I have a strange memory which I'm sure stretches right back to when I was still in the womb.
It's not a memory of any event, just a tactile sense accompanied by a very low level of lighting and warmth.
I can recall this "memory" being quite vivid until the age of 8 or 9 and since then it has gradually weakened with time -- but on some very rare occasions it all comes flooding back for a brief instant -- just a second or two.
It's weird -- but incredibly comforting and soothing.
Other than that, my earliest recollection is from before I was walking. I can recall sitting on the driveway looking up at an old two story house. I never told my parents about this until I was about 13 and they told me that it must have been a house they rented for just a couple of months about 9 months after I was born. They'd never mentioned it to me and once again it wasn't a particularly memorable event that would have been recounted by them for any reason so I suspect it's a real memory.
So, now that there are moves to significantly increase the amount of information gathered, analyzed and stored on every citizen in the name of a war against terror, how are we supposed to feel confident that this information is not going to be stolen by some terrorist group or spammer and used against us?
What if you own the CD - should you pay again to listen to a degraded version?
Interestingly enough, copyright law in New Zealand is about to undergo a bit of a shake-up that would have an effect on this.
At present it's illegal to make *any* copy of any disk you own -- that's right, there's no fair use provision here.
However, the government (in an uncharacteristic exhibition of wisdom) appears to have decided that it makes sense to allow people to copy for the purpose of "format shifting" -- ie: from CD to MP3 or from CD to tape, etc.
This would create a very interesting situation where someone already had a specific CD but chose to download the MP3 version of its contents from a P2P network rather than rip it themselves. Under the proposed new law, this could be considered a completely legal act.
To make the matter even more ridiculous -- the proposed changes appear to have some DMCA-like provisions that prohibit the cracking of copy-protection schemes. So, if you've just bought a new CD which is copy protected -- it would be legal to download an MP3 version from the Net but illegal to rip it yourself.
Don't ya just love politicians and the laws they make?
Oh yeah, and this is a very likely scenario, given that EMI Australia has announced that it will be copy-protecting *all* its disks as of next year.
Now I believe that one of the specific "fair use" exclusions to copyright is for reporting purposes.
In such cases of course, the excerpted piece of otherwise copyrighted material must only be a small percentage of the original work.
This allows one newspaper report to quote a few lines from a competing publication without fear of breaching their copyright.
So what's wrong with the claim that turning 10 seconds or so of a top-40 song into a ring-tone isn't also covered by this "fair use" exclusion because it's only a tiny percentage of the original work and it's *reporting* that someone has called your cellphone?
It would certainly be an interesting sharkfight if someone decided to test it out in the courts:-)
Hell, some people (no names:-) have been ripping DVDs to DVDR and CDR disks for ages using freely available shareware.
There are even some bloody excellent websites like VCDHelp.com and Doom9.net which explain the whole process in simple to follow steps and provide discussion forms for those who have questions or problems.
What's the MPAA going to do now? Force these sites to charge a subscription and demand that all the revenues be handed over to them?
Hey, maybe the MPAA *have* found a new business model -- let people help others make backup copies of your wares and then sue them for huge sums.
Probably sounds pretty damned good from a movie exec's perspective -- let others do all the work then just raid their wallets at your leisure.
The problem with government grants is...
on
The End of Solotrek
·
· Score: 2
In December of 2000, Trek Aerospace was awarded $5,100,000 in development funding from DARPA over a thirty-six month period.
I don't know about the USA but when I applied for a $30K R&D grant here in New Zealand, it cost me about $35K in time and effort just to file all the paperwork!
Suffice to say I haven't bothered applying for another (even thought the first application was successful).
Such grants appear to only be practical when you're a big enough organization that you can have staff dedicated to the full-time processing of all the forms, requests, reports and other bits of bureacracy that are required to meet all the criteria.
But hey, some nice person I've never heard of before sent me an email the other day telling me that I qualify for a government grant. I think their name was Ima Spamma or something;-0
A few flying platform and jetpack projects
on
The End of Solotrek
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The Solotrek was at best, an ill-conceived concept with many drawbacks and a long list of flaws that doomed it from the start.
Firstly, it offered few real benefits over earlier options such as the Hiller flying platform.
Most of us will have seen archive footage of these platforms that were so stable that a regular foot-soldier (or man in the street) could learn to fly one in just a few short minutes.
Hiller poured a lot of money into these devices in the 1950s but ultimately they were deemed to be impractical for numerous reasons -- most of which are shared by the SoloTrek.
Actually, the Hiller might even have been superior in a number of areas -- such as being far simpler in design and construction. Remember -- when you double the complexity of something you reduce its reliabilty by more than an equivalent amount. When my life is dependent on a piece of technology, I want that technology to be as simple and reliable as possible!
I plan to build my own flying platform when time/funds allow but have no illusions that it will be anything other than a curiosity. There are certainly no plans to turn it into the personal transporter of the 21st century.
Moller's Sky Car falls into the same category as the SoloTrek -- it's an overly complicated, hideously expensive and completely impractical device.
That the SoloTrek and Moller Skycar managed to get any external funding amazes me.
And, if you're interested in personal VTOL transport then check out this ambitious amateur jet-pack project which may be very ambitious, but is also astonishingly impressive in its engineering.
Does this mean that the RIAA will be seeding P2P networks with MP3s that contain the subliminal message "buy this CD, buy this CD"?
And I believe that listening to boy-bands will give you tinitus even if you keep the volume way down and wear ear-plugs. That's the price you have to pay for having really bad taste.
Why hasn't Microsoft just changed the way it handles buffers to eliminate the weekly discovery of yet another buffer overflow exploit that compromises security?
I wonder if I should lend them my copy of Code Complete... oh, hang on..:-)
Wow.. great minds think alike (whilst fools seldom differ)
I was just pondering the practicalities of a RIAA boycot this morning (okay, who installed the trojan on my PC???:-)
Unfortunately, such boycotts can backfire very, very badly.
Imagine if the/. community proclaimed a boycott and refused to buy CDs for a month.
If CD sales remained unaffected then the RIAA could simply turn around and say that this proves most people are happy with their pricing, their product and their attitudes to the marketplace.
Or, even worse, if such a boycott did affect sales in a negative way, they'd simply say that this was due to piracy and that it endorses their stand on copy-protection, the DMCA, etc.
In effect, we'd be hoist by our own petard.
Anyone contemplating a boycott ought to be very sure they've got the numbers (and I'm talking *big* numbers) before they embark on such an action.
A better way might be to incite people to get active in starting a petition protesting the loss of fair use due to recent and proposed moves by the RIAA/MPAA.
This would have to be a petition where signatures are collected in ink, on sheets of paper. Cyber petitions are too easily discredited.
I'm sure, given the seven degrees of separation principle, that if everyone here solicited everyone they knew to sign such a petition, and got them to do likewise, it wouldn't be too hard to dump a very large truckload of dead-tree pulp and ink on the doorstep of Congress.
You're dead right -- spammers will simply run their businesses like the movie industry does.
Set up numerous little companies so that those which run into problems (such as being a box-office bust or having the snot sued out of them) can be bankrupted at no real cost to the people behind them.
I would expect that these spamhaus companies would rent their computers and other "assets" from a parent company at a rate equal to the revenues the spamming generated. That parent company would (of course) be a legally separate entity. This means that when the sued company is bankrupted for failure to pay the fines, it has neither assets nor cash in the bank and the spammers don't lose a penny.
It's a strategy that's been used countless times before in many different industries. The only losers are the *real* creditors who are unfortunate to lose their money -- but in this case that serves them right for dealing with a spammer anyway.
Are you having trouble paying your bills and affording subscriptions to all those porn sites?
Well our unique money making system will ensure that you can claim squillions of dollars in just a few short weeks.
Yes, based on the recent spamming decision in favor of AOL, we've produced a set of reports that you can use to earn a fortune!
By following the simple instructions contained in these reports, you can set up your own tiny ISP operation and your own spamhaus.
Then, after you've sent *yourself* several million spam messages, we show you how to get the courts to award you $7 million in damages against yourself
It's so easy anyone can do it.
But hurry, supplies of these important reports are strictly limited so don't miss out.
Do not reply to this email, we made a small typo when entering the address - it's not Ajj389782@yahoo.com it's actually zw99qwX@hotmail.com.
Or you can ring our toll-free 19-00 number and speak to one of our friendly Romanian operators who are waiting to take your order.
NOTE: this email is not spam, it has been sent because you (or someone with your hair-color) filled out a contact form on our website.
If you wish to be unsubscribed from our special offers mailing list then simply send an email to signmeup@spamhaus.spam.spam
What we need is for George W to make a statement like:
"We choose to send bin Laden to Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. You can run Ozzie but you can't hide!"
As someone who creates a lot of material that falls under the protection of copyright law I think it's time that other writers and publishers lighten up a little.
I'm certainly not in favor of people being able to copy and republish or redistribute my work for free without my permission -- but I can't think of a single occasion when I've refused a request from someone who wished to do so.
The only condition usually associated with the granting of such rights is a clear attribution.
Of course if the NY Times comes knocking on my door asking to republish something I've written then I'll probably ask a fair fee for the privilege -- but when it's another not-for-profit website or there's a measure of public good then I simply grant a non-exclusive right to republish without charge.
This usually works well for all concerned:
* The republisher gets some good free content.
* My work becomes more widely known
* The general public has more access to my writing.
In marketing terms, these free republication licenses are a loss-leader. What I lose (which is probably very little in cash terms) by giving away the content, I gain by being able to charge more for material that I write specifically for other publishers.
What those who produce material protected by copyright have to appreciate is that just because you can enforce your rights to be paid for copying doesn't mean it's always a good idea to do so.
I cringe every time I hear Microsoft, the RIAA or MPAA preach about how much money they've lost through unauthorized copying. How on earth do they know that those who copied their IP would have actually purchased it otherwise?
I have to say that I echo the concerns that others have expressed over the reliability and veracity of news reports filed through an informal network of uncertified sources.
News that you can't rely on to be timely *and* accurate is worse than no news at all.
The big problem is that the immediacy (and high levels of competition) of news on the Net puts enormous pressure on publishers to be "first" with a breaking story and I've already witnessed numerous instances where this has resulted in even the "big names" getting their facts wrong.
There are three factors that a news organization needs to be successful:
1. Timeliness 2. Accuracy 3. Credibility
Without the first two, you don't get the third -- but without the third, the first two are squandered.
Back in 1998, I discovered that my 7am.com website was generating some pretty heavy traffic and decided that I needed a decent US-based provider on which to host it.
I chose Tierranet and was certainly never disappointed.
Within a few short years, 7am.com grew to become the world's most widely syndicated web-based news service, delivering news headines through its Java-based news ticker more than two million times a day across a network of more than 200,000 third-party webpages -- and it really started gobbling up bandwidth.
From memory we were doing 15GB-20GB and servicing 2-3 million HTTP requests per day on average.
TierraNet has always provided exceptional service, outstanding performance and brilliant support.
Although I'm no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of 7am.com, I still have several smaller sites hosted with TierraNet and I'm just as happy.
When my Jet-powered gokart page was slashdotted a while back, the service had absolutely no problems keeping up with the load. There were around 40,000 visitors in just a few hours and even though most of these downloaded videos and other large objects, the server didn't blink an eye.
All the usual diclaimers apply -- I don't work for Tierranet, I'm not a shareholder, I don't get a commission, I have no relationship with them other than as a very satisfied customer for about six years now.
They're not the cheapest -- but if you're looking for bullet-proof hosting with great support then I'm damned if I've seen better value anywhere (and yes, I've looked:-)
By "lazy" encoding I assume you mean storing the bitstream from the capture card in an uncompressed form and encoding as a background process or as a separate batch process.
The only problem is that to provide any timeshift functionality in this type of setup you're going to either have to have a huge amount of uncommitted RAM or you're going to be really working that disk IO to the maximum.
Simultaneously writing an uncompressed video datastream and reading back an uncompressed datastream (even with the help of DMA)is going to render your PC pretty useless for anything else that involves disk I/O (and that's just about everything).
The problem with this guy's effort is that he's doing things the hard way.
My own Tivo-like PC project has so far taken a more pragmatic approach and evaluated a number of hardware and software options.
It would seem that Windows, given the proliferation of PVR hardware and software available for it, is the better option for such a task. (Yeah, I hate to say it).
As part of my project development I've reviewed two capture/tuner card options: a dumb BT8x8 card which relies on the host PC's CPU to do all the hard work, and an affordable tuner/capture card that has an onboard MPEG1/MPEG2 encoder in hardware.
The differences can be quite dramatic when you're looking to build Tivo-like functionality on a PC platform -- but there's no clear winner because both have pro's and con's.
However, using the card with the hardware encoder I can capture at 720x576 or so with no dropped frames while the host CPU sits comfortably at about 12%-18% utilization.
I can even carry on using the PC for other tasks without any real perceptable effect on either the recording or the interactivity of the desktop.
Re:Here's another Tivo-like PC project site
on
Build Your Own Linux PVR
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Since MJPEG isn't particularly processor-intensive, it's almost as simple to use a dumb card and software such as VirtualDub to capture the video with the MJPEG or Huffyuv codec.
Huffyuv is a lossless RLE codec that puts very little strain on the CPU but provides realtime compression of up to 3.2:1.
This will cost you 8-9GB/hour in diskspace, but the resulting files are very high quality and can be edited right down to the individual frame level (MPEG editors often limit you to key frame cuts).
I've created some very nice videos using the Huffyuv/VirtualDub/TMPGenc software combo. If you work at it, you can get about 45mins of virtually broadcast-quality video on a single 700MB CDR.
The downside is that even on a 2GHz processor, TMPGenc will take about 4 hours of CPU time to encode a single hour of video to MPEG-2 in high-quality format.
One advantage of a "smart" card such as the Hauppauge PVR-250 is that you can capture using realtime MPEG-2 encoding with a very high bitrate then transcode that down to SVCD bitrates in the background later on.
There's no way you're going to be able to capture in realtime and use a non-realtime MPEG-encoder in the background simultaneously with a dumb card.
The bottom line is that this whole area of video capture, encoding, Tivo-like functionality and the like is fraught with compromises.
That's not so much because the hardware/software isn't up to the job -- it's more that a PC is a far more flexible box than a regular Tivo so you're constantly coming up with "this too" wishes.
The PC system I'm working on is already a very multi-faceted system that offers:
* PVR functionality (including Tivo-like timeshift
* SVCD/VCD burning capabilities
* FM radio recording and burning to MP3 or audio CD
* a Net-radio capability
* Great games:-)
* CD/DVD/MP3 player functionality
* Web-surfing and email
Plus you could add (although I never would of course):
* Videocrypt decoding -- watch some Pay-TV broadcasts for free!
* DVD ripping -- transcoding DVD disks to SVCD on CDR.
* CD ripping/burning -- copying commercial music CDs to CDR
There's a whole bunch of funcationality that makes such a machine a great addition to the entertainment rack. Unfortunately some functions are best served by Windows, some best served by Linux. Some are best served by dumb capture cards, some by smart ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, this is Microsoft we're talking about. Why bother cracking a 2048-bit key when all you've got to do is find the right buffer overrun to exploit?
If the copyrights expire on Elvis, then what impetus is there for Elvis to create more works if he know he can only profit from them for 50 years?
:-0
I hear Elvis is so angry about this that he's stopped composing new songs and is now busy decomposing instead
At last we have a practical use for all those AOL CDs eh?
I have a strange memory which I'm sure stretches right back to when I was still in the womb.
It's not a memory of any event, just a tactile sense accompanied by a very low level of lighting and warmth.
I can recall this "memory" being quite vivid until the age of 8 or 9 and since then it has gradually weakened with time -- but on some very rare occasions it all comes flooding back for a brief instant -- just a second or two.
It's weird -- but incredibly comforting and soothing.
Other than that, my earliest recollection is from before I was walking. I can recall sitting on the driveway looking up at an old two story house. I never told my parents about this until I was about 13 and they told me that it must have been a house they rented for just a couple of months about 9 months after I was born. They'd never mentioned it to me and once again it wasn't a particularly memorable event that would have been recounted by them for any reason so I suspect it's a real memory.
So, now that there are moves to significantly increase the amount of information gathered, analyzed and stored on every citizen in the name of a war against terror, how are we supposed to feel confident that this information is not going to be stolen by some terrorist group or spammer and used against us?
What if you own the CD - should you pay again to listen to a degraded version?
Interestingly enough, copyright law in New Zealand is about to undergo a bit of a shake-up that would have an effect on this.
At present it's illegal to make *any* copy of any disk you own -- that's right, there's no fair use provision here.
However, the government (in an uncharacteristic exhibition of wisdom) appears to have decided that it makes sense to allow people to copy for the purpose of "format shifting" -- ie: from CD to MP3 or from CD to tape, etc.
This would create a very interesting situation where someone already had a specific CD but chose to download the MP3 version of its contents from a P2P network rather than rip it themselves. Under the proposed new law, this could be considered a completely legal act.
To make the matter even more ridiculous -- the proposed changes appear to have some DMCA-like provisions that prohibit the cracking of copy-protection schemes. So, if you've just bought a new CD which is copy protected -- it would be legal to download an MP3 version from the Net but illegal to rip it yourself.
Don't ya just love politicians and the laws they make?
Oh yeah, and this is a very likely scenario, given that EMI Australia has announced that it will be copy-protecting *all* its disks as of next year.
Now I believe that one of the specific "fair use" exclusions to copyright is for reporting purposes.
:-)
In such cases of course, the excerpted piece of otherwise copyrighted material must only be a small percentage of the original work.
This allows one newspaper report to quote a few lines from a competing publication without fear of breaching their copyright.
So what's wrong with the claim that turning 10 seconds or so of a top-40 song into a ring-tone isn't also covered by this "fair use" exclusion because it's only a tiny percentage of the original work and it's *reporting* that someone has called your cellphone?
It would certainly be an interesting sharkfight if someone decided to test it out in the courts
Would it really kill zdnet to include a picture with stories like this?
:-)
Oh yeah, a 2D picture of a 3D display -- that would be impressive!
Just like those ads on TV for TVs that have a better picture quality than the one you're watching. How does that work?
Hell, some people (no names :-) have been ripping DVDs to DVDR and CDR disks for ages using freely available shareware.
There are even some bloody excellent websites like VCDHelp.com and Doom9.net which explain the whole process in simple to follow steps and provide discussion forms for those who have questions or problems.
What's the MPAA going to do now? Force these sites to charge a subscription and demand that all the revenues be handed over to them?
Hey, maybe the MPAA *have* found a new business model -- let people help others make backup copies of your wares and then sue them for huge sums.
Probably sounds pretty damned good from a movie exec's perspective -- let others do all the work then just raid their wallets at your leisure.
In December of 2000, Trek Aerospace was awarded $5,100,000 in development funding from DARPA over a thirty-six month period.
;-0
I don't know about the USA but when I applied for a $30K R&D grant here in New Zealand, it cost me about $35K in time and effort just to file all the paperwork!
Suffice to say I haven't bothered applying for another (even thought the first application was successful).
Such grants appear to only be practical when you're a big enough organization that you can have staff dedicated to the full-time processing of all the forms, requests, reports and other bits of bureacracy that are required to meet all the criteria.
But hey, some nice person I've never heard of before sent me an email the other day telling me that I qualify for a government grant. I think their name was Ima Spamma or something
The Solotrek was at best, an ill-conceived concept with many drawbacks and a long list of flaws that doomed it from the start.
Firstly, it offered few real benefits over earlier options such as the Hiller flying platform.
Most of us will have seen archive footage of these platforms that were so stable that a regular foot-soldier (or man in the street) could learn to fly one in just a few short minutes.
Hiller poured a lot of money into these devices in the 1950s but ultimately they were deemed to be impractical for numerous reasons -- most of which are shared by the SoloTrek.
Actually, the Hiller might even have been superior in a number of areas -- such as being far simpler in design and construction. Remember -- when you double the complexity of something you reduce its reliabilty by more than an equivalent amount. When my life is dependent on a piece of technology, I want that technology to be as simple and reliable as possible!
I plan to build my own flying platform when time/funds allow but have no illusions that it will be anything other than a curiosity. There are certainly no plans to turn it into the personal transporter of the 21st century.
Moller's Sky Car falls into the same category as the SoloTrek -- it's an overly complicated, hideously expensive and completely impractical device.
That the SoloTrek and Moller Skycar managed to get any external funding amazes me.
And, if you're interested in personal VTOL transport then check out this ambitious amateur jet-pack project which may be very ambitious, but is also astonishingly impressive in its engineering.
Does this mean that the RIAA will be seeding P2P networks with MP3s that contain the subliminal message "buy this CD, buy this CD"?
And I believe that listening to boy-bands will give you tinitus even if you keep the volume way down and wear ear-plugs. That's the price you have to pay for having really bad taste.
Why hasn't Microsoft just changed the way it handles buffers to eliminate the weekly discovery of yet another buffer overflow exploit that compromises security?
:-)
I wonder if I should lend them my copy of Code Complete... oh, hang on..
Wow.. great minds think alike (whilst fools seldom differ)
:-)
/. community proclaimed a boycott and refused to buy CDs for a month.
I was just pondering the practicalities of a RIAA boycot this morning (okay, who installed the trojan on my PC???
Unfortunately, such boycotts can backfire very, very badly.
Imagine if the
If CD sales remained unaffected then the RIAA could simply turn around and say that this proves most people are happy with their pricing, their product and their attitudes to the marketplace.
Or, even worse, if such a boycott did affect sales in a negative way, they'd simply say that this was due to piracy and that it endorses their stand on copy-protection, the DMCA, etc.
In effect, we'd be hoist by our own petard.
Anyone contemplating a boycott ought to be very sure they've got the numbers (and I'm talking *big* numbers) before they embark on such an action.
A better way might be to incite people to get active in starting a petition protesting the loss of fair use due to recent and proposed moves by the RIAA/MPAA.
This would have to be a petition where signatures are collected in ink, on sheets of paper. Cyber petitions are too easily discredited.
I'm sure, given the seven degrees of separation principle, that if everyone here solicited everyone they knew to sign such a petition, and got them to do likewise, it wouldn't be too hard to dump a very large truckload of dead-tree pulp and ink on the doorstep of Congress.
That's the way democracy works isn't it?
You're dead right -- spammers will simply run their businesses like the movie industry does.
Set up numerous little companies so that those which run into problems (such as being a box-office bust or having the snot sued out of them) can be bankrupted at no real cost to the people behind them.
I would expect that these spamhaus companies would rent their computers and other "assets" from a parent company at a rate equal to the revenues the spamming generated. That parent company would (of course) be a legally separate entity. This means that when the sued company is bankrupted for failure to pay the fines, it has neither assets nor cash in the bank and the spammers don't lose a penny.
It's a strategy that's been used countless times before in many different industries. The only losers are the *real* creditors who are unfortunate to lose their money -- but in this case that serves them right for dealing with a spammer anyway.
Dear friend,
Are you having trouble paying your bills and affording subscriptions to all those porn sites?
Well our unique money making system will ensure that you can claim squillions of dollars in just a few short weeks.
Yes, based on the recent spamming decision in favor of AOL, we've produced a set of reports that you can use to earn a fortune!
By following the simple instructions contained in these reports, you can set up your own tiny ISP operation and your own spamhaus.
Then, after you've sent *yourself* several million spam messages, we show you how to get the courts to award you $7 million in damages against yourself
It's so easy anyone can do it.
But hurry, supplies of these important reports are strictly limited so don't miss out.
Do not reply to this email, we made a small typo when entering the address - it's not Ajj389782@yahoo.com it's actually zw99qwX@hotmail.com.
Or you can ring our toll-free 19-00 number and speak to one of our friendly Romanian operators who are waiting to take your order.
NOTE: this email is not spam, it has been sent because you (or someone with your hair-color) filled out a contact form on our website.
If you wish to be unsubscribed from our special offers mailing list then simply send an email to signmeup@spamhaus.spam.spam
38enmdu3nmd3i393je
What we need is for George W to make a statement like:
"We choose to send bin Laden to Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. You can run Ozzie but you can't hide!"
That'll do the trick!
Shut up you nigger
My God! Socrates lives!
Such cutting wit, such insight into the human condition, such command of the English language.
I am truly humbled.
(removes tongue from cheek)
As someone who creates a lot of material that falls under the protection of copyright law I think it's time that other writers and publishers lighten up a little.
I'm certainly not in favor of people being able to copy and republish or redistribute my work for free without my permission -- but I can't think of a single occasion when I've refused a request from someone who wished to do so.
The only condition usually associated with the granting of such rights is a clear attribution.
Of course if the NY Times comes knocking on my door asking to republish something I've written then I'll probably ask a fair fee for the privilege -- but when it's another not-for-profit website or there's a measure of public good then I simply grant a non-exclusive right to republish without charge.
This usually works well for all concerned:
* The republisher gets some good free content.
* My work becomes more widely known
* The general public has more access to my writing.
In marketing terms, these free republication licenses are a loss-leader. What I lose (which is probably very little in cash terms) by giving away the content, I gain by being able to charge more for material that I write specifically for other publishers.
What those who produce material protected by copyright have to appreciate is that just because you can enforce your rights to be paid for copying doesn't mean it's always a good idea to do so.
I cringe every time I hear Microsoft, the RIAA or MPAA preach about how much money they've lost through unauthorized copying. How on earth do they know that those who copied their IP would have actually purchased it otherwise?
I have to say that I echo the concerns that others have expressed over the reliability and veracity of news reports filed through an informal network of uncertified sources.
News that you can't rely on to be timely *and* accurate is worse than no news at all.
The big problem is that the immediacy (and high levels of competition) of news on the Net puts enormous pressure on publishers to be "first" with a breaking story and I've already witnessed numerous instances where this has resulted in even the "big names" getting their facts wrong.
There are three factors that a news organization needs to be successful:
1. Timeliness
2. Accuracy
3. Credibility
Without the first two, you don't get the third -- but without the third, the first two are squandered.
Back in 1998, I discovered that my 7am.com website was generating some pretty heavy traffic and decided that I needed a decent US-based provider on which to host it.
:-)
I chose Tierranet and was certainly never disappointed.
Within a few short years, 7am.com grew to become the world's most widely syndicated web-based news service, delivering news headines through its Java-based news ticker more than two million times a day across a network of more than 200,000 third-party webpages -- and it really started gobbling up bandwidth.
From memory we were doing 15GB-20GB and servicing 2-3 million HTTP requests per day on average.
TierraNet has always provided exceptional service, outstanding performance and brilliant support.
Although I'm no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of 7am.com, I still have several smaller sites hosted with TierraNet and I'm just as happy.
When my Jet-powered gokart page was slashdotted a while back, the service had absolutely no problems keeping up with the load. There were around 40,000 visitors in just a few hours and even though most of these downloaded videos and other large objects, the server didn't blink an eye.
All the usual diclaimers apply -- I don't work for Tierranet, I'm not a shareholder, I don't get a commission, I have no relationship with them other than as a very satisfied customer for about six years now.
They're not the cheapest -- but if you're looking for bullet-proof hosting with great support then I'm damned if I've seen better value anywhere (and yes, I've looked
Have you used a USB PVR solution?
;-)
While researching suitable hardware I found almost universal condemnation of USB-based systems from dissatisfied users.
The main problem seems to be crappy drivers and an almost total lack of support from vendors.
Mind you, most capture cards also ship with flakey software and are poorly supported -- but at least they work most of the time
By "lazy" encoding I assume you mean storing the bitstream from the capture card in an uncompressed form and encoding as a background process or as a separate batch process.
The only problem is that to provide any timeshift functionality in this type of setup you're going to either have to have a huge amount of uncommitted RAM or you're going to be really working that disk IO to the maximum.
Simultaneously writing an uncompressed video datastream and reading back an uncompressed datastream (even with the help of DMA)is going to render your PC pretty useless for anything else that involves disk I/O (and that's just about everything).
Or have I misunderstood the term "lazy encoding"?
The problem with this guy's effort is that he's doing things the hard way.
My own Tivo-like PC project has so far taken a more pragmatic approach and evaluated a number of hardware and software options.
It would seem that Windows, given the proliferation of PVR hardware and software available for it, is the better option for such a task. (Yeah, I hate to say it).
As part of my project development I've reviewed two capture/tuner card options: a dumb BT8x8 card which relies on the host PC's CPU to do all the hard work, and an affordable tuner/capture card that has an onboard MPEG1/MPEG2 encoder in hardware.
The differences can be quite dramatic when you're looking to build Tivo-like functionality on a PC platform -- but there's no clear winner because both have pro's and con's.
However, using the card with the hardware encoder I can capture at 720x576 or so with no dropped frames while the host CPU sits comfortably at about 12%-18% utilization.
I can even carry on using the PC for other tasks without any real perceptable effect on either the recording or the interactivity of the desktop.
Since MJPEG isn't particularly processor-intensive, it's almost as simple to use a dumb card and software such as VirtualDub to capture the video with the MJPEG or Huffyuv codec.
:-)
;-)
Huffyuv is a lossless RLE codec that puts very little strain on the CPU but provides realtime compression of up to 3.2:1.
This will cost you 8-9GB/hour in diskspace, but the resulting files are very high quality and can be edited right down to the individual frame level (MPEG editors often limit you to key frame cuts).
I've created some very nice videos using the Huffyuv/VirtualDub/TMPGenc software combo. If you work at it, you can get about 45mins of virtually broadcast-quality video on a single 700MB CDR.
The downside is that even on a 2GHz processor, TMPGenc will take about 4 hours of CPU time to encode a single hour of video to MPEG-2 in high-quality format.
One advantage of a "smart" card such as the Hauppauge PVR-250 is that you can capture using realtime MPEG-2 encoding with a very high bitrate then transcode that down to SVCD bitrates in the background later on.
There's no way you're going to be able to capture in realtime and use a non-realtime MPEG-encoder in the background simultaneously with a dumb card.
The bottom line is that this whole area of video capture, encoding, Tivo-like functionality and the like is fraught with compromises.
That's not so much because the hardware/software isn't up to the job -- it's more that a PC is a far more flexible box than a regular Tivo so you're constantly coming up with "this too" wishes.
The PC system I'm working on is already a very multi-faceted system that offers:
* PVR functionality (including Tivo-like timeshift
* SVCD/VCD burning capabilities
* FM radio recording and burning to MP3 or audio CD
* a Net-radio capability
* Great games
* CD/DVD/MP3 player functionality
* Web-surfing and email
Plus you could add (although I never would of course):
* Videocrypt decoding -- watch some Pay-TV broadcasts for free!
* DVD ripping -- transcoding DVD disks to SVCD on CDR.
* CD ripping/burning -- copying commercial music CDs to CDR
There's a whole bunch of funcationality that makes such a machine a great addition to the entertainment rack. Unfortunately some functions are best served by Windows, some best served by Linux. Some are best served by dumb capture cards, some by smart ones.
Oh, what a wonderful nightmare