I'd like to add that I think Davies has come up with a good idea, but it needs one thing - property rights. A development regime which provides some form of property rights will become increasingly necessary as space develops. Professionals foresee an integrated system of solar power generation, lunar and asteroidal mining, orbital industrialization, and habitation in outer space. In the midst of this complexity, the right to maintain a facility in a given location relative to another space object may create conflict. Such conflicts may arise sooner than we expect, if private companies begin building subsidiary facilities around space stations. Eventually large public facilities will become the hub of private space development, and owners will want to protect the proximity value of their facility location.
It also seems likely that at some point national governments and/or private companies will clash over the right to exploit a given mineral deposit. Finally, the geosynchronous orbit is already crowded with satellites, and other orbits with unique characteristics may become scarce in the future.
The institution of real property is the most efficient method of allocating the scarce resource of location value. Space habitats, for example, will be very expensive and will probably require financing from private as well as public sources. Selling property rights for living or business space on the habitat would be one way of obtaining private financing. Private law condominiums would seem to be a particularly apt financing model -- inhabitants could hold title to their living space and pay a monthly fee for life-support services and maintenance of common areas.
In case, you don't know, Icecast is an audio broadcasting system that streams music in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format. It is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. The main home page for the Icecast Project is located here.
Icecast is used mainly for a couple different reasons. If you are like me and work at a radio station, you may want to stream your live audio feed over the Internet. This provides access to listeners who would normally fall outside your nominal broadcasting radius. Or, if you wish to play Internet disc jockey, you can create your own playlist, insert sound bytes and broadcast to the world. This is useful for smaller stations who have limited wattage and who wish to play alternative music or talk radio. Because icecast does not broadcast over radio waves or use limited frequencies, it does not fall under FCC rulings. Anyone can set up an icecast server and begin streaming songs or audio files. This ranges from home use through networked machines or for use in a business environment. There are many stations currently using icecast.
Sometimes we in the Linux world can be so obsessed with our own belly buttons that we do not see how the mainstream world approaches computing on all levels, whether it be a laptop used for business or the PC used for e-mail and Web browsing.
This was a lesson I learned this weekend after spending a busman's holiday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. I met up with two old friends who don't work in the computer world, but they both are interested in computing to the point where they thought CES sounded like a lot of fun.
We in the Linux world take for granted that Linux will be a player in the consumer-electronics space, if only for the fact that it has many attributes that make it a good choice for embedded systems, speed and reliability being among them.
But judging by the vendors at CES, Linux isn't close to breaking into this space. There really was only one vendor that was pushing Linux at all, and that was Agenda, showing off the Agenda VR3 in the shadow of Palm Computing in the Palm Pavilion.
There were also many other vendors that were showing Linux-based devices but never let on that Linux was running under the hood. Tivo had a huge booth to show off the various models of the Tivo, while Tivo licensees Sony and Philips were showing off their Tivo devices. (A side note: Santa Claus delivered a new Tivo to the Reichard residence at Christmas -- the Tivo that is integrated with DirecTV service. The integration between Tivo and DirecTV is great, but the unit is slower than heck when you're scrolling the show listings or surfing between channels. Overall, I'm OK with it, but the slowness is frustrating.) ZapMedia was showing off its Linux-based ZapStation, which will play CDs and DVDs, streaming audio/video, as well as allow you to surf the Web and watch cable TV. Again, no mention of Linux here.
More disappointing was the Transmeta booth, where the firm that employs Linus Torvalds put a lot of time showing off Windows-based subnotebooks from the likes of Hitachi. These subnotebooks are for the Japanese market, but my brief hands-on testing didn't reveal anything unique about them (which isn't surprising; one cannot determine long battery life based on a short experience at a trade show). Still, not having a single Linux-based machine at the Transmeta booth is a kick in the teeth to the Linux world..
