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Usenet Audio
Carel writes "Everybody who has done some streaming knows the downside: as soon as you're getting popular the costs are getting sky-high. While there have been some efforts in the P2P area these didn't have the impact they need. Enter Usenet Audio, a project that uses the existing, distributed and proven Usenet as its medium. Check the site for details and for the beta-versions of the software (which is available for Linux, OS X and MS platforms)."
Usenet Audio joins an esteemed coterie of previous spectacular endeavors including Usenet Porn, Usenet Warez, Usenet Fashion Magazines, and Usenet Moderated Nonviolent Underwater Images.
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Download link "Not Found"
But nobody using Windows reads usenet.
http://mediagoblin.org/
Also, searching google for "El-Katabi Investment" or "Nim services BV" (mentioned in their press page) returns no results. Those plugins likely just say "April Fools" over your speakers (if the plugins really exist: one online mirror has none of the files and the other says the limit of 500 users has been reached.)
The goofy idea of streaming over usenet aside, this sounds like YAAFJ (Yet Another April Fools Joke) to me.
Trolling is a art,
I assume this would apply to songs written by or mentioning Nazis?
Not so much coffee for you, old chap!
and we gotta endure a whole 24 hours of these posts over and over?
Ugh, shoot me now....
The less usenet's capabilities are publicized, the better. Do we want the RIAA/MPAA/etc pressuring ISP's for people that download from specific groups? Or pressuring to have those groups removed entirely? Keep it quiet!
ween in teh coconut, and move it up and down.
repeat 10x
Damnit Michael, just stop. They just aren't funn- oh wait, this isn't a April fool's article. Carry on :)
PS: The moderation you're looking for is "funny", and not "troll"
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
...messaging functionality! Imagine that! USENET used for messaging! Who needs flying cars?
"You light up my life, you give me hope, to carry on."
Namaste
These stories are lame. Therefore, rather than spending time working productively, playing with the kids, or having meaningful dialogue with my spouse, I am going to spend my time closely monitoring /. today so that I can rapidly post whiny comments every time a new (lame) story is posted.
Did I mention the stories are lame?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
I'll prove it to you. Bring out some of this 'fun' you talk about; and we'll enjoy it - instead of flaming these consistently lame joke articles!
what happens when real news is posted?
Sheesh, even though I make streaming software, I still fall for this (and every) April Fools Day gag. If you're interested in streaming, you might want to check out my app, Andromeda.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
But I think a neat idea for streaming audio would be a BitTorrent type protocol, where if you listen to the stream a client will help distrubute it to other listeners using your bandwidth. There could be some issues with it I suppose, but I think it could be a reasonable idea.
Buckethead
Man, you people who CAN'T FUCKING GET A JOKE are really starting to piss me.... Oh. Nevermind.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
April Fools aside, there is no chance of this ever happening. Usenetters are obsessive about not wasting bandwidth, this protocol would never work because the creators would be flamed out of house and home in microseconds. Even worse, the website uses HTML, and thats just plain anathema in Usenet! For shame!
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
How about contracting with an ISP that supports Multicast UDP? Multicast is not broadcast, though it offers similar bandwidth savings.
You send out one packet and pay for it once, the routers split it as appropriate as it spreads. Any router that doesn't support multicast gets one packet for each recipient that must be routed through that node; therefore all ISPs can save money on bandwidth by enabling multicast.
The only downside is that packet storms that bring down whole sections of the internet become available. But, since its UDP and therefore the application should be packet loss tolerant, a simple throttling mechanism can be used.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Besides being a bad April 1st post, there's nothing great about it... It's simply posting an mp3 file. Of course you can't listen to the audio in real time, but servers synchronize every days (I guess) so it would be possible to broadcast with a latency of one day. Impressive :-P
I think what impresses me the most is that you guys actually go through the time to create the fake websites to link to for your fool's day postings!
Nicely done! (SCORE: +5, Detailed)
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! this was the last domain that the plebian masses didn't know about. now they're goign to ruin hands down the best source out there.
napster was great and all but if your mom hadn't heard about it then we'd still be downloading from it.
Not much, since most of us will have already read it in google news three days earlier.
You just can't take *BSD seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You BSD groupies need to find some sexy girls like her ! I mean just look at this girl ! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox . As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx . I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass ?!
With sexy chicks like the lovely Lt. Gay Ellis you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of Linux if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight deamon or a gay looking goat ! Don't you wish you could get one of these ? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty !
Join the campaign for more cute open source purple-haired moonbabes today!
