Who needs them ? We already have FairTunes which has been operating for a while now. FairTunes is maintained by a couple of canadian students, and they DON'T take hefty processing fees out of people's tips '(or ips).
> This says a few things to me:
>
> 1) Opennap is bigger than Napster
> 2) Opennap users are more prone to sharing
> 3) The signal to noise level is much much
> better
I wish that was true, but i'm afraid it isn't. The data returned to you by Napster on the number of users only applies to the server you're connected to. They have several thousands of those connected together on a big funky LAN, as opposed to about 20 machines for OpenNap.
The current user base of Napster is about 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of OpenNap.
I think it would, and one of the interesting VMWare feature here is that you could setup your virtual firewall to use a non-persistent disk (the disk is writable, and it appears as though things are saved to the virtual disk, but it's only cached in memory and the actual disk file is unchanged).
That means that even if it's broken into, you can thrash the virtual disk all you want, nothing is damaged, and the entire virtual firewall can be restored by clicking on a button, in a matter of seconds.
It's difficult to compare with Gnutella, because remember that when your gnutella client receives a broadcasted search request, you only need to compare it against your own files, i.e. the files of a single user. In the case of a distributed OpenNap network, you will get as many broadcast searches, but you'll have to match each of them to your own set of 5000 users database.
Anyway i'm not convinced, though it's an interesting challenge and I hope that OpenNap works out okay.
I'd like to point out that my first post has been modded down just because i dared voice criticism over OpenNap...
They CAN, but it won't scale, not over the internet (latency!!!!!). You'd need too many machines, and the search would be too slow. Hell, it's already slow enough on Napster right now, even slower on most OpenNap servers. You are certainly right when you say the OpenNap user base will increase dramatically when free-Napster dies, but I don't see how *technically* it can scale up.
Don't get me wrong, the OpenNap initiative is a worthy one, but to make a free music-sharing service that can compete with Napster as it exists now, you need an infrastructure that is WAY TOO expensive. Well, of course, OpenNap is certainly better than nothing. But it won't compete with Napster.
I use gnapster, and therefore have access to both official Napster and OpenNap servers. I use the OpenNap servers occasionally, mainly to chat with people. But i have 2000 MP3s, and none of them come from an OpenNap server.
I don't get this. OpenNap is just software. You need a lot more than that.
What makes Napster great is the computing infrastructure they have, which means a HUGE number of people can be connected at the same time, which means you can practically find ANY SONG you want. Frankly the limit is your own imagination. I have tried looking for the most obscure songs, old TV shows music or commercials or whatever, chances you'll find it are pretty good.
I have been on various OpenNap servers out there, and they are WORTHLESS, because it's only running on a SINGLE MACHINE, therefore only a few thousands users can be logged at once. That's not enough : the chance you'll find the song you're looking for is exactly ZERO PERCENT. Unless you're a Britney Spears fan.
Remember that Napster has thousands of machines connected together, and even though they do have islands, you still search across a user database of hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
No, I believe it's IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a secure (i.e. impossible to crack) encryption mechanism if the decryption algorithm and key is easy to reverse engineer.
In other words, if you intend to produce a SOFTWARE PLAYER for your encrypted stuff, it WILL BE broken.
The only way to have securely encrypted music would be to use hardware-based encryption : the decryption key is hidden deeply inside a complex decoding chip engineered and taped out at great cost by some company. To produce a player you must incorporate that decoding chip into the MP3 player. To produce a SOFTWARE player, you need the customer to buy a special PCI card containing the decoding chip. That would be secure, because reverse engineering the chip is impossible.
It may sound like it would be overkill and would never work, because you'd never convince customers to buy special hardware just to listen to encrypted music. But frankly, i'm telling you i bet the next generation DVD encryption will be based on something like this. Besides, all it would take to push this for music would be an agreement with the sound card manufacturers to incorporate the chip directly into sound cards, in a way that makes tapping the digital signal very hard.
> For the average American consumer there has
> never been better choice in content, there has
> never been more accessible mass importation of
> foreign product such as Japanese anime.
> Overall, things got better.
Is this a joke ?
A lot of people interested in foreign movies had multi-standard VCRs and TVs that could read Pal & Secam Tapes. Now, YOU CAN NO LONGER WATCH ANY EUROPEAN MOVIES ON DVD. Except those that Holiwood feels are US-worthy to edit in Zone 1, i.e. a tiny percentage.
For all the other ones, screw you, multi-zone DVD players are easy to find in Europe, but they are a lot harder to come by here in California, because the average american doesn't care about obscure foreign movies.
When i went back home to Europe for X-mas, i saw in stores lots of french DVDs that I wanted to buy, but couldn't knowing they wouldn't work on my Sony DVD player here. ALL of those, because they are in French and mostly pertinent to european culture (TV shows and such), are ONLY available in Zone 2. Screw me. Overall, things got worse.
