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Dotnaught writes: "An article that I wrote about a new music promotion service called fightcloud.com and CD pricing in general has just gone up on Salon. And heeding the advice of Dave Winer, I also posted the full transcript of the interview on my Web log, Lot 49, for those curious about what got left on the cutting room floor." Rather than complaining that Big Recording's CDs are overpriced, it sounds like this company is simply demonstrating that music (even on physical media) just don't have to cost that much.

Dotnaught writes: "An article that I wrote about a new music promotion service called fightcloud.com and CD pricing in general has just gone up on Salon. And heeding the advice of Dave Winer, I also posted the full transcript of the interview on my Web log, Lot 49, for those curious about what got left on the cutting room floor." Rather than complaining that Big Recording's CDs are overpriced, it sounds like this company is simply demonstrating that music (even on physical media) just don't have to cost that much.

Last week, you posted your questions to SomaFM's General Manger, Rusty, and today he delivers. In this interview: answers about CARP (which was wisely rejected by the Library of Congress, this week), the RIAA, the workings of an internet radio station, and of course, Big URL.

1) how much does the recording industry really care?
by Laplace

I was curious to know how much the recording industry cares about small stations. Do you think that the Recording Industry Association of America is going to come after these tiny internet broadcasters, some of which are run out of someone's bedroom, and actually try to enforce this legislation? Given the bandwidth small stations operate on, their lack of mainstream exposure, and the tiny bang for the (litigious) buck, it seems that the record industry can spend their resources elsewhere with greater effect.

Rusty:

I think the RIAA is very concerned with small broadcasters, and that they will go after them the same way they've gone after small web sites that post MP3 files. Just like the movie companies were sending cease and desist letters to all the fan sites out there.

Think about it, just in the last few months we've been hearing about how the RIAA's been suing companies who have MP3s on company fileservers.

If you can stay under the radar, more power to you. But once you start getting more than 50 concurrent listeners, you'll start getting their attention. Small stations have been getting letters from ASCAP and BMI for a long time, and the RIAA stands to gain much higher revenues than they do. With the proposed rates of 0.14 cents per song per listener, that works out to roughly $0.50 a day per concurrent listener, or $180 a year per concurrent listener. You can see that even a small station with 10 average concurrent listeners could owe them a decent amount of money each year.

I think they'll come after anyone listed in a popular listing directory, be that Shoutcast.com or the Icecast YP.

This whole CARP thing also seems more about control by the record companies rather than just pure monetary greed. The major labels only want to push their superstars. They're not interested in a diverse marketplace. CARP isn't just about money, it also includes some overly burdensome reporting requirements (including stupid things like each listeners time zone!). To me, it's pretty obvious that the major labels want to control what the public is listening to. That's why they're paying huge amounts in "legal payola" to the big broadcast chains. They don't want independent programmers fragmenting their potential audience.

And the way they'll enforce it is by going after the ISPs. The DMCA has some pretty clear methods for dealing with that. So it will be simple for the RIAA to use provisions of the DMCA to shut down the ones that aren't worth suing.

2) Thoughts about Digital Rights Management?
by SPYvSPY

Given the availability of programs like streamripper (and others like it, I guess), do you have any plans to accomodate the myriad of digital rights management schemes in the pipeline? Which, if any, do you support or intend to implement? Do you think that you have an obligation to do so? BTW, keep up the good work. I can say with total sincerity that your stations have introduced me music that I would otherwise never have heard. I thank you, (and so does my iPod). ;)

Rusty:

The bottom line is that DRM doesn't work. It's like a speed bump, not a barrier. You can always use something like Total Recorder to record the bits going to the sound drivers. You can always plug a minidisc recorder into the audio outs on your computer. And you can always make a cassette off of the radio.

That being said we're not big fans of streamrippers. Bandwidth costs real money, and we have licensing fees (ASCAP/BMI) that are based on numbers of listeners and revenue. If someone is streamripping all day long, and they're not listening, they're costing us money. The latest versions of the Shoutcast server as well as the Shoutcast YP are not too friendly to streamrippers but again, that's just another speedbump.

Streamrippers do have their place for time-shifting, and taking a program with you in the car or on your iPod. But in those cases, you'd be ripping a continuous chunk of audio, not trying to split it up into discrete audio tracks. After all, we want people to listen to our full presentation. We may implement things to make it harder to split the tracks automatically.

As for an obligation to implement other forms of DRM, I guess I would have to see what that DRM was. And since our music is segued and we talk over the intros, when people do streamrip us they're not getting cleanly split versions of the tracks we're playing anyway!

3) Pirate Mythology
by tcd004

Right now Internet Radio enjoys a sort of "pirate" image, which I think endears it to many people because they feel like they're supporting independent media.

However, my guess is that as it grows and becomes more profitable, most Internet radio is bound to end up owned by 2-5 big players, as is the case with most other media. Do you expect internet radio to get bought up like the movie studios, local TV stations and radio stations, or do you think it will be able to stay independent?

Would mergers and consolidation ruin internet radio, or would it help it?

Rusty:

I'm not sure I agree with the "pirate" terminology, but I get your drift. We're independent, we're not mainstream, we're an alternative, we're indie, we're not part of the system.

I disagree that internet radio will be owned by several big players. Remember, net radio doesn't have the limitations that over the air broadcast stations do. There are a limited number of over the air stations in each city. This is because broadcast radio spectrum is limited (the FM band is twenty whole megahertz wide, the AM bandwidth is just over one megahertz wide!) However, the net is different, while not infinite there is a whole lot of room out there for content. There are over 3,000 stations listed in Shoutcast.com right now, and I'm sure there is an equal number of stations in other formats. There are less than 13,000 FCC licensed AM and FM stations in the United States. In all major metro markets, there is no more room for additional AM/FM stations. There is plenty of room for more stations in the 'net.

