Is the PC-less Internet radio dead?

I would laugh, but the scary reality of this whole situation is too much for me to even find pessimistic humor in. What free country?

Bluesdealer

Subject: RIAA targets 784 more file-sharers

I have one statement about the legal bulldogging that the RIAA is Doing.

How do they know How much music was purchased in a persons lifetime?? or the amount of records and tapes that were lost. I think most households purchased 60-70% of the music they download...think about it...

just a thought, Possibly some lawyers could jump on the RIAA for that.

have a nice day
onecajun

Subject: Supreme Court sides with Hollywood to hammer Grokster

So does that mean that email and ftp programs can also be sued if music is emailed?

And what about newsgroups, haven't they noticed that most people nowdays dont bother with file sharing but use newsgroups as there is a lot more useful content there. I think it will be another few years before they catch on to this :)

Richard

Subject: Brain and CPU

There are two schools of thought on the CPU/Brain issue. The school I find convincing counters that the brain is an endocrine organ primarily with some ancillary computer-like functions. These appear to be not organized but haphazard evolutionary reactions to different conditions. There is a vast literature on this sort of topic. The main function of the "Computer is a brain" school of thought is to jerk monies out of granting foundations and government projects.

Best-Art Horn

Subject: Comparing file sharing to gun sales?

Far be it for me, a hypocritical, arrogant American to pass judgement on the views of an Australian, but just what is the point of using the gun industry to draw a parallel with the file sharing industry? It was claimed that "BIG" money is on the side of the gun lobby (I like how the author bought into the whole "big" cliche these days i.e. big tobacco etc.)

and therefore gun manufacturers are not held liable for the uses of their products. First of all, until very recently, it was the ANTI gun lobby which brought crippling lawsuits against gun manufacturers years past. Suing the manufacturer for the usage of the items in asinine. So, as it turns out, was outlawing handguns in Australia. The crime figures prove that point.

Individuals must take responsibility for their own actions, and stop trying to pass the buck.

cefoskey

Subject: RE: AMD Sues Intel

On a message board I frequent, someone pointed out a very interesting idea. AMD likely does not care if the win the case. They have some good products and are slowly gaining market share. Likely yeilds are also good and they want to move more chips. He figures that AMD throwing this case at Intel might make Intel get nervous and act like they know how to play nice until this all blows over. This could let AMD finally open up a few of those stuborn markets Intel was bullying them out of. Once they get a foothold they will be there to stay.

Since Intel lacks anything to fight off AMD's line-up other than the P-M for the next 12-18 months, this could let AMD really grab some market share. Maybe they wil top 20% before the end of the year. If they can pull off 65nm without too many delays, they might hit 25% by the end of next year. Then it will be the battle of the Quads. It will be a much closer race.

tabbott

Subject: Where's that Radio?

Hello Mike,

I'm living abroad and would really like to listen to the morning radio news from my home country. The radio signal is not available on the satelite, nor on the cable network, so streaming is my way to go; at least I wouldn't know of any other alternatives.

What I've been looking for is a small and "simple" radio that connects to my DSL router (wired/wireless) and allows me listening WITHOUT having to switch on my pc. Of course it should be possible to configure a list of stations to select from.

To summarize the features: a small radio with an on/off switch, a build in speaker, a (wireless) LAN connection, volume control and station selection that doesn't require the PC but for configuring the stations. If it's portable I could also use it at work.

I've been looking around and found the following possibilities:

1) Peguinradio http://www.penguinradio.com/penguin/

As far as I know still not available, although the idea exists since 2000.

2) Kerbango 100E http://tinyurl.com/afcsj

Looked very promissing in terms of what I wanted but seems to have died

3) Squeezebox2 http://www.slimdevices.com/

Looks promissing, but expensive and meant as a high-end device part of a hifi-chain. It is not clear if streaming directly from the net is possible without having to power up the PC (is the Squeezenetwork service working)?

4) Rocu http://www.rokulabs.com/ Very similar to the Squeezebox.

5) Philips Streamium technology

Appears to be too far awy from the "simple" radio I'm looking for

The abvailable systems on the market all seem have the disadvantage that they are rather big (meant to be part of a hifi-set, or sold as a complete hifi set) and that they still require some server soft running, etc.

I don't know if any of you or your readers have experience with this matter or could recommend some device I might have overlooked.

It's a bit frustrating to see how a simple looking problem seems hard to solve. I'm aware that many different streaming formats exist so a solution supporting as much formats as possible might be more difficult than it seems at first sight. When I talk about the idea to people around it seems many people would be very interested in such a "portable" solution. In the end it could even integrate a normal AM/FM tuner so that the radio can be used in a non-networked environment.

I'm interested in other ideas around this topic.

Kind regards,
Jan

PS: I don't know if The Inquirer is a good forum for my question. If not, please let me know. I think however that you might be interested and able to publish something that makes sense on this technological issue.

Subject: Misc Letters re: Supreme Court, Property, and Grokster

I believe the term individual is applied to the corporate entity, so there's no reason to differentiate corporate from person (I believe but may be wrong). Maybe a smart attorney reading your site could confirm/deny this.

The ruling on private property is just wrong. Bottom line they made the wrong decision. It is due process that is required to deprive someone of their freedom and property. Unless there's due process with a legal reason there should be no laws that permit government to steal the property of the individual for their own purposes be they for governmental use or to transfer to another private citizen.

As far as who has the best knowledge and can make the best decision, well, that's always been debatable. The Supreme Court ruled blacks weren't human at one point. The Supreme Court also ruled that due to one man of average intelligence they changed the law to provide legal counsil to all those that couldn't afford it. In both cases they turned around. Blacks are human, and the average man can sometimes see something that the most allegedly intelligent and educated people in the world can't.

As far as grokster goes. Well, most of the examples given were invalid. The gun was not designed with the "intent" of committing a crime. This means that the gun was designed for legal purposes not for the purpose of committing crimes. The same goes for the car and knives. Their purpose was not a design in an evil act, at least as far as a modern tool.

If these guys would note, they didn't overturn the ruling on the Sony Betamax, instead they said that to create something with the specific intent to commit a crime, regardless of any legitimate use they may have, is illegal.

The problem will be, from this point forward, in proving that the product was designed with the intent of committing crimes.

But even so, this could extend farther, say to the "intel" field where evesdropping tools are considered illegal and to use them as a private citizen is illegal and hence the design of them is illegal and now we can sue the manufacturers.

They knew cigarettes killed. They knew this for decades and still created more and more harmful cigarettes. Does this mark those corporates as criminal entitles and open them up for more lawsuits?

Maybe a vehicle could be considered illegal if the vehicle was intentionally souped up so that it could be used specifically to outrun a police officer. A gun might be considered illegal and make the company producing it criminals if the intent of the design of the gun was to actually allow someone to kill others more efficiently, hence making it a instrument of crime instead of one for hunting or protection.

Technically, anything can be considered illegal by the standards the Judges applied. For instance, the cable companies could be ruled illegal because they were selling their products as high speed downloads. Who whould need highspeed downloads if not for multimedia content and since the vast majority of multimedia content distributed over the web is illegal then the cable companies' product are illegal. You could extend that farther to the idea that mp3 players are illegal because the primary intent of those players most likely were to allow people to play mp3s normally obtained through illegal downloading.

But what if every product ever released had a notice on the box that said: "not intended for criminal use". Would that clear everyone? It clearly would show that that they tried to stem the use of the item for criminal activity. Expect to see that as the first attempt to alleviate the number of lawsuits being used corporations to destroy anyone that challenges their status quo business practices.

But surely it won't stop there. They will still drag you into court and sue you. They will use this as a way to cut into your profits and kill you as a garage start up that has ideas.

I think this crop of Supreme Court Justices were out to lunch, especially when it comes to how they decided this. To me they seem to have tried to "not invent" any new laws (which inherently is wrong in that most laws are not technology savvy).

Either way, this will be used by large corps to kill the little start up with potential lawsuits that crush them financially.

Remember when Kazaa accused the RIAA of using illegal hacked copies of their software to monitor file sharing on the internet? Whatever happened to that? Wasn't the RIAA committing a crime? Or was the software they were using (hacked or not) considered illegal by the Supreme Court's standards?

jdblaich

Subject: Dear god...

I usually read the letters but all the AMD/Intel fanboys are giving me a splitting headache. Nearly unreadable...

Surely that is a new Inq record for the most spelling/grammar errors on one page.

karafias

Doubt it. Ed. µ