I've been thinking about this. A reasonable way to put live or regional commercials into a distributable file.
I imagine a show with no advertising breaks, but adverts built into the show. Say characters have a scene where they're in a vehicle moving around a city, and the billboard in the background has an ad for a real live company. If this file were a reference to something external, i.e. to play the file you have to be online (maybe a cached mode?) so the file can grab the ad image while rendering the video.
Or the show is written such that as a character turns their back to the camera to go to the fridge they say "I'm just gonna grab a ________. I love the taste!" and the product name is pulled in.
Or they're talking and in the background on the set is a radio playing a commercial. The audio can't be cut out of the file unless you want to lose the content of the characters' dialog, as well.
Even with ad breaks, you could make this work. A new file format, with no DRM *but* it grabs a new live 15-second ad a few times during the show. No distribution limits, but it won't play if it can't query the adserver to get new ads. This could win because it's more work to crack the file and export pure video than to go to the official show web site and download the official file. Make it faster, quality, and easy to get on PC or TV.
Last one, I promise. A download site would have a user register, and then would have to answer one product preference question before each show. This would slowly build a profile of the viewer (grab yer tinfoil hat). Personally, I like targetted ads much better than the shotgun effect I see on TV. I'm not interested in a Lexus, or house cleaning products. I am interested in adverts for computer games, and am much more likely to watch the ad than to get up and go to the bathroom or something.
Wait -- not trolling here, but I think I need it spelled out for me. When I read this, I think back to the arguments earlier in this thread that argue that proprietary software vendors should compete with FLOSS directly, not hidden behind legistlation. Granted, you didn't make that argument and so you shouldn't have to defend it, but I don't see the direct link to shutting out Free software.
The current industry trend in hardware is commoditization; how will Microsoft continue to compete now that operating systems and software is becoming commoditized in price and features? What is your five year and ten year strategies to stave off software commoditization?
Our ISP has set up a slightly more elegant way to fliter out lots and lots of spam. They call it DoubleVerify.
From the FAQ (http://www.olympus.net/doubleVerifyNL):
DoubleVerify gets two chances to automatically identify mail. When mail arrives at our mail server the first time our server requests the sending mail server to send it a second time. Spammers rarely comply. Legitimate mail servers typically resend the mail about fifteen minutes later. Once OlympusNet receives mail the second time, it immediately delivers that mail and continues to immediately deliver mail from that sender. The DoubleVerify process works invisibly and is handled automatically by the mail servers.
You can whitelist entire domains (like your company, for example), too. It's worked pretty well for us.
i know this was an offhand comment, but it brings up a larger point.
totally off topic, of course.
microsoft is not only motivated by money. they really believe they're making the best stuff on the planet. ever talk to a microserf? they *glow*. honest.
the point? a warning to open sourcerers; don't underestimate the drive of microsofties. they're passionate on their own, and they're a formidible competitor. it's not accurate to dismiss them based on the idea that "they do it for money only."
Microsoft relies on their programs being a commodity, while OSS transforms software into a tool to achieve other goals.
I see it more like this: Microsoft relies on commoditizing hardware, to make way for higher premiums on software. This is why FLOSS scares them so much.
They're about to get Delled. FLOSS commoditizes software, to the point where you have so many choices and so inexpensively. Microsoft's whole backbone is software, and if that gets commoditized, there goes their lunch. Damn right they'll lash out at FLOSS.
re: switching friends over to firefox, i've noticed the same thing. what tends to switch people over seems to be the 'me, too' buzz factor. if i'm talking to another tech dork about how cool it is, others will listen in and ask about it. not sure if that means they installed it, but the reactions of people are different if you're
trying to convince them versus discussing some cool new thing.
when they hear something cool is up, seems people are more apt to get on the bandwagon.
x10.com is the latest incarnation of the company that created the X10 protocol.
Back in the 70's, a company called BSR (they were British, if I recall) were brainstorming electronics projects. Each project was codenamed X, followed by a letter. The 10th project, was X10 (duh). They stuck with that as the marketing angle.
BSR turned into X10 LTD., which was strictly OEM during the 80's. The OEM'ed for Radioshack, Magnavox, and a few others. Radioshack, of course, still does the X10 stuff under their own brand.
In the early 90's, they decided to retail their own stuff. A few years later, x10.com was born as a subsidiary, and later became it's own deal.
