Charbax.com

August 26, 2008

Charbax Report 1: Joe Biden

First episode of the new series on your Internet channel. These are going to be a whole bunch of videos of me talking about all kinds of relevant and newsworthy topics. First topic is Joe Biden, the new vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats. I try to give him some good advice if he wants to help Barack Obama win the election.

John Keyes aka Dandy Jack and Andrès Garcia

DivX HD 1280×720 3.5mbit/s: Play, Download (169mb)

Flash versions (high quality): Youtube

Flash versions: Blip, Viddler, Putfile

Intro music Blup by http://maf464.free.fr

December 19, 2007

Studios know that they are going to be toast on the Internet

Filed under: Consumer Electronics, Politics, Video-On-Demand — Charbax @ 7:27 am

I think that the big studios in all categories of media know that their days of controlling media are counted. With such disruptive platforms as Youtube, BitTorrent, DivX, $200 HD camcorders, Miro, Video-blogging, it’s just a matter of time before the cool writers and composers get directly together with the cool performers and producers and decide to release the shows directly to the viewers without any need of big media moguls interfeering and taking the largest part of the revenue and destroying a lot of the creativity in the process.

$100 video-on-demand set-top-boxes, cheap, open and unrestricted portable media players (700mhz, WiFi, WiMax and HSDPA) and other open on-demand Internet access hardware will make it completely user-friendly for everyone to get those independant shows delivered instantly over the Internet from the show creators themselves.

In France once the parliamentarians suggested to pay the artists through taxes, such a thing as a $5 tax on average per citizen was suggested, which could fund much more than what all artists combined are paid today. Thus providing a system for many more talents to express themselves and create even higher quality content with complete creative freedom.

The quality and popularity of the shows being measured very precisely through the Internet connected on-demand system and through social networking tools and some popularity and quality measurement tools provided by the state which also neutrally redistributes the culture tax money directly to all the artists who deserve it.

Anyways, it’s not I guess useful to think about this right now, cause all those shows have to stay on media giant tv channel networks for now, but I would guess everyone should prepare themselves for this probable media revolution coming up. Especially a new administration such as when Al Gore “invented the Internet”, probably could set the reform agenda on the table which would take away the control on the media from the established studios (that is, unless all the candidates are corrupt or media conservatives).

Image source: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne

I posted this at the Writers Guild of America forum: http://www.fans4writers.com/forum/index.php?topic=810.msg9036#msg9036

November 25, 2007

Sarkozy wants to ban people from using the Internet

Filed under: Politics — Charbax @ 4:27 am

Bush-friendly extreme right french president Sarkozy wants to disconnect people from the Internet, put people on a national database and not allow them to sign up for another ISP, then fine users up to 3 million euros and put them in jail even. This is so ridiculously funny ridiculous, putting the kids and other young people in jail, fine them, ban them from using the Internet just because they are not accepting to pay intermediaries like Fnac for a service that is absolutely useless to both artists and consumers.

What is funny is that the guy who wrote this law is the CEO of Fnac, which is the biggest retail store chain in France for CDs and DVDs. Such distributor is totally useless in this digital age, where artists should be able to sell their music directly to the consumers with no intermediaries in between taking the biggest part of the transaction.

What will happen is that the french will Boycott participating CD and DVD retailers such as Fnac, boycott the major music and movie studios for wanting to keep control on the cultural industries at all cost. The french people will pirate more if such a law is enacted, cause secured encrypted p2p networks will florish, to keep the music and film majors from sniffing users IP addresses which ISPs are obligated to provide in this law (even the progressive Free Iliad was forced by the Culture minister to comply with this law in exchange of getting the last 3G telecommunications licence). Sniffing users IP addresses is something that the music and movie studios can do with open eMule and BitTorrent p2p networks. But the french will just be able to add a layer of encryption and proxies to the eMule and BitTorrent p2p networks, and thus they will have an unstoppable, untrackable p2p network.

The established music, movie and distribution majors are just interested to keep their control on the cultural industry income for as long as they can. They are probably hoping that they can stay in control of those billions of euros for another few years. The cultural development is loosing out during this unreasonable process and so are artists and the people.

I contributed to Ségolène Royal’s campaign by video-blogging at http://sego.tv and having done what I could so that she had DivX DVD quality video streaming, Miro BitTorrent RSS integration on her official campaign website at http://videos.desirsdavenir.org (my videos are under “Votez Danois!”):

November 1, 2007

Ségolène Royal is better for France

Filed under: Democracy, Politics, Videos — Charbax @ 2:31 am

I was there during the french presidential campaign in France, when I was filming the 462 videos for http://sego.tv with a selection at http://videos.desirsdavenir.org. I was invited a few times during the campaign when I was in Paris to the campaign headquarters as I was working with the webmaster team.

This video was filmed just a few minutes after she did her concession speech, a few minutes after the official final election results appeared on the french TV channels at 8PM on the 6th of May 2007.

I still think the french socialists were robbed the vote by a right wing which controls all media in France thus most of the information channels during a political campaign. France has illegal oil, gas, nuclear and other special interests around the world as well as there are unethical monopolies inside and outside of France, which forced Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency and which made sure not to loose control over french politics.

