The biggest added value to this scheme that I see is the ability to listen to CDs that you buy online before they arrive in the mail.
However, I think that there are better pricing structures and delivery modes for this type of purchase. For example: Pay $2 extra and we'll e-mail you 160kbps.mp3s of the whole album. This would be something that would actually add value and be useful. Being able to stream mp3s just isn't all that cool. _____________
The thing that really gets me is that you'll have to insert your CDs at random intervals. This means that my.mp3.com provides no benefit at all. I could see using (and paying a little for) this service if it ment that I could leave my CDs at home and listen to those songs while I was at work without going through the trouble of ripping/compressing/uploading to Xdrive.com/downloading to my work machine/etc. There's just no way that I'm going to pay good money to listen to my own CDs on those terms. Furthermore they won't even let me put any CD that I want on there. Only the record companies that they have deals with. _____________
Oh, I see, you have enough bandwidth for 60+ digital cable channels but not enough to let people upload files to work at more than a snail's pace?
Well, there's a world of difference between what they choose to send down pipes that they own and what they are going to send up the pipes that they lease. Typical pricing arrangements for ISP bandwidth involve some calculation of peak bandwidth and total data sent. So it probably costs them money when you're running a server on their network. Therefore they do what they can to discourage this behavior, namely they make your server really slow.
In addition, you have to remember who most of their customers are. Most people buy internet access so that they can buy beanie babies on e-bay. Most people who use the internet aren't/. readers. Most of them don't want and wouldn't know how to run servers from their home. As long as they can buy and sell beanie babies on e-bay they're happy. Asymetric cable internet service makes this possible and speedy. _____________
While I certianly don't believe that to be successful in the tech world one must base their company in the Bay Area, I do seem some advantages to locating in a place where the resources you need are avaliable. This is why the movie industry in the US is largely based around LA. LA has the resources that movie producers need to make movies. SF has the resources that.coms need to throw away large quantities of cash in a hurry.
Can you imagine this scenerio:
airplanetickets.com and onlinediplomas.com are pleased to announce their joint relocation to a shack in rural Montana. "We believe that our purchase of this shack from convicted mail bomber Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) will allow us the space that we need to grow our operation at a minimal cost" said Ima Dumass CEO of onlinediplomas.com.
Obviously this would not be a very good idea. Rural Montana doesn't have the connectivity and workforce that is necessary for a.com business. _____________
The 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz bands are set aside under FCC Part 15 for unlicensed use. That's why little things like cordless phones and RF remote controls and cordless headphones usually operate at 900 or 2400 Mhz in the US. Title 15 does specify some power and interference limitations which I suspect that these guys are violating in a big way when they take their little unlicensed radio cards and hook them up to high gain antennas on top of their houses. There's a reason why they had such a hard time finding antenna adaptors, the radio manufacturers have to use non-standard connectors to comply with FCC regulations intended to prevent people from doing things like this.
It's a bit of a cat and mouse game with industry and the FCC in this regard. Industry needs to have connectors mass produced to keep costs down, the FCC wants to insure that people don't hook up antennas to devices that cause them to violate regulations and cause problems. Thus the need for "Industry standard non-standard connectors" _____________
What you're doing with Yahoo here is more closely similar to tossing your letter in your outbox. Then it sits there in plain sight for a little while before your secretary picks it up and puts it in an envalope for you and then mails it. Certianly more secure than sending a postcard (at least it's in an envalope on the receiving end), but not as secure as sealing an envalope yourself. One of the big uses that I've found for crypto e-mail is sending a heads-up the the receiver that the content of the message may not be suitable for reading when a roommate is looking over your shoulder. This yahoo scheme is certianly going to be effective for that purpose. _____________
Polished and MS office in the same sentance is
wrong.
Now really, I think that MS Office is at least a little bit polished. That talking paperclip is pretty shiny, he must have gotten a little polish. _____________
Well, you do have a.sig here on/. that takes users toward your site. I'd be willing to bet that the Mac:Linux ratio at/. is much different than it is in the world at large. I'm curious as to what your statistics would look like if you were to remove all hits referred by slashdot. The subject matter of your sites may come into play as well. Sites about avation seem like they would appeal more to the type of person who would run linux than say Beanie Baby sites, which might appeal more to the iMac crowd. _____________
I have to agree with you completely. What's important here is not who made the CPU, but rather who put the box together. If you're buying your boxen from a reputable vendor (i.e. Gateway, Dell, IBM) and getting a good price then it's a good deal. I recently built out an Athlon box for myself, I think that it's great. However, I would not base my professional reputation on several hundred boxes that I put together in my living room.
