I'd say it's damn telling. If that's all Napster got to show up - given the huge amount of people that use the service...
I guess it's hard to get people behind a cause that's pushed by a company that's every bit as duplicitous and money-grubbing as the corporations it supposedly defies.
Ummm, ok - I guess I don't have anything nice to say, so I won't say anything else:)
You are missing the point, they were misled.
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 1
Of course he knew it wouldn't be profitable for a few years, everyone knew that.
The point is that Covad knew this and told the ISPs that everything would be fine and that they would wait with them for it to become profitable, only they didn't. They also forced them to purchase orders in very large increments, supposedly since the demand would quickly materialize and defray the up-front costs. If an ISP wanted to offer DSL (and I suspect that ISPs in cities with cable or other broadband access had little choice if they wanted to remain competitve) there was no other game in town. When Covad began offering thier own service they bascially made it impossible for the ISPs that had originally signed on to compete as they were reliant on a larger projected market share that had just been considerbly down-sized by the new competition. For Covad to encourage people to resell thier product and then enter the same market, making it impossible for the resellers to meet thier "quotas" - that is highly questionable.
Of course that doesn't explain why the ISPs didn't get all this in writing, and that is definately thier own fault.
All is not what it seems.
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 3
I originally heard about this a few months ago as I had some co-location dealings with a company that also sold Covad DSL (Internet Express here in San Diego). My buddy happened to know people there and got kind of an inside scoop.
Here's the gist of it, Covad would go to these local companies and show them how profitable it would be for them to resell DSL accounts. Of course the initial cost of setting everything up is astronomical, but hey the future is bright, don't worry about such things...
Well Covad basically told these resellers not to worry and that everything would be fine, and that they had to purchase these huge contracts that they didn't have enough users to cover - but it would be fine in the long-run.
I don't know if someone at Covad finally realized they weren't going to get paid any time in the near future or if they had this planned all the time - but one day they told everyone, hey you're in debt to us - give us all your subscribers and we'll give you a break on what's due.
And somehow Covad ends up with all these subscribers after having paid out little to nothing or get them... Odd.
The CEO of Internet Express went so far as to issue a press release on this. Pretty tame, I would have been a lot more blunt. Then again, I'll probablly never be a CEO:)
"If you use crappy cables you'll loose all the benefits "
There is absolutely no basis for the expensive cabling theories that advertisers would have you believe.
A cable is a physical medium for transferring an electrical signal (duh). Any normal cable will transfer that signal just fine for most applications. The only real considerations are impedance - which is not going to be considerable enough to change anything with a cheap piece of cable - and line noise - which is also not going to be very different with the cheap stuff. If the electrical fields in your house are so strong they are affecting your sound quality I'd be more concerned about cancer than how your MP3s sound. From a logical perspective the cost doesn't make sense and ultimately from an aural perspective (what really counts), I doubt that near anyone could tell the difference between the different types of cable.
Bottom line - cheap cable can very easily handle the power of your components and will give you almost no signal degradation over a normal length.
Of course the normal stuff may not have gold connectors, which protect against corrosion - and I know how most/. readers like to salt spray their electrical equipment (when was the last time you saw a rusty component cable, how old was it?)...
PS I picked up a Pioneer DVD player that is a three disk carousel (I think the current model is a five) so that I could take out my old cd player completely. It reads CDRs, has great DVD playback and 5.1 etc. I highly recommend it if you can handle not having an MP3 solution.
People have brought up the idea that we will have filters that will keep out "bonus additions" to our video feeds, this kind of thinking is targeted twords commercial applications of the technology. Well, of course the people who want to make the commercial additions will be against this but due to public outcry over the veracity of what we see I think it's quite possible that some sort of watermarking will be built into the hardware that makes these scenarios possible (there'd have to be watermarking of some kind or verification would be impossible as the technology progresses). All consumer electronics will have this, um, feature so that us we can't spoof the public eye as well as it being used in adding in-line commercials. Of course the companies that make these virtual commercials will lobby quite hard against any sort of filtering so it'll be only the minority (slashdot readers) that will have access to work-arounds. But that will be enough to make sure that obvious fakes aren't perpatrated.
Now if the government wanted to fake something do you think it would include a watermark? Neither do I.
Thought Two.
The possibility that is brough up of small organizations using this technology to manufacture footage to bolster claims is a valid one I'm sure (integrity rarely gets in the way of idealism). However it's the exact opposite that concerns me the most.
Example: The Very Honest Coalition of Nice People Against Psychopathic Murderers - "We just got this video of that man killing one meelion (pinky in mouth) people, let's make sure to send it to all the news channels and show it on our website.
The Evil Government Plus Puppet Media Sources - "The video that was sent to us and that you might find on the internet is a total fake, we have lots of valid reasons to say this and a plethora of witnesses that are all very credible that will back us up.
Hmmmm, so much for ever getting the word out about anything that people dont want to believe is true.
Once the FBI submits Carnivore to public (the university) scrutiny - will they then be able to install their boxes with impunity, without continuous monitoring?
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but how hard would it be for them to fill a box with some fairly innocuous code and then run whatever they want once they get the green light and the spotlight dies down?
Just a thought.
There's a guy in our office who used to work for a company that was bought by Netscape. After reading the letter I decided to ask him what the heck is going on over in Mozland. This is what I got back. The head of the company he used to work for stayed on after the buy-out and was put in charge of the 6.0 suite. This was about three years ago. Everything was written from the ground up in Java and the speed on it wasn't quite up to par so they scrapped the whole thing and went back it with C++. Now meanwhile the whole 5.0 version has been scrapped and they've decided to go straight to the 6.0 project when it's ready. So what happened? It's all management. According to my friend the people on the 6.0 team are all extremely competent coders and there is absolutely no way they would have not had everything finished by now. He stopped by thier office the other day and he said the best way to sum it up was "unmotivated". With all the changes in who's pulling the strings they've been in a programing limbo. Far as he can tell they should have released something some time ago and it's just the usual corporate bullsh*t that's been slowing them down. I used to stick with Netscape myself but like many others I finally got sick of the crashes and made the switch to IE. Now I find out that I'm using a product I'd rather not because management doesn't have a clue. Seems like business as usual.
Slashdot Mirror
Your logic is flawed,
The DMCA is covers more than just movies.
To support your point you will need to show that NO portion of the DMCA is making you "the agent of injustice to another".
I guess it's hard to get people behind a cause that's pushed by a company that's every bit as duplicitous and money-grubbing as the corporations it supposedly defies.
Ummm, ok - I guess I don't have anything nice to say, so I won't say anything else :)
Of course he knew it wouldn't be profitable for a few years, everyone knew that.
The point is that Covad knew this and told the ISPs that everything would be fine and that they would wait with them for it to become profitable, only they didn't. They also forced them to purchase orders in very large increments, supposedly since the demand would quickly materialize and defray the up-front costs. If an ISP wanted to offer DSL (and I suspect that ISPs in cities with cable or other broadband access had little choice if they wanted to remain competitve) there was no other game in town. When Covad began offering thier own service they bascially made it impossible for the ISPs that had originally signed on to compete as they were reliant on a larger projected market share that had just been considerbly down-sized by the new competition. For Covad to encourage people to resell thier product and then enter the same market, making it impossible for the resellers to meet thier "quotas" - that is highly questionable.
Of course that doesn't explain why the ISPs didn't get all this in writing, and that is definately thier own fault.
I originally heard about this a few months ago as I had some co-location dealings with a company that also sold Covad DSL (Internet Express here in San Diego). My buddy happened to know people there and got kind of an inside scoop.
Here's the gist of it, Covad would go to these local companies and show them how profitable it would be for them to resell DSL accounts. Of course the initial cost of setting everything up is astronomical, but hey the future is bright, don't worry about such things...
Well Covad basically told these resellers not to worry and that everything would be fine, and that they had to purchase these huge contracts that they didn't have enough users to cover - but it would be fine in the long-run.
I don't know if someone at Covad finally realized they weren't going to get paid any time in the near future or if they had this planned all the time - but one day they told everyone, hey you're in debt to us - give us all your subscribers and we'll give you a break on what's due.
And somehow Covad ends up with all these subscribers after having paid out little to nothing or get them... Odd.
The CEO of Internet Express went so far as to issue a press release on this. Pretty tame, I would have been a lot more blunt. Then again, I'll probablly never be a CEO :)
How do they plan on acurately figuring-out what artists get what?
And if they do, will Jerry Lewis become richer than Bill Gates?
There is absolutely no basis for the expensive cabling theories that advertisers would have you believe.
A cable is a physical medium for transferring an electrical signal (duh). Any normal cable will transfer that signal just fine for most applications. The only real considerations are impedance - which is not going to be considerable enough to change anything with a cheap piece of cable - and line noise - which is also not going to be very different with the cheap stuff.
If the electrical fields in your house are so strong they are affecting your sound quality I'd be more concerned about cancer than how your MP3s sound.
From a logical perspective the cost doesn't make sense and ultimately from an aural perspective (what really counts), I doubt that near anyone could tell the difference between the different types of cable.
Bottom line - cheap cable can very easily handle the power of your components and will give you almost no signal degradation over a normal length.
Of course the normal stuff may not have gold connectors, which protect against corrosion - and I know how most /. readers like to salt spray their electrical equipment (when was the last time you saw a rusty component cable, how old was it?)...
PS
I picked up a Pioneer DVD player that is a three disk carousel (I think the current model is a five) so that I could take out my old cd player completely. It reads CDRs, has great DVD playback and 5.1 etc. I highly recommend it if you can handle not having an MP3 solution.
Two thoughts on this...
Thought One.
People have brought up the idea that we will have filters that will keep out "bonus additions" to our video feeds, this kind of thinking is targeted twords commercial applications of the technology.
Now if the government wanted to fake something do you think it would include a watermark? Neither do I.Well, of course the people who want to make the commercial additions will be against this but due to public outcry over the veracity of what we see I think it's quite possible that some sort of watermarking will be built into the hardware that makes these scenarios possible (there'd have to be watermarking of some kind or verification would be impossible as the technology progresses). All consumer electronics will have this, um, feature so that us we can't spoof the public eye as well as it being used in adding in-line commercials. Of course the companies that make these virtual commercials will lobby quite hard against any sort of filtering so it'll be only the minority (slashdot readers) that will have access to work-arounds. But that will be enough to make sure that obvious fakes aren't perpatrated.
Thought Two.
The possibility that is brough up of small organizations using this technology to manufacture footage to bolster claims is a valid one I'm sure (integrity rarely gets in the way of idealism).
However it's the exact opposite that concerns me the most.
Example:
The Very Honest Coalition of Nice People Against Psychopathic Murderers - "We just got this video of that man killing one meelion (pinky in mouth) people, let's make sure to send it to all the news channels and show it on our website.
The Evil Government Plus Puppet Media Sources - "The video that was sent to us and that you might find on the internet is a total fake, we have lots of valid reasons to say this and a plethora of witnesses that are all very credible that will back us up.
Hmmmm, so much for ever getting the word out about anything that people dont want to believe is true.
Once the FBI submits Carnivore to public (the university) scrutiny - will they then be able to install their boxes with impunity, without continuous monitoring? Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but how hard would it be for them to fill a box with some fairly innocuous code and then run whatever they want once they get the green light and the spotlight dies down? Just a thought.
There's a guy in our office who used to work for a company that was bought by Netscape. After reading the letter I decided to ask him what the heck is going on over in Mozland. This is what I got back. The head of the company he used to work for stayed on after the buy-out and was put in charge of the 6.0 suite. This was about three years ago. Everything was written from the ground up in Java and the speed on it wasn't quite up to par so they scrapped the whole thing and went back it with C++. Now meanwhile the whole 5.0 version has been scrapped and they've decided to go straight to the 6.0 project when it's ready. So what happened? It's all management. According to my friend the people on the 6.0 team are all extremely competent coders and there is absolutely no way they would have not had everything finished by now. He stopped by thier office the other day and he said the best way to sum it up was "unmotivated". With all the changes in who's pulling the strings they've been in a programing limbo. Far as he can tell they should have released something some time ago and it's just the usual corporate bullsh*t that's been slowing them down. I used to stick with Netscape myself but like many others I finally got sick of the crashes and made the switch to IE. Now I find out that I'm using a product I'd rather not because management doesn't have a clue. Seems like business as usual.