Will there be mergers and consolidation? Probably. Will this ruin it? Probably not. Here's how I see it: I think you'll see lots of stations join together into "groups". Maybe they'll be ad supported, and sell ads across the group. Maybe they'll be subscription based, and by subscribing to the group, you'll have access to all the member stations.

I'm sure a lot of stations will "sell out" to big media companies. And then their programming will get just as boring as the programming from the big media companies. Which in turn will mean that people who are tired of the same old shit will look for something different, the kind of programming only being played on the stations that didn't sell out.

I see it as a continual flow, a cycle almost. Would we sell out? Right now we are running purely on donations and donated bandwidth, so if someone offered us a way to keep running it like it is now with guaranteed bandwidth and actually pay me a salary, that would be great. There is also a lot of things we'd like to do to improve the quality of our streams but they'd all cost money. Same with our plans for additional channels. We've got plans for 6 more niche channels in the works but we can't afford to get them going at this time.

SomaFM could even go away tomorrow not due to CARP, but if everyone suddenly pulled their bandwidth. Donations aren't going to come close to covering the potential bandwidth bill of $12,000-20,000 a month. That really isn't control.

4) Cutting out RIAA music
by mcc

Something that has been brought up a couple times in other threads, and that I am kind of curious about:

The CARP is something the RIAA is imposing, correct?

Does this or does this not mean that if an internet radio station were certain to only play music by non-RIAA artists, it could stay in business? It would not be terribly easy to find material for a net radio station that only played independent music, but it would be possible, i think, and at the least i'd listen to it.

But am i just confused? Would that be feasible from a royalties standpoint? What exactly is the royalties relationship between independent record labels and internet radio, before or after CARP?

One more small question: the page on CARP on your site says that non-US broadcasters would not be subject to the CARP fees. How would this work out? Would this just mean that anyone in Canada would be able to netcast worldwide without having to pay any fees other than the ones imposed by their government? Or would stations outside the U.S. be barred from netcasting to U.S. citizens? If stations outside the U.S. are allowed to run free, what would the regulations say about a server in the U.S. that is just repeating what is being broadcast by an internet streaming radio station located outside the U.S.-- so that the lag created by the internet links that go across the atlantic ocean are minimized. Could a repeater of this sort be classified as just another router, or would the repeater be subject to the CARP payments?

Thanks for clarifying things.. just curious. Hopefully, the LoC will see through this blatant attempt by the RIAA to silence internet radio and none of the above questions will ever become an issue. I wish you luck..

Rusty:

The CARP is the outcome of a provision of the DMCA known as the compulsory license. What that means, is that an internet broadcaster can get a license to broadcast any recorded works without getting prior permission from the copyright holder. The compulsory part means that the copyright owners must give it to you. In return the CARP set a royalty fee that would be paid to Sound Exchange, an unincorporated division of the RIAA. Sound Exchange is then obligated to distribute that money to the copyright owners and the performance artists, after keeping a cut for their efforts.

If a radio station was to get permission from the holder of the copyright of the sound recording - they could broadcast it without being subject to the DMCA compulsory license. It would not be easy to do this, and would require a lot of paperwork, but it could be done. The biggest issues that arise is what happens when the copyright is sold? This has happened with many electronica artists. They created the recording, they gave us permission to play it. But then they sold it to a record label who no longer gives us permission to play it. So the only way in that case we can play it is through the compulsory license.

This is what is hurting SomaFM the most. When we started back in 1999, we were playing unknown obscure ambient music. Labels would contact us after finding their tracks in the playlists and thank us for playing them. But as ambient electronica became more and more popular, big labels started buying the rights. Now those big labels won't even return our emails... and we're the people who did so much to expose and popularize their artists.

As for non-US broadcasters, the CARP fees don't apply to them, but similar, albeit substantially lesser, fees do. European stations have to pay a "Phonographic Performance License". My understanding is that this is a 3-6% of revenue fee. Stations outside the US won't run free, they'll just run at an affordable, reasonable rate.

As to the question of whether repeaters would be considered a "source of broadcast", we are not sure and it will probably take a court challenge to clarify it.

5) Royalties loophole?
by Dan Crash

The statutory royalty rate for Internet simulcasts of FM radio broadcasts is only half that of Internet-only broadcasts. So couldn't any web station cut their royalties in half by spending $34.95 (plus shipping) to buy a micro-FM transmitter?

Here's what the law says in Title 17, ? 114. Scope of exclusive rights in sound recordings:

The performance of a sound recording publicly by means of a digital audio transmission, other than as a part of an interactive service, is not an infringement of section 106(6) if the performance is part of ...a nonsubscription broadcast transmission.

It doesn't require you to be a licensed or noncommercial broadcaster, simply that your performance is broadcast freely over the airwaves.

Has the webcasting industry looked into this loophole at all? Seems to me that cutting your operating expenses roughly in half could be the difference between economic life and death for most companies.

Rusty:

You are correct that the compulsory rate for Internet simulcasts of FM radio broadcasts is only half that of Internet-only broadcasts. However, that is still a huge amount of money. For SomaFM, that would still amount to over $150,000 for the next year, or about 6-7 times our estimated revenues.

But buying a micro FM transmitter doesn't help. If you read further on, you'll note that Section 114 of Title 17 defines a "broadcast" transmission a transmission made by a terrestrial broadcast station licensed as such by the Federal Communications Commission.

Remember, in the US, you can't broadcast freely over the airwaves except in certain designated bands, and then only within certain limits.

