Slashback: Galileo, Backlight, Tariffs

Slashback tonight brings you several updates and amplifications on everything from Java in phones and a GPS system in Europe, to the future of Internet audio streaming and (related) near-unbelievable proposed tariffs on nearly anything that will hold data (in Canada). Read on below for the details.

The man is not often wrong. Doc Searls writes: "I wrote a piece piece at the Linux Journal site that you might want to check out. The very first comment is 'This needs to be Slashdotted.' I agree. And not because I'm looking for attention. I want to *call* attention to the CARP Report, which will kill Webcasting with fees. It's a big deal, and I don't see anybody else talking about it. Yet. And we need to."

Would you say that these are more 'puppies," "babies," or "mommas"? Vladimir Vuksan writes: "There are already hundreds of so called Java midlets that will presumably execute on these Nokia puppies or any other Java enabled browser. Check out http://midlet.org/jsp/index.jsp"

Too bad I can't get the entire Economist free just by reading the ads. FortKnox writes: "ZDNet is running a story about generic "Ad-Free Subscription Services" being used on the internet today. The review of these services is from the 'Ad Space Buyer' and how marketing execs are not keen on the idea. Something interesting to read, seeing Slashdot is testing the services."

How about a countersuit for strong-arm tactics? iosphere writes "According to an article on Wired, the judge in BT's case issued a ruling that questions whether or not the technology that was patented is really analogous to todays definition of a hyperlink. She questions how the patent, which was written with only a single computer terminal in mind, can apply to the internet as we know it now."

Update: 03/15 00:31 GMT by T : arget writes with a few more data points: "An article at News.com suggests that Prodigy has won a TKO in the first round. Another story at ZDNet is more neutral, but quotes an expert saying that prior art will 'come back to haunt BT's efforts.' Both articles agree that motions for summary judgement and probably a ruling will come soon."

Portable Monopoly kylus writes "Roughly a month after it was last mentioned here, the Gameboy Advance light project over at Portable Monopoly takes another step closer to fruition. While the official release date is in May, the group will begin accepting preorders on Friday, March 15th for the $35 light kit, which has been officially named 'Afterburner.' In addition to this news, they've provided some video captures of the product in action."

Remember, as reader Vito puts it, that's Portable Monopoly's warranty-voiding, solder-requiring, tech-support-suiciding Gameboy Advance internal lighting kit. :) Your own risk, et cetera.

This goes beyond disputes about how to spell "meter." meehawl writes with an update on the European Union's plans for a GPS workalike system, which we had previously reported had been scrapped.

"So after the Pentagon removed GPS's Selective Availability, the maximum GPS accuracy is typically within 10 to 20 meters. Differential GPS can reduce this to minute levels, very useful for calling in airstrikes and pinpointing installations, and so on.

So it's probably no surprise that the the European Union's plans to build their own GPS system, the Galileo Project, met such stern resistance from the U.S., with Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asking EU defence ministers not to go ahead, saying it could complicate US satellite-assisted warfare and furthermore could be more easily used by anti-US military forces.

The EU has has now rejected the latest message from the U.S., a State Department exhortation to forgo development. Interestingly, the latest rebuff was framed as an anti-monopoly stance, that competition in satellite navigation would be good for business.

Apparently, Osama is responsible for this latest rebirth of the European space industry.

Perhaps more worryingly, in a related development a UK company was awarded the "Skynet 5" military communications system contract. Don't these people watch movies at all?"

The principle of the thing. Boone^ writes "It's been well covered, but The Tech Report has written a nice little article going through the finer points of the proposed levy and why there should be more people than just Canadians lobbying against it."

Perhaps some more apprentices will emerge from the woodwork? pynchin writes "Kyle Sallee, creator of Sorcerer GNU Linux has just announced on #sorcerer that he will no longer be involved with SGL. Some disgruntled SGL users forked the distro a few days ago -- see www.lunar-penguin.com for details."

