This seems to confirm my subjective assessment that Google is pretty quick on the updates. I remember reading years ago that Altavista had decreased it's frequency of updates to every 3-4 months or so, while increasing advertising (less for more -you gotta love those MBA's - I hope there's a special place in hell for them). On the web, that game plan has to be about the fastest possible route to obscurity.
Jeez, I'd completely forgotten them. 5 years ago, they would have been my number 3 choice, after trying Altavista and Yahoo or maybe Lycos (yes kids, Yahoo was once a real search engine). I just checked and they're still there - I got misty-eyed for a moment since it brought back memories of a less commercial (by at least 2 orders of magnitude), more information and technology oriented, FLASH-FREE web. Once the advertising leeches found out about the web they started making it more like television - more and more squeal, less and less pig.
Re:Altavista the best?
on
Altavista Renewed
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Anyone remember when Alta Vista was the best search engine?
I certainly do, it was 5-6 years ago (~= 1 web lifetime). Then, as it started to descend into deep suckitude in the search of money rather than results, along came Google. I also remember when people used to use Yahoo and Lycos and a few others as search engines. IMO, Google is currently and still king of the hill, especially since it became less anal about including common words (the, at, by, etc. - hey when I do a literal search, I mean literal, not liberal, damn it). Alltheweb is getting pretty good though, and IMO it does a better job on finding foreign pages and has better advanced search capabilities than Google.
Jack - come read this post. Who the hell do these people think they are whining about fair use and flexibility and choice and all that other liberal crap. Mass acceptance? Hah. Don't make me laugh. We're going to eliminate the standard CD just like we did the LP and combine it with all the legislation that we're buying and they'll have no friggin' choice! Well charge more for these and force the dumb bastards to buy their whole collection over again. Come on baby, Hilary needs a new Mercedes!
It's war, I say, war damn it! What makes these consumer slimes think that they can have what they want. Consumers exist for the sole purpose of feeding corporate bottom lines an padding my goddamn wallet. If we could do away with dealing with these %$#@ consumers entirely and just collect our money through taxes it would be a better world. Hey-wait a minute... what are we paying those congressmen for? Get senator Payme Butgoode on the phone - it's time for some new legislation!
If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. Something they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.
Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.
"Buy the CD... Twenty-five dollars is cheap... Go ahead... You know you want to... Uh huh... Buy two copies - you need a legal backup... Come on honey... Hilary needs a new Cadillac... Only thieves copy music... Copy music and go to jail... Turn in your neighbors who copy music... Oh yeah, baby..."
I'll bet that in their collective minds MS feels vindicated - the fact that they were found guilty of anti-trust violations is years-old news and really isn't important to them anyway. What is important to them is that they got away with it, probably thanks in no small part to Asscroft and Bush and some well-spent campaign contributions. The media is helping MS to appear vindicated by shouting "Microsoft Won!" and then whispering "at getting away with it". I expect that MS will behave like a petulant child that only received a scolding and a wink for setting fire to the school house and truly exploit their apparent omnipotence from now on.
So, unfortunately, in today's screwed-up world, maybe the lesson that Sun needs to learn from this is to play outside the rules and fight like hell when caught. To the victor of that game go the spoils.
Sorry for the AC post above. Opera ate my cookies a few hours ago and I have to use a different browser (which I forgot to do for this post) until I get time to find my Slashdot password.
You must be psychic. I just spent several hours with Audacity doing that very thing. I was trying to profile the results of several encoders at different bit rates against a baseline ripped wav (I wish that Audacity would let you display several spectral analysis displays at once). You're absolutely right that at 128 kbps, there is a sharp rolloff at 15-16 kHz. Once you get to 256 kbps, though, its up around 20 kHz - outside of most peoples' hearing range. Even at 256 kbps, you still get the losses from the spatial (spectral?) redundancy reduction, so there is still a slight perceivable loss of quality if you do an A/B. But, for most of my listening, 256 kbps mp3 encoding (using a GOOD encoder) is just fine and even 128 kbps VBR (using a GOOD encoder) is quite acceptable. A lot of bad sounding mp3's that I've encountered are the result of poor encoders, poor source material, bad EQ'ing, clipping, etc.
As a result of intensive lobbying by the RIAA and MPAA an emergency bill was passed in Congress today. The bill, known as the Fervently Undoing Computing Capabilities of all Users act (F.U.C.C. U.), requires that each copy of the disk, code-named HWN (Hillary's Worst Nightmare), contain special embedded DRM software developed by Microsoft (motto: bend over, we got your DRM right here!) that includes the user's entire DNA sequence and will only be useable on special drives and computers that adhere to the PC (19)84 specification and run the forthcoming MS Palladium (rommed edition) operating system.
"There will be some small loss of space on the disc itself as a result", said congressman Payme Goode, "but the disc will still have abundant free space, a good 1.44 Meg, available for the end-user's data".