Since they did the manufacturing, they started playing around with a CMOS chip and USB cable originally from Nogatech (http://www.nogatech.com). They make their own stuff now. That was the first few x-cams. The sold like HOT CAKES like you wouldn't believe. They made lots of money, and well, if you're making more money selling cameras and not so much your cool technology (X10 protocol), you sell cameras.
Funny, but I remember during the dot-com heyday when everybody was going IPO -- the X10 LTD company changed the name to x10.com to sound hip and internet-ish -- then when dot-com's started blowing up, and they STILL wanted to IPO, they changed the name again to X10 Wireless Technology, Inc. (investor site: http://www.x10wti.com). They never IPO'd, because the economy got all sneaky like it did. Around this time, I quit.
Dave Rye, one of the original protocol developers and a hell of a nice guy, still works at X10.com. When I was there in the tech department (worked there for 2 1/2 years) I could occasionally corner him to ask about a particularly wierd tech support case we'd have, or just shoot the shit about all the devices.
Anyway, the people are the same. X10 WTI are the folks behind the X10 protocol.
actually, you mistyped the phrase "send mail" without the space. to be clear, you should have typed "send email". the phrase "sendmail", which is what you typed, sure looks a lot like the open source project sendmail, which is a common phrase on the open source-centric Slashdot.
don't be so quick to be a jerk in your replies. nobody was jumping down your throat, so don't jump down ours.
right, and that's not "most" customers. he's not talking about a worker using Sendmail from your workstation; he's talking about Doris at the front desk who plays solitaire and occasionly surfs eBay.
it's true.... my mother in-law works at the BIA, and hasn't had email for years. i've offered to do real cheap contracting to help them set up a small, secure network in their regional office, to no avail. they were still waiting for the gov IT dept to work it out.
You used to be able to get it (and some other stuff, OS/2, Win3.1, etc) from oldos.org. If you go there now and check the forums, there's a bunch of kids posting ftp logins for downloading old os versions. pretty fun.
If it's just fonts keeping you from using linux, check out Corefonts on SourceForge. It's a legit way to get Microsoft's IE core fonts (Verdana,
Comic Sans, Tahoma, Trebuchet, et. al.) installed legally in Linux. It's worth it, as it makes using linux so much nicer.
I'm not a big fan of software patents, but the first thing that struck my mind is that you're going about this the wrong way. you've made up your mind, and now you're asking for arguments to support your position. it's all backwards, baby, jus' backwards.
you should think about the reasons, both for and against whatever issue at hand, before making up your mind.
well, no shit./. is all about hyping linux. of course its biased; that's been the plan all along. laugh at the funny posts, ignore the trolls, and get your hard, objective and unbiased news elsewhere.
exactly. that's the *same* reason that we're hearing so much about copy protection, hardware copy protection, etc. it's not that companies are necessarily evil - it's that in hard times, they need to trim the corners, and get the most out of the products they have. piracy (and therefore, copy protection measure, DRM, etc) wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't in a recession. i think once the US (and globally, as well) start to recover, we'll see less emphasis on stopping piracy, enforcing product activation, and tracking customers; and we'll see more emphasis on new products.
you mean the microsoft software inventory analyzer? yeah, my company just finished with it. we ran it three times over the course of two weeks to get a good read on what products we have. it doesn't *appear* to be spyware, and it makes lists of what you got in HTML,.doc, or.xls formats. the software gets classified two ways; one, by product name (ex: Microsoft Office 2000 Pro), and by file location/name (ex: msoffice.exe, winword.exe, excel.exe, etc.).
the bottom line is that if your company really has been fudging some of the licensing numbers (like mine has), probably out of laziness, this software does work pretty fast, no bugs that we could see. 'course, it would figure that the only bug-free MS program we now own is the audit software. nothing like a good ROI, you know?
You make a good point regarding the differences in businesses, whether they play by the rules (major labels), or break them (Napster). Napster-like trading services have changed the way your business competes, and it is an unfortunate truth that your business will have to change in order to deal with that. I don't see how asking consumers to 'step up to the plate', or to 'cough up some money on that plate' are going to help your business be competitive.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been thinking about this. A reasonable way to put live or regional commercials into a distributable file.
I imagine a show with no advertising breaks, but adverts built into the show. Say characters have a scene where they're in a vehicle moving around a city, and the billboard in the background has an ad for a real live company. If this file were a reference to something external, i.e. to play the file you have to be online (maybe a cached mode?) so the file can grab the ad image while rendering the video.
Or the show is written such that as a character turns their back to the camera to go to the fridge they say "I'm just gonna grab a ________. I love the taste!" and the product name is pulled in.
Or they're talking and in the background on the set is a radio playing a commercial. The audio can't be cut out of the file unless you want to lose the content of the characters' dialog, as well.
Even with ad breaks, you could make this work. A new file format, with no DRM *but* it grabs a new live 15-second ad a few times during the show. No distribution limits, but it won't play if it can't query the adserver to get new ads. This could win because it's more work to crack the file and export pure video than to go to the official show web site and download the official file. Make it faster, quality, and easy to get on PC or TV.
Last one, I promise. A download site would have a user register, and then would have to answer one product preference question before each show. This would slowly build a profile of the viewer (grab yer tinfoil hat). Personally, I like targetted ads much better than the shotgun effect I see on TV. I'm not interested in a Lexus, or house cleaning products. I am interested in adverts for computer games, and am much more likely to watch the ad than to get up and go to the bathroom or something.
Wait -- not trolling here, but I think I need it spelled out for me. When I read this, I think back to the arguments earlier in this thread that argue that proprietary software vendors should compete with FLOSS directly, not hidden behind legistlation. Granted, you didn't make that argument and so you shouldn't have to defend it, but I don't see the direct link to shutting out Free software.
The current industry trend in hardware is commoditization; how will Microsoft continue to compete now that operating systems and software is becoming commoditized in price and features? What is your five year and ten year strategies to stave off software commoditization?
Our ISP has set up a slightly more elegant way to fliter out lots and lots of spam. They call it DoubleVerify.
From the FAQ (http://www.olympus.net/doubleVerifyNL):
DoubleVerify gets two chances to automatically identify mail. When mail arrives at our mail server the first time our server requests the sending mail server to send it a second time. Spammers rarely comply. Legitimate mail servers typically resend the mail about fifteen minutes later. Once OlympusNet receives mail the second time, it immediately delivers that mail and continues to immediately deliver mail from that sender. The DoubleVerify process works invisibly and is handled automatically by the mail servers.
You can whitelist entire domains (like your company, for example), too. It's worked pretty well for us.
i know this was an offhand comment, but it brings up a larger point.
totally off topic, of course.
microsoft is not only motivated by money. they really believe they're making the best stuff on the planet. ever talk to a microserf? they *glow*. honest.
the point? a warning to open sourcerers; don't underestimate the drive of microsofties. they're passionate on their own, and they're a formidible competitor. it's not accurate to dismiss them based on the idea that "they do it for money only."
Microsoft relies on their programs being a commodity, while OSS transforms software into a tool to achieve other goals.
I see it more like this: Microsoft relies on commoditizing hardware, to make way for higher premiums on software. This is why FLOSS scares them so much.
They're about to get Delled. FLOSS commoditizes software, to the point where you have so many choices and so inexpensively. Microsoft's whole backbone is software, and if that gets commoditized, there goes their lunch. Damn right they'll lash out at FLOSS.
re: switching friends over to firefox, i've noticed the same thing. what tends to switch people over seems to be the 'me, too' buzz factor. if i'm talking to another tech dork about how cool it is, others will listen in and ask about it. not sure if that means they installed it, but the reactions of people are different if you're
trying to convince them versus discussing some cool new thing.
when they hear something cool is up, seems people are more apt to get on the bandwagon.
I mean, I've had 'flexible wiring' in my clothes for years. Also, I make my own clothes out of tinfoil and rags.
CrossOver Office recently announced full support for DWMX. You could probably be even more bold than saying at least 90%.
x10.com is the latest incarnation of the company that created the X10 protocol.
Back in the 70's, a company called BSR (they were British, if I recall) were brainstorming electronics projects. Each project was codenamed X, followed by a letter. The 10th project, was X10 (duh). They stuck with that as the marketing angle.
BSR turned into X10 LTD., which was strictly OEM during the 80's. The OEM'ed for Radioshack, Magnavox, and a few others. Radioshack, of course, still does the X10 stuff under their own brand.
In the early 90's, they decided to retail their own stuff. A few years later, x10.com was born as a subsidiary, and later became it's own deal.
Since they did the manufacturing, they started playing around with a CMOS chip and USB cable originally from Nogatech (http://www.nogatech.com). They make their own stuff now. That was the first few x-cams. The sold like HOT CAKES like you wouldn't believe. They made lots of money, and well, if you're making more money selling cameras and not so much your cool technology (X10 protocol), you sell cameras.
