Check out WorldSpace. They have been granted licenses to server South America, Africa, Eurpoe and most of Asia. XM and Sirius were granted licenses to serve North America. I'm not sure who ended up with the former Soviet Union, and Australia / New Zealand.
These satellite channels are coordinated and agreed upon by the WRC (kind of like the UN of radio frequency coordination).
WorldSpace has a cool PC card that plugs into your laptop. That will probably be the device the hackers start with for pirate decoding boxes for the US - as the frequency bands are the same.
Not all shoutcast stations are someone's MP3 player set on random. Many of the stations are professionally programmed, segued, etc. There are also some great college and community stations from around the world.
It's compressed audio, using 4:1 MPEG-2 compression which I think is about 256-320k. Note that MPEG2 is much less compute intensive and sounds great at 320kb - that's the broadcast standard for source material.
Read the details here from Telos, who makes the hardware encoders for them.
Why does everyone think that dot coms were playing nerf gun battles all day long? The place that I worked that had nerf guns, it was a twice a day, 5-10 minuite interruption. If you didn't like it, go use the bathroom or get a cup of coffee.
In the non-dot-com companies I worled at, everyone was taking more time on breaks than the dot com did for their nerf gun wars.
I guess those Japanese companies are lame for having their morning excercise routines... they should be working dammit!
I agree, this is %$*#ed up, I did a search on Wndows, and didn't get the Microsoft home page. Instead I got all these sites about automotive glass and home improvements.
They only started this complex verification procedure a few weeks ago.
The goal is to make it hard for peope to transfer to another ISP before they are foreced to renew for another 2 years with NetSol.
They are evil,
This is nothing new. CNN just fell for a press release. Many companies have been doing this for a long time. However, it's really a crap shoot, as so many other domain speculators are out there looking to acquire any decent expired domain name.
Hell, now Network Solutions hardly ever deletes domains that they have put on hold - no doubt holding out for the day when they can start auctioning them all off.
2 years ago, when the new TLDs were bring proposed, several companies started offering reservation services - for $25 you could have a first shot when the new top level domains became available. Personally, I wish I would have done this scam, imaging people paying you $25 so that you would "try" and register a name for them....
So as long as you support the Government, it's OK for the Government to censor then?
I guess Religion is just outsourcing your morals to the church?
Whatever happened to self determination? I can't imagine so many people happily giving control of what they see to corporations.
1. Determine URL of enemy's website
2. Make a fake email ad for that web site, and pay one of the millions of spammers $99 to send it to 5 million addresses.
3. Keep copy to yourself, forward it to MAPS.
4. Enemy's web site is blacklisted and off the air. Yay!
5. Laugh as enemy tries to explain to MAPS that "they didn't do it".
If you support free speech as well as supporting MAPS, you are a hypocrite. Pick one or the other.
How would you feel if MAPS was owned by AOL? Because that's the way it will soon be going. Big corporations will run MAPS-like services... with MAPS-like non-accountability.
Don't forget that program formats get even more complex than that. There is the key of the song (songs in compatible keys segue together better; minor keys "feel" different than major keys, etc), the mood, the beat, the subject, upbeat vs. depressing, and on and on.
Formats are how we discover new music. If you knew what you always wanted to listen to, then your music collection wouldn't need to grow.
Besides, we're not talking about turning MP3 files into "My radio Station", it's about adding organization to your MP3 files. Want them to still be independent? No problem. They are. But what happens when you want to find new music that is like other music you like? How do you find it? Napster and Gnutella are not so good at introducing us to new music... you're just randomly combing through the random tracks.
Sysadmins can choose to censor inbound mail to their customers. It's their bandwidth, there servers, etc. Just like the phone company can block incoming calls to your home phone whenever they want to, and your landlord can lock you or whoever else out of your house because you're just renting it, it's *the landlords* house.
And it's not your bandwidth, it's your upstreams. Just remember that when they decide to censor you because of an opinion, or the type of content on your servers. In the end, Worldcom is going to be able to control what you say. You're laying the groundwork for it.
RBL is censorship. If you support RBL, you have to admit that some censorship is ok.
No Kidding. Level 3 has what looks like a great facility, but... security is lax (easy to sneak people in), their HVAC inadequate, their rack cabinets small (not the standard depth - good luck fitting some deep rack systems in there; Sun e220/420r boxes are a real challenge to fit in). I've heard horror stories about Power problems (but not experienced them personally), if you want T1s or other cross connects installed, be prepared to wait forever. If you need something special, forget it. I needed a Bridge financial feed installed and Level 3 just can't communicate with Bridge... gave them wrong information, sent their installers back, wouldn't let us use our choice of local loop vendor, etc... I can normally get a Bridge server installed in about 60 days; but it's been 7 months and it still isn't finished.
Needless to say, my experience at SoftAware in Los Angeles and Above.Net in San Jose was very good.
So here's what you need from a CoLo vendor besides the obvious stuff (bandwidth, etc):
Clean power. Be wary of a fast growing CoLo space like Level 3 where contractors will plug their circular saw into the same outlet your servers are plugged into. Not good.
Good air ventilation- look for hot spots vs cold spots. And make sure that air is clean! With all the construction at most CoLo facilities, this can be a serious issue.
What kind of backup power do they have? Do they have enough fuel on site? Level 3 SF brags about having SLAs in place with a Barge company that will bring fuel to the dock behind their building but they forget to mention that a drawbridge, electrically operated, must go up before a boat can go in.
Is the building strong enough? With all those EMCs going into CoLo these days, there are large loads on the floors and they may not be seismicly adequate.
Ease of getting stuff in and out of the building. If you're going to swap out machines after hours, do you have to go through several mazes to get your new equipment in? Does the freight elevator work at night? Is it located right next to a Ball Park causing gridlock on game days?
Operational issues: One Bay Area CoLo provider (a highly ranked one but not Level 3) had a power outage when their cleaning staff pushed the emergency power off buttons thinking it was the exit door open button.
Response from on-site staff. If you have a problem, do they offer to help or refuse to talk to you until you have obtained either a trouble ticket number or a work order number?
To me, the most important things in a CoLo these days are personal attention, customer service, responsiveness, customer service, quick response on additional orders places, customer service, and most importantly, CUSTOMER SERVICE!
In all due fairness, Level 3 runs a good network. But there is so much more to CoLocation than bandwidth.
There are recorded incidents of cell phones setting off smoke detectors in airplanes. While I can't cite the date (early 1990s as I recall), a person had a cell phone turned on in their luggage. When they were near their destination, someone called the cell phone. When it transmitted it's acknowledgement that it had received the page (e.g. yes, i'm here and ringing) that emission set off the smoke detector in the cargo hold.
Very few tech workers want to be in a union now. There have been various attempts by the AFL/CIO to organize the San Francisco web sweatshops. But at this point in time here, it's easier to just get a job somewhere else than it is to unionize. But times will eventually change. And as more giant corporations dominate the landscape, there will be a need to unionize. Small shops almost always take better care of their workers than big corporations.
I reister a domain with the intent to sell it, but don't pay for it because I get 60 days before NSI takes it back. No one wants to buy it, so I don't pay for it and they take it back. How is this different than Wal Mart buying products from their vendors on 60-90 day terms, and returning any unsold merchandise? It is extremely common to not pay for things you can't sell, and they're returned to the manufacturer. Why should this not apply to domains?
Slashdot Mirror
These satellite channels are coordinated and agreed upon by the WRC (kind of like the UN of radio frequency coordination).
WorldSpace has a cool PC card that plugs into your laptop. That will probably be the device the hackers start with for pirate decoding boxes for the US - as the frequency bands are the same.
Not all shoutcast stations are someone's MP3 player set on random. Many of the stations are professionally programmed, segued, etc. There are also some great college and community stations from around the world.
Read the details here from Telos, who makes the hardware encoders for them.
I was kind of depressed to hear that they're using Omnia audio processors instead of Orban's 6200 processors, I can tell you the Orban stuff generally sounds a lot better.
--
Check ot SomaFM.com, six channels of high bandwidth, listener supported commercial free Mp3 internet radio.
In the non-dot-com companies I worled at, everyone was taking more time on breaks than the dot com did for their nerf gun wars.
I guess those Japanese companies are lame for having their morning excercise routines... they should be working dammit!
I agree, this is %$*#ed up, I did a search on Wndows, and didn't get the Microsoft home page. Instead I got all these sites about automotive glass and home improvements.
They only started this complex verification procedure a few weeks ago. The goal is to make it hard for peope to transfer to another ISP before they are foreced to renew for another 2 years with NetSol. They are evil,
This is nothing new. CNN just fell for a press release. Many companies have been doing this for a long time. However, it's really a crap shoot, as so many other domain speculators are out there looking to acquire any decent expired domain name. Hell, now Network Solutions hardly ever deletes domains that they have put on hold - no doubt holding out for the day when they can start auctioning them all off. 2 years ago, when the new TLDs were bring proposed, several companies started offering reservation services - for $25 you could have a first shot when the new top level domains became available. Personally, I wish I would have done this scam, imaging people paying you $25 so that you would "try" and register a name for them....
So as long as you support the Government, it's OK for the Government to censor then? I guess Religion is just outsourcing your morals to the church? Whatever happened to self determination? I can't imagine so many people happily giving control of what they see to corporations.
Follow these steps:
1. Determine URL of enemy's website
2. Make a fake email ad for that web site, and pay one of the millions of spammers $99 to send it to 5 million addresses.
3. Keep copy to yourself, forward it to MAPS.
4. Enemy's web site is blacklisted and off the air. Yay!
5. Laugh as enemy tries to explain to MAPS that "they didn't do it".
If you support free speech as well as supporting MAPS, you are a hypocrite. Pick one or the other.
If they say they're all Cisco, then they get their equipment for about half off. :-)
Not true. All you have to do is say someting insulting about MAPS in response to a RSS Open Relay message, and you'll be put on RBL in no time.
So, by your definition, we are all paying for TV and Radio too, because there are ads?
How would you feel if MAPS was owned by AOL? Because that's the way it will soon be going. Big corporations will run MAPS-like services... with MAPS-like non-accountability.
Don't forget that program formats get even more complex than that. There is the key of the song (songs in compatible keys segue together better; minor keys "feel" different than major keys, etc), the mood, the beat, the subject, upbeat vs. depressing, and on and on.
Formats are how we discover new music. If you knew what you always wanted to listen to, then your music collection wouldn't need to grow.
Besides, we're not talking about turning MP3 files into "My radio Station", it's about adding organization to your MP3 files. Want them to still be independent? No problem. They are. But what happens when you want to find new music that is like other music you like? How do you find it? Napster and Gnutella are not so good at introducing us to new music... you're just randomly combing through the random tracks.
Sysadmins can choose to censor inbound mail to their customers. It's their bandwidth, there servers, etc. Just like the phone company can block incoming calls to your home phone whenever they want to, and your landlord can lock you or whoever else out of your house because you're just renting it, it's *the landlords* house.
And it's not your bandwidth, it's your upstreams. Just remember that when they decide to censor you because of an opinion, or the type of content on your servers. In the end, Worldcom is going to be able to control what you say. You're laying the groundwork for it.
RBL is censorship. If you support RBL, you have to admit that some censorship is ok.
Needless to say, my experience at SoftAware in Los Angeles and Above.Net in San Jose was very good.
So here's what you need from a CoLo vendor besides the obvious stuff (bandwidth, etc):
- Clean power. Be wary of a fast growing CoLo space like Level 3 where contractors will plug their circular saw into the same outlet your servers are plugged into. Not good.
- Good air ventilation- look for hot spots vs cold spots. And make sure that air is clean! With all the construction at most CoLo facilities, this can be a serious issue.
- What kind of backup power do they have? Do they have enough fuel on site? Level 3 SF brags about having SLAs in place with a Barge company that will bring fuel to the dock behind their building but they forget to mention that a drawbridge, electrically operated, must go up before a boat can go in.
- Is the building strong enough? With all those EMCs going into CoLo these days, there are large loads on the floors and they may not be seismicly adequate.
- Ease of getting stuff in and out of the building. If you're going to swap out machines after hours, do you have to go through several mazes to get your new equipment in? Does the freight elevator work at night? Is it located right next to a Ball Park causing gridlock on game days?
- Operational issues: One Bay Area CoLo provider (a highly ranked one but not Level 3) had a power outage when their cleaning staff pushed the emergency power off buttons thinking it was the exit door open button.
- Response from on-site staff. If you have a problem, do they offer to help or refuse to talk to you until you have obtained either a trouble ticket number or a work order number?
To me, the most important things in a CoLo these days are personal attention, customer service, responsiveness, customer service, quick response on additional orders places, customer service, and most importantly, CUSTOMER SERVICE!In all due fairness, Level 3 runs a good network. But there is so much more to CoLocation than bandwidth.
There are recorded incidents of cell phones setting off smoke detectors in airplanes. While I can't cite the date (early 1990s as I recall), a person had a cell phone turned on in their luggage. When they were near their destination, someone called the cell phone. When it transmitted it's acknowledgement that it had received the page (e.g. yes, i'm here and ringing) that emission set off the smoke detector in the cargo hold.
Very few tech workers want to be in a union now. There have been various attempts by the AFL/CIO to organize the San Francisco web sweatshops. But at this point in time here, it's easier to just get a job somewhere else than it is to unionize. But times will eventually change. And as more giant corporations dominate the landscape, there will be a need to unionize. Small shops almost always take better care of their workers than big corporations.
I reister a domain with the intent to sell it, but don't pay for it because I get 60 days before NSI takes it back. No one wants to buy it, so I don't pay for it and they take it back. How is this different than Wal Mart buying products from their vendors on 60-90 day terms, and returning any unsold merchandise? It is extremely common to not pay for things you can't sell, and they're returned to the manufacturer. Why should this not apply to domains?