Slashdot Mirror

Missing from most of the articles on this, including the ones on their web site, is that they used to employ a senior Microsoft media guy who, unsurprisingly, set about converting everything to Microsoft Media formats - Ashley Highfield. Here's a 2007 article with a section of the controversy

BBC used to have one of the more progressive approaches to media with early mp3 streams, Dirac codec research...it then just stopped. Nice to see them get back towards the rest of the world - next step, please go HTML 5 video on the site as well and then we can avoid Flash.

those folks really should have chosen a service that encrypts the copies on the server.

Right, because you can trust them not to decrypt everything for the government:

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/11/09/hushmail-opens-emails-to-us-dea/

If there's no obligation for the government to make the data easily accessible then must we rely on Paid Sites (Ancestry.com) and Open Sites (Public.Resource.Org) to make this data accessible? If so, what happens if Open Sites run out of funding, like what almost happened to Wikipedia.

Cloud service providers may be required to hand over data, but do they have the means of handing over the encryption keys along with it?

Well, it depends on what you mean by "cloud," but...

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/11/09/hushmail-opens-emails-to-us-dea/

But by the looks of things Apple has again, taken an idea that has been around for some time and made it easy enough to use that the level of convenience is nearly the same as a phone call.

3G phones supporting video calling have been around in the UK for ages (5 years?). It's very easy to make a video call: you find the contact in the address book, and instead of pressing Menu--Call or Menu--Message, you press Menu--Video Call. Still no one uses it.

For example, here's an article from 2006 noting that video calling hasn't caught on in the UK: article.

Re "If you want to make a generic phone, be ready to charge no more than $50 for it."
Bic mobile phone - looks not unlike the Bic razor
http://digital-lifestyles.info/2008/07/11/bic-phone-launches-in-france-e49-mobile-ready-to-go/
http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/07/bic_mobile_phon_1.html
and a nice video with a French voice over
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6cykt_premiers-test-du-bic-phone_tech
and in English (ad before warning)
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoChannel=2602&videoId=88851

Look here

Oh... Sorry... It is 2005. Errm... And is not 25th of september...

Oops! Is not SUN is The Sun

Oops! And is not US is UK

Hmm! Who cares anyway. We are on Slashdot isnt't it?

Maybe CowboyNeal could post a weekly mash up of all stories he found particularly interesting, instead of duping them. In case you were wondering: I don't find the additional links to linuxjournal and currybet interesting. Fewer then 200 comments, most of them obvious spam. Additionally, everyone knows that intelligent people post on Slashdot.
Don't even get me started about http://digital-lifestyles.info/

Contrast this with the legal situation in the US where you could probably sue me for libel (Libel is Letters, Slander is Speech) whether you pour hot grits down your pants or not.

Actually we in th UK have some of the most over the top libel laws in the world. Not only could that comment get you sued for libel but you would also have the following problems:

1) No legal aid - you would have to pay for your entire defence out of your own pocket. Lawyers are expensive and this alone would prbably force you to appologise.

2) They could also sue anyone who published your statement. In order to "publish" something you merely have to know you are distributing it, so either slashdot (or their) ISP would receive a standard take down notice and would have to either comply, or dive head on into a horrific (ie - expensive) legal quagmire.

I had a bit of a dig about and here are some links I found:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,8 24902,00.html
http://digital-lifestyles.info/2006/03/23/john-bun t-and-flame-groups-legal-pitfalls-with-postings/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_2_6 3/ai_53706056

The last is one is particularly relevant as it pertains to a printer being scared of a libel trial so shredding all the issues of something they were printing.

[..]but how long before we see this resolution in a mobile phone?

I do realize that the future will bring us things that we simply cannot understand the use of today, such as computers exceeding today's super computers. But I doubt that just because the tech is going to be there, that we will see 160 MP consumer cams. Eventually, people will stop hearing megapixel and instead listen to other intuitive features. Maybe built-in software with 3D depth readability and such?

Scanners are about the same. Back when we had 300 DPI scanners, it was all about DPI. Now that scanners can make the balls of a fly look hairy with perception, there's no need for more.

OT: If you're thinking that 160 MP is a lot, how about 4 GP? You can check the proof right here.

Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping--and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing.

TV advertisers and execs could be heard blubbing into their double tall skinny lattes all over Soho as a new survey revealed that around 90 percent of current users fast-forward through ads.

- Tash
Vroom...

It must be true. First time you baldly asserted it, I didn't believe you. But since you did it again, I'm soooo convinced.