Funny, but I remember during the dot-com heyday when everybody was going IPO -- the X10 LTD company changed the name to x10.com to sound hip and internet-ish -- then when dot-com's started blowing up, and they STILL wanted to IPO, they changed the name again to X10 Wireless Technology, Inc. (investor site: http://www.x10wti.com). They never IPO'd, because the economy got all sneaky like it did. Around this time, I quit.
Dave Rye, one of the original protocol developers and a hell of a nice guy, still works at X10.com. When I was there in the tech department (worked there for 2 1/2 years) I could occasionally corner him to ask about a particularly wierd tech support case we'd have, or just shoot the shit about all the devices.
Anyway, the people are the same. X10 WTI are the folks behind the X10 protocol.
actually, you mistyped the phrase "send mail" without the space. to be clear, you should have typed "send email". the phrase "sendmail", which is what you typed, sure looks a lot like the open source project sendmail, which is a common phrase on the open source-centric Slashdot.
don't be so quick to be a jerk in your replies. nobody was jumping down your throat, so don't jump down ours.
right, and that's not "most" customers. he's not talking about a worker using Sendmail from your workstation; he's talking about Doris at the front desk who plays solitaire and occasionly surfs eBay.
it's true .... my mother in-law works at the BIA, and hasn't had email for years. i've offered to do real cheap contracting to help them set up a small, secure network in their regional office, to no avail. they were still waiting for the gov IT dept to work it out.
what about AIM for linux?
p erm=
i use gaim becuase it's better, but AOL *did* port some of their branded, own software to a *nix.
http://aim.com/get_aim/linux/latest_linux.adp?aol
ralph hogaboom
You used to be able to get it (and some other stuff, OS/2, Win3.1, etc) from oldos.org. If you go there now and check the forums, there's a bunch of kids posting ftp logins for downloading old os versions. pretty fun.
If it's just fonts keeping you from using linux, check out Corefonts on SourceForge. It's a legit way to get Microsoft's IE core fonts (Verdana, Comic Sans, Tahoma, Trebuchet, et. al.) installed legally in Linux. It's worth it, as it makes using linux so much nicer.
I'm not a big fan of software patents, but the first thing that struck my mind is that you're going about this the wrong way. you've made up your mind, and now you're asking for arguments to support your position. it's all backwards, baby, jus' backwards.
you should think about the reasons, both for and against whatever issue at hand, before making up your mind.
mod this one up, man.
well, no shit. /. is all about hyping linux. of course its biased; that's been the plan all along. laugh at the funny posts, ignore the trolls, and get your hard, objective and unbiased news elsewhere.
Only thing that can topple big companies are big companies...
Now, I disagree. Remember the Microsoft Antitrust case? I think we all saw how the little guy won that one.
exactly. that's the *same* reason that we're hearing so much about copy protection, hardware copy protection, etc. it's not that companies are necessarily evil - it's that in hard times, they need to trim the corners, and get the most out of the products they have. piracy (and therefore, copy protection measure, DRM, etc) wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't in a recession. i think once the US (and globally, as well) start to recover, we'll see less emphasis on stopping piracy, enforcing product activation, and tracking customers; and we'll see more emphasis on new products.
did the mads put you up to this?
you mean the microsoft software inventory analyzer? yeah, my company just finished with it. we ran it three times over the course of two weeks to get a good read on what products we have. it doesn't *appear* to be spyware, and it makes lists of what you got in HTML, .doc, or .xls formats. the software gets classified two ways; one, by product name (ex: Microsoft Office 2000 Pro), and by file location/name (ex: msoffice.exe, winword.exe, excel.exe, etc.).
the bottom line is that if your company really has been fudging some of the licensing numbers (like mine has), probably out of laziness, this software does work pretty fast, no bugs that we could see. 'course, it would figure that the only bug-free MS program we now own is the audit software. nothing like a good ROI, you know?
flamity flame-flame! OH, sorry ... you're quite right, i agree ... just got excited about someone asking to be flamed ...
Dear Ms. Rosen,
You make a good point regarding the differences in businesses, whether they play by the rules (major labels), or break them (Napster). Napster-like trading services have changed the way your business competes, and it is an unfortunate truth that your business will have to change in order to deal with that. I don't see how asking consumers to 'step up to the plate', or to 'cough up some money on that plate' are going to help your business be competitive.
Best Regards,
R. Hogaboom