6) Fraunhofer, and OGG Vorbis
by E1ven

What amount do you currently pay in MP3 liscensing, in order to stream SomaFM over the internet?

With all the threats and attacks to MP3 streaming by Fraunhofer, have you considered moving to streaming OGG Vorbis files?

As Winamp is now shipping with native support, this could be a good way of shaving down some of the fees regarding your business.

Rusty:

We are not paying licensing fees to Fraunhofer, although we do own a licensed copy of their encoder. We currently use LAME for all Mp3 streams.

We are intrigued with OGG Vorbis compression, and would like to start experimenting with it soon. We've been kind of kind of busy with all the politicking lately to spend time on technical experiments.

There are a few problems we face: all our music is currently stored as high bit rate MP3 files. (192-320kb). From what I've seen, OGG does not do a good job recompressing MP3 files. Our broadcast playback software plays back and segues music files, does some audio processing (automatic gain control and some light dynamics compression), sends the bit stream to the LAME encoder and then onto the server. This sounds pretty good even though in the end, the listener is getting a file that has been double MP3 compressed. But add OGG to that equation, and the recompression could sound pretty bad. We still have to experiment with this more. OGG is in our future. As storage gets cheaper, we'll re-encode our music in a non-lossy format.

And as soon as Tag and Tom ship a version of the Shoutcast DSP with OGG codec support that is stable, we'll start running an experimental stream.

7) Popular (internet) music on the Radio?
by Traa

As much as I love internet radio and hope to see it stay I have been wondering why some of the more popular music themes on the internet are not available on commercial radio. I am talking about the sounds of SomaFM's Groove Salad, Digitally Imported and other internet radio stations playing Ambient, Trance or any of the other more mellow versions of Electronic House. What in your opinion is the reason we can't find these styles on commercial radio?

Best of luck and keep up the good work!

Rusty:

The audience isn't big enough to make it worthwhile to advertisers. The broadcast band isn't big enough to hold fringe formats. Formats succeed on internet radio because the audience is NOT limited to a geographical area. I think the place you'll see these formats first is satellite radio. We've talked a bit to XM, but they are still under the impression that electronic music = dance music. They don't realize how broad the genre is, and lumping them all together would be like mixing Dixieland jazz and blues and smooth jazz together on the same channel. XM is starting to come around and we've been told that they're actively considering some type of "Chill Out / Downtempo" channel.

8) Will CARP (crap) affect overseas operators?
by an Anonymous Coward

The beauty of the Internet is that no single government (or stupid government person) could stop an entire class of service - look at Internet gambling. That said, why not relocate to a co/lo service in India?

Or, better yet, just run amok of the law? Last I heard, the Library of Congress is a library, not an authorized body to create policy. Since they are attempting to do so, why not block them on the grounds that they are exceeding their charter, and therefore, acting against the constitution?

Also, the fact that internet based transmissions are treated differently than FM based transmissions is ridiculous. This is the foundation of the "separate but equal" crap that CARP is funnelling.

128k MP3 (and less) is not a perfect reproduction of sound, as the LoC contends. It is no more perfect than FM, and no less perfect. Both formats mangle stereo separation, both add audio artifacts, and both deduct from clarity and depth of the source's timbre. The only real difference is one is digital, and the other analog.

And both formats HELP drive record sales. The big difference to the RIAA is that they don't control the channels of distribution for MP3 servers. All SomaFM, or any other internet broadcaster needs is a music library, a fast connection to the net and powerful servers. In order to broadcast on the air, you need to give some slimy FCC official a kickback, and/or be owned by TimeWarnerAOL, Vivendi, or Viacom.

I can't help but see the future of the RIAA - all the offices burned to the ground and the leadership decapitated. This another one of those infuriating instances where their feeble attempts at limiting distribution channels so that everyone listens to the same, soulless crap that record producers are puking at us.

Rusty:

Why not set up in India? Well, I like living in San Francisco and can't afford to move to India (I have to have a day job to pay my bills, SomaFM loses money). So we'd have to "virtually" run out of India and control things from here. That's a pretty lose loophole and won't protect us. It sounds good in theory but when you dive into it you realize that we would still be a target for the RIAA. Unless we were buying the CDs here and mailing them over there to be digitized and loaded into playback systems over there, we would still be breaking copyright law. Not to mention we could never do any more live broadcasts from the US. So that option is out.

While the Library of Congress is only setting the royalty rate, they're not charged with enforcing the law. The law is set in place by the DMCA. And as I get older, it's scary enough for me when I get a letter from the IRS, let alone a knock on the door from the FBI.

If we were rich enough, and had enough money or a bunch of lawyer friends, we would form a LLC and challenge them. But just to give you an idea of what it would cost- the costs associated with being a part of the original CARP hearings came out to $300,000 per each participant. Yahoo and MTV can afford that, but we can't.

Keep in mind that CARP only sets the fees that are required by the DMCA. We can't change provisions of the DMCA by going after the Library of Congress, or complaining about CARP. We can only hope to get a fee basis from CARP that will not bankrupt internet stations.

9) Business Model
by Everach

How does SomaFM compare fiscally to a traditional FM or AM business?

Specifically, are there any fiscal advantages to using an internet-only format to outweight the disadvanges (like a lack of big-name advertising)?

Rusty:

The fiscal advantages to being internet-only:

Massively lower startup costs. We were able to get started almost immediately. Even if we could have gotten a license and construction permit to build a new FM station, it would have taken a year with all the regulations you have to go through. Not to mention the ongoing regulations that over the air stations have to deal with (FCC licenses bring with them lots of FCC mandated record keeping and such).

