You could try a dynamic bayesian filter system like Bogofilter or Dpsam. If the internal staff use IMAP then create a couple of training folders and let the end users train up their own filter database by dragging ham or spam from their Inbox and Spam folders to the appropriate retraining folder. A bash script on a 5 minute cron job can do the retraining, which is effectively instant retraining. Bogofilter on it's own in tri-mode (ham, spam, unsure) works great without even thinking about Spamassassin. I use Dspam now and get about 1 spam per day in my Inbox out of 100 to 200 spams in my Spam folder. It takes me 5 seconds to drag it into the retraining folder, ie; no effort at all. All spam is kept in the Spam.Unsure folder for 24 hours but that could easily be for a week, or more, so nothing is actually immediately deleted. If the end-user checks their Spam.Unsure and Spam folder every now and then for false positives then you don't have to do anything. Woops, maybe you need the job... hang on, leave things the way they are and keep your job.
I'd rather not but I will as a last resort only if the content is not available elsewhere in downloadable format. I hate inbrowser video regardless whether it was flashed based or not and I remain perplexed as to why most sites and people put up with the crappy flv experience.
So what has that got to do with the current general pattern of MP3 usage which would surpass AAC by 100 to 1? In fact, P2P traffic in mp3's could outnumber AAC traffic by 1000 to 1. As for for iPod users, if they demanded this "new next generation MPX format" then there would be a greater chance that Apple would have to support it. I just happen to think that the Ogg label, along with that particular labels lack of focus on being a direct replacement for MP3, is a significant factor, and such a simple non-technical point that could be easily changed. Ogg does not tell me or my 7 friends anything about what it actually is other than yet another strange sounding audio codec whereas "mpx" directly implies "next generation mp3"... really simple.
The biggest mistake with Ogg Vorbis is the.ogg suffix and lack of marketability of an awkward label for the codec. If Ziph.org et al had of named their new codec something like.mpx to explicitly mean "MP3 eXtended", ie; to unambiguously signify the next generation of the mp3 format then, I believe, this simple non-technical move could have made the difference between mp3 being all pervasive now or... tah dah... this mythical new shiny MPX format. I know quite a few non-nerdy folks who simply won't use Ogg Vorbis *mainly* because it just sounds butt ugh-ly and dumb for a start, and besides, everyone else uses mp3 so what's the point. If I could have said to these same folks "hey, why don't you try the new MPX next generation mp3 format, it sounds much better" I am positive most of them would have got it and done it but the resistance I have seen simply because of the dumb ogg suffix is remarkable. Another awkwardness is using the same.ogg suffix to mean both audio and video content such that it's not simple to call an audio-only application (like amarok) with the single official mime type of application/ogg when the contant may be video and choke the application. Simple little dumb things that have ruined the lossless codec revolution.
By sucking around for unwise votes in response to well-groomed populist or alarmist nonsense.
Which is EXACTLY what politicians do when they are up for election. The most significant difference with this public voting method is that the voting process is indeed open for anyone to get involved with and I would most certainly prefer to have a whole swag of concerned citizens, ill-swayed or not, making a publically transparent statement than a closed circle of representatives with not much more than beating off the opposition in mind.
Going by yours, and the ubuntu devs, logic then just about every other Bash shell script author in existence should never have written any scripts either. I'm not arguing about whether it's righteous or not to expect Bash semantics when using/bin/sh, what I am bitter about is the manner in which ubuntu/canonical have suddenly enforced something which WILL BREAK MANY SCRIPTS. Regardless whether you think I and others are fit to write any shells scripts at all is the fact that many many scripts will simply die when folks UPGRADE to edgy without reading any threads or posts like this one to first to warn them about this issue. Whining about the issue here is one of the few ways to alert some folks that have been running legacy Bash scripts for the last decade via/bin/sh, which includes anyone coming from Debian, Gentoo and probably most other systems, to be wary. This is more than the ubuntu crew have done, thanks very much.
No one bothered to take note of how #!/bin/sh has evolved over the years because just about EVERY other linux distro, including *ubuntu up to dapper, linked/bin/sh to/bin/bash. The issue 10 years ago was whether/bin/sh would be linked to/bin/csh or/bin/bash but Bash won out in the end. What the ubuntu folks (no longer will I use the upper case Ubuntu because of this issue) should have done is use #!/bin/dash in THEIR startup scripts and left the rest of the world at peace with their desktop and server scripts and announced that in the NEXT release they will make the move to a POSIXified #!/bin/sh strategy. Just to unleash a change like this that could break millions of scripts and really piss off 1000s of admins is not very ubuntu (lower case intended) at all. Why deliberately break many persistent scripts for the sake of 30 to 60 seconds of extra boot time performance is beyond me. I complained about this on #ubuntu+1 (irc) about a month ago and was told in no uncertain terms to grow up, rtfm, and move on. No amount of temperance on the issue was tolerated as if they just didn't care that my, and no doubt many other, scripts were breaking under edgy updates. What is more important?... to be POSIXly correct at any expense, or to allow long term shell scripts to keep running and at least provide some warning before things BREAK... you know, as in stop working, like, fubarred. How can they justify being politically correct when it kills their users otherwise working shell scripts!
