The resume of ELIZABETH (LIZ, LISA) BRADY CABOT WINSLOW, is possibly one of the most remarkable documents of the life and work of this woman. It in fact may the the only document of her life and work. Although her original site has been removed, internet archivists have preserved it here. RHZ would be honored to have some programming or technical collaboration from Elizabeth.
The Podcast revolution has very kindly built a bridge to RHZRadio’s back door. You may now subscribe to our retrospective programming using iPodder! The subscription link for the retrospective program is here:
rhzradio_podcast.rss
Here’s how we look in the player:
We would have published this sooner had we known how easy Adam and the crew at iPodder has made podcasting. And it’s lemony-fresh too!
There is a list of other compatible podcast clients here.
RHZRadio is a system composed of four interdependent components:
Micro-radio transmitters
Program schedule
Distributed filesystem
Synchronized nodes
The transmitters are inexpensive radios designed to operate within FCC regulations. Several of these transmitters broadcasting in proximity will be able to saturate a slice of the radio spectrum. It is an expressed goal that participation in the RHZRadio network be available to all regardless of social class. Transmitter kits are available from online retailers starting at $30US.
The program schedule has been built using open source software which runs on all modern platforms (OSX, Windows, Linux, etc.). After the audio files have been collected, they are encoded using MPEG-1 compression (with LAME, an open-source MP3 encoder) with appropriate settings (monaural, 44.1k sample rate, etc.). ID3 tags include information about the artist, the title of the piece, and the broadcast time. The length of each file is calculated by custom code, RHZRadio station identifiers are inserted, and the program is uploaded to the server with an XML file describing the day’s schedule. This XML file is parsed by various client scripts, most visibly on the RHZRadio schedule page (http://rhzradio.org/schedule.htm). Separate RSS feeds are also included so that the program is pushed to people using news-readers and aggregators. The broadcast stream may be received by any browser with the Flash plugin, or to clients such as iTunes and Winamp.
We have just founded a Sourceforge project to distribute the scheduler to anyone who want to start their own radio station. As with other open-source projects, improvements are solicited from the community of participants.
The next phase of the project will introduce a distributed filesystem. RHZRadio has demonstrated a flaw in streaming radio: the more popular the broadcast, the less signal is available to listeners. We have calculated that our server may accommodate up to 100 concurrent listeners, far fewer than we require. The distributed filesystem removes this constraint. Each listener also a file distributor, shifting the stream away from a central source. Bittorrent-style distribution ensures that the stream is shared as it is consumed.
We will continue to decentralize RHZRadio with two exceptions. Scheduling and distribution. Content will be submitted to program managers for scheduling. Also the seeding / tracking of files will be managed centrally from rhzradio.org.
The fourth phase of the project calls for the synchronization of broadcasting nodes. Transmission synchronization propagates signal in the same way that radio repeaters carry public radio stations. Using this method, we predict that a density of 1 node per city block will be enough to generate a strong local signal. For example, 100 RHZRadio nodes could saturate AM1680 for lower Manhattan. We are now investigating the practicality of synchronizing transmissions to VLF time signal broadcasts.
Description sent to SourceForge.net for public display
The RHZ Amateur Radio Network is a participatory experiment aiming to create the possibility of a legal, publicly owned and operated broadcast radio that is built like a peer to peer network.
Description sent to SourceForge.net staff for registration purposes
RHZRadio includes software for scheduling radio broadcasts similar to Frequency Clock (a mechanism to control FM transmitters over the Internet, http://openfc.sf.net/ ) and distributes programming by bittorrent-style peer networks (compare Peercast, http://peercast.org/). RHZRadio extends these projects in four important ways:
1. Making each receiver into a broadcaster
2. Distributing advance programming between peers
3. Synchronizing broadcast between broadcasters
4. Promoting legal radio broadcasts
RHZRadio solves the crisis of bandwidth by distributing the programming to peer nodes before broadcast. Each file is seeded and disseminated four hours in advance. This builds a 240Mb buffer which is steadily distributed by each node as it is consumed.
RHZRadio adds time-code to foster precisely synchronized transmissions. This makes possible the accumulation of signal on a particular radio frequency. Each packet is tagged with time-code which is synchronized to the VLF time signal broadcasts and then broadcast in precise sync with its neighbors. I am not aware of any software projects using this approach.
Many projects of this kind have been created to facilitate Pirate Radio broadcasts. RHZRadio differs in that it is designed to command a piece of radio spectrum within the allowance of FCC code Part 15 which allows unlicensed broadcasts up to 1/40 watt. Broadcasts of this kind may reach two blocks with an appropriate antenna. Commanding part of the spectrum requires density of one 1/40 watt transmitter per block. For example, 100 broadcasting nodes would be required to command AM1680 in lower Manhattan.
Software produced by this project will include everything necessary to participate in the RHZRadio network. That includes uploading and scheduling programming as well as the p2p distribution software and VLF time signal synchronization. Also included will include everything needed to build a broadcasting node for under $50US.
Contact Doug Goodwin for more information, or go to http://rhzradio.org/.
dgoodwin at rhzradio dot net
Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing fame, just written a paper on how DRM will affect the developing world. It’s called “Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world,” and it was written for an International Telecommunications Union report on DRM that is aimed at telecoms regulators in national governments around the world who are trying to figure out which DRM to adopt.
