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.