Catch up? I would argue it is a means to push browser technology where Internet Explorer has stalled. Sure IE is getting pop up blocking. Mozilla/Firefox has had it for how long? Same for tabbed browsing.
As for being identical pieces of software, well that is to be expected. Two hammers made by different manufactures are both hammers when you get down to it.
Besides, if two pieces of software are going to take the same document and render it the "same" way to the user, then exactly how do you expect them to be worlds apart in difference?
One innovation that Firefox has on IE that I don't expect to change any time soon--open source.
There is no way the telcos have the backbone to support tens of thousands of people all pulling 200MB in highly poplulated areas going into a single CO.
It seems to me that your arguement is moot on exactly why my proposition would fail simply because due to the proliferation of Kazaa and Napster before, the situation you describe is already here. I actually had a person say to me "Why are they suing everyone for downloading music? If it is illegal, they shouldn't make all that music available for free."
The point is that the cat is out of the bag and now the only thing you can do it make downloading convenient and easy and also provide a convenient and easy way to get payments to the artists. That is my goal.
What I propose is the equivalent of a farmers market for music. Music from labels could still be distributed here so long as the music was open and no attempts to limit fair use either by DRM or crazy lawsuits. Artists have the choice to be independent or part of a label. As with any open project, the key is choice.
As for non-Internet using customers--current estimates are that seventy percent of homes in the United States are connected. That number is increasing daily.
I am sure that a non-Internet option could exist so long as it was inexpensive. The cost of shipping and such would have to be paid for by the consumer of course.
There is no reason that music from Magnatune artists couldn't be included in this. As I said from an earlier post, as long as the music can be distributed in an open form that has no DRM and consumers can observe their fair use rights, no problem.
The only difference would be that Magnatune artists would only see half of the donations whereas independent artists would see all of it.
I wasn't aware of Magnatune. I will check that out. Thanks for the information!
No, only new contractually pure music allowed. Maybe in the future, it could be possible to negotiate the release of music after it is clear no additional profits (or very minimal) will be accrued in their imprisoned status.
Labels
Bands can and will break free from their labels if they have a compelling reason to do so. This is a label-free proposition. It might be possible to have labels put the music up, but it must meet a strict set of criteria that means consumers will never be hindered from their fair use.
Funds
Bands would have to register and not just by e-mail. This is a comprehensive approach so that every effort that can be taken to prevent fraud and/or misdirection of funds will be taken.
Authentication
No such thing except to keep track of the songs people have donated towards so they can get credit towards bonuses. That would be easily calculated based on financial reports from Paypal donations. This is about consumer and artist empowerment through goodwill and NOT through forced will.
Overhead
With a pure digital distribution medium over a network using bittorrent technology, there is a near-zero entry barrier for both artists and consumers. Artists only need to record their music either directly into a digital format or convert it after the fact. Consumers need only an Internet connection to shop.
-No media costs -No advertising costs -No RIAA related costs -No transportation of materials costs
The only catch is the goodwill. When confronted with the opportunity to play fair, will people? Maybe and maybe not. But that really isn't any different from the current distribution model.
As for bittorrent, it works great on my broadband firewall with no additional configuration necessary. Maybe there are some it wouldn't work.
As for killing surfing, isn't there a way to limit the rates of download and upload?
The point of a non-profit is to encourage donations especially if they are tax deductible. Which is also why bittorrent is so attractive. It diestributes bandwidth requirements for downloading music to everyone in a manner that seems to work better than P2P applications.
Would artists donate back? Might not be necessary for too much donation back if there is minimal overhead.
What do you think could be done to encourage donating back?
haha, no thanks. You couldn't pay me enough to have something like this fashioned after me. I am not arrogant enough to think that. I just really want some balance to be restored to the musice market.
As evidenced with bittorrent, if something good comes along that really doesn't NEED an alternative then none will surface (unless there is an alternative I don't know about).
If we can get as much unity as possible then I don't worry about competing entities. What steps do you think should be taken to prevent splintering?
Those that won't will take the selfish route regardless of laws, DRM and any other measures you throw at them. At least this way, all of the useless overhead that goes into trying to stop that behavior is cut out of the model.
I think you would be surprised at how well the majority can and will behave if faced with the opportunity to do so with minimal effort.
I for one am completely and totally tired of their antics. We geeks have power and can be a serious force. I am issuing a challenge at this moment. We need to develop an alternative path for customers and artists to take to bypass them.
I am confident that if we can all band together, we can overcome. I am talking about a distribution system that is based on open standards that allows payment to go directly to artist with minimal (if any) overhead.
