Slashdot Mirror
Swapping Clock Cycles for Free Music?
droopus writes "USA Today is reporting on an innovative business model for the music business. Free music for your spare CPU cycles.
Honest Thief says the firm has developed software, to be available in the second quarter of this year, that will enable file-sharing providers to capitalize on the unused CPU cycles of their members. That in turn would allow them to raise money to compensate artists for the use of their material.
Honest Thief said the software, known as ThankYou 2.0, enables a peer-to-peer file-sharing client to turn the computers of digital music fans into nodes in a distributed net.
By leasing out the processor power on distributed nets to research facilities the firm could generate revenues that would be distributed back to the musicians.
Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation. "
Although, Kazaa hid it from the users, and kept the profits for themselves...
your PC just sitting there is not worth $150/year. If it were, then the company would just buy one for $450, and depreciate it over 3 years.
Count me in, as long as there's no spyware :\
I dont have spare cycles, i have mp3s to encode.
Since the folks who download music are more likely to "borrow" that cd of Office it would make sense that the first few CPU cycles used will be to send MS or other software supplier a list of all unregistered software on your system. This idea really does work.
To have all the P2P computers on the net "fingerprinting" the files they download for identification purposes. I suppose prosecution for MP3 sharing *could* count as compensation for the artists...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
It sounds really great but it begs the question how much free music for how much cpu power and then what is the point if you are going to download other illegal music anyway, well I guess you may be able to find something in 192kbs that wasn't on kazaa.
As if research institutions have the money to pay people for all those clock cycles. Hell, people do it for SETI for free and SETI *still* has money problems.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
People already donate CPU cycles, if you really want to donate, try clicking on things in Kazaa, you'll know your donating enough cycles when you get a nice gray window that repaints your desktop as you move it. Take that distributed.net.
At least now, I can have my PC slow to a crawl AND help artists.
I can already see this being like SETI.
Then someone will distribute a compromise version and the spyware will literaly take over your computer.
I can see it now.
You go to Google and type in something, automaticaly it goes to gay p0rn sites.
wow what an idea.
Besides what the hell good is a cluster of 56K modem computers for processing power? Time/money would be better spent in building a cluster.
Aren't the vast majority of people still on 56k dial-up connections? Is it really possible to do "distributed computing" using computers that are constantly being turned on and off at irregular and unpredictable intervals?
Looks like they can use all the CPU cycles they can get right now!!
Artist: Where's the Cash?
Honest Thief: All the cash we raised went into taking in that last slashdotting.
No, it wasn't /.ed after 4 posts...
http://www.thehonestthief.com/ is the correct URL.
This is a very creative and interesting business proposition, but how practical could it possibly be in the real world? Who would be willing to have there important research computations being worked out on computers owned by *REALLY* honest people who steal music? I don't see a market for the CPU cycles.
My CPU is busy downloading MP3s...
If I'm giving up my clock cycles, it's not really free, is it?
I have come to believe there is no "free music", just a point where ones tolerance is higher than the perceived level of annoyance caused by the "not free" (whether it's commercials, Carson Daily, or unused processor cycles...)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
i don't see why people wouldn't sign up...they already do it without knowing anyway with all the spyware that is installed...
...but I don't think so. The RIAA & co. wouldn't be interested, beacuse they would not understad the concept. Believe me, they _never_ understand the concepts of new innovations.
Since they will not understand it, they will boycott it and try to ban it.
Geeks wouldn't want to install something that surely will be delivered with a 1096-page EULA stating that Honest Thief can do whatever they please with your CPU, whenever they please, and that they may close your account when they feel like it.
And Joe Sixpack couldn't use it either, because his ISP would ban this bandwith hog.
That's just the way it is, and I am _not_ pessimistic.
Now all we need is automatic music mastering and effects software that makes use of all the spare CPU cycles... Then the studios can use the users cpus to make music(?) that the users can share in exchange for their CPU cycles...
(?) - see the Backstreet Boys website to see why most studios produce is of questionable musicallity...
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
I confess I don't understand the business model here. It seems like Honest Thief is offering to pay record companies from the proceeds from an arguably untested business model, which would generate an unknown amount of money that would be divided among an unknown number of people in an unknown number of ways.
It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave.
Just the 2003 version of an ad-driven "free" ISP service, I'm afraid.
This business model just doesn't make sense. HonestThief is going to compensate users with something they could get for free (illegally) anyway and in a way that's much less portable than cash - so where is the user's incentive? On top of that, HonestThief will have to provide the music store and infrastructure to provide that "payment," not just to the users but the musicians as well. Seems like a MAJOR distraction, as opposed to simply cutting checks for the equivalent value to the users.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Barring these concerns, I would see this as possibly viable...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
But it seems to me to be on the complicated side, expecially on the asset tracking side, and not very reliable. I assume that in time, this could improve, but your clock cycles alone are not worth this sort of reward, even when not pricing music at market. I have no figures to back me up, but if you were to follow the supply vs. demand principal along its natural course, you find it a little hard to believe something like this would be self-sustining.
