An ATSC carrier uses the 6 MHz band, but better. At least around here, the minor networks (CW, MyNetworkTV, and Telefutura) have partnered up as digital sub-channels of a major station. That's several stations that aren't going to be building their own transmitters on their own 6 MHz NTSC allocation.
The fact that adjacent channels are no problem is, of course, a huge step.
What annoys me is how hard it is to find a simple, cheap set-top box. I'm absolutely fine with the 25" tube TV I got from Goodwill four years ago. I found one seller on eBay with the obvious stock of a bankrupt firm (search for "Hisense tuner"). ATSC is great. I like PBS, and I like it a whole lot more with 3 alternate (subchannel) PBSes. But, I can't go to Best Buy or Wal-Mart and buy a $100 tuner off the shelf.
I get Quicktime and WMV files regularly. I had a cousin get married out of country, their own wedding->camcorder->iMovie->Quicktime. They ought to have legal right to share their content.
I host websites for several folk/bluegrass bands. They put up MP3s or RealAudio clips of their own compositions, performed by themselves. Don't they have a legal right to share their content?
Yes, many people are tied to their place of work. More than anything else, it is a symptom of the absolutely nuts health care system the US has.
If you're young and have no dependents, you can afford to work for Kroger, maybe buying crappy catastrophic insurance, maybe keeping your fingers crossed.
But, if you have (or have a child with) medical issues and were lucky enough to have insurance beforehand, in the US, you are a slave. New employers supposedly can't ask. But they sure do find out. You probably won't get insured again. If you can, the new rates will be absolutely unaffordable. The situation is, according to friends, distinctly different in Canada. It may severely crunch your family's budget for a while if you have to live on grocery wages, but you won't go destitute for health care, possibly forever, if you quit a bad job.
And, a union is bad for motivated senior employees? I'm not sure it's worse than the Circuit City (or Sprint, or Sony, or hundreds of others) practice of firing long-term good employees. As they get older, employees tend to have family commitments, ask for time off and regular scheduled hours, and eventually even get sick. Better to churn them and hire fresh replacements or offshore.
I always found that sysadmins (myself included) tend to acquire keys whenever possible. I don't care if it's just a broom closet, I want to know what's in there. There's a mix of paranoia, extreme curiosity, and helpfulness that come with the profile.
Like a couple other people suggested, I have a personal installation of MediaWiki. Actually, several installs. One for my own personal info. One for thesis research (shared with a couple fellow students and my advisors), one for my sideline web-development biz, one with work documentation. Lots of uploaded files, too. When I get a new gadget, the manual (PDF hopefully, but scanned if I have to), a scan of the receipt, and my setup notes all go to a page on it. Random piece of software I hadn't heard about before, but don't have time to play with? Gets it's own page, and then a link from a "software I should check out someday" page.
One critical thing is to be able to throw in just about any little bit of text information with no setup, from anywhere with a net connection. Unlike more rigid information management systems, it usually doesn't matter that there isn't a template for this kind of information. The other thing is searchability. The MediaWiki/MySQL text search isn't great, but it's enough.
Now, there's lots of cruft in my wiki. My old airline flight schedules. Meeting notes. But, unlike a raft of little paper notes, a lot of unnecessary wiki pages are pretty harmless if you've got lots of server hard drive space.
God, I'd be buggered to name a *favourite genre*. I'm curious if they got a list to pick from. I know I've had that problem when asked similar questions. Probably easier to say "none of these" than try to get into:
Singer-songrwriter Folk Bluegrass esp. New Acoustic/Newgrass Celtic (stronger toward Scottish or Newfoundland) Blues, Polka, Jazz, Klezmer, old Country, slightly harder New Age (Jean Luc Ponty or Ralph Towner), Scandinavian (NorthSide records artists), Jam Bands, etc etc.
You know, the stuff that is categorized as "Other" and not even counted in such surveys. Mostly I'm sad that the "gifted" kids have such limited horizons that 80% answered "eh... rock, I guess".
Another important contribution of Wikipedia has been to beat down MediaWiki as a pretty powerful program for educational uses, as well as inspire other wiki software.
Savvy teachers in wired schools are finding a lot of success with smaller classroom wikis. The students aren't generating "new" content, really, but are building a repository of what they've learned together. I've seen good examples of building history timelines or evolutionary hierarchies, or foreign-language dictionaries (each student adds some examples of a word in a sentence).
As I said, for my uses. My main use is finding open WiFi for 30 seconds with my Zaurus PDA (far too underpowered to crack keys effectively) in random other towns just to fetch e-mail and go.