The disadvantages:

Incremental costs increase as audience increases (bandwidth mostly). Can't reach people in cars, which are a huge potential audience. We don't get respect from record companies (e.g. we have to call and beg just to get copies of CDs, they rarely automatically send them to us), nor do we get the legalized payola known as indie promotion to play their music.

But to me, the most important thing is the global reach we get by being internet only. We can now get decent sized audiences for extremely niche music genres and formats.

10) Big Earl [spelled 'Big URL' actually] by hitchhacker

Hi Rusty, thanks for the beautiful music!

I wanted to know what you use for Big Earl's voice synthesis. It sounds awfully similar to Dr. Sbaitso from the early 90's.

Also, I noticed that there are many songs that have disapeared from Groove Salad's playlist from around last year. (GOOD songs). I wanted to know if this is because you were forced to remove them, and how many other artists/labels are being held back this way. This music is so good it gives me goose-bumps, and I can't stand the thought that there is more that I am missing.

my letter is off to my controllers^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentatives.

Rusty:

Big Url's voice is driven by an old bell labs text to speech demonstration site. He's the "Big Man" voice. Google for Bell Labs TTS and you'll find it. Sadly, the site crashes from time to time - I'm not sure but I get the feeling it's one old timer who keeps the site working. We're glad whoever keeps it up does, because we'd miss his voice otherwise.

The only songs that have disappeared are songs that we only had in MP2 format and have lost the original CDs for them. We try and re-encode them as we re-discover them. The reason for this is that the playback automation software we now use (from OtsJuke.com) only handles MP3 compression. But there were less than 50 songs that way. I don't think there are any others we are missing, we generally don't completely remove songs, we just play them a lot less frequently. In the last year, we've removed less than 20 songs from the playlist. There are probably close to 15,000 tracks that we play on the air.

securitas writes "The NYTimes tells us Senator Trent Lott forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill requiring ISPs and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation. I urge Trent Lott's constituents to make your voices heard on this. Same goes for readers whose senators serve on the Senate Commerce Committee." Salon and EPIC have written about Hollings' bill.

purduephotog writes "In an effort to preserve and expose scholars around the world to rapidly plundered historical texts, a joint project between the University of California and the Max Planck Institute have photographed and digitized around 60,000 tablets. An overview is available at ABCNews, while the main site can be found at at UCLA." The ironic part is whether the digitized versions will last/be usable longer then the clay tablets.

EyesWideOpen writes "There is an excellent (and lengthy) two part article (part 1, part 2) at Salon detailing the rise, and... rise, of Nvidia and how the company came to rest atop the 3-D graphics chip industry with a little help from Microsoft. The article discusses how Nvidia was able to persevere in the multi-billion dollar industry while other graphics chip companies, such as 3Dfx which was bought by Nvidia, did not fare as well."

EyesWideOpen writes "There is an excellent (and lengthy) two part article (part 1, part 2) at Salon detailing the rise, and... rise, of Nvidia and how the company came to rest atop the 3-D graphics chip industry with a little help from Microsoft. The article discusses how Nvidia was able to persevere in the multi-billion dollar industry while other graphics chip companies, such as 3Dfx which was bought by Nvidia, did not fare as well."

In celebration of the release of AotC, here are a bunch of random SW stories that have fluttered through our bin: Tim Drage has made a Lego Star Wars movie, POds sent us a fan film Fan Film (quicktime. Bah). Here is a comic to share and enjoy. iamchaos noted that the next Matrix Trailer will be showing with Clones. nellardo sent in a fine tribute to darth maul. Anyone want a Star Wars Axe? Zack sent us a great collection of SW Characters you won't see as much as you might want to. wiredog sent us some spoilers, the Skywalker family tree and how Anakin becomes Vader. peter_gzowski sent in an essay by Ebert where he gives it 2 of 4 stars, and discusses the digital filming. Finally ant sent us a bizarre tale of some guys who got the brilliant idea to build a life-size Millenium Falcon. So there it is folks. I have tickets for a 12:01 showing in Ann Arbor and I'll be getting in line in just a few short hours.

battlebot writes: "O'Reilly's ONlamp.com is running an interview with the bnetd developers that goes into great detail about how exactly they reverse-engineered Battle.net. This is by the same guy who wrote the recent Salon article, though is far more technical. They talk a little bit about their legal troubles too, and even sheepishly admit that perhaps talking to a lawyer earlier in the process would have been a good idea. Has this project been successfully squashed?"

macnigel writes "DOE tries to find a good warning sign for the nuclear waste dump out in Nevada. This is one of those scary yet true things our government actually does; research into finding what exactly can be interpreted as "dangerous" 10,000 years from now." I was sure we had run a story about this before, but I don't see it in the archives. The report on how to mark the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (complete version in pdf 19.5Mb) makes chilling, yet somehow inspiring reading, and IMHO is much less deserving of mockery than the Salon author makes it out to be.

dave cutler writes "Salon has an amusing little wire article claiming that Microsoft argues that were they to provide any greater technical detail about protocols and APIs, it would make computers running their operating system far more vulnerable to cracking attacks." Update: 05/09 13:59 GMT by M : The benefit to customers of Microsoft integrating internet services into the operating system, as well as Microsoft's commitment to security, are exemplified in this article which notes yet another remote root hole in Microsoft's code.

Selanit writes "Salon.com is reporting on a company which exploited a vulnerability in an old but common version of Internet Explorer's Java engine to install spyware on the visitor's machine. " It's a pretty in depth story showing the lack of respect that some companies have. My favorite part is that the guy who denies any knowledge of the trojan popup is named 'Frank Bigott'.

