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MP3 Player - The Be Way
shyster writes "Be has created a prototype mp3 player that puts all other hack jobs to shame. Using an Intel 810E chipset with a Celeron-400MHz processor, and relying on BeOS's wonderful file system (where attributes are stored with the files) for database search capabilities, this thing really makes BeOS look good, as well as emphasizes it's audio/video capabilities. They don't plan on making this thing themselves, but rather customizing and branding the OS for OEM partners to place in their own hardware solutions. This kind of approach should allow for some differences between devices, such as having a CD-RW, DVD drive, touchscreen LCD display, etc. The other great thing about this is that it's networked.
Check out the full story here."
If the RIAA were even vaguely more sophisticated than the pack of Neanderthals with JDs that they are, this is the sort of thing they'd be spending their money on.
As a collective organization representing the recording industry, they could be shooting impulse music purchases into the stratosphere by embracing and supporting appliances like this. They could be working on standards, encouraging hardware and software manufacturers, generating consumer interest. Just imagine - You're listening to something you like, and instantly you can choose to buy songs that are (A) liked by the same people who like the current song, (B) listed as inspiration by the band that recorded the current song, (C) anything else clever people can imagine. They could - gasp - look forward for a change.
But no, it is not to be. Instead they are going to waste their time and further alienate consumers by focusing on low-return, antipathy-generating initiatives like pay-per-listen recordings and Quixotic lawsuits against software that courts can't touch.
Which is why I think they are on the way out. One of these days some other upstart organization - perhaps another industry group with an eye to expanding its constituency - is going to make the case to the big recording companies that the club they're sending checks to is doing nothing but hurting their interests.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
well technically the "index" (i assume you're talking about the Sherlock index) on a MacOS volume is stored in a separate file. the other difference from BFS is that the index isn't automatically updated everytime a file is changed. instead, it's more of a hack, where Sherlock's "scheduler" runs at midnight (default) and updates the day's changes in the index file. BFS does all of this behind the scenes and in real-time, along with many other niceties (such as storing attributes along with the files as mentioned in the article).
so really what they're saying is correct, though misleading. they make it sound as though you can't do the same thing with MacOS. you can of course, it's just not as elegant a solution.
i was a big Be fan a back a few years ago but i gave up on them (especially after their "Apple screwed us" FUD when they dropped Mac support). i'll stick with my Mac, with some real applications and enough niceties for my taste. besides, i always liked NeXT-Step, and i'll get to use once again, but on my G3s! :)
- j
What? You're not making sense...
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
yeah, Bowser.. I love it ;)
You know, it's year 2000. Linux, basically technology from 1972, is the hottest thing. It will always be. Shame on you for wanting something better! /etc directory and recomplile their kernel. It gives us a feeling of control. I used to be that way myself, until I figured that I'd have much more time for actually developing stuff under BeOS, rather than fixing broken installations all the time.
Franky I think geeks love to poke around in the
Arghh. Be started in 1990, before Apple was in trouble. The aim has been more modern computing in general. That includes Media, Internet, etc. Of course, Internet is a much better word for hyping so they use that for now.
It's not limited to MP3. It fits in 6 MB with a complete browser. It comes with a Management and Administration Platform. Do some research, please!
Ignore the Amiga style windows decorations it has at the moment, what should be more interesting is the following:
- It's Open Source. Shares that in common with Linux, so neither has that advantage over the other
- It also has a 64 Bit Journaled Filesystem, and will have file Attributes. Exactly the same as BeOS (Although it is not BFS, natch)
- It is actually fairly small. Certainly smaller than Linux, BeOS etc. Can't compare it to BeAI though, they're two diferent things
- It has great potential as a "Media OS" as well. It doesn't use X for a start, which is always a good thing if you want to do things like video...
- It's just cool.