AMD has been in some disfavor with the reputable vendors because in the past machines that didn't have an Intel Inside sticker on the front were typically big old hunks of shit (well, cyrix even more so) the vendors who chose to save a few bucks by buying a non-Intel processor usually chose to cut costs on other parts too and the quality suffered. This, combined with a lack of SMP support by AMD really ruled them out of the high-end/business market.
If you have the time and are able to support the machines yourself I'd be the first to recommend AMD chips and hand building your machines. I suspect that you don't have those kind of resources so your choice of vendor is going to be much more important than the CPU that's inside. _____________
By your logic Microsoft is owned by NSI.
Domain Name: MICROSOFT.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS7.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS6.CP.MSFT.NET
Updated Date: 29-sep-2000
as are Red Hat and/.
Domain Name: REDHAT.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS2.REDHAT.COM
Name Server: NS1.REDHAT.COM
Updated Date: 13-nov-2000
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.ORG
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.ANDOVER.NET
Name Server: NS2.ANDOVER.NET
Updated Date: 08-feb-2000
All that the Registrar line says is who got paid to register that domain name. The information you posted only indicated to me that AOL registered their domain name and hosts the site. Now, as it happens they are affiliated with AOL as can be seen here. _____________
If I have to pay to listen to NPR while I drive, heck with it
Actually, that's kind of the way that it's supposed to work now. You know, the listener supported thing.... You send them some money then they don't have to advertise for used cars everybody wins? _____________
While it is true that small independant radio stations will be unable to afford to launch their own satellite networks, I believe that this technology will actually allow more independant music and niche market talk shows to be broadcast. With the channel set expanded from ~10 to ~100 channels there is much more opportunity for real variety. With so many different channels avaliable it becomes possible to broadcast something other than the standard palatte of top 40, rock, top 100 country, urban contemporary, adult contemporary, oldies and NPR. There are very few places in the US where you can receive a radio station that does not fall very neatly into one of those categories. But with this new opportunity I forsee expansion of independant, special topic radio programs in much the same way that cable television brings us TV choices that are much more varies than in the days of the over the air networks. _____________
That's not quite true. You can buy a separate converter box from Radio Shack that converts an RCA pulg output into a standard coax for connection to your television set. Sample partnumbers from the Radio Shack catalog are: 15-1268 15-1269 15-1267. I'd give links to their website, but they have a screwy cookie thing that prevents you from pasting a link and having it function properly. These devices are intended primarily to allow game consoles to be attached to older televisions and ship with most consoles but I don't see why they couldn't be used for a DVD player or other device. _____________
I wasn't actually referring to the content of the traded mp3s but more to the quality of the mp3s themselves. Finding songs worth listening to is a bit of a challenge no matter where you look for them, be it at a record store, CDNow, or Napster. Dark side of the moon is also one of my favorite albums. But if I were to search for "Pink Floyd Money" on Napster chances are that what I would download would be complete and total shit. What I see as part of the value of paying for an album is getting a competent audio engineer to make the master that gets stamped onto the disk and not having that work undone by some AOL user trying to rip their CDs into a lossy audio compression format.
I agree with you that there is a great deal of crap on the market. There are also some real jems. Lately Blue Note has been releasing some of their prize recordings on CD. Say what you like about music today being a rip off of everything good that was done by Pink Floyd, the Stones et. al. in the 70s, but remember that most of what they did was building on what John Coltrane and Miles Davis et. al. did in the 40s. _____________
This is the kind of thing that often gets people here on/. all excited. It's pretty much the same deal as the "cachless" Celeron (yes, I _*know*_ it had L1 cache). The 486SX story is actually pretty clever and I've seen it cited in more than one econ book as effective price discrimination.
The deal is, as a seller you want to get the highest price you can from the buyers. One way of doing this is to sell all of your products one at a time at auction. However this is inefficient. Another way is to set a price where you will receive the maximum profit (price * units sold - cost) but then you end up with some people who would have paid more for the product (lost profit) and some people who would have purchased the product if it were a little cheaper. The challenge is to come up with a way to charge people who are willing to pay more a higher price while still selling at a lower price to those who want to buy your product but won't pay as much.
The classic example of this is hard cover and paper back novels. As a sample i've just pulled prices on a Tom Clancy novel from Amazon (really good geeky book. I like it.). sells for $7.19 while hardcover sells for $25.95. Now how can this be, you ask. It is the same story, the same words, written by the same man. The difference is a perceived difference in quality. The hardcover book has the appearance of being of higher quality and is generally issued first. Those who really want the book and have a little extra cash to spare will pay extra for the hardcover. However the publisher doesn't lose sales by setting the price too high because those without extra money or who are indifferent enough about getting the book to wait for the paperback will still buy it, albeit at a reduced rate. This behavior is not actually the incarnation of Satan, it's just good business. _____________
AMD needs to spin off a differently named company to sell the "quality" line of (really AMD) processors.
I think that's what they have done to a certian extent. When they launched the Athlon they wisely decided not to refer to it as K7. Not only did they change the name associated with their CPU but it was also the fastest chip on the market when launched. Now a little over a year later they've managed to look less like a Geo ("It'll get you there and back, but don't expect too much.") into more of a Chevorlet ("Quality, full featured automobile at a fair price."). Now with their recent development of dual processor capable motherboards they may be approaching something on the lines of a Pontiac ("Good performance, quality machine, low cost."). While Intel is starting to look more and more like an Oldsmobile ("A nice comfortable car for fuddy-duddies.")
My apologies to those of you who aren't from the US. I realize that these auto brands aren't exported very often and you might not be all that familiar with them. Also, I apologize for the slogans, it should be quite clear why I am in computer programming rather than advertising. _____________
Well, reputation still means a lot in the computer industry. AMD has managed to get itself a reputation for making budget chips. This problem is compounded by PC makers when they select AMD chips. If the PC maker chose the AMD chip because it was lower in price, then that was probably the driving force in selection of other parts as well. Up until a year ago if you were looking at a box that wasn't a genuine "Intel Inside" box chances are that it was a piece of shit.
Naturally, this applies somewhat differently to the/. kind of crowd. It is possible for someone to build their own box that has an Athlon chip in it that is still a quality machine. I just built my own machine and it has an Athlon 800 chip in it and a real 3Com NIC and a video card with it's own RAM. This however isn't the usual case when you buy a preassembled AMD machine. These are often the budget models that have a winmodem, shared video RAM and all manner of other shortcuts. This reflects badly on AMD and when combined with their lack of support for dual processors rules them out in the high end mass market. _____________
I want to enjoy music I can download, and Napster stands in the way of this.
Couldn't agree with you more. All that Napster really does is make lots more really bad mp3s avaliable to a huge audience and see that they get handed around further. I stopped using Napster quite a while ago because so much of the music there sounds really bad (as if mp3s weren't bad enough to start with) and/or is missing the end of the song. As far as I'm concerned, it's still worth some money to be able to buy an album and know that I'm getting something quality. _____________
I just recently upgraded to KDE 2.0, so I'm not completely sure about all the features.
KMail is a stand alone program. I believe that it can be setup to share its address book with some other programs. KOrganizer was a pretty decent program in KDE 1.1.2 I haven't played with it yet in my new install, KNode the KDE 2.0 newsreader is excellent. Only trouble I've had with it is that it doesn't support multipart messages. It is however a vast improvement over KRN which came with KDE 1.1.2.
Overall I'm just as happy having these programs be standalone. I usually don't want to download news headers when I open up my calendar. _____________
I understand why this was done. I just find it frustrating that the channels I want to watch aren't avaliable in the quality that digital cable can provide. Getting a dish isn't really an option for me since I live in an apartment, I very well may do that when I move next time
The question asked here was about if the MPEG stream could be captured direct to a PC. Even if this could be done you wouldn't be able to capture things on the low numbered channels (like the Simpsons) since they're analog anyway. _____________
Slashdot Mirror
However, I think that there are better pricing structures and delivery modes for this type of purchase. For example: Pay $2 extra and we'll e-mail you 160kbps .mp3s of the whole album. This would be something that would actually add value and be useful. Being able to stream mp3s just isn't all that cool.
_____________
The thing that really gets me is that you'll have to insert your CDs at random intervals. This means that my.mp3.com provides no benefit at all. I could see using (and paying a little for) this service if it ment that I could leave my CDs at home and listen to those songs while I was at work without going through the trouble of ripping/compressing/uploading to Xdrive.com/downloading to my work machine/etc. There's just no way that I'm going to pay good money to listen to my own CDs on those terms. Furthermore they won't even let me put any CD that I want on there. Only the record companies that they have deals with.
_____________
Well, there's a world of difference between what they choose to send down pipes that they own and what they are going to send up the pipes that they lease. Typical pricing arrangements for ISP bandwidth involve some calculation of peak bandwidth and total data sent. So it probably costs them money when you're running a server on their network. Therefore they do what they can to discourage this behavior, namely they make your server really slow.
In addition, you have to remember who most of their customers are. Most people buy internet access so that they can buy beanie babies on e-bay. Most people who use the internet aren't /. readers. Most of them don't want and wouldn't know how to run servers from their home. As long as they can buy and sell beanie babies on e-bay they're happy. Asymetric cable internet service makes this possible and speedy.
_____________
Can you imagine this scenerio:
Obviously this would not be a very good idea. Rural Montana doesn't have the connectivity and workforce that is necessary for a_____________
It's a bit of a cat and mouse game with industry and the FCC in this regard. Industry needs to have connectors mass produced to keep costs down, the FCC wants to insure that people don't hook up antennas to devices that cause them to violate regulations and cause problems. Thus the need for "Industry standard non-standard connectors"
_____________
What you're doing with Yahoo here is more closely similar to tossing your letter in your outbox. Then it sits there in plain sight for a little while before your secretary picks it up and puts it in an envalope for you and then mails it. Certianly more secure than sending a postcard (at least it's in an envalope on the receiving end), but not as secure as sealing an envalope yourself. One of the big uses that I've found for crypto e-mail is sending a heads-up the the receiver that the content of the message may not be suitable for reading when a roommate is looking over your shoulder. This yahoo scheme is certianly going to be effective for that purpose.
_____________
Now really, I think that MS Office is at least a little bit polished. That talking paperclip is pretty shiny, he must have gotten a little polish.
_____________
Well, you do have a .sig here on /. that takes users toward your site. I'd be willing to bet that the Mac:Linux ratio at /. is much different than it is in the world at large. I'm curious as to what your statistics would look like if you were to remove all hits referred by slashdot. The subject matter of your sites may come into play as well. Sites about avation seem like they would appeal more to the type of person who would run linux than say Beanie Baby sites, which might appeal more to the iMac crowd.
_____________
AMD has been in some disfavor with the reputable vendors because in the past machines that didn't have an Intel Inside sticker on the front were typically big old hunks of shit (well, cyrix even more so) the vendors who chose to save a few bucks by buying a non-Intel processor usually chose to cut costs on other parts too and the quality suffered. This, combined with a lack of SMP support by AMD really ruled them out of the high-end/business market.
If you have the time and are able to support the machines yourself I'd be the first to recommend AMD chips and hand building your machines. I suspect that you don't have those kind of resources so your choice of vendor is going to be much more important than the CPU that's inside.
_____________
By your logic Microsoft is owned by NSI.
/.
Domain Name: MICROSOFT.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS7.CP.MSFT.NET
Name Server: DNS6.CP.MSFT.NET
Updated Date: 29-sep-2000
as are Red Hat and
Domain Name: REDHAT.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS2.REDHAT.COM
Name Server: NS1.REDHAT.COM
Updated Date: 13-nov-2000
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.ORG
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.ANDOVER.NET
Name Server: NS2.ANDOVER.NET
Updated Date: 08-feb-2000
All that the Registrar line says is who got paid to register that domain name. The information you posted only indicated to me that AOL registered their domain name and hosts the site. Now, as it happens they are affiliated with AOL as can be seen here.
_____________
Actually, that's kind of the way that it's supposed to work now. You know, the listener supported thing.... You send them some money then they don't have to advertise for used cars everybody wins?
_____________
While it is true that small independant radio stations will be unable to afford to launch their own satellite networks, I believe that this technology will actually allow more independant music and niche market talk shows to be broadcast. With the channel set expanded from ~10 to ~100 channels there is much more opportunity for real variety. With so many different channels avaliable it becomes possible to broadcast something other than the standard palatte of top 40, rock, top 100 country, urban contemporary, adult contemporary, oldies and NPR. There are very few places in the US where you can receive a radio station that does not fall very neatly into one of those categories. But with this new opportunity I forsee expansion of independant, special topic radio programs in much the same way that cable television brings us TV choices that are much more varies than in the days of the over the air networks.
_____________
That's not quite true. You can buy a separate converter box from Radio Shack that converts an RCA pulg output into a standard coax for connection to your television set. Sample partnumbers from the Radio Shack catalog are: 15-1268 15-1269 15-1267. I'd give links to their website, but they have a screwy cookie thing that prevents you from pasting a link and having it function properly. These devices are intended primarily to allow game consoles to be attached to older televisions and ship with most consoles but I don't see why they couldn't be used for a DVD player or other device.
_____________
I agree with you that there is a great deal of crap on the market. There are also some real jems. Lately Blue Note has been releasing some of their prize recordings on CD. Say what you like about music today being a rip off of everything good that was done by Pink Floyd, the Stones et. al. in the 70s, but remember that most of what they did was building on what John Coltrane and Miles Davis et. al. did in the 40s.
_____________
"It's all a vast right wing conspiracy I tell ya."
_____________
The deal is, as a seller you want to get the highest price you can from the buyers. One way of doing this is to sell all of your products one at a time at auction. However this is inefficient. Another way is to set a price where you will receive the maximum profit (price * units sold - cost) but then you end up with some people who would have paid more for the product (lost profit) and some people who would have purchased the product if it were a little cheaper. The challenge is to come up with a way to charge people who are willing to pay more a higher price while still selling at a lower price to those who want to buy your product but won't pay as much.
The classic example of this is hard cover and paper back novels. As a sample i've just pulled prices on a Tom Clancy novel from Amazon (really good geeky book. I like it.). sells for $7.19 while hardcover sells for $25.95. Now how can this be, you ask. It is the same story, the same words, written by the same man. The difference is a perceived difference in quality. The hardcover book has the appearance of being of higher quality and is generally issued first. Those who really want the book and have a little extra cash to spare will pay extra for the hardcover. However the publisher doesn't lose sales by setting the price too high because those without extra money or who are indifferent enough about getting the book to wait for the paperback will still buy it, albeit at a reduced rate. This behavior is not actually the incarnation of Satan, it's just good business.
_____________
I think that's what they have done to a certian extent. When they launched the Athlon they wisely decided not to refer to it as K7. Not only did they change the name associated with their CPU but it was also the fastest chip on the market when launched. Now a little over a year later they've managed to look less like a Geo ("It'll get you there and back, but don't expect too much.") into more of a Chevorlet ("Quality, full featured automobile at a fair price."). Now with their recent development of dual processor capable motherboards they may be approaching something on the lines of a Pontiac ("Good performance, quality machine, low cost."). While Intel is starting to look more and more like an Oldsmobile ("A nice comfortable car for fuddy-duddies.")
My apologies to those of you who aren't from the US. I realize that these auto brands aren't exported very often and you might not be all that familiar with them. Also, I apologize for the slogans, it should be quite clear why I am in computer programming rather than advertising.
_____________
Naturally, this applies somewhat differently to the /. kind of crowd. It is possible for someone to build their own box that has an Athlon chip in it that is still a quality machine. I just built my own machine and it has an Athlon 800 chip in it and a real 3Com NIC and a video card with it's own RAM. This however isn't the usual case when you buy a preassembled AMD machine. These are often the budget models that have a winmodem, shared video RAM and all manner of other shortcuts. This reflects badly on AMD and when combined with their lack of support for dual processors rules them out in the high end mass market.
_____________
Couldn't agree with you more. All that Napster really does is make lots more really bad mp3s avaliable to a huge audience and see that they get handed around further. I stopped using Napster quite a while ago because so much of the music there sounds really bad (as if mp3s weren't bad enough to start with) and/or is missing the end of the song. As far as I'm concerned, it's still worth some money to be able to buy an album and know that I'm getting something quality.
_____________
Being down for a reboot during an attack is not the kind of security policy I want.
_____________
Motif isn't so popular anymore. I'd suggest doing the room in Qt though some around here seem to have a strong preference for Gtk.
_____________
KMail is a stand alone program. I believe that it can be setup to share its address book with some other programs. KOrganizer was a pretty decent program in KDE 1.1.2 I haven't played with it yet in my new install, KNode the KDE 2.0 newsreader is excellent. Only trouble I've had with it is that it doesn't support multipart messages. It is however a vast improvement over KRN which came with KDE 1.1.2.
Overall I'm just as happy having these programs be standalone. I usually don't want to download news headers when I open up my calendar.
_____________
"Thank you for pressing the self destruct button. Have a nice day."
_____________
The question asked here was about if the MPEG stream could be captured direct to a PC. Even if this could be done you wouldn't be able to capture things on the low numbered channels (like the Simpsons) since they're analog anyway.
_____________
Check out gateway's web site. They ship a lot of machines with AMD chips, especially on their budget models.
_____________