EyesWideOpen writes: "There is an article at Salon that covers a U.S. District Judge's ruling that computer games don't deserve First Amendment protection. The ruling is in response to The Interactive Digital Software Association's request for the dismissal of an ordinance that requires parental consent before children under 17 can buy or play violent or sexually explicit video games. From the Salon article: 'From his ruling, [US District Judge] Limbaugh appears to believe that no amount of contextual information, or additional narrative, in a game is enough to make it a work of art or expression worthy of the name 'free speech.'' The judge's deliberations were based in part on his review of four games: 'Fear Effect,' 'Doom,' 'Mortal Kombat' and 'Resident Evil'."

EyesWideOpen writes: "There is an article at Salon that covers a U.S. District Judge's ruling that computer games don't deserve First Amendment protection. The ruling is in response to The Interactive Digital Software Association's request for the dismissal of an ordinance that requires parental consent before children under 17 can buy or play violent or sexually explicit video games. From the Salon article: 'From his ruling, [US District Judge] Limbaugh appears to believe that no amount of contextual information, or additional narrative, in a game is enough to make it a work of art or expression worthy of the name 'free speech.'' The judge's deliberations were based in part on his review of four games: 'Fear Effect,' 'Doom,' 'Mortal Kombat' and 'Resident Evil'."

Lots of updates, amplifications and followups in tonight's Slashback. Clones are on the way, the Agenda Linux-based PDA isn't quite dead, Gates' testimony is online, (surprize!) Hollings' so-called privacy bill could have a very different upshot, and much much more. Read on below for the details.

I can't be dead -- I still have batteries! Bill Kendrick writes: "Just when you thought the first Linux-based PDA was dead and gone, someone announces a compatible version, the STVR3 from Softfield Technologies (who actually did the hardware design for the original AgendaVR3). Only $105 for the 8MB, and $135 for a new 16MB version. Not bad if you want a bash prompt in your pocket, and can't afford the $500 for a Zaurus!"

De gustibus non est disputandum. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Mosfet has posted a reply to Bart Decrem's interview regarding Bart's comments on KDE and its looks. Mosfet explains how KDE has a very elegant system for users and developers using the flexibility of C++ and Qt, which creates a more consistent look and feel. He makes many good points that developers and users often disregard when considering desktop environments and their toolkits. Good read, expecially for those who participate in the 'Desktop Wars.'"

Borrowed at gunpoint, but spent much more freely. blankmange writes: "CNet is carrying a followup to a story that was posted here not too long ago. The State of California apparently ordered too many licenses for Oracle's database software: 'A top official in California Gov. Gray Davis' administration has resigned in a growing controversy over a $95 million software contract with Oracle. Barry Keene, director of the state's Department of General Services, quit after a highly critical state audit said the contract--awarded without competitive bids and for software that is little used--could cost taxpayers $41 million.' Sounds like there may be more resignations and a further investigation."

I wish Gary Trudeau would run a few strips skewering these presumptuous bureaucrat wastrels, prodigal even by the standards of the public trough.

Welcome to my secret underground lair. ceswiedler writes: "Salon is running a story that Sen. Hollings' new Online Personal Privacy Act 'would place a congressional stamp of approval on precisely the kinds of practices that purveyors of spyware are eager to engage in.' The writer is particularly concered with the 'nonsensitive' information clause, which is 'a huge gaping loophole' for companies like KaZaA and Brilliant Digital."

Science greatly ups my odds of reproducing. Transcendent writes: "I just recently read an article at SpaceDaily about how there are three women due to give birth to clones. Italian Professor, Severino Antinori, told reporters that two of the women were from the former Soviet Rebublic, and one from an Islamic country. They're keeping specific details from the public, but it's still a huge shake to an ever-changing legal, scientific, and moral society."

A bedtime story for very, very bad children. tulare writes: "Microsoft is hosting Bill Gates' written testimony online. At 42,000 words, it's not neccessarily light reading, but to their credit, it is nicely indexed. Probably a must-read." Also good for European insomniacs to start boring through.

Lobby your library. Lots of readers inquired where they could find copies of The Computer and the Skateboard . Filmmaker Paul David writes: "DVD copies of this movie will be ready to ship in mid-may. The Cinema Guild website will be e-commerce ready by June 1. If you would like to order a copy before June 1, The Cinema Guild will take your order over the phone: (800) 723-5522 or (212) 685-6242. dvds for home use are $59.95. vhs copies (for home use) are available for $79.95."

Lots of updates, amplifications and followups in tonight's Slashback. Clones are on the way, the Agenda Linux-based PDA isn't quite dead, Gates' testimony is online, (surprize!) Hollings' so-called privacy bill could have a very different upshot, and much much more. Read on below for the details.

I can't be dead -- I still have batteries! Bill Kendrick writes: "Just when you thought the first Linux-based PDA was dead and gone, someone announces a compatible version, the STVR3 from Softfield Technologies (who actually did the hardware design for the original AgendaVR3). Only $105 for the 8MB, and $135 for a new 16MB version. Not bad if you want a bash prompt in your pocket, and can't afford the $500 for a Zaurus!"

De gustibus non est disputandum. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Mosfet has posted a reply to Bart Decrem's interview regarding Bart's comments on KDE and its looks. Mosfet explains how KDE has a very elegant system for users and developers using the flexibility of C++ and Qt, which creates a more consistent look and feel. He makes many good points that developers and users often disregard when considering desktop environments and their toolkits. Good read, expecially for those who participate in the 'Desktop Wars.'"

Borrowed at gunpoint, but spent much more freely. blankmange writes: "CNet is carrying a followup to a story that was posted here not too long ago. The State of California apparently ordered too many licenses for Oracle's database software: 'A top official in California Gov. Gray Davis' administration has resigned in a growing controversy over a $95 million software contract with Oracle. Barry Keene, director of the state's Department of General Services, quit after a highly critical state audit said the contract--awarded without competitive bids and for software that is little used--could cost taxpayers $41 million.' Sounds like there may be more resignations and a further investigation."

