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Web of Trust Audio News Distribution

Posted by michael on Tue Dec 10, 2002 05:37 PM
from the happy-birthday-stephanie dept.
News
c0rtex writes "Wearlab (University of Bremen) has designed a cool web of trust voice message routing system with a decaying credibility metric. It supports xmms and winamp. Source available for Linux and win32. "MPN makes it possible to deliver completely decentralized and independent news. Everyone has the possibility to be a reporter, no filtering publisher is required...""
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  • decaying credibility metric? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tps12 (105590) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:38PM (#4858182) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like Slashdot.

    • Re:decaying credibility metric? (Score:4, Funny)

      by ekrout (139379) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:42PM (#4858216) Journal
      I visit Slashdot, but I'm skeptical as to whether the true spirit of the original site will persist.

      The ideas and expressions that once comprised geek culture have changed so much that the original Slashdot themes of individualist strength and moral integrity in the face of monopolistic powers will probably be cast aside in favor of a more contemporary populist sensibility.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:decaying credibility metric? by Real World Stuff (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:44PM

  • decentralized news pirates (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:40PM (#4858200)
    Quick! Call John Ashcroft! These pirates want to take copyrighted "news stories" and distribute them freely! This will take away the incentive for news to occur. News occurs only because news has an incentive to occur. Take away that incentive and it won't occur anymore. See what you've done? You can't just take news and distribute it without lots of damage. I say it's time for an FBI raid.

  • I'd love to read the web page ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Greedo (304385) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:41PM (#4858213) Homepage Journal
    ... but someone seems to have their caps-lock key stuck.

    A whole page of CAPS? My eyes started to hurt after the 3rd paragraph.

  • Oh no... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bdesham (533897) <bdesham@gSLACKWAREmail.com minus distro> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:42PM (#4858215) Journal
    ...now we can have /.-style moderation of the news...

    Al-Qaeda Destroys White House, Pentagon (-1, Troll)

  • Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aridhol (112307) <klacquement@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:43PM (#4858232) Homepage Journal
    Why would I bother with something like this? If I want local news, I know where to find it on the web. I can find personal home pages near me through the local ISPs. Why do I need yet another way to get information?

    In addition, I'd rather read my news. It lets me go at my own pace, skip over the summary to the details, translate it, easily quote from it for rebuttal, etc.

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by smd4985 (203677) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:49PM (#4858298) Homepage
      I think it would be useful to have a moderated discussion without having to maintain a bunch of central servers.

      1) like p2p, it seems to leverage the resources of every partipant on the network.
      2) like slashdot, it vests control of what is heard in a distributed way, as certain (all?) nodes will moderate what is listened to.

      i agree applications currently seems non-existent, but like all research i think exploring the system is a good idea in and of itself.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Why bother? by aridhol (Score:3) Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:53PM
        • Re:Why bother? by Anonvmous Coward (Score:3) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:03PM
          • Re:Why bother? by seanadams.com (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @11:23PM
          • Re:Why bother? by Rysc (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @11:28PM

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Qrlx (258924) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:55PM (#4858350) Homepage Journal
      Why do I need yet another way to get information?

      You could have made that same argument before the advent of the Internet, you know. Want local news? Hang out at the barbershop. The coffee house. Talk to the kids on the street. Attend a city hall meeting.

      I do agree that reading would be way better than just audio. There's simply no point to limiting the "stream" to audio-only. I can understand a bandwidth cap, but there should be a way to introduce a text stream, and maybe a video stream if exists the bandwitdh to push it without crowding out others.

      It has become increasingly obvious that The Names You've Gradually Grown To Trust (like NYT) are less and less worthy of that trust -- marketing and the need for sensationalism drives their agenda and clouds their judgement. I get my news from The Economist and Funny Times and everything in between. The more sources, the better!
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Why bother? by aridhol (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:02PM
        • Re:Why bother? by mackstann (Score:3) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:47PM
          • Re:Why bother? by aridhol (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @08:12PM
      • Re:Why bother? by John Hasler (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:34PM
        • Re:Why bother? by johnwroach (Score:1) Wednesday December 11 2002, @01:37AM
      • weeow, shit by _KhlER3L (Score:3) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:43PM

  • biteme (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nanite (220404) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:44PM (#4858239)
    Sound cool, but what keeps people from spreading false news around? Any enterprising young H.G. Wells want to pull a 'War of the Worlds' all over again?

    Nan
    • Re:biteme by optikSmoke (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:48PM
      • eBay analogy by No Such Agency (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:47PM
    • Re:Orson Welles by wwwgregcom (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:57PM
    • Re:biteme by pcol (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:01PM
    • Re:biteme by evilviper (Score:3) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:03PM

      • Uh... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TheAwfulTruth (325623) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:54PM (#4859095) Homepage
        Slashdot does it ALL THE TIME. Spreading false and misleading news. And when it happens 90% of everyone here swallows it hook line and sinker. Never bothering to check the actual article or any other sources that may contain possibly contradictory information. Slashdot has posted completely false stories and frequently picks out inflamitory and mostly incorrect stories to feed our insatiable lust for gossip.

        Slashdot is itself one of the best examples of why this will fail as a "news" source. Slashdot is a self-feeding FUD machine where people come to hear what they want to hear and to oppress any thought that they do not want to consider. Slashdot is a popular gossip site but is an utter failure as a "news" site.

        So if what you want is a giant audio gossip system, It'll go gang-busters. But reliable news? Not possible. You'll get prefiltered news for a particular segment of people. Anyone with an unpopular opinion will be "untrusted" out of the system just like they are "moderated" out of the system here. Popular news for the popular masses is no news at all.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Uh... by evilviper (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @11:03PM
      • Re:biteme by bigfatlamer (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @10:54PM
        • Re:biteme by evilviper (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @11:07PM
    • Re:biteme by Anonvmous Coward (Score:2) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:06PM
    • Slashdot mod system != Web of Trust by Glass of Water (Score:2) Wednesday December 11 2002, @11:53AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by droid_rage (535157) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:45PM (#4858254) Journal
    One of the key concepts of developing technology that depends on decentralization is simplicity.
    Setting this up will not be simple. You have to chose who you trust and how much of what they trust you trust. In order to do that, you have to get some idea what a whole bunch of people like. Getting this up and working correctly will be a headache.
    Now, a directed news system based on previous picks and voting a la amazon might not be a bad idea...

  • Does this guy use AOL? (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger (69688) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:45PM (#4858259) Homepage Journal
    I MEAN, COME ON, POSTING TECHNICAL SPECS IN ALL CAPS? AND THAT BACKGROUND CHOICE?

    Also, the problem with "decentralized news" is the same problem with posts to /. - people .

    Do you really want your news be mostly "First Post", penis bird, goatse.cx, Beowulf clusters of grits, and NPN&P?

    Until you have a means of creating a real trust metric, so that I can insure those I get my news from are marginally competent, the distribution method is meaningless.

    And please, don't suggest M1 and M2 for news....

  • Great..... (Score:2, Funny)

    by kinshadow (548757) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:46PM (#4858262)

    Now I get to hear those "In Soviet Russia" jokes over my web radio.

    • Re:Great..... by phorm (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:51PM
    • IN SOVIET RUSSIA by egg troll (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:10PM
    • Re:Great..... by cthulhubob (Score:2) Wednesday December 11 2002, @12:20AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Beware the pseudo-trust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johnthorensen (539527) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:46PM (#4858263)
    The technology claims to be able to provide "news that you can trust in", but it should be noted that trust != truth.

    As in traditional trust systems (Karma, anyone?), someone being trusted does not necessarily mean that their information is valid.

    -JT

  • It's probably just me but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by core plexus (599119) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:46PM (#4858269) Homepage
    not only does there seem to be a large number of audio-related posts this day, but...

    I can't remember when the last time I listened or watched a news program. I find that I can suck up all the news I need from less than a dozen sites (including /., of course) during the course of a day and all my reading and clicking is still less than the 11-15 minutes of someone droning on between advertisements backed up by video clips and sound bites.

    "Hey! Who grabbed my ass?"

  • This system is broken. (Score:4, Funny)

    by ChrisNowinski (606426) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:46PM (#4858274) Homepage
    If it means your computer broadcasts other peoples voices on your computer, imagine what damage would be caused by someone reading breaking news stories for a day or two (getting trust), and then screaming out stories like "I spanked your mom! GOATSE!" all day.

    Much like slashdot, actually.

  • Why audio? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by g4dget (579145) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:47PM (#4858281)
    Putting together a good news story with audio is much harder than writing. Why not start with a "credibility system" for text?

  • REALLY annoying spam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nsample (261457) <nsample@@@stanford...edu> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:48PM (#4858287) Homepage


    For better or worse (almost certainly worse), spammers will target this sort of medium with a fury. It's a medium for open *audio* transmissions... it's like telemarketing, sans feedback.

    Hopefully there will be an additional decision metric that allows users to selectively change their rankings for messages that they've listened to. If I like something, I want to give it a +1 regardless of which ID it came from! Then again, spammers want the capability to do the same thing.


    *sigh*

  • Hmm..like Kazaa (or other P2P) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PFactor (135319) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:48PM (#4858292) Journal
    I think that crackdowns on P2P-ers will be dramatically smaller than what will happen to those that use this. Once people start using this to "publish" information that [insert evil government of choice here] doesn't want widely publicized, expect all hades to break loose.

    Add the "traditional" news outlets (who aren't nearly as flexible and fast moving as they'd like to believe) into the fray and you have tons of people in whose best interest it is that this never take off.

    Of course, all the above reasons are why I absolutely LOVE this idea!

  • Feel my antipopulist contempt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sam_handelman (519767) <skh2003 AT columbia DOT edu> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:49PM (#4858294) Homepage Journal
    I see two ways this could work, depending on how most people configure themselves.

    1) The plurality opinion, among those who care enough to broadcast, dominates what is "credible." Aliens kidnap people. School prayer should be mandatory. The list goes on. The internet is already like this.

    2) The service fragments into cliques. You only hear from people who agree with you. Within any given clique, whatever you already believe to be true - this is credible. Nothing else is. The internet is already like this.

    The big advantage to this is that it will give anti-p2p lawyers brain hemmorhages. As soon as p2p is a delivery vehicle, even secondarily, for political speech, it is sacrosanct. Untouchable. Yippee.

  • Uses? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by johnthorensen (539527) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:50PM (#4858306)
    As far as I can tell, actual real-life uses for this are not really in the area of getting the daily news. Rather, it seems better suited to "man-on-the-street" type coverage where unfamiliar parties are thrown together. Perhaps some types of urban warfare??? It's not so hard to envision trust metrics changing based on the consortium-of-the-week in some third-world environment where transmissions need to be made in the clear but some sort of filter is necessary and identity verification is important.

    -JT

  • Great Concept except... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Torinaga-Sama (189890) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:52PM (#4858320) Homepage Journal
    I barely trust people who make a living on knowing what they are talking about.

    Maybe I don't understand the underlying concept, but it sounds kinda like a big game of telephone.

    Also what good is a source that cannot be identified outright? How will this get us unfiltered news when the you have to filter everything (in your head) for truth or logic?

    If I miss the point please explain as this has piqued my interest.

  • In theory, this sounds great (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ekrout (139379) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @05:52PM (#4858326) Journal
    But who are we kidding, people?

    We have seen how long it's taken Linux and its related applications to gain acceptance. When Microsoft executives aren't crying to the press about us "communists" as we've been labelled, we find Linux getting a bad name for itself by information technology research groups like Gardner and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

    Decentralized news seems nice, but that's until one thinks about financing such an endeavor.

    I ask you now, in front of your friends and peers:

    - Who will pay the on-air personalities?
    - Who will pay the reporters?
    - Who would write code updates for free?
    - Who would prevent Digital Rights Management (DRM) from becoming the black plague of Decentralized News Services (DNS)?

    There are so many great ideas out there, people. So many. And I wish they could all succeed, but the hard facts and Lady Luck don't seem to be on the side of those who ignore capitalistic principles.

    This is America. It's not East Germany circa 1940. It's not China under Mao. It's America under George W. Bush, and "because it's cool and geeky" just doesn't cut it anymore.

    Money talks, the economy sucks, and free-spirited software movements are on the out and out.

