I was working at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh back in 1999-2000 when they decided to try the "new" thin-client approach, for all the reasons you cite. The concept was brand new at the time, I believe. I remember a vice president (or some other big shot) from Sun coming to visit on the day we rolled them out.
Unfortunately, you could tell it was brand new technology. When you get a BSOD on a Win98 or XP machine, you spend XX minutes troubleshooting it and ask the patron to use another machine. When the thin client server goes out, ALL machines are down. And it really seemed like the thin client server was down a LOT. (I'm a librarian, not a sysadmin, so I'm not sure about the details of why they had so many problems.)
The numerous outages were a major source of frustration for front-line staff (librarians and clerks) as we would inevitably get complained to/yelled at every time while waiting for IT to take care of the problem.
The machines didn't run Windows but some proprietary Sun thing (sorry, can't remember) that no patrons were familiar with and always complained about.
The thin clients we used were web-only machines--no word processing, spreadsheets, etc.--which was another problem. The system you would get now would (hopefully) be (1) more stable and (2) more robust. I've since moved away from Pittsburgh, but I know that they were doing away with all the thin clients and getting Dell machines.
I suggest you contact the folks at eiNetwork [http://www.einetwork.net/] to get their opinions. They are the "IT department" for all the libraries in the Pittsburgh area, and they are the ones who actually ran the thin client system there.
Is this really "legitimizing" unauthorized piracy, or an attempt to undercut it? If you could be guaranteed to get a "professional quality" soudboard recording of the show (i.e. little crowd noise, no hiss, etc.), why even attempt to sneak in recording equipment of your own? IF this works, it could be another revenue stream for the artists involved (thus sating the RIAA, possibly). Their shows are being recorded anyway, why not release good quality recordings (a la Pearl Jam) and beat the bootleggers at their own game?
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I was working at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh back in 1999-2000 when they decided to try the "new" thin-client approach, for all the reasons you cite. The concept was brand new at the time, I believe. I remember a vice president (or some other big shot) from Sun coming to visit on the day we rolled them out.
Unfortunately, you could tell it was brand new technology. When you get a BSOD on a Win98 or XP machine, you spend XX minutes troubleshooting it and ask the patron to use another machine. When the thin client server goes out, ALL machines are down. And it really seemed like the thin client server was down a LOT. (I'm a librarian, not a sysadmin, so I'm not sure about the details of why they had so many problems.)
The numerous outages were a major source of frustration for front-line staff (librarians and clerks) as we would inevitably get complained to/yelled at every time while waiting for IT to take care of the problem.
The machines didn't run Windows but some proprietary Sun thing (sorry, can't remember) that no patrons were familiar with and always complained about.
The thin clients we used were web-only machines--no word processing, spreadsheets, etc.--which was another problem. The system you would get now would (hopefully) be (1) more stable and (2) more robust. I've since moved away from Pittsburgh, but I know that they were doing away with all the thin clients and getting Dell machines.
I suggest you contact the folks at eiNetwork [http://www.einetwork.net/] to get their opinions. They are the "IT department" for all the libraries in the Pittsburgh area, and they are the ones who actually ran the thin client system there.
Is this really "legitimizing" unauthorized piracy, or an attempt to undercut it? If you could be guaranteed to get a "professional quality" soudboard recording of the show (i.e. little crowd noise, no hiss, etc.), why even attempt to sneak in recording equipment of your own? IF this works, it could be another revenue stream for the artists involved (thus sating the RIAA, possibly). Their shows are being recorded anyway, why not release good quality recordings (a la Pearl Jam) and beat the bootleggers at their own game?