This Blog Has Moved!

This blog has moved to my new website:

chad-meyer.com.

Please update your links and feed subscriptions. See you there!

Thanks!

Simulation Remake -- Update

Well, I've finished the PHP stats script. Yay!

Here's a video of the final version:



It still just grabs one team's stats at a time. I thought about trying to automate the gathering of an entire conference at a time, but decided against it. Due to the uncertainties of the (sometimes) unreliable internet, there really needs to be user confirmation of the stats along the way so garbage doesn't get inserted into the database. Screen scraping for information is not always 100% reliable, unfortunately.

It was a bit of a learning process -- dependent form elements, passing arrays between forms, etc., but I finally got it figured out. And I learned a few tricks on the way.

It's definitely not optimized, and probably a little slow, frankly. I'm sure if an experienced programmer looked at my code, they'd probably cringe or roll on the floor laughing (or maybe both). But you know what...it works, and that's all I care about. All-in-all, I like the way it turned out.

Now...on to the database connectivity inside the executable! Oh joy!

Simulation Remake - UPDATE

Just a quick update on my progress so far:

• Schema for database backend has been created using MySQL
• Currently using three tables
• Installed MySQL ODBC driver so connection to database can be established in executable (connection yet to be established)
  
• All conference and team information has been entered into the database
• 32 conferences
• 341 teams
  
• Started a PHP script to scrape player statistics from popular sports website
• Statistics scraping currently done by team, one team at a time
  
• Team selected using drop-down list -- all 341 teams are available
• Statistics scraping code completed successfully, but still need to add code to insert stats into database

That's pretty much it. All-in-all, it's been a pretty productive few days of work. I plan on adding the database insertion code to the PHP script tomorrow. Should be fairly straightforward -- just need to take care not to duplicate player stats when inserting. After that, I'll begin to tackle the database connection inside the executable.

EDIT - Here's a quick little video of the PHP stats script. My script is in the left pane, and the website the stats are being extracted from is in the right pane. If the video quality weren't so poor, you'd see it successfully retrieve the stats. Since the making of this video, I've enhanced the on-screen output of the retrieved stats by putting them in tabular format -- looks much cleaner. ;)

Note: If you're using FireFox, the video may not play completely. Not sure why. Seems to work OK with IE though. Make that semi-OK. Or maybe it's just my computer...hmmm...

UPDATE: The day internet radio DIES

Internet radio receives a stay of execution -- sort of...

"The day internet radio DIES" has been pushed back a month to July 15, 2007 following the publication of the Copyright Royalty Board's (CRB) "Final Determination of Rates and Terms" in the May 1, 2007 Federal Register. The CRB ruling states that webcaster's first payments are due 45 days after the end of the month in which the "final" determination is published (Sec. 380.4(c)), which results in the July 15, 2007 date.

House Resolution 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060), which is currently under review by the Energy and Commerce Committee, has gained significant steam since it's April 26 introduction by Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Don Manzullo (R-IL) in the House of Representatives. Strong support for the proposed legislation has has emerged over the last few weeks, with 41 current co-sponsors to the bill (31 D, 10 R). The bill would nullify the March 2, 2007 CRB ruling for increased royalty rates, and apply a more mutually beneficial and economically feasible rate structure. In addition, the bill would unify the royalty standards between internet radio, satellite radio, cable radio, and jukeboxes. It appears that unification with terrestrial radio royalty requirements is not addressed specifically.

The sponsor of the bill, Jay Inslee (D-WA) is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, which oversees "Interstate and foreign telecommunications including, but not limited to all telecommunication and information transmission by broadcast, radio, wire, microwave, satellite, or other mode; and, Homeland security-related aspects of the foregoing, including cybersecurity."

Contact your representative and urge them to co-sponsor H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act, and help save internet radio!

The day internet radio DIES - Part II

The following is a continuation of my blog entry entitled: May 15, 2007 -- The day internet radio DIES.

Another aspect of the Copyright Royalty Board proposed fee schedule that deserves mentioning is that it continues the unbelievable disconnect in royalty payments between terrestrial stations and internet/satellite radio (at least as far as I can tell). Ever wonder why your favorite FM station, with all the backing of a mega-conglomerate like ClearChannel, doesn't offer an online stream? I know I've thought about it before (the local ClearChannel rock station here does not offer such a service). The (likely) answer: It's because as soon as they cross over to streaming their station online, they are required to pay additional royalties that they are not obligated to pay as terrestrial stations. That's right -- internet radio stations are actually required to pay royalties beyond those that terrestrial stations are required to pay. Now tell me that makes sense.

I'm sure that the additional royalties are not the only factor driving the decision not to stream online for these FM stations, but it's got to be a major player at the very least. And don't tell me they lack the capital to purchase the necessary equipment to get a stream off the ground. If Joe Blow the internet radio hobbiest can stream his favorite Led Zeppelin tunes at 192 kbps mp3 using his P.O.S. home computer and COMPLETELY FREE SOFTWARE, then certainly a ClearChannel owned FM station can find a way to afford to simulcast their terrestrial signal. In the end, I've got to think that the additional royalties make venturing into online streaming significantly less attractive to terrestrial radio.

As noted above, the gap in royalty payment requirements between terrestrial and internet radio is unfortunately a continuation of the status-quo. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which was built upon the Digital Performance Rights in Sound Recordings Act of 1995, says that internet radio stations have to pay performance royalties on songs played, in addition to composer royalties on those songs. Terrestrial radio stations pay composer royalties, but are not obligated to pay performance royalties. Why, you ask? Because of the long-established rationale that recognizes record labels benefit from the promotional value of songs played on terrestrial stations. In essence, the logic is that the promotional value to record labels offsets any performance royalties that would be due. So why is it that internet radio is not afforded the same rationale??? If anything, internet radio provides more promotional value for a wider artist-base than terrestrial radio. It just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, the CRB ruling set to go into affect May 15, 2007 not only increases the royalty fee schedule, it also appears that it fails to address this disconnect.

I'll admit that I do not know exactly how the fee schedule is setup for the composer royalties terrestrial stations must pay. Perhaps they are somewhat inflated to try and balance with the total royalties paid by internet stations, I don't know. But from the reading I've done, it doesn't appear to be this way.

Web browsing frustrations

After many frustrations with Internet Explorer 7, I decided to give Firefox 2 a try. Yes, I know -- slightly behind the times again. My main complaint is that IE 7 would tend to hang on page load quite often, and once it did so, any subsequent browsing (even in a new tab) would also hang indefinitely. Only a completely new instance of IE would remedy the problem. I'm thinking it may have something to do with the corporate network and/or proxy server, as the problem seems to only occur at work. The irony of the situation is that IE is required to use the corporate intranet site -- Firefox is not "approved." So it looks like IE will still get some use, albeit begrudgingly.

One week into my trial, I must say that Firefox is performing quite well for me. Page loads seem to be generally faster, and I haven't experienced any of the annoying hangs that I was getting with IE 7. I switched to IE some years ago after wanting to try something other than Netscape Navigator, but it's looking more and more like Firefox will be my browser of choice from now on.

May 15, 2007 -- The day internet radio DIES

For more information on the CRB ruling, please visit the following sites:

SaveNetRadio Coalition
Small Webcaster Community Iniatitive
International Webcasting Coalition
Save Webcasting dot org