If this is a sign of the kind of arrogant and careless system upgrade choices these people will make then I find it hard to trust their judgement anymore. In a way it's a pity this particular issue is being drowned out by all the reports of upgrade and installation problems a lot of folks (25%?) are having. The laptop I am currently using, via a Dapper to Edgy upgrade over the past few months, would not work with the Edgy liveCD, wireless didn't work when booted from the CD nor did X/KDE fire up, yet the same hardware is being used under Edgy right now anyway. I am now so dissapointed that I am moving to Archlinux. I just don't trust ubuntu/canonical anymore.
I mostly agree with your sentiments about less than optimal brand names for various projects. Trying to tell non-linux folks that there is an almost cool paint program on linux called "the gimp" generally goes down like a lead balloon as a first impression. "photoshop" has nothing to fear as the iconic program and label to indicate exactly what it does.
As for "ogg"... I absolutely and unconditionally blame that name for the miserable adoption of Ogg-Vorbis and rate it (the naming thereof) as one of the greatest avoidable tragedies in the known FLOSS universe. Podcasting has now so entrenched mp3 as the canonical digital audio format that it'll never be unseated from that crowning glory. Before the podcasting wave hit there was a slim chance that Ogg-Vorbis could have gotten a stronger foothold but the average jock out there would be hard pressed to be convinced that something with such an ughful name could possible be worth even trying out. Now if they had of simply called it "mpx", for "mp3 extended", then I, for one, am sure that joe average jock would have easily "got it" and at least tried it out with some confidence that this new fangled "new mp3 thing" was worth the effort. It would have been an easy sell with some sort of name that implied "you know, the next big thing beyond mp3". But then, from guys that call themselves Xiph (which is vaguely cool) what could we expect. Such a pity. A simple name thing totally blew it and we'll now have to live with crapful mp3... forever.
I wager that if anyone put up a new site proclaiming the virtues of some new mpx digital audio standard and made a half decent attempt at "marketting" and projecting this "new" format that it would surpass standard Ogg-Vorbis saturation within a year... even though it was all a stunt and simply a rebranded ogg system. Go on someone, do it!
a) like entertainment downloads, no doubt they are counting on every tom dick or harry installing a pirated copy of office actually uses the software and would otherwise fork out the $700 if they couldn't simply download it for evaluation
b) fine, that extra $400 billion has to come from somewhere so that is that amount not available to develop and expand non-software products, like food and shelter for some and beer and parties for others
If the BBC started using Dirac for all its streaming video feeds, for example, then suddenly millions of users will have an excellent incentive to download the codec and if people already have it on their machines then others can produce Dirac based media without having to worry that people won't want to view it because it means downloading something extra.
But if the BBC started using Theora now then that would help Theora get off the ground for exactly the same reason you outline above. A move like this would give the open source movement confidence the BBC were serious and exposure to the concept of a government agency sponsoring truly open source video codecs. Then in a few years we would all have two excellent and (more) widely used open source video codecs. More power to them, and us. As long as they keep using Real and WMA they are not endearing open source developers. I use an AMD64 machine and can't be bothered setting up a dual 32-bit environment, so I can't use Real, therefor I don't get to view any BBC content at all. Not that this means anything other than I'm one extra open source zealot that can't view BBC video.
That site probaly mean business so laughing it off may not achieve much. I'm sure the core M$ crew and adherents are also quite intelligent and accomplished too but there seems to be _distinct_ difference of attitude towards proprietory and open source fundementals. I'm personally drawn to the open source nerd genre but I've met a lot of people who just don't get it and think "we" are some wierd communistic and idealistic cabal that is basically irrelevant to the "real world". W3.1 blew away the superiour OS/2, W95 blew away Macs, W98 consolidate those "achievements" and W2k could be the cream of their cake, so far, that icing on top that might entice even some of us core nerd types to indulge. I'm surprised at myself that I started using W98 and immediately more productive for doing so... as much as I hate to admit that.
