This was kinda what I was thinking with my "Honour System" post the other day.
I think it will shortly get to the stage where music and video producers accept that unauthorised digital distribution / copying of their material CANNOT be stopped.
The industry could then move to an "Honour System" of payment, whereby a viewer could make payment for digital content _however_ they received it.
Multimedia file formats should contain meta-data information about an Internet location from where payment for the material can be made should one so wish to do so.
If anybody present knows of any currently issued or applied for patent that may be applied to the use of MPEG4 video over a mobile data link, speak NOW - or forever hold your peace.
How about an honour system for payment of all music and video.
Fact: Unauthorised digital distribution of copyrighted material is _never_ going to be stopped. Therefore, rather than try and beat it (impossible), accept it.
The new form of digital distribution is chaotic. Whether it be underground websites, Usenet, Kazaa, let it be.
However, along with all digital entertainment content, include details of a website from where you can make an honour payment for the material you have obtained. MP3's etc. can use meta-data (ID3 tags etc.) and Video can just display a "Thanks, if you've enjoyed this please pop online and pay us".
I hereby nominate .noads
on
Plans For New TLDs
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I mentioned this in an article the other day but it was so far down that nobody noticed..noads would be for websites that were either completely free _or_ charged REAL MONEY for their services.
Once established I would surf almost exclusively in this domain.
If you're planning on a purchase and not sure exactly which manufacturer/model to buy, half an hour in Google Groups should make up your mind.
Search on the product you're interested by date, and read what people are saying. Sure, you will get the odd one or two who have had nothing but trouble, but see how it works out on average.
Google Groups is especially good for getting the low down computer / electrical consumer goods.
People keep saying that web advertising must work otherwise people wouldn't do it.
Well, maybe it doesn't, but until a company tries, it doesn't know - and there are plenty of companies yet to try!
I have a theory that one day, Yahoo! will go out of business because everybody who could advertise with them has tried - and found it doesn't work!
The minimum ad spend on Yahoo! is $5k per month, so they can juice money out of plenty of companies that haven't tried yet on the premise that it might work, knowing full well that it probably won't....!
Come to think of it, as long as new companies come along at a frequency big enough to sustain Yahoo! then they might not go out of business.
I'm not being entirely serious.:)
Internet Advertising: If you don't try it, you'll never know....
I think i've heard that one of the reasons for SMS pricing is the network capacity to actually handle the volume of messages - not air time, i'm talking about the processing and delivery at and between message centers
Any cheaper and they wouldn't be able to cope. I've not done the maths but it sounds plausable.
How did RealPlayer install itself on a Nokia without the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Current Version \ Run ] to install about 3 billion entries in that start every time your turn on your computer, consume resources and pop-up random messages??
The day RealPlayer respects my computer will be the day I respect RealPlayer.
...to what any sensible software engineering team would have built as a re-active solution?
Problem:
Some of our affiliates have out of date links.
Dumb Solution:
Create stupid high bandwidth consuming spider that endlessly crawls affiliate sites looking for out of date links;
or
Sensible Solution:
When an out of date link comes along to the website, display an apology screen to the visitor (whilst not letting up on any other sales opportunity) and email the affiliate telling them to get their site up to date.
But surely if you want to provide wireless capabilities on your corporate network you put the access point in a DMZ and have users come in via a VPN, just as if they were working from home and connecting over the "public" Internet.
Blockquoth the article...
on
Cringely on P2P
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· Score: 3, Funny
My columns are published in newspapers and websites and handed-in as college essays all over the world
Yeah, and thanks to you, Cringely, I only got a D.
If the 10,000+ users you are talking about are individual paying customers of an ISP (you don't say in your post) then I trust you have consulted with management and customers before implementing this.
It is massively irresponsible of an ISP to decide what email their users get. SPEWS blocks a lot of non-SPAM email through their policy of targeting ISP's, not individual spammers, meaning your customers _could_ miss out on important email.
I'm not saying I have anything against SPEWS - they make it perfectly clear on their site that they hold an opinion and if you wish to share their opinion that's up to you; but I do have a problem with sysops that decide to go and implement this kind of blocking off their own backs without proper consultation.
For several years yet, there are going to be those that still want to buy their music on a CD, for the same reason that I still have to stand in line at the supermarket every now and again whilst some old dear pays by cheque.
If a significant proportion of the record companies customer base moves to an online distribution model then surely the economies of scale in the mass manufacture of music CDs would be affected. Wouldn't it?