I wish Gary Trudeau would run a few strips skewering these presumptuous bureaucrat wastrels, prodigal even by the standards of the public trough.

Welcome to my secret underground lair. ceswiedler writes: "Salon is running a story that Sen. Hollings' new Online Personal Privacy Act 'would place a congressional stamp of approval on precisely the kinds of practices that purveyors of spyware are eager to engage in.' The writer is particularly concered with the 'nonsensitive' information clause, which is 'a huge gaping loophole' for companies like KaZaA and Brilliant Digital."

Science greatly ups my odds of reproducing. Transcendent writes: "I just recently read an article at SpaceDaily about how there are three women due to give birth to clones. Italian Professor, Severino Antinori, told reporters that two of the women were from the former Soviet Rebublic, and one from an Islamic country. They're keeping specific details from the public, but it's still a huge shake to an ever-changing legal, scientific, and moral society."

A bedtime story for very, very bad children. tulare writes: "Microsoft is hosting Bill Gates' written testimony online. At 42,000 words, it's not neccessarily light reading, but to their credit, it is nicely indexed. Probably a must-read." Also good for European insomniacs to start boring through.

Lobby your library. Lots of readers inquired where they could find copies of The Computer and the Skateboard . Filmmaker Paul David writes: "DVD copies of this movie will be ready to ship in mid-may. The Cinema Guild website will be e-commerce ready by June 1. If you would like to order a copy before June 1, The Cinema Guild will take your order over the phone: (800) 723-5522 or (212) 685-6242. dvds for home use are $59.95. vhs copies (for home use) are available for $79.95."

Andrew Leonard writes: "In the wake of the Ad-Aware/RadLight spyware vs. anti-spyware showdown, Salon has an interview with Ad-Aware's Nicholas Stark, who explains in no uncertain terms Lavasoft's determination to match every move by the spyware developers."

Andrew Leonard writes: "In the wake of the Ad-Aware/RadLight spyware vs. anti-spyware showdown, Salon has an interview with Ad-Aware's Nicholas Stark, who explains in no uncertain terms Lavasoft's determination to match every move by the spyware developers."

Last week we noted that Senator Hollings had introduced a privacy bill and that there were likely to be more introduced. Now Salon has a piece critical of Hollings' bill. EPIC wrote about it as well, and they seem to think it's not too bad, all things considered. Read Hollings' bill yourself and decide who's right. Also of note is a bill introduced in the House that would require all Federal agencies to prepare privacy impact statements (the ACLU has a summary) akin to the environmental impact statements now required for actions adversely affecting the environment. Seems like a good idea to me.

Romancer writes "According to this article, Recent X-box "Sales have been disappointing, and the co-creator of Microsoft's game console just quit his job -- a day before a book portraying him as a hero hit the bookstores." " The article itself is allright, but it has a lot of good links.

An anonymous reader points to this "good article from the Boston Globe about the culture of CD burning, and how hard it will be for the RIAA to stop it. Some interesting quotes: 'There's a "sex appeal" to burning CDs, says [Sheryl] Crow, adding that it is a social event for young people, just as listening to 45s was once a social event for their parents.' An interesting one from Hilary Rosen: "I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?' So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people." Seems like at least one musician thinks his A paper is being peddled all over town.

splorf writes "Salon has a good new article on computer forensics, focusing on Lee Tydalska, a guy in Southern California who started collecting old computers and peripherals as a hobby, and now has a nice business doing data recovery from weird and obsolete media for investigators (or normal users who just need media conversion). "It hardly needs saying why this craft has grown in importance", the article says, "but if one word sums it up, it's 'Enron-itis'". Oh yes, the #1 outfit in the field is apparently a UK firm called Vogon International. You've got to love this stuff."

splorf writes "Salon has a good new article on computer forensics, focusing on Lee Tydalska, a guy in Southern California who started collecting old computers and peripherals as a hobby, and now has a nice business doing data recovery from weird and obsolete media for investigators (or normal users who just need media conversion). "It hardly needs saying why this craft has grown in importance", the article says, "but if one word sums it up, it's 'Enron-itis'". Oh yes, the #1 outfit in the field is apparently a UK firm called Vogon International. You've got to love this stuff."

An anonymous submitter writes: "Ladies and gents, the endtimes have begun. The Seattle Times is reporting that Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House (or 'America's CIO', as he bills himself) has said the feds are considering the use of Microsoft's Passport technology to ID every citizen and every business seeking access to government services online. This is about as scary as it gets." To be fair, it looks very preliminary. Read the article. So many companies have tried to assist the government in providing services over the Net... but I guess if your lobbyists are good enough, you can be heard at the top.

zephc writes "According to The Register, Dominic Giampaolo, creator of BFS, Be's journaling file system, has 'joined Apple as a file system engineer. He started last week.' As a Mac user and former BeOS user, I am delighted to hear this, as it has great implications for the future of filesystems on the Mac. The article is a great transcript with Dominic and another BeOS great, Benoit Schillings." Another user adds, "Interesting for a man who once said that Apple was the epitome of everything Be was not."

Jadsky writes "Salon is is running a story about how modifications to games are now the lifeblood of the industry. It cites "Day of Defeat", an add-on to Half-Life, and proceeds to give an analysis of the history and current work on game mods. It also mentions Castle Smurfenstein and the Doom Construction Kit, which many of us played with before there was z-space."