I wasn't quibbling with your argument that BluRay may have a problem finding customers because people don't care enough. I was calling you out on your wildly incorrect assesment of the state of who is buying HDTVs and LCDs right now.

And I was right.

You don't even know what direct view means.

LCD is by far not the worst tech on the market. If you think so too, I think you're not looking at decent LCDs. I'd never buy a plasma or a DLP. And I like my current rear projection LCD a lot more than my previous CRT HDTV. I'm not going to lie, the picture does suffer in some ways. But it's two years old now. And it's a lot better in many other ways. Current RP LCOS TVs (like the Sony SXRDs) look much better and fix all the problems I have except viewing angle (which direct-view LCD fixes just fine if you want to pay for it).

Direct-view CRT is dead for HDTV. My HDTV I got rid of is better than what you can get now in CRTs. There is no margin to be made on CRTs anymore, so they are decontenting them a lot. It is making the pictures worse, and the reliability is dropping through the floor. Quality (longevity) cannot be seen on the store shelf, so in a tight commodity market it's the first thing companies take out.

Consumer DLPs don't have good near blacks. The rainbows are pretty much gone, but they still use temporal dithering to emulate luminance, and it makes the picture jittery to my eyes. Plasma is the same way. Also note there is no real 1080P DLP right now because all consumer 1080P DLPs woblerate and thus don't actually display all 1920x1080 pixels at once like a true progressive display would. I just don't find consumer DLP very pleasing.

As to your comments about DRM, they are typical uninformed Slashdot crap. I bought one of the very first TVs with digital video input, and it supports HDCP (thus has no compatibility problems). And even if you want to use analog only, you have no problems either right now because the image constraint token is not being used (due to being unpopular).

I can't see being confused by the versions of HDMI. Just ignore all that crap. I assure you that isn't confusing the average person, they don't know what HDMI is, let alone the versions.

I don't agree about the TV prices. LCD (and plasma) TV sales are booming.

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=platforms&id=3087

That means people are spending more than they absolutely need to. It isn't going to matter soon anyway. CRTs can only get so cheap (shipping along is expensive), and LCDs will catch up on price by the end of this year for any size over 20".

What do you mean by abusing what had been established terms? I'm have to say I'm slightly skeptical since you seem to have problems with the terms yourself. Could you fill me in?

to BenQ last summer. http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=business&id=2289

Apple doesn't allow that so you can't.

"Virgin demands Apple license iTunes DRM"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/06/apple_vs_v irgin/

"iTunes, DRM and competition law"
http://www.reckon.co.uk/open/iTunes

"Apple Avoids French Courts Opening FairPlay DRM"
http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=business&id=1769

I know Apple is seeing as gods here and this will be modded down to oblivious but hey face it, in this field they are as monopolistic as microsoft. Why is it so hard for some companies to play nice with each other ?

I was wondering if the ground line was a major reason for this. He does not live in Tokyo, but he does live in a nearby suburb of it.

Currently the large majority of the US phone network is copper. Due to the "time sharing" that was invented about 100 years ago the max speed possible is 56k over a normal phone line. Even that requires some interesting math discoveries.

DSL bypases the time sharing and gives a straight hard line directly to the central office. The reason for the distance limits on DSL is due to distortion over long copper lines. The longer the line, the more distorted the original signal gets. This is why they farther you are from the central office, the slower the speeds you get. How Stuff Works has some info on this.

In order to get faster, the phone companies are installing fibre. I remember reading somewhere that that is what Japan has essentially done. It is still called DSL since it is from the phone company and is stil a digital line. Verizon, my local phone company, is currently working on installing fibre to the home. Already, we qualify for DSL, where a few years ago we did not. (Currently we have cable by Cox.) Hmm... Their 3mb DSL service is a bit cheaper than the 5mb Cox service. They have a DSL 768k/128k for $15/month. That is much better than our old 56k dial up that cost $20/month. So it is improving. We don't yet qualify for their fibre service, it hasn't been put out to this area yet. However, the fibre service they are offering 15mbps for $45. They are also offering HDTV over those connections. By the way, I live in a relatively unpopulated area. Fairfax County, VA. 1 Million people, 395 square miles. We have under 1000 people per kilometer^2 compared to Tokyos 13400.

As I understand it, the largest delay was due to the telcos wanting to make sure they didn't have to open up their brand new fibre networks to rivals. Probably since they wouldn't be able to pay off the investment of fibre at whole sale prices.