Here is what I propose:
-A non-profit organization comprised of volunteers -Create a website to serve as a repository of songs to be distributed via bittorrent -Payment taken in the form of Paypal donations -Payment is artist AND song specific based completely on an honor system -To encourage reasonable sized payments, offer bonuses for tiered donations -For example, after $100 is donated to band X, the customer becomes eligble for free concert tickets or something -Payment is dispursed to artists in entirety -Artists are encouraged to donate back a portion of their payments to cover costs of bandwidth, etc. -No DRM to be used and only open formats for music. -Songs should be available in varying qualities.
Maybe this exact model has already been proposed, I don't know. Comments and suggestions welcome. I have issued the challenge, will anyone answer?
Cross your fingers whether you are pro-Linux or pro-Microsoft that SCO gets hammered. Because if they win, you can bet the IT industry in the United States (and potentially other countries) is going to suck royally and innovation will take a huge setback.
About the only people that will make money in the short term are a select few corporate types and lawyers.
As others have noted, the tower is the antenna. The output line coming from an AM transmitter is fixed directly to the tower. Usually this is not fixed at ground level to avoid killing a passerby. RF waves WILL arc and kill. Also, if you are feeling especially depressed and want to cause yourself bodily harm, walk up to a hot AM tower barefoot and grab it.
As it says in the article, wet (and salty which I didn't know) ground is best for transmission. AM towers are often set in a group of three and set in low lying wetlands (near water especially). If you look closely, you will see that the only thing perched on top would be the strobes (if applicable).
Turning off DNS could prevent some of his games from working right. Instead, why not statically set the IP information for both images and block port 80 to the windows image and give him a restricted account so he can't change IP information? I don't know of any games that use port 80.
My experience with Netgear products has led me to believe their quality has diminished dramatically.
IANAL, but I seem to recall a lawyer I know telling me that with product liability, a company is liable if due diligence is not performed to fix an issue when a known problem exists. Of course, the trick becomes can you call changing a username and password due diligence? I feel certain every computer expert in the world would say no.
I can't speak for all geeks out there (we are usually on the front line), but I have seen so many computers running Windows XP out there just getting raped by adware/spyware/worms/trojans lately. One of the primary culprits? Internet Explorer.
The reason I believe it is Internet Explorer is that I have seen a machine that is behind 2 different firewalls (one of which is a very well configured PIX) get molested. It wasn't used for e-mail, no P2P programs for downloading and nothing else was used except the browser. I am SURE some people were browsing dodgy websites on that machine. So far, it is the only PC on that IP segment that has been infected so it wasn't from another machine.
Forget the free speech issue for just a moment and take a pause to thank the FCC that they put limits on output power of equipment. Just a little for example--2.4ghz (cordless phones, 802.11b/g) is in the natural resonance frequency of water (think microwave ovens). The FCC is the only thing that has prevented some monkey from making a 500 watt amp and shoving it into a high gain antenna next door to you. The results of that would be disastrous and probably kill you and your family in a few short days or weeks (maybe hours).
They are also the reason many people can get more than one DSL provider. I can tell you that without FCC regulations, there would be no such thing as competition in Bellsouth's territory. There hardly is now.
I agree that there are many aspects about the FCC that just plain suck. The answer might be to strip them of the frequency allocation rights. They SHOULD still be responsible for setting such things as output power limits and forced competition on the wired infastructure. That or create a new body for that task.
In a coffee shop? Sure free can happen. But once you step outside those coffee shop walls, what happens? For example -- your favorite spot in the park. On that overlook above town. On the bench in the middle of the bridge. Down by the river. On the beach. How about anywhere where that little access point won't reach?
There are other forces at work and in the near future, Internet access will only one facet of your connection.
Free is not the future so long as it is run by private entities. There are several reasons why this is so:
-security -- sure someone isn't sniffing your data and/or hammering your system for vulnerabilities while you surf?
-reliability -- when the access point you are connecting to locks up, who do you call?
-quality of service -- does the person operating the AP you are connected to have SSH blocked? What about FTP? SMTP? You just don't know.
It seems to me what is REALLY happening is that free wireless Internet is making plain access a comodity such that high premiums won't last. Look for services beyond Internet access to appear widespread.
Also look for one of two things to happen -- either providers using the free spectrum will have to charge tax for providing service OR wired companies will become exempt from having to charge them.
To be fair, I know just enough about Linux to make mre dangerous. So when I say gcc is broken, that means at a command prompt when I type "gcc" nothing happens, I get a fun message informing me no such command.
