If you do not like the way a business conducts itself, then don't patronize the business.
That means if the entertainment industry cheeses you off, then you quit buying CDs, DVDs and stop listening to music radio. You then tell your friends why they should be doing the same thing.
Consumers in this country hold the purse strings. Stop complaining and vote with your dollars.
This also works for those of you upset over the outsourcing of employment to other countries. TELL those companies why you refuse to do business with them each and every time they approach you for your hard earned dollar.
Remember, you hold the purse strings. Of course, it's easier to moan about it on Slashdot and exchange goatse trolls rather than taking a stand on an issue in which you believe. I mean, you *can't* possibly live without your tunes, right?
Wal-mart and Target have operations in all states. Ergo, they already collect sales taxes for that appropriate state and it's no big deal to include online and telephone sales, which they should have been doing anyway.
Ever notice on television advertisements for "The Osmonds Greatest Hits", you'll see the disclaimer that "residents of New York add sales tax". That's because the company pushing and fufilling the order has offices in New York. They're required to collect taxes for orders going to destinations within the state of NY. So, there's nothing terribly earth shattering about what these companies are doing nor the agreement that has been reached. I argue that Target/Wal-mart are trying to keep their respective tits out of the wringer because they haven't been collecting taxes for online/telephone sales.
In fact, I argue that this is the first step in stricter enforcement of sales tax laws directed at large corporations.
HOWEVER, you'll note that this is a voluntary program. The states can not force the guy at FixYourOwnPrinter.com to collect sales taxes for parts sold to anyone in any state other than his own. It is unconstitutional.
While this voluntary program is technically correct, I think it may be the first step at a wider attempt at regulating interstate commerce. Which of course, the states can not do per the Constitution.
Look for this one argued in the US Supreme Court soon.
In Other News, London is Under Spud Attack
on
Potato Bazookas
·
· Score: 1
Prime minister Tony Blair has reported London has been under constant potato barrage for the past 36 hours.
I agree that in the scheme of hardware manufacturers and OEMS, it is irrelevant. But for the hordes of Slashdot readers that are very interested in commercial desktop Unix/Unix-like operating systems, this is far from irrelevant.
I'm now on my second round of "switching". My first attempt at Apple was an iBook, which I dearly hated. OSX wasn't quite "there yet", I wasn't patient enough and the opportunity to unload it at close to what I paid was too much to resist.
I now own a G4 and this thing is totally awesome. And coming from a Unix desktop background (still run Linux on the desktop at work, before that used Irix), OSX is pure heaven.
So your point is well taken, but I think the post is made as "Hey, Unix freaks, check this out" as opposed to "Hey computer users".
"For years, the safest path to success in the music business has been to hunt the teen market. But by ignoring career artists at the expense of the latest trends, the labels have lost touch with wide swaths of society. Ultimately, Timothy suggested to me that night, the industry as we know it could vanish not so much because of technology but because few people over the age of 30 would care if it did."
Well written.
I'm 34 years old, and the only CD I've purchased in the last 18 months was for a gift. I am no longer able to stomach most new music that the labels promote. I do not like rap, I do not like teen pop, older bands are ignored and anything that is new and fresh is immediately duped and run into the ground as the latest profit mill. Meanwhile, good local bands are ignored and routinely GIVE away their music online.
I purchased an insane amount of CDs between 1986 (my first CD player) and 1996. I had a nice amount of disposable income and thought nothing of dropping $40 on CDs on a weekly shopping trip. No longer, there's nothing worthy of my hard earned dollar.
If the record companies want to make a quick buck, all they need to do is simply create a web site that offers ALL their out of print music in their entire collection and allow me to download it and burn it for $2 per song. I can fit 10 songs per CD, and the weekly revenue stream magically re-appears.
Alas, they are too stupid to see how profitable it is to satiate a demand in the market. They are too arrogant to admit that they need to make an adjustment. And they are too greedy to do anything about their problem but to buy legislation and call their customers criminals.
That is preposterous. The FCC has determined that your tastes are better served by the media cartel of ClearChannel, CBS/Infinity and Viacom. If you're an urban radio fan, you have Radio One.