I believe in a democratic revolution in Europe which could change the fundaments of the society and change the way every country is governed. The revolution will happen on the Internet.

Now I am covering the parliamentary election campaign of the Radical Left party in Denmark at http://radikale.tv.

Watch in HD resolution

October 31, 2007

I am video-blogging the parliamentary campaign in Denmark

Filed under: Democracy, Politics, Videos — Charbax @ 4:08 pm

I am filming many of the videos at http://radikale.tv which is my contribution to the Radical Left party´s campaign in Denmark. The election day is on the 13th of November and the campaign has been going on for a week now.

September 20, 2007

Bravo Andrew Meyer

Filed under: Democracy, Politics — Charbax @ 5:49 am

Yesterday something quite awesome happened in Florida. A 21 year old student asked 3 very interesting questions to John Kerry:

Why did John Kerry not challenge the 2004 presidential election outcome?

Why did John Kerry not want to impeach Bush?

Was John Kerry in a secret society with Bush at Harvard?

Instructed by some mysterious man in a grey suit, the police grabbed Andrew Meyers, tackled him to the floor, tasered him infront of everybody and escorted him to prison. This has become an Internet hit, and some people think the best quote from Andrew Meyer during that episode was “Don’t tase me, bro”.

Here I picked some more classic quotes from Andrew Meyer at http://video.nbc6.net/player/?id=157250:

“There are people that know I’m here, you can’t just like kill me.”

“Oh my god, they’re giving me to the government.”

“Ask them where I am cause they’re gonna try and kill me.”

“Could you please come with us and make sure they don’t kill me?”

Bravo Andrew Meyer, this episode is a great idea for a movie, and if he spins it right, he could continue to ask the hard hitting questions on a video-blog and in the mass media. He should request an uncensored conversation with John Kerry broadcast on the Internet and in the mass media. John Kerry still hasn’t answered those 3 questions that Andrew Meyer asked before he was arrested.

He shouldn’t focus on the police fuckups. He should focus on the change that he would like to bring to the American Democracy. He should request to have an uncensored conversation with John Kerry and to be broadcast live on American TV and on the Internet. And also he should request to have his questions to politicians aired and the mass media should help him bring those questions to any politician that he would like. Democracy should be about anyone being able to ask any question they like to anyone else.

August 2, 2007

We don’t need plastic bags

Filed under: Politics — Charbax @ 11:50 pm

August 1, 2007

Karl Marx didn’t have the Internet

Filed under: Politics — Charbax @ 1:30 am

What is a free society? Is it one where everyone can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t bother others?

Does a free society mean everything should have a price and not one purchase be monitored or regulated by a central governmental entity that really represents the people?

Did Bush get elected in fair and democratic elections in 2000 and 2004? Did Sarkozy win a fair democratic election while his oil and war buddies control most of the media thus most of the information channels available to most of the french people?

How can we, the people of the developped supposedly democratic economies, let these crooks have the power to control our governments?

How soon will this change? I don’t think that one old constitution of any supposedly civilised state should slow down the process of the internetisation of politics, that needs to take place as soon as the right online applications are put to use. The Internet should enable the complete and fast realisation of the free society, the utopy of a perfect world.

July 21, 2007

Last.fm is awesome

Filed under: Politics — Charbax @ 12:57 pm

And I think it should be politically backed not only by the CBS type of people. This could be a way for talented artists to be paid. For people to download content to their portable music players. And the same technology can be applied to video.

July 20, 2007

Questions I have about the 700MHZ frequency for wireless broadband

Filed under: Politics — Charbax @ 10:23 pm

I posted this at GigaOM. This is sounding like it can become a mud fight in the telecom industry. This sounds fun. I’d like it if you could answer these questions I have about the technologies in question:

- Is the winning bid going to be using Mobile WiMAX on this 700MHZ spectrum? Is there any other kind of wireless broadband technology that suits better or worse in that frequency range?

- How will this 700MHZ Mobile WiMAX be different from the one Sprint and Clearwire are building for next year? Can Mobile WiMAX equipment that is made for 700MHZ be compatible with 2500MHZ?

- Can one deploy a 700MHZ network very cheaply by installing FON routers type of 10 dollar small boxes into people’s homes which would take adsl/cable/fiber that people have at home and no matter which provider they use, and broadcast that signal on 700MHZ, maybe Mobile WiMAX down onto the streets and nabourhood? Do you think such approach could automatically be scalable with more than one of such boxes installed per building, with clever bandwidth throttling and users still logging in through a centrally controlled DNS login just as with FON? Could FCC force all ISPs to accept that this FON approach be undertaken?

- If this Flower Box model for a cheap and quick deployment of 700MHZ Mobile WiMAX would work, why isn’t Google suggesting FCC that they can make this happen and guarantee free mobile broadband access to all Americans during a specific limited amount of time, for example 5 years? Could bandwidth quality be guaranteed and be part of the bid? Since I think slow bandwidth could maybe be free and ad-supported while higher prioritized ad-free bandwidth could be available only for a fee.

- Do you know what the status is for what the UHF 700MHZ frequency is going to be used for in Europe and other countries where they also are phasing out the old fashionned analogic terrestrial television?

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