Managed Code Archos

My portable media player thingy is misbehaving. It won't let me synchronise with Napster. This is a potentially serious problem, in that if it doesn't get to say Hi to mom every now and then all the protected content on the disk will stop working.  This is where the idea of renting access to music rather than actually buying it once and for all starts to come to bits.  I've surfed the internet and quite a few people have the same problem as me, but nobody knows how to fix it. I've been in contact with Archos technical support and they asked if the cable was plugged in correctly. Which was rather irritating.

Seems to me that every now and then a progam in the device goes loopy and tromps all over memory, corrupting things. Sometimes the machine will stop for no reason, or the screen will change colour without being asked. I can live with these problems, but if it won't play my music that is another matter. What they need is managed code. This is a layer between the vulnerable system and the program which is running. One of the jobs of a managed code environment is to stop a program from going bananas and writing into random areas of memory.  If this happens the managed bit just stops the program from doing any damage, like mum would stop you from putting your hand into the gas fire. 

It looks as if I will have to wipe the entire machine and start over. And then live in fear of it happening again with no guarantee that it won't. Or start buying records that I really like and stop renting.