coComments related to GeorgeHotelling

The music stores I've dealt wi

2007-05-16T04:39:53.655+02:00

The music stores I've dealt with accept ISRCs as unique IDs. Unfortunately, ISRC is a centrally regulated system that is geared towards the existing music industry (the US ISRC contact appears to be an RIAA employee). I don't know how hard it would be to set up a free ISRC assignment service for independent artists (dyndns for music) but that seems like a more commercially adopted solution than MusicBrainz IDs.

I think that the biggest reaso

2007-05-08T15:16:42.084+02:00

I think that the biggest reason why P2P desktop applications have fallen by the wayside is mentioned. P2P applications are at least an order of magnitude more complicated than client-server apps (which are another order of magnitude more complex than single-user apps). For that much complexity, P2P doesn't offer a whole lot in return. Sure you can leverage your users' bandwidth and hard drive space, but if you have any sort of profit mechanism you can probably afford S3. Bandwidth is a lot cheaper than it was in 1999. Plus the bandwidth you get probably sucks, due to the asynchronous nature of consumer broadband. The biggest benefit of P2P I see is that you can avoid directly breaking laws that curb what you can publish. While there are noble and ignoble reasons to do so, I think it has a limited value that the existing players have mostly exploited. There's also the question of whether the value of P2P lies in the network protocol or the user experience. What made Napster great from a user perspective was that you put your music into the pot and mix it with everyone else's and benefit from the aggregated pieces. Isn't the same thinghappening with "web 2.0" sites like Wikipedia? Wikipedia's architecture is only slightly less P2P than Napster's central-server-indexing scheme. Oh, and it must say something about the target audience that a proposed P2P SIP is offered as evidence that P2P is still healthy but BitTorrent isn't mentioned.

This is amazing news, I never

2007-04-23T16:24:17.756+02:00

This is amazing news, I never would have expected it! I had no idea that Excite was still around! (Oh, and the phone call thing is kind of interesting too).

I love the way that Bollywood

2007-03-21T14:37:52.857+01:00

I love the way that Bollywood films use dance scenes the way that American films use dramatic tension - their audiences would be bored to tears without it. But juxtapose that with American cultural icons and you have kitsch gold. The cheesy 70's special effects don't help either. But for exported-superhero-WTFery my money is on Japanese Spider-Man. That's only the intro but it does show Spider-Man's most important power: calling his giant robot on his spider-wristwatch. If you can track down a full episode I highly recommend it; sadly it's been pulled from YouTube.

Voted down for hyperbole.

2007-03-04T17:57:24.479+01:00

Voted down for hyperbole.

Grocery stores 'now terrorist'

2006-05-29T20:49:04.114+02:00

Grocery stores 'now terrorist's dream' Australia's proposed new food selling system would make it easier for terrorists to locate food, interest-conflicted campaigner Dick Smith said today. Mr Smith said a plan by Foodservices Australia to replace hunting and gathering with the Uniting And Strengthening Australia's Produce Aisles Through Retail Interchange Of Terror-money (ADS B) system would allow terrorists to exchange money for food.