And, I'm too polite to just go and use someone's slightly guarded WiFi. I assume (though I know otherwise) if it's open, they're like me and welcome a little reciprocal friendliness (my kindness to strangers is throttled to 50kbps... get off my lawn kids). Just like I open doors as a matter of habit, but put a dollar-store lock on it and I won't.
I wonder. Around here, (formerly) SBC DSL is pretty common (2/3 of broadband is local CATV, 1/3 SBC). A goodly percentage of the SBC users have a 2WIRE wireless router on the air. Moderately unfortunately (for my uses, good for SBC), the 2WIRE system takes users through a wizard that pretty much enforces WEP.
I'm wondering, could SBC/ATT offer such a service in just about no time, using their installed base? Particularly when I use an external antenna, I pick up 2WIRE boxes everywhere. While I doubt they're as advanced as the Linksys routers, it seems like most of the authentication would be at the headend. Would be very valuable for mobile users, unlike the current SBC/ATT 'Freedomlink' Wifi, which is pretty costly (at least if you use their 'roaming partners') for usability in about 5 obscure spots in a big town.
I really learned Dvorak at the same time I got my first Kinesis Ergonomic (the fingerbowl) keyboard 5 years ago. I had played around with Dvorak on and off since the Apple IIc (which had a Dvorak switch!) days.
Now, I type effectively on Dvorak on the Kinesis. I still type pretty good QWERTY on a normal keyboard (and a common 'split' keyboard is normal after the Kinesis). I can get my fingers to do Dvorak on a flat keyboard with some effort (sometimes I put the laptop in Dvorak, sometimes not). But, I can not, for the life of me, type QWERTY on a Kinesis keyboard. Mind you, I like Dvorak enough that I haven't tried for days on end, but my fingers are programmed for the Dvorak when they feel the Kinesis.
I doubt that I'll ever lose QWERTY skill, no matter how long I use the Dvorak. After all, I could type at a reasonable clip as a four-year-old. (When I occasionally deal with children, I have to remember that my hyperlexic reading-at-two was the abnormal situation).
Harldy the only ex-Great Bender here, Justin! (Tom, the viola section).
I use both on different keyboards.
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
As a kid, I set up my Apple IIc in Dvorak (there was a little switch), but it didn't stick. I again took up Dvorak six years ago, when I bought my first Kinesis Ergonomic (Classic) keyboard.
The interesting thing is, I can type very well Dvorak on the Kinesis... I can type very well QWERTY on a flat keyboard (and a 'natural' keyboard is a flat one compared to a Kinesis)... I can type Dvorak on a flat keyboard with some mental struggle (I sometimes put my laptop in Dvorak to keep others off)... but I can't type QWERTY on a Kinesis at all!
Ethernet socket driver for a simple ethernet card.
Trupmet winsock or similar to bind to the 0x60 DOS socket.
$20 router connected to your DSL to do the PPPoE login, as well as a bit of firewalling to any computers internally.
I would never suggest using a PPPoE utility on the computer when routers are so cheap and useful. Most DSL modems even have the router logic built-in nowadays.
It seems like everything to do with the war on terror is focused on 'follow the money'. Why? I mean, I understand that Bush, Cheney and everyone they've ever personally known have been cash fetishists. Therefore they assume everyone that they oppose is after their cash. Is that what it's about?
Sep. 11 budget?
19 airline tickets, bought ahead online. Motel room, rental cars. (maybe) an efficiency apartment in Florida to sit around a table and plot evil for two months. Boxcutters.
Total cost? $8000? I could slap that on my MasterCard.
Terrorism is not at all $$ expensive. That's sort of the point. So what do they think they'll find by all this new power?
Common criminals, mostly drug runners, whose assets they can seize.
The first portable CD player I had was a branded "Sony Discman" circa 1995. It was a square about the size of a minidisc player, the spindle was in the corner, and 3/4ths of the disc was outside the unit at any time.
Tiger Direct, fine store otherwise, is a complete scam on rebates, from my findings.
Every rebate offer wants "a copy of the reciept".
Included in the shipments from Tiger, you get a "Packing Slip".
On 5 different occasions, out of 5 tries, my rebates have come back as a postcard, "sorry, you didn't send a reciept.
I called Tiger. They said my e-mail confirmation letter was my reciept. Print that, and go.
Tried that 3 times. Included both the e-mail "reciept" and the "packing slip".
3 failures.
God, I'm a slow learner.