(but we all know how massively marked up CDs are!)
What a boad of lollocks.
on
Sensors Gone Wild
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Anybody else try and read this article and not have the faintest idea what it was about?
"At least one shortcoming of these approaches is that neither is capable of allowing a user to access embedded interactive program objects in distributed hypermedia documents over networks."
Firstly, I have no doubt myself that the moon was visited by man.
However, even if Hubble _could_ resolve the lunar lander, and even if there _are_ reflectors on the moon's surface, they do not prove that Man actually visited.
The lunar module could have gone it alone whilst Armstrong et. al. were in orbit around the Earth for a few days, and the lunar reflectors placed there automatically.
I stopped watching that Fox documentary when they showed the photograph that contained the lunar lander one minute, and not the next. Gee, you never looked at mountains in the distance? See how they don't change over the course of a few meters?
Get a life, hoax believers.
You know how stupid the average person is? Well by definition, half of 'em are more stupid than that.
Just a warning to those becoming or already hooked on Tetris.
I used to be a serious Tetris junkie, and played on many different versions on different platforms.
Playing so much, I became "quite good", and this meant that blocks were falling extremely rapidly.
To play tetris at high speed, you glance very quickly at the arriving piece, then move your gaze back to the pile to asses the position - moving the piece without looking at it. Repeat until bored.
Then my eyes packed up. I basically developed something like "RSI" in both eyes - my eyes would twitch repeatedly up and down in the exact movements used in high speed tetris. This whilst not even playing tetris.
I diagnosed the problem myself and quit playing, but it took a few months to clear up.
As others have said, I will also be sad to see S@H finish, but alas their job is done since we have found life on venus.
Ok, so it might not be "intelligent", but define "intelligence". I assume the S@H definition of "intelligence" is the ability to generate radio waves somehow.
Slashdot Mirror
This was kinda what I was thinking with my "Honour System" post the other day.
I think it will shortly get to the stage where music and video producers accept that unauthorised digital distribution / copying of their material CANNOT be stopped.
The industry could then move to an "Honour System" of payment, whereby a viewer could make payment for digital content _however_ they received it.
Multimedia file formats should contain meta-data information about an Internet location from where payment for the material can be made should one so wish to do so.
Well if the way Microsoft Word saves out as HTML is anything to go by, then concise it most definitely will not be.
If anybody present knows of any currently issued or applied for patent that may be applied to the use of MPEG4 video over a mobile data link, speak NOW - or forever hold your peace.
How about an honour system for payment of all music and video.
Fact: Unauthorised digital distribution of copyrighted material is _never_ going to be stopped. Therefore, rather than try and beat it (impossible), accept it.
The new form of digital distribution is chaotic. Whether it be underground websites, Usenet, Kazaa, let it be.
However, along with all digital entertainment content, include details of a website from where you can make an honour payment for the material you have obtained. MP3's etc. can use meta-data (ID3 tags etc.) and Video can just display a "Thanks, if you've enjoyed this please pop online and pay us".
I wish people would stop trying to manage it.
I mentioned this in an article the other day but it was so far down that nobody noticed. .noads would be for websites that were either completely free _or_ charged REAL MONEY for their services.
Once established I would surf almost exclusively in this domain.
Now can anybody lend me USD 50,000?
Take an average.
If you're planning on a purchase and not sure exactly which manufacturer/model to buy, half an hour in Google Groups should make up your mind.
Search on the product you're interested by date, and read what people are saying. Sure, you will get the odd one or two who have had nothing but trouble, but see how it works out on average.
Google Groups is especially good for getting the low down computer / electrical consumer goods.
How about a new TLD (.noads?? :) in which websites could either be completely free or actually charge MONEY for their service?
:)
I know it would never work but it's a nice thought!
People keep saying that web advertising must work otherwise people wouldn't do it.
:)
Well, maybe it doesn't, but until a company tries, it doesn't know - and there are plenty of companies yet to try!
I have a theory that one day, Yahoo! will go out of business because everybody who could advertise with them has tried - and found it doesn't work!
The minimum ad spend on Yahoo! is $5k per month, so they can juice money out of plenty of companies that haven't tried yet on the premise that it might work, knowing full well that it probably won't....!
Come to think of it, as long as new companies come along at a frequency big enough to sustain Yahoo! then they might not go out of business.
I'm not being entirely serious.