  • I don't see what the value is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bittmann (118697) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:01PM (#4858395) Journal
    I mean, think of it this way...

    So we have the opportunity to pick up "news" that is placed in front of us by people who are unaccountable for the veracity of the facts they present, who are driven by their own agendas, who are shamelessly self-promoting, who in some cases are not experienced nor educated in the subjects on which they report, and who are unlikely to hesitate before reporting information that is confidential, damaging, endangering, or even (legally) secret.

    On the other hand, we could get our news from "Web of Trust"...

    (grin)
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Sounds interesting (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi (554944) <teamhasnoiNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:02PM (#4858406) Homepage Journal
    Might be a good way for musicians to distribute music, and vote the cream to the top.
    But people *reading* their news? I can barely stand listening to regular people talk (Here in MN).

    God forbid someone from Minnesota reads the news.

    "YAAAAAAA...tudayee its reahl col, yah. Daah Nord Chore got some wedder 'day. Yahh. Dat 'torm waz ah reahl bigun, donchaa know...YAAAAAAAAAAAAA it wahz..." *Shudder*

    Perhaps we can just make it text-based.

  • [ More Links to Decentralized News Projects ] (Score:4, Informative)

    by ekrout (139379) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:05PM (#4858430) Journal

    I've been reading about decentralized news for quite awhile now and have been waiting for some real, concrete results/products to be released. As such, here are some of my Mozilla bookmarks from my Decentralized News folder. Please enjoy!

    infoAnarchy || Comments || The Circle: a new decentralized search ... [infoanarchy.org]
    ... Gossip: This is a decentralized news service, with a trust system kind of
    like Advogato. Nodes on the network swap gossip with their friends. ...
    www.infoanarchy.org/comments/ 2002/1/15/82223/3481?pid=1 - 12k - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    Scripting News [userland.com]
    ... Call us cockroaches if you want, I'm sure IBM thought Apple, Microsoft and Intel
    were cute and dirty too, but distributed and decentralized news is rapidly ...
    scriptingnews.userland.com/backIssues/2002/02/15 - 25k - Dec. 9, 2002 - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    Research News: TVC Alert, 31 May 2002 [virtualchase.com]
    ... Before summarizing software available for reading RSS/XML news feeds (end of article),
    the author opines about the value of decentralized news or information ...
    www.virtualchase.com/tvcalert/may02/31may02.html - 38k - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    Hoosier Review [hoosierreview.com]
    ... used to their privileges as brokers of information in a top-down world, threatened
    by the rise of new, bizarre, egalitarian and decentralized news sources? ...
    www.hoosierreview.com/musgrave10.html - 12k - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    Netizens Info [columbia.edu]
    ... Non-electronic Reference Sources. Bellovin, Steve M. and Mark Horton, USENET
    - A Distributed Decentralized News System, an unpublished manuscript, 1985. ...
    www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CMC/netizen_thoughts.ht ml - 11k - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netizen_thoughts.txt [columbia.edu]
    ... and future of the data highway Non-electronic Reference Sources Bellovin, Steve
    M. and Mark Horton, USENET - A Distributed Decentralized News System, an ...
    8k - Cached [216.239.51.100]
    [ More results from www.columbia.edu [slashdot.org] ]

    MetaLog [larkfarm.com]
    ... just recycled news from major outlets. But what the weblogs did do
    was provide a decentralized news source. At a time when all of ...
    www.larkfarm.com/metalog.asp - 18k - Dec. 9, 2002 -

    Michael Barone [jewishworldreview.com]
    ... years ago. That's how it's bound to be in a country with increasingly
    decentralized news media and a fragmented electorate. The ...
    www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/barone100300.a sp - 17k - Dec. 9, 2002 - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    SubIntSoc.net: The Suboctagon Report - The Center Cannot Hold, ... [subintsoc.net]
    ... Another example: personal video cameras. People on the streets with cameras formed
    a decentralized news-gathering system that the TV networks couldn't match. ...
    subintsoc.net/suboctagon_20011121.php - 39k - Dec. 9, 2002 - Cached [216.239.51.100]

    Wired Online: Brain Tennis [lycos.com]
    ... Or will the many-to-many nature of the Net lead to self-correcting, decentralized
    news media that nobody owns and everybody contributes to? ...
    hotwired.lycos.com/braintennis/96/23/index2a.htm l - 11k -

  • Signal-to-noise? (Score:1)

    by SerialHistorian (565638) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:08PM (#4858456)
    How would people be able to filter out what's signal and what's just plain noise?

