Dear Miernik, I have changed the topic as I think your thoughts on a new broadcast service is a whole separate issue, but definitely worth understanding.
>> There are many users/developers who otherwise have to pay money they can't afford to be online. I might have the wrong perspective here, but for about 50 EUR / month you can get DSL with a flatrate or at least some very high transfer volume seen from a mail / news perspective. (What I mean is: 1 GB of monthly traffic is nothing if you are a heave user of video trading systems such as the Napster successors, but it is more than you will ever have to use up for newsgroups.) If you go for dial-in prices have arrived at about 1 Cent (Euro-Cent) per Minute without a monthly subscription fee being paid. That is about 0,60 EUR per hour. If you count ONLY the time you need to replicate newsgroups or mailing lists (not all the time you spend on the web) 1 hour a day would sum up to maybe 25 hours a month which will be less than 20 EUR a month. If you'd sell such a subscription for 10 EUR / month (don't forget administrative cost) this will make 10 EUR / month of a difference for a lot of technical effort. Do you think people would subscribe to that service? Thoughts and opinions on this are welcome! Maybe prices are different in other parts of the world? Just it is my experience that even in Africa (I am not kidding, I am serious) there is Internet service available pretty much at comparable rates to in what some people call the "developed" world. So I did not find a lot of value in making huge investments to compete in such markets. >> It should not cost more than 100 EUR monthly to multicast that. I have heared quite different prices for capacity on Astra or Eutelsat. More like 10.000 EUR / month or even more. Torsten -----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Miernik [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Im Auftrag von Miernik Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. Januar 2003 22:46 An: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Betreff: [linux-dvb] Re: DVB driver for B2C2 based budget cards (such as Technisat SkyStar 2) On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:23:06PM +0100, Torsten Schlabach wrote: > >> In many coutries even disassembling the driver in order to write a > completely new one is ont illegal EVEN IF the vendors licence > prohibits disassembling. > > Do you know what countries these are or do you have any pointers to some > literature on this topic? I think the other part of the story is if I've read about this that this law was used to legally disassemble the BIOS of one of the old computers (it was either Amiga, Amstrad or Atari - they all begin with A, so I don't remeber which one). This was they legally made a machine compatible with the original computer (the A.... company didn't want to release any specifications). > Aside from legal issues, I am not sure if I think it will be realistic > to understand the chipset interface from looking at the uncommented > disassembled code. Anyone has any experience with this? I might be wrong > or over-estimate the complexity ?!? Surely it is poossible, the question is - in what time :) I think it is worth it - it would be great to have two different hardware platforms for GPL Linux based DVB systems. I hate it when there is only one hardware platform which is possible to use - it's great to have a choice. And the low price of these cards... BTW: I just had a great idea for all GNU community to benefit from: There is a bi-directional mailing-list <-> nntp gateway at http://gmane.org/ They will offer feeds for anyone who wants in the near future. It would be great to take such feed, and: Buy some bandwith on a satellite service, and transmitt all the groups multicast, so everyone who has a DVB card and antenna can receive it without any monthly cost in real time! Don't you think this would be great? There are many users/developers who otherise have to pay money they can't afford to be online. With such service it will be posibble to receive all the groups without any uplink (however they will need uplink to post - but that is small cost, because you read much more than post). I have looked at the statistics, and all the groups there take only 11 kbps in total, it will be probably a little larger when new groups are added, so a 16 kbps will be enough. It should not cost more than 100 EUR monthly to multicast that. And one multicast would supply it all for whole Europe. A second multicast on a different satellite would be needed for America, and maybe a third one for Asia. We could look for some sponsor, or even collect money from GNU users and developers, for example 1 EUR monthly for each user. The fee would not be mandatory, but I am sure that there would eaisly be 100 people who would pay 1 EUR monthly for this service to run. What do you think? Ability to receive all mailing lists in real-time for 1 EUR monthly? > I�ve heard that, but please, where is it? http://www.esat.pl/files/dvb/technisat/b2c2_install_base.tgz -- Miernik ____________________________________________________ ___ ICQ: 4004001 ___/___ tel.: +48608233394 ___/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] No Iraq war http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/iraq/invadeIraq082702.html Please call the White House +1-202-456-1111 or fax +1-202-456-2461 and say no! -- Info: To unsubscribe send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe linux-dvb" as subject.