Internet Advertising:
If you don't try it, you'll never know....
I think i've heard that one of the reasons for SMS pricing is the network capacity to actually handle the volume of messages - not air time, i'm talking about the processing and delivery at and between message centers
Any cheaper and they wouldn't be able to cope. I've not done the maths but it sounds plausable.
How did RealPlayer install itself on a Nokia without the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Current Version \ Run ] to install about 3 billion entries in that start every time your turn on your computer, consume resources and pop-up random messages??
The day RealPlayer respects my computer will be the day I respect RealPlayer.
Fat Reducing Set Top Box.
Just like a normal Set Top Box except it's on slant so the fat you use to fry your egg runs off.
...to what any sensible software engineering team would have built as a re-active solution?
Problem:
Some of our affiliates have out of date links.
Dumb Solution:
Create stupid high bandwidth consuming spider that endlessly crawls affiliate sites looking for out of date links;
or
Sensible Solution:
When an out of date link comes along to the website, display an apology screen to the visitor (whilst not letting up on any other sales opportunity) and email the affiliate telling them to get their site up to date.
Some people just don't fink.
But surely if you want to provide wireless capabilities on your corporate network you put the access point in a DMZ and have users come in via a VPN, just as if they were working from home and connecting over the "public" Internet.
My columns are published in newspapers and websites and handed-in as college essays all over the world
Yeah, and thanks to you, Cringely, I only got a D.
Just gimme an IP address.
I'll roll my own content and killer app.
Thanks.
If the 10,000+ users you are talking about are individual paying customers of an ISP (you don't say in your post) then I trust you have consulted with management and customers before implementing this.
It is massively irresponsible of an ISP to decide what email their users get. SPEWS blocks a lot of non-SPAM email through their policy of targeting ISP's, not individual spammers, meaning your customers _could_ miss out on important email.
I'm not saying I have anything against SPEWS - they make it perfectly clear on their site that they hold an opinion and if you wish to share their opinion that's up to you; but I do have a problem with sysops that decide to go and implement this kind of blocking off their own backs without proper consultation.
Cheers,
PHB.
For several years yet, there are going to be those that still want to buy their music on a CD, for the same reason that I still have to stand in line at the supermarket every now and again whilst some old dear pays by cheque.
If a significant proportion of the record companies customer base moves to an online distribution model then surely the economies of scale in the mass manufacture of music CDs would be affected. Wouldn't it?
(but we all know how massively marked up CDs are!)
Anybody else try and read this article and not have the faintest idea what it was about?
Firstly, I have no doubt myself that the moon was visited by man.
However, even if Hubble _could_ resolve the lunar lander, and even if there _are_ reflectors on the moon's surface, they do not prove that Man actually visited.
The lunar module could have gone it alone whilst Armstrong et. al. were in orbit around the Earth for a few days, and the lunar reflectors placed there automatically.
I stopped watching that Fox documentary when they showed the photograph that contained the lunar lander one minute, and not the next. Gee, you never looked at mountains in the distance? See how they don't change over the course of a few meters?
Get a life, hoax believers.
You know how stupid the average person is? Well by definition, half of 'em are more stupid than that.
... and every other kind of IT employee monitoring solution is that they are implemented by the IT DEPARTMENT.
Who by definition are the worst offenders.
And because they're all buddies, they "bypass" the monitoring for their own IP addresses.
Total waste of time.
Just a warning to those becoming or already hooked on Tetris.
I used to be a serious Tetris junkie, and played on many different versions on different platforms.
Playing so much, I became "quite good", and this meant that blocks were falling extremely rapidly.
To play tetris at high speed, you glance very quickly at the arriving piece, then move your gaze back to the pile to asses the position - moving the piece without looking at it. Repeat until bored.
Then my eyes packed up. I basically developed something like "RSI" in both eyes - my eyes would twitch repeatedly up and down in the exact movements used in high speed tetris. This whilst not even playing tetris.
I diagnosed the problem myself and quit playing, but it took a few months to clear up.
Just a warning. I still play it on and off.
As others have said, I will also be sad to see S@H finish, but alas their job is done since we have found life on venus.
Ok, so it might not be "intelligent", but define "intelligence". I assume the S@H definition of "intelligence" is the ability to generate radio waves somehow.
Look's like a great service s'long as you don't get through to TrollGeek.
.....
"Ok Betty, click on Start, then Run, then type 'cmd' and press Enter'.
"Done that."
"Now type format c: