Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!hoptoad!dasys1!wfp
From: wfp@dasys1.UUCP (William Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Magazine Distribution (was Re: Allen Holub on DDJ & C-Chest)
Keywords: DDJ, C-Chest, magazines
Message-ID: <6638@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 26 Sep 88 00:43:27 GMT
References: <22873@amdcad.AMD.COM> <14047@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <75@unet.pacbell.COM> <5550@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <3961@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: wfp@dasys1.UUCP (William Phillips)
Distribution: na
Organization: This Techie For Hire (tm)
Lines: 38

In article <3961@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> keithe@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) writes:
|An article appeared detailing the problems with distributing the
|equivalent of a magazine on floppy disk. I have no argument with the
|points made therein.

|But you might consider the potential of electronic distribution via
|television or FM broadcast subcarrier.  You have your computer
|connected to your FM or TV set which decodes the stuff, filters it
|for you and has it stored, waiting for your perusal the next
|morning. If you pay extra you can skip over the advertisements; on
|the cheap you get ads included with the "useful" stuff.

|This is not a new idea. The guy who started Dr. Dobbs'... presented
|this - not for the first time - at the SOG in Bend last July (damned
|if I can recall his name: but it will come to me as soon as I ship
|this note off, I'm sure :-)).

|I whould think newspaper publishers would be real nervous about this
|if they're foresightful (huh?) enough to know about it.

I think this is essentially how Lotus Signal works, though I believe you
have to buy a special receiver as part of the package -- probably works
better than some haywire hookup to your FM set.  Signal is a stock
market quotation service.  I don't know what kind of coverage it has,
or even whether it still operates, but I didn't hear of any publishers
getting worried about it.  It would be interesting to know how much
data (text and graphics) such a system could move overnight.  Of course,
considering that many of us hackers are using our machines for other
things (like Usenet) till the wee hours, perhaps a daytime feed would be
more appropriate :-).  I wonder whether Signal operates 24 hours a day,
and if not, whether stations equipped to broadcast it would like to
generate some additional revenue by transmitting other stuff during off
hours.

-- 
William Phillips                 {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Big Electric Cat Public Unix           {bellcore,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!wfp
New York, NY, USA                !!! JUST SAY "NO" TO OS/2 !!!