You're simply un-American and a terrorist sympathizer if all you want is information about your local community, or music that isn't getting airplay because of elaborate plug-n-play schemes or being pulled from the dusty archives because the station ownership is promoting the concert in the next town.
The FCC has your interests at heart. They realize that more common ownership is a good thing and is willing to take this a step further by again reducing ownership rules and even permitting television stations to own radio and newspapers.
Think of the bargains that advertisers will see when they have a one-stop-shop for all of their advertising. Imagine the benefits of unbiased uniformed reporting that you'll get from radio, TV and newsprint. Why, there won't be nary any discrepancies to the news since it'll come from the same copy writer no matter the source of your news.
The FCC knows best, trust them and you will see.
Of course, the above is sarcasm. I spent over 13 years in the broadcasting industry. I'm still taking three showers a day in an attempt to get rid of the stench.
... to make reasonable efforts to stop P2P networks.
That's really what the RIAA wants. They'd be elated to get Congress to authorize such a ridiculous charge, but they know in reality that there's little likelihood of that happening.
So, they're overshooting their goal by 5,000% in hopes of attaining what they've really wanted all along, and that is for ISPs to block P2P networks.
It'll probably work too. Until they start running them on port 80, and then the RIAA will need to come up with another plan of attack. Oddly enough, since the whole tax everyone had already been mentioned, they'll revisit that.
Eric S. Raymond was arrested today by the FBI for being in posession of confidential documents from Microsoft corporation. Microsoft has charged that posession is tantimount to industrial espionage and violates the DMCA.
"I find the whole matter deeply disturbing and troubling that this confidential document ended up in the hands of this individual. Obviously, intellectual and ownership rights have no meaning to the 'Linux' crowd and it just goes to show you their true mettle", said Microsoft spokesperson Nyles Forebush in an exclusive interview to Slashdot's Cowboy Neil.
Mr. Raymond is being held without bail at the federal penetentiary in Milan, Michigan.
The problem, as I've said here before, is SMTP itself.
The RFC pretty much states that to be compliant, you have to accept the mail as it is presented. Can't achieve accurate or trusted reverse name lookup information on the sending system? Well, that's tough, take the mail (read this for yourself).
This problem stems from when systems on the Internet were inherrently trusted. That's not the case any longer, and it's time for a new mail transmission standard.
For starters, it should allow system administrators the ability to give priority to systems that can present some form of credentials. SSL or keyed encryption, whatever the standard is, it will permit systems to give totally trusted access to systems that meet the specific security and trust guidelines of the receiving system, not the RFC (times have changed, tough).
Those systems that do not meet minimum trust levels will either have to clean up their act or take the time to contact the remote system to figure out the issue.
It won't stop spam, but it will go a long way to slowing it down and possibly providing some secure method of mail transport in the process.
It simply legitamizes the business of advertising through a cost-shifted model.
While the incremental cost to the end user (victim) is immeasurable on a single email basis, over a prolonged period the time spent weeding through the trash that comes in via email has a very real cost in lost time/productivity.
I've seen many arguments that there needs to be a balance between the rights of the recipient and the rights of the advertiser. Sad fact is, in any circumstance where any of the cost of the delivery of the advertisement is shifted to me and without my consent, it's consumer fraud. The adversiser has no right to take one microsecond of my time in effort to delete their advertisements from my email box, or to force me to get up from my chair to answer the phone or toss their ad from my fax machine.
Telemarketing, spam, junk faxes or stapling posters to my tree, the costs of delivery are heaped upon me and I'm sick and tired of it.
As far as spam goes, it's time to start pushing for the death of SMTP. It was nice when the Internet was sheltered, but it's now part of the real world and just like the real world, there's plenty of morons to cause problems.
The biggest problem with SMTP is that it has too much implicit trust. Spammers take advantage of this and either falsify headers or steal relay services. Giving priority to systems that have valid credentials and all but ignoring those that fail basic trust guidelines will cause spammers to play fair, or go broke. Those spammers that play fair will have no alternative but to honor remove requests or find their trust level set to zero.
