The new rates go into effect May 15 and are expected to instantly bankrupt most small web broadcasters (because they're retroactive to January, 2006).
In the mean time, this bill has to get out of committee, be voted on and passed by the house, get to the president's desk either on its own or tacked on to another bill, and then get signed.
That's a lot to get right fast. And the bill will no doubt face fierce lobbying opposition from the music industry suits trying to get internet radio shut down.
Props to these congressmen for setting up a bill on this, but...we're not there yet.
This is how we've dealt with a number of QuickTime vs. Windows issues in the past: QuickTime control panel>Video Settings, uncheck as many acceleration options as necessary to stop the crashing.
Untried on Vista, but a trick I always keep handy.
I recall reading Townshend's online diary in the weeks BEFORE he was accused and arrested. He was on quite a tear about child porn at the time. He reckoned it one of the world's greatest tragedies, as it destroys so many lives and creates a cycle of child porn and child sexual abuse. I haven't checked the wayback machine, but it might just be in there.
It's easy to sneer at his "research" explanation if you don't know the backstory, but having seen evidence of his interest in wiping it out, perhaps the start of a campaign to do something about it immediately prior to his arrest makes his claim credible in my eyes.
He certainly did admit that he'd used his credit card to enter a site. He admitted entry, and allowed as to how it was a stupid mistake on his part. That said, the cops grabbed his G4s as evidence, and with Townshend's admission of entry into the site as a starting point, certainly could've determined whether they had an actual child-porn offender in custody with just a little forensic analysis.
As it stands, the cops had an admission that Pete had visited a child porn site, had all the equipment in their hands to find evidence of offense and didn't make a case of it.
I don't know that that makes it a "false accusation" - particularly given Pete's admission - but if the cops couldn't find enough to make a case from that, it certainly says to me that Pete Townshend is not an actual child-porn offender.
"run[ning] a bad business" would consist of offering product the customer doesn't want at a higher price than product the customer wants more.
My original brief isn't really a technology assessment - it's about marketing, and when the customer doesn't understand what the custom chips in the box deliver, (s)he really doesn't care except for the features and benefits the product can deliver and at what price.
Marketing isn't something that happens after you've designed the motherboard. You need to build what people will buy, not a technology wet-dream (lookout iPhone!!!).
If the customer wants modern video resolutions, lower price, compatibility with quality software that's actually available for purchase at the nearby store, the Amiga failed on all of these grounds long before Commodore finally bit the dust, regardless of the spectacuar technical merits of the chips in the box or the tiny-but-wonderfully-capable OS.
Of course you have to make money per unit, and of course you have to advertize it, but to badly paraphrase the (first) Clinton campaign: "It's the F&B/price, stupid."
Apple, Microsoft, et al understood this. Most of us geeks have a hard time swallowing it.
I say this as a former Amiga owner/lover, and someone currently sitting at a desk with a Powerbook, a W2K, an XP and an Etch machine cranking away (very hot in here right now...). I coded multimedia apps on Amiga, recorded 3D to my PVR hard-disk-recorder, was heavily invested in my Amiga stuff.
But it became all-too-clear to me what was wrong when I showed the Amiga's NTSC-TV-resolution picture to a PC-using colleague and heard him go "oooh - gross!".
The standard Amigoid response is to explain how the flickering NTSC-resolution picture is somehow superior to the stable, higher-resolution and cheaper-to-buy progressive-scan image the PC guy is used to.
The response of smart marketing people is to figure out what the PC guy wants to buy and deliver that or something marginally better for a premium price.
The Amiga's hardware was so locked into the NTSC/PAL mindsets (and truly DID excel at these things) that moving to higher resolutions the market was starting to demand required abandoning the prized "Amiga hardware" that made the brand special. Without the "Amiga hardware", you had a commodity box with an "incompatible" processor, card bus and OS (in the mind of a consumer).
So while the "Amiga hardware" made the Amiga quite special, it also proved its undoing, particularly as Apple and eventually PC card makers provided the desired higher resolutions and as time went on, got smarter about providing tools for analog and eventually digital video (and sold them at QUITE a premium I might add. Geeks decry high prices for hardware, but a good profit margin keeps a company around. For how long has Apple been on the brink of bankruptcy now? Where is the Amiga?))
Yes, I realize that 3rd parties eventually grafted on solutions - beginning with high-res greyscale displays for the "Desktop Publishing" (remember that term?) software that (as a professional matter) never really arrived for the Amiga either. (voice of experience: I remember wanting to tear my eyes out after working with the first of the bezier-curve drawing apps for the Amiga for an hour on a 640x480 interlaced screen, black pixels on white background, AAAAAHHHH!. Meanwhile, my day job offered me the opportunity to work with Adobe Illustrator 88 on a 21" greyscale progressive-scan monitor. The writing was on the wall for the Amiga...).
Apple absolutely did the right thing for their brand by ignoring NTSC/PAL analog video resolution, focusing on higher-res, higher-refresh square-pixel displays and developing the QuickTime architecture for digital video. They knew where their bread was buttered.
Why do I think this means more gawdawful graphic controllers and drivers from Intel?
Example: The chipset can do 1600x1200, the monitor can do 1600x1200, I can even see it flash on the screen for a half-second before I'm limited to 1024x768.
Example: The Java applet is on monitor 2. Click on a drop-down box: WTF? The dropdown list appears on monitor 1!!!
Avoid, avoid, avoid like the plague smart people....
Bill, remind me to explain to you the concept of "a joke".
Oh yeah: "you insensitive clod".
The story actually did say "Hmong" first thing this morning, unless I was just that sleepy and out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll just post the defamatory content in hexadecimal poems and songs on You Tube!
HEY! That's the combination on my luggage!!!!
What's more, since the camera adds 20 lbs., the guy now weighs about 3.6 tons!!!!
The new rates go into effect May 15 and are expected to instantly bankrupt most small web broadcasters (because they're retroactive to January, 2006).
In the mean time, this bill has to get out of committee, be voted on and passed by the house, get to the president's desk either on its own or tacked on to another bill, and then get signed.
That's a lot to get right fast. And the bill will no doubt face fierce lobbying opposition from the music industry suits trying to get internet radio shut down.
Props to these congressmen for setting up a bill on this, but...we're not there yet.
Instead of taking the high road, he has instead presented himself as a no-talent imitator.
Let's see, like um...virtually every rap and hip hop artist out there?
This is how we've dealt with a number of QuickTime vs. Windows issues in the past: QuickTime control panel>Video Settings, uncheck as many acceleration options as necessary to stop the crashing.
Untried on Vista, but a trick I always keep handy.
I recall reading Townshend's online diary in the weeks BEFORE he was accused and arrested. He was on quite a tear about child porn at the time. He reckoned it one of the world's greatest tragedies, as it destroys so many lives and creates a cycle of child porn and child sexual abuse. I haven't checked the wayback machine, but it might just be in there.
It's easy to sneer at his "research" explanation if you don't know the backstory, but having seen evidence of his interest in wiping it out, perhaps the start of a campaign to do something about it immediately prior to his arrest makes his claim credible in my eyes.
He certainly did admit that he'd used his credit card to enter a site. He admitted entry, and allowed as to how it was a stupid mistake on his part. That said, the cops grabbed his G4s as evidence, and with Townshend's admission of entry into the site as a starting point, certainly could've determined whether they had an actual child-porn offender in custody with just a little forensic analysis.
As it stands, the cops had an admission that Pete had visited a child porn site, had all the equipment in their hands to find evidence of offense and didn't make a case of it.
I don't know that that makes it a "false accusation" - particularly given Pete's admission - but if the cops couldn't find enough to make a case from that, it certainly says to me that Pete Townshend is not an actual child-porn offender.
Well, to dramatically shorten my above post:
"run[ning] a bad business" would consist of offering product the customer doesn't want at a higher price than product the customer wants more.
My original brief isn't really a technology assessment - it's about marketing, and when the customer doesn't understand what the custom chips in the box deliver, (s)he really doesn't care except for the features and benefits the product can deliver and at what price.
Marketing isn't something that happens after you've designed the motherboard. You need to build what people will buy, not a technology wet-dream (lookout iPhone!!!).
If the customer wants modern video resolutions, lower price, compatibility with quality software that's actually available for purchase at the nearby store, the Amiga failed on all of these grounds long before Commodore finally bit the dust, regardless of the spectacuar technical merits of the chips in the box or the tiny-but-wonderfully-capable OS.
Of course you have to make money per unit, and of course you have to advertize it, but to badly paraphrase the (first) Clinton campaign: "It's the F&B/price, stupid."
Apple, Microsoft, et al understood this. Most of us geeks have a hard time swallowing it.
No. No, no, no.
I say this as a former Amiga owner/lover, and someone currently sitting at a desk with a Powerbook, a W2K, an XP and an Etch machine cranking away (very hot in here right now...). I coded multimedia apps on Amiga, recorded 3D to my PVR hard-disk-recorder, was heavily invested in my Amiga stuff.
But it became all-too-clear to me what was wrong when I showed the Amiga's NTSC-TV-resolution picture to a PC-using colleague and heard him go "oooh - gross!".
The standard Amigoid response is to explain how the flickering NTSC-resolution picture is somehow superior to the stable, higher-resolution and cheaper-to-buy progressive-scan image the PC guy is used to.
The response of smart marketing people is to figure out what the PC guy wants to buy and deliver that or something marginally better for a premium price.
The Amiga's hardware was so locked into the NTSC/PAL mindsets (and truly DID excel at these things) that moving to higher resolutions the market was starting to demand required abandoning the prized "Amiga hardware" that made the brand special. Without the "Amiga hardware", you had a commodity box with an "incompatible" processor, card bus and OS (in the mind of a consumer).
So while the "Amiga hardware" made the Amiga quite special, it also proved its undoing, particularly as Apple and eventually PC card makers provided the desired higher resolutions and as time went on, got smarter about providing tools for analog and eventually digital video (and sold them at QUITE a premium I might add. Geeks decry high prices for hardware, but a good profit margin keeps a company around. For how long has Apple been on the brink of bankruptcy now? Where is the Amiga?))
Yes, I realize that 3rd parties eventually grafted on solutions - beginning with high-res greyscale displays for the "Desktop Publishing" (remember that term?) software that (as a professional matter) never really arrived for the Amiga either. (voice of experience: I remember wanting to tear my eyes out after working with the first of the bezier-curve drawing apps for the Amiga for an hour on a 640x480 interlaced screen, black pixels on white background, AAAAAHHHH!. Meanwhile, my day job offered me the opportunity to work with Adobe Illustrator 88 on a 21" greyscale progressive-scan monitor. The writing was on the wall for the Amiga...).
Apple absolutely did the right thing for their brand by ignoring NTSC/PAL analog video resolution, focusing on higher-res, higher-refresh square-pixel displays and developing the QuickTime architecture for digital video. They knew where their bread was buttered.
Why do I think this means more gawdawful graphic controllers and drivers from Intel? Example: The chipset can do 1600x1200, the monitor can do 1600x1200, I can even see it flash on the screen for a half-second before I'm limited to 1024x768. Example: The Java applet is on monitor 2. Click on a drop-down box: WTF? The dropdown list appears on monitor 1!!! Avoid, avoid, avoid like the plague smart people....
Bill, remind me to explain to you the concept of "a joke". Oh yeah: "you insensitive clod". The story actually did say "Hmong" first thing this morning, unless I was just that sleepy and out of it.
Damn. More offshoring...