I'm pretty well hardcore OSS but I've found the load of endlessly dealing with code in development takes it's toll and I've started running W98 just so it can take the load of basic print/fax and business services. Yes, I could spend yet another week of my life nailing down fax and printing under linux but I have other areas of focus and dealing with even more RTFM is... well, do I sacrifice my main interests to get these fundementals out of the way or do I just "give in" and take one hour off on an old P166 and have instant print and fax services that work (for me) immediately... rather than days and days of screwing around with HOWTOs and deja searches to finaly figure it out and get it working properly ?
That W2k post at freshmeat (on April 1st:-) was a timely message. Where my server is co-located there is an NT box next to it where the owner paid $60k for a unlimited license on some HotMail clone and I said to him, gee, he could have employed me for a year to do an opensource equivalent... he was at the point of fixing a problem by re-installing the software from scratch, yet again, but it'll be interesting to see that in another 12 months that his project gets sold off for a lot of money (with a mature client base) and I am still waiting to find a decent tutorial/example of how to use the new session abilities in php4. We'll see but there is a distinct possibility that for all the perceived shortcomings on M$ products that from a non-nerds productive investment point of view that his investment may blow my efforts (for years now) out of the water and his strategy will "win" in the end.
I'm absolutely sure "we" have the right ethical stance but I'm yet to see any real rewards for the majority of open source business models. For the lucky few that got in early and stuck to it, sure, there are now plenty of millionares from OSS, but there are a lot more of us left out in the cold.
Linux/*BSD have two distinct advantages, price and complete access to source. Both are important to nerds but only one is important to the majority of non-hardcore-nerds out there and that's price... so if M$ ever decide to release future updates of W98 for free then (seeing W2k is really NT, a different beast) then we could see further slowdown of growth in the OSS world.
I would not mind betting on the fact that M$ is rearranging their financial structure right now to cope with releasing future updates to W98 for free within another 12 months. They have already got $b's out of it and the new future is W2k so giving away W98 updates would not cost them much and be a brilliant marketing move.
M$ definately have a comunity based mindset out there so if they galvinise it (taking on a core OSS principle) and tease it along with a big gift like "giving away" updates to W98 to the masses of non-nerds who would not pay for W2k anyway then that just might be a real hard nut for linux to crack wide open.
I've been selling ISDN based ISP servers in Australia for nearly two years now with a moderate degree of success. Fortunately the main internal components, the internal ISDN card and the 8-port analog modem cards, are made locally.
http://www.netserva.com for some indication of the hardware and I understand the company in Melboune who supply the ISDN card (passive HiSax based) also now have a US port of the isdn4linux code and have a sales outlet or partner in the US.
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You could try a dynamic bayesian filter system like Bogofilter or Dpsam. If the internal staff use IMAP then create a couple of training folders and let the end users train up their own filter database by dragging ham or spam from their Inbox and Spam folders to the appropriate retraining folder. A bash script on a 5 minute cron job can do the retraining, which is effectively instant retraining. Bogofilter on it's own in tri-mode (ham, spam, unsure) works great without even thinking about Spamassassin. I use Dspam now and get about 1 spam per day in my Inbox out of 100 to 200 spams in my Spam folder. It takes me 5 seconds to drag it into the retraining folder, ie; no effort at all. All spam is kept in the Spam.Unsure folder for 24 hours but that could easily be for a week, or more, so nothing is actually immediately deleted. If the end-user checks their Spam.Unsure and Spam folder every now and then for false positives then you don't have to do anything. Woops, maybe you need the job... hang on, leave things the way they are and keep your job.
I'd rather not but I will as a last resort only if the content is not available elsewhere in downloadable format. I hate inbrowser video regardless whether it was flashed based or not and I remain perplexed as to why most sites and people put up with the crappy flv experience.
So what has that got to do with the current general pattern of MP3 usage which would surpass AAC by 100 to 1? In fact, P2P traffic in mp3's could outnumber AAC traffic by 1000 to 1. As for for iPod users, if they demanded this "new next generation MPX format" then there would be a greater chance that Apple would have to support it. I just happen to think that the Ogg label, along with that particular labels lack of focus on being a direct replacement for MP3, is a significant factor, and such a simple non-technical point that could be easily changed. Ogg does not tell me or my 7 friends anything about what it actually is other than yet another strange sounding audio codec whereas "mpx" directly implies "next generation mp3"... really simple.
