
Competing (Commercial) Visions For The Internet Future 195
Stirland writes: "This
article in today's NYTimes says that AOL's new
plan focussed on creating content for broadband could
have cable companies over a barrel.
It tries to compare programming on cable to 'programming' on the Internet.
It's an important article to read because it gives us an idea of what cable companies' potential plans are for the broadband Internet. Given that they're not regulated like DSL, and they're the fastest growing providers of broadband Internet access, this has profound implications for the next generation of the Internet.
This article omits the fact that Excite@Home tried this 'programming' approach on broadband. It failed.
Another reason this article is important: Contrast AOL's approach described here with Amazon.com and Microsoft's .Net strategy. These are two polar opposite visions of the way the Internet will develop. The media vision vs. computing vision. The interesting story here is that it isn't that one is 'open' and the other 'closed.' They're just open and closed in different places -- places, obviously, that suit the companies' strategies. Why should you care, and what's in it for you? These competing visions are currently duking it out at the FCC under open-access proceedings. So the future of the Internet is hanging in the balance."
Well (Score:1)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:2)
and then
"This, too, shall pass"
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
> reliable hige company than one that could fold
> any minute.
A big reliable company that couldn't fold any minute? Such as Enron or Worldcom, perhaps?
When you rely on a small company and it folds you can find another just like it down the street. When you rely on a big company and it folds...
Re:Well (Score:1)
But rather than relying on some big company like Covad for the big pipe, you rely on several and switch between them
So does Comcast's "new" network (Score:1)
Re:So does Comcast's "new" network (Score:1)
You didnt have to install the software...
Re:So does Comcast's "new" network (Score:3, Interesting)
But you have no idea how many think they had to... or maybe you do, probably somewhere around 95% sound right? I received those packages in the mail and was quite suspicious. So, I setup a Win98 test box on my network in order to load up the software and see what it does. Well, that was a dead end because I ran into so many problems with hardware requirements. But keep in mind, this was a rather old machine, some 133 MHz or so setup that I picked up around 95 (still, it should be quite capable of connecting to the Comcast network without any bloat, and was able to in the past). I called in tech support a couple times to see if I could find solutions for some of the problems and basically ended up finding out that it didn't change any hardware settings or whatnot (I thought they might have be trying to push everyone through proxies with the switch-over). Now, that was just me, but at least I had suspicions. I also setup my grandma's box with Comcast cable, and when the software came in the mail she must have called me and/or mentioned something about the software several times, along the lines of "Will it still work after the date listed, because the package said it is absolutely critical to install the software before the network switches over.". I explained a few ideas about the network each time and she seemed to finally agree with me and everything turned out alright. But for the million of other Comcast subscribers that don't have a nerd to turn to, how can they be sure? And, more importantly, will they just end up taking the "safe road" and installing the software anyhow?
LOL except IIS (Score:2)
Guess right, win a million! (Score:3, Interesting)
>[
> [
Why care? Because IMHO it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the net is all about, and if AOL tries this, they're fux0r3d even harder than they were after the AOL/TW merger.
What's in it for you? If you agree, and you put your money where your mouth is by selling AOL stock short, you make good money riding it down to zero. (Conversely, you can lose a bundle if you're wrong and don't realize it in time, but with great risk can come great reward :-)
Re:Guess right, lose a million! (Score:3, Insightful)
If only we had such sane markets. It matters not if AOL is a junk company or not, only if joe stockbuyer thinks it is. AOL has looked like a bad investment for years and years. You look at their various moronic business plans that they never really deliver on, etc. But as long as old Jod keeps buying it, it goes up - not down. Knowing they are wrong is easy, predicting the moment the bubble will burst in another thing entirely.
Re:Guess right, lose a million! (Score:2)
True. But given that the stock has been in a three-year decline from around $90 in late 2000 to today's $12 and change, I'd say that had you gone short at any time in the past three years (outside of the past two weeks :), the market would have rewarded you quite well for your prescience and patience.
Anyone who thinks "It matters not if XYZ is a junk company or not" has only to look at the stock charts for said companies over the past few years.
(And anyone who wants to talk about Enron, Tyco, Worldcon and Martha Stewart would do well to look at a one-year chart before they spoke. The market is a far harsher judge of business impropriety than Congress can ever be.)
