Or not. At any rate, it’s pretty awesome.

Check it out: Link to article and video.

*Special thanks to forum member Nicholas Naime for the link.

Cnet news.com reports that Apple’s latest version of its iPod software no longer plays music using Real’s Harmony technology.

The move could render tunes purchased by many iPod owners unplayable on their music players. For the last four months, RealNetworks has marketed its music store as the only Apple rival compatible with the iPod, following the company’s discovery of a way to let its customers play their downloaded tunes on Apple’s MP3 player.

Read the article here. Good times, good times. Although it begs the question; should Apple open up? iTunes Music Store is not a huge revenue generator for Apple, so it wouldn’t hurt Apple too much to open up--and it may help sustain sales of the iPod. However, it must be done on Apple’s terms. “H4x0r” may indeed be an appropriate term to describe Real on this matter.

I admit it, while trying to sort something out I made a tiny mistake and I accidentally wiped the entire Deep Thought database. But at least I learnt something. Don’t try that again. Hopefully we are now at full operating capacity (minus the obvious content). And with any luck the project that was meant to be secret but was the cause of this mess will be finished for it’s planned opening date of January the 1st.

Okay, so final exams suck, but what are ya gonna do? ...I hope Penn State’s ditching of IE is a sign of things to come. Of course I just had to go to the school that signed a deal with Real (from what I’ve heard, the UC Berkeley-Real deal didn’t really catch on with the students--I sure don’t use it! ). ...With the announcement of an 80 GB Toshiba mini hard drive and subsequent rumors of an 80 GB iPod, I just have to ask; when will I decide to plunk down the cash for an iPod? Maybe, like, when I’m not forking over $3400 every semester? ...And will MWSF be Mac-Centric or music-centric this year. I’m hoping for the former; better yet, I’m hoping to actually hop on a bus for a half hour and actually go to MWSF…

Okay. Glad we got that taken care of. After our, uh, database hiccup, Deep Thought is live again. The database was lost, but we’ll try to make up for lost time. In the meantime, join the fun in our forums!

Stay tuned.