Any purchaser of the disc will require a license. In order to apply for the license, the applicant must first submit to a thorough background check and will be profiled and fingerprinted by the authorities. Once granted a license to use this dangerous technology, the licensee will be required to carry the license at all times or face a penalty of 50 years in prison with no parole.
"We think that this is a very fair and equitable act", Hilary Rosen was quoted as saying, "It nicely balances the rights of the individual user against the recording and motion picture industries' rights to ensure that all digital technology is hobbled to the point of being useless".
Thank you for spotting that! I was just about to post about it.
Let me see now, the 3 of the 4 remaining major hard drive manufacturers (IBM being the other) all announce that their warranty periods will be reduced to THE SAME 1 YEAR, EFFECTIVE THE SAME DATE. There's nothing suspicious about that, is there?
Conference call :
Chuck: "Profits are down. How do we save money? Jack, any suggestions?"
Jack: "Well Chuck, we could all reduce our warranty periods. Viola - more bucks for us. What do you think Bill?"
Bill: "I'm in, I'm in. More money - yeah! Besides, after we finish buying the other two of you, we won't have to harmonize that policy!"
Jack: "OK, what else can we do to get the profits up? We need to have a reason to all start raising prices now. They're too low per meg and until Gatesy gets that Palladium thing out, or the RIAA gets its head out of its butt, people are gonna start asking why they need bigger drives. Look what's happening over at Intel - they've had to put millions into seeding compute intensive applications so they can sell the high-end processors that really make the money."
Chuck: "Hey... do you think we could create a world-wide shortage of, I don't know..."
Journalists, I grow tired of this. Wouldn't it save a lot of time, electrons and trees if you only published articles when Microsoft wasn't up to its old tricks?
This Just In: Dropped My Shoe - It Fell to Floor - Gravity Still Works! Update at Eleven.
I often muse about the scenario that you describe and even fantasize about it.
In my fantasy, steps 1 - 4 are as you describe:
1. Webcaster rates are unrealistic.
2. Webcasters play public domain (non RIAA) content from musicians that release into public domain.
3. Free music gets exposure to public via webcasting.
4. Free music artists gain exposure and subsequent market stature.
But then we diverge. My fantasy is as follows:
5. RIAA continues to have their collective heads up their collective butts, continues to try to dictate the rules to consumers and buys more legislation from their paid political employees.
6. RIAA continues to raise prices of CD's because, gosh darn it, they deserve it.
7. 5&6 finally cross the line that pisses Joe and Janet sixpack off.
8. Joe and Janet start to listen to non-RIAA cartel independent artists in speakeasy's that pipe in underground webcasts and play independent music. Joe and Janet suddenly realize that the musical rainbow has more colors than white and ecru. They like it and ask for more.
9. The RIAA cartel's profits fall through the floor. Shareholders sell, sell, sell. RIAA cartel member companies go into bankruptcy. The musicians the were indentured servants to the cartel are freed and join the new movement.
10. Hilary Rosen gets job as waitress in donut shop.
because it's probably a medical condition. In the northern hemisphere, the days are getting longer. This is when some people start to experience "Seasonal Effective Disorder".
On the comments to the DMCA issue: people of the United States, please take the opportunity to provide constructive inputs that will help to effect positive change a DEEPLY flawed piece of legislation that currently serves the interests of powerful corporations at the expense of the little guy. You have a voice - those of us outside your borders are affected by the DMCA but have no effective voice.
Ah, the opportunity to make a cheap pun: you are patently incorrect mi amigo. From Lessig's blog:
The Court has held that of all the "authors" and "writings" that might be granted copyright, only those that are "original" are allowed copyright; and it has held that of all the inventions or writings that can get patent or copyright protection, only works that are not in the public domain can get the benefit of the copyright and patent clause protection.
OK. It's a technicality and I'm just teasing. But in all seriousness, I remember the days when developers could spend the bulk of their time developing. The overhead introduced (as an ancillary effect of copyright-omania / patent-omania) to avoid inadvertently stepping on patents/copyrights is an increasingly negative pull on innovation. I often wonder if an essential member of any development team of the future will be a lawyer.
The telephone was invented by Philipp Reis, a German science teacher in the early 1860's (he began work in 1860 at the age of 26). And he was inspired by an 1854 paper by a Frenchman named Bourseul. Reis's phones (which worked but were somewhat unreliable) were demonstrated in Europe and in Scotland in 1863, while Bell was there visiting his father. There is no proof that Bell saw it, but it's one heck of a coincidence.
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
So in truth, Bell can only be credited with improving the telephone and being the first to PATENT the telephone (and maybe with being a fast runner).
Since Bell and his dynasty (not Reis, not Bourseul) were the financial beneficiaries of the patent, it is immediately obvious that the benefits of patents are accrued to the patent holder, not necessarily the inventor.
