Slashdot Mirror

eshefer writes "With the upcomming IPO of mp3.com Upside has this article that warns Mp3.com is still far away from competing with traditional record companies since the quality of most of the music is low and sales of D.A.M CD's isn't so hot. "

deicide wrote in to send us a link to MP3.com and this story about RCA's new MP3 Player. Its called 'Lyra', and it is nice looking, and while it only holds 32 megs, it accepts external storage of up to 340 megs.

Joy! Cleaning out the submissions box: Praxxus sent us a link to an article you'll swear is a joke... a new use for old computers: filling potholes. HerbieTMac wrote in to say that Ice-T has joined the fray by releasing a new MP3 single. sanpitch sent us an interesting article about facial expression recognition. polar_bear` wrote in to say that Linux Mall has an Associates Program just like CD-Now. Or Amazon, speaking of which Sevn gave me the heads up on their entry for Bill "Family Circus" Keane- check out the reader reviews of Daddy's Hat is on Backwards. Trust me. Read it. Someone had to much spare time, and I'm glad they did. [null] hooked us up with the definitive Mr. T vs. site and east sent us an offensive dilbert parody site. gseidman wrote in to tell us about an important translation project underway to decipher the alien language used on Futurama. Assorted Slashdot notes from the world: An anonymous reader linked us to a cute comment on Neal Stephenson's server about the Slashdot effect. suprax noted that Slashdot and Freshmeat have a cameo in the current dead tree edition of PC Computing. adamv sent us a link to an interview with the creator of IMDB where he says he wishes he designed Slashdot. Funny, I wish I had designed IMDB. And Lastly, Jesse Shrieve, my favorite BSD pusher and dedicated Slashdot Server whipping boy noticed that Slashdot is up to 28 on hot100.com. We're neat.

dayeight asks: "Are there any surround sound .wav editor anywhere? I want to sit in the middle of my room and have one speaker start counting and have it jump to the next and so fourth. Something with CoolEdit's stereo split would be nice, but for all the (5.1) speakers available. Now that I have a cd-burner I really want to do this. Or maybe, put a seperate song for each speaker (screw the woofer). Can a burners even do this?"

Taz writes "The NAiAM CD-MP seems to be vaporware, but MP3.COM has just posted an article listing a whole slew of new MP3 players for the car and home, some of them are even shipping right now. "

Taz writes "The NAiAM CD-MP seems to be vaporware, but MP3.COM has just posted an article listing a whole slew of new MP3 players for the car and home, some of them are even shipping right now. "

Sander van Zoest writes "Grammy Magazine, the quarterly, consumer-brand publication developed by Grammy organizers the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) pulled an Ad for MP3.com's 5,500 Artists. " Gee, wonder what Grammy Magazine is scared of. I thought they were about music, not money. Shows what I know.

Sander van Zoest writes "Grammy Magazine, the quarterly, consumer-brand publication developed by Grammy organizers the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) pulled an Ad for MP3.com's 5,500 Artists. " Gee, wonder what Grammy Magazine is scared of. I thought they were about music, not money. Shows what I know.

This is a bit different for Slashdot, but I wanted to post it anyway. Matt Terich writes " A few months back I was guilty of slamming the mp3 community for it's (stereotypical) lack of respect of an artist's copyright. You see, I'm in an unsigned rock band and well... was being extremely defensive (mostly against the "I can pirate music because CD's are too expensive" crowd.) Of course, I was flamed... and flamed... and flamed. There were, however, a few constructive posts from /.ers. After some serious thought I posted a few of our tunes in mp3 format at our site , and then put them up at mp3.com (to give it a try and see what happened.) Now we're getting email from people all over the country asking us for CD's and asking us to tour through their necks of the woods. It's nuts I tells ya. Anyway, just wanted to give shouts out to the site. We'll see what happens."

Charles Bronson sent us a link to a ZDNet story with an Update to the story we posted yesterday about Sighsound.com claiming a patent on the sale of downloadable music, and demanding a 1% royalty from mp3.com. Apparently Goodnoise is actually complying!

Neuroprophet writes "It appears a company named SIGHTSOUND.COM is claiming to have patents on the selling of audio content over the internet as downloadable files. This letter was sent to MP3.com telling them they need to pay a 1% royalty or stop selling downloadable music." Look people- you can't patent selling a download just because it's a new data type. The letter claims that they have a patent on downloadable video as well. People have been selling downloadable data online for years.Just because its sound and not sight doesn't make it different. It's all just 1's and 0's! I'll be ecstatic when this joke is thrown out.

Josh Beck submitted this interesting question:"Hello. We're currently using a Mylex PG card and a pile of disks to run a 120 GB RAID5 under Linux. After some minor firmware issues with the Mylex (which their tech support acknowledged and fixed right away!) , we've got a very stable filesystem with a good amount of storage. My question, though, is how far will Linux and e2fs go before something breaks? Is anyone currently using e2fs and Linux to run a 500+ GB filesystem? " Josh continues... "I have plenty of faith in Linux (over half our servers are Linux, most of the rest are FreeBSD), but am concerned that few people have likely attempted to use such a large FS under Linux...the fact that our 120 GB FS takes something like 3 minutes to mount is a bit curious as well, but hey, how often do you reboot a Linux box?"

Richard Hestilow writes " MP3.com has a couple of recent articles on IP and its affect on music. The first article, The Future Of Music , relates mp3s to free software and describes the threat IP presents to music. In response, MP3.com posted another article, How Free is Free Music? , which states that from now on each download page will have an appropriate copyright notice appended. "

Richard Hestilow writes " MP3.com has a couple of recent articles on IP and its affect on music. The first article, The Future Of Music , relates mp3s to free software and describes the threat IP presents to music. In response, MP3.com posted another article, How Free is Free Music? , which states that from now on each download page will have an appropriate copyright notice appended. "

Richard Hestilow writes " MP3.com has a couple of recent articles on IP and its affect on music. The first article, The Future Of Music , relates mp3s to free software and describes the threat IP presents to music. In response, MP3.com posted another article, How Free is Free Music? , which states that from now on each download page will have an appropriate copyright notice appended. "

Siva writes "There's an update on the X11AMP homepage regarding the release of the next version along with some nifty screenshots. X11AMP is a (soon-to-be GPL'd) mp3 for linux. "

Sacrifice sent us a link to mp3.com where you can read that GoodNoise has decided to GPL FreeAmp. It's cool that companies think this is viable. And as encoders are being developed abroad, and we'e got a player. You can't keep online audio down. Hope the record companies pay attention and embrace this stuff.

Sacrifice sent us a link to mp3.com where you can read that GoodNoise has decided to GPL FreeAmp. It's cool that companies think this is viable. And as encoders are being developed abroad, and we'e got a player. You can't keep online audio down. Hope the record companies pay attention and embrace this stuff.

My eagerly awaited copy of C'T has arrived, and in it there is a short interview with Martin Sieler, multimedia software lead at the Fraunhofer Institute. The topic was Fraunhofer's demand for patent license fees on free MP3 encoders. In it Sieler disputes that the encoders were free because the internet sites distributing them made money on the banner advertisements. He also discusses the newest MPEG standard (MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding -- also to be in MPEG-4): a refinement of the MPEG-1 layer 3 technology (MP3), it will provide even higher compression rates for the same audio quality. As with MP3 unlicensed encoders will be illegal, but unlike MP3 no free decoders will be tolerated... S: I find the ISO's current trend of accepting standards which cannot be implemented without violating patents worrisome. While I agree with some readers that a lot of work goes into this type of research I disagree that the key elements are inventions: they are discoveries about how human perception works. As a result, an unrestricted alternative (like gzip was to pkzip) should not only be possible, but encouraged. What do you think? I've corrected MPEG-3 to MPEG-1 Layer 3. Thanks manuka for your correction. I've also corrected the "like gzip" statement to "like gzip was to pkzip" since it seems to be causing some confusion. Finally thanks to Christian who pointed out I forgot the u in Fraunhofer. Oops.

smackdaddy writes "An MP3 Virus hoax is circulating on the net and snaring some of the more popular MP3 sites in its scam. In spite of what appear to be an official announcement, a little fact checking reveals the organizations cited to be nonexistent and no record of the virus with any credible authority. Check it out here "

A whole bunch of people wrote in with this but RUAOK was the first. He writes "The Recording Industry Association of America is sueing Diamond Multimedia for selling the Rio portable MP3 player. This is the first attack of a major player in the MP3 community. The RIAA is backed into a corner and trying to lash out at anyone that is willing to stick out their neck. " You can also read about it at Wired or at ZDNet.

dglidden writes "BladeEnc is another MP3 encoder that's been ported to Linux. The author says that since he lives in Sweden, the laws governing patents allow him to continue to develop and distribute his software despite Fraunhofer's recent attacks on MP3 developers " Ed: AFAIK: In the UK, and I thought in the rest of the EU, algorithms are recognized as mathematics, and therefore unpatentable. Indeed, according to jusrisdiction.com , European Software Patent Law excludes mathematical methods. Any lawyers care to clarify? (The 8Hz guys were students in the Netherlands (EU)) Ed: As the first comment points out: no source :-( However I would like to get some answers on the Patent question.

Andy Filer of mp3.com has written in to tell us about his proposal for MP3 CD players to use a standard Joilet/Rock Ridge. If you're interested in seeing this sort of thing, join the club. And go read this proposal. Increasing the amount of audio ten-fold on a CD seems like a worthwhile investment of time.

Andy Filer of mp3.com has written in to tell us about his proposal for MP3 CD players to use a standard Joilet/Rock Ridge. If you're interested in seeing this sort of thing, join the club. And go read this proposal. Increasing the amount of audio ten-fold on a CD seems like a worthwhile investment of time.

Josh Beck writes "Surfdog / Hollywood records has just become the first major label to release a single in MP3 format. mp3.com is distributing a great track by a cool swing band, "Alien Fashion Show", off their self-titled debut album, as a promotional event. Check it out! "

Josh Beck writes "Surfdog / Hollywood records has just become the first major label to release a single in MP3 format. mp3.com is distributing a great track by a cool swing band, "Alien Fashion Show", off their self-titled debut album, as a promotional event. Check it out! "

rmci writes "Currently only available for Windows9x/NT, ampRadio has released beta 1 of its server software which will allow anyone to operate their own internet radio station (if they have Windows, that is). Big advantage is that any mp3 player should work, so platforms like BeOS and the various unixes, which don't have RealAudio support, but do have mp3 players, shouls be able to tune in.. in an interview with mp3.com the author also mentions that he is considering releasing the source under the GNU license.."

rmci writes "Currently only available for Windows9x/NT, ampRadio has released beta 1 of its server software which will allow anyone to operate their own internet radio station (if they have Windows, that is). Big advantage is that any mp3 player should work, so platforms like BeOS and the various unixes, which don't have RealAudio support, but do have mp3 players, shouls be able to tune in.. in an interview with mp3.com the author also mentions that he is considering releasing the source under the GNU license.."