No computer science education should be considered complete without reading Alonzo Church's paper from the 30s, "The Lambda Calculus". (BTW, Church was Turing's thesis advisor.)
I think that Tivo is missing an important benefit of the open-source development model. If they were to make their own source available to developers, they could benefit from substantial improvements to their system.
For instance, I would love to see Tivo's program guide tied in with a rating system like IMDB, or for someone to improve their "Smart Recording" system to capture more than just idiotic sit-coms (e.g. how hard can it be to notice that I only watch IFC and Sundance?).
It seems to me that Tivo could open up their code without letting the cat out of the bag w.r.t. their service model. (I mean, the Tivo hackers already know how to enable the lifetime subscription mechanism -- but how many everyday users are able to figure out how to install it?) Perhaps they could develop an emulator for external people to prototype improvements.
I too got scammed on eBay back in 2001 -- for an iBook that I was buying for my parents. I was out $1250, and PayPal claimed that there was nothing they could do about it. I wasn't eligible for their maximum $200 compensation.
But... I got a letter from the FBI just last week saying that they caught the guy, and that he had pleaded guilty. (This is only the second response I've gotten from them, the first being an email a few months after it happened. They're amazingly uncommunicative.) Now I've got a "victim's impact statement" to fill out. We'll see what happens.
This idea just doesn't scale. Imagine when the next Lil' Kim album goes to number 1 and 100,000 fans want to listen to it all on the same day. Is the Snapster library going to have 100,000 copies? No -- it would be like Blockbuster when the 5 (or 500) copies are all loaned out.
Even if the service could statistically deal with demand waves for content (rather like the phone system only has enough capacity to cover the number of people that usually want to call at the same time), I don't think the system would scale because of the timely nature of the content. Music that's hot today, is just a pile of inventory tomorrow. Imagine all the left-over copies after the demand is gone. Do they get sold off on the clearance table at Walmart?
So it has to be virtual copies, and someday soon the RIAA will come to realize this. To make it manageable, content will probably have to be purchased in bulk. Distributers like Snapster could pay the RIAA and music companies for capacity rather than copies (much like companies buy network bandwidth from ISPs). The RIAA might agree to that if it could be shown that their profits are >= their current modus operandi, and this isn't going to happen until the p2p impact on their business has brought them economically to their knees.
So I believe that the RIAA does realize this, and is stalling in attempt to apply a tourniquet to their massively gaping wound. They need to figure out how to build a system that does the accounting, billing, fulfillment, etc. at a cost that is sufficiently low to deter piracy (and I think people would pay their subscription fee if the cost was reasonable and it meant that they could sleep without fear of suit/subpoena). As we all know, that's just a mere matter of programming.
The solution to this problem is not a new business concept. It's a compulsory license fee charged by ISPs for media use (much like the British TV license). Here's an article by Fred von Lohmann of the EFF describing the idea:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/04/ 14/opinion/7930.shtml
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No computer science education should be considered complete without reading Alonzo Church's paper from the 30s, "The Lambda Calculus". (BTW, Church was Turing's thesis advisor.)
... now there's a master-stroke!
I can't wait to see the first 6 Million Dollar granny!
I think that Tivo is missing an important benefit of the open-source development model. If they were to make their own source available to developers, they could benefit from substantial improvements to their system. For instance, I would love to see Tivo's program guide tied in with a rating system like IMDB, or for someone to improve their "Smart Recording" system to capture more than just idiotic sit-coms (e.g. how hard can it be to notice that I only watch IFC and Sundance?). It seems to me that Tivo could open up their code without letting the cat out of the bag w.r.t. their service model. (I mean, the Tivo hackers already know how to enable the lifetime subscription mechanism -- but how many everyday users are able to figure out how to install it?) Perhaps they could develop an emulator for external people to prototype improvements.
But... I got a letter from the FBI just last week saying that they caught the guy, and that he had pleaded guilty. (This is only the second response I've gotten from them, the first being an email a few months after it happened. They're amazingly uncommunicative.) Now I've got a "victim's impact statement" to fill out. We'll see what happens.
Warren
Even if the service could statistically deal with demand waves for content (rather like the phone system only has enough capacity to cover the number of people that usually want to call at the same time), I don't think the system would scale because of the timely nature of the content. Music that's hot today, is just a pile of inventory tomorrow. Imagine all the left-over copies after the demand is gone. Do they get sold off on the clearance table at Walmart?
So it has to be virtual copies, and someday soon the RIAA will come to realize this. To make it manageable, content will probably have to be purchased in bulk. Distributers like Snapster could pay the RIAA and music companies for capacity rather than copies (much like companies buy network bandwidth from ISPs). The RIAA might agree to that if it could be shown that their profits are >= their current modus operandi, and this isn't going to happen until the p2p impact on their business has brought them economically to their knees.
So I believe that the RIAA does realize this, and is stalling in attempt to apply a tourniquet to their massively gaping wound. They need to figure out how to build a system that does the accounting, billing, fulfillment, etc. at a cost that is sufficiently low to deter piracy (and I think people would pay their subscription fee if the cost was reasonable and it meant that they could sleep without fear of suit/subpoena). As we all know, that's just a mere matter of programming.
The solution to this problem is not a new business concept. It's a compulsory license fee charged by ISPs for media use (much like the British TV license). Here's an article by Fred von Lohmann of the EFF describing the idea: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/04/ 14/opinion/7930.shtml