Jadsky writes "Salon is is running a story about how modifications to games are now the lifeblood of the industry. It cites "Day of Defeat", an add-on to Half-Life, and proceeds to give an analysis of the history and current work on game mods. It also mentions Castle Smurfenstein and the Doom Construction Kit, which many of us played with before there was z-space."

mikelove writes "Salon has an article arguing that Star Wars owes its origins to pulp science fiction and not Joseph Campbell-esque mythology. Finally SOMEONE is realizing this... Also makes the suggestion that Lucas/Kasdan didn't really write The Empire Strikes Back, which makes a certain amount of sense when you compare it to Lucas' other screenplays."

Microsoft is in the news for two reasons today: the continuing saga of the antitrust cases, and Microsoft's public relations push for "trustworthy computing". A selection of links: Microsoft claims two months of code reviews and half-day seminars surpasses everything ever done by the open source community; Salon talks about the problems with a monoculture; SBC, an abusive telecom monopoly, complains about Microsoft's behavior, an abusive OS monopoly; and Microsoft responds, claiming that SBC is merely being self-serving.

Microsoft is in the news for two reasons today: the continuing saga of the antitrust cases, and Microsoft's public relations push for "trustworthy computing". A selection of links: Microsoft claims two months of code reviews and half-day seminars surpasses everything ever done by the open source community; Salon talks about the problems with a monoculture; SBC, an abusive telecom monopoly, complains about Microsoft's behavior, an abusive OS monopoly; and Microsoft responds, claiming that SBC is merely being self-serving.

jso888 writes "Salon has a nice article today on Meir Lehman's work on how software evolves and is developed. Lehman's investigation of the IBM OS/360 development process became the foundation for Brooks' Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." He is hopeful that his work will make software development less of an art and more of an engineering science."

klaun writes "Salon is running a story about a federal suit against members of an Internet mailing list. Seems a company got a bad review on the list and the owner sued the person that said it and everyone who agreed. But the case grew bigger from there, including a suit against the legal defense fund set up to support members of the list being sued and anyone who linked to the defense fund. The ultimate rub of it all is that it basically worked. Most of the defendants have settled." This is a truly bizarre story.

klaun writes "Salon is running a story about a federal suit against members of an Internet mailing list. Seems a company got a bad review on the list and the owner sued the person that said it and everyone who agreed. But the case grew bigger from there, including a suit against the legal defense fund set up to support members of the list being sued and anyone who linked to the defense fund. The ultimate rub of it all is that it basically worked. Most of the defendants have settled." This is a truly bizarre story.

Andrew Leonard writes: "Steve Marks, VP of legal affairs of the RIAA, is duking it out with critics in a point-counterpoint debate focusing on the nitty-gritty details of how artists will be compensated by the new rules on Webcasting royalties."

Andrew Leonard writes: "Steve Marks, VP of legal affairs of the RIAA, is duking it out with critics in a point-counterpoint debate focusing on the nitty-gritty details of how artists will be compensated by the new rules on Webcasting royalties."

jso888 writes "After Network Associates decided to halt further development of PGP, I'm sure that many users like myself who use non-CLI platforms most of the time, wondered "what next?" (PGP Freeware is not an option, since it's tied into the Network Associates product). Salon today has a nice article on GnuPG, the Open PGP/GNU alternative. The article highlights one of the problems with Open Source software today: its "by the geek, for the geek" nature, which by and large places barriers to mass adoption of OSS, especially important capabilities like personal encryption. One of the nice things about NAI PGP was its ease of use and commercial polish. It was easy to install and use, and integrated nicely with Windows software like Eudora and ICQ. GnuPG, admittedly, isn't quite there yet, the article concludes. That's too bad; given the privacy-hostile world we live in, the last thing we need is another barrier to widespread cryptography adoption."

curunir writes: "Salon is running an interesting interview with the program manager for the internet radio station, SomaFM. He discusses some of the effects of the recent CARP recommendations (previously discussed on /. here). We all know the DMCA is bad, but this seems to be a particularly good example of where its broad nature is curbing reasonable web uses."

curunir writes: "Salon is running an interesting interview with the program manager for the internet radio station, SomaFM. He discusses some of the effects of the recent CARP recommendations (previously discussed on /. here). We all know the DMCA is bad, but this seems to be a particularly good example of where its broad nature is curbing reasonable web uses."

dlupyan writes: "A federal appeals court said Monday that Napster Inc. may not resume its free online file-swapping service."

feed_me_cereal writes: "Salon has an article describing a new law in Pennsylvania which requires ISPs to prevent access to child pornography on the internet. Under this law, the government can give ISPs a list of websites to block. Failure to do so can result in fines from $5,000 to $30,000 + jailtime. While stopping child pornography sounds noble, it seems that these powers will do little to meet this goal and much to allow the government to decide what websites are suitable for public viewing." Reader lightspawn provided this link to the law itself as well as another story at freedomforum.org.

lapse writes: "PFIR's latest policy statement calls for bringing an end to ICANN. Without assigning blame, it calls for immediate action, and suggests some possible paths forward. Let's hope that this clear statement from such a respected trio will lead to better times ahead for Internet policy management." Salon also has an interview with Karl Auerbach about his lawsuit against ICANN.

NoData writes: "Salon is running an elegant article that covers the current state of the copy protection and circumvention debate. The article touches on the DMCA and the SSSCA, with input from Touretzky, Lessig, and others. It offers a dystopic vision of a future where geeks battle increasingly complex copy protection schemes until ultimately, any consumer control over media is outlawed outright. Refreshingly, the article is not a "Salon Premium" feature."

