch some interest. This deal of theirs is hardly free.

One other thing of note, the press statement says that it will come to mac eventually. I wonder if its just a penn state feature, or if napster is actually going to try to sell its service to the mac community. Talk about suicide.
 
Originally posted by raiderz182
it was probably you who i saw at the hub with that beauty powerbook that got me interested in macs 😀
Click to expand...

ha ha my plan is working!! I get lots of people coming up to me asking about the Mac in the hub. All my windows buddies either want one as their next computer or have and use itunes. 🙂

I think I have seen one other Mac user using a 12inch powerbook in the hub one day. I think somebody also has an ibook that I see every now and then. 🙂
 
Spanier's Napster...

I have emailed President Spanier regarding this issue at president@psu.edu

here are some student reactions:

... students have posted fliers on Penn State's Erie campus protesting the deal and its use of their IT fees, which ordinarily go toward funding networks, computers and other campus technology services. --from c-net.com

... I was disappointed to learn yesterday that Napster was chosen as the provider for digital music at Penn State. This was done with minimal consideration for the fact that a substantial chunk of students will be unable to enjoy it. For one, Napster is only compatible with Windows, which leaves me, as a Mac user, paying for other people to have a service I can't use. Second, Napster is not compatible with the iPod, the most popular MP3 player on the market. Given that iTunes is available for both Mac and Windows now, is disappointing that this decision was made without considering these important facts, and without giving the students much of a chance to debate if it is a good use of tuition surcharges. It would be much more sensible to avoid the nonsense of exclusive deals (God forbid anyone like the taste of Coke over Pepsi around here!) and give people a choice to ensure that they at least get something for their money. -- from PSU digital collegian
 
e-mailed Penn State this...

This is what i emailed President Spanier:

Dear President Spanier,

I assume that you are running or intend to run pilot 'tests' of the other services besides Napster. I take issue with the statement that Napster offers a 'lot more songs than other providers'. That is open to judgement and changes weekly with these services. Besides, this whole issue of trying to judge a service is not something that Penn State should be doing... its like judging which cable channel you should watch. Let the students select the service without interference from the administration. Please don't create a take it or leave it service where... 'You don't have to use it as part of your technology fee'... is the only option out. Apply your monies where students may choose the 'correct' service... not where some IT-type is dictating choice.

It is one thing to govern educational content for students but you should not be governing this type of entertainment service.

There should be no need for students to 'give us feedback' on this issue at all since this should never have been a project in the first place.

Please forward my email to your Board of Trustees.

Thank you for your time.

Professor William Carlson, '75, '81', '87 and an alum
 
Re: e-mailed Penn State this...

Originally posted by carlson9
This is what i emailed President Spanier:

Dear President Spanier,

I assume that you are running or intend to run pilot 'tests' of the other services besides Napster. I take issue with the statement that Napster offers a 'lot more songs than other providers'. That is open to judgement and changes weekly with these services. Besides, this whole issue of trying to judge a service is not something that Penn State should be doing... its like judging which cable channel you should watch. Let the students select the service without interference from the administration. Please don't create a take it or leave it service where... 'You don't have to use it as part of your technology fee'... is the only option out. Apply your monies where students may choose the 'correct' service... not where some IT-type is dictating choice.

It is one thing to govern educational content for students but you should not be governing this type of entertainment service.

There should be no need for students to 'give us feedback' on this issue at all since this should never have been a project in the first place.

Please forward my email to your Board of Trustees.

Thank you for your time.

Professor William Carlson, '75, '81', '87 and an alum
Click to expand...

you should have said your a rich alum 😀
 
wish we were like Virginia Tech...

mikeyredk
unfortunately professors are not rich enough to influence presidents or kings...

Instead of Penn State trying to choose a music service I wish they would focus on important issues... Virginia Tech installed a G5 based supercomputer... why couldn't Penn State do this. How about buying each student a dorm room G4 iBook or G5??? and connecting them to produce the world's largest open grid supercomputer. Let's see, Penn State's 20,000 on campus G5s vs Virginia Tech's 1100 G5s. I think PSU could definitely have the world's fastest supercomputer AND each student would have a piece of it!
 
I guess I'm kind of late on this but what the heck.

I'm a PSU student and as far as I can tell this whole Napster system will just suck it up like nobody's business.

Reasons:
1. Napster will not meet the needs of the students who, from what I can tell, listen to a whole hell of a lot of music -NOT- in their rooms. Has anyone else who goes here noticed the number of people listening to music on their way to class? Or, for that matter, the number of people listening to iPods on their way to class?

2. Anyone not running Windows 2000 or XP will not have access to the service. That not only cuts out all the Mac users but also people who haven't yet upgraded or use Linux. Yet we all have to pay for it.

3. Our network is damn slow enough already. Last year, when about 200 people were using a direct connect file sharing program the network traffic was enough to basically shut down the network in at least one dorm. If only 10% of the 13,000 (or 18,000, depending on the source) people on campus use this service at the same time it's still going to be 1,300 people downloading as much as they want. Does anyone else see the potential problem here?

4. They tested this with -SIX- students. SIX! And not all of them loved it. Some of them noted that it was not easy to use and they couldn't find the artists they wanted by just searching for them, partially because Napster doesn't carry the artists.

5. The reason most Windows users have given me for not using iTunes is that they like Winamp just fine (some of them are also under the impression that AAC is a proprietary format but that's another issue) and don't want to switch their music player. The stuff you download or stream from Napster cannot be played in Winamp, you have to use Windows Media Player. Even more people alienated.

6. Finally, if students wanted to buy songs for $.99, they could use iTunes already. At no cost to the University. That way our information technology fee could go toward something useful, like better network infrastructure, more wifi access, printers that don't suck ass or hell, just more free pages per semester instead of this bull****.
 
yes, I didn't mention to the president...

the details of this issue because i figured he wouldn't be interested.

chastickaddict,
thanks for the information:

I can't believe they used only 6 students out of 30,000 for a test of these services... they only tested 1 service?

I would like to make your comments(without your name) available to the President and the BOT but I don't think 'forwarding' is legal on this forum.

Or, better yet, how about contacting The Digital Collegian with your 'opinion' at
bks163@psu.edu (staff writer) or the form at:http://146.186.194.36/opinions/opinions.asp

I have sent my opinions to PSU and to the New York Times Web Forum> Technology... what else can I do?
 
Re: wish we were like Virginia Tech...

Originally posted by carlson9
mikeyredk
unfortunately professors are not rich enough to influence presidents or kings...

Instead of Penn State trying to choose a music service I wish they would focus on important issues... Virginia Tech installed a G5 based supercomputer... why couldn't Penn State do this. How about buying each student a dorm room G4 iBook or G5??? and connecting them to produce the world's largest open grid supercomputer. Let's see, Penn State's 20,000 on campus G5s vs Virginia Tech's 1100 G5s. I think PSU could definitely have the world's fastest supercomputer AND each student would have a piece of it!
Click to expand...

because Penn State is poor if they can't afford to put in carpeting in every dorm room why would they give out computers with those rooms
 
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