|
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 165 responses total. |
void
|
|
response 88 of 165:
| 
May 9 15:26 UTC 2002 |
The entire point of cable in the first place was to be ad-free.
|
remmers
|
|
response 89 of 165:
|
May 9 16:30 UTC 2002 |
Now that AMC does commercials, I don't watch it anymore. Same
goes for Bravo, with rare exceptions. Wouldn't wanna be guilty
of stealing. :)
Re #84: Yes, I remember that when "pay-TV" (which later evolved
into cable) was first being discussed in the 1950s, one of the
selling points was going be freedom from commercials. Um...
|
jep
|
|
response 90 of 165:
|
May 9 16:58 UTC 2002 |
re #88: There was cable TV in Houghton, MI in the 1950's because there
were no locally accessible TV stations there. The original point of
cable was sharp reception and greater selection of programming.
|
tpryan
|
|
response 91 of 165:
|
May 9 17:00 UTC 2002 |
The other end of it is the the local advertiser now has
a harder time than ever of getting their niche market into
the cable station slots.
I am sure some nightlife spot in Ann Arbor would love
to advertise only on Comedy Central's Insomniac. But no, instead
we get the ComCast self promotion ad instead. To me, it looks
like ComCast is not interested in the small order business.
|
gull
|
|
response 92 of 165:
|
May 9 19:53 UTC 2002 |
Cable TV started as "community antenna television." (This is where the
acronym CATV comes from.) They'd put an array of single-channel Yagis
on top of some tall structure, pointed at the various local channels,
then amplify the signals and feed them out to residents, to avoid the
visual clutter of every house having its own outdoor TV antenna.
Obviously that wasn't commercial free since it was just another way to
get broadcast TV.
Even today most cable systems, as part of the francise agreement, have
to offer a cheap "basic service" level that mostly just provides area
broadcast stations. They rarely advertise that fact and will often
charge an arm and a leg to install it, but it usually exists.
|
keesan
|
|
response 93 of 165:
|
May 10 01:33 UTC 2002 |
Last I knew the local basic service here was $30/month, hardly cheap.
It had suddenly gone up from $8.
|
ea
|
|
response 94 of 165:
|
May 10 01:46 UTC 2002 |
92 - the acronym CATV has since been modified to be "Community Access
TV", which may go by other names including Public Access, or Community
Television.
|
jmsaul
|
|
response 95 of 165:
|
May 10 03:53 UTC 2002 |
Re #88: I thought the point was to be able to show naked people and use
naughty words.
|
dbratman
|
|
response 96 of 165:
|
May 12 09:43 UTC 2002 |
Well, there's two origins of cable tv, and they tend to get confused.
One is the provision of tv to back-country areas that get poor
broadcast reception, and that's always been commercial, simply because
it was a feed of broadcast stations. The other is cable-only channels,
intended in the first place for urban customers, which came along
around 1980, and that indeed was originally mostly commercial-free, the
idea being that subscription fees to cable would pay the cost. So much
for that notion.
Kellner's remark about stealing is profoundly disturbing, for several
reasons.
First, as several people have pointed out, applied to print
publications it would require that you read all the ads (and various
corollaries about electronic media suggest that you'd have to start at
the beginning and read the whole thing, read it only once, and you
couldn't pass it on to somebody else). It also suggests you can't flip
stations during commercials, either.
Second, it flies in the face of the whole basis of advertising, in
which the best ads are designed to actually attract attention and not
just lecture to a captive audience, and more than that, in which ad
rates are set with the specific understanding that there won't be 100%
feed-through.
Thirdly, if you can be required to watch the ads, you can also be
required to buy the wonderful products being pitched.
|
gull
|
|
response 97 of 165:
|
May 14 15:01 UTC 2002 |
A couple interesting tidbits about copy-protected CDs, from The Register:
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24940.html
First, it turns out some CD copy protection schemes can be defeated with
electrical tape or a Sharpie marker. The idea is to cover up enough of
the outer, intentionally corrupt track that the computer will ignore it.
