ryan.freebern.org

A mashup is a home-spun mix of two or more songs, usually the lyrics from one overlayed on the backing music from another. The artist uses an audio editing program, chops samples out of one or more songs, and blends those samples in some sort of pleasing fashion with samples from other songs. The result, if done well, can be both fun and intriguing, as you hear some familiar sounds in a totally new context. (For instance, the Kleptones’ “A Night at the Hip-Hopera” is quite possibly my favourite album released last year, and it’s entirely mashups.)

The problem with mashups is that record companies really don’t like people chopping up copyrighted songs and redistributing them. They complain a lot and try to sue people for it. However, the mashing-up isn’t what they have a problem with; it’s the distributino of said mashed-up music. So why not get rid of that distribution? Why not invent a way for people to let other people listen to clever mashups without having to actually send them any copyrighted music?

Say there’s an audio editing program which, along with actually editing the audio, keeps track of all the steps you take to do the editing and can save those steps — essentially, a set of instructions describing how to duplicate the edits you’ve made — as a small, easily redistributable file. Imagine: you open songs X and Y in the editor, and remove the vocals from song Y, then chop a few small sections out of song X and lay them on top of the instrumentals from song Y, and produce a mashup, song XY. Meanwhile, the editing program not only saves song XY to disk, it also saves a file describing every operation the program performed on either of the songs, called XY’.

You then send XY’, a file that contains no copyrighted music whatsoever, to a friend. Your friend has his own copies of songs X and Y on CD, and his own copy of the editing program. He opens songs X and Y in the editing program, and loads XY’, and voilá: song XY (your mashup) is available to him, and — here’s the important part — no illegal exchange of copyrighted data has taken place.

Essentially, it’s an optimized macro-recorder for an audio editing program. Someone on the Audacity team get on this, okay?

After a few days of research, I’ve come up with the following potential hardware configuration for a home-built PVR:

• Inwin BT610G MicroATX case
  MicroATX cases have a very small form factor, about the size of an average VCR.
• Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard
  This model of motherboard fits the main criteria I am looking for:
  1. it’s microATX, so it’ll fit into the case I’ve chosen.
  2. It’s known to work well with the Linux distribution I’m considering.
  3. It has onboard audio, ethernet, and video.
  4. The onboard video has TV-out to serve as a backup in case I can’t get the TV card’s TV-out to work correctly.
• AMD Athlon 2400+ CPU
  A powerful yet relatively inexpensive CPU.
• Hauppauge WinTV PVR350 TV card
  The PVR350 has both decoder and encoder chips onboard, so it can both process an incoming video stream as well as an outgoing one without having to use the host CPU very much.
• 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
  512MB is pretty universally considered by the homebrew PVR community to be more than enough memory for a PVR box.
• 200GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drive
  Noise level is apparently the biggest concern (after capacity) for most people when building a PVR. Seagates are generally considered to be quieter than Western Digitals, which would usually be my hard drive brand of choice.

Additionally, I’m strongly considering using KnoppMyth, a MythTV-centric single-CD Linux distribution, as my base system.

As it currently stands, the hardware configuration I’ve chosen will cost approximately US$475 before shipping costs. I’m not placing the order yet, though; more research is definitely warranted before I dive in.

The technology behind BitTorrent could solve a huge number of bandwidth woes — and help the web more easily route around damage. We’ve all seen the Slashdot effect take down websites, even when they’re just serving static content. Why should this happen, when possibly thousands of people, many with bandwidth to spare, already have that content sitting in their browser’s cache?

BitTorrent solves the bandwidth problem by distributing downloads across many hosts. Instead of ten people downloading one file from one server, the ten people all download bits of the file from the server, then share their bits with each other until everyone has the entire file.

Integrating BitTorrent-like functionality into browser caches and webservers and using custom HTTP headers on the server side to indicate what content is static and public (can be shared) versus dynamic or private (shouldn’t be shared) would allow everyone viewing a particular resource, such as a web page, to get the page and its included files from other people who’ve viewed it recently, not just the server it’s hosted on.

The Freenet Project sort of solves this problem, as every freenet node helps replicate some of the entire network’s data based on popularity, making frequently-requested data easier for everyone to reach. However, despite years of development, Freenet is still far out of reach of most casual web users. Integrating this functionality invisibly into a popular open-source browser and a popular open-source webserver would be a much stronger step toward solving this problem.

With TiVo working hard to piss off its customers and the FCC working hard to screw over the entire U.S., I’m seriously looking into building a homebrewed Personal Video Recorder (PVR).

About a year ago, the FCC adopted the broadcast flag mandate rule (link to 430kb PDF) which, in a nutshell, requires any device that has the capability of recording a television broadcast of any sort to respect a flag telling it whether or not consumers should be able to record the broadcast. So, not going to be home for the new episode of Law & Order and want to record it? You might be out of luck, depending on if the TV studio wants you to be able to record it.

Luckily, this broadcast flag rule doesn’t take effect until July 1st, 2005. Any devices manufactured before that date don’t need to respect it — so, if someone like me wants a good, unrestricted PVR, now’s the time to build it. I’ve got approximately six months to plan, purchase, and build this thing, and as I make progress I’ll keep this blog updated.

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The chemical Dioxin has been in the news fairly recently with the poisoning of Ukranian presidential candidate (now president) Viktor Yushchenko. What is dioxin? It’s one of the most toxic chemicals known to science, a potent carcinogen, and a poison that has been linked to severe reproductive and developmental effects.

Why, then, do small amounts of dioxins occur in bleached cotton tampons, which are placed in one of the most sensitive, absorbent, and reproduction-related areas of a women’s body?

The FDA claims that it’s not a problem. They say the levels in most tampons are well below dangerous. However, dioxin accumulates in the body over time, so even these tiny levels can eventually be harmful — especially when you consider that the average American woman uses over 11,000 feminine hygiene products in her lifetime.

Additionally, as Heather Guidone says in her study entitled Endometriosis & Dioxin: a Toxic Link?:

Currently, the FDA requires tampon and related menstruation product manufacturers to monitor dioxin levels in their products; however, the results are not available to the public and the dioxin tests relied upon by the FDA are done by the manufacturers themselves. That’s a little bit like having the fox guard the hen house!

So the FDA, trusting giant manufacturing companies to put consumer safety over profit margins, tells us that bleached cotton menstrual products are safe.

What’s a concerned woman to do? Well, in the course of researching a rumour regarding asbestos in tampons (which proved to be false), Snopes’ esteemed Barbara Mikkelson reached the conclusion that the best bet is to buy unbleached organic cotton tampons, which are just as effective as any other tampon while being much safer. And Guidone suggests that you write to your state-level political representatives and urge them to support legislation mandating independent testing of feminine hygiene products to determine and warn consumers about the dangers of dioxin.

I’m normally not that cranky about the invention or adoption of new words, but I must express my extreme displeasure with Xeni Jardin for her use of the word “pheblogenomenon” today. Boo, hiss.