IOW, does this also solve the music problem (lots and lots of middle men with excesive ratios)?
See here. The evildoers were Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
This time around its Honest Theif.
When will the naming of companies with oxymorons end?!
I don't leave my computers at home on all that much, though. Saving electricity and all.
I'm not quite sure how you are going to get the RIAA clan to trade cycles for music. They much prefer dollars.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
If I can trade my CPU cycles for free *legal* music, I'd have to know what they're going towards. If it's something I completely agree with like F@H, then great! I'm all for it! However if it's something like Seti@Home that I don't agree with, or worse something that I'm morally opposed to, then I'd have to say no means no.
kazaa just keeps trying to run a file called bargains.exe... i just have it automatically shut down... then again that might just be kazaa lite... that definitely doesnt use my spare cpu cycles as im running seti 24/7 and thats always at about 100% cpu use +/- 5%
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
..and most of the teens I know wouldnt even notice the fact their computer is not only full of spy and adware but now is being used by companies they don't even know about. What does make me ponder a bit is how this could be secure, most companies that use distributed net's use their own software.. I just don't see how you could do this without a user having to be present, and even then, securely.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
"Available in the second quarter" is not a real implementation, it's vapourware, at least for now.
clock cycles from a computer are worth Cents on the day.... hell we leave our comp on all day and it costs us jack-nothing almost.
.... traded....
You can sell that distributed power to firms and even they are going to realize how much the true cost/value of such a net is.
which in turn is going to make the value of selling such power go down... the revenue from even selling 80% of Kazzaa's distributed computing wouldn't match the "lost" sales of even just the TOP 40 artists or so "traded" on the P2P network. Much less the huge amount of other artists who become
the real solution is to stay ahead of the RIAA , MPAA, DRM, and paladium/itanium by cracking their shit quickly until the media industry is forced to re-shape itself into a more communal buisness model which would award the artists more and promote the local talent more.
-- enter the sig --
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
"Is it really possible to do "distributed computing" using computers that are constantly being turned on and off at irregular and unpredictable intervals?"
Yes, if your system is designed right. Remember, seti@home doesn't require extensive communication to work, it handles 250K packets which are handled over several hours or a day, and then returned, and new information is gathered. This keeps the master servers from being hammered to death. Also, they're redundantly assigned, to make sure of data integrity, and if a client never returns a result, another one with the same packet probably will. It's no good for small jobs, but big jobs, like weather modelling, key cracking, analyzing RF signals, etc, should be fine.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave.
Have you heard the stuff they try to sell?! There's nothing sultry or songbirdy making it in the Pop music crowd these days...
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Now, if they port it to Linux/Mac OS X (I say Linux because I'll just recompile it).
This could work; and if the RIAA are smart, maybe there will be a court order for Kazaa to bundle it with their downloads, or for it to be required to be running this program when running any P2P app?
Now, if only the RIAA will pull their heads out of their asses, they could be compensated for P2P programs, and be able to set up their own online music biz _without_ investing anything.
Stick a 30 second ad in front of every song distributed, so music becomes like tv.
Producers can charge advertisers per download of the song they advertise on, kinda like they charge by ratings of the show the commercial interupts.
How much is a SuperBowl commercial nowadays?
Most likely a Britney Spears hit would be worth quite a bit to advertise on...
Just my lame opinion...
It seems like Honest Thief is offering to pay record companies from the proceeds from an arguably untested business model
Untested is the key word. I think this idea is worth testing. People have been preaching this sort of thing for a long time; why not try it?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I thought businesses were upset about people using comptuer for music swapping only, let alone pimping off their extra cycles. I can not wait to see the reaction that the industry will have to this.
g
I think most applications/jobs that people run these days aren't CPU-bound, so I'd say that offering CPU cycles won't attract much of a customer base. I like the idea though - I just don't think offering CPU is as of yet something that will catch on. CPU cycles are just too cheap these days.
smd4985
Aww, man. I only have a Celeron 500. Does that mean I'm going to get stuck with "The Best of Perry Como"?
Not only do i need to buy a bigger hard drive but a better proccessor?? Guess i'll have to buy the cd.. not..
Just yesterday Eminem was wondering where he could get some spare CPU cycles to do his computations with. Good thing they thought of this!
Geek perspective: If you let me dl your music (something I want), I'll let you have my unused cycles (something that is surely valuable).
Evaluation: Fair trade
RIAA perspective: You want to drive to my house, take my stuff, and drive away. In exchange for me allowing you to rob me blind (yes, this is the way the RIAA thinks, despite absence of evidence), you're offering to let me borrow your shitty old car while you're not using it??
Evaluation: You're still a god damned thief, geek boy. Go to hell!
According to definitions of theft and stealing, you can't steal music by downloading copies. It might be horribly immoral, it might be wrong, but it is not stealing.