There _are_ no free speech rights of advertisers as it pertains to my electronic mail address.
I simply do not want ANY mail that does not pertain to my business activities. Where do they get off thinking they have the right to steal the time it takes to read the header, address and possibly the text to determine if it's junk or not?
The owner is reported saying that: "any violation of the power limits was unintentional and resulted from the fact that the personnel working [on it] primarily have expertise in computers and not radio technology."
That says it all. A bunch of computer people playing with RF; no knowledge of Part 15 rules, no concept of RF.
Really, if the FCC is going to assign new frequencies for wireless networking, we owe it to ourselves to become acquainted with the technology and the rules thereof. The last thing that anyone needs is to turn 802.11 into another RF wasteland like CB radio.
Free speech gives you the right to go out on the corner, stand on the soap box and have at it.
Free speech does not give you the right to enter onto private propery and spout whatever it is you want to spout. Malls, theatres, business, they all apply and it applies equally when you _call_ my private property on _my_ phone. It's nice how the greatest share of cost in telemarketing is heaped upon the person that pays for the incoming line.
I hope this goes before the Supreme Court. It won't because the argument that it restricts free speech is patently absurd.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone within Congress will let this happen.
First, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) will have kittens at the mere suggestion of re-assignment of spectrum, either as a primary or secondary use. They'll have an absolute tirade if the proposal calls for secondary use of television spectrum. As well they should, part of their job is lobbying in Washington for the broadcasters.
I also can not believe the incumbent telcos will stand idle for this either. After the huge investments in (the soon to die) 3G wireless, they're going to need help from Congress and a lot more of those annoying "MOTO" commercials with the extra fine print that mentions that the cool stuff needs to be downloaded -- and paid for on a per-kilobyte basis.
However, if this were come to fruition, I can only see advantages. *Finally* the public gets to use its own valuable spectrum as opposed to having it auctioned off or sold to the highest bidder. The very spectrum that was formerly used by broadcasters to effectively print money will be put back into the hands of the people that allegedly own it.
Technically, these frequencies should allow for greater range and avoid the ever present foliage and weather losses. Current 2.4/5.2 gig wireless networks are cool, but you're not going to see competitive wireless services built around them as you simply need way too many access points. Maybe this is what's needed to put real broadband into the hands of people like myself who live in rural under-served markets. It may also serve as a welcome kick in the shorts to the likes of Comcast/Covad/pick-yer-most-reviled-broadband-prov ider and introduce some competition.
I'm hopefull, but still a pragmatic realist about it all. Congress doesn't necessarily do what's in the best interest of the people, so if you're in favor of this, start writing your letters.
Finally an American CEO that understands the problems of shifting operations overseas.
We are definetly mortgaging the future of our children for today's short-term buck. Far too many businesses are willing to sell their souls to the people that could one day go to war with the US.
The larger issue as I see it is that here's yet another large corporation guzzling up RF spectrum and leaving nothing for anyone else.
AT&T has a penchant for loading spectrum auctions with seemingly small outfits that they support, and when one of them wins spectrum it (surprise!) ends up in the hands of AT&T.
If the FCC were truly concerned about competition in the broadband market, they'd carve off two or three UHF television channels and start printing licenses for their use by small companies wanting to be WISPs. These channels would be expressly off-limits to incumbent telcos and wireless outfits.
Picking something between 500 mHz and 1 gHz will allow the users to have a reasonable chance of overcoming losses due to foliage and weather. Existing FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) technology can be used, and speeds well over 500 kbs are easily attainable, yet the range is upwards of 5 miles.
Of course, that'll never happen as small businesses are completely unable to swing the required $70,000 campaign donation to those legislators sitting on the FCC's appropriations committee.
This logic already exists in the US, but it's not the territory of the RIAA, it's the territory of ASCAP/BMI.
This is the toll-master of the music publishing business. Whenever a song by the artist formerly known as Prince (but now again known as Prince) has a song played, he gets a clink in the bank. If Tom Jones remakes another one of his songs (God please no), then Prince gets more money as his music is published through ASCAP/BMI.