Secondly, a new copy-protected CD release apparently does nasty things
to the flat-screen iMacs. Not only does it fail to play, it locks up
the computer and prevents it from rebooting properly as long as it's in
the drive. (iMacs, you'll recall, will try to boot off CDs.) It also
locks the CD tray, keeping you from remedying the situation by removing
the disc again. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but it's an example
of what can happen when you start putting out intentionally non-standard
discs.
|
gull
|
|
response 98 of 165:
|
May 14 15:07 UTC 2002 |
Here's Apple's page about the problem:
http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/wa/query?searchMod
e=Ass
isted&type=id&val=KC.106882
They suggest several ways to try getting the disc out, but admit you may
have to take the machine in for service if it's a model that has no
manual eject hole. They seem to be taking a pretty hard-line stance on
these discs:
"CD audio discs that incorporate copyright protection technologies do
not adhere to published Compact Disc standards. Apple designs its CD
drives to support media that conforms to such standards. Apple computers
are not designed to support copyright protected media that do not
conform to such standards. Therefore, any attempt to use non standard
discs with Apple CD drives will be considered a misapplication of the
product. Under the terms of Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty, AppleCare
Protection Plan, or other AppleCare agreement any misapplication of the
product is excluded from Apple's repair coverage. Because the Apple
product is functioning correctly according to its design specifications,
any fee assessed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for
repair service will not be Apple's responsibility."
Think there's the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against Sony
from people who have to pay Apple to have these discs extracted from
their systems?
|
jmsaul
|
|
response 99 of 165:
|
May 14 15:12 UTC 2002 |
I'd hope so. The rumor is that putting a disc in actually damages the
firmware somehow, though I don't know how that's possible.
|
gull
|
|
response 100 of 165:
|
May 14 15:26 UTC 2002 |
I doubt it's that. It sounds to me like it just confuses everything enough
that the drive can't eject the disc. I've heard of places having to strip
down iMacs and physically remove the disc by hand, but I haven't heard
anything about having to replace or reprogram the drives yet.
|
dbratman
|
|
response 101 of 165:
|
May 14 16:53 UTC 2002 |
I applaud Apple's very hard-nosed, snotty response to the "nonstandard"
copy-protected CDs, but I have to say that the problem equally lies in
the Mac's equally bizarre and non-standard way of ejecting disks.
|
krj
|
|
response 102 of 165:
|
May 14 16:59 UTC 2002 |
((One of the copy-prevention systems was rumored to screw up a
Windows PC to the point where the CD-R driver software had to be
reinstalled, but I cannot remember the details.))
((Not having an emergency manual eject is a really, really dumb
design decision, for reasons that should now be obvious...))
It's been suggested by someone I won't name (in case it's a really
stupid idea) that copy-prevented CDs which crash computers could
legally be equivalent to a malicious computer virus, and that there
could be liability under the Michigan law which was used to prosecute
the M-net vandal of two summers back. Hmm, should we draft a note
to the Attorney General?
|
other
|
|
response 103 of 165:
|
May 14 18:12 UTC 2002 |
Not that it takes much to force system software to have to be reinstalled
on a windows machine anyway...
|
mdw
|
|
response 104 of 165:
|
May 15 05:11 UTC 2002 |
I'd have to say that a cd-player that can't eject a cd that adheres to
the physical standards for a cd is defective, or at least, has a faulty
design. The manual eject button should only be necessary in cases where
it's no longer possible to safely apply power to the drive (ie, the
computer power supply is dead, the cd drive has somehow shorted ouet,
etc.) If the computer crashes because of the defective cd, then I'd say
the computer has other software or perhaps OS driver issues.
|
krj
|
|
response 105 of 165:
|
May 15 12:14 UTC 2002 |
Wired and Cnet report that Napster Inc. took another step closer to the
corporate graveyard on Tuesday:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52532,00.html
The Napster corporate board of directors is torn by a bitter feud
between John Fanning, the uncle of program author Shawn Fanning,
who provided the earliest funding, and representatives of the
venture capitalist firm who provided the second round of Napster's
funding. The Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers, who unofficially represents
Napster's third funder, the Bertelsmann conglomerate (BMG), quit
on Tuesday because the board would not approve selling Napster
outright to Bertelsmann.
Bertelsmann had the foresight to make its $85 million investment in
Napster in the form of a loan; this means that in the looming bankruptcy,
Bertelsmann is probably in the driver's seat and gets any Napster assets
it wants anyway.
