I recently had call to contact ntl when they announced that they were to limit downloads to a gigabyte a day. I am a PhD student, and use my cable modem to backup my research from my university computer to my home linux server once a week. The backup is almost always over a gig in size, so I thought it would be worth phoning ntl to find out where I stood.
The drone I spoke to was certainly unhelpful, and was bordering on insulting. She proceeded to try and explain that the bandwidth capping was in place to reduce piracy, as most copied DVDs were around 800 meg in size, and that no-one would ever need to download more than a gigabyte a day for 'legitimate home or academic' use. I listened patiently, and explained that, with that size cap, pirated DVDs (even at 800 meg) could be moved once a day. How did this stop piracy I asked?
She changed tack, pursuing the 'fair home and academic use' idea that no-one would need that amount of bandwidth for anything unless they were a business. Fair enough I thought, I'm using it for academic use, so it should be no problem.
She then tried to tell me that in fact, I was not excempt. She reasoned that, as I was at University, I would get a degree, and as I was getting a degree, I would get a better job. Therefore, using my cable modem for that purpose constitued commercial use, and I would need to upgrade to their business package!
Whatever, ntl.
Stunned, I asked to speak to a supervisor, who still could not answer any of my questions. The whole affair left me feel extremely angry, and like ntl were doing me a favour for allowing me to pay for their service for my own backup needs!
The word is out!
I'm sure you'll all get this eventually - but here is the full text of today's email announcement. To cut to the chase and cancel your account, the link is:
Over the past several years, EMusic has stood alone in its commitment to providing digital music consumers a service that offers flexibility and portability. We remain the ONLY service offering downloads in the standard MP3 format.
We are also unique in our focus on music from the leading independent labels. Unlike other services, we understand that many music consumers want to go beyond the Billboard charts. We remain firmly committed to continuing to provide avid music fans an alternative to the mainstream.
The digital music industry continues to change rapidly, and EMusic also continues to evolve. The purpose of this letter is to inform you of a number of important changes that will affect EMusic Subscribers.
First, we are pleased to inform you that EMusic.com Inc. is being acquired by Dimensional Associates LLC ("Dimensional"), a private equity group focused on providing innovative online music distribution services. Dimensional shares EMusic's consumer focused philosophy of providing low cost, convenient access to great music. Dimensional plans to continue enhancing the EMusic service with new features and content and you can look forward to hearing more once the acquisition has been completed.
Although our current privacy policy remains in effect, http://www.emusic.com/help/privacy_policy.html, when the acquisition is completed, EMusic's privacy policy will be changing to reflect Dimensional's ownership and your Personal Information (as defined in the privacy policy) will be transferred to Dimensional. Please take a few moments to review this our new policy which will take effect around October 30, 2003.
http://www.emusic.com/help/privacypolicy. html
As always, EMusic is firmly committed to consumer privacy and we believe the new policy continues to reinforce this.
As an avid digital music fan, you are also aware that the music industry continues to suffer under intense financial, legal and technological pressure. As a provider of music downloads, EMusic is subject to a complex system of intellectual property rights and technological challenges that impose high costs and often uncertain risks on the company.
In order to respond to these ongoing challenges and maintain a compelling service for our valued customers, EMusic will be making a number of significant changes in the coming weeks and months. As part of these changes, we will be discontinuing the unlimited service plan and replacing it with a new service offering.
Unless you visit the link below: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi?cmd=step2&st=1 &categoryID=1198 and notify us of your intention to cancel your subscription prior to November 8, 2003, your EMusic subscription will convert into EMusic Basic. Under EMusic Basic, you will be billed $9.99 per month for access to the service with no minimum monthly commitment, but you will be limited to no more than 40 downloads during your monthly billing cycle.
In addition, EMusic is pleased to present a special, limited time offer available exclusively to current subscribers - EMusic Premium. Designed for our most active subscribers, this plan allows you to download up to 300 tracks per month (approximately 25 albums) for a monthly charge of $50.00 - a price of just 16 cents per track - with no minimum monthly commitment.
If you are interested in registering for this subscription plan, you must complete the EMusic XL registration form no later than November 8, 2003.
I know this is a little off topic, but I've been eager to ask the community for a while, so here goes:
Can anyone recommend a good, cheap music tracking or creation package for the Mac for someone who is interested in getting into making music on their Mac.
I guess I'm not really after anything pro, just something I can record guitar tracks on, throw in a couple of drum loops and make a noise with. An OS X version would be the best.
Any ideas?
There sure is: I couldn't for the life of me get the local area network sharing to work in 4.0 on the University network. I just assumed it was being blocked somewhere down the line.
But, when me and a couple of others upgraded, the Rendezvous sharing kicked in and worked first time. Now I can share tunes from all my friends around campus, without fear of being attacked by the RIAA.