O.K, it may have less applications than BeOS now, but there is no reason why AtheOS can't find itself finding market share not just on the desktop, but also the embeded market, in the future.This is all IMHO of course, but it does have most of the advantages being touted here.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Why, so you can have crappily encoded, untagged, misnamed and incomplete music? Hey, go for it.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
ack. i think the general consensus here is that nobody is obsessed enough with English grammar to really know or care :). but yes, "effect" can be used as a transitive verb just as "affect" can.
:), and i think it's probably the most right.
i've changed it back to "affected" because that pisses less people off (so far
whatever.
- j
Not so far. In fact, Be's deadness is so complete that its doubtful that a free, GPL'd BeOS could even attract mindshare at this point.
Be is simply the next Amiga. People will be playing with Be ten years from now. At least none of the Amiga advocates try to convince you that its going to take over any market - they're a happy clan of hobbyists. I suggest Be advocates adopt this mentality if they want to salvage any dignity.
Free in price. But not "Free Software". You can't get the source to BEOS, you can't modify it, you can't redistribute it without a license.
Just to begin with, without having info on your box:
1) Standardized
2) Commercial backing
3) OS/HW support
4) an efficient multimedia OS
5) it probably will look better, have a better UI, and be controllable by a browser (yours may have these, but most home built mp3 players don't).
6) cost
Why would I care that it can play mp3's backwards? Do I really want to listen to my music backwards?
Oh-BTW-don't take offense at the hack jobs comment. If you read carefully, you'll see that I'm also lumping Be's Aura in that category. To me, a hack job is using something for a use not orignally intended for. A PC is a multi-purpose device, putting it to use as an "appliance" is a hack job-IMHO at least.
Cranberries, "The Icicle Melts" ...
am I right?
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
One problem: what major OEM is using BeOS solutions?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Although it sounds cool, and although Be may inherently have some database functionality that makes this kind of thing rather elegant and intuitive from a developer point of view....
HOw is this, as a commercially viable product, any better than others? Certainly not because it's based on BE. Most consumers don't care what it's based on. Do you know what OS your sony dvd player runs? Do you care?
Archiving mp3 information is trivial whether you have a filesystem that lends itself well to this or not....
Or, rather, it makes it seem that way to the user. In reality, when you insert an audio CD and tell Aura to add its songs to your database, it rips raw audio from the CD first, making it immediately and transparently available for playback. Actual encoding to MP3 can then happen in the background later on. As a result, consumers can create a digital database of their CD collections more easily than they would be able to do on their computers. Smart.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
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Ripping at 32x is easy...doing it well is not. Most good rippers (like cdparanoia or eac) use secure copying, which reads data several times to make sure you are getting the intended data.
If you want a recommendation on a CDRW, I've heard nothing but raves about the plextor 12x burner. Personally I've had good luck with my HP 10x burner, not one coaster yet at 10x, that's a full CD in about 8 minutes.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Not true!
If there's one lesson we should have learned from Microsoft over the last 20 years, it's that superior marketing will always win out over superior technology. Perhaps that's why Be is not manufacturing the units themselves, because they know they suck at marketing.
Is it just me, or does anyone else see the demise of MP3s in about 5 years? At that point, I would hope that cheap mass storage would allow for the storage of music in lossless formats or even just plain wav files. I mean, when I can buy a 250Gb drive & burn 17Gb DVDs to send to friends, why put up with any loss in quality. Alrady on my low end DSL line at home downloading isos isn't too bad, and it's only going to get better. When I can replace my 400 disk changer with a little device holding exact images I won't be messing around with MP3z.
You've got it right, don't worry about it. Effected isn't even a word.
-lx
A P100 should work just fine for playing MP3s.
sup
Yes, actually people have adopted Be, and the Slashdot users who don't sit around in front of computers all the time may well have been to a theatrical show or amusement attraction whose audio is being run by Level Control Systems' BeOS-based gear. It's been out for years, has won several major industry awards... you can "see" it on Broadway ("Ragtime," "Fosse"), Las Vegas (Cirque de Soleil, both shows), and in odder places (Disney's Cirque de Soleil, the MGM Indiana Jones show, the Sony Metreon in San Francisco).
