Why is everyone so afraid of the concept of anything being 'free'? Is it that radical of a proposition that a broad-based community can create and support an infrastructure without the need for it to turn into a for-profit corporation? Community WLANs, VoIP, Open Source projects....aren't these things all technologically and socially proven by now? All of these analysts and experts can't be that shackled to the bottom line, can they? Paradigm shift, anyone....
Exactly-the Big Five (or is 4 now? or 3 even?) major record behemoths won't budge. That doesn't mean they shouldn't, or that others that operate outside of their sphere of influence can't take the initiative from them. It comes down to a few very large, very shadowy corporations have to make a paradigm shift about their business, and their bottom line. And thousands of greedy music stars putting their art before their lifestyle.
It's very good to see some forward movement in the development of 'real world' VoIP solutions. Let's hope 2004 will be the year when the rest of the world can agree on a set of standards that will allow this technology to bring the global benefits it has always had the promise to fulfill. One of the big downsides to the dotcom bust, was that VoIP was to be the next big area of convergence, and suddenly everyone pulled there investment from it, into bolstering their weakening core markets. With financial statistics for next year looking more promising, let's hope the tide may once again turn toward R&D, and an exciting and innovative future.
Well....almost. The "Santa being tracked by NORAD" thing was mentioned last night on a weather forecast broadcast by Tacoma,WA PBS station KBTC at 7pm PST (though these are provided for them by completely rubbish local Fox affiliate Q13, Seattle). As they were talking about Santa flying over an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the really rather wonky computer animation of this alleged event locked up, and popped up a giant gray box stating, "Real Player has lost connection to the server", etc. Then everything went blue! Waaaah-ha-ha! I could hardly believe my eyes as the forecaster stammered onto the weather, apologizing for the problems....
Look hear, you bandwith-hogging, record-breaking herd of bristly swine, a guy should be able to stand outside your building with a wireless card, fire up a packet sniffer, and not get his favorite pair of pants ruined because his laptop melted. OK? You'll be hearing from my dry cleaner.
I noticed there was a reference in the article to a "first home computer from 1971 that "no one knows about"". Could this be the computer designed and built by Finnish physicist/inventor Erkki Kurenniemi? The machine he created would have been in existence around this time, a couple of years before other, more prominent examples.
I've been reading a number of articles about this gentleman, and his activites (in building innovative early electronic musical instruments mainly), and there's also a documentary film about him, which was recently released on DVD ("The Future Is Not What It Used To Be"). A fascinating character to say the least, and a largely forgotten pioneer in many fields.
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Why is everyone so afraid of the concept of anything being 'free'? Is it that radical of a proposition that a broad-based community can create and support an infrastructure without the need for it to turn into a for-profit corporation? Community WLANs, VoIP, Open Source projects....aren't these things all technologically and socially proven by now? All of these analysts and experts can't be that shackled to the bottom line, can they? Paradigm shift, anyone....
Exactly-the Big Five (or is 4 now? or 3 even?) major record behemoths won't budge. That doesn't mean they shouldn't, or that others that operate outside of their sphere of influence can't take the initiative from them. It comes down to a few very large, very shadowy corporations have to make a paradigm shift about their business, and their bottom line. And thousands of greedy music stars putting their art before their lifestyle.
They said "volume", not "profit" ;)
It's very good to see some forward movement in the development of 'real world' VoIP solutions. Let's hope 2004 will be the year when the rest of the world can agree on a set of standards that will allow this technology to bring the global benefits it has always had the promise to fulfill. One of the big downsides to the dotcom bust, was that VoIP was to be the next big area of convergence, and suddenly everyone pulled there investment from it, into bolstering their weakening core markets. With financial statistics for next year looking more promising, let's hope the tide may once again turn toward R&D, and an exciting and innovative future.
Well....almost. The "Santa being tracked by NORAD" thing was mentioned last night on a weather forecast broadcast by Tacoma,WA PBS station KBTC at 7pm PST (though these are provided for them by completely rubbish local Fox affiliate Q13, Seattle). As they were talking about Santa flying over an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the really rather wonky computer animation of this alleged event locked up, and popped up a giant gray box stating, "Real Player has lost connection to the server", etc. Then everything went blue! Waaaah-ha-ha! I could hardly believe my eyes as the forecaster stammered onto the weather, apologizing for the problems....
Look hear, you bandwith-hogging, record-breaking herd of bristly swine, a guy should be able to stand outside your building with a wireless card, fire up a packet sniffer, and not get his favorite pair of pants ruined because his laptop melted. OK? You'll be hearing from my dry cleaner.
I noticed there was a reference in the article to a "first home computer from 1971 that "no one knows about"". Could this be the computer designed and built by Finnish physicist/inventor Erkki Kurenniemi? The machine he created would have been in existence around this time, a couple of years before other, more prominent examples. I've been reading a number of articles about this gentleman, and his activites (in building innovative early electronic musical instruments mainly), and there's also a documentary film about him, which was recently released on DVD ("The Future Is Not What It Used To Be"). A fascinating character to say the least, and a largely forgotten pioneer in many fields.