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I'm so sorry, but I do not buy into 90% of the hype brought to us audiophiles by the commercial sector of our hobby and the home entertainment industry at large. My brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me what is real and what is not. Let me rehearse with you an example of how he does this.This is for a short run of cable. If you're going over 50 ft, then you may benefit from better shielding, but for most home people's home theaters, this is not the case. Remember folks, just because something performs better spec-wise doesn't mean it actually sounds better. Specs are one thing, psychoacoustics are another. Of course, a coat hanger doesn't have a Monster Cable lifetime warranty, so if your coat hanger breaks, you'll have to go out and buy another coat hanger.We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables [ed. Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnects] (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right...most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.
Deep packet inspection gear has long had the ability to peer inside users' datastreams to pull out all sorts of interesting information, but a UK company called Phorm is taking DPI to the next level by using it to sell ads. The company's ambitious goal: segment users into small and highly-accurate "channels" by reading the URLs they visit, the search terms they use, and the content of the pages they visit. The resulting channels are then sold to advertisers who are salivating at the thought of better targeting. Actual users are predictably less thrilled, however, and a row over the issue has erupted in Britain.
Phorm made its announcement on Valentine's Day. The company said that it had inked deals with the three largest ISPs in the UK: BT, Talk Talk, and Virgin Media. The ISPs will place Phorm's gear inline on their networks, where it will have access to the datastream of all users. Phorm charges advertisers for access to highly-targeted customers, and it splits this revenue with the ISP. In addition to offering the benefit of more relevant ads, the company says that its gear will also warn users if they happen to visit phishing sites. So everyone wins, in theory.
But plenty of users don't see it that way. Web sites like BadPhorm have already sprung up, encouraging users to take action by pressuring their MPs and by complaining to ISPs.
The story has gained significant traction in the UK this week, with multiple pieces in the major UK media outlets. The Register even had the chance to interview Phorm's CEO on Friday at the company's London offices, and CEO Kent Ertegrul made clear that Phorm has nothing to hide. In fact, it welcomes scrutiny and has opened its system up to inspection by groups like Privacy International. Phorm claims that its system is far better for privacy than, say, Google's AdSense, since the analysis of the datastream is done in memory and only the user's "data digest" (stripped of all identifying information) is retained.
The real story of Phorm is "how you can run an advertising service and store nothing," Ertegrul told The Register. He's also convinced that raising the value of online ads will actually lead to less advertising on the sites that use Phorm's Open Internet Exchange (OIX), since web site operators know that ads interfere with content. We'll see.
Ertegrul knows that he needs to overcome consumers' gut reactions to the idea of advertisers targeting them based on clickstream data, but Phorm isn't helped in that work by having once been an adware (not spyware, it insists) provider. Before changing its name to Phorm last year, the company was known as 121Media, and it offered adware services including PeopleOnPage, which would show you others who were browsing a web page and allow you to chat with them (while showing you ads).
Also controversial is the idea that ISPs would simply opt all of their users into the scheme. Final announcements haven't been made, but this does seem the only real way to ensure enough participation to make the whole exercise worthwhile. Fortunately, opting out is as simple as blocking Phorm's cookie, and the company promises that no bandwidth throttling or other consequences will follow.
All eyes are on Phorm and the UK's top ISPs to see if users will eventually acquiesce to the idea of being tracked online. The likelihood of the system staying on the right side of the law seems great to us, but only if Phorm's claim that this technology is AdSense-like is upheld.
The bigger issue is customer reaction. When one thinks back to the launch of Gmail, which was really the first time that AdSense came in for a beating owing to some folks' concern over a machine reading their e-mail and serving ads based on them, the majority of users didn't sweat it. That had a lot to do with Gmail being a win-win situation: you got a great web-based e-mail client and (then an unheard of) 1GB of space. Most people overlooked the privacy issue and didn't think too deeply about it.
With Phorm's plan, there doesn't appear to be a win-win aside from perhaps some phishing alerts, which frankly doesn't get us too excited. Without that win-win, users will scrutinize the deal more heavily, even if it is truly machine-based like AdSense is.
BT has admitted that it secretly used customer data to test Phorm's advertising targeting technology last summer, and that it covered it up when customers and The Register raised questions over the suspicious redirects.
The national telecoms provider now faces legal action from customers who are angry their web traffic was compromised.
Stephen Mainwaring, a BT Business customer in Weston-super-Mare, believes sensitive banking data relating to his online horse racing business was press-ganged into a trial of an unproven technology. He suffered sleepless nights after detecting the dodgy DNS requests, and said today: "It is very likely that I and others will take legal action against BT for what they did last summer."
In a statement, BT said: "We conducted a very small scale technical test of a prototype advertising platform on one exchange in June 2007. The test was specifically conducted to evaluate the functional and technical performance of the platform.
"Absolutely no personally identifiable information was processed, stored or disclosed during this trial. As with all service providers, it is important for BT to ensure that, before any potential new technologies are employed, they are robust and fit for purpose."
Speaking to El Reg on Friday, Stephen agreed: "Absolutely, new technologies should be stringently tested, but not using mine and my customers' data. If they wanted to run a trial, they should have asked. I would have told them I did not want to be part of it.