Adamation's systems run the ZEUM in San Francisco as well. Edirol recently announced the DV-7 nonlinear video editing system, which runs, you guessed it, BeOS. A forthcoming "hospitality industry" version of Compaq's iPad runs BeIA. And, of course, there's the obligatory weird startup (Qubit) and the "what were they thinking" project (Whirlpool's prototype BeIA-based refrigerator). These are just the announced projects, of course.
Look, folks, I'm an archetypal disillusioned BeOS user--it's still my favorite desktop OS, but I don't think it has much of a future on the desktop. And it didn't die when Apple chose NeXT, it died--well, became undead, more accurately--when Be decided that focusing on the appliance market required them to publicly gut their desktop effort.
To paraphrase Al "Totem Pole" Gore, "I strongly disagree with their decision, but I accept it." From everything I've heard, BeIA is getting a lot of positive attention within the industry, particularly because of their management services, which are evidently significantly ahead of anybody else's comparable offerings.
With all due respect, having access to the source is not the only consideration most businesses will have in evaluating options, and licensing fees are only one component in development cost. And, just because Be is being quiet about things doesn't mean they're not doing anything--we've all seen companies which were much louder and weren't, when all was said and done, doing anything. Conversely, we've seen Transmeta....
Ok, I was wrong about "effected" not being a word. It is a word, but is *very* rarely used.
Ripped from dictionary.com:
/* Usage Note: Affect1 and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect1 is most commonly used in the sense of "to influence" (how smoking affects health). Effect means "to bring about or execute": layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about. */
Now, not that my own grammar is perfect or anything, but I think this indicates that affected is the proper word. Affected implies influence, whereas effected implies creation. In the signature, "affected" was used, because it was referring to PacMan's influence - the word "influenced" could have easily been substituted for "affected".For instance:
Al Gore effected the creation of the the internet.
Well, maybe. Effected is a rather hard word to use at all - normally "effect" is used as a noun, e.g. the slashdot effect, special effects. As a side note, Harvard has eased its grammar rules considerably - split infinitives are now acceptable, for instance. Sheesh.
-lx
Read up on Aura. The BFS plays heavily into how cool Aura will be. It is a LOT more than "networked MP3."
"And like that
Heh, the moment I saw "...BeOS's wonderful file system (where attributes are stored with the files" the HPFS flag went up pretty much the same way as it did for you....:)
BTW, last week my company did some cleaning and was ready to throw away 4 generations of OS/2 (2.1, Warp 3, Warp 3 Connect and Warp 4)...I promptly scooped them all up and just for fun loaded Warp 3 Connect on an aging Deskpro/166/64...and man, did that thing fly!
Ahhh, good old days....Somehow I still hope IBM will come to its senses and resurrect OS/2 development.....
Playing mp3s backwards is no big deal. Install Soundplay on BeOS, and throw in a CD - you can play CDs backwards on the fly. Now *that's* cool.
Personally, I wish Linux folks would venture out of *their* little OS domain - and notice that they're not the only nor the best free UN*X system, and that there are different OSes best suited to different purposes.
Myself, I'm sick to death of crap programs that won't even compile properly under *BSD, because the developers forgot the universe didn't revolve around their OS.
-lx
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The native OS/2 file system, HPFS, also has the ability to store attributes with files. And remember, HPFS was released in 1988 - 12 years ago. Wow. Is it also a 64-bit journaled file system? Does it handle the attributes the same way as BFS? (Namely that searching attributes is SUPERFAST, and users can create their own attributes for files and folders.)
"And like that
If you read the article you would see that it just copys the raw audio onto the unit and then encodes it during downtime. This means that you can play it 2 minutes after you stick the cd in.
wow, I'd love to beable to have pe on its own partition, do you have a Faq somewhere that gives exact instructions?
For the author of the column I mean: "Scot Hacker"
hehe
My other sig is also a
No. It implies that 99.9% of people still listen to MP3s on their computers, not in the living room.