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=distribution&id=2615
http://www22.verizon.com/FiosForHome/channels/Fios /HighSpeedInternetForHome.asp

This has already been done by Siemens:

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=platforms&id=1910

CDs haven't been $20 for years. The average price of a new CD is $13 and change.

You're correct that the record stores and distributors make a total of $2- $3 a sale, so all the record company ever sees out of a sale is about $10.

"The record company makes at least 17 million and all their expenses are covered out of pocket by the artist."

It's not out of pocket, per se. A more accurate statement would be that all of the artist's expenses are paid out of pocket by the record label. The recording artist gets paid last, only after all the expenses have been covered. If the album is a failure, the record company eats the loss and the artist ends up with zero -- but they're not in debt. In this regard it's better than a traditional bank loan -- if you borrow $50K from the bank to self-produce/promote/etc. your record and it only makes $25K, the bank will still insist on getting all $50K back, plus interest. They'll be a lot less understanding than the record label. A record label won't ruin your credit rating and repo your car if your album doesn't turn a profit.

"There's some good reasons I don't play for a living anymore...it's not much of a living, making 30,000/yr before taxes."

This statement is sure to either confuse or enrage the usual Slashdotters who are quick to point out that it's morally okay to pirate music because musicians are wealthy -- after all, just look at all those fancy cars in the rap videos! It does, however, echo what I've heard about musicians having among the lowest average incomes of any profession. I hope ASCAP is still sending you checks...

I still cannot convince myself that this isn't a hoax... but here's some actually coherent info on the laptop:

World's first solid state laptop?

Atom Chip Corporation Reveal Ultra Fast 6.8GHz Laptop

I would be surprised if countries like South Korea and Sweden wouldn't be ranked among the top nations.

They are:

1. South Korea
2. The Netherlands
3. Denmark
4. Hong Kong
5. Canada
6. Switzerland
7. Israel
8. Taiwan
9. Norway
10. Sweden

The US of A is nowhere to be seen.

From a TelecomPaper survey:

"Europe has outrun the Americas for the first time in history and became the second largest broadband market in the world," TelecomPaper noted.

The addition of broadband to European homes was also greater than Asia and America, growing around twice as fast.

Leading the European charge were countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark whose broadband connectivity now only trails South Korea by a smidgen.

"Given the slow growth of South Korea, we expect that the top position, now held by South Korea, will change hands this year", observed TelecomPaper director Ed Achterberg.

Five out the world's top 10 broadband nations are European, with Hong Kong at number four and Canada at five. Switzerland, Israel, Taiwan, Norway and Sweden are all up in the top ten, boasting at least 16.9 percent fast Internet connections per 100 citizens.

Using software downloaded off the internet, McKinnon allegedly hacked his way into almost 100 networks operated by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defence and the US Air Force, with the US government estimating that his antics have cost around one million dollars (£570,000, 790,000) to track down and fix.

Interesting, given that a new Guinness World Record has just been set by a guy using the new Treo 650.

I think the previous record was held by a thumbstabber on a traditional phone keypad.

use BugMeNot to get at the article To summarize:

"A New Jersey man who pleaded guilty to illegally copying and posting a digital version of summer action movie "The Hulk" on the Internet received a three-year probation, was fined us $2,000 and was ordered to serve six months confinement in his home. He also must pay $5,000 in restitution to Universal, the company that produced and distributed the movie. Kerry Gonzalez pleaded guilty to one count of copyright infringement. He admitted to receiving an unfinished copy of the movie from a friend who in turn sourced the 'work print' from a third party who worked for an advertising agency. No one from the ad agency has been charged. The FBI traced the Internet copy back to Gonzalez through an encoded "security tag" on the print."

Yeah, interesting that they never tracked the 'friend' he got it from, or which ad agency that friend worked for /shrug

Another site says he got 6 months of 'home confinement', 3yrs probabtion, and fines for his part in distributing the film.

And the movie wasn't even that good ...

If it catches on at all, it'll only have a minimal market-share.

Nokia already has it's N91 phone that is slated to be released in the 4th quarter of 2005.
http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=platforms&id=2154 It's spec'd to have a 4GB internal hard drive and is marketed to take some market share from the iPod mini. But nokia's phone is going to be quite pricy.