"I note the statement, 'absolutely no personally identifiable information was processed, stored or disclosed'. That means that all my information was processed, stored or disclosed but the personal bits were filtered out. Clearly that was unlawful."
Stephen has already filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office and is consulting on how to proceed through the courts with other BT subscribers who believe their connection was subject to illegal Phorm tests.
Today, he and a fellow BT customer also disputed the claim that only one exchange was involved in the covert testing.
Spike, a Reg reader based in Brighton and Hove, also noticed dodgy redirects of his web traffic last July to sysip.net, a domain owned by Phorm. He wrote about the mystery here at the time.
Spike and Stephen urged other BT customers who believe they may have been co-opted into last summer's secret trials to speak out.
We first asked BT about its relationship with Phorm in July 2007, when it was widely known as 121Media, a firm deeply involved in spyware. BT denied any testing and said customers whose DNS requests were being redirected must have a malware problem.
It wasn't until 14 February this year, when the deals between BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse to pimp customer web browsing were announced, that a cover-up was revealed. You can read the original story here.
BT's belated confession that it secretly used its customers' traffic to test the safety of ad targeting technology can only add to the distrust around Phorm, whose executive team includes a former BT Retail CTO. Several security firms have confirmed plans to classify Phorm's cookies - both for opting in and opting out of Webwise - as adware.
As part of its admission to the secret 2007 trials, BT also said it will follow Carphone Warehouse's lead and develop an opt-out that does not involve cookies and means no data will be mirrored to a profiling server, even if it is ignored. It follows serious concerns raised by experts on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) that Phorm's plan to use cookies to exclude people who opt-out is illegal.
BT repeated its insistence that the technology is legal, however. It said: "We are already developing an opt-out solution that would remove the need for opt-out cookies altogether. We have carried out significant due diligence in this area, and informed consent from our customers will satisfy the necessary legal requirements."
Yet some authorities on RIPA have argued that ISPs would also need permission from website owners to profile the content of their pages. BT has not responded to our questions on this point.
ISP data pimping has also invoked the ire of the Greatest Living Briton™. Today the BBC reports that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, has spoken out against ISP ad targeting. He summed up public opposition to the system: "It's [web traffic] mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I'm getting in return."
Meanwhile, the Downing Street petition against Phorm has now garnered almost 5,000 signatures.
Carphone Warehouse has said it will ensure that its subscribers are opted out of Phorm and Webwise by default. BT and Virgin Media have made no such promise.
You can follow all our reporting of Phorm over the last three weeks here. ®
All Linkin Park songs look the same
Linkin Park's singles often inspire the question "haven't they already written this song?" An mp3 that does the rounds from time to time mixes Numb (on the left) and Pushing Me Away (on the right) to illustrate this with almost comical effect: All Linken Park Songs Sound Exactly The Same.
As shown below, and forgive the hyperbole, much more than they sound the same all Linkin Park songs look the same. And while it's easy to criticize the band for their overuse of a formula that's by now cliche, the similarity between their tracks at least holds a lesson on the importance of song arrangement in pop music production.
The standard Linkin Park structure looks like this:
Here's how it "looks" in practice. Each image below shows the audio level in (roughly) the first 90 seconds of a Linkin Park song. Note that I adjusted the tempo of a few tracks for better visual alignment:
If the pattern isn't clear to you, mouse-over each image to highlight the 4 sections: Intro, kicker, verse, chorus. And click the title to hear the song on Youtube.
There's nothing particularly surprising or innovative about the structure. But its repeated use by Linkin Park is clearly successful: They're one of a few acts still selling lots of CDs.
There are several reasons why this song formula works, and whether or not you record pop music, understanding the reasons will make you a better producer:
Dynamic contrast: Our senses are drawn to change (remember why we listen to reference tracks while mixing?) so we find dynamic, evolving sounds more interesting. The up-and-down of a typical Linkin Park song grabs listeners' attention on an instinctive level.
Memorable hooks: Because it's often jarring, the kicker at the start of Linkin Park's songs is memorable, and makes for a great hook. Pop songs hit or miss mainly on the effectiveness of their hooks.
Familiarity: For lovers, it breeds contempt. For pop music artists, familiarity breeds fans. It's a truism in the traditional music industry that to succeed, a band needs a "sound." Linkin Park's re-use of the same basic song structure makes their music instantly recognizable, and lets their listeners feel immediately comfortable with new material.
Again, you may not write or record pop music. You may even despise the stuff. But knowing why a band would choose to re-use a formula like this will help you make better decisions about your own song arrangements (even if only to avoid having your music compared to Linkin Park.)
What does this say about Linkin Park's music?
On one hand, the band and their producers deserve kudos for finding and exploiting a successful formula. They're in the entertainment business, after all, and appealing to fans is any entertainer's number one job.
On the other hand, it's hard not to view the six images above as a statement on the music industry. The major labels decry the actions of listeners who download music from free sources. But this is the alternative they offer: The same song, repackaged six different ways. The vast majority of music listeners who aren't Linkin Park fans ask the same question I did in the first sentence, "Haven't they already written this song?" And the obvious follow-up question, "Why would I pay for it more than once?"
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