ASCAP/BMI assures that those who write music are paid for it when it is used, regardless who sings it. It's actually not a bad system because it assures that song writers like Burt Bacharach keep churning out music, and bad singers keep recording them.
Where it goes horribly wrong is that the record companies themselves seem to be pretty much exempt from the ASCAP/BMI fees. ASCAP/BMI seems to concentrate on radio stations, the music-on-hold for businesses, bars, Muzak and now, Finish taxicabs.
Now and again, when you walk into a dance club or bar, you'll see a yellow sticker proudly displayed with the letters ASCAP. It means that this bar owner actually paid his yearly fees.
Looks like they shoved it through the AOL interface maker and called it "new".
Microsoft needs to realize that cosmetic changes to the OS are not a reason to upgrade. Although that won't stop them, through yet more forced upgrades and built-in obsolesence from pushing this on the computer world.
I use Mac OSX at work, and occasionally SuSE 8.1 at home. If Microsoft depricates my Windows2000, I'll just move to OSX or SuSE.
Check your kernel sources. Enable the ax.25 kernel modules and you too can enable tcp/ip over serial devices.
Add in the supplemential toys which include a niftly "inted"-style super server and you can have it fire applications off on that serial lan, or use kernel routing to route to the Internet.
Yet more waste of resources for very little reason.
If this catches on, someone needs to figure out a use for these useless chunks of plastic. It's the road to riches. Include the junk sent by AOL and Earthlink and now you're really talking money.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad, I actually liked that magazine. Really too bad that my wife just re-upped my subscription for another year too.
Hmmm. Take money, promise something, fail to deliver and fail to return the money after it's all spent. Yep, sounds like a dot-com flame-out tactic.
If you do not like the way a business conducts itself, then don't patronize the business.
That means if the entertainment industry cheeses you off, then you quit buying CDs, DVDs and stop listening to music radio. You then tell your friends why they should be doing the same thing.
Consumers in this country hold the purse strings. Stop complaining and vote with your dollars.
This also works for those of you upset over the outsourcing of employment to other countries. TELL those companies why you refuse to do business with them each and every time they approach you for your hard earned dollar.
Remember, you hold the purse strings. Of course, it's easier to moan about it on Slashdot and exchange goatse trolls rather than taking a stand on an issue in which you believe. I mean, you *can't* possibly live without your tunes, right?
Wal-mart and Target have operations in all states. Ergo, they already collect sales taxes for that appropriate state and it's no big deal to include online and telephone sales, which they should have been doing anyway.
Ever notice on television advertisements for "The Osmonds Greatest Hits", you'll see the disclaimer that "residents of New York add sales tax". That's because the company pushing and fufilling the order has offices in New York. They're required to collect taxes for orders going to destinations within the state of NY. So, there's nothing terribly earth shattering about what these companies are doing nor the agreement that has been reached. I argue that Target/Wal-mart are trying to keep their respective tits out of the wringer because they haven't been collecting taxes for online/telephone sales.
In fact, I argue that this is the first step in stricter enforcement of sales tax laws directed at large corporations.
HOWEVER, you'll note that this is a voluntary program. The states can not force the guy at FixYourOwnPrinter.com to collect sales taxes for parts sold to anyone in any state other than his own. It is unconstitutional.
While this voluntary program is technically correct, I think it may be the first step at a wider attempt at regulating interstate commerce. Which of course, the states can not do per the Constitution.
Look for this one argued in the US Supreme Court soon.
Prime minister Tony Blair has reported London has been under constant potato barrage for the past 36 hours.
Well, yes and no.
I agree that in the scheme of hardware manufacturers and OEMS, it is irrelevant. But for the hordes of Slashdot readers that are very interested in commercial desktop Unix/Unix-like operating systems, this is far from irrelevant.
I'm now on my second round of "switching". My first attempt at Apple was an iBook, which I dearly hated. OSX wasn't quite "there yet", I wasn't patient enough and the opportunity to unload it at close to what I paid was too much to resist.