The biggest mistake with Ogg Vorbis is the .ogg suffix and lack of marketability of an awkward label for the codec. If Ziph.org et al had of named their new codec something like .mpx to explicitly mean "MP3 eXtended", ie; to unambiguously signify the next generation of the mp3 format then, I believe, this simple non-technical move could have made the difference between mp3 being all pervasive now or... tah dah... this mythical new shiny MPX format. I know quite a few non-nerdy folks who simply won't use Ogg Vorbis *mainly* because it just sounds butt ugh-ly and dumb for a start, and besides, everyone else uses mp3 so what's the point. If I could have said to these same folks "hey, why don't you try the new MPX next generation mp3 format, it sounds much better" I am positive most of them would have got it and done it but the resistance I have seen simply because of the dumb ogg suffix is remarkable. Another awkwardness is using the same .ogg suffix to mean both audio and video content such that it's not simple to call an audio-only application (like amarok) with the single official mime type of application/ogg when the contant may be video and choke the application. Simple little dumb things that have ruined the lossless codec revolution.
By sucking around for unwise votes in response to well-groomed populist or alarmist nonsense.
Which is EXACTLY what politicians do when they are up for election. The most significant difference with this public voting method is that the voting process is indeed open for anyone to get involved with and I would most certainly prefer to have a whole swag of concerned citizens, ill-swayed or not, making a publically transparent statement than a closed circle of representatives with not much more than beating off the opposition in mind.
Going by yours, and the ubuntu devs, logic then just about every other Bash shell script author in existence should never have written any scripts either. I'm not arguing about whether it's righteous or not to expect Bash semantics when using /bin/sh, what I am bitter about is the manner in which ubuntu/canonical have suddenly enforced something which WILL BREAK MANY SCRIPTS. Regardless whether you think I and others are fit to write any shells scripts at all is the fact that many many scripts will simply die when folks UPGRADE to edgy without reading any threads or posts like this one to first to warn them about this issue. Whining about the issue here is one of the few ways to alert some folks that have been running legacy Bash scripts for the last decade via /bin/sh, which includes anyone coming from Debian, Gentoo and probably most other systems, to be wary. This is more than the ubuntu crew have done, thanks very much.
No one bothered to take note of how #!/bin/sh has evolved over the years because just about EVERY other linux distro, including *ubuntu up to dapper, linked /bin/sh to /bin/bash. The issue 10 years ago was whether /bin/sh would be linked to /bin/csh or /bin/bash but Bash won out in the end. What the ubuntu folks (no longer will I use the upper case Ubuntu because of this issue) should have done is use #!/bin/dash in THEIR startup scripts and left the rest of the world at peace with their desktop and server scripts and announced that in the NEXT release they will make the move to a POSIXified #!/bin/sh strategy. Just to unleash a change like this that could break millions of scripts and really piss off 1000s of admins is not very ubuntu (lower case intended) at all. Why deliberately break many persistent scripts for the sake of 30 to 60 seconds of extra boot time performance is beyond me. I complained about this on #ubuntu+1 (irc) about a month ago and was told in no uncertain terms to grow up, rtfm, and move on. No amount of temperance on the issue was tolerated as if they just didn't care that my, and no doubt many other, scripts were breaking under edgy updates. What is more important?... to be POSIXly correct at any expense, or to allow long term shell scripts to keep running and at least provide some warning before things BREAK... you know, as in stop working, like, fubarred. How can they justify being politically correct when it kills their users otherwise working shell scripts!
If this is a sign of the kind of arrogant and careless system upgrade choices these people will make then I find it hard to trust their judgement anymore. In a way it's a pity this particular issue is being drowned out by all the reports of upgrade and installation problems a lot of folks (25%?) are having. The laptop I am currently using, via a Dapper to Edgy upgrade over the past few months, would not work with the Edgy liveCD, wireless didn't work when booted from the CD nor did X/KDE fire up, yet the same hardware is being used under Edgy right now anyway. I am now so dissapointed that I am moving to Archlinux. I just don't trust ubuntu/canonical anymore.
I mostly agree with your sentiments about less than optimal brand names for various projects. Trying to tell non-linux folks that there is an almost cool paint program on linux called "the gimp" generally goes down like a lead balloon as a first impression. "photoshop" has nothing to fear as the iconic program and label to indicate exactly what it does.
As for "ogg"... I absolutely and unconditionally blame that name for the miserable adoption of Ogg-Vorbis and rate it (the naming thereof) as one of the greatest avoidable tragedies in the known FLOSS universe. Podcasting has now so entrenched mp3 as the canonical digital audio format that it'll never be unseated from that crowning glory. Before the podcasting wave hit there was a slim chance that Ogg-Vorbis could have gotten a stronger foothold but the average jock out there would be hard pressed to be convinced that something with such an ughful name could possible be worth even trying out. Now if they had of simply called it "mpx", for "mp3 extended", then I, for one, am sure that joe average jock would have easily "got it" and at least tried it out with some confidence that this new fangled "new mp3 thing" was worth the effort. It would have been an easy sell with some sort of name that implied "you know, the next big thing beyond mp3". But then, from guys that call themselves Xiph (which is vaguely cool) what could we expect. Such a pity. A simple name thing totally blew it and we'll now have to live with crapful mp3... forever.