NoData writes: "Salon is running an elegant article that covers the current state of the copy protection and circumvention debate. The article touches on the DMCA and the SSSCA, with input from Touretzky, Lessig, and others. It offers a dystopic vision of a future where geeks battle increasingly complex copy protection schemes until ultimately, any consumer control over media is outlawed outright. Refreshingly, the article is not a "Salon Premium" feature."

ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."

ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."

burnsy and others sent in links to stories about 802.11b that are cropping up everywhere. The New York Times has one. (Well, two, actually.) Salon has one. InternetNews has a piece about Boingo, a new wireless start-up, that's also covered in this Forbes article. (The NYT article above also mentions Sputnik.) Both Boingo and Sputnik are trying to leverage the existing community wireless networks to speed their network build-outs. MIT's Tech Review has an interesting piece about a wireless start-up that has already tried and failed. Fixed wireless is also booming, according to an industry study.

SimHacker writes: "An article in salon.com reports that the Ricochet wireless network will be bouncing back from the dead! Aerie Networks, who purchased Metricom's Ricochet network for $8.25 million, is going to offer the service in markets where it was popular, like Southern California and the Bay Area. They're also planning to lower the price of the modem from $300 to $100, and lower the monthly flat rate fee from $80 to $50. Ricochet is hardly the perfect wireless network, but it's much faster and more reliable than CDPD, so I'm really looking forward to signing back up."

Slashback tonight with more updates, responses and corrections on scalability in P2P networks, TV shows which may not actually be cancelled, tentative wireless service in the Mile High City, and what exactly OS X is. Read on below for these and more.

The difference between theory and practice ... Paul Harrison writes: "I see your theoretical discussion of a scalable gnutella, and raise you a working, open source implementaion! Details in this linux.conf.au talk."

I was in Berkeley at a party, and then things got hazy. In response to the recent story on fixing the UNIX configuration mess, jbloggs writes: "OS X is not on top of NetBSD, but rather is a BSD compatibility layer on top of a Mach kernel. Its closest BSD-lite would be FreeBSD, which is used as a reference platform."

The problem with unstated motivations. Reader app writes "Tim O'Reilly responds to the BountyQuest piece on Salon and featued here. Tim makes some interesting points and clarifications -- especially where he refers to theodp as a crank."

You can't watch, and neither can they. UberOogie writes: "Who didn't see this coming? The MPA shut down Movie 88 today. What should be noted by everyone is that they took no legal action: they just went to the ISP, HiNet, and got them to shut off the pipe. (Movie88 was legal through a loophole in Tiawan copyright law.) So much for process, even in Tiawan. Movie 88 vows to find another provider."

I hope they use the time to reconsider. Cynical_Dude writes: "David Cohen, one of the producers of Futurama, was interviewed on Cinescape. He says that Futurama is not really cancelled, but will run for another year or so ... at least that's how many episodes they've got more or less ready now. FOX hasn't ordered any additional episodes, but Cohen asks fans to "write those letters [...] in physical form, not email" to the FOX executives."

And in other TV News, Glitch Tybalt writes: "Working for Hot Topic has its benefits. We recieved an e-mail saying that Invader Zim will not be cancelled after all. It seems that it was getting no ratings whatsoever, because they kept changing the time slot for it. Once they had decided to cancell it, they left it in one slot to finish playing the remaining episodes out. Then, since everyone could figure out when it was on, it got great reviews. (plus, the Schweet Schwag has started selling like crazy)the Invader Zim petition must have been pretty convincing as well. I guess one of them stopped to read it before wiping his ass. Maybe there's hope for a megaconglomo like Nikelodeon after all..."

Won't someone start making money with unmetered wireless? tabbser writes: "According to Aerie networks, the folks that bought bankrupt Ricochet (www.richochet.com) tests are being conducted in Denver, CO with the support of the City and county of Denver's Office of information technology. Ricochet will test and evaluate the network as part of an initial step to reactivating the service. The full story can be found on Ricochet's web site news room at http://www.ricochet.com. Go Aerie!" Aerie announced this a while ago, but in these uncertain times it's nice to see it actually happening.

Ashes to ashes, little blinking lights likewise. spike666 writes: "Blinkenlights.de is coming to an end! The Blinkenlights project by the Chaos Computer Club will be ending its run February 23, 2002. It was exposed to /. back here They are having a big party, and we're all invited. One last chance for Taco to embarrass Kathleen ..."

theodp writes: "Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly's once-hyped BountyQuest.com takes a beating in a Salon article today that takes note of Amazon's recent decision to license one of the few patents BountyQuest claimed to have found winning prior art for, a patent held by the InTouch Group, who had sued Amazon for infringing on the patent prior to Bezos' reported $1+ million BountyQuest investment. In the article, professional patent buster Greg Aharonian provocatively remarks that "BountyQuest was always a joke...Bezos and O'Reilly were never seriously interested in patent quality...Bezos just used O'Reilly to help Amazon...That Amazon ended up licensing the InTouch patent just shows how stupid the whole thing is.""

jonerik writes "Salon has this article today about the troubles behind the scenes for Showtime's "Stargate SG-1." Since Michael Shanks left the show in October (a result of his unhappiness with the show's change in focus to "X-Files"-influenced government conspiracy plotlines), women have been abandoning the show in droves. The problems come at a bad time. MGM, which produces the show, is looking to be bought out by a sugar daddy. And the Sci-Fi Channel, which is taking the program over from Showtime for its sixth and final season, can't be happy at the prospect of ending up with a troubled show with plummeting ratings and a fanbase in revolt. " I have yet to see the more recent episodes, but several of the episodes I have seen have been quite excellent (and some others well... weren't) but I know a lot of people who consider SG1 among the best SciFi on TV. Personally I'll take Lexx & Farscape over it, but its not bad.