"Somehow I doubt I'll see the end of Big Media's dominance though. There's always a market for its strained and drained product."
As long as there are major chains to force feed it to us, yes. Next time you go travelling - at each of the airports notice that all fo the magazine stands stock the same titles, then notice that they are all from the same publishers. This isn't random - it's because they have found a way to force the product down peoples throats.
You asked what replaced books in most peoples lives. Here's you answer: Television.
Most of my coworkers can dialogue endlessly about the current status of Ally Macbeal, or Friends, or.... well you get the picture. They've replaced books with television - I have difficulty in naming those who've read more than a dozen books in the past year.
Not that television is particularly different than most of the current literary drivel, but even the basest book requires more thought than watching a majority of the television programs available.
And the outside promotion & creation of "megastars" The key to a succesful book in recent years has been to be deemed worthy Oprah's book club - analagous to the succesful promotion of Alicia Keyes by Rosie O'Donnell. This is unless your already a succesful megastar like Steven King - at which point your pulp will be forcefed down our throats.
"One of the problems I see is that once the optical signal is inside the network, it's encoded in a special manner, diffferent for each equipment (to improve performance, add more error checking, force the carrier to continue to buy from the same vendor)."
Your assuming that those spying won't know the manner in which the signal is encrypted - but when Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel or good forbid Corvis will gladly sell you the box, this problem is much less severe. Buy the box, and reengineer it - or hell, just use it to do your deciphering! As for transmitting the data back to be decrypted - they'd probably just run a cable back to shore. Not that hard - but a little time consuming. But not what they are likely to do.
What they are much more likely to do than any harebrained fiber cabletaping scheme (at least for commercial cable - governmental would be different) is to tap the cable when it comes to ground - at the comshack with the amplifiers, etc. This is orders of magnitude less difficult, and much less likely to be damaged. More than likely the NSA already has for all of the cables leaving the US.
If you remember your 80's history - the plan was to tap Moscow's offshore comline (unencrypted) - and the via a which ran from North of Norway, to Iceland, to the US - decrypt it. Of course this was all before a spy gave the game away - after we'd spent a couple of hundred million.
40% of your cable bill (and thats even for Basic) goes to pay the content producers - ESPN is generally carried at a loss for example. Cable is, in general, a schlock industry - they have the crappiest compentry - but then, thats why they make so much money.
The FCC doesn't prevent competitors from stepping in to your local market. Anybody is welcome to set up shop.
True. The FCC has the power to force the phone companies, and the cable cos, to share the lines into subsriber homes. They aren't doing this - because of a)cash donations to various politicians b) very good telephone compnay lawyers. No Company is going to string new lines into subscriber homes - so in order for competition to exist, we need sharing of access lines.
Tangential, but.... Your comment about rating music by tempo is reminescent of what WGMS (Washington DC classical music station) is doing. They've rated 10,000 pieces of classical music according to mood, and then play the various moods according to what they think people wish to listen to at various times of the day (energetic in the morning, soothing after work, etc. ) Of course this does suck, because they no longer play complete pieces of classical music:(
When you're applying for a job, you give consent for a background search
Indeed! Most places of business do not actually perform background checks of even the most rudimentary nature.
As an applicant it is possible for you to perform a similar service on publicaly traded companies - using business research tools like Hoover's, etc. They tell you the same type of information - lawsuits, judgements, profits, losses. Of course, if you're applying to a private company your S.O.L
the fish
And why didn't that corporation find out about this before they hired the guy?
Because most corporations, and other agencies, rarely do full and efficent backgroung checks on employees. A company I used to work for, which shall remain nameless, hired a "reliability engineer" who had neither his claimed military experience, nor his PHD!
the fish
since March 1996, patents assigned to Lucent have been issued at a rate of more than three per business day
This more reflects the pathetic state of current patent law than the research prowess of Bell Labs. If you look at, for example, athermal packages for Fiber Bragg Gratings(telcom equip.) they have at least 2 dozen different designs patented, most of which are minor iterational changes that any competent mechanic could think up themselves - not by any strech of the word, groudbreaking.
the fish
Slashdot Mirror
"Somehow I doubt I'll see the end of Big Media's dominance though. There's always a market for its strained and drained product." As long as there are major chains to force feed it to us, yes. Next time you go travelling - at each of the airports notice that all fo the magazine stands stock the same titles, then notice that they are all from the same publishers. This isn't random - it's because they have found a way to force the product down peoples throats.
You asked what replaced books in most peoples lives. Here's you answer: Television. Most of my coworkers can dialogue endlessly about the current status of Ally Macbeal, or Friends, or.... well you get the picture. They've replaced books with television - I have difficulty in naming those who've read more than a dozen books in the past year. Not that television is particularly different than most of the current literary drivel, but even the basest book requires more thought than watching a majority of the television programs available.
And the outside promotion & creation of "megastars" The key to a succesful book in recent years has been to be deemed worthy Oprah's book club - analagous to the succesful promotion of Alicia Keyes by Rosie O'Donnell. This is unless your already a succesful megastar like Steven King - at which point your pulp will be forcefed down our throats.
"One of the problems I see is that once the optical signal is inside the network, it's encoded in a special manner, diffferent for each equipment (to improve performance, add more error checking, force the carrier to continue to buy from the same vendor)."
Your assuming that those spying won't know the manner in which the signal is encrypted - but when Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel or good forbid Corvis will gladly sell you the box, this problem is much less severe. Buy the box, and reengineer it - or hell, just use it to do your deciphering! As for transmitting the data back to be decrypted - they'd probably just run a cable back to shore. Not that hard - but a little time consuming. But not what they are likely to do.
What they are much more likely to do than any harebrained fiber cabletaping scheme (at least for commercial cable - governmental would be different) is to tap the cable when it comes to ground - at the comshack with the amplifiers, etc. This is orders of magnitude less difficult, and much less likely to be damaged. More than likely the NSA already has for all of the cables leaving the US.
The fish.
If you remember your 80's history - the plan was to tap Moscow's offshore comline (unencrypted) - and the via a which ran from North of Norway, to Iceland, to the US - decrypt it. Of course this was all before a spy gave the game away - after we'd spent a couple of hundred million.
40% of your cable bill (and thats even for Basic) goes to pay the content producers - ESPN is generally carried at a loss for example. Cable is, in general, a schlock industry - they have the crappiest compentry - but then, thats why they make so much money.
the trout
From Corn no less!
http://www.cdpoly.com/natureworks.asp
And Cargill, while a family owned company, is no small potatoes in the world of business.
The FCC doesn't prevent competitors from stepping in to your local market. Anybody is welcome to set up shop. True. The FCC has the power to force the phone companies, and the cable cos, to share the lines into subsriber homes. They aren't doing this - because of a)cash donations to various politicians b) very good telephone compnay lawyers. No Company is going to string new lines into subscriber homes - so in order for competition to exist, we need sharing of access lines.
Tangential, but.... Your comment about rating music by tempo is reminescent of what WGMS (Washington DC classical music station) is doing. They've rated 10,000 pieces of classical music according to mood, and then play the various moods according to what they think people wish to listen to at various times of the day (energetic in the morning, soothing after work, etc. ) Of course this does suck, because they no longer play complete pieces of classical music :(
When you're applying for a job, you give consent for a background search Indeed! Most places of business do not actually perform background checks of even the most rudimentary nature. As an applicant it is possible for you to perform a similar service on publicaly traded companies - using business research tools like Hoover's, etc. They tell you the same type of information - lawsuits, judgements, profits, losses. Of course, if you're applying to a private company your S.O.L the fish
And why didn't that corporation find out about this before they hired the guy? Because most corporations, and other agencies, rarely do full and efficent backgroung checks on employees. A company I used to work for, which shall remain nameless, hired a "reliability engineer" who had neither his claimed military experience, nor his PHD! the fish
since March 1996, patents assigned to Lucent have been issued at a rate of more than three per business day This more reflects the pathetic state of current patent law than the research prowess of Bell Labs. If you look at, for example, athermal packages for Fiber Bragg Gratings(telcom equip.) they have at least 2 dozen different designs patented, most of which are minor iterational changes that any competent mechanic could think up themselves - not by any strech of the word, groudbreaking. the fish