  • OGG.DLL Where? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by yelligsc (451575) <yelligsc@nOSpAM.msu.edu> on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:17PM (#4858506)

    Alright.. Im stupid. I tried to install this thing, but it keeps complaining about not having an OGG.DLL. Where can I get it?

    Scott.

  • Keys Are Just Changing Hands (Score:4, Insightful)

    by limekiller4 (451497) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:23PM (#4858536) Homepage
    From the site [wearlab.de]:
    You want to hear news every 10 minutes? Fine.
    You want to hear only one minute each hour? Also fine.
    You want to hear the news as soon as possible? Why not.
    You want news from another country? Who does not.
    You want news from a specific person? Go ahead.
    You want to know about a specific topic? Sure.
    You want news you can trust in? That is our business.

    Yeah, it's the last item that bugs me. Trust is still being vested in someone to create the trust model.

    Someone has to be holding the keys and the keys here are the weights. For example, the rate of trust decay could be increased to marginalize the "small reporter." I'm not suggesting that these guys are some ill-intentioned neer-do-well's, I'm just suggesting that keys of power are merely being shifted, not eliminated.

    Frankly, if I'm wrong, someone PLEASE speak up and tell me why. I've never wanted to be so wrong in my life. =)

  • Reminds me of someone I know... (Score:4, Funny)

    by slipgun (316092) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:32PM (#4858587)
    Everyone has the possibility to be a reporter, no filtering publisher is required...

    Sounds like a great place for Jon Katz.

  • keep 'portable' in mind (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:34PM (#4858607)
    I have read most of the posts here, and most of you don't realize that this was made with 'wearable' in mind. Meaning that you have a slow connection to the internet, and a quick connection to the intranet. Let me give you an example. You have a wearable device that has a 128kbps uplink (think cellmodem) and you have an IR port on your shoulder that can communicate with other people within the line of sight at 4mb/sec. With this system, your buddy who listens to the radio can record and re-distribute the stories to his buddies over the IR link. If you bump into them during the day, you could instantly be updated on the latest news.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • heh (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by zapfie (560589) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:36PM (#4858615)
    Someone needs to introduce the webmaster of that site to the wonderful concept of TURNING OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK KEY. SO THE WHOLE PAGE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THIS.
    • Re:heh by Pretzalzz (Score:1) Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:00PM

  • As a news editor I say... (Score:2)

    by NewtonsLaw (409638) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:05PM (#4858795)
    I have to say that I echo the concerns that others have expressed over the reliability and veracity of news reports filed through an informal network of uncertified sources.

    News that you can't rely on to be timely *and* accurate is worse than no news at all.

    The big problem is that the immediacy (and high levels of competition) of news on the Net puts enormous pressure on publishers to be "first" with a breaking story and I've already witnessed numerous instances where this has resulted in even the "big names" getting their facts wrong.

    There are three factors that a news organization needs to be successful:

    1. Timeliness
    2. Accuracy
    3. Credibility

    Without the first two, you don't get the third -- but without the third, the first two are squandered.

  • perhaps (Score:1)

    by Now15 (9715) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:27PM (#4858949) Homepage
    APPARENTLY THE AUDIO QUALITY DECAYS ALONG WITH ITS CREDIBILITY, WHICH IS WHY IT'S NECESSARY TO SHOUT OUT EVERYTHING...

    --
    Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    Therefore, I have to pad my mildly chucklable reply with somewhat less funny text... honk honk!
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • If anyone wants to have a television channel (Score:2, Insightful)

    by inerte (452992) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:32PM (#4858965) Homepage Journal
    Start an *internet* one.

    Simple: Use P2P and magnet links to distribute content. Have a bunch of online friends, say, 20, produce content. Then post a magnet link with the video. You can have weekly news, comments, animation, movies, whatever you want.

