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Locked-Out Journalists Turn To Podcasting
An anonymous reader writes "An Interesting Canadian Press article is up on the Macleans website discussing locked out union journalists podcasting to stay on the air. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation locked out 5,500 unionized employees Aug. 15 over a contract dispute. Most of those walking the picket line are radio, TV and internet journalists and technicians. In the last few days, they've been cranking out podcasts - locked out folks in Fredericton, New Brunswick; Regina, Saskatchewan; Vancouver, British Columbia and other cities have all participated. Some have 'real news', music and interviews. Others are more propaganda-like. A whole batch of them are at www.cbcunplugged.com."
Two words: firefox + adblock
It is not "streaming audio". Streaming requires enormous bandwidth in order to play in real time. A Podcast is downloaded and saved to the subscriber's disk for playback at a later time. It does not matter, therefore, if limited bandwidth means that a twenty minute episode will take fourty minutes to download
Streaming audio also has the same limitation that radio does, and which podcasting provides a solution to: the listener must tune in on the day and time of the broadcast in order to hear it. There are a large number of Public Radio programs which I enjoy but my schedule does not allow me to listen to live. Even more programs that I listen to are not offered by stations in my area. Podcasts allow me to subscribe to the feeds that I want and listen to them whenever and wherever I want, including on my mp3 player when I am away from my computer.It's not streaming audio, and it's not shoutcast. I hate the term too, but at least do your homework before shooting your mouth off.
Or get a browser that doesn't run slow as molasses. CoughOperaCough
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
I too am also in Fredericton, here is the link to the local blog on the issue: http://frederictonguild.blogspot.com/ What caused this lockout is this, the management wants to bust the union and be able to hire contract/short term workers for half the salary or less than that of current workers. The current workers are not fighting for more money, but for job security, for themselves and new people comming into the workplace. Its the same thing that happened to a lot of industries/companies in the 90's. What irks me the most, is that this is paid for by TAXPAYERS! They have been simulcasting the BBC news in the place of CBC news, and now that the workers at the BBC have found out, they are furious, as this says that they support the lockout, which they do not! Its low, and underhanded management that are trying to make a profit on a taxpayer based system.
Point still valid.
I'm surprised that people on a geek site wave technical ideas away before even bothering to spend any time understand them. It is more than just an audio file on a web site somewhere.
What makes "podcasts" an improvement over just audio files on a web site somewhere is that you can subscribe to them using a podcast aggregator. An aggregator lets the user subscribe to a bunch of different feeds, when a feed has a new file, it automatically downloads the latest files. It then takes those files and puts them in the user's media library, and also can copy them to the user's portable audio device. Then the user can play the "recently added files" on the media player in the way to work while driving or riding.
That whole automated chain of events is what makes podcasting a vastly improved delivery system over manually checking every site, downloading every single file and them manually copying them to their portable audio device. I think it is a great improvement over radio. While most of radio, and most podcasts are garbage, with podcasts, I can pick and chose when and where I can play the recordings.
Also, cbcwatch.ca is run and operated by Wayne MacLaurin, one of the Canadian dot.com con artists (he owned more dot.com busts then I can count, all of which appear to have served the purpose of "asset conversion" of that of shareholders to his pocket), and whose political stance can be described as "you cant fucking tax meee! I am too fucking important!!! Down with the commie Canada!" or something to that effect. Naturally a public broadcaster (or public health or public roads) is somewheat contrary to that ideology as are all other things which interfere with Mr. MacLaurin raking in money, like laws for example, a true Libertarian that he is.
Any Slashdot story mentioning Canada or Canadians always results in less than 259 comments, so why bother posting them? They're about on par with response to games.slashdot.org.
A quick search of Slashdot with the word Canada brings up 9 Canadian stories in the last two months alone (2 are sort of multinational) that have greater than 259 comments.
Instead of bitching about it, I suggest you simply don't click on Canadian-related stories.