The biggest problem with the idea is (as mentioned by other people as well) is battery life.
If it's gonna be an iPod killer, it's GOT to have massive memory.
To have massive memory (multiple GB without massive price of flash-based mem) they'll have to use a hard drive (which means moving parts). Hard drives with moving parts require more power which means a larger battery.
Larger battery + Hard drive=Larger phone.
So phones of the type will either have horrible battery life, or be awkwardly bulky.
So unless 30-60GB iPods shrink down to HALF the size of a current cell-phone, and a cell phones do the same, then MAYBE they could combine the two (and hope they both can run for 8+ hours off one power source)
Otherwise it'll never happen and catch on.

plus, how many times have you dropped your cell phone?
Hard-disks + Falling impacts = BAD.

And on top of that Gates thinks it will run Windows. ...un huh.
I think Gates's brain just BSOD'd.

• http://www.voip-news.com/1/voipwifi.htm
• http://www.zyxel.com/product/P2000W.php
• http://www.vonage.com/
• http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2005/ voIP_WiFi.asp
• http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=platforms&id=1761
• http://www.voipsupply.com/home.php
• http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_1072.html
• http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php

Here the shut down for the analog transmissions is in july 2011. But you can still buy analog TV sets on the shops ... mmmhhh, wide plasma digital TV. But they are still quite expensive. :(

Since Slashdot is visited mostly by Americans, I shall supply some reference articles discussing the BBC Creative Archive (which was basically an idea presented by BBC's ex-director general Greg Dike suggesting to regroup and distribute all of BBC's past, present and future media under the Creative Commons licence).

• The original press release;
• BBC Creative Archive to be based on Creative Commons;
• another detailed article.

A whole bunch of other articles are available.

The RIAA says music sales are down, more specifically they say sales of the top 100 cd are down and this is DUE TO PIRACY.

Well by Sales the Mean "Items Shipped to Stores" !

So all they Really Mean is Stores Stock Less.

In the US Nielsen Ratings are based on "Individual Sales to Customers" so are these REAL sales down?

"Soundscan recorded 146 million CDs sold in Q1 2003, against 160 million in Q1 2004 - an increase of nearly 10%. Figures for Q2, released this summer are expected to show yet another increase. The RIAA, on the other hand, are claiming a 7% decrease in revenue - but that's purely through managing shipments and returns."

Nope, Sales are up !!!
By this more realistic definition Music Sales are up.

=> Therefore if we are to believe the RIAA but use a more realistic definition of sales then :
FILE SWAPPING HAS INCREASED POPULAR MUSIC SALES.

Here is a Link with the sources http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=distribution&id=1222

People listen to more music than they buy.
The More Music People Listen to, the more they buy.

ADD in the spectacular rise of iTunes and Music Sales are through the roof.

File Sharing promotes music and increases sales.

Artists Win, The RIAA, wins, File Swappers Win, P2P wins - Everyone Wins !!!

It is about controlling the means of distribution.

Here is an Very Rigorous Academic Study of File Sharings Effect on Record Sales.
The Conclusion:"File Sharing Has A Negligable Satistical Effect on Sales".
http://www.p2pnet.net/zero/FileSharing_March2004.p df
Here is A Japanese Study with much the same conclusion.
http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/file/WP05-08tanaka.pdf
So the Lies are exposed, the **AA are just out to keep cartel control, make sure we only watch and buy what they have.
Read How Exhorbitant Liscense Fees for Samples have crippled Modern Music in the excellent fast paced read.
http://kembrew.com/documents/mcleod-freedomofexpre ssion3.pdf
Freedom Of Expression by Kembrew McLeod also details many other ways in which Irresponsible Litigous Intellectual Property stifles research, innovation, cost millions of lives worldwide due to drug patents and holds back the development of important medicines for breast cancer due to human genome patents.

I think that P2P has revitalised Culture and learning, it has made the world a richer place and everyone has benefited from this, leechers, artists and business' alike.

Thanks for the reply! Just a few comments:

"The music industry is dominated by a handful of retailers, the RIAA has effective control over the product supplied to those retailers, they can pressure the (say it with me) handful of major resellers into not selling other products. This kind of behavior is not hypothetical The RIAA has been tried and convicted of such price fixing schemes."

It's ironic that the record companies were busted for price fixing when they tried to get away from the industry being dominated by just a few large retailers. Many Slashdotters talk about the famous record company price fixing case a few years ago, but most don't know the details:

• Best Buy and Wal-Mart (who, as you pointed out, utterly dominate the retail music business nowadays) started selling CDs at or below cost, as a "loss leader" to get people into the stores.
• This was very upsetting to some specialty realtors (Tower Records, TWE, and one which I can't recall). Unlike Wal-Mart and Best Buy, the specialty stores didn't have an acre of high-margin electronics or children's clothes to make up the difference.
• Tower and TWE complained that they were being put out of business, and went to the record companies for help. The record companies set up a MAP ("minimum advertised price") co-op advertising program in which the labels would help pay for newspaper ads if if Tower, et al. didn't advertise below a certain price. (In case this sounds familiar... lots of industries have MAP programs. Ever hear words like "price too low to mention" on radio spots? That's likely a MAP in effect.)
• Wal-Mart and Best Buy complained to the goverment.
• The government spanked the record companies and prevented them from doing MAPs.
• Tower Records subsequently filed for bankrupcty.

The price fixing judgement is a good thing if one subscribes to the "What's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" theory (lots of people do; I don't and I'm guessing you don't, either). It was bad news for the indie and specialty retailers, and bad news for consumers who appreciate having a choice beyond Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Ironically enough it didn't affect the record companies much, as they sold their CDs into disti for the same price regardless of who was buying it.

In short: the price fixing was basically Wal-Mart bitch slapping the record industry and making them play by Wal-Mart's rules. You stated that the price fixing judgement was because the record labels were trying to control the major retailers, when the reality is that it was exactly the opposite.

"You're going to have to come up with some more information regarding Magnatune's 'failure' before I buy your argument."

I would not say that Magnatune is failing -- just flailing. They haven't really grown much in the past few years compared to the competition, and their customer service is pretty horrible because they're just not making enough to hire enough people. For the time being, customers as a whole still want the commercial stuff. iTunes' major competition still seems to be etailers like Amazon and, of course, P2P. I would not yet classify "virtual labels" as serious competition.

You asked for more info about Universal's online venture. Here's what I found on Google:

Interesting stuff. The Internet is here whether anybody likes it or not; Universal seems to be relatively cluefull about leveraging it.

FCC mandates that cable companies need to make firewire control possible as of early 2004: Link

If you live in the US you should be able to do something about this.

This is slightly off-topic as it doesn't relate to Bit Torrent but did you know that the BBC is planning to allow downloads of TV shows from the Interweb after they have been broadcast?

BBC already offers the chance to replay radio shows via their website (using an ad-free version of RealPlayer). They are also in the process of building an online archive containing thousands of hours of content:

Some news website article

Obviously the BBC have a completely different business model i.e. no ads. But this shows that some people are beginning to "think different" (sorry Apple).

To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.

According to other experts, "In June, an average of 8 million P2P users were online at any one moment, with 1 petabyte of data available to share."

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?se ction=cm&id=1396

The problem is that the output streams are all coming from a single point. Although a post below suggests that caching at various points on the network could go a long way to alleviate this problem. Why not distribute movies via P2P?

Some major broadcasters are considering this method already. Have a look at the BBC's interactive Media Player (iMP).

OK, so this may not be true streaming in the generally accepted sense, but it will still produce pretty much on demand titles that you source from a node close to you. Set your PVR to download the titles you want and away you go.

The size of HD files are possibly the biggest issue here. Some recent investigation I did revealed that WMV 9 HD files will end up at about 16 MB for 20 seconds of 24fps at a resolution of 1280x720. That's about 4GB for a 90 minute movie. You'll need a pretty big pipe into your home no matter where the file is served from.

Their own webpages are a little light on content and mostly aimed at helping out the Beta testers, but more useful information can be found on various sites.

iMP is P2P client that allows distribution of BBC programmes. There is a DRM component that stops a programme being watched 7 days after downloading. iMP is a great idea for the BBC as it has the potential to significantly reduce the infrastructure costs in terms of streaming and network bandwidth required. A big question for me though is how robust their DRM technology will prove to be.

I think this is the same series in its US franchise form.

Anyone interested, the link is here. A slightly critical review of the series here.

It wasn't a bad programme, but you were rather at the mercy of the TV studio contestants, some of whom clearly had no idea about about basic tactics (ie. it was clear they had never played anything like it before) or the time period in question (some very questionable uses of shield walls in the face of cavalry kept cropping up IIRC).

Can Peppercoin work?

Might do, lots look like they merely record for later viewing...

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Home+Video+Serve r%22

The fifth and sixth results look like something you would want to investigate for sure!

Most, however, appear to be geared towards serving a local network. This makes alot of sense considering the bandwidth problems over the public internet as opposed to a slick local connection ala 100Mbit switch.

The TechWorld piece touches on how there may be a limit connection between mobile and the Internet. It appears that there's potentially a lot more to it than that.