A number of distinguished Non-Governmental Organizations have signed onto the paper—if your organization is interested in singing on, please email him.
The “DRM hypothesis” is that the public is dishonest, and will do dishonest things with cultural material if given the chance. DRM is deployed in order to force dishonest customers to behave honestly and buy media and to limit their activities to those that are authorized by rightsholders.
For this to work, it must be impossible for a potential customer for media to locate a non-DRM copy of their chosen movies, books, games or music. If a dishonest customer for an ebook can download an un-restricted version of a book that is otherwise available in a restricted DRM format, she surely will.
But DRM is simply not very good at doing this job. Because DRM is based on “security through obscurity”—that is, in hiding from a user the way that it works—it is inevitably broken in short order and the materials that it covers are put on the Internet where anyone can download them.
Indeed, there has never been a single piece of DRM-restricted media that can’t be downloaded from the Internet today. In more than a decade of extensive use, DRM has never once accomplished its goal.
Link
via boing boing
Jim sez, “’Public’ non-copyrighted information is going to be
subjected to controls and restrictions we usually associate with RIAA
and MPAA.
“A rather obscure U.S. government agency, the Government Printing
Office, is proposing a new set of policies that will drastically
reduce free access to government information. Three librarians from
the University of California San Diego have written an article about
the details.”
Link
(Thanks, Jim!)
via Cory Doctorow at boing boing
Packard Jenning ’s Il Duce Action Figure involves both the insertion of a hand-made Benito Mussolini doll into Wal-Mart and documentation of the ensuing comical conundrums (video of confused workers assigning a value to the item, manual entry of ‘Mussolini’ onto the receipt, etc.).
![shop_4[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/yyy/shop_4[1].jpg)
Il Duce Action Figure is part of Shopdropping: Experiments in the Aisle which instigates the insertion of art into conglomerate retail stores. The exhibition runs march 11 05 – april 10 05 at the Pond gallery in San Francisco.
Another artist featured in the exhibtion is Conrad Bakker who, in his Untitled Projects series (Consumer Actions, Untitled Products, etc.), highlights the role of labor involved in commodity production and consumption.
In Mail Order Catalog, he painted and carved wooden objects to resemble functioning technology (radar detectors, binoculars, lighters, flashlights). The items bear traces of their production: visible chisel marks, brush strokes from the oil paint, and imperfections. Bakker marketed them through a catalogue at prices comparable to the products they resemble. Shoppers calling the catalogue’s number found themselves in intimate conversation with the artist, who took orders, shipped items, and produced more on demand, a process which often took considerable time. By emphasizing the relationships built between shopper and artist, Bakker presents an alternate economic model—a hybrid between a gift economy and commodity-based culture.
Via core77, via we make money not art .
Imagine a tracery of threads connecting every thing in the universe. The threads spread in every direction. The tracery is knotted at each node with a brilliant gem which shines with the collective radiance of all the others. This web is the interdependence and interpenetration of all phenomena. Touch one strand and the rest sparkle.
Joseph Campbell introduced Public Television watchers to this net in the 80’s. I’ve been trying to get my head around it ever since. I’m not alone: this net provides this medium its defining metaphor.
And so it is with RHZRadio. We’re expanding in three dimensions at once. The first here, on the world wide web. The second is on the radio dial at AM 1680 (for now). And the third…
Chris Anderson’s brilliant Wired article, The Long Tail, talks about how indie, obscure and midlist/backlist material is more valuable, in aggregate, than all the glitzy, mainstream top-forty stuff is.
However, when Lawrence Lessig argues for shorter copyright terms, he bases his stuff, in part, on the fact that old stuff is all out of print and can’t be brought back into print because of the cost of clearing the copyright to the work.
Are Lessig and the Long Tail irreconcilable? Anderson says no:
Many of those extracting new value from old content are not the original creators or rights-holders. Some of them are repurposing older material, and others are aggregators who have found ways to find new markets for material that’s fallen beneath the commercial radar. Either way, they typically aren’t the original record label, film studio, publishing house, TV production company or any of the other names that might be on the copyright declaration. They are someone else, probably someone entirely unexpected. This is, after all, the dawn of Remix Culture.
What’s changed is the presumption that the primary rights-holder is the best at extracting the commercial potential of creative material. Instead, anyone can do it: the advertising company that remixes an old movie to sell a car; the Linux t-shirt done Warhol-style, or just plain old DJ magic. What you need to encourage this multiplicity of commercialization potential is tiered alternatives to one-size-fits-all copyright, from allowing derivative works (good marketing!) to shorter terms for the sake of the remix-culture social good. I can’t think of a better example of that than Lessig’s own Creative Commons, which has already become the license of choice for the right side of the Tail, where the commercial imperative is less all-consuming.
Link (via Copyfight )
Here’s a link to a “video of Bram Cohen speaking at Stanford University as part of a series “focusing on what the interesting problems in studying BitTorrent are. The video is about 90 minutes long. discussing possibilities on benchmarking bit torrent, aspects of the bit torrent code, as well as offering a service of producing magic numbers. It’s very interesting and sometimes funny. He has quite the distinctive laugh.” Link (Thanks, Brian!)
Reblogged from boing boing