(Just because I similarly do not mislabel rapes as murders does not mean I favor any of them; just trying to be accurate with words).
so why don't you subscribe to /., and then you really might have a better chance of getting first post. Since you (and many, many other AC and logged-in trolls) feel compelled to waste the seemingly endless amounts of free time you have, you might as well help pay the bills for the website whose users and owners you're annoying.
I've only glanced at the first 20 or so replies to this article and already about a third of them are talking about KaZaA.
If you don't like KaZaA's constant pop-up windows and warning messages and prompts to install the latest Flash plug-in etc... use something else!
I just discovered the eMule Project about a week ago. Open source. No ads. And it looks a lot nicer than the spamware that I've been using for the past year or so too. Yes, it took me a while to get used to it (I had to actually READ THE HELP FILES to figure out how to get it past my router!) but it works really well now.
Karma: NaN
I don't think this makes sense financially from the end users point of view. The CPU running at full power will use more electricity, raising your electric bill. Leaving my computer on at home raised my electric bill from $30 a month to nearly $150 a month. $120 could get me at 6 least CD's... There isn't enough good new music to fill 6 CDs in a month.
-Doc
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Since the article is slashdotted, is there some ratio of operations performed to bits downloaded? Would people with faster CPUs be able to download more music?
I know there are a few entities that would pay for unused cycles, but I think they are few and far between. I will bet that the numbers of potential "sellers" of cycles will far outstrip the buyers very quickly.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Ie, trojan horse?
Unless such an endeavour was open source, why would you trust it?
Frankly, these guys are asking for more trust than most people would extend their next-door neighbours. And abusing that trust would be far too easy.
Yes, SETI, distributed.net have shown the altruistic potential of such software but we're not talking about non-profit organisations here, we're talking about corporations, and the only language that corporations know is the language of money. And people interested in making money don't always put other people's (data) security high up on their list of priorities.
To be honest, I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store. At least that way I know I'll never wake up one day to find that my system's been hacked by a script kiddie who was given the keys to my virtual front door by a "harmless" piece of software.
A touch paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
When I am downloading Kazaa, my entire system dogs down so much that these companies might find it easier and faster to buy and use IBM-AT's on-site than trying to scrape my super slow cycles remotely.
The man behind this corporation doesn't have a very good name in the Netherlands. (Pieter Plass). He has already been trying to hype his 'honest thief' service on various occasions (the last years). Without releasing one single byte.
He has also shown in the past that he had no real knowledge about P2P, he just follows the buzzwords. Just look the silly honest thief site...
Just some weirdo who desperately wants to become rich and who thinks he is very cool. I think this service will utterly fail.. (unless perhaps he convinced some skillfull developers with his peptalks, but I hope they are smarter...).
I highly doubt this will be a viable revenue stream for the music industries. Think about how much they get for an average CD as far as profit goes. Now compare that to your average MP3 downloader. Computer processing power is cheap. If your average person downloads an album a month (a SEVERELY conservative estimate) that is a $15-20 album that isn't sold. Over the course of a year, you are seeing $180-$240 given out in free downloads (that is the album cost @ 1 album/month). You may as well just BUY a board and chip and case for that price and network it locally. You can get a middle of the road AMD or Intel processor and board for that cost, and possibly fit in the case cost. If it has onboard lan, just pop some memory in and you're good to go. Use network booting, maybe a MOSIX cluster or something.
Don't forget to add in the salaries of all the people who have to run this "P2P for cycles" system. Development costs. Administration. Those are people that could just be running the purchased cluster, instead of trying to milk P2P somehow. I think this is just a shot in the dark. Or a conspiracy to fingerprint downloads, as someone else mentioned.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Free lunches are common in just about every kind of situation.
To compound the irony, go ahead and download utterly royalty-free Heinlein novels off of an e-bookz site.
You want to pay me for my unused PC cycles?
Fine.
You want me to pay for my music?
Fine.
Why tie one to the other? Sounds like a stupid idea to me.
"Old man yells at systemd"
has there ever been? pop music isn't about sultry songbirds. pop music is a babe dancing with a microphone. nothing more - nothing less.
looking for sultry songbird singers in pop music is like looking for honest, constitutionally upholding politicans in today's government. perhaps there once was a day when they were abundant, and perhaps there's one or two out there, but i wouldn't waste your extra cycles searching them out.
Before I allow some peer to peer client the ability to let other users run programs on my machine.
err... on purpose that is
I'm sure Kazaa already has plenty of ways to let users do this, but ignorance is bliss.
how it would work exactly is another question.. but clients could generate beats/tones/tempos/vocals and the p2p system would be the means of bandwidth needs..
clients could vote if they like whats being generated and the music would shift accordingly..
just an idea
true dat.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
There are some fundamental problems with this proposed business model, but I won't get into those. My problem with this is that spare CPU cycles that they intend to use simply aren't worth very much because of the slow and unreliable nature of the network connectivity that most users will have. While SETI@home and distributed.net work on "embarassingly parallel" problems that require very little communication, many, many problems that people are interesting in paying money to solve require regular communication between nodes and thus some guarantee on the quality of network service. Some amount X of spare CPU cycles on machines using 56K modem connections (or even cable or DSL modems) just isn't worth nearly as much as an equivalent amount of spare CPU cyles on machines connected by something like gigabit ethernet... or even switched fast ethernet.
