RANTS
The following things currently piss me off:
- People referring to the recent U.S. Presidential
election as a "mess" or "disaster"
- BMG trying to capitalize on Napster
- Top level domains being considered/added
The U.S. Presidential election
OK, if our electoral system cracks under the pressure of
a close vote, there's a problem with the electoral system.
Unfortunately, it has been getting by on the reality that
most state-by-state elections aren't close. Who needs vote
tally accuracy? Not us! So instead of being able to
capitalize on the extremely close poll results in Florida
and earning the right to emphasize that "Every vote
counts!", we must endure totally justified criticism of our
polling methods. How long should it take to perform a
recount of an entire state worth of ballots? Why wouldn't
the first count be accurate? Can't there be a running total
that includes the absentee ballots as they arrive? I won't
bother to go into the issue of confusing ballots. Al Gore
"invented" the Internet, yet you or I can't use the Internet
to vote for (or against) him. What's up with that?
Napster
Napster good. Napster woke up the record labels and
said, quite clearly in my opinion: "Distribute your
products online in digital format!" OK, fine. Someone
has to figure out how to make money from this. BMG?
Napster? But hold it. Napster is a bunch of people
encoding songs on their own with free/stolen/commercial
encoders, and then allowing their machines to act as servers
for other users who will then effectively get these files
for free. By
turning Napster into a subscription service, do I pay for
the right to download a questionable-quality encoding from
another anonymous user? Do I get a discount for each song
downloaded from my machine? Is the new Napster going
to generate revenue from the time and money I spent encoding
and serving these files?
If I encode songs at the best possible quality,
utilize a high-speed DSL connection, and thus attract a
large number of downloads, do I get to profit from all
this? Probably not. So how is BMG planning to operate
Napster as a profitable online music distribution service?
All they're trying to solve is the problem of unlicensed
music distribution online. That's fine. But they can't
simply set up a turnstile and then hand the quarters out to
their artists. The users that provide the file-serving
portion of Napster (as it exists today) will (or
should) realize they can pack up their bags and go
home. Am I missing something here? Once you take away the
peer-to-peer aspect of Napster, it essentially wipes away
the technology on which entire system is based. At that
point, all you're left with is a peaceful resolution to a
lawsuit and a brand name. If Napster introduces
self-encoded files and centralized servers, paying customers
will debate about the encoding quality and methods, server
reliability, offensive chat users, inaccurate song
information, slow download times, and so on.
Top Level Domains
Be the first to register your .biz domain! Got a
.web site yet? Register your WebSite (.ws)
domain now! Be the first .kid on your block!
Wow, fantastic .. all these choices. But new
TLDs don't fix any problems, they only add money to the
registrars. Companies that have found a domain name that
works will reach out and protect this name across multiple
TLDs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Linuxcare, for example,
has obtained the rights to linuxcare.com, linuxscare.com,
linuxcare.com.au, linuxcare.co.jp, linuxcare.ca,
linuxcare.it, kerneltraffic.com, kerneltraffic.org, and
more. This prevents anyone else from being effective by
using these names and phrases that Linuxcare either owns as
a service mark/trademark, or helped to popularize.
When new TLDs come into existence, they either get swarmed
by people trying to protect their brands along with
cybersquatters trying to capitalize, or they get ignored.
Only if a TLD gets swarmed does it add any value to your own
registrations within that TLD. Therefore, adding TLDs is
not an effective way of solving Internet namespace
problems.
Thanks for listening.