I now own a G4 and this thing is totally awesome. And coming from a Unix desktop background (still run Linux on the desktop at work, before that used Irix), OSX is pure heaven.
So your point is well taken, but I think the post is made as "Hey, Unix freaks, check this out" as opposed to "Hey computer users".
"For years, the safest path to success in the music business has been to hunt the teen market. But by ignoring career artists at the expense of the latest trends, the labels have lost touch with wide swaths of society. Ultimately, Timothy suggested to me that night, the industry as we know it could vanish not so much because of technology but because few people over the age of 30 would care if it did."
Well written.
I'm 34 years old, and the only CD I've purchased in the last 18 months was for a gift. I am no longer able to stomach most new music that the labels promote. I do not like rap, I do not like teen pop, older bands are ignored and anything that is new and fresh is immediately duped and run into the ground as the latest profit mill. Meanwhile, good local bands are ignored and routinely GIVE away their music online.
I purchased an insane amount of CDs between 1986 (my first CD player) and 1996. I had a nice amount of disposable income and thought nothing of dropping $40 on CDs on a weekly shopping trip. No longer, there's nothing worthy of my hard earned dollar.
If the record companies want to make a quick buck, all they need to do is simply create a web site that offers ALL their out of print music in their entire collection and allow me to download it and burn it for $2 per song. I can fit 10 songs per CD, and the weekly revenue stream magically re-appears.
Alas, they are too stupid to see how profitable it is to satiate a demand in the market. They are too arrogant to admit that they need to make an adjustment. And they are too greedy to do anything about their problem but to buy legislation and call their customers criminals.
It's sad, really.
That is preposterous. The FCC has determined that your tastes are better served by the media cartel of ClearChannel, CBS/Infinity and Viacom. If you're an urban radio fan, you have Radio One.
You're simply un-American and a terrorist sympathizer if all you want is information about your local community, or music that isn't getting airplay because of elaborate plug-n-play schemes or being pulled from the dusty archives because the station ownership is promoting the concert in the next town.
The FCC has your interests at heart. They realize that more common ownership is a good thing and is willing to take this a step further by again reducing ownership rules and even permitting television stations to own radio and newspapers.
Think of the bargains that advertisers will see when they have a one-stop-shop for all of their advertising. Imagine the benefits of unbiased uniformed reporting that you'll get from radio, TV and newsprint. Why, there won't be nary any discrepancies to the news since it'll come from the same copy writer no matter the source of your news.
The FCC knows best, trust them and you will see.
Of course, the above is sarcasm. I spent over 13 years in the broadcasting industry. I'm still taking three showers a day in an attempt to get rid of the stench.
... to make reasonable efforts to stop P2P networks.
That's really what the RIAA wants. They'd be elated to get Congress to authorize such a ridiculous charge, but they know in reality that there's little likelihood of that happening.
So, they're overshooting their goal by 5,000% in hopes of attaining what they've really wanted all along, and that is for ISPs to block P2P networks.
It'll probably work too. Until they start running them on port 80, and then the RIAA will need to come up with another plan of attack. Oddly enough, since the whole tax everyone had already been mentioned, they'll revisit that.
Eric S. Raymond was arrested today by the FBI for being in posession of confidential documents from Microsoft corporation. Microsoft has charged that posession is tantimount to industrial espionage and violates the DMCA.
"I find the whole matter deeply disturbing and troubling that this confidential document ended up in the hands of this individual. Obviously, intellectual and ownership rights have no meaning to the 'Linux' crowd and it just goes to show you their true mettle", said Microsoft spokesperson Nyles Forebush in an exclusive interview to Slashdot's Cowboy Neil.
Mr. Raymond is being held without bail at the federal penetentiary in Milan, Michigan.
The problem, as I've said here before, is SMTP itself.
The RFC pretty much states that to be compliant, you have to accept the mail as it is presented. Can't achieve accurate or trusted reverse name lookup information on the sending system? Well, that's tough, take the mail (read this for yourself).
This problem stems from when systems on the Internet were inherrently trusted. That's not the case any longer, and it's time for a new mail transmission standard.