Nice of Steve Gillmor to give up an issue of his column for the mail-in letter
Yep, really nice of him - a day off for Steve and he still gets the pay check. Of course, there's always the risk that they'll hire the guy who wrote the letter and show Steve the door...
Having said that, I think that the article was pretty much on the money. It's unfortunate that it's a concept about which Joe and Janet Sixpack don't have time to give a rat's bum - to them, it (the patent/copyright madness) is an indirect and/or societal cost at best and they're too busy trying keep up with the direct ones.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to confirm my subjective assessment that Google is pretty quick on the updates. I remember reading years ago that Altavista had decreased it's frequency of updates to every 3-4 months or so, while increasing advertising (less for more -you gotta love those MBA's - I hope there's a special place in hell for them). On the web, that game plan has to be about the fastest possible route to obscurity.
Is Solaris already compliant with all the other bits?
Jeez, I'd completely forgotten them. 5 years ago, they would have been my number 3 choice, after trying Altavista and Yahoo or maybe Lycos (yes kids, Yahoo was once a real search engine). I just checked and they're still there - I got misty-eyed for a moment since it brought back memories of a less commercial (by at least 2 orders of magnitude), more information and technology oriented, FLASH-FREE web. Once the advertising leeches found out about the web they started making it more like television - more and more squeal, less and less pig.
I certainly do, it was 5-6 years ago (~= 1 web lifetime). Then, as it started to descend into deep suckitude in the search of money rather than results, along came Google. I also remember when people used to use Yahoo and Lycos and a few others as search engines. IMO, Google is currently and still king of the hill, especially since it became less anal about including common words (the, at, by, etc. - hey when I do a literal search, I mean literal, not liberal, damn it). Alltheweb is getting pretty good though, and IMO it does a better job on finding foreign pages and has better advanced search capabilities than Google.
It's war, I say, war damn it! What makes these consumer slimes think that they can have what they want. Consumers exist for the sole purpose of feeding corporate bottom lines an padding my goddamn wallet. If we could do away with dealing with these %$#@ consumers entirely and just collect our money through taxes it would be a better world. Hey-wait a minute ... what are we paying those congressmen for? Get senator Payme Butgoode on the phone - it's time for some new legislation!
If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. Something they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.
mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)
IUMA
Besonic
mp3.de
Soundclick
Garageband
France mp3
Vitaminic (free + pay)
Washington Post (yup)
Online Rock
Peoplesound
mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)
Emusic (pay)
Artistlaunch
Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.
"Buy the CD... Twenty-five dollars is cheap... Go ahead... You know you want to... Uh huh... Buy two copies - you need a legal backup... Come on honey... Hilary needs a new Cadillac... Only thieves copy music... Copy music and go to jail... Turn in your neighbors who copy music... Oh yeah, baby..."
Tin soldiers and Fed's are comin'
No longer can they download
Their modems have stopped a hummin'
Dead cable in O-hi-o
So, unfortunately, in today's screwed-up world, maybe the lesson that Sun needs to learn from this is to play outside the rules and fight like hell when caught. To the victor of that game go the spoils.
Sorry for the AC post above. Opera ate my cookies a few hours ago and I have to use a different browser (which I forgot to do for this post) until I get time to find my Slashdot password.
You must be psychic. I just spent several hours with Audacity doing that very thing. I was trying to profile the results of several encoders at different bit rates against a baseline ripped wav (I wish that Audacity would let you display several spectral analysis displays at once). You're absolutely right that at 128 kbps, there is a sharp rolloff at 15-16 kHz. Once you get to 256 kbps, though, its up around 20 kHz - outside of most peoples' hearing range. Even at 256 kbps, you still get the losses from the spatial (spectral?) redundancy reduction, so there is still a slight perceivable loss of quality if you do an A/B. But, for most of my listening, 256 kbps mp3 encoding (using a GOOD encoder) is just fine and even 128 kbps VBR (using a GOOD encoder) is quite acceptable. A lot of bad sounding mp3's that I've encountered are the result of poor encoders, poor source material, bad EQ'ing, clipping, etc.
It looks like MS has the full DRM module ready.
"There will be some small loss of space on the disc itself as a result", said congressman Payme Goode, "but the disc will still have abundant free space, a good 1.44 Meg, available for the end-user's data".
Any purchaser of the disc will require a license. In order to apply for the license, the applicant must first submit to a thorough background check and will be profiled and fingerprinted by the authorities. Once granted a license to use this dangerous technology, the licensee will be required to carry the license at all times or face a penalty of 50 years in prison with no parole.
"We think that this is a very fair and equitable act", Hilary Rosen was quoted as saying, "It nicely balances the rights of the individual user against the recording and motion picture industries' rights to ensure that all digital technology is hobbled to the point of being useless".