Oh yeah, I know. We posted it on BeNews a few days ago. I don't know about the other BeNews editors, but I certianly feel special that we're important enough to have Slashdot gather content from us :-) I could go on and on about how most of you have completely missed the point, but it'd fall on deaf linux zealotrous ears :)
If you think I have nothing better to do with my free time then whore myself out for karma points, you need to get a grip. It's been my experience that people who denegrate technologies that aren't part of the Linux Core Philosophy are far more likely to get karma than those who attempt to be the voice of reason.
Yes, I posted fairly commonly known information. At the time of my posting, several people had alluded vaguely to this information, true enough. But no one bothered to spell it out for those who haven't used BeOS, so they could stop making snide, ill-informed comments about the Capitalist Pig-Dogs.
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Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
UNIX permission scheme? KISS?
I still haven't mastered chmod yet..
I don't know, but when I can play 40 mp3's at 128k on my dual p2 350 box (~600mhz with all the messaging overhead and what not) and still have my OS remain fully responsive, that seems to speak leaps and bounds about the core technology. Sure, you might be able to play a bunch of mp3's at once with ALSA, but that will bring the machine to it's knees. And yes, I venture outside the BeOS world. I run a FreeBSD box and a LinuxPPC box. It is also very easy to mass edit the meta data for mp3's. There are programs (free) for BeOS that exports the id3 information right into the attributes (fs meta data), where it can be queried from inside any program, or the Tracker (file manager). Personaly, I find that it makes running an mp3 stream incredibly easy.
I agree that you should use the tool for the job and this seems like the right tool for this job(not the only tool though). I have an old Micron server that I used to test BeOS on (PPro 200, 64mb RAM, SB16, etc.). I was fairly impressed on how smooth it ran with a bunch of AVIs and MP3s simultaneously without missing a beat. What it does, it does well but unfortunately it doesn't do everything. I believe that BeOS will have it failings for more political reasons than technological reasons.
I'm all for making Linux do more and more things. Growing and expanding can't but help things overall. I don't go for all the people that whine and cry about something done that they like. Maybe it doesn't give them anything to brag about i.e "We have gimp, apache, etc. and win32 doesn't". The more quality free products on the various platforms, the less importantance MS© will have if the OS running underneath doesn't matter. The whole point of free software is the ability for anyone to make it do what they want not what you want. If you don't like it then don't use it but I will continue to use and test all kinds of OS, software, etc. and use what want for each job.
Check the article. They are using components from both. So what is the difference now?
IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR OS!
Before you call the post clueless, you should take the time to read it. I didn't see the journaling capabalities touted anywhere. What I saw being touted was the fact that it stores metadata with the files. This is a very impressive feature of Be's fs. No I'm not a Be lover. I gave up developing for their platform a couple of years ago. I do like their tech though.
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Multimedia is only going to be more and more integral to everyday information appliances (not just stereo components and PVRs). What answer does Linux have to this with its mishmash of incompatible multimedia technologies?
To me, this article indicates exactly why operating systems like BeOS will continue to make inroads into the embedded market, while Linux is in serious danger of losing out. Be is designed and marketed as a "multimedia OS", and uses like this allow it to really shine. How long before the built-in features of BeOS are more than anyone doing it from scratch in Linux will want to compete against? Isn't it already that way?
My feeling is that the multimedia capabilities in BeOS will eventually obviate the need for Linux's primary strength in the embedded market--the availability of source code. If an OEM-ready platform already has support for all the stuff you'd want to hack into Linux, is small and cheap enough, why NOT use it? Isn't the whole reason TiVo used Linux so they could add in all the multimedia stuff they needed that Linux didn't provide? (And don't tell me they did it for philosophical reasons. OEMs want results, not dogma.)
If Linux wants to compete in this space, it needs focus, which seems to be the one thing it doesn't (yet) offer.
The only certainty is entropy.
This is not a portable unit. It's a home unit.