(which is available for Linux, OS X and MS platforms)."
/. editor for not doing your homework.
I _always_ surf usenet with my 286, 2400bps modem, and DOS. It is available for DOS as well.. Thanks
Mod +5 Drunk
On a more serious note, I remember working at "the U" back in the days (late 80s). I remember the news server disks had to be replaced on a regular basis, since they would wear out due to being constantly hammered. Considering how much crap floated around on newsgroups back then, I can only imagine how bad they are now.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It's existing and proven. The implication that the peer space has not solved this problem seems unfair and inaccurate to me.
BT wins over NNTP on a large number of grounds, not least of which is the end-user responsiveness which is so desired by stream consumers.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
A lot of you have probably seen this, but I'll chip it in - since the point of today is fun, yes?
Got this in my inbox this morning:
1) Go to http://www.google.com/
2) Type in: weapons of mass destruction (DO NOT hit return)
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, NOT the "Google search"
Enjoy...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Probably when michael's head exlpodes from all of the Scanner-type hate-waves heading his direction from readers like you and I.
Slashdot is basically worthless on April First. Then again I have browse with posts moderated as funny modified with a -3 weighting.
We as a majority need to complain to your ISPs to enable Mulitcast on our broadband lines. Then we wouldn't HAVE to be worried about bandwidth issue when streaming.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I think France and Britain should immediately launch nukes at the US to end the misery of these obese bitches. I wouldn't worry about a counterattack, because obviously their fingers have become too fat to push the right buttons.
This looks like a joke, but I did this back in the day. I checked out a number of bands by getting .au files UU encoded in usenet over my 14.4 connection to AOL. It took about 12 hours to get a song. And yes, I did buy the album later.
For great justice.
Holy porn, Batman!
My movies off of Usenet. I have SuperNews Account and get all the alt.binaries subcategory.
;-) And I've mirored them on my hd for (cough) safekeping.
I've routinely seen 5 gig packages of mp3's and flacs floating around
Well... not the usenet part, but p2p streaming.
Wouldn't it be interesting to have a bittorrent type of streaming interface? You click "watch this video clip" and it connects to all the other people watching it so you don't have as much choppyness?
I think it would be a great extention to BT, personally.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
"Current equipment on which the netwerks of most (A)DSL-providers are built"?
If you're serious about making an April Fool's joke, at least get it spelled right...
phozz
On April Fools Day, people could take a joke.
Seriously, who wouldn't use the Net for audio?
Who isn't usin'it?
True story.
Usenet giraffes. It's obviously the next logical step, isn't it? Once you've got text, audio, pr0n, and so on, the next thing to do is clearly to find a way to quickly and efficiently transfer giraffes via usenet. Once that technology's available, then we shall truly be in giraffe nirvana, and there shall be free giraffes available for everyone, and all shall be happy.
come on - someone post an article about Walmart selling tartan paint.
"Remember that 2nd terabyte server we were going to put in for the newsgroups archive search? HURRY!!!"
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
another good 4-1 submission!
But here's a *real* project, StreamerP2P, that could use some coders to help out porting to linux and making packages that work.
hint fedora hint
and I was aiming for a +5 funny. Darn.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Usenet is a text-based medium; music is binary. To attempt to move music, or any binary data via Usenet would be a hack on top of a kludge. Usenet is 7-bit, music is 8, so it would have to go through some kind of awkward encoding/decoding process to even survive the delivery. Furthermore Usenet is notoriously unreliable, so get ready for lots of missing data. Usenet also blindly sends posts all over the world. This is fine for small text messages, but to send large binary files to a server where nobody may want them would be a huge waste of bandwidth.
There are far, far better ways to move music around. Streaming audio, P2P, even FTP would be far better choices. These guys must be mad to even consider this.
Do we use this with the iloo or something?
hate titty pee colon slash slash
I love the april fools story, keep dishing them out
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unison by Panic has live mp3 streaming, directly from your favorite newsgroups. Just click and listen - all the boring jobs of connecting messages together are taken care of, so it's compatible with thousands of songs already published out there.
:-)
Well maybe this project is about something entirely else, but does anybody ever read the articles around here? Yeah, I thought so
Peercast is a pretty good solution. The only problem is that it has very few stations. I've uninstalled it and I only listen to shoutcast now.
alt.binaries used to be a major source of music (not just porn and warez), before the advent of napster.
In the days when ripping a CD with your desktop might've taken the better part of a day, there were folks sending MP3s over usenet. Sure, you had to re-combine 20 articles to get a file, and they weren't recorded at all that high of a quality, but it was a start.