For starters, it should allow system administrators the ability to give priority to systems that can present some form of credentials. SSL or keyed encryption, whatever the standard is, it will permit systems to give totally trusted access to systems that meet the specific security and trust guidelines of the receiving system, not the RFC (times have changed, tough).
Those systems that do not meet minimum trust levels will either have to clean up their act or take the time to contact the remote system to figure out the issue.
It won't stop spam, but it will go a long way to slowing it down and possibly providing some secure method of mail transport in the process.
It simply legitamizes the business of advertising through a cost-shifted model.
While the incremental cost to the end user (victim) is immeasurable on a single email basis, over a prolonged period the time spent weeding through the trash that comes in via email has a very real cost in lost time/productivity.
I've seen many arguments that there needs to be a balance between the rights of the recipient and the rights of the advertiser. Sad fact is, in any circumstance where any of the cost of the delivery of the advertisement is shifted to me and without my consent, it's consumer fraud. The adversiser has no right to take one microsecond of my time in effort to delete their advertisements from my email box, or to force me to get up from my chair to answer the phone or toss their ad from my fax machine.
Telemarketing, spam, junk faxes or stapling posters to my tree, the costs of delivery are heaped upon me and I'm sick and tired of it.
As far as spam goes, it's time to start pushing for the death of SMTP. It was nice when the Internet was sheltered, but it's now part of the real world and just like the real world, there's plenty of morons to cause problems.
The biggest problem with SMTP is that it has too much implicit trust. Spammers take advantage of this and either falsify headers or steal relay services. Giving priority to systems that have valid credentials and all but ignoring those that fail basic trust guidelines will cause spammers to play fair, or go broke. Those spammers that play fair will have no alternative but to honor remove requests or find their trust level set to zero.
There _are_ no free speech rights of advertisers as it pertains to my electronic mail address.
I simply do not want ANY mail that does not pertain to my business activities. Where do they get off thinking they have the right to steal the time it takes to read the header, address and possibly the text to determine if it's junk or not?
The owner is reported saying that: "any violation of the power limits was unintentional and resulted from the fact that the personnel working [on it] primarily have expertise in computers and not radio technology." That says it all. A bunch of computer people playing with RF; no knowledge of Part 15 rules, no concept of RF. Really, if the FCC is going to assign new frequencies for wireless networking, we owe it to ourselves to become acquainted with the technology and the rules thereof. The last thing that anyone needs is to turn 802.11 into another RF wasteland like CB radio.
Free speech gives you the right to go out on the corner, stand on the soap box and have at it.
Free speech does not give you the right to enter onto private propery and spout whatever it is you want to spout. Malls, theatres, business, they all apply and it applies equally when you _call_ my private property on _my_ phone. It's nice how the greatest share of cost in telemarketing is heaped upon the person that pays for the incoming line.
I hope this goes before the Supreme Court. It won't because the argument that it restricts free speech is patently absurd.
The problem with "innovation" is that's driven by one single force -- the almighty buck.
You can't have innovation without the pursuit of the dollar. You can't force those who innovate to pay the freight for "minimum living standards".
Pick your poison -- innovation via capitalism or socialism. I'm afraid we're leaning far more toward the latter.
I'll bet a fiver that I've responded to more NPRMs than you've had dates.
Thanks for the troll, now go back to your algebra class.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone within Congress will let this happen.
First, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) will have kittens at the mere suggestion of re-assignment of spectrum, either as a primary or secondary use. They'll have an absolute tirade if the proposal calls for secondary use of television spectrum. As well they should, part of their job is lobbying in Washington for the broadcasters.
I also can not believe the incumbent telcos will stand idle for this either. After the huge investments in (the soon to die) 3G wireless, they're going to need help from Congress and a lot more of those annoying "MOTO" commercials with the extra fine print that mentions that the cool stuff needs to be downloaded -- and paid for on a per-kilobyte basis.
However, if this were come to fruition, I can only see advantages. *Finally* the public gets to use its own valuable spectrum as opposed to having it auctioned off or sold to the highest bidder. The very spectrum that was formerly used by broadcasters to effectively print money will be put back into the hands of the people that allegedly own it.
Technically, these frequencies should allow for greater range and avoid the ever present foliage and weather losses. Current 2.4/5.2 gig wireless networks are cool, but you're not going to see competitive wireless services built around them as you simply need way too many access points. Maybe this is what's needed to put real broadband into the hands of people like myself who live in rural under-served markets. It may also serve as a welcome kick in the shorts to the likes of Comcast/Covad/pick-yer-most-reviled-broadband-pro
I'm hopefull, but still a pragmatic realist about it all. Congress doesn't necessarily do what's in the best interest of the people, so if you're in favor of this, start writing your letters.
Finally an American CEO that understands the problems of shifting operations overseas.
We are definetly mortgaging the future of our children for today's short-term buck. Far too many businesses are willing to sell their souls to the people that could one day go to war with the US.
The larger issue as I see it is that here's yet another large corporation guzzling up RF spectrum and leaving nothing for anyone else.
AT&T has a penchant for loading spectrum auctions with seemingly small outfits that they support, and when one of them wins spectrum it (surprise!) ends up in the hands of AT&T.
If the FCC were truly concerned about competition in the broadband market, they'd carve off two or three UHF television channels and start printing licenses for their use by small companies wanting to be WISPs. These channels would be expressly off-limits to incumbent telcos and wireless outfits.
Picking something between 500 mHz and 1 gHz will allow the users to have a reasonable chance of overcoming losses due to foliage and weather. Existing FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) technology can be used, and speeds well over 500 kbs are easily attainable, yet the range is upwards of 5 miles.
Of course, that'll never happen as small businesses are completely unable to swing the required $70,000 campaign donation to those legislators sitting on the FCC's appropriations committee.
Disgraceful, really.
This logic already exists in the US, but it's not the territory of the RIAA, it's the territory of ASCAP/BMI.
This is the toll-master of the music publishing business. Whenever a song by the artist formerly known as Prince (but now again known as Prince) has a song played, he gets a clink in the bank. If Tom Jones remakes another one of his songs (God please no), then Prince gets more money as his music is published through ASCAP/BMI.
ASCAP/BMI assures that those who write music are paid for it when it is used, regardless who sings it. It's actually not a bad system because it assures that song writers like Burt Bacharach keep churning out music, and bad singers keep recording them.
Where it goes horribly wrong is that the record companies themselves seem to be pretty much exempt from the ASCAP/BMI fees. ASCAP/BMI seems to concentrate on radio stations, the music-on-hold for businesses, bars, Muzak and now, Finish taxicabs.
Now and again, when you walk into a dance club or bar, you'll see a yellow sticker proudly displayed with the letters ASCAP. It means that this bar owner actually paid his yearly fees.
And it's a nonsense quote too.
Unix (SGI IRIX) *does* tie the OS to the hardware, just not in the way Microsoft sees as acceptable.
You're licensed per processor serial number. Just call SGI, give them a ton of cash, fire-up the license manager and enable features of the OS.
Hope this doesn't give MS any ideas....
Looks like they shoved it through the AOL interface maker and called it "new".
Microsoft needs to realize that cosmetic changes to the OS are not a reason to upgrade. Although that won't stop them, through yet more forced upgrades and built-in obsolesence from pushing this on the computer world.
I use Mac OSX at work, and occasionally SuSE 8.1 at home. If Microsoft depricates my Windows2000, I'll just move to OSX or SuSE.
It would be *nice* if they picked bands that didn't have obscene losses when shooting through vegitation.
Hopefully this will be structured to give competition to the telcos and not merely end up being spectrum purchased by the telcos.
Check your kernel sources. Enable the ax.25 kernel modules and you too can enable tcp/ip over serial devices.
Add in the supplemential toys which include a niftly "inted"-style super server and you can have it fire applications off on that serial lan, or use kernel routing to route to the Internet.
Spiffy.
Yet more waste of resources for very little reason.
If this catches on, someone needs to figure out a use for these useless chunks of plastic. It's the road to riches. Include the junk sent by AOL and Earthlink and now you're really talking money.