Happy ending

[Tommy Trussell]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Michael TheZorch Haney
<thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>     I got 2 songs in mp3 format from a Russian Doctor I talk with daily
>> on Skype. He sends them while we talk. I got both which were single
>> songs and double clicked one and Totem came up and gave an error that it
>> could not read the file. Igor and I talked about this and thought
>> perhaps there is some code in the file that indicates the area the music
>> came from.
>>
>>     An hour later I tried it again and both songs played perfect. So
>> something nice changed but I have not the slightest guess what :-)
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
> I'm not sure what happened here but copy protection and region coding is
> not a part of the MP3 specification.  Straight MP3 files cannot be
> DRMed, which is why the Micro$oft Zune (which is near death) and the
> Apple iPod use proprietary closed source compressed audio formats that
> CAN be DRMed, and believe me the Zune's DRM is far worse than the iPod's
> FairPlay DRM.  So, I'm not sure what happened and why the file suddenly
> started playing.

My theory is they had not finished downloading when he clicked them
and his player "choked" on the partially downloaded file. Later when
they HAD finished they red the mp3 completely.