Does this sound like an envelope stuffing scheme to anyone else?
There is no magic program to make crap sound like gold. Post processing is done fine on desktop machines. IANAPP (post processor :) but I would imagine with a nice desktop or maybe a handful (armful? roomful?) they have all the power they need for post-processing. If you have to have an entire distributed-net for post processing to fix your crappy music, maybe it is time to fire your scouts, and get new talent.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I'm sorry, I don't see this being worth it for ANYONE. No matter how fast your connection is, the transfer time to get something to your PC to be executed would well outweigh any gains you may get from it. Distributed nets are really only useful on extremely fast networks with dedicated CPUs, otherwise you're really just ADDING time to a problem rather than helping anything. Sorry.
Why not just buy the artist's CD online at your local music store?
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
This seems sort of ridiculous, only because of the power of our processors. Do you really thank that one x86 processor which is connected by no more than a 256 kb/s connectionis going to be worth more than $5 a year or so to the ILM? I think not. They want huge Sun servers with gigabytes of memory which can crush numbers that rival that of the bloat of your Mozilla installation which you use to download the software. The money that you'll be earning will not be enough to buy more than one CD every couple of months, let alone the massive quantities of anything you can get your hands on needed to fill that 200 gigabyte quota you need to get onto that amazing DC++ hub you'll be downloading.
additionally,
it does not have to pay for the air conditioning costs to keep them cool too. Moreover beyond money you dont have to generate the electricity to power and cool the waste heat. instead the heat is dumped in the users homes and is not waste: it subtracts directy from the heat bill. and uses clean-water, clean air, anti-war nuclear power instead of say oil or gas (for which we fight wars).
Or even build a building, thus lessening development forces and consumption of water.
also this halves smaller disposal problem of computers. certainly they save on disposla costs. But also the land fill has fewer computers in it total (i.e. the one on your desk and the one in their rack will go to the dump --thats 2 computers. Or if you share it then that's only one computer in the dump)
by promoting electronic distribution (legal that is) of music we save the cost of millions of shipped packages every year containing CDs.
Since I might be willing to pay more for broad band if I were effectively getting a rebate on my use of it, it will promote broadband usage and higher profits for the companies that provide it, while not costing me more.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yeah, but there are currently 40 million users online on Kazaa ae I'm writing this. Now, 40 million times a couple of GHz per user distributed all over the net do add up to a couple of clock cycles that ILM could use to create Jar Jar Binks' grand children in Star Wars VII or whatever they like.
Plus, they can buy it on demand when they need it and don't have to invest in hardware that gets useless after a couple of months.
It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave. Are you serious?! The last thing record companies want to do is give the public the master audio files of Avril or Britney's pre-production work! Can you IMAGINE the outrage when people find out that many pop stars have no talent?
If they'll provide a Sun/Linux version I'm willing to let them have spare cycles on my Sun with gigabytes of memory! Until then it runs dnetc.
Where do I sign up?
Knowing the quality of the crap I see on these networks, these shared spare CPU cycles are likely to be ridden with floating point errors, cycles that stop short, cycles that loop the same instructions over and over again, and cycles from a PPC mislabeled as Pentium cycles.
If people have to share CPU cycles like that, so many would start tampering with it, making life hard for the companies that pay for the processing power. One thing is Seti@Home (and the such), where users share their CPU cycles because they want to, and tampered-with data units make up a vanishingly tiny percentage of the total number of data units. Forcing users to process data (especially for research companies (biotech in particular)) will only cause too many users to sabotage their data units.
I took a course in sound recording (and post-production audio etc) a few years ago, and the instructor had worked at a theme park as the sound engineer during the summer. He said he was blown away by the number of singers that lip synched during their live performances (this would have been mid 90's, when teeny pop and boy-bands where mainstream). He couldn't actually name names, but he definately made it clear that there were a lot of the very popular bands that did it.
Speak before you think
This is the exact reason why I use OpenFT.
I have had at least one computer running almost 24/7 in my home for the last 4 years, and have always been looking for a way to turn that into cash. Almost everything I have found is crap, things like ProcessTree went belly up before it got started. The best thing I have found is CapCal, which manages to pay me about a dollar a month, w00t! I am very septical of this ever working.
What's the difference, legally, between posting a URL as text and a posting Hypertext link to said URL, if the law says that linking to the URL is illegal?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Why not just buy the artist's CD online at your local music store?Because that would require spending money. :)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
broadcast everything over radiofrequency waves for everyone to hear and then play ads during the broadcast.... oh wait. that wont work...
Assuming a business model like the following, which may or may not closely resemble this 'Thank You' software:
- User runs a distributed computing app on his computer, accumulating credits of some kind on a per work-unit basis.
- User can cash in his work-unit credits for merchandise, music, software, whatever.