Not counting any potential for pirating software, it's safe to assume that a music lover could have upward of ten thousand songs on their hands. That's quite a few song titles and artists to search from, when you have an urge to listen to some song by a female artist that came out in 95 or 96, with something about icicles in it.
Without even trying, you could have that from a BeFS. (you'd have to add a 'lyrics' metadata to the song, of course, but that's hardly a stretch)
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Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
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So basicly its a fairly large Mp3 player with cute graphics?
'I sense much NT in you. NT leads to blue screen, blue screen leads to downtime, downtime leads to suffering.' -Uknown
Do you want to take the performance hit for indexing while you're using the computer (BeOS) or while you're not (MacOS)? There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.
What they're saying is wrong. Do consumers really care about those kinds of details (difference between MacOS and BeOS)? No. It's just techno-FUD.
Also, if BeOS stores the info in each file, how can it be true that you don't have to iterate through all the files to find something? There has to be some external data structure. Whether you call it a file or something else is just symantics.
And have you considered that because Be is a company that when the RIAA decides to go with a *secure* digital music format, they can then implement it without the whole open-source problems that Linux entails?
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux, but from a commercial standpoint, Be makes more sense. If I can hire a company to customize the way things look and work underneath without worrying about code and save money developing it, I would. Instead of hiring someone to hack this and that into a bunch of Linux source to get something that will probably not quite what i expected. And there is more accountability with one company working on it. They get blamed for screw ups, who do I blame when the code is open source? And they can keep their trade secrets to themselves if they want.
Is it just me or does anything that's not Linux-based here, get gunned down for any real reason?
Read the article here and realize that each os has it's role. I personally am getting sick of Linux is for everything because it's open source. It isn't. BeOS isn't suited for everything. NT/9x/Me/CE aren't either. QNX is cool, but also not suited for everything. Open/Free/NetBSD have their places as well.
Use the right tool for the job. Isn't open source about choice anymore? I recall people complaining about gimp being ported to win32. If I can't run the software on the os of my choice, what good is it? This is what the source is for, to use, abuse, and port.
Now time for the mods to mark me as flamebait. :)
Um... ok.
Two points:
First off, the first GPL player thing... So what? So its the first player to do it that was released under the GPL. Thats like saying that its the first player because its green. It still came after soundplay. Quite a while after.
And for your 36 songs... are they just playing backwards/forwards? Can you play 12 of em at 72% speed backwards? Can you run 3 different tracks of the same CD at once, some backwards some forwards? And oh yeah, while you are doing that can you map 6 mov files to a software rendered realtime 3d cube?
If that isnt enough, you could always burn a cd while you were doing it...
and you wouldnt have a "wait" prompt once. no hourglass, nothing. It would just, well... do it.
But honestly, this was just to point out that mp3's backwards came from Be, and is not some great alsaplayer thing.
When it comes to mp3's, it really doesnt get better than Be... assuming you judge on technical competence and not a great socio-political belief structure about the nature of the software.
Ogg Vorbis support is available today. Check out www.bebits.com and you can find Vorbis codecs for the BeOS. One nice feature of the BeOS is that it includes a robust API for handling audio and video. Once you install the codecs for a new file type, all of your existing applications can access it immediately.
.so files in the proper place in your ~/config/add-ons directory. Once this is done the stock BeOS player app will play your Vorbis files, and the stock BeOS CDPlayer app will save CDDA tracks as Vorbis files if you want. Any well-written app will ask the OS for a list of available audio encoders and present the user with the choices.
So, you install the codecs by putting what amounts to some
I actually just got thru adding this functionality into one of my projects. It only takes a small handful of code to iterate thru all the encoders installed. Now, if a user adds a codec or upgrades an existing one, my program benefits automatically. No recompile needed.
Actually, no, BFS does not keep a metadata database. It does keep a journaling log, but all of the file metadata is actually kept in the inode itself. The required information for a file, which is normally store in an inode, does not take up the entire inode, so effectively BFS has 700 free bytes in every inode to store data. Any attributes which are less than that size will be completely in the inode, and thus much faster. Additionally, the system does index attributes, and keeps track of any changes made to those attributes. But it does not have to crawl the filesystem to do it; changes are marked at modification time and that's it.
