I decided to do some work from home today, as at my place of work the Halloween activities inevitably result in hours upon hours of Halloween traffic in the afternoon. Normally while I'm driving into work, I like to listen to either mentally stimulating (NPR) or funny (Howard Stern - The Howard Stern Radio Show). Either way, it's a little break and it lets me get my mind into what's going on in the world. At home, I thought I'd indulge in the same, but I was displeased to discover that my concrete and steel building provides absolutely no reception. You'd think you spend money to get near the top of a building, and what do you get... a whole lot of nothing.

But have no fear, I'm a geek. Certainly, _I_ of all people can jury rig some solution together using this wonderful thing called the "Internet". Alas, I failed miserably. By the time I found anything even remotely similar to live simulcast, all my morning programs were over. My question is, outside of the few public radio stations out there doing this, why wouldn't all the major radio stations broadcast over the web?

I once got into a heated discussion (READ: big argument) that TV stations would get no benefit by providing their television streams over the net. My point was they'd be reaching audiences that couldn't watch them through the normal methods (i.e. those in bad reception areas)... the counter was that it would basically be pure cannibalization of their existing market and would add no additional viewers (therefore increasing cost per viewer). A lot of this seems like it comes down to the ATM argument where until one bank had ATMs, it seemed like a big cost increase, but when one started getting them, it was game over. Everyone had to had them otherwise, you'd be the bank that didn't have ATMs and people would laugh at you.

Someday I hope that's where television is. But today, that's where radio _should_ be. Radio is so low bandwidth, plus there are many places that it's just not convenient to bring an actual radio (though you may have a computer) and internet radio is reception independent... it seems like a no brainer. But no, it's massively difficult. I'm sure a non-zero part of this is the insanity that the RIAA make all internet broadcasters go through for licensing. I'm sorry, but charging someone differently for your radio stream that goes over the airwaves vs. one that goes through ethernet seems impossibly stupid. But that's just me.

Net of the story: I lived the morning in silence. Well, really, relative silence, considering I had my favorite internet broadcaster to which to listen (Digitally Imported). :)

Just FYI, Conflagration means a large destructive fire, not a large group of people. This could be useful in not making you sound like an idiot.

Got back from the company meeting today. Yes that company. Yes I work for the man. Yes, I know I'm a complete sell out. That said...

It's definitely a fascinating experience working there. There are a ton of very smart people, which I always find remarkable, mostly because I consider the vast majority of people not very smart. That's not to say they're not very interesting and great people, I just don't think that they're smart. Just like I would say that I'm probably not the best looking guy in the world. I think that people just need to face who they are. Back to the original point, I've always been fascinated by any collection of smart people in one place, just because it’s such a rarity. It’s like that Chris Rock bit… when’s the last time you saw two Indians together. It’s like seeing a snow flake. That’s not to say the place is perfect, or there aren’t any number of people who work there who could use a good boot to the noggin’, but as the general populace goes, I’d say it’s above average.

The meeting really made me realize the banality of running a company. Here you have one of the smartest and most passionate companies in the world and you still have to gather everyone together in a room (or in this case a stadium) and rah-rah everyone into doing the work that they’re getting paid to do anyway. It was undoubtedly inspirational, and it was a nice insight into what the executives are thinking, but all in all, still a little bit weird. I do love the product demos though... :)

Since this is my first blog, I'd like to use this space to really bemoan the fact that now that blogging has become so popular, the singal to noise ratio is really in the toilet. Actually, that's not even the problem. The problem is that there are tons of people out there and I'm sure they all think that they have something important to say, and it's quite likely that they do. But no human could possibly read or enjoy all the things that all the people out there in the world have to say. It's just not possible.

I had a great picture up on my wall for a while from Jim Gray's Turing award speech...

Human input data          /hr        /lifetime

READ (text)               100 KB      25 GB

Hear (speech @ 10 KBps)   40 MB       10 TB

See (TV @ .5 MB/s)        2 GB         8 PB

It's so fascinating to think that we're physically bounded by the our input bandwidth. Regardless of comprehension. You actually can't beat it, without some kind of neural input. Suffice it to say, that the total bandwidth, comprehension included, of people reading blogs is just way way below that. That's a nice bound for how many people I think are going to read this :)

Updated [11/10/2004]: Oh just trying to correct a spelling error that's more than ONE YEAR OLD.