This could have interesting impact on the whole "how much CPU power is too much" question. Suddenly there are more reasons than just bragging rights to have the fastest CPU on the block. I wonder if Intel or AMD would start to encourage this kind of thing.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
So... I can barter my cpu cycles for music through this system... that's nice. What if there were a way that I could provide my CPU cycles for others to use, and get some kind of "generic credit" in return.
Then, I could use that "generic credit" to buy music, or EVEN OTHER THINGS! Hell, what if I could provide ANY service or product and get this generic credit??
Maybe we could call it "money".
I guess I like the idea, but how much money will my dual Pentium computer at home will be making a year for the artists? Would they keep stats that tells you how much your PC made in profit for the music companies? That would be interesting, thinking of all my friends with either DSL or Cable Modems at home thart leave their computer on 24/7. So if you work 8 hours a day and sleep about 4, that 12 hours your PC would be working for them.
it is like leasing your unused bedroom for free beer. simple in theory, hard in practice. we have lots of unused bedrooms in USA alone, with rental values exceeding all the home PCs in the world.
This sounds a lot like Freenet.
wary nice...
I can't believe this hasn't been done yet...
Imagine how many songs you could download with a Beowulf cluster!
--beacher
Crap.. there goes the karma....
Sooo, I'm an artist, or at least I like to think so, and my stuff is going to be out there on the network, where is my money?
How can an unmoderated 1 point post be overated? This is ridiculous.
:Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation.
One dont need to be smart to proclaim the benefits of using idle PC time for the distributed computing. Quite a few companies are already doing just that.
It's now purely the issue of effective marketing and sales, not the technology. And grabbing CPU cycles to compensate musicians is just another business plan, certainly neat in idea, but not exactly novel.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I'm not even sure where my local music store is. Last time I was in one I couldn't believe the prices. Insane. No, I don't copy it illegally either.
Perhaps if you are signing up for this service then you may need to specify your systems availability and connection speed and time zone - times where system available. Those with high availability would be first to have distributed real time processing. Others would have access to batch processing type jobs. If you fail to meet certain requirements after job assignments it would keep track and apply modifires next time you're in the queue.
Will I be forced to crunch so many data units before I download an mp3??
Could I set the program to lowest priority, download 1000 mp3s in an hour, and then turn it off?? If so they will be losing money... And if not, people on lowend machines won't bother, especially when they can use something similar(except for being illegal) for free.
That's the network that RIAA/MPAA execs use to distribute revenues so that the artists see very little of it, right?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Yes! my spark clutser can finely come to GOOD use ! lets think here 13 spark 200 shood get my daly dosige of mp3s :)
I can't get to the site. Apparently they didn't have enough CPU cycles to keep up with Slashdot.
Jar Jar Binks' grand children
You just gave me a very disturbing mental image. Thank you...
Thank You implies we should be thanking the RIAA for something, doesn't it?
Oh yeah, thanks for suing us for not breaking the law and increasing your sales.
Thanks for adding bad copy protection to CDs we purchase for way too much and own.
Thanks for having no other recourse.
Please use my computer to make more money.
Please and Thank You.
Ace
Could be an interesting way to address micro payments. They maintain an on-line account that builds credits for the useage. This account could be accessed for any micro charges. Newspaper articles and such. I'm loath to hand out my credit card number to every site out there but a CPU useage account would be more like found money. Not sure how viable the whole approach is but there are definate uses for any funds that it would generate even if they have not off-line cash value.
Instead of using free clock cycles just use unused disk space across the networks! That way the mp3 providers will save thousands and thousands on storage! No need to sign me up, I'm already there!
Well, my CPU cycles are really valuable, as there are only few of them. Authetic 486SX25 CPU cycles, only $0.10 per million!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It works for radio, because radio transmission is analog, and, if you make an mp3 from an analog signal, the mp3 will degrade with every copy. Ask the RIAA, if you don't believe me.
I just downloaded an album in 2 hours, you mean to tell me someone would give me 20 bucks for 2 hours of taking a few Clock cycles. Hell take all my clock cycles!!!
>I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store
Me too. Its somewhat hypocritical to condemn the RIAA and keep sucking the top 40 teat. There are plenty of indie bands out there which not only sound great (of course music taste is subjective), but also sell CDs for 10 dollars and throw eight dollar concerts. Its not like its hard to find lots of indie music.
I'm getting tired of hearing how we can appease the RIAA. They don't want a truce, they want you to buy their shiny CDs at 16 bucks a pop, listen to their radio stations and commercials, and go see their overpriced shows plus play the ticketmaster tax.
Capitalism is supposed to decentralize power, the RIAA is as centralized as you can get. Cut them out, ignore their products, and give your money to other markets.
Even if selling cycles was 10x more profitable, they still wouldn't got for it. Maintaining the current system is much more profitable and they're already commited to DRM and already told MP3 traders to piss off.
I was trying to convince this guy that I *really am* the real slim shady.
Seriously, I am!
In addition, this assumes that the processing can be parallelized, which is not always the case.