As far as sound goes, on my own system it didn't work with FC2T1. It started working again after many up2date sessions with no changes made by me. Then after more updates, it mysteriously stopped working again. I then discovered that for whatever reason, updates set the sound to mute all by default. Go figure.
As far as installing it on someone else's PC--it seemed like the logical thing to do since:
a) a test version seemed to work quite well on my PC
b) Theirs was about the same age as mine and had no complicated hardware.
HOWEVER
-Fedora installed and correctly discovered the Soundblaster Live soundcard. Sound didn't work.
-DHCP doesn't work on this machine. Manually setting the IP address worked fine.
-Had to reinstall the system because I put in an ethernet card after the install and post-installation hardware configuration just got all confused about that.
-Despite printing working like a charm on mine and them having a fully supported printer (can't remember the HP model right off hand) it didn't work until after I manually configured the queue.
-It was SLOW AS HELL. Same system with a Knoppix HD install was night and day difference.
Bottom line is that Fedora Core 2 is not a point release worthy distribution. Call it Fedora Core 2 Non-stable or something that makes it quite clear to not have high expectations.
Once upon a time I was a Red Hat Desktop evangilist. Can't say that now. At least not with their free version. I am sure their latest paid versions are great. I know RH9 was (yes, I bought it).
Actually I think Knoppix is just great out of the box. Wish it detected hardware a little better (failed to configure some vanilla DVD drives).
Cutting edge research and development distro? I think "Alpha/Beta Distro" would be more like it.
There are all kinds of things that just don't work for no explicable reason. We are talking about simple things such as, oh I don't know, gcc and sound and stuff that has worked for eons in 2.4 based kernels.
They window dress what it really is by calling a research and development distro. Call it what it is--alpha and _maybe_ beta quality software.
I had a chance to convert someone to Linux and lost that chance because all kinds of stuff didn't work.
Vonage seems to work well so long as your connection is good. Being able to listen to your voicemail either on a phone or online is really neat.
My experience is that tech support takes FOREVER to get someone on the line if you have trouble. When I say forever, I am talking about 45 minutes plus.
Slashdot Mirror
Catch up? I would argue it is a means to push browser technology where Internet Explorer has stalled. Sure IE is getting pop up blocking. Mozilla/Firefox has had it for how long? Same for tabbed browsing.
As for being identical pieces of software, well that is to be expected. Two hammers made by different manufactures are both hammers when you get down to it.
Besides, if two pieces of software are going to take the same document and render it the "same" way to the user, then exactly how do you expect them to be worlds apart in difference?
One innovation that Firefox has on IE that I don't expect to change any time soon--open source.
In some instances
Care to quote where it explains in what instances 200MB is possible?
There is no way the telcos have the backbone to support tens of thousands of people all pulling 200MB in highly poplulated areas going into a single CO.
Pardon me if I don't hold my breath.
It seems to me that your arguement is moot on exactly why my proposition would fail simply because due to the proliferation of Kazaa and Napster before, the situation you describe is already here. I actually had a person say to me "Why are they suing everyone for downloading music? If it is illegal, they shouldn't make all that music available for free."
The point is that the cat is out of the bag and now the only thing you can do it make downloading convenient and easy and also provide a convenient and easy way to get payments to the artists. That is my goal.
What I propose is the equivalent of a farmers market for music. Music from labels could still be distributed here so long as the music was open and no attempts to limit fair use either by DRM or crazy lawsuits. Artists have the choice to be independent or part of a label. As with any open project, the key is choice.
As for non-Internet using customers--current estimates are that seventy percent of homes in the United States are connected. That number is increasing daily.
I am sure that a non-Internet option could exist so long as it was inexpensive. The cost of shipping and such would have to be paid for by the consumer of course.
There is no reason that music from Magnatune artists couldn't be included in this. As I said from an earlier post, as long as the music can be distributed in an open form that has no DRM and consumers can observe their fair use rights, no problem.
The only difference would be that Magnatune artists would only see half of the donations whereas independent artists would see all of it.
I wasn't aware of Magnatune. I will check that out. Thanks for the information!
Music
No, only new contractually pure music allowed. Maybe in the future, it could be possible to negotiate the release of music after it is clear no additional profits (or very minimal) will be accrued in their imprisoned status.
Labels
Bands can and will break free from their labels if they have a compelling reason to do so. This is a label-free proposition. It might be possible to have labels put the music up, but it must meet a strict set of criteria that means consumers will never be hindered from their fair use.
Funds
Bands would have to register and not just by e-mail. This is a comprehensive approach so that every effort that can be taken to prevent fraud and/or misdirection of funds will be taken.