It's a big-assed scam. Tiger is otherwise a fine company to work with, just realize that the price you pay is the price you pay, and that rebates are a big fat lie.
I've ordered a couple custom items from the Folkways back-catalog. (I am a folk music fan and radio DJ).
Riddle me this: Most of the old Folkways recordings are approx $20 for a CD-R and $10 for a cassette. Why?
I don't expect they have some surplus of pre-recorded tapes around. I assume they're doing those Just-In-Time as well.
CD-R media is *much* cheaper than even basic grade cassette, particularly at the bulk they must use.
I *assume* much of this is in a digital vault and burned/taped on demand. By my reckoning, there is less labour involved in burning a CD than in setting up a tape to dub. If nothing else, you don't have to flip the CD halfway through.
If the vaults were reasonably set up, the duplicator could burn the CD-Rs at 8x or more. They *might* be using high-speed tape duplicators, but more likely it's at real-time.
So, why the difference? The old capitalism of "that's what they'll pay"? That's not the point, or the attitude I've ever gotten from the Folkways people. Cultural inherency? Perhaps. It's blessed dumb, that's all I know.
They may not be the cheapest in the world, but I've been very happy with my 1U coloed at rackmy.com. $45 a month per U of rackspace, $4 per GB transferred, monthly bill. My OpenBSD box there has perfect uptime and consistently fast net access (they're on the Inflow floor in St. Louis). Everywhere I go, I see how the route from X Inflow is routed. They seem to have a LOT of redundancy. That's *good*.
One little box, 1 IP address, 150 domains, and I never have to think about it. Ever.
Plus, whenever I go to St. Louis, there's free food in the fridge for me. That's customer service!
It's in me to be this kind of packrat. It runs in the family. But I've fought it like no other. Life ruled by your stuff is no way to live. You have to think about it, store it, fix it, trip over it... etc. MINIMIZE!
Computing is pretty central to my life, so it's reasonable that it's front and center in my space. BUT, it doesn't overwhelm everything else in life, so it doesn't overwhelm my space.
I had the 10 monitors, 20 cases, 286 in the corner life. Eventually, I said "WHY??". Couldn't quite throw it out, but I stuck the approx 100 kilos of crap in the basement of my office building with a note saying "FREE. TAKE.".
Down to one desktop PC (dual-boots) and a BSD nat and filestorehouse server. That's it. Not keeping and buying crud means I can have good components. I don't need 5 keyboards "just in case". I have a Kinesis, and it's bulletproof. I don't have a parallel printer. Don't think I'll ever have another. Well then, I don't need to keep parallel cables, do I?
I think a lot of people, geeks and non geeks, could learn a lot from backpacking or bicycle touring. 25 pounds of stuff is usually enough. Really. Buy less junk, live smaller, and be happier, guaranteed!
In the pre-computer days, some folks noticed that a neophyte (basic idea, needs dictionary)translation into Esperanto was much more comprehended at the other end than a neophyte translation to the destination language or a neophyte translation by the recipient.
The reasoning was that the process of translating into a more formal mechanical language clarified and codified ideas.
Once again, it's the dividing line between human and machine that's the problem. Millions of people train themselves to C or the shells. Fewer to assembly. But it takes some wetware work to push the human/computer boundary closer to the computer.
Like most programming has a learning curve, usually less than ASM, leaving language translation completely to the machine will be fraught and ambiguous. Good translation requires some push from normal speech, but maybe not so far as mastering every other possible language...
He may not be pushing it at all. The club has, in all certainty, pays ASCAP/BMI performance royalties. Through that, the public performance is covered, no matter the medium used.
This is what I've been told is true for those of us doing radio. We burn CDs all the time to keep at the station. And, I play loads off my MP3s. When a musician is coming to town, and I don't have the CD to plug the show, I even go on P2P. Since we pay the artist through BMI for the performance, it's legal.
However, I host/listen to folk and bluegrass, so maybe the RIAA will never care...
One thing that may (hopefully) come of this is further growth in the Video Music DVD. I, for one, won't buy movies b/c I *never* want to watch a movie twice. Certainly not every day. But, I've got 20 or so Music DVDs (Bluegrass, Jazz, etc). These have the replayability of a CD but are much more engrossing. I have yet to sell one back to a used trader... I like them so well. I'm hoping to see more and more inventive DVDs in this field.
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An ATSC carrier uses the 6 MHz band, but better. At least around here, the minor networks (CW, MyNetworkTV, and Telefutura) have partnered up as digital sub-channels of a major station. That's several stations that aren't going to be building their own transmitters on their own 6 MHz NTSC allocation.