    It's possible, today, to start your own video distribution system. You can call it "video-blog" too, or "vilog".

  • Wha? Installation? (Score:1)

    by gando (3647) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @07:51PM (#4859074)
    Did anyone try to install this?

    I had a hell of a time, and you have to configure most of it by hand (re: pull out your editor and hit the conf files). I'm not usually against this sort of thing, being a System Admin, but geeeeesh.

    Granted I went the lame way out with Winders, but geeeeesh.

    Anyone have any luck?

  • Last line from the website (Score:1)

    by spoco2 (322835) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @10:19PM (#4859797) Homepage
    "the servers are only stupid data stores"

    So... does that mean they store data and are stupid, or they store data that is stupid?

    If it's the latter, I wanna have a look-see, cause I'm always up for a bit of stupid data viewing.

  • And this is different to... (Score:1)

    by mattax (251921) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @10:19PM (#4859803)
    http://radio.oneworld.net/ is a fairly similar concept, and has been going for a while.

  • Win32 version & winamp plugin (Score:1)

    by anon757 (265661) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @10:51PM (#4859944)
    Has anyone actually got the Win32 version to work? I've finally got it to the point where fetchnews will download the news items, but whenever I try to select the plugin in Winamp, it crashes. I downloaded Winamp3 and can listen to each individual item by dragging it into the player, but V3 doesn't appear to support plugins the same so I don't know how to use the plugin there.

    Also, the documentation for the win32 install is horrid. I'd be happy to help with that if I could ever get this thing to work!

  • 80% of what (Score:1)

    by cyril3 (522783) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @11:00PM (#4859981)
    I don't get it. I believe 80% of what mr A tells me and he believes 50% of what Mr C tells him so I can accept (or not) something from Mr C via Mr B at 40 % level of confidence.

    Isn't my 80% level of confidence based largely on whether Mr A has been wrong in the past which might be related to his believing Mr C or people like him. Don't I double count if I add Mr C to the mix.

    I mean I trust Mr B not to lie to me but I'm not sure about people he hears things from.

    I think I'll stick to the regular channels. At least I'm sure that they're lying to me except for the bits that can be checked.

  • Quit the screaming! (Score:1)

    by mlk (18543) <michael.lloyd.le ... il.com ['gma' in> on Wednesday December 11 2002, @12:43AM (#4860347) Homepage Journal
    Or turn the caps key of, god dam it!

  • Last Post! (Score:1)

    by alpg (613466) on Tuesday December 24 2002, @05:09PM (#4954526) Homepage
    The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market
    award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal
    gesture by the individual to himself.
    -- John Kenneth Galbraith, "Annals of an Abiding Liberal"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

  • Re:completely off topic (Score:1)

    by GigsVT (208848) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @06:39PM (#4858631) Journal
    Mod this down.

    GigsVT's Latest 24 of 3201 Comments

    Carpe:
    You can put me in as number 4 on your list of prolific posters. Of course, instead of running that spider, if you would have asked one of the staff nicely, I'm sure they would have run "SELECT * FROM users WHERE commentsposted > 3000 SORT BY commentsposted DESC LIMIT 10"... It would have saved everyone a lot of time and bandwidth. Now that you have pissed them off, it's not likely they will be too receptive.

    [ Parent ]

  • Re:This is amazingly important (Score:1)

    by mattax (251921) on Tuesday December 10 2002, @10:10PM (#4859763)
    If Americans wanted good, unbiased broadcast news, they'd all subscribe to PBS and NPR affiliates. Or even watch public access TV.

    The thing is, most people who have a clue about the media prefer text to get info. This is partially because text is cheap and so the unpopular truthtellers use it to stay in business, but also because it's the easist to skim, re-read and archive.

    If we are to get many-to-many broadcast media, then I see it growing from the existing many-to-many text media. /. Radio is here now if you use an RDF text-to-speach reader. At the moment it's only easy to do headlines, but you could do whole threads or the messages with high scores if you really wanted to.

    You could do something similar with other boards and newsgroups.

    But for it to really take off, text-to-speach software has to improve, or someone has to pay for someone to read it.
    [ Parent ]
  • 15 replies beneath your current threshold.

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