Actually, the hardest part seems to be getting software developers to code a centralized application that does something sensible with packaging up data into small chunks to send out for distributed processing, efficiently gets the results back, and puts them together into a useful result.
The idea of having millions of CPUs "on tap" to crunch a corporation's figures seems quite tantalizing. I think it loses much of its initial luster, though, when they start looking at what it takes to make it go.
Not only do they have to code clients (possibly for multiple platforms, if they don't want only Windows users participating), but they have to provide a level of support (updates?) to said clients, ensure everything is secure (the data is useless if people are altering the results before sending them back, and the infrastructure can't catch that and filter/block it), *and* keep the "core" of it running, so it's efficiently picking up the processed data that keeps coming in, chunk by chunk.
It's schemes like this make made the original Audiogalaxy Satellite so incredible. Audiogalaxy users, at least geeks like me, wouldn't have been affected by something like this.
For those who don't remember it, Audiogalaxy had two totally separate elements to its system. First, there was the Satellite. It was the actual program that downloaded the files. However, it could recieve requests for downloads from the second part: the website. I don't know if Satellite was a client/server, otjust quite how it worked (it was released for Linux and Windows, only Windows had a GUI obviously) but it did not allow people to function as mules, and it could be administered remotely! The actual search interface was totally web based. The client was fairly small (less than 150k), and people could add songs to their download queue from "anywhere on the planet". I loved it. I didn't have to write down songs so that I could remember them later, I could hop on a computer right next to me and start downloading right then and there! And the song would be ready when I got home. When Audiogalaxy first got sued, I was one of the few who suggested that Mike and Geoff, the owners (whom I had personally met), open source Satellite and the web site. Obviously it didn't happen, as they saw they could still crank some money out of it.
Well, before I get onto any more of a rant, people will always find some way to get around things. Be their reason in this case that they are running a Pentium 95Mhz on Win98, and have no power to waste, or they are running a Cray, have power to waste but are too geeky to let some stupid company steal their cycles, people will ALWAYS get around this, and their is no avoiding it.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I'm not sure I would do it. But its a reasonable idea, so long as you are at least notified of who is using your clock cycles and why.
Ideally, there would be options as to what research projects you are willing to support. I would blow a gasket if my cycles were used to support research into abortion(personal feelings, if you support it, thats your business), but research into cancer drugs I wouldn't have any problem with...
The minimum of course is knowing who you are supporting with those cycles. I wouldn't even consider it if I didn't have a list of what companies and organizations my cycles are being donated to.
did u consider the ethical part of the thing
I don't suggest anything even remotely resembling "stealing" the music (if one can even do such a thing, I still haven't decided that myself) - I don't mean downloading MP3s, or swapping with friends, or anything of the sort.
Turn on a radio. What do you hear? Music! Coming to you FOR FREE. Your radio doesn't give the station spare CPU cycles, it doesn't "force" you to listen to commercials, it doesn't even collect demographic info.
My point centers around that. So many companies seem to have this idea that the internet counts as this amazing new medium that needs totally different laws and pricing schemes. That simply does not hold true. Internet radio doesn't need to differ AT ALL from broadcast radio. But folks keep saying some difference has to exist, and we keep swallowing it up.
Until the RIAA gets its act in gear, I'll keep listening to Canadian and European internet stations; buying indie music that doesn't pay for lawyers to fight against what I believe in; and giving a great big finger to corporate America that believes it knows what I want and how I'll pay for it more than I do.
Just in the really unlikely chance someone in the afforementioned group reads this... You know what I want? Choice. I would pay perhaps $10/CD (twice what I spend per indie CD) to choose the exact contents of such a CD, shipped physically to my door (not some sub-quality DRM'd format that expires when I miss my monthly music-library-extortion). I want real music to choose from, not a canned boy-band or slut-soloist of the week to repackage the same drum-machine-with-bad-lyrics songs over and over. I want variety. I want artists who get paid for their work, not artists who need to sue their labels to get what their contract promises them. I want the right to rip music to my computer in the format of my choice (which I theoretically have, except for increasing technical difficulties thanks to "broken" CDs, which I keep returning but the companies keep making anyway).
peronally i have no ethics and shouldnt be talkin, but maybe some may think it is the right thing to do.
I do have ethics. I don't want to screw anyone out of their work. However, those ethics include the idea that the people actually doing the work should get my money, not lawyers, suits, and PR folks so far behind the times they think people will pay more for less just because they redefine the words "better", "cheaper", and "choice".
Perhaps you really do have no qualms about downloading music with no compensation for their work. I can't tell you that. I do, however, believe that most people who "illegally" download MP3s don't do so out of lack of ethics, but out of lack of choice. If music cost a realistic price (of which more than a pittance went to the artist); if 99% of it didn't completely suck; if music stores actually offered choices rather than prepackaged sets of one or two listenable songs and fourteen tracks that make dogs howl; then I think we'd see a lot more "honest" people buying music rather than "stealing" it.