So there you have it. As far as consumer electronics go, Linux still has a ways to go before it's a player in this space. While Linux has a lot of attributes that make it a contender in consumer electronics, the Linux industry really needs to take a good look at what goes into successful consumer electronics -- ease of use, reliability, attractive price points -- and then make the appropriate adjustments.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to add that I think Davies has come up with a good idea, but it needs one thing - property rights. A development regime which provides some form of property rights will become increasingly necessary as space develops. Professionals foresee an integrated system of solar power generation, lunar and asteroidal mining, orbital industrialization, and habitation in outer space. In the midst of this complexity, the right to maintain a facility in a given location relative to another space object may create conflict. Such conflicts may arise sooner than we expect, if private companies begin building subsidiary facilities around space stations. Eventually large public facilities will become the hub of private space development, and owners will want to protect the proximity value of their facility location.
It also seems likely that at some point national governments and/or private companies will clash over the right to exploit a given mineral deposit. Finally, the geosynchronous orbit is already crowded with satellites, and other orbits with unique characteristics may become scarce in the future.
The institution of real property is the most efficient method of allocating the scarce resource of location value. Space habitats, for example, will be very expensive and will probably require financing from private as well as public sources. Selling property rights for living or business space on the habitat would be one way of obtaining private financing. Private law condominiums would seem to be a particularly apt financing model -- inhabitants could hold title to their living space and pay a monthly fee for life-support services and maintenance of common areas.
Testing
In case, you don't know, Icecast is an audio broadcasting system that streams music in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format. It is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. The main home page for the Icecast Project is located here.
Icecast is used mainly for a couple different reasons. If you are like me and work at a radio station, you may want to stream your live audio feed over the Internet. This provides access to listeners who would normally fall outside your nominal broadcasting radius. Or, if you wish to play Internet disc jockey, you can create your own playlist, insert sound bytes and broadcast to the world. This is useful for smaller stations who have limited wattage and who wish to play alternative music or talk radio. Because icecast does not broadcast over radio waves or use limited frequencies, it does not fall under FCC rulings. Anyone can set up an icecast server and begin streaming songs or audio files. This ranges from home use through networked machines or for use in a business environment. There are many stations currently using icecast.
Sometimes we in the Linux world can be so obsessed with our own belly buttons that we do not see how the mainstream world approaches computing on all levels, whether it be a laptop used for business or the PC used for e-mail and Web browsing.
This was a lesson I learned this weekend after spending a busman's holiday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. I met up with two old friends who don't work in the computer world, but they both are interested in computing to the point where they thought CES sounded like a lot of fun.
We in the Linux world take for granted that Linux will be a player in the consumer-electronics space, if only for the fact that it has many attributes that make it a good choice for embedded systems, speed and reliability being among them.
But judging by the vendors at CES, Linux isn't close to breaking into this space. There really was only one vendor that was pushing Linux at all, and that was Agenda, showing off the Agenda VR3 in the shadow of Palm Computing in the Palm Pavilion.
There were also many other vendors that were showing Linux-based devices but never let on that Linux was running under the hood. Tivo had a huge booth to show off the various models of the Tivo, while Tivo licensees Sony and Philips were showing off their Tivo devices. (A side note: Santa Claus delivered a new Tivo to the Reichard residence at Christmas -- the Tivo that is integrated with DirecTV service. The integration between Tivo and DirecTV is great, but the unit is slower than heck when you're scrolling the show listings or surfing between channels. Overall, I'm OK with it, but the slowness is frustrating.) ZapMedia was showing off its Linux-based ZapStation, which will play CDs and DVDs, streaming audio/video, as well as allow you to surf the Web and watch cable TV. Again, no mention of Linux here.
More disappointing was the Transmeta booth, where the firm that employs Linus Torvalds put a lot of time showing off Windows-based subnotebooks from the likes of Hitachi. These subnotebooks are for the Japanese market, but my brief hands-on testing didn't reveal anything unique about them (which isn't surprising; one cannot determine long battery life based on a short experience at a trade show). Still, not having a single Linux-based machine at the Transmeta booth is a kick in the teeth to the Linux world..
So there you have it. As far as consumer electronics go, Linux still has a ways to go before it's a player in this space. While Linux has a lot of attributes that make it a contender in consumer electronics, the Linux industry really needs to take a good look at what goes into successful consumer electronics -- ease of use, reliability, attractive price points -- and then make the appropriate adjustments.