Although as I live in the UK, that is probably a little unlikely anyway. : )
Whilst the 'concept' of a client side scripting language is a good one, the way Javascript has been implemented by the larger browsers is shameful. In some cases you can end up writing 5 different functions to do the same thing.
Perhaps some people enjoy the pain staking cross browser tester, but not me.
But who is really to blame? Was it really the Browser War that caused this?
Well, I'm not sure we'll ever see Safari with this particular feature. Found this info from tab guru David Hyatt. According to this, all the other tab implementations discussed here were his idea, and he now works on Safari.
My old BBC Acorn A3000 - one of the first ARM machines back in the early 1990s, still going strong today. With 4 meg of RAM and no hard drive, it still plays some kick ass games, and has some of the best DTP software around.
Not sure these made it over to the States, but they were really popular over here in the UK, especially in schools. Cut my teeth with everything from Basic to assembler on this little beauty. : )
Ahh - got me all nostalgic now...
A DVD player that won't let you watch DVDs the way you want to watch them? How long before we see TVs without 'mute' buttons. Can't you just do this kind of thing now anyway with a decent VCR and a little time?
When will the anti-digital madness end?
Slashdot Mirror
So - does this mean that we would be able to click _through_ windows?
Will be interesting to see how that fits into the rest of Tiger in June.
I recently had call to contact ntl when they announced that they were to limit downloads to a gigabyte a day. I am a PhD student, and use my cable modem to backup my research from my university computer to my home linux server once a week. The backup is almost always over a gig in size, so I thought it would be worth phoning ntl to find out where I stood.
The drone I spoke to was certainly unhelpful, and was bordering on insulting. She proceeded to try and explain that the bandwidth capping was in place to reduce piracy, as most copied DVDs were around 800 meg in size, and that no-one would ever need to download more than a gigabyte a day for 'legitimate home or academic' use. I listened patiently, and explained that, with that size cap, pirated DVDs (even at 800 meg) could be moved once a day. How did this stop piracy I asked?
She changed tack, pursuing the 'fair home and academic use' idea that no-one would need that amount of bandwidth for anything unless they were a business. Fair enough I thought, I'm using it for academic use, so it should be no problem.
She then tried to tell me that in fact, I was not excempt. She reasoned that, as I was at University, I would get a degree, and as I was getting a degree, I would get a better job. Therefore, using my cable modem for that purpose constitued commercial use, and I would need to upgrade to their business package!
Whatever, ntl.
Stunned, I asked to speak to a supervisor, who still could not answer any of my questions. The whole affair left me feel extremely angry, and like ntl were doing me a favour for allowing me to pay for their service for my own backup needs!
Cancel link
I know this is a little off topic, but I've been eager to ask the community for a while, so here goes:
Can anyone recommend a good, cheap music tracking or creation package for the Mac for someone who is interested in getting into making music on their Mac.
I guess I'm not really after anything pro, just something I can record guitar tracks on, throw in a couple of drum loops and make a noise with. An OS X version would be the best. Any ideas?
There sure is: I couldn't for the life of me get the local area network sharing to work in 4.0 on the University network. I just assumed it was being blocked somewhere down the line.
But, when me and a couple of others upgraded, the Rendezvous sharing kicked in and worked first time. Now I can share tunes from all my friends around campus, without fear of being attacked by the RIAA.
Although as I live in the UK, that is probably a little unlikely anyway. : )
You can take a look at what the page looked like here!
Personally, just couldn't get there fast enough. A friend of mine 'bought' four - seems unlikely that they'll honour the orders though!
Woah. Has anyone actually bothered to read all this?
Is Javascript really so good?
Whilst the 'concept' of a client side scripting language is a good one, the way Javascript has been implemented by the larger browsers is shameful. In some cases you can end up writing 5 different functions to do the same thing.
Perhaps some people enjoy the pain staking cross browser tester, but not me.
But who is really to blame? Was it really the Browser War that caused this?
Well, I'm not sure we'll ever see Safari with this particular feature. Found this info from tab guru David Hyatt. According to this, all the other tab implementations discussed here were his idea, and he now works on Safari.
My old BBC Acorn A3000 - one of the first ARM machines back in the early 1990s, still going strong today. With 4 meg of RAM and no hard drive, it still plays some kick ass games, and has some of the best DTP software around. Not sure these made it over to the States, but they were really popular over here in the UK, especially in schools. Cut my teeth with everything from Basic to assembler on this little beauty. : ) Ahh - got me all nostalgic now...
A DVD player that won't let you watch DVDs the way you want to watch them? How long before we see TVs without 'mute' buttons. Can't you just do this kind of thing now anyway with a decent VCR and a little time? When will the anti-digital madness end?