I wager that if anyone put up a new site proclaiming the virtues of some new mpx digital audio standard and made a half decent attempt at "marketting" and projecting this "new" format that it would surpass standard Ogg-Vorbis saturation within a year... even though it was all a stunt and simply a rebranded ogg system. Go on someone, do it!
a) like entertainment downloads, no doubt they are counting on every tom dick or harry installing a pirated copy of office actually uses the software and would otherwise fork out the $700 if they couldn't simply download it for evaluation
b) fine, that extra $400 billion has to come from somewhere so that is that amount not available to develop and expand non-software products, like food and shelter for some and beer and parties for others
If the BBC started using Dirac for all its streaming video feeds, for example, then suddenly millions of users will have an excellent incentive to download the codec and if people already have it on their machines then others can produce Dirac based media without having to worry that people won't want to view it because it means downloading something extra.
But if the BBC started using Theora now then that would help Theora get off the ground for exactly the same reason you outline above. A move like this would give the open source movement confidence the BBC were serious and exposure to the concept of a government agency sponsoring truly open source video codecs. Then in a few years we would all have two excellent and (more) widely used open source video codecs. More power to them, and us. As long as they keep using Real and WMA they are not endearing open source developers. I use an AMD64 machine and can't be bothered setting up a dual 32-bit environment, so I can't use Real, therefor I don't get to view any BBC content at all. Not that this means anything other than I'm one extra open source zealot that can't view BBC video.
I'm pretty well hardcore OSS but I've found the load of endlessly dealing with code in development takes it's toll and I've started running W98 just so it can take the load of basic print/fax and business services. Yes, I could spend yet another week of my life nailing down fax and printing under linux but I have other areas of focus and dealing with even more RTFM is... well, do I sacrifice my main interests to get these fundementals out of the way or do I just "give in" and take one hour off on an old P166 and have instant print and fax services that work (for me) immediately... rather than days and days of screwing around with HOWTOs and deja searches to finaly figure it out and get it working properly ?
That W2k post at freshmeat (on April 1st :-) was a timely message. Where my server is co-located there is an NT box next to it where the owner paid $60k for a unlimited license on some HotMail clone and I said to him, gee, he could have employed me for a year to do an opensource equivalent... he was at the point of fixing a problem by re-installing the software from scratch, yet again, but it'll be interesting to see that in another 12 months that his project gets sold off for a lot of money (with a mature client base) and I am still waiting to find a decent tutorial/example of how to use the new session abilities in php4. We'll see but there is a distinct possibility that for all the perceived shortcomings on M$ products that from a non-nerds productive investment point of view that his investment may blow my efforts (for years now) out of the water and his strategy will "win" in the end.
I'm absolutely sure "we" have the right ethical stance but I'm yet to see any real rewards for the majority of open source business models. For the lucky few that got in early and stuck to it, sure, there are now plenty of millionares from OSS, but there are a lot more of us left out in the cold.
Linux/*BSD have two distinct advantages, price and complete access to source. Both are important to nerds but only one is important to the majority of non-hardcore-nerds out there and that's price... so if M$ ever decide to release future updates of W98 for free then (seeing W2k is really NT, a different beast) then we could see further slowdown of growth in the OSS world.
I would not mind betting on the fact that M$ is rearranging their financial structure right now to cope with releasing future updates to W98 for free within another 12 months. They have already got $b's out of it and the new future is W2k so giving away W98 updates would not cost them much and be a brilliant marketing move.
M$ definately have a comunity based mindset out there so if they galvinise it (taking on a core OSS principle) and tease it along with a big gift like "giving away" updates to W98 to the masses of non-nerds who would not pay for W2k anyway then that just might be a real hard nut for linux to crack wide open.
I've been selling ISDN based ISP servers in Australia for nearly two years now with a moderate degree of success. Fortunately the main internal components, the internal ISDN card and the 8-port analog modem cards, are made locally.
http://www.netserva.com for some indication of the hardware and I understand the company in Melboune who supply the ISDN card (passive HiSax based) also now have a US port of the isdn4linux code and have a sales outlet or partner in the US.
http://www.traverse.com.au may be able to help you directly with some info.
http://www.moreton.com.au are the people that provide the 8-port PCI 56k V90 modem card which I also believe is usable in the US.
These pointers may help you evaluate some possibilities.
--markc