In the mean time, the RIAA has reached the end of its life. I fully expect it to collapse worse than the video game insdustry 25 years ago, or the comic industry did a decade ago, in the next few years. And you can bet I won't mourn its passing as I did either of those previous two. I see its pathetic attempts to squash any form of music on the internet as no better than SCO's attempts to report one last quarter's profit for a dying product.
Good riddance.
Here we have a company that is perfectly willing to pay them for their copyright claims. Yet, quoting from the article:
This pretty much reveals it all. In fact, that second paragaph is particularly interesting; "...and have said they will press ahead with an effort to enforce their rights". Anti-trust legislators around the world should really begin asking them exactly what "rights" they're really trying to enforce, because it's quite obviously not copyrights that they're interested in. And when a cartel believe it has a right to control distribution, governments should have an interest in protecting the public from the corruption of that cartel. And if the recording industry is not a corrupt cartel, then Microsoft is not a monopoly.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
I figure they'll use those extra cpu cycles to scan your own system for unauthorized copyrighted material. After that, they'll use your computer to scan the network for unauthorized copyrighted material.
It might've made it easier, but SETI's been perennially due for funding cuts whenever money gets tight. When people think "which of the projects we're spending money on isn't really that essential," it's not surprising that "searching for aliens" comes up near the top of the list.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
as long as they let the user choose when the clock cycles are "free" and there are no other hidden fees or anything like that. As long as my computer operates like normal without any speed decrease when I want to use it, they can take as many cycles as they want when its not being used.
SIGFAULT
Because such a thing hasn't been made by our uber-fast progress of dot-com creation, then most likely, it doesn't work.
Suicide is the true mark of an advanced civilization - philipd
Philosophistry
Ordinary stupid bimbo/jock: d00d! dis gnutella/kazaa shit iz 2 complicated 4 me
HonestThief: Well, just run me on your PC, and every day or two you can download a song real easy, I promise.
Seeing how the RIAA settles for charging 2$ per individual song, how long would it take to rack up 2 bucks of computation time, plus how ever much cash it takes to keep HonestThief running.
karma: ouch!
I want to swap my free CPU cycles for money and then use it to buy *whatever* I want, be it music or pizza.
I'll believe in this business model when I see it succeed...
I never could get a decent download from kazzaalite.com and those pop-ups really suck too. Ironicly, I found the best way to download Kazaa Lite was to use Kazaa. This also is the best way to get the Kazaa Lite updates. Forget KazaaLite.com, use Kazaa's P2P network to get KazaaLite.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
It's goatse.cx. If you can't even be bothered to give me a proper answer at least spell your damn URIs right
But, dear pirate, I did not want to test it to see if I had it right.
Report to the Ministry of Information Wanting to be Free-as-in-Beer for reindoctrinalization.
This is a very good idea, in my mind, with a great possibility of it turning to a win-win situation.
Hell, I'd even throw together a cheap box, dedicated to donate CPU cycles. Sounds good to me!
Speaking of malicious users ....
If I'm going to sell my CPU time, I'm assuming I'm going to be selling some of my memory and hard disk space. What guarantee to I have of the validity and integrity of the code I'd be running? How do I know it's not some super virus of doom that's going to assimilate me and my roommate and e-mail itself home and assimilate my dog?
Okay, that's a silly question, but can't spy-ware companies buy my CPU time and make the right system calls to get my name, phone number, etc of my comptuer the same way they do now? Or would it be done with something similar to Java that won't have access to main memory and also be terribly terribly slow?
I'd be willing to sell my CPU time to my friends in exchange for free pizza or to SETI or Folding just because it's cool, but not to strangers.
BrilliantDigital, everyone's favorite spyware component was bundled with Kazaa for a while (don't know if it still is, but it's icky enough to keep me away). That one not only sold clock cycles, it sold hard drive space too. I remember a C|Net article about it, but I didn't save that one. This is interesting, because instead of keeping the moolah or using it to support their legal defense, this service seems to actually want to pay the artists (pay the labels? most likely, given the situation). Could have possibilities, but I'd still like to keep up my Genome@home team with those extra cycles, thank you very much.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Would this program limit downloads based on how much it can execute in the processor's spare time? Is there some sort of quota on downloads, or are you granted unlimited downloads for any free cycles it can get? I'd be interested in that stuff before I sign anything.
I'm from Australia, and I don't know what the current situation regarding broadband in the US is, but over here we pay through the nose if we go over a predefined limit (3gb in our case). If they can just use my free cpu cycles whenever they like, this will more than likely add up in terms of bandwidth meaning more likely that there is more cost to me. PS - More bandwidth they use = less MP3 downloads!
Ah, nothing like some good old-fashioned ascii art. Next time, put a picture of the giver up there as well, so we can all marvel at his manhood.
...think of the MUSICIANS!?
This is a scheme to rip them off, again. I don't like it. Nowadays I find free music to listen to (not commercial which is freely distributed).
What I don't get why the people making the music allow this crap to continue.
winmx (on primary connection) uses cpu time but to expand the network. because people are connected to the network through you for searching.
Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but who gets the money? And that's only if you assume this idea would actually work.
I wouldn't want Britney's or N'Sync's bosses making money off my CPU cycles while all I listen to comes from extremely small labels that aren't part of the RIAA or other such organizations. I'm pretty sure that if this works, whoever runs it won't want to spend time figuring out which labels and bands the stuff that gets downloaded is from. They'll just dump a monthly fee at the RIAA's door and have them figure out the details. So if you're not part of the RIAA collective, no money for j00.
I don't want to be paying for music I don't like, from "artists" that aren't.
The Honest Thief link is slashdotted so I'm totally ignorant of the details, but here's an observation: if the plan is to pay new musicians to put their non-recording-contract work online, Hooray! On the other hand, if the plan is merely to license content from record companies, then don't expect one actual musician to see a single penny of that money, ever.
here //rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Old distributed computers don't die...
They just fold.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
They'd have to pry the processor from my cold, dead fingers . . .
P
The biotech industry has cash to spare and needs lots of cycles. This should be a major source of funding.
Of course, I prefer to donate cycles for research that will be public domain.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I didn't think that Honest Theif would be good enough to kill the middleman, but from what I've read above, I must have set my expectations too high. From what I can gather, this is what ThankYou (Honest Theif's p2p distribution program) does:
It creates a network allowing people to share music files in exchange for their unused clock cycles. These cycles are sold (well, technically they're "leased") to research facilities. That money is sent to the artists, with a little held back by Honest Theif. This effectively eliminates the RIAA (I am all for that--corporate organizations only need to exist in order to encourage standards among its members).
I like this idea. A lot. The more a file is shared, the more money the artist gets. The user should be allowed to log off the network (without shutting his computer off) whenever he wants. But both of these bring up major problems: how do they know who created which file? You can't simply give the money to whosever name is in the file's title, since many people don't even know the correct artist of some songs. As for the clock cycles, people will be disengaging themselves from the network at unpredictable times, making it a very shaky network.
I think it would be cheaper to use this system (rather than buying CPU farms) for CPU cycles, but how? With such an unstable network, sending back calculations would be rather difficult. In order to make sure a packet is processed, it will have to be sent out many times, which would waste a lot of CPU cycles. More software will be required to sort through all the feedback, gathering and compiling the useful bits. In order for the whole thing to work efficiently, a LOT of machines will have to be tapped--maybe not enough if multiple research firms are "renting" CPU cycles.
Also, files are tracked somehow in order to determine how many times it's traded... this would require anonymous statistics to be gathered, but I don't trust anyone these days--how do I know they won't gather private info?
Well, the more I think about it the less attractive it becomes. While I think it's a cool idea, I don't think it'll actually work.
I don't think that HonestThief can function, because
1. RIAA won't let him distribute music electronically without restrictions (DRM) no matter how much he pays them per song. RIAA views at every unlocked MP3 as source of hundreds, if not thousands of pirate copies.
2. CPU cycles are difficult to sell, especially when they are not reliable (client might just disappear for a month) and not trustworthy (client might sabotage the project by producing false computation results).
I see a possible way for it to function, but it would be a complete rip-off. Note that this not related to reality at all - it's pure imagination. I possess no knowledge about HonestThief (I've not even read the article, just the Slashdot comments!).
A. don't intend to pay the music producers at all, just prepare to disappear within a months (or go bankrupt)
B. don't intend to sell the CPU cycles. Instead, consume them yourself. The best (but most illegal!) purpose would be to crack some cryptographic secret that can be turned into money later. You know, bank network security etc - let your imagination play..
I'm not suggesting that HonestThief is planning any such thing.. It's just that I can't figure out how his business model can work.
Marc
pop music is a babe dancing with a microphone. nothing more - nothing less
The greatest thing about a Brinty [tm] concert is that my TV has a mute function!
I have an active, healthy sex life. A partner might be a nice change however...
Damn, that's funny!
what's worse? copying information that may or may not contain an encrypted file that can be decrypted through hardware/software to listen to music, enriching your life while making no one's life any worse OR paying money to a system that systematically rapes artists of their life works, not to mention leaves them at the side of a highway later on with nothing to keep them alive? where are all your one hit wonders? gone! i consider it a sin to give the RIAA Any money whatsoever. if you have to do it, you have to do it...but it doesn't make you a good person if you do it and it DEFINITELY does not make you a bad person if you don't. STOP STEALING MUSIC FROM ARTISTS -- USE GNUTELLA AND KEEP MUSIC FREE. this THE only ethical choice.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
dont forget TON 'O' $$$$$$ they will save by not having to pay tecs to fix the network or people to man the computers ... labor costs for setting it up period and maintaning that kind of setup is way worse than the hardware cost(FREE TECH SUPPORT) lol now they want us to do it for them..isnt that ironic
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be
installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your
congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how
the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he
got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would
inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the
plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman
proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be
designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.")
This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public
would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem
is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500
members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil,
are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
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