Napster's employees have been given two choices: quit immediately and
get severance pay, or else take unpaid leave for a week while the
company desperately searches for another buyer. The company is just
about out of operating funds.
|
krj
|
|
response 106 of 165:
|
May 16 04:32 UTC 2002 |
Wired thinks Napster is finished and runs an obituary written
by Brad King, their Internet music correspondent:
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,52540,00.html
-----
The Kazaa music sharing operation has been suggesting that
ISPs should pay a fee-per-user to the copyright industry, since
the ISPs are making money selling high-speed connections to
users who want to swap files. There's a tweak to the proposal
suggesting that the money should go directly to artists, with
nothing for the record company, and today's story in USA Today,
referenced via Slashdot, says that Verizon is now supporting
the idea.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/14/232237.shtml?tid=141
|
gull
|
|
response 107 of 165:
|
May 16 13:17 UTC 2002 |
Can't say I like that idea much. I have high-speed access, but I don't use
it to pirate music. Why should I be charged a fine just because they
*assume* I'm breaking the law?
|
krj
|
|
response 108 of 165:
|
May 16 14:18 UTC 2002 |
www.fatchucks.com points to a huge parade of Napster obituary stories.
I'll single out this one from the Boston Globe for a few quotes:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/136/business/The_legacy_of_Napster+.shtml
> 'Napster was absolutely a groundbreaking technology that changed the way
> consumers listened to music, discovered music, and interacted with music,''
> said Stacey Herron, an entertainment and media analyst with Jupiter
> Research in New York. ''Napster so fundamentally changed the way people
> interacted with music that there's no turning back.''
Matt Bailey, of Redshift Research, a "consulting firm that covers the
digital entertainment industry:"
> ''If you take the three top free file-sharing
> systems together - Kazaa, IMesh and
> Gnutella - they had an average of 2.15 million
> users logged on at any given time in
> April,'' Bailey said. ''In February of last year,
> when Napster was at its peak, there
> were only 1.57 million simultaneous users on the system.''
-----
Also via fatchucks.com: Sony is trying to use the Scour technology to
whip up a little P2P enthusiasm for a limited number of artists.
The songs can only be played for 30 days, and only if you are a
registered user:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-913534.html?tag=fd_top
There's a really mean review of this "service" at:
http://www.slyck.com/newsmay2002/051502a.html
|
krj
|
|
response 109 of 165:
|
May 20 04:14 UTC 2002 |
Many stories report that Bertelsmann finally gets Napster.
Bertelsmann pays $8 million to Napster's creditors in what one
article described as a "prepackaged bankruptcy filing."
This maneuver is also supposed to wipe out the potential billions
in liability for any past copyright violations.
(Bertelsmann had offered $20 million to buy Napster in February,
an offer the board rejected. In the new deal the shareholders get
nothing, so I imagine the shareholders will be quite displeased with
the board for failing to sell when the investors could have recovered
something.)
In personnel terms; Shawn Fanning's uncle John, who tried to eject other
members of the Napster board, is now off the board himself; Shawn Fanning
is back on the team, as is BMG's man chief exec Konrad Hilbers; and
in general it seems like the goal is to reassemble the Napster staff
to the way it was prior to last week's meltdown.
|
krj
|
|
response 110 of 165:
|
May 22 18:09 UTC 2002 |
Reported everywhere: The new webcast royalty rate proposed by the
CARP panel has been turned down by the Librarian of Congress, who
for some obscure DMCA reason has the final say on setting the rate.
No news on what happens next for a month.
|
krj
|
|
response 111 of 165:
|
May 22 20:25 UTC 2002 |
Cnet reports that the music industry is about ready to win two of its
cases against P2P firms by draining their resources before trial:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-920557.html
"Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing"
The original Kazaa BV corporation in the Netherlands has asked for
"terms of surrender," having sold the Kazaa network to the somewhat
mysterious Sharman Networks, based on a Pacific island. The RIAA
accuses them of playing a shell game to move the P2P technology
assets to a new corporate home.
Streamcast Networks, the US operation under the Morpheus name,
has run out of money to pay its lawyer, who has left the case.
|
dbratman
|
|
response 112 of 165:
|
May 22 23:29 UTC 2002 |
Dreaming about what I'd do if I were Librarian of Congress ...
Make Nicholson Baker pay all the royalties?
|
