Beer has taught me that yeast create ethanol as a metabolic waste product, right? I believe that yeast also create carbon dioxide as a waste product.
I doubt that large-scale industral ethanol plants are using yeast colonies for production... but what do they use? And what are the waste products from that process?
I understand that reducing our reliance on fossil fules is a good thing. However, if substantial amounts of greenhouse (or other undesirable) gas emissions result from the ethanol production process, aren't we just playing Whack-A-Mole with the source of the pollution?
Isn't it true that the little "Compact disc" logo which appears on every jewel case of every CD is licensed from Phillips, and that it indicates an adherence to some sort of standard, as set out by the patent held by Phillips? And isn't it also true that if a CD doesn't adhere to that standard, it presumably can't be licensed, and so it can't be assigned the logo, and can't precisely be called a "compact disc."
So does this mean that the new, crippled CDs will still be sold under the name "CD"? Wouldn't Phillips want to protect their patented technology's name from being misapplied to products which don't adhere to the standards which they established? And, on the flipside, if these new things aren't CDs, then do the companies pressing the new, flawed discs still have to pay licensing to Phillips? Could it be that there's an additional financial incentive to switching over - a marginal savings in cost in avoiding those fees?
Maybe I'm just paranoid, or misinformed... but I can see how this would read as win-win to record companies: Cheaper bulk disc fabrication, and the elimination of all that pesky fair use!
It would probably be wise to do so quickly, before the scheme is actually put into use for protecting anything copyrighted, at which point it becomes blessed with DMCA Power.
Actually, that brings up an interesting question: Suppose someone decides today to use a copyright protection scheme which was cracked by researchers *before* the DMCA went into effect. Does it then suddenly become illegal to traffic in the so-called circumvention mechanisms? Does it become illegal to republish or redistribute the paper?
If so, a lot of back-issues of technical journals could be considered contraband under the law. Whee!
Does this mean that by simply naming a file "something.mp3", I am associating "type" information (it's an mp3) with the file? And then, if a browser inspects that extension and launches an mp3 player, that browser has infringed on the patent?
If so, get me some shares in that company. Yee haw!
Come to think of it, a few months ago, I used my browser to download and play DeCSS_source_read_aloud.mp3 . In doing so, it turns out I have violated not only the above-mentioned patent, but also the DMCA *and* the hotly debated Fraunhofer mp3 patent! A 3-in-one! Somebody better lock me up.
Isn't it true that Mir has been continually occupied, and is presently occupied by people for years? So, while it's neat that we're near the start of our maybe-permanent venture into space, to say that this age begins today doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Sure, it looks like an iMac turd, but it's a slick little device that not only provides wireless bridging to the wired network, but also automatically does network address translation for the wireless devices. It will even offer DHCP / NAT for the wired machines, and manage your dialup for you (it has an integrated 56k modem).
So, on DSL/Cable setups that share a single IP, it frees up whatver machine was forced to do IPmasq. And over a shared dialup, you no longer have to have anybody running diald.
It only costs $300, which isn't that much more than what you'd pay for a small home router anyway, and of course it also gives you wireless access (compatible with 802.11b products).
I get excellent reception throughout my entire 3-story house, including the basement.
Best of all, you don't have to have a Mac (or Windows) to use it... there's a java-based configurator.
I was pro-boycott from the start - I didn't want to do dirty work for the RIAA, serving to strengthen their algorithm which they would eventually use against me. But in spite of my reservations, a successful, across-the-board crack this early may be a good thing.
I think the bad PR will constitute a serious blow to the SDMI (unless they somehow manage to downplay or spin it), and I think the lost time will be even more crippling to the initiative.
This means no SDMI players by christmas... meanwhile, more and more MP3 players will emerge and gather market share. If, by the time they come out with a new, improved SDMI, millions of people have mp3 products (especially non-technophile people), it will be much, much harder to pitch it to the average consumer. Hopefully at that point SDMI will go the way of DivX (the pay-per-view DVD, not the compression).
BMI is one of the two big organizations that licenses music for public performance. (ASCAP is the other.) Radio stations, some restaurants, and other locations with "public performance" of copyrighted music have to pay fees to BMI & ASCAP to legally broadcast the copyrighted music managed by those companies.
When I was general manager of a radio station in Pittsburgh (waves-through-the-air radio, not net radio), we were approached by BMI who wanted us to pay them more money to extend our license to cover our webcast.
Our webcast is a mid-to-low-quality streaming MP3 version of our air signal. We had our lawyers write them saying that we were already paying licensing for our radio broadcast, and that the netcast was merely a simulcast. As such, it did nothing but increase our so-called potential listening audience, which our licensing fees are not a function of. We weren't playing any more copyrighted music, we were just playing it to (potentially) more people.
They went away, and we never heard back from them one way or the other. Which was fine with us.
Cute, eh? This site (same at all three addresses) has some interesting rants about bad treatment at the hands of various DSL providers, and some links to alternative DSL providers.
The stories are good for a few laughs... the site maintainer actually got the president of Bell Atlantic Broadband making false promises over the phone!
There are some links to contact lawyers to join class action suits. The site is a bit Bell-Atlantic-centric, but still interesting and entertaining. I can sympathize, I had a 2-month Bell Atlantic DSL outage myself.
It seems to me that people (like me) who don't like anything about the SDMI should be boycotting the hack challenge. Here's why:
Someone winning the challenge does NOT hurt the SDMI.
Quite the contrary. By poking holes in the SDMI in its early stages, we help make it more ironclad for when it is actually rolled out.
By hacking it now, you're not getting egg on their face. You're not making them look dumb. Even if it's really easy and the hacker who breaks it says "Ha ha, silly people, can't make a strong algorithm to save their lives" and all his/her hacker buddies laugh at the SDMI, they have fundamentally made the algorithm stronger, because the consortium will immediately plug the hole that was used to crack it. And one gloating hacker gets some money, and the rest of us get stuck with a stronger algorithm in the hands of oppressive corporations.
The SDMI is run by corporations who should be paying for this work.
Corporations don't need our help. Statistically, the odds of any one hacker being the first to break it are very low. So basically, everyone but that one person who is lucky enough to win is donating his or her time to a bunch of bloated media giants to help them make CDs more expensive and harder to listen to in the future. Some deal.
We do not want a strong SDMI to prove that it's a bad idea
I'd prefer to see the SDMI consortium triumphantly deploy their new "unbreakable" system, and then have it hacked and go belly up and get recalled a week later. That, and not public outcry, will convince corporate policymakers and possibly some lawmakers that the whole thing is a bunch of bunk. Angry shouting people on slashdot go away... big losses in non-recoverable engineering costs don't.
By participating, you legitimize the entire notion of the SDMI
Please, let's not think that all people suggesting boycots are whiners saying that "it would be too easy" or "$10,000 isn't enough". Anyone who tries to hack the SDMI before it is rolled out is implicitly endorsing it and making a real contribution to its cause. Don't!
I think the real reason that Verizon backed off is because they didn't like the prospect of taking 2600 to court and having
VerizonShouldSpendMoreTimeFixingItsNetworkAndLessM oneyOnLawyers.com
be brought to issue, along with all the hypocrisy that comes with serving papers to net squatters after batch-registering (and not using) dozens of domain names of their own.
Remember that Verizon preemptively registered many, many other domain names for themselves, including the original
verizonsucks.com, plus
verizonblows.com and countless others. And there's nothing on thosesites, and there almost certainly never will be.
I would suggest to those who are saying "At last, a big corporation does something good!" that they are at best doing the right thing for the wong reason but more likely paying off their noisiest opponent to effectively silence dissidence.
They have managed to avoid a court case, to avoid bad PR, and to avoid the net squatting issue completely without too much media attention. And they still own most of the best names for protest sites. Not exactly cause for celebration.
Here's an idea: make a renamer-daemon, or "renaemon," which runs through selected directories on your filesystem and continually renames the files. Good-bye legal worries!
Agent: Our records show that you have a copy of "ReCSS.zip", a derivative of DeCSS, on your machine. Sysadmin: Nope! All I have is GeCSS... make that BeCSS. Totally different. Just like "Gomb_recipe.txt" and "Buclear_weapon_plan.pdf". Agent: D'oh!
Perhaps one could even forge some kind of quantum uncertainty defense. Isn't that what earned an acquittal in the SPCA vs. Schroedinger case?
Perry Mason: Sir, you are accused of killing your poor cat. Could you please describe the circumstances of the crime? Schroedinger: No, I cannot. Judge: Case dismissed!
"A less privileged community can start a computer club and get the kids to write web pages. Or a ham radio club."
And where will the members of the community get the money to buy computers to view the web pages that the computer club created?
"The point is not that the money to set up an LPFM is low. The point is that there are not enough stations on the dial so that every person can have a LPFM, but every person can have a computer and a web site.
You have missed my point entirely. I was not talking about set-up costs, I was talking about access costs. There's no benefit to setting up a comunity-oriented web page if nobody from the community can view it, even if millions of outsiders can.
We're not talking about LPFM versus the internet, we're talking about LPFM versus no LPFM. Given that, I'm sure we both agree. In my initial post I was trying to remind people of this (i.e., the issue at hand having nothing to do with the internet-as-panacaea), but my point was lost.
You dwell on how the internet is better at doing the things I propose than LPFM is. Frankly, I agree. But I also think that the day when, in your words, "every person can have a computer and a web site" is a LONG ways off. I can't predict the future, but I'd say at least a decade. And I think that's very optimistic.
I love the internet. I use it all the time. I think it kicks the pants right off of all the other media in terms of its current and potential effects on society. But there are a few crucial differences between the internet and LPFM. Among others:
The financial bar to accessing the internet in the home is extremely high. The financial bar to accessing FM airwaves (as a recipient) is practically zero.
Nobody is deciding right now whether or not the internet should be allowed to exist. LPFM is go or no-go based on the decisions to be made in the coming months.
I'm not arguing that the microphone is better than the keyboard, and I'm definitely not saying that there are more jobs in broadcasting than there are in computers. But lets not get internet tunnel-vision just yet. Just because it's the wave of the future (and I agree that it is) doesn't mean that everything that doesn't incorporate it is unexciting. Folks who can't get at that great new technology will be better off for having LPFM in the meantime.
The much-talked-about digital divide would not affect would-be listeners of low-power FM stations. This is one of the most important implications of LPFM.
A less priveliged community can fairly easily pull together the dough to get an LPFM station, base it at, for example, a local public school, and then provide a tremendous number of services to the local area. Not only programming that addresses the local communtiy's needs (rather than shrinkwrapped kool-kulture brought to you by 102.5 the BUZZ), but also on-the-job training for people interested in careers in broadcast media, and hands-on experience in positive, community-oriented programming for the students at the school.
It also allows another way to inexpensively bring independant music (either local, national, or international) to the ears of people who want to hear it. This provides a real alternative to big radio's spoonfed programming, generally chosen by computers to suit a perceived demographic.
And, most importantly, the bar to accessing the media is very low - a working radio can be had for less than $10. That's a lot less than a $1500-$3000 dollar computer, or even a cheapo iOpener that requires a monthly fee. Additionally, converting a LPFM station for internet simulcast is not hard to do, should the cost on internet access drop in the future.
IMO, the more access people have to accessible media sources, the freer they will be.
Slashdot Mirror
Beer has taught me that yeast create ethanol as a metabolic waste product, right? I believe that yeast also create carbon dioxide as a waste product.
I doubt that large-scale industral ethanol plants are using yeast colonies for production... but what do they use? And what are the waste products from that process?
I understand that reducing our reliance on fossil fules is a good thing. However, if substantial amounts of greenhouse (or other undesirable) gas emissions result from the ethanol production process, aren't we just playing Whack-A-Mole with the source of the pollution?
So does this mean that the new, crippled CDs will still be sold under the name "CD"? Wouldn't Phillips want to protect their patented technology's name from being misapplied to products which don't adhere to the standards which they established? And, on the flipside, if these new things aren't CDs, then do the companies pressing the new, flawed discs still have to pay licensing to Phillips? Could it be that there's an additional financial incentive to switching over - a marginal savings in cost in avoiding those fees?
Maybe I'm just paranoid, or misinformed... but I can see how this would read as win-win to record companies: Cheaper bulk disc fabrication, and the elimination of all that pesky fair use!
Actually, that brings up an interesting question: Suppose someone decides today to use a copyright protection scheme which was cracked by researchers *before* the DMCA went into effect. Does it then suddenly become illegal to traffic in the so-called circumvention mechanisms? Does it become illegal to republish or redistribute the paper?
If so, a lot of back-issues of technical journals could be considered contraband under the law. Whee!
If so, get me some shares in that company. Yee haw!
Come to think of it, a few months ago, I used my browser to download and play DeCSS_source_read_aloud.mp3 . In doing so, it turns out I have violated not only the above-mentioned patent, but also the DMCA *and* the hotly debated Fraunhofer mp3 patent! A 3-in-one! Somebody better lock me up.
This totally reminds me of something I once saw on xscreensaver!
Isn't it true that Mir has been continually occupied, and is presently occupied by people for years? So, while it's neat that we're near the start of our maybe-permanent venture into space, to say that this age begins today doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Sure, it looks like an iMac turd, but it's a slick little device that not only provides wireless bridging to the wired network, but also automatically does network address translation for the wireless devices. It will even offer DHCP / NAT for the wired machines, and manage your dialup for you (it has an integrated 56k modem).
So, on DSL/Cable setups that share a single IP, it frees up whatver machine was forced to do IPmasq. And over a shared dialup, you no longer have to have anybody running diald.
It only costs $300, which isn't that much more than what you'd pay for a small home router anyway, and of course it also gives you wireless access (compatible with 802.11b products). I get excellent reception throughout my entire 3-story house, including the basement.
Best of all, you don't have to have a Mac (or Windows) to use it... there's a java-based configurator.
s/mp3/vorbis/g
I think the bad PR will constitute a serious blow to the SDMI (unless they somehow manage to downplay or spin it), and I think the lost time will be even more crippling to the initiative.
This means no SDMI players by christmas... meanwhile, more and more MP3 players will emerge and gather market share. If, by the time they come out with a new, improved SDMI, millions of people have mp3 products (especially non-technophile people), it will be much, much harder to pitch it to the average consumer. Hopefully at that point SDMI will go the way of DivX (the pay-per-view DVD, not the compression).
When I was general manager of a radio station in Pittsburgh (waves-through-the-air radio, not net radio), we were approached by BMI who wanted us to pay them more money to extend our license to cover our webcast.
Our webcast is a mid-to-low-quality streaming MP3 version of our air signal. We had our lawyers write them saying that we were already paying licensing for our radio broadcast, and that the netcast was merely a simulcast. As such, it did nothing but increase our so-called potential listening audience, which our licensing fees are not a function of. We weren't playing any more copyrighted music, we were just playing it to (potentially) more people.
They went away, and we never heard back from them one way or the other. Which was fine with us.
- www.phoneproblems.com
- www.ihatethephonecompany.com
- www.theydontcare.com
Cute, eh? This site (same at all three addresses) has some interesting rants about bad treatment at the hands of various DSL providers, and some links to alternative DSL providers.The stories are good for a few laughs... the site maintainer actually got the president of Bell Atlantic Broadband making false promises over the phone!
There are some links to contact lawyers to join class action suits. The site is a bit Bell-Atlantic-centric, but still interesting and entertaining. I can sympathize, I had a 2-month Bell Atlantic DSL outage myself.
Quite the contrary. By poking holes in the SDMI in its early stages, we help make it more ironclad for when it is actually rolled out. By hacking it now, you're not getting egg on their face. You're not making them look dumb. Even if it's really easy and the hacker who breaks it says "Ha ha, silly people, can't make a strong algorithm to save their lives" and all his/her hacker buddies laugh at the SDMI, they have fundamentally made the algorithm stronger, because the consortium will immediately plug the hole that was used to crack it. And one gloating hacker gets some money, and the rest of us get stuck with a stronger algorithm in the hands of oppressive corporations.
Corporations don't need our help. Statistically, the odds of any one hacker being the first to break it are very low. So basically, everyone but that one person who is lucky enough to win is donating his or her time to a bunch of bloated media giants to help them make CDs more expensive and harder to listen to in the future. Some deal.
I'd prefer to see the SDMI consortium triumphantly deploy their new "unbreakable" system, and then have it hacked and go belly up and get recalled a week later. That, and not public outcry, will convince corporate policymakers and possibly some lawmakers that the whole thing is a bunch of bunk. Angry shouting people on slashdot go away... big losses in non-recoverable engineering costs don't.
Please, let's not think that all people suggesting boycots are whiners saying that "it would be too easy" or "$10,000 isn't enough". Anyone who tries to hack the SDMI before it is rolled out is implicitly endorsing it and making a real contribution to its cause. Don't!
Remember that Verizon preemptively registered many, many other domain names for themselves, including the original verizonsucks.com, plus verizonblows.com and countless others. And there's nothing on those sites, and there almost certainly never will be.
I would suggest to those who are saying "At last, a big corporation does something good!" that they are at best doing the right thing for the wong reason but more likely paying off their noisiest opponent to effectively silence dissidence.
They have managed to avoid a court case, to avoid bad PR, and to avoid the net squatting issue completely without too much media attention. And they still own most of the best names for protest sites. Not exactly cause for celebration.
Agent: Our records show that you have a copy of "ReCSS.zip", a derivative of DeCSS, on your machine.
Sysadmin: Nope! All I have is GeCSS... make that BeCSS. Totally different. Just like "Gomb_recipe.txt" and "Buclear_weapon_plan.pdf".
Agent: D'oh!
Perhaps one could even forge some kind of quantum uncertainty defense. Isn't that what earned an acquittal in the SPCA vs. Schroedinger case?
Perry Mason: Sir, you are accused of killing your poor cat. Could you please describe the circumstances of the crime?
Schroedinger: No, I cannot.
Judge: Case dismissed!
Sadly, this isn't because the CDDB folks "saw the light," it's because the folks who make Media Jukebox signed a contract.
Still, I think freeDB is a better alternative.
And where will the members of the community get the money to buy computers to view the web pages that the computer club created?
"The point is not that the money to set up an LPFM is low. The point is that there are not enough stations on the dial so that every person can have a LPFM, but every person can have a computer and a web site.
You have missed my point entirely. I was not talking about set-up costs, I was talking about access costs. There's no benefit to setting up a comunity-oriented web page if nobody from the community can view it, even if millions of outsiders can.
We're not talking about LPFM versus the internet, we're talking about LPFM versus no LPFM. Given that, I'm sure we both agree. In my initial post I was trying to remind people of this (i.e., the issue at hand having nothing to do with the internet-as-panacaea), but my point was lost.
You dwell on how the internet is better at doing the things I propose than LPFM is. Frankly, I agree. But I also think that the day when, in your words, "every person can have a computer and a web site" is a LONG ways off. I can't predict the future, but I'd say at least a decade. And I think that's very optimistic.
I love the internet. I use it all the time. I think it kicks the pants right off of all the other media in terms of its current and potential effects on society. But there are a few crucial differences between the internet and LPFM. Among others:
- The financial bar to accessing the internet in the home is extremely high. The financial bar to accessing FM airwaves (as a recipient) is practically zero.
- Nobody is deciding right now whether or not the internet should be allowed to exist. LPFM is go or no-go based on the decisions to be made in the coming months.
I'm not arguing that the microphone is better than the keyboard, and I'm definitely not saying that there are more jobs in broadcasting than there are in computers. But lets not get internet tunnel-vision just yet. Just because it's the wave of the future (and I agree that it is) doesn't mean that everything that doesn't incorporate it is unexciting. Folks who can't get at that great new technology will be better off for having LPFM in the meantime.A less priveliged community can fairly easily pull together the dough to get an LPFM station, base it at, for example, a local public school, and then provide a tremendous number of services to the local area. Not only programming that addresses the local communtiy's needs (rather than shrinkwrapped kool-kulture brought to you by 102.5 the BUZZ), but also on-the-job training for people interested in careers in broadcast media, and hands-on experience in positive, community-oriented programming for the students at the school.
It also allows another way to inexpensively bring independant music (either local, national, or international) to the ears of people who want to hear it. This provides a real alternative to big radio's spoonfed programming, generally chosen by computers to suit a perceived demographic.
And, most importantly, the bar to accessing the media is very low - a working radio can be had for less than $10. That's a lot less than a $1500-$3000 dollar computer, or even a cheapo iOpener that requires a monthly fee. Additionally, converting a LPFM station for internet simulcast is not hard to do, should the cost on internet access drop in the future.
IMO, the more access people have to accessible media sources, the freer they will be.
R. Reed Taylor
General Manager '98-'99, WRCT Pittsburgh 88.3 FM