Of course, only a few new songs came by each day/week, and if you didn't grab them before your server purged them, they were gone. [which for some places, might be as low as one day for alt.binary] And it wasn't nearly as easy to recombine the files, either, as they were multipart UUencoded, if I recall. (which was a pain, when I was using trn) It was sort of like TV, where you had to get the stuff when it was being sent, or you missed out.
Or you could go to some IRC channels, but I was never big on IRC.
And then, ICQ came along, and people started sending files to each other through that.... and then, napster, so you could find files, and get them easily, etc. These days, it's not worth the hastle.
Hell, I even listen to talk radio for the most part. (WTOP, sometimes WIYY's morning show). Most of my entertainment money is going into DVDs these days, not CDs.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
When discussing P2P Broadcast solutions, most people talk either about open sources solutions like PeerCast or Streamer or proprietary solutions like Abacast or Chaincast. Unfortunately, a multiplatform Java-based solution often overlooked by both broadcasts and listeners is P2P-Radio. With a bit of support from both side, could be a really strong canidate to change the way we listen to online streams (both audio & video);
http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/
-pjc
Broadcasting LIVE from a Bonus Room Over the Gara
Someone's got too much time on their hands... On the other hand, the idea of kiting streaming media through the usenet servers is some food for thought... 1 second MP3s? That's probably the biggest clue that it's a joke...
who say's that this are mp3's? the files are compressed to .par files that are joint to geter by some software. atleast that is what the site says
Say goodbye to Usenet now. IRC is soon to follow.
Or, of course, ISPs could just multicast-enable their networks.
Right now they have little incentive - because enabling multicast for anything but distribution of their own "content" is perceived by ISPs as an added cost that provides them with no new revenue. So ISPs have an incentive not to enable it (or not to enable it generally even if it's on for themselves) while independent net-casters are stuck buying fat pipes to separately transmit streams to each customer - limiting their potential audience to the few they can afford to feed, and thus limiting their load on the ISPs.
But consider what happens with a broad adoption of a cooperative, peer-to-peer, flooding-protocol broadcast workaround:
- The listeners are now using their otherwise unused uplink to forward and fork the stream.
- The broadcaster's potential audience is no longer limited by the size of his feed - so it can expand without limit, just as if multicast were enabled.
- The load on the ISP is the same as if the broadcaster had to give each of his customers a separate unicast feed - but FAR higher than if multicast were used. (And it's harder to manage because it originates diffusely, both throughout the ISP's customer base and incoming from multiple external sources.)
Now the ISP gets the NxUnicast load ANYHOW. This gives him a strong financial incentive to enable multicast - even for external originators - and try to move his users to it.
If the application can detect, and automatically use, multicast when/where it's available, it will provide an INSTANT reward to the ISP for enabling multicast. Even if the program originated outside his network, the peer-to-peer links within it would be multicast, producing a drastic cut in his traffic. (The application could easily have multiple multicast islands connected by unicast links - and even adjust the routing to merge multicast islands and minimize back-and-forth unicast routes connecting them.) The forward-looking ISP gets lowered costs, his competition still pays. Market advantage. So once one adopts it, the rest either stampeed with him or get hit in the pocketbook and left in the dust.
Turning on multicast is a win-win for the ISP (who gets lower costs and better system utilization) and his customers (who get much lower latency when the stream is delivered by multicast than by many unicast hops.) This gives the application authors an incentive to include opportunistic-multicast and the users to prefer a multicast-capable solution over a unicast-only first cut.
= = = = = =
The original article may have been an April Fool joke. But it has pointed out a solution to one of our big problems. A peer-to-peer streaming broadcast application, combining the usenet flooding algorithm and voluntary-link-subscription approach with dynamic configuration ala Bit Torrent and opportunistic multicast will provide:
- a useful service under current ISP policies
- a built-in, seamless and automatic, migration path to a better solution, and
- an evolutionary selection pressure on ISPs to implement it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There's streaming support in Freenet now, and the network has been behaving nicely enough lately that it almost ought to work. More nodes = better performance, so go play with it.
The trouble with usenet and Freenet is that they're both very high latency. Great for your everyday muzak feed, but not ideal if you want to run a breaking-news station.
alt.microsoft.outlook.breeds.top.posting.nitwits
I had comeup with a way to do live streaming audio over a P2P network (without file sharing) and tried to raise funding, but P2P had such a bad name at the time I was forced to drop it,
those iterested can see more at www.livecamserver.com and www.ecip.com
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso