It's prime time to start taking the MST3K treatment to all media, not just ones that someone happens to purchase the "rights" to. (Apparently the licensing fees became a significantly larger cost for the MST3K producers.)
For some time now, fanatics have been riffing off the junk scraped from USENet with "mistings". That's an ok start.
And we're all familiar with that brilliantly-inspired by horribly-design (ie, closed-standard) ThirdVoice annotation system.
We need a better 3rd-party annotation standard for web-based media. This should lead to a nice solution for broadcast-TV & VCR. I mean, when "convergence" comes along, do you really think you'll be watching TV and have the itch to "click on" a ballplayer just to find out what his batting average is with 2 runners on in the seventh during a meteor shower?
Nooo... you'll have your choice of armchair broadcasters all across this great web, spinning their own plot, analysis, and all that in the name of postmodernism!
A "boycott" under the rubris that the product is "too expensive" is a tautology, and therefore ill-named.
Clearly, if you don't want to pay so much, use the product less. Use the Internet at your office or school, and dialup less from home.
The same silliness was tried in California wrt/ gasoline taxes, and marketed as a "media stunt." But boycotts and their associated media maelstroms only work if there is a real threat...
...such as cutting back on you Internet usage by a significant portion for some extended period of time.
None of the residential broadband services (at least here in Boston) have promised any sort of latency targets. But that shouldn't stop people from figuring out typical latencies, and using that in their decision.
In his tech column in the Boston Globe, Simson Garfinkel reported that pings to well-known local sites were 70 for Bell Atlantic Infospeed DSL! I would assume that this reflects the relative quality of the networks. I passed this bit of information onto BA sales reps, and then to Flashcom.
I didn't figure the sales reps to get an answer right away (or know what latency was, for that matter), but I figured they'd at least read the local press about the product they were selling. Regardless, I told them it was important, and I figured they would do one of two things:
Recognize the problem, and give me some smoothe sales massage about how their engineers will take note of the problem.
Tell me that they can't really give me stats, but market to me what I'm truly paying for (bandwidth)
Bell Atlantic has taken four weeks to still not come up with an answer; their sales reps were unfazed when I said I was going over to Flashcom.
Flashcom sales rep was a used method #2, trying to convince me it was better than BA because "you have a dedicated line-- all the way to the Internet!" What a riot.
If anybody has latency numbers, great. Obviously, with any broadband choice I will get better latencies than with dial modems. But I feel that it's my duty as a well-informed customer to press the DSL-ISP's on these issues.
>Simson Garfinkel yesterday had an article in Boston Globe which he says he compared MediaOne's speeds to Bell Atalantic's DSL service and MediaOne was ten fold faster.
Not quite, if I may echo the skepticism of Tony's post. Garfinkel reported that the latency on BA DSL were about 10x as long. (apparently due to BAIS peering in Virginia). He also reported that download speeds are comparable, but upload is on 90k.
For those of us in Boston/Brookline, DSL is better than nothing. And it's *just gone live*-- it won't be difficult to peer at more places (probably will need FCC approval, of course!)
>I firmly dissent from AC's proposition that judges making law is a new thing, or an increasing thing.
We're measuring differently: as a lawyer, you might be counting by case, and be right. I'm measuring by policy effect (read: money); the tobacco settlement seems to have tipped the scales this past year.
>[contributions to cases from all sorts of parties] happens all the time, in the form of amicus briefs and appearances...
which might then be added to the corpus of legal commentary, a searchable database? Helpful, but you need to make the case that this is dependent on Open-ness.
>It is important to note the very case that spawned this thread is about the constitutionality of particular legislation
So given my last post, I'm expected to defend that the issue of copyright extensions can better be solved in a Policy Forum than a Federal court.
werdna, you've caught me for the moment. I can't defend that at this time. All I can do is meekly retreat and say that OpenPolicy forums would be more pertinent to public usage. They would be a ncessary base for OpenLaw to develop from.
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It's prime time to start taking the MST3K treatment to all media, not just ones that someone happens to purchase the "rights" to. (Apparently the licensing fees became a significantly larger cost for the MST3K producers.)
For some time now, fanatics have been riffing off the junk scraped from USENet with "mistings". That's an ok start.
And we're all familiar with that brilliantly-inspired by horribly-design (ie, closed-standard) ThirdVoice annotation system.
We need a better 3rd-party annotation standard for web-based media. This should lead to a nice solution for broadcast-TV & VCR. I mean, when "convergence" comes along, do you really think you'll be watching TV and have the itch to "click on" a ballplayer just to find out what his batting average is with 2 runners on in the seventh during a meteor shower?
Nooo... you'll have your choice of armchair broadcasters all across this great web, spinning their own plot, analysis, and all that in the name of postmodernism!
A "boycott" under the rubris that the product is "too expensive" is a tautology, and therefore ill-named.
Clearly, if you don't want to pay so much, use the product less. Use the Internet at your office or school, and dialup less from home.
The same silliness was tried in California wrt/ gasoline taxes, and marketed as a "media stunt." But boycotts and their associated media maelstroms only work if there is a real threat...
...such as cutting back on you Internet usage by a significant portion for some extended period of time.
None of the residential broadband services (at least here in Boston) have promised any sort of latency targets. But that shouldn't stop people from figuring out typical latencies, and using that in their decision.
In his tech column in the Boston Globe, Simson Garfinkel reported that pings to well-known local sites were 70 for Bell Atlantic Infospeed DSL! I would assume that this reflects the relative quality of the networks. I passed this bit of information onto BA sales reps, and then to Flashcom.
I didn't figure the sales reps to get an answer right away (or know what latency was, for that matter), but I figured they'd at least read the local press about the product they were selling. Regardless, I told them it was important, and I figured they would do one of two things:
Bell Atlantic has taken four weeks to still not come up with an answer; their sales reps were unfazed when I said I was going over to Flashcom.
Flashcom sales rep was a used method #2, trying to convince me it was better than BA because "you have a dedicated line-- all the way to the Internet!" What a riot.
If anybody has latency numbers, great. Obviously, with any broadband choice I will get better latencies than with dial modems. But I feel that it's my duty as a well-informed customer to press the DSL-ISP's on these issues.
>Simson Garfinkel yesterday had an article in Boston Globe which he says he compared MediaOne's speeds to Bell Atalantic's DSL service and MediaOne was ten fold faster.
Not quite, if I may echo the skepticism of Tony's post. Garfinkel reported that the latency on BA DSL were about 10x as long. (apparently due to BAIS peering in Virginia). He also reported that download speeds are comparable, but upload is on 90k.
For those of us in Boston/Brookline, DSL is better than nothing. And it's *just gone live*-- it won't be difficult to peer at more places (probably will need FCC approval, of course!)
I was AC. Sorry my name got lost.
>I firmly dissent from AC's proposition that judges making law is a new thing, or an increasing thing.
We're measuring differently: as a lawyer, you might be counting by case, and be right. I'm measuring by policy effect (read: money); the tobacco settlement seems to have tipped the scales this past year.
>[contributions to cases from all sorts of parties] happens all the time, in the form of amicus briefs and appearances...
which might then be added to the corpus of legal commentary, a searchable database? Helpful, but you need to make the case that this is dependent on Open-ness.
>It is important to note the very case that spawned this thread is about the constitutionality of particular legislation
So given my last post, I'm expected to defend that the issue of copyright extensions can better be solved in a Policy Forum than a Federal court.
werdna, you've caught me for the moment. I can't defend that at this time. All I can do is meekly retreat and say that OpenPolicy forums would be more pertinent to public usage. They would be a ncessary base for OpenLaw to develop from.