Re:Guess right, lose a million! (Score:2)
Re:Guess right, lose a million! (Score:2)
IIRC, they never were. I have an AOHell client disk for the Apple II at home...never used it because I didn't like the idea of being locked into using whatever crummy software they provided. (I used ProTERM [intrec.com] 3.0 to dial into GEnie, the CS department's terminal server (for Internet access), and local BBSes instead.) I think they introduced DOS and/or Win16 clients around the same time they dropped Apple II support.
ok, apple only! (Score:2)
Re:Guess right, lose a million! (Score:1)
perhaps you should have looked at a chart before commenting. AOL has been a a bad investment for years. for the past two years the street has been extremely sceptical about aol and its future.
there are plenty of stocks (like roxio) that are still elevated by unrealistic expectations, but aol has not been one. i do believe that aol has some more points to lose. if i were to open a position, it would be short.
Ms. Hook? (Score:2)
And there we had them, Hooked :)
I have digital cable... (Score:2)
It's important only if the internet == USA (Score:4, Insightful)
For those of us not under the control of the FCC, we may beg to differ that this will decide the whole internet - there may be something that can be added to the internet by the rest of the world, perhaps ?
Which Non-US Cable Modems allow user servers? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that the main location for experimentation is college campuses, which often have high-speed LANs in the dorms and may not be too aggressive about firewalls to the outside world, though there are also some US ISPs and DSL providers that allow servers on their DSL connections.
Re:Which Non-US Cable Modems allow user servers? (Score:3, Informative)
But then, Earthlink does offer various anti-spam services as well as a new Popup blocker software [earthlink.net] available free to members, and while they provide dial-up software similiar to AOL's, you're just as free to not install or use the "simplified net interface" and just use the connection on it's own.
For one of the big guns of ISPs, they tend to be one of the better deals, at least if you're not in certain areas and in need of detailed tech support.
Re:Which Non-US Cable Modems allow user servers? (Score:1)
I have DirecTV DSL, nee Telocity, and I find their TOS regarding servers acceptable: everything (except, maybe, IRC servers... I'll have to check that) is okay, as long as you don't exceed an upload cap of 2 GB/mo. There's no download capping (short of the DSL line speed, which in my case is officially 768Kbps, but I've hit speeds north of 1Mbps from time to time.
Re:Which Non-US Cable Modems allow user servers? (Score:2)
Of course the server is theirs, on their site, not mine. This makes perfect sense, because bandwidth on the cable is very asymmetrical. A typical cable modem segment, shared among dozens of users, has 2.5 Mbps upstream and 27 Mbps downstream. (These numbers can vary somewhat but that's in the range.) So if users put servers on their sites, the upstream bandwidth could congest pretty quickly.
This isn't some nefarious plot. CATV networks begin their downstream at Channel 2 (in the USA, 54-60 MHz), and need a guard band between that and the upstream. So upstream is below 40 MHz, and is shared between modems, telephony, cable box response, and a whole lot of noise in that part of the spectrum. Upstream bandwidth on a cable is just naturally scarce. To have more, the cable would need a "high split", say at 100 MHz, which would reduce the number of TV channels, especially the valuable "cable ready" analog ones (VHF 2-6).
Cable operators make mistakes, and don't always "get it", but they are stuck dealing with reality.
You've missed the point technically (Score:2)
Most of the cable companies supported by AT&T Broadband doesn't let you run a server on *your* machine - you can't take that nice In reality, while the cable modem upstream bandwidth is limited, it's not THAT limited. Most of the equipment can limit you to 128kbps upstream, which is a surprisingly large amount of data transfer for any activities other than distributing lots of CDs or movies. You wouldn't want to run a high-volume commercial site on it, not only because it's too slow, but because the cable tv Service Level Agreements say Look, it's just television, if it goes down for a day or two in bad weather, go read a book or help your kids build snowmen and the cable modems get the same quality of repair service. 2.5Mbps upstream is more than a T1 - a surprising number of medium-sized business offices don't need that much for downstream (though it's always nice) for the number of people you're sharing your cable feed with. And most of the newer cable modem systems are running on Hybrid Fiber-Coax - if they run out of bandwidth, it's pretty easy to split the segment, but more importantly, the cost of Packet Shapers has been coming way down - they can stick a box in the upstream that starts throttling individual connections if the total gets too high.
The real reason they banned servers was that the beta-test cities had some equipment problems causing high packet loss (perceived as low throughput due to TCP retransmits) which led to all those bogus but effective Don't Be A Web Hog smear ads from competing telco DSL services - and the equipment they were using couldn't limit individual users below the raw transmit level of 768kbps, so they were worried that they might have worse public relations problems (i.e. even lower sales) if they started having neighborhoods with bad performance because of somebody's p0rn server. By the time Napster came along, they had performance under control, so they had official policies about "Napster is Bad Evil Bandwidth-Eating Copyright Theft" even though half the employees thought "well *duhh*, it's about *time* people had a compelling reason to get broadband besides gamez for their kids" :-)
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA (Score:2, Insightful)
have draconian laws and is not under the umbrella
of US control, yet affords such luxuries as unshackled high-speed internet access?
And how difficult will it be for an american who
is fed up with the tyranny building up, to emigrate there?
The USA is acquiring the characteristics of an
iron curtain nation, and I want to leave before that becomes forbidden. Unfortunately, it appears that every other country on the planet which has such luxuries as refrigeration and telecommunications, also represses its people.
So tell me, where is this mythical land, and what color is the sky there?
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA QWZX (Score:1, Insightful)
And how difficult will it be for an american who is fed up with the tyranny building up, to emigrate there?
PLEASE emigrate somewhere. The more of you idiots who experience what real repression in other countries is like, the better. Americans are the most spoiled rotten people on earth. Yeah, Mr. Teenager, you're oppressed. Oh NO! The feds are cracking down on your ability to steal music. OH MY GOD! When will the oppression end???
Meanwhile, did you know it's illegal in Germany to believe that the holocaust never happened? That's right. You can be put in JAIL for having the wrong opinion.
Or how about France, where it's ILLEGAL to mix English words in French broadcasts. And let's not even get into the fact that it's illegal to own Nazi artifacts.
Please, do us all a favor and just stop leave. The less whining from idiots like you the better. Go live in one of the socialist "paradises".
unfortunately, they won't let you in (Score:2)
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA QWZX (Score:2)
Oppression here is the same as anywhere, the penalty just differs. For every thing you can't do or own legally, there is something here that is similar. For every illegal opinion, there is one here too. Hell, you saw what they did to the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, right? Their beliefs and practices where supposed to be legal, and they probably were. They just weren't popular and some closet-communist (Janet Reno) decided to burn 'em out. I'm betting you'd at least get a trial in Germany for disbelieving in the holocaust.
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA (Score:2)
Independent offworld colonies (in ~50+ years when nanotech makes it easy), followed shortly thereafter by 'mythical lands' in the virtual space of the society of mind. [aeiveos.com]
Depends. If you're a planetary chauvinist, the sky will be red (on Mars), otherwise it'll be black or blue depending on the size of the space habitat (4 miles of atmosphere is enough to produce a blue sky overhead, along with clouds, and weird weather).
--
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA (Score:1)
Re:It's important only if the internet == USA (Score:1)
As seen in the past, the American government is very good at creating a "moral agenda" and subjecting not only its own citizens, but also the world. Using economic & military aid and trade laws, the US sometimes attempts to apply its own sense of right and wrong onto outside sovereign nations. Just ask the EU and Russia. When they banned American beef imports, America raised taxes on Russian steel.
Just remember the American ego has no boundaries or borders.
media giants == multinational (Score:2)
Neither Vivendi nor Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is American. Don't you think they are doing exactly the same calculating that ATT and AOL are doing? John Malone, the American cable magnate, has been trying real hard to crack the European cable market. EuroDisney. Do you feel safe from them where you live?
Europe will of course be safer than the developing world where the big guys are going in before there is a mature market to crack. Many countries might never get to experience a 'net with a frontier, it will be like the walled garden Compuserve of the mid/late 80's. Murdoch is especially agressive in this area, having a lock on global satellite distribution outside of the US. Most media markets are protected in some way from foreign ownership,, these protections are under attack, being on the WTO's agenda for the next round of negotiations. Brazil recently amended its constitution to allow for foreign ownership.
So, if you live outside of the US, you should watch what goes on here closely and make sure it doesn't happen where you live.
pr0n stays? (Score:1)
The future of the Internet (Score:1)
In the USA only, thanks.
While a great deal of the current content on the Internet is indeed US-based at the moment, there is a whole big world out there that these "strategists" seem to ignore with great success. Nothing says that "Hollywood" has to stay in Hollywood (witness the spate of movies and television programs that film in Toronto and Vancouver) and Internet content-creation is even more portable. Given enough (regulatory) reason to move, much-that-matters will move.
Re:The future of the Internet (Score:1, Insightful)
This town is big enough for everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, there are AOL groups like
Just because the internet is literally linked, doesn't mean it is in practice. It's the people who make it what it is, not just the technology.
Re:This town is big enough for everyone (Score:2)
Programming? (Score:3, Insightful)
If these companies can't give me what I want, then they won't get my money. Lately, I've been bitten by a camera collecting bug. I want to get information on really cool old cameras that cost less than 20 bucks. Can they "program" for that? I doubt it.
Connections (Score:2)
Hell yeah. I'd never even heard of Connections until I got cable and saw it on Discover Science. Awesome stuff, history filled to the brim with fascinating trivia. You'll never hear about this stuff in your history classes.
Burke was rumored to have done some speaking here in Portland recently, but I missed it. Want to see him speak, along with Spalding Gray.
yikes! (Score:1)
Are we truly doomed to the mindless commercialization of EVERYTHING?
nah (Score:1)
anyway, i should go read the article now that i've gone and run my mouth off!
end to end communications (Score:4, Insightful)
Truely the internet is meant for and best at 2-way, end-to-end communications. These schemes to make the internet a playground for a few big content providers can cause nothing but trouble.
I dislike companies that try blur the line between Internet access providers and Internet Content providers. All I want from ATT or Verizon is fast internet access. They and AOL can take their content and shove it. If they can't make enough money providing me with basic internet access, without charging extra for what I click on, then I'm sure some other company will be content to take my money providing me with just the service that I want.
Re:end to end communications (Score:1)
Re:end to end communications (Score:1, Interesting)
It would be, if I also had the ability to make a TV broadcast, and any viewer who could view "Their" content, could also view mine.
So a lot of people have nothing to say, nothing to distribute, no reason to host an http service, and so a lot of them are simply forbidden to do so, etc.
But that doesn't make the internet a broadcast-to-consumer medium.
Re:end to end communications (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. What's a web server?
Web is just one kind of application that runs over the Internet. Email is another one. Napster yet another. The Internet is a peer-to-peer data communication network. You can use it many different ways.
It happens to be pretty lousy mechanism for broadcast. Just think, there is no Slashdot effect in television, no matter how many people watch a particular channel.
Re:end to end communications (Score:2)
Say you can keep a person occupied with text page and a couple images, say 50KB, for 10 minutes. To keep someone occupied with, say, 40KBps of video for 10 minutes requires about 24MB or 500 times as much bandwidth. So you see that cost scale pretty quickly, with bandwidth dominating the cost to provide beyond trivial use (notice how many service centers will give you one or two streams with a package, but you have to pay for each additional).
Re:end to end communications (Score:1)
What's really holding back netbroadcasting is the lack of deployed multicast backbone. How difficult would it be for a DSL ISP to have the gateways (which are probably running embedded Linux or BSD anyway) support multicasting, design a GPL protocol to allow multicast Ogg streaming and offer hundreds of channels of digital music (say 96kbps Ogg) to their subscribers. I would pay an extra $15/month for a DSL ISP with that and decent TOS.
Re:end to end communications (Score:5, Informative)
The internet is not meant to be a broadcast medium, nor is it very good as one. Ask online radio stations that not only must now pay high license fees, but also must buy lost of servers and bandwidth to stream audio to a few listeners, nothing like traditional broacast mediums (radio, tv, even broadcast cable and satelite) which scale much better.
That's absolutely true, if you look at unicast streaming methods. But there's definately technologies out there to get around that. Multicast is an excellent way to get over that nasty bottleneck that expensive bandwidth creates. The main problem with multicast? Not everyone has it. Its one requirement is that every device in the path be multicast enabled.
Check out this FAQ [multicasttech.com] for a starter on multicast. Read up on PIM-SM, the dominant multicast protocol, and the future of multicast which is SSM. These are protocols that are designed specifically for one-to-many applications, which is ideal for things like audio and video streaming. Unfortunately, the only major OS with built-in SSM support is Windows XP. There's patches out there for specific Linux and FreeBSD kernels to add the necessary IGMP v3 support, but you won't see it in the main builds. Why? I wish I knew.
If your cable modem is DOCSIS 1.1 compliant, then it's capable of multicast. But most ISPs don't want to enable multicast. A lot of the time, they've never even heard of it, even though it's been around since the mid-80s. It's a requirement for IPv6, but Juniper and Cisco routers don't support it yet. I definately haven't seen any IPv6 multicast enabled applications.
Multicast is out there, and it's exactly the type of communication model that we need in order to scale audio and video streaming applications on the Internet. On 9/11, an audience of 2000 was watching CNN Headline News over a multicast feed from the University of Chicago. It was a single 300 kbps video stream that never ran into the issue of a bandwidth bottleneck that CNN's own website had. And quite frankly, that audience could have grown to over a million, and the University of Chicago's server never would have known it. It still would have been sending out a single 300 kbps stream, and still reached all those people.
Re:end to end communications (Score:2)
Even assuming that they had to make no investment, they could just lock down their routers, to not just prevent multicast (or maybe a similar app level service), but to slow down content coming from their competitors, as suggested by the Center for Digital Democracy [democraticmedia.org].
While there are still a few things going on in the courts and before the FCC they don't want to do anything like this that would attract attention. But being proactive to put forward technologies that would strengthen civil society is not in the cards.
Re:end to end communications (Score:2)
Multicast is for TV, Radio, and traditional media. I may be wrong but could someone please explain to me how multicast would work through the phone, which is a unicast by design such as the Net, then I may understand how it would work through the Net.
Re:end to end communications (Score:1)
The idea of turning the net into another mass medium is so insane, I now have another reason to ask the same old question. Who would *ever* want to go back to a one-way medium? With content created & controlled by 3 networks?
CBS/NBC/ABC was an ideal propaganda machine. So might the internet be. But I'd rather know what people think than what governments think. If that's really what's at stake here, then this is indeed a crucial decision.
Nullsoft Video (Score:2)
So how does this tie into the whole AOL story? Well, some of you may or may not know nullsoft was bought out by time warner AOL some time ago. Now in addition to the MP3 technology nullsoft has a streaming format ready to go. Nullsoft has sort of become a PARC for AOL.
Just a interesting side note I wanted to point out.
Re:Nullsoft Video (Score:1)
However, the codec is just plain-old VP3 which you yourself can get the source for: www.vp3.com [vp3.com], which also happens to be what OGG Targus is going to be based on.
Re:Nullsoft Video (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nullsoft Video (Score:1)
- money_shot
Re:Nullsoft Video (Score:2)
Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
http://members.cox.net/infornography/nyt.txt
I can't think of a single AOL product I want! (Score:2, Insightful)
Are they thinking that somehow they will be able to "port" over the popular "must have" shows?.....I don't even watch HBO on television, still nothing for me...
The only way I could see this as positive is if somehow AOL and Comcast block Microsoft's attempt to own the content delivery. If AOL were to switch to some form of Linux too, that would keep delivery platform neutral....that's about the only good I could see from this.
Re:I can't think of a single AOL product I want! (Score:2)
The big problem I see with this plan is that if AOL is giving Comcast $38/mo for each subscriber, then AOL Broadband is probably going to be more than $50/mo (just my guess) At that price, it will be a significant premium over regular AT&T/Comcast broadband, or at least AT&T can undercut them and make it a significant premium. I wonder if all those people will think it is worth the extra money for the AOL experience. Will they spend $10/mo to hear "You've got mail." instead of a beep. AOL seems to be betting that the people wil pay. Then again, what choice to they have. People aren't going to stay on dialup forever and AT&T doesn't have any interest in leasing them access lines. This "HBO business model" may be their only choice.
Re:I can't think of a single AOL product I want! (Score:1)
Winamp. granted it was purchased by AOL and not created.
Re:I can't think of a single AOL product I want! (Score:2)
Re:I can't think of a single AOL product I want! (Score:2)
Granted, there are ISPs that offer packages that are just as easy to set up or even easier, but you don't know until you sign up.
I can. (Score:2)
And whenever I'm in Windows I use Winamp, another fine AOL product.
Relationship with the customer? (Score:3, Insightful)
I currently use a Comcast cable modem connection, and used to have a lot of problems with it (though lately it's been fine). I didn't enjoy calling tech support, because the level 1 guys are flunkies reading off a clipboard, but once you get to level 2 you can get some actual help. And when you have a serious problem that it takes a computer geek just like yourself to understand, Comcast actually has one somewhere up the line.
That's because they kind of care. While AT&T, Comcast, and others like them are large corporations, they still manage to deal with their users reasonably well. I'm sure more localized providers like Cox and Optimum Online do a great job with customer relations.
That said, I'm much happier that America Online has chosen this route. I'd have to have AOL, the most faceless company on the face of the Earth, be helping me with my tech support questions and installations. When I have a question that it needs an expert to answer, I don't want to speak to one of a hundred thousand AOL flunkies.
Better to have those with "the direct relationship with the customer" be those who actually know what state the customer lives in.
- Jeff
Can't stop giggling! (Score:2)
CmdrTaco@aol.com
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
Then there is the people's vision of the internet. (Score:2)
Finally half a clue :-) (Score:2)
The cable modem content-creation efforts failed, partly because the ideas that can be generated by one group of Central Planners are usually much lamer than the ideas created by a large number of different groups (even if they're not well-funded) - the anti-server policies adopted for performance reasons discouraged development of real applications, though some content applications developed by other people in the market succeeded at getting people to want to buy cable modem service (some of the games, and of course Napster). Another big reason, of course, was that there were only so many viable market niches for search engines, and the Excite business model depended on banner advertiser funding at a time that the market was going through rapid discovery of what that was worth (much much less for late arrivals in a crowded market than for the early adopters when web users were also mostly well-paid early adopters in an uncrowded market.) And Blue Mountain Greeting Cards didn't appear to have much business model at all - your mother could send out cutsie MommySpam(tm), but nobody got paid anything
AOL is another example of this - it's content that wanted more bandwidth, but that had become successful without it, though unlike some approaches, it's a combination of user-developed and service-provided content on the service's computers rather than the users'.
AOL is screwed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it, already we see on television that there is no shortage of crap to watch. The problem is figuring out what crap is worth watching, and when it is on. The solution, of course, is Tivo and ReplayTV. This solution has the side effect of choking off money (through ad revenue) to the providers of content. This does, however, illustrate the struggle that content providing services are already getting burned by.
Basically if you want to be a content provider, plan to provide a service that people will be willing to pay for. Be like HBO or any number of pr0n sites. Otherwise you will get drowned in the sea of noise that is thousands of small-time producers who are willing to do their work for free because they enjoy it or to gain noteriety enough to go work for HBO or any number of pr0n sites.
Smart money is on the people who can filter through the noise and consolidate the content in a useful way for various audiences.
AOL needs good marketing. (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL Has been taken over by the media moghuls of TW (Score:2)
Only to some degree. I know a number of people who use AOL, and most of the "internet" they spend their time on (the World Wide Web) isn't on AOL. Of course, their tastes are
AOL is suffering from the fact that the Time-Warner portion of the company has ousted most of the leadership of the AOL side of the company. In other words, the old Media Moghuls have taken over the AOL side of the company, and it shows in both their thinking and their behavior. It shouldn't be any surprise, in that light, that AOL is persuing the 'dream' of becoming a big cable company
It should also be no surprise that such a strategy will prove disasterous, should the internet survive. Unfortunately, the very same people are in Washington lobbying and purchasing legislation that will eliminate the internet as we know it, and replace it with something that represents the Home Shopping Network and Interactive TV more than it will the internet as we know it today. Should they succeed, this strategy will no longer be inane, it will be inspired. Inspired by the destruction of the last vestige of free thought and freedom of expresson in America, whose demise they will have orchestrated and profited from handsomely.
Gives new meaning to the song "Burn Hollywood Burn" doesn't it?
"Open Up" by Leftfield (Score:2)
If they take the internet away, we'll just have to start our own.
The fringe will continue (Score:4, Interesting)
There is room for independent sites on the web and they will continue to exist while they can find an audience that will sustain them.
the real issue, IMO (Score:1)
PBS would be dead dead dead if it had to compete in commercial space. It doesn't, and indie music and films don't truly compete in any meaningful way with their "corporate" counterparts. The concern is not whether independent web sites and content providers can survice. The concern is what I can do (copy, backup, skip commercials, burn to CD/DVD) with "corporate" content which I bought and paid for.
Re:the real issue, IMO (Score:2)
Gee, I guess those "Funding for this program has been provided by BigChemicalCo" announcements aren't commercials. My mistake! :^)
It would be interesting to measure their effectiveness against the blitz of ads on regular TV. Of course, the demographics are completely different.
Re:the real issue, IMO (Score:1)
You're absolutely right - they are a kind of commercial. However, the point still stands. PBS doesn't operate as a commercial enterprise, but as a charity.
Re:The fringe will continue (Score:1)
There just isn't any reason for PBS to exist anymore. There are other channels on cable that provide the specialized content that used to be PBS-only. They're commercial, and they're successful. PBS truly is redundant at this point in time and probably won't last another decade.
kind of works already for AOL (Score:2)
Hard to grow that though, with so much competing free stuff out there.
Obligatory pr0n ostings all covered in one shot... (Score:2)
-Hope this means faster pr0n...
-The more pr0n the better!
-Imagine what this will do to pr0n?
-I love porn.
-You've got pr0n!
Doesn't matter who wins (Score:2)
The only thing that concerns me is how it might affect your and my ability to post and surf each others websites. As long as those stay online, I don't care whether AOL or MSN has more members. The corporate interests all want to control whatever they think might threaten their profit streams, and in that sense I don't think really matters which of them wins these wars. There aren no good guys among them. What affects us is how much they are allowed to restrict on our access, and the only way we peasants will win that war is if Congress decides to bite the hand that feeds it and do a Bell breakup on these guys, prohibiting any of them from owning a controlling interest in a significant facet of the Internet.
Or, alternately, monkeys could fly out of my butt.
What they're proposing.. (Score:2)
The idea is simple... TV on demand, watch what you want, when you want... We would all like that. Especially if there were few to no commercials.
Second, the internet, what you're using right at this moment.
Example: you're watching the movie you decided to see, for no apparent reason.. All you Aspen Extreme people know who you are... and all of a sudden something pops in your brain because of a scene on the TV. The press of a button, and you're on google! You do a search, surf, now satisfied, you go back to your Movie.
Now even better... you're watching TV and see a commercial. Press *55 now to go to our web page!
See what I mean. Everything, in one box. No, not for us Gamers, or serious programmers, but for the everyday I-just-check-my-e-mail user. This is the projected future of the internet, and people like AOL are betting their business on it.
But with 9 years of surfing (using gopher for me) can I drop my computer and go solely TV??? That's the obsticle they need to jump....
the future of the 'net? (Score:2, Insightful)
So the future of the Internet is hanging in the balance.
It seems a little hysterical to me to say such a thing. While we should be concerned and involved in the process, companies like AOL/MS/etc.. have to bring products to market that poeple will buy. They are not the best products, but they are saleable. Products with extreme DRM or forced commercials won't sell, I don't think. There will always be a gray market for non-DRM content, commercial-stripped content etc.. Until they make it easy and cheap to pay for the content, people will continue to "steal" it.
As for
Future of the internet hanging in the balance? (Score:1)
I am an American, so I am not some elitist European either. I just wish that more people would look at the big picture. Furthermore, I would rather have 56k dialup before I would accept restrictive broadband access. Fortuantly my current DSL ISP gives me raw bridged ethernet access instead of restrictive PPPoE AND I can do whatever I want with it as long as the FBI doesn't come knocking on their door.
Business Models (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, adapting your business model to the likings of the cable companies really sounds like a recapie for disaster! The only reason cable companies are successful is because they can extort their clients; competition for the last mile really destroys this advantage.
Re:Business Models (Score:2, Insightful)
The packaging/sales of content in cable is hindered in a lame and anti-competitive manner when provided solely by the single company providing the wire. Choices are severely limited, and realistic alternatives for a different infrastructure provider may not be available in some locations.
Contrast (Score:1)
Who is surprised? (Score:1)
Second, the idea that "market forces" can affect anything is rather touching, but so naive. The corporation$ will determine what you are allowed to "choose". Sort of like Republicans vs. Democrats, Ford vs. Chevy, etc. Some fucking choice.
So, the Web was made to function, and the corps took it over, corrupted and polluted it. Who is surprised? Who thinks that anything but huge $$$ runs anything any more?
Ack.
False analogy (Score:2, Interesting)
The author spends much time building up an example of the broadcast TV and cable industry, and how the cable companies are forced to carry certain content to keep customers. But the problem is that this line of reasoning fails utterly when applied to the internet.
In the TV industry, you have a limited number of content providers and a limited number of content carriers. It takes a few barrels of money to become either a provider or carrier. Not so with the internet, at least not entirely. While you could make the case that there are a limited number of carriers, there are too many providers to count. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers can set himself up to be a provider.
So AOL would be just another provider, only the content would be sent over the cable pipe only if you subscribe to it. Unless they propose coming up with their own protocol for this, I don't see how this would differ from just another site on the internet, except serviced exclusively through the cable connection. I don't see how this model is very different from having a site on the regular internet and requiring people to pay subscription fees to get into it. And the moment that they did come up with some "killer app", someone else somewhere will duplicate it on a site that is more widely available, and people will then say "why am I paying AOL through the nose for this when I can get is more cheaply on my own"? You can't do this in the traditional broadcast model because of the cost factor involved in setting up your own content. But on the internet, this cost prohibition is either not there are greatly reduced.
In other words, AOL is too late. The internet has been so widely established as not simply an American phenomenon, but a global one. I can't think of very many other technologies that a single protocol (i.e. TCP/IP) is so widely and tacitly accepted as the de facto standard. Not so with broadcast content (try playing a European PAL DVD in your American NTSC player and you'll see what I mean, and I'm not talking about region codes).
Yes, some people will subscribe to this because they don't know any better. But I don't see it becoming the resounded success that they want it to be without reverting to the days of BBSs and isolated networks. And I don't see anything warranting the somewhat alarmist cry of the person that posted the story.
Nothing more to see here. Move along.
What really matters (Score:2, Insightful)
media vision vs. computing vision (Score:2)
I think that it hasn't arrived yet, that this will be 'something' else. Something that will superset everything else.
Ultimately I think it will be an AI Star Trek type thingy with voice commands, able to do almost anything. I say this because I can recall a old couple many many years ago who came into the computer retail store I worked in, who wanted to see the first mac with a built in microphone and built in speech capability. Telling them that it was not star trek yet was exactly like taking a lollipop from a child. They were heart broken.
Point being, there is a major pent up demand in the culture for that kind of tool. It has been sold in the culture through multple shows and movies for decades now. This is what computers are supposed to be.
The first company that can legitimately say say "This IS Star Trek" will make a mint. I think everything else is sort of grasping baby steps towards this sort of thing.
heck, If you have ever seen the film of the introduction of the very first Mac will note what a visceral reaction was achieved with such a jump in technology, even if alot still had to be fulfilled and developed over the coming year. Just the idea that it could be achieved ...
Heck If Steve Jobs comes out with something that is a legit star trek level type system in the next few years, he can blow peoples mind all over again. But I digress. (And I do not own a Mac)
Of course, this is insanely difficult. but ....
Re:media vision vs. computing vision (Score:2)
still furiously type on a huge
keyboard when they want fast input,
and not telegenic "Computer, Warp 9"?
So, we're closer to it than you think
Re:media vision vs. computing vision (Score:2)
As an optional imput ssystem, this may not be bad.
After all people can type 100 words per minute, but how many people can type that fast?
should be (Score:2)
Re:media vision vs. computing vision (Score:2)
to type 100 wpm correctly - you'll
use abbreviations and shortcuts.
Why the fuck is anything changing at all? (Score:2)
"original programming available nowhere else" (Score:1)
How is this different from the LIVE, FREE video feeds of YOUNG TEENAGE CELEBRITIES doing all sorts of risqué things that I get in my inbox everyday??? :)
WTF? (Score:1)
AOl bets farm (Score:1)
Its still the consumer (Score:2)
Remember though, in the end it is about the consumer. If you don't ilke it, stick with it. There are still a (few) gopher sites around, even though I havn't seen one since 1995. There are a couple BBSs in my area, though I haven't called one since I got on the internet.
I used to be into irc, one guy at work found out, and decided to check it out. In half an hour he found 10 warze sites, and concluded that it was irc was about. I used it for hours at a time, over several years, and never once encountered warze (or porn, which is appearently the other big thing on irc). Porn is a major force in web-commernce according to slashdot posts, but I rarely encounter them.
If the consumer doesn't like it, they won't find it. If the consumer finds it useful they will. Now you might find that you are a minority consumer, but just because you don't want what everyone else does, doesn't mean that you can't get your fix.
I don't care if AOL wins, and 95% of the net population subscribes to their service, which can only be accessed with their client in windows. Knowing AOL/TW, I don't expect to have any interest in the content I cannot access. My TV is only used for nostalga trips with my Atari, I have no interest in any of the programs I could get. Maybe there is something of interest, but I haven't seen it. YMMV.
Re:NY Times needs to open up (Score:2)
Oh, you don't want to pay?
Therein lies the whole problem.
Internet users want shit for free, because they paid for their computer and their dialup, dammit! they expect to have all this free video and news and shit!