The fact that adjacent channels are no problem is, of course, a huge step.
What annoys me is how hard it is to find a simple, cheap set-top box. I'm absolutely fine with the 25" tube TV I got from Goodwill four years ago. I found one seller on eBay with the obvious stock of a bankrupt firm (search for "Hisense tuner"). ATSC is great. I like PBS, and I like it a whole lot more with 3 alternate (subchannel) PBSes. But, I can't go to Best Buy or Wal-Mart and buy a $100 tuner off the shelf.
Bull.
I get Quicktime and WMV files regularly. I had a cousin get married out of country, their own wedding->camcorder->iMovie->Quicktime. They ought to have legal right to share their content.
I host websites for several folk/bluegrass bands. They put up MP3s or RealAudio clips of their own compositions, performed by themselves. Don't they have a legal right to share their content?
Another 5000 religious satellite-based repeater stations and just about zero actual local stations. Just like the last time.
Yes, many people are tied to their place of work. More than anything else, it is a symptom of the absolutely nuts health care system the US has.
If you're young and have no dependents, you can afford to work for Kroger, maybe buying crappy catastrophic insurance, maybe keeping your fingers crossed.
But, if you have (or have a child with) medical issues and were lucky enough to have insurance beforehand, in the US, you are a slave. New employers supposedly can't ask. But they sure do find out. You probably won't get insured again. If you can, the new rates will be absolutely unaffordable. The situation is, according to friends, distinctly different in Canada. It may severely crunch your family's budget for a while if you have to live on grocery wages, but you won't go destitute for health care, possibly forever, if you quit a bad job.
And, a union is bad for motivated senior employees? I'm not sure it's worse than the Circuit City (or Sprint, or Sony, or hundreds of others) practice of firing long-term good employees. As they get older, employees tend to have family commitments, ask for time off and regular scheduled hours, and eventually even get sick. Better to churn them and hire fresh replacements or offshore.
I always found that sysadmins (myself included) tend to acquire keys whenever possible. I don't care if it's just a broom closet, I want to know what's in there. There's a mix of paranoia, extreme curiosity, and helpfulness that come with the profile.
Like a couple other people suggested, I have a personal installation of MediaWiki. Actually, several installs. One for my own personal info. One for thesis research (shared with a couple fellow students and my advisors), one for my sideline web-development biz, one with work documentation. Lots of uploaded files, too. When I get a new gadget, the manual (PDF hopefully, but scanned if I have to), a scan of the receipt, and my setup notes all go to a page on it. Random piece of software I hadn't heard about before, but don't have time to play with? Gets it's own page, and then a link from a "software I should check out someday" page.
One critical thing is to be able to throw in just about any little bit of text information with no setup, from anywhere with a net connection. Unlike more rigid information management systems, it usually doesn't matter that there isn't a template for this kind of information. The other thing is searchability. The MediaWiki/MySQL text search isn't great, but it's enough.
Now, there's lots of cruft in my wiki. My old airline flight schedules. Meeting notes. But, unlike a raft of little paper notes, a lot of unnecessary wiki pages are pretty harmless if you've got lots of server hard drive space.
God, I'd be buggered to name a *favourite genre*. I'm curious if they got a list to pick from. I know I've had that problem when asked similar questions. Probably easier to say "none of these" than try to get into:
Singer-songrwriter Folk
Bluegrass esp. New Acoustic/Newgrass
Celtic (stronger toward Scottish or Newfoundland)
Blues, Polka, Jazz, Klezmer, old Country, slightly harder New Age (Jean Luc Ponty or Ralph Towner), Scandinavian (NorthSide records artists), Jam Bands, etc etc.
You know, the stuff that is categorized as "Other" and not even counted in such surveys. Mostly I'm sad that the "gifted" kids have such limited horizons that 80% answered "eh... rock, I guess".
Another important contribution of Wikipedia has been to beat down MediaWiki as a pretty powerful program for educational uses, as well as inspire other wiki software.
Savvy teachers in wired schools are finding a lot of success with smaller classroom wikis. The students aren't generating "new" content, really, but are building a repository of what they've learned together. I've seen good examples of building history timelines or evolutionary hierarchies, or foreign-language dictionaries (each student adds some examples of a word in a sentence).
As I said, for my uses. My main use is finding open WiFi for 30 seconds with my Zaurus PDA (far too underpowered to crack keys effectively) in random other towns just to fetch e-mail and go.
And, I'm too polite to just go and use someone's slightly guarded WiFi. I assume (though I know otherwise) if it's open, they're like me and welcome a little reciprocal friendliness (my kindness to strangers is throttled to 50kbps... get off my lawn kids). Just like I open doors as a matter of habit, but put a dollar-store lock on it and I won't.
I wonder. Around here, (formerly) SBC DSL is pretty common (2/3 of broadband is local CATV, 1/3 SBC). A goodly percentage of the SBC users have a 2WIRE wireless router on the air. Moderately unfortunately (for my uses, good for SBC), the 2WIRE system takes users through a wizard that pretty much enforces WEP.
I'm wondering, could SBC/ATT offer such a service in just about no time, using their installed base? Particularly when I use an external antenna, I pick up 2WIRE boxes everywhere. While I doubt they're as advanced as the Linksys routers, it seems like most of the authentication would be at the headend. Would be very valuable for mobile users, unlike the current SBC/ATT 'Freedomlink' Wifi, which is pretty costly (at least if you use their 'roaming partners') for usability in about 5 obscure spots in a big town.
I really learned Dvorak at the same time I got my first Kinesis Ergonomic (the fingerbowl) keyboard 5 years ago. I had played around with Dvorak on and off since the Apple IIc (which had a Dvorak switch!) days.
Now, I type effectively on Dvorak on the Kinesis. I still type pretty good QWERTY on a normal keyboard (and a common 'split' keyboard is normal after the Kinesis). I can get my fingers to do Dvorak on a flat keyboard with some effort (sometimes I put the laptop in Dvorak, sometimes not). But, I can not, for the life of me, type QWERTY on a Kinesis keyboard. Mind you, I like Dvorak enough that I haven't tried for days on end, but my fingers are programmed for the Dvorak when they feel the Kinesis.
I doubt that I'll ever lose QWERTY skill, no matter how long I use the Dvorak. After all, I could type at a reasonable clip as a four-year-old. (When I occasionally deal with children, I have to remember that my hyperlexic reading-at-two was the abnormal situation).
Harldy the only ex-Great Bender here, Justin! (Tom, the viola section).
As a kid, I set up my Apple IIc in Dvorak (there was a little switch), but it didn't stick. I again took up Dvorak six years ago, when I bought my first Kinesis Ergonomic (Classic) keyboard.
The interesting thing is, I can type very well Dvorak on the Kinesis... I can type very well QWERTY on a flat keyboard (and a 'natural' keyboard is a flat one compared to a Kinesis)... I can type Dvorak on a flat keyboard with some mental struggle (I sometimes put my laptop in Dvorak to keep others off)... but I can't type QWERTY on a Kinesis at all!
Ethernet socket driver for a simple ethernet card.
Trupmet winsock or similar to bind to the 0x60 DOS socket.
$20 router connected to your DSL to do the PPPoE login, as well as a bit of firewalling to any computers internally.
I would never suggest using a PPPoE utility on the computer when routers are so cheap and useful. Most DSL modems even have the router logic built-in nowadays.
It seems like everything to do with the war on terror is focused on 'follow the money'. Why? I mean, I understand that Bush, Cheney and everyone they've ever personally known have been cash fetishists. Therefore they assume everyone that they oppose is after their cash. Is that what it's about?
Sep. 11 budget?
19 airline tickets, bought ahead online.
Motel room, rental cars.
(maybe) an efficiency apartment in Florida to sit around a table and plot evil for two months.
Boxcutters.
Total cost? $8000? I could slap that on my MasterCard.
Terrorism is not at all $$ expensive. That's sort of the point. So what do they think they'll find by all this new power?
Common criminals, mostly drug runners, whose assets they can seize.
All I know is that there's ads in pissers all over NYC.
'Pisser' is NYC slang for bus shelter, no?
The first portable CD player I had was a branded "Sony Discman" circa 1995. It was a square about the size of a minidisc player, the spindle was in the corner, and 3/4ths of the disc was outside the unit at any time.
Nothing new under the sun!
HINT to the wise:
Tiger Direct, fine store otherwise, is a complete scam on rebates, from my findings.
Every rebate offer wants "a copy of the reciept".
Included in the shipments from Tiger, you get a "Packing Slip".
On 5 different occasions, out of 5 tries, my rebates have come back as a postcard, "sorry, you didn't send a reciept.
I called Tiger. They said my e-mail confirmation letter was my reciept. Print that, and go.
Tried that 3 times. Included both the e-mail "reciept" and the "packing slip".
3 failures.
God, I'm a slow learner.
It's a big-assed scam. Tiger is otherwise a fine company to work with, just realize that the price you pay is the price you pay, and that rebates are a big fat lie.
I've ordered a couple custom items from the Folkways back-catalog. (I am a folk music fan and radio DJ).
Riddle me this: Most of the old Folkways recordings are approx $20 for a CD-R and $10 for a cassette. Why?
I don't expect they have some surplus of pre-recorded tapes around. I assume they're doing those Just-In-Time as well.
CD-R media is *much* cheaper than even basic grade cassette, particularly at the bulk they must use.
I *assume* much of this is in a digital vault and burned/taped on demand. By my reckoning, there is less labour involved in burning a CD than in setting up a tape to dub. If nothing else, you don't have to flip the CD halfway through.
If the vaults were reasonably set up, the duplicator could burn the CD-Rs at 8x or more. They *might* be using high-speed tape duplicators, but more likely it's at real-time.
So, why the difference? The old capitalism of "that's what they'll pay"? That's not the point, or the attitude I've ever gotten from the Folkways people. Cultural inherency? Perhaps. It's blessed dumb, that's all I know.
They may not be the cheapest in the world, but I've been very happy with my 1U coloed at rackmy.com. $45 a month per U of rackspace, $4 per GB transferred, monthly bill. My OpenBSD box there has perfect uptime and consistently fast net access (they're on the Inflow floor in St. Louis). Everywhere I go, I see how the route from X Inflow is routed. They seem to have a LOT of redundancy. That's *good*.
One little box, 1 IP address, 150 domains, and I never have to think about it. Ever.
Plus, whenever I go to St. Louis, there's free food in the fridge for me. That's customer service!
It's in me to be this kind of packrat. It runs in the family. But I've fought it like no other. Life ruled by your stuff is no way to live. You have to think about it, store it, fix it, trip over it... etc. MINIMIZE!
Computing is pretty central to my life, so it's reasonable that it's front and center in my space. BUT, it doesn't overwhelm everything else in life, so it doesn't overwhelm my space.
I had the 10 monitors, 20 cases, 286 in the corner life. Eventually, I said "WHY??". Couldn't quite throw it out, but I stuck the approx 100 kilos of crap in the basement of my office building with a note saying "FREE. TAKE.".
Down to one desktop PC (dual-boots) and a BSD nat and filestorehouse server. That's it. Not keeping and buying crud means I can have good components. I don't need 5 keyboards "just in case". I have a Kinesis, and it's bulletproof. I don't have a parallel printer. Don't think I'll ever have another. Well then, I don't need to keep parallel cables, do I?
I think a lot of people, geeks and non geeks, could learn a lot from backpacking or bicycle touring. 25 pounds of stuff is usually enough. Really. Buy less junk, live smaller, and be happier, guaranteed!
In the pre-computer days, some folks noticed that a neophyte (basic idea, needs dictionary)translation into Esperanto was much more comprehended at the other end than a neophyte translation to the destination language or a neophyte translation by the recipient.
The reasoning was that the process of translating into a more formal mechanical language clarified and codified ideas.
Once again, it's the dividing line between human and machine that's the problem. Millions of people train themselves to C or the shells. Fewer to assembly. But it takes some wetware work to push the human/computer boundary closer to the computer.
Like most programming has a learning curve, usually less than ASM, leaving language translation completely to the machine will be fraught and ambiguous. Good translation requires some push from normal speech, but maybe not so far as mastering every other possible language...
He may not be pushing it at all. The club has, in all certainty, pays ASCAP/BMI performance royalties. Through that, the public performance is covered, no matter the medium used.
This is what I've been told is true for those of us doing radio. We burn CDs all the time to keep at the station. And, I play loads off my MP3s. When a musician is coming to town, and I don't have the CD to plug the show, I even go on P2P. Since we pay the artist through BMI for the performance, it's legal.
However, I host/listen to folk and bluegrass, so maybe the RIAA will never care...
One thing that may (hopefully) come of this is further growth in the Video Music DVD. I, for one, won't buy movies b/c I *never* want to watch a movie twice. Certainly not every day. But, I've got 20 or so Music DVDs (Bluegrass, Jazz, etc). These have the replayability of a CD but are much more engrossing. I have yet to sell one back to a used trader... I like them so well. I'm hoping to see more and more inventive DVDs in this field.
Obviously you don't use the Dvorak layout...