I was wondering how this would impact VMWare users, but it seems to me this is another reason to us it, since basically you can install IDENTICAL virtual PCs on as many Linux (or Windows) boxes as you want.
There are however dual-band phones that work both in Europe and in the US. For example, the very cool Ericsson T28 World, which is a GSM 900 and GSM 1900 phone.
Unfortunately, the only GSM provider here in California is the dreadful and pathetic Pac Bell Wireless which, based on plenty of personal experience, are a freakin' nightmare to deal with.
Next Generation ? It will still be 3 generations behind:-)
Re:This is nice - but what about other DRM systems
on
SDMI Cracked Too Soon
·
· Score: 1
I believe the main reason these systems have not been under heavy attack is simply nobody is interested in doing it, because what's the point ? It's very poor sound quality and not worth recording. And most of the audio streams out there are 'listen-once' type of things.
If the web had the bandwidth to widely stream CD quality sound, and some web services would let you stream any song to you, there would be a real incentive of breaking the streaming clients. They'd get reversed engineers to shreds and cracked in a matter of days i'm sure.
Re:Satan is not incarnate in the form of the RIAA
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 1
To those of us who who've got every album released in the last month filed away on a RAID somewhere, you are dumb. The correct solution to "CD prices are too high 'cause of the RIAA!" is not, "...soooo I'll steal 'em!"
It's not ? That what is it ? I'm all ears, please tell me what the solution is. That's right, there are NO OTHER ALTERNATIVES at this point but to steal the music. Or just give up on the whole music thing, who cares about culture anyway.
CD prices *are* too high, and if you find that unacceptable your only solution is to be a criminal. So be it.
I do happen to have entire albums on my 80gig drive. I was looking at some point into a way of donating 8 or 10$ to the artist for every CD I burn from Napster tracks, but I didn't find any way to do this (help?). Until there is, i'll steal.
It's pretty ironic that would go after an MP3 collector, when in Belgium you can RENT pretty much any musical CD you want at the local 'Mediatheque' for something like a buck a week per CD.
All the people I know in Belgium that have some sort of musical interest own a CD burner, they are hugely popular for obvious reasons. I heard the CD sales have been dropping pretty badly, something like 5 to 10% in a year.
But I don't blame anyone for copying CDs in Belgium, because a lot of people simply CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY MUSIC!!!! CD's cost between $20 and $25, and salaries are pretty low because of huge taxation rates. And as far as I know, music (and culture in general) is not a privilege for rich people, but should be affordable to everyone ('affordable' not necessarily being equal to 'free').
Strange thing, the music distributors don't seem to understand this, and CD prices keep going up.
The reason you get all those Microsoft hits is because of the 4.72 word. There are several Microsoft releases that have the 4.72 version (IE 4.72, Microsoft Express 4.72). You have to remember that Google searches, unlike AltaVista's, are AND searches, so only pages that contain all three keywords are showed. If you try Google with simply "Netscape Navigator", you get the expected results.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll shamefully copy/paste this comparison here, because it's worth it :
Fairtunes rules.
Linus Torvalds has received money from them too!
>
> 1) Opennap is bigger than Napster
> 2) Opennap users are more prone to sharing
> 3) The signal to noise level is much much
> better
I wish that was true, but i'm afraid it isn't. The data returned to you by Napster on the number of users only applies to the server you're connected to. They have several thousands of those connected together on a big funky LAN, as opposed to about 20 machines for OpenNap.
The current user base of Napster is about 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of OpenNap.
That means that even if it's broken into, you can thrash the virtual disk all you want, nothing is damaged, and the entire virtual firewall can be restored by clicking on a button, in a matter of seconds.
Anyway i'm not convinced, though it's an interesting challenge and I hope that OpenNap works out okay.
I'd like to point out that my first post has been modded down just because i dared voice criticism over OpenNap...
Don't get me wrong, the OpenNap initiative is a worthy one, but to make a free music-sharing service that can compete with Napster as it exists now, you need an infrastructure that is WAY TOO expensive. Well, of course, OpenNap is certainly better than nothing. But it won't compete with Napster.
I use gnapster, and therefore have access to both official Napster and OpenNap servers. I use the OpenNap servers occasionally, mainly to chat with people. But i have 2000 MP3s, and none of them come from an OpenNap server.
What makes Napster great is the computing infrastructure they have, which means a HUGE number of people can be connected at the same time, which means you can practically find ANY SONG you want. Frankly the limit is your own imagination. I have tried looking for the most obscure songs, old TV shows music or commercials or whatever, chances you'll find it are pretty good.
I have been on various OpenNap servers out there, and they are WORTHLESS, because it's only running on a SINGLE MACHINE, therefore only a few thousands users can be logged at once. That's not enough : the chance you'll find the song you're looking for is exactly ZERO PERCENT. Unless you're a Britney Spears fan.
Remember that Napster has thousands of machines connected together, and even though they do have islands, you still search across a user database of hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
I personally will pay for the Napster service.
In other words, if you intend to produce a SOFTWARE PLAYER for your encrypted stuff, it WILL BE broken.
The only way to have securely encrypted music would be to use hardware-based encryption : the decryption key is hidden deeply inside a complex decoding chip engineered and taped out at great cost by some company. To produce a player you must incorporate that decoding chip into the MP3 player. To produce a SOFTWARE player, you need the customer to buy a special PCI card containing the decoding chip. That would be secure, because reverse engineering the chip is impossible.
It may sound like it would be overkill and would never work, because you'd never convince customers to buy special hardware just to listen to encrypted music. But frankly, i'm telling you i bet the next generation DVD encryption will be based on something like this. Besides, all it would take to push this for music would be an agreement with the sound card manufacturers to incorporate the chip directly into sound cards, in a way that makes tapping the digital signal very hard.
> never been better choice in content, there has
> never been more accessible mass importation of
> foreign product such as Japanese anime.
> Overall, things got better.
Is this a joke ?
A lot of people interested in foreign movies had multi-standard VCRs and TVs that could read Pal & Secam Tapes. Now, YOU CAN NO LONGER WATCH ANY EUROPEAN MOVIES ON DVD. Except those that Holiwood feels are US-worthy to edit in Zone 1, i.e. a tiny percentage.
For all the other ones, screw you, multi-zone DVD players are easy to find in Europe, but they are a lot harder to come by here in California, because the average american doesn't care about obscure foreign movies.
When i went back home to Europe for X-mas, i saw in stores lots of french DVDs that I wanted to buy, but couldn't knowing they wouldn't work on my Sony DVD player here. ALL of those, because they are in French and mostly pertinent to european culture (TV shows and such), are ONLY available in Zone 2. Screw me. Overall, things got worse.
As a PalmPilot 1 user, i have an almost infinite supply of dead AAA batteries. :-)
On the fun side, try to do a Google search on Shockwave, that's what they get for being idiots.
-ZeMenace
10) a beeper for the rear gear, otherwise blind people running across parking lots might get hurt.
I was wondering how this would impact VMWare users, but it seems to me this is another reason to us it, since basically you can install IDENTICAL virtual PCs on as many Linux (or Windows) boxes as you want.
Slapped with a talking Boogie Bass, actually.
There are however dual-band phones that work both in Europe and in the US. For example, the very cool Ericsson T28 World, which is a GSM 900 and GSM 1900 phone.
Unfortunately, the only GSM provider here in California is the dreadful and pathetic Pac Bell Wireless which, based on plenty of personal experience, are a freakin' nightmare to deal with.
For example, with all the eletromagnetic microwaving power pumped into thin air, you can cook your meal while you download an mp3 to your laptop!
Next Generation ? It will still be 3 generations behind :-)
If the web had the bandwidth to widely stream CD quality sound, and some web services would let you stream any song to you, there would be a real incentive of breaking the streaming clients. They'd get reversed engineers to shreds and cracked in a matter of days i'm sure.
It's not ? That what is it ? I'm all ears, please tell me what the solution is. That's right, there are NO OTHER ALTERNATIVES at this point but to steal the music. Or just give up on the whole music thing, who cares about culture anyway.
CD prices *are* too high, and if you find that unacceptable your only solution is to be a criminal. So be it.
I do happen to have entire albums on my 80gig drive. I was looking at some point into a way of donating 8 or 10$ to the artist for every CD I burn from Napster tracks, but I didn't find any way to do this (help?). Until there is, i'll steal.
All the people I know in Belgium that have some sort of musical interest own a CD burner, they are hugely popular for obvious reasons. I heard the CD sales have been dropping pretty badly, something like 5 to 10% in a year.
But I don't blame anyone for copying CDs in Belgium, because a lot of people simply CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY MUSIC!!!! CD's cost between $20 and $25, and salaries are pretty low because of huge taxation rates. And as far as I know, music (and culture in general) is not a privilege for rich people, but should be affordable to everyone ('affordable' not necessarily being equal to 'free').
Strange thing, the music distributors don't seem to understand this, and CD prices keep going up.
Google obviously thought it was a good idea when they saw the demo at Xift's launch party a month ago.
Funny thing they claim to be first.
The reason you get all those Microsoft hits is because of the 4.72 word. There are several Microsoft releases that have the 4.72 version (IE 4.72, Microsoft Express 4.72). You have to remember that Google searches, unlike AltaVista's, are AND searches, so only pages that contain all three keywords are showed. If you try Google with simply "Netscape Navigator", you get the expected results.