Java will save us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let Java be the language that saves us all from .NET lock-in. Let it be.

To All Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend you snail mail and email a letter to your member of Parliament, politely declaring that you will never vote for the Liberal government, in any election, and will advise your friends, family and neighbours to do the same, unless they repeal this bill.

This money goes straight to the pockets of the Record Company. Which is very wrong, considering the amount of money they steal from musicians.

GPS

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

How can it be a monopoly, or need competition? Normally, I'm very anti-monopoly, but I can't see how what is a universal free service, paid for by the US gov, counts. It would be different, were the US doing something half-assed (which we often do) like threatening to selectively deny it to Europe... but hell, they're just wasting their own money, and making it that much easier for psycho's to use it. And for what, national pride? Hell, if they wanted that, they could do something impressive, like go to the moon, something which sadly, the US is abandoning.

Re:GPS

[JanneM]

Because it is such an important use, not only for civilian enterprises, but also for military uses, it is sort of unwise to have no control over the system used. The deifintion of 'risk' is roughly 'chance of happening' times 'consequenses if it does', and even though the chance of the US pulling the plug for europeans - or some third party managing to figure out how to cripple the system - is very small, the consequences could be devastating enough that a second, different system could be warrranted. Add to that that Europe and the US might well have different ideas of whom to cut off in conflict in the future, and it seems like a pretty good idea to have a system of our own.

/Janne

Too risky

[TecraMan]

Think how much impact this will have on our daily lives. In the coming years, GPS will become part not only of our cars but also of our mobile phones, PDAs and watches. It will become a key part of our interaction with commerce, transport and health services and will be a secure way to get location-based services (it is passive, unlike GSM location info).

With all that in mind, can you blame the Europeans if they don't trust the US government that this will always remain free and open?

Since they assume I'm guilty anyway

[smartin]

I take this as an absolute license to copy what ever i want on to media that i've prepaid the royalties on. Hey maybe this is the solution to the record companies delemma. Let bands distribute their music directly to the net, we will all pay to a big royalty pot that gets evenly distributed to all artists. Oh by the way, i just started a new group called White Noise.

Re:To All Canadians

[bryan1945]

How is this off-topic?!??!

Let me explain to those twit mods that didn't read any of the articles (christ, you should have understood it from the "Tarriffs" part of the TITLE of the article!)-

The AC is referring to the 2nd to last article in the post. It talks about a Canadian bill which would impose levies on recordable media. CD-RWs would get about $0.60 (Canadian dollars I believe), CD-Rs $1.20, DVD recordable of all types about $2, and $20/GB for harddrives in MP3 players. Think about that last one- the iPod (5GB) just jumped $100 due to this proposed levy.

And the worst part of the bill is that it states that there will NOT be any exceptions for fair use (ie, personal copy). None. They just assume that every single recordable media unit sold will be a dent in profits. This is not a good thing.

We are Pavlov's Dogs

[jazman_777]

When the entertainment industry churns out some new content, we consume, breathlessly. And we complain about the price. How many of us would be willing to skip out on Star Wars Episode II to make a point? Zero? And we'll buy the CD-RWs etc., complaining all the way home about the price we just willingly paid for a product.

market self selection

[epine]

I run squid with an ad filter. I know I'm lucky that this works so well. Eventually the content people will invent a protocol which makes it a lot more difficult to scratch out the crap.

But not impossible. When marketting people talk about ads, they don't mean the message. They mean blinking, scrolling, flashing, and all other forms of obnoxious behaviour that make it difficult to attend to anything else on the page.

This kind of content I will always be able to eliminate. Simple rule: if it blinks, flashes, or scrolls, trash it.

I'm so vehemently opposed to obnoxious inputs that I'm more likely to make a mental note to refuse to buy the product than to to be swayed that the product behind the irritation is going to solve all of my problems. One could argue that I'm doing them a favor by scraping out the ads: someone is no longer paying to have those bytes delivered, and none of those bytes are making a dime off of me.

Here's where it has to end up: the advertiser who wants to push their blinking piece of crap under my nose is going to have to pay a very high price. My attention doesn't come cheap. If I'm such a desirable demographic, pay me for it.

Agreed 100% and then some

[freeweed]

The most salient point in the article:

Perhaps what's worse is that this government program almost encourages piracy. Think about it. If you buy blank media whose price has been increased by a levy, you've got to rip some copyrighted material to get your money's worth. The artists are getting paid from the levy anyway, so you might as well steal their music, right?

I've tried. I really have. I've bought and paid for every damn thing of mine, all legally. I've also bought a hell of a lot of cd-r's, for backing up my legally made (ie: by me) software, photos, video, you name it. I've spent years watching everyone get in on the free ride, and I thought that somehow if I avoided it all, I wouldn't be caught in the backlash. I personally hate the recording industry, and as such, I've not bought anything released in years. Voting with my wallet, you could say. I've also voted to keep the current idiots in power AWAY from Ottawa each time (so much for that doing anything).

And now, the Federal Government is basically telling me to fuck off and die, because it knows that I must be pirating music!

That's it. I give. I hereby declare myself a wanton pirate, and will do my damndest to spread every bit of music that I can. Obviously the creators of it figure I pirate anyway, and would rather just make their money off of blank media, so they must not mind. The Government, having no right to even be involved in the issue, let alone taxing it, is also telling me to pirate all that I can. Fine. From hereon in, every single cdr I buy will be dedicated solely to the copying and distribution of pirated music.

Happy now?

Webcasting

[Sloppy]

Specifically, CARP wants to charge very steeply--punitively--for broadcasting music on the Net

This is incorrect. The copyright office can't do a damned thing about broadcasting music on the net. Nor does CARP. All it addresses is broadcasting someone else's content to other people.

I am pretty convinced that the part of the real reason the xxAA organizations are trying to outlaw things like camcorders and associate music file formats with crime, is that they fear competition from low-budget production, since now, thanks to the Internet, those low-budget producers have just as good of an infrastructure for distribution as the old monopolies did. But it is pure dishonesty to try to pretend that webcasting RIAA music fits into this scheme. When you're playing someone else's music, you're not part of any "creative commons." Copying ain't creativity.

And if you are doing something creative (exactly the kind of stuff RIAA fears) CARP doesn't effect you. If you're making music, you can webcast your music. If you're helping local underground bands, then when you're talking with them at the local bar after the show, you get their permission. They're not going to charge you thousands of dollars. They're people, chat with them.

All this whining about CARP killing webcasting, is total bullshit. If CARP effects you, then you're part of the problem. You're just publicizing the megacorps' products. I don't know why you'd want to do that, or why RIAA doesn't want you to do that, but I don't care. You're still just a tool.

Re:GPS - Europe gets it.

[Crass Spektakel]

Aw, cut it short, ByTor,

its a major difference if the US decides to "filter out" their own NAVSTAR over europe, which would be their best right, because they pay the bill,

or if the US activily disrupts european infrastructur - which would be basically an act of aggression against europe.

True aggression against europe (worlds largest econonomy, half a billion citizens, technolocal mostly equal to the US, a large military, nukes, whatever, name it) is something completely different from pulling the plug from US-NAVSTAR over europe.

I wonder why the US fears an alternate GPS. Only high-tech-powers will depend on GPS, dont think GPS makes any difference in libyia, india or most other regions in the world. GPS is only vital for powers like the EU, US, China, Japan and so on.

And by the way, if the US needs all GPS over one region shut down, they just need to ask and explain. Thats all.

Re:GPS - Europe gets it.

[jameslore]

The thought occurs that if America hadn't decided to sit and watch teh genocide from the sidelines, Hitler could have been put down a lot quicker.

And but for the sacrifice of many Europeans, America could have long ago been facing Germany as an enemy of not small power...

Honestly, think outside your north American shaped box.