I don't want to sound like I'm slamming the Audio ReQuest mentioned in the last post, it's probably a very well designed product. But I went to the page and saw what it could do (connect to a network, transfer files with SMB) and realized that hey, the people this is targetted at already have computers. So can someone explain to me the advantage of having one of these dedicated systems for $800, when you can get a sound card with a digital output for $100-200 and essentially do the same thing with your existing hardware?
I don't know, it just seems like this is a product people will buy to impress each other, but not because it actually suplies a needed function. I understand mobile mp3 players, since you're not going to lug your desktop around with you, but surely when you're at home you'll just use your computer to play your MP3s?
-- sudo.ca
".. or ext2+tree patch uses. HPFS no doubt uses it to.." Note the patch there. BeOS comes with it default, no hacking, tweaking, or fighting bad installs to get it setup and working. I don't know about you, but I like *nix, but I sure as hell hate fighting installs for 3 days, trying to get my new computer up and running with it's shiney new OS. class BeOS : public CoolOS ....
BFS is a nice filesystem
Thank you. We agree. Most modern file systems has similar file indices, but they usually aren't updated in real time, and they're not as expansive as BFS' are. BFS' file attributes and indices may not be revolutionary, but they're available in the same place and used to complement each other, which has an overall revolutionary effect. Working with files in BeOS is something much different than in any other OS I've used. The small things, like having different icons for different shortcuts to the same program and sorting MP3s by genre, then filename are what I miss when I use other OSes.
If every FS had unlimited, indexed, real-time, pervasive file attributes, I would be quite happy. I don't see them readily available with any of the other major players, so BFS does have something unique and special that makes it stand above the crowd. If not in terms of innovation, then in terms of application.
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I agree that the RIAA is far too incoherent as an organization to even consider this and that these types of appliaces are where they should be looking. HOWEVER...
;) I'd really like to see the RIAA die a very rapid yet painful death. The hegemony of white old men with no sense of creativity is rapidly coming to a close and open standards and open arcitectures shall rule the day. AND artists will still live on. Very well, I predict. No, they won't drive Bentley's and pour champagne on their ho's. But those folks aren't artists. No, they won't be boy bands that do nothing more than coreograph shitty dance. But those kids aren't artists. True musical artists will live on and embrace open-ness and the sharing of their work and they will be very successful. And we won't have these teen sensations shoved down our throats by some balding asshole with a ponytail who's trying to predict the next big thing so he can feed his porn and cocaine habit. Whew--now I gotta study.
I'm glad they're as dumb as they are
My other computer is your Windows box
OS/2 also has a multithreaded multimedia subsystem, which was released in the early 1990's (I can't remember if it was 1990 or 1992).
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And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
FYI, Soundplay has been playing mp3's backwards for years. In fact, its believed by many people to be the first player that could play it backwards. So your big alsaplayer advantage is shot...
Oh yeah, on most Be systems soundplay can play about 30 mp3's backwards, forwards, and at different speeds... simultaneously, and without skipping.
I'm curious what other people are using for databases of mp3s (and any other format of file, for that matter). I took a look at RIMPS as a frontend, and I wasn't terribly impressed (maybe it's because I was using their 1.0 version rather than whatever is in CVS). Bad things seemed to happen, like it would attempt to re-insert the same file sometimes and would crap out on me.. It also apparently couldn't handle non-numeric characters in the year field of an ID3 tag...
Anyway, I'm thinking of reworking a simple database system I already made, but it would include support for multiple `creators', which is especially important when you think about how many people are `featured' artists, or other collaborative efforts. Most systems require you to decide which single artist is `The Artist' I also want to add in some sort of support for multiple songs in a single file (such as the single 70 minute file I have of my copy of Paul Oakenfold's Tranceport CD).
Also, I really get annoyed when files get sorted character-by-character, and the sort includes a leading `A' or `The'. In addition, I was thinking of adding support for fixing the case of letters in song titles. Ordinarily, words like `on', `in', `for', etc., are supposed to be lowercase in titles, but most people seem to capitalize them.. Who knows if that would ever happen, though..
But maybe something like that already exists?
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It's not "confused", Tracker shows the contents of /home/Desktop/ on any volumes mounted on the desktop. By default Tracker automounts all BFS volumes, so that's where it gets fun.
Running a Plextor SCSI 40x, i can rip and encode a full audio CD under BeOS in ~5-10 minutes, at 192kbps.
Copying raw audio off of this CD-Rom would potentially be much faster, but i have not tried it.
Be Inc. changed it's focus in January.
They are focusing now on Internet Appliances, thus BeIA, rather than BeOS. BeIA is supposed to be fully customizable for the OEM, including UI and all sorts of other things. It's made to run on as little as 32MB of RAM and has support for Flash, Real, and Opera 4 as it's main browser.
The device spoken of here is yet another iteration of BeIA. This just goes to show the remarkable uses of Be's latest work. Hopefully the networking support will be seamless- not like it is on R5 Pro. Check out http://www.qubit.net for another BeIA enabled device, this one with 802.11b connectivity.The attributes aren't stored *in* the file. They are "attached" to the file. In the example of mp3s you have Album/Artist/Title/etc attributes, which are all indexed and updated in real time. The filesystem isn't constantly probing for changes, as you think, so there is no performance hit. When a file is modified, a BMessage is sent which updates the index on the file.
Like you said, most consumers don't care how it works behind the scenes. But the way Aura does it is incredibly elegant and quick.
I'm sorry, but its curtains for Be. Its mindshare is nonexistant, it has no direction, and it will soon be out of cash. Be essentially went out of business the day Apple chose NeXT instead of Be.
does his opinion on linux have any impact on his review of a completely non-linux related system?
No, you can't actually. You CAN encode (without ripping) in that time, though, by directly reading the audio tracks as .wav files through BeOS's filesystem plugin for audio CD's. Just to clear up some terminology :)
I like BeOS and all, but if you want this NOW, you could check out the Audio ReQuest.
It's a home audio component with a big hard drive full of mp3s. It has an RJ45 in the back for your home ethernet. It transfers files to/from any computer on the same network with their branded software, and their next software update will make it do SMB.
It had audio quality problems, but an update on the soundcard made the quality much, much better. I hope they add digital outs in a future model.
It connects to a tv and has a remote to let you navigate your collection and sort by artist/album/whatever.
It has a CD drive that rips and encodes mp3, and I believe it also looks up titles from CDDB if on the internet. It also encodes from any input source you want to plug into the back of it. My dad is mp3ifying his LP collection this way.
It also has nifty visual effects it does on the tv while it plays, if you like.
My two wishlist items: ogg vorbis support (hopefully with multichannel) and 802.11b wireless networking.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Okaay.. the necessary qualifications in order to be "very, very OPEN," according to your post are:
- Drop MP3 and move to Ogg Vorbis.
- Have complete networking support.
Ogg Vorbis, being incomplete itself, is supported as much as it can be already under BeOS. The vendors just have to include it. As for preventing users to encode MP3s, I don't see why that's necessary. Give them a good, open encoder like LAME (better than Fraunhofer cited in the article, and supports Ogg), and let the people have their backwards compatibility. Why shouldn't I be able to burn MP3s to disc to play in my MP3-CD player? (I really do own such a beast.) Why take away options when you're trying to be open? Vorbis will always be there too.For other requirement, it appears that the device will have as much network interconnectivity as required by the vendor. This could range from none to a complete Internet jukebox.
Seems like they've got you covered. Really, this thing will be more open than the TiVo, whose major stumbling block was the filesystem. For this, just pop the hard drive into a BeOS system and you'll be able to hack away and add