Authentication
No such thing except to keep track of the songs people have donated towards so they can get credit towards bonuses. That would be easily calculated based on financial reports from Paypal donations. This is about consumer and artist empowerment through goodwill and NOT through forced will.
Overhead
With a pure digital distribution medium over a network using bittorrent technology, there is a near-zero entry barrier for both artists and consumers. Artists only need to record their music either directly into a digital format or convert it after the fact. Consumers need only an Internet connection to shop.
-No media costs
-No advertising costs
-No RIAA related costs
-No transportation of materials costs
The only catch is the goodwill. When confronted with the opportunity to play fair, will people? Maybe and maybe not. But that really isn't any different from the current distribution model.
I thought about it and I might start it.
As for bittorrent, it works great on my broadband firewall with no additional configuration necessary. Maybe there are some it wouldn't work.
As for killing surfing, isn't there a way to limit the rates of download and upload?
The point of a non-profit is to encourage donations especially if they are tax deductible. Which is also why bittorrent is so attractive. It diestributes bandwidth requirements for downloading music to everyone in a manner that seems to work better than P2P applications.
Would artists donate back? Might not be necessary for too much donation back if there is minimal overhead.
What do you think could be done to encourage donating back?
haha, no thanks. You couldn't pay me enough to have something like this fashioned after me. I am not arrogant enough to think that. I just really want some balance to be restored to the musice market.
As evidenced with bittorrent, if something good comes along that really doesn't NEED an alternative then none will surface (unless there is an alternative I don't know about).
If we can get as much unity as possible then I don't worry about competing entities. What steps do you think should be taken to prevent splintering?
Those that won't will take the selfish route regardless of laws, DRM and any other measures you throw at them. At least this way, all of the useless overhead that goes into trying to stop that behavior is cut out of the model.
I think you would be surprised at how well the majority can and will behave if faced with the opportunity to do so with minimal effort.
I for one am completely and totally tired of their antics. We geeks have power and can be a serious force. I am issuing a challenge at this moment. We need to develop an alternative path for customers and artists to take to bypass them.
I am confident that if we can all band together, we can overcome. I am talking about a distribution system that is based on open standards that allows payment to go directly to artist with minimal (if any) overhead.
Here is what I propose:
-A non-profit organization comprised of volunteers
-Create a website to serve as a repository of songs to be distributed via bittorrent
-Payment taken in the form of Paypal donations
-Payment is artist AND song specific based completely on an honor system
-To encourage reasonable sized payments, offer bonuses for tiered donations
-For example, after $100 is donated to band X, the customer becomes eligble for free concert tickets or something
-Payment is dispursed to artists in entirety
-Artists are encouraged to donate back a portion of their payments to cover costs of bandwidth, etc.
-No DRM to be used and only open formats for music.
-Songs should be available in varying qualities.
Maybe this exact model has already been proposed, I don't know. Comments and suggestions welcome. I have issued the challenge, will anyone answer?
This is so easy to make a joke about, I am actually having difficulty doing so.
Cross your fingers whether you are pro-Linux or pro-Microsoft that SCO gets hammered. Because if they win, you can bet the IT industry in the United States (and potentially other countries) is going to suck royally and innovation will take a huge setback.
About the only people that will make money in the short term are a select few corporate types and lawyers.
As others have noted, the tower is the antenna. The output line coming from an AM transmitter is fixed directly to the tower. Usually this is not fixed at ground level to avoid killing a passerby. RF waves WILL arc and kill. Also, if you are feeling especially depressed and want to cause yourself bodily harm, walk up to a hot AM tower barefoot and grab it.
As it says in the article, wet (and salty which I didn't know) ground is best for transmission. AM towers are often set in a group of three and set in low lying wetlands (near water especially). If you look closely, you will see that the only thing perched on top would be the strobes (if applicable).
Turning off DNS could prevent some of his games from working right. Instead, why not statically set the IP information for both images and block port 80 to the windows image and give him a restricted account so he can't change IP information? I don't know of any games that use port 80.
My experience with Netgear products has led me to believe their quality has diminished dramatically.
IANAL, but I seem to recall a lawyer I know telling me that with product liability, a company is liable if due diligence is not performed to fix an issue when a known problem exists. Of course, the trick becomes can you call changing a username and password due diligence? I feel certain every computer expert in the world would say no.
If they truly don't care, I don't think they would bother posting this:
http://xfree86.org/distro-support.html
I can't speak for all geeks out there (we are usually on the front line), but I have seen so many computers running Windows XP out there just getting raped by adware/spyware/worms/trojans lately. One of the primary culprits? Internet Explorer.
The reason I believe it is Internet Explorer is that I have seen a machine that is behind 2 different firewalls (one of which is a very well configured PIX) get molested. It wasn't used for e-mail, no P2P programs for downloading and nothing else was used except the browser. I am SURE some people were browsing dodgy websites on that machine. So far, it is the only PC on that IP segment that has been infected so it wasn't from another machine.
Anyone else see this out there?
Forget the free speech issue for just a moment and take a pause to thank the FCC that they put limits on output power of equipment. Just a little for example--2.4ghz (cordless phones, 802.11b/g) is in the natural resonance frequency of water (think microwave ovens). The FCC is the only thing that has prevented some monkey from making a 500 watt amp and shoving it into a high gain antenna next door to you. The results of that would be disastrous and probably kill you and your family in a few short days or weeks (maybe hours).
They are also the reason many people can get more than one DSL provider. I can tell you that without FCC regulations, there would be no such thing as competition in Bellsouth's territory. There hardly is now.
I agree that there are many aspects about the FCC that just plain suck. The answer might be to strip them of the frequency allocation rights. They SHOULD still be responsible for setting such things as output power limits and forced competition on the wired infastructure. That or create a new body for that task.
In a coffee shop? Sure free can happen. But once you step outside those coffee shop walls, what happens? For example -- your favorite spot in the park. On that overlook above town. On the bench in the middle of the bridge. Down by the river. On the beach. How about anywhere where that little access point won't reach?
There are other forces at work and in the near future, Internet access will only one facet of your connection.
Free is not the future so long as it is run by private entities. There are several reasons why this is so:
-security -- sure someone isn't sniffing your data and/or hammering your system for vulnerabilities while you surf?
-reliability -- when the access point you are connecting to locks up, who do you call?
-quality of service -- does the person operating the AP you are connected to have SSH blocked? What about FTP? SMTP? You just don't know.
It seems to me what is REALLY happening is that free wireless Internet is making plain access a comodity such that high premiums won't last. Look for services beyond Internet access to appear widespread.
Also look for one of two things to happen -- either providers using the free spectrum will have to charge tax for providing service OR wired companies will become exempt from having to charge them.
To be fair, I know just enough about Linux to make mre dangerous. So when I say gcc is broken, that means at a command prompt when I type "gcc" nothing happens, I get a fun message informing me no such command.
As far as sound goes, on my own system it didn't work with FC2T1. It started working again after many up2date sessions with no changes made by me. Then after more updates, it mysteriously stopped working again. I then discovered that for whatever reason, updates set the sound to mute all by default. Go figure.
As far as installing it on someone else's PC--it seemed like the logical thing to do since:
a) a test version seemed to work quite well on my PC
b) Theirs was about the same age as mine and had no complicated hardware.
HOWEVER
-Fedora installed and correctly discovered the Soundblaster Live soundcard. Sound didn't work.
-DHCP doesn't work on this machine. Manually setting the IP address worked fine.
-Had to reinstall the system because I put in an ethernet card after the install and post-installation hardware configuration just got all confused about that.
-Despite printing working like a charm on mine and them having a fully supported printer (can't remember the HP model right off hand) it didn't work until after I manually configured the queue.
-It was SLOW AS HELL. Same system with a Knoppix HD install was night and day difference.
Bottom line is that Fedora Core 2 is not a point release worthy distribution. Call it Fedora Core 2 Non-stable or something that makes it quite clear to not have high expectations.
Once upon a time I was a Red Hat Desktop evangilist. Can't say that now. At least not with their free version. I am sure their latest paid versions are great. I know RH9 was (yes, I bought it).
Actually I think Knoppix is just great out of the box. Wish it detected hardware a little better (failed to configure some vanilla DVD drives).
Cutting edge research and development distro? I think "Alpha/Beta Distro" would be more like it.
There are all kinds of things that just don't work for no explicable reason. We are talking about simple things such as, oh I don't know, gcc and sound and stuff that has worked for eons in 2.4 based kernels.
They window dress what it really is by calling a research and development distro. Call it what it is--alpha and _maybe_ beta quality software.
I had a chance to convert someone to Linux and lost that chance because all kinds of stuff didn't work.
Vonage seems to work well so long as your connection is good. Being able to listen to your voicemail either on a phone or online is really neat.
My experience is that tech support takes FOREVER to get someone on the line if you have trouble. When I say forever, I am talking about 45 minutes plus.
Other than that, it is great.