Let me see now, the 3 of the 4 remaining major hard drive manufacturers (IBM being the other) all announce that their warranty periods will be reduced to THE SAME 1 YEAR, EFFECTIVE THE SAME DATE. There's nothing suspicious about that, is there?
Conference call :
Chuck: "Profits are down. How do we save money? Jack, any suggestions?"
Jack: "Well Chuck, we could all reduce our warranty periods. Viola - more bucks for us. What do you think Bill?"
Bill: "I'm in, I'm in. More money - yeah! Besides, after we finish buying the other two of you, we won't have to harmonize that policy!"
Jack: "OK, what else can we do to get the profits up? We need to have a reason to all start raising prices now. They're too low per meg and until Gatesy gets that Palladium thing out, or the RIAA gets its head out of its butt, people are gonna start asking why they need bigger drives. Look what's happening over at Intel - they've had to put millions into seeding compute intensive applications so they can sell the high-end processors that really make the money."
Chuck: "Hey... do you think we could create a world-wide shortage of, I don't know..."
Bill: "Iron oxide?"
Chuck: "Bill, you're a freaking genius!"
This Just In: Dropped My Shoe - It Fell to Floor - Gravity Still Works! Update at Eleven.
10. Hilary Rosen gets job as waitress in donut shop. In Kabul. Naw, the Afghans have suffered far too much already.
10. Hilary Rosen gets job at the DMV. Ooops, power trip.
10. Hilary Rosen gets job as a roadie for Metallica. That's the ticket. They deserve each other.
This one was more likely "Seasonal Defective Disorder".
1. Webcaster rates are unrealistic.
2. Webcasters play public domain (non RIAA) content from musicians that release into public domain.
3. Free music gets exposure to public via webcasting.
4. Free music artists gain exposure and subsequent market stature.
But then we diverge. My fantasy is as follows:
5. RIAA continues to have their collective heads up their collective butts, continues to try to dictate the rules to consumers and buys more legislation from their paid political employees.
6. RIAA continues to raise prices of CD's because, gosh darn it, they deserve it.
7. 5&6 finally cross the line that pisses Joe and Janet sixpack off.
8. Joe and Janet start to listen to non-RIAA cartel independent artists in speakeasy's that pipe in underground webcasts and play independent music. Joe and Janet suddenly realize that the musical rainbow has more colors than white and ecru. They like it and ask for more.
9. The RIAA cartel's profits fall through the floor. Shareholders sell, sell, sell. RIAA cartel member companies go into bankruptcy. The musicians the were indentured servants to the cartel are freed and join the new movement.
10. Hilary Rosen gets job as waitress in donut shop.
11. The world is a better place.
I see it, but I don't believe it. Brain says "shorter", hands type "longer". My bad.
On the comments to the DMCA issue: people of the United States, please take the opportunity to provide constructive inputs that will help to effect positive change a DEEPLY flawed piece of legislation that currently serves the interests of powerful corporations at the expense of the little guy. You have a voice - those of us outside your borders are affected by the DMCA but have no effective voice.
The Court has held that of all the "authors" and "writings" that might be granted copyright, only those that are "original" are allowed copyright; and it has held that of all the inventions or writings that can get patent or copyright protection, only works that are not in the public domain can get the benefit of the copyright and patent clause protection.
OK. It's a technicality and I'm just teasing. But in all seriousness, I remember the days when developers could spend the bulk of their time developing. The overhead introduced (as an ancillary effect of copyright-omania / patent-omania) to avoid inadvertently stepping on patents/copyrights is an increasingly negative pull on innovation. I often wonder if an essential member of any development team of the future will be a lawyer.
doesn't anybody code any more?
The telephone was invented by Philipp Reis, a German science teacher in the early 1860's (he began work in 1860 at the age of 26). And he was inspired by an 1854 paper by a Frenchman named Bourseul. Reis's phones (which worked but were somewhat unreliable) were demonstrated in Europe and in Scotland in 1863, while Bell was there visiting his father. There is no proof that Bell saw it, but it's one heck of a coincidence.
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
So in truth, Bell can only be credited with improving the telephone and being the first to PATENT the telephone (and maybe with being a fast runner).
Since Bell and his dynasty (not Reis, not Bourseul) were the financial beneficiaries of the patent, it is immediately obvious that the benefits of patents are accrued to the patent holder, not necessarily the inventor.
Yep, really nice of him - a day off for Steve and he still gets the pay check. Of course, there's always the risk that they'll hire the guy who wrote the letter and show Steve the door ...
Having said that, I think that the article was pretty much on the money. It's unfortunate that it's a concept about which Joe and Janet Sixpack don't have time to give a rat's bum - to them, it (the patent/copyright madness) is an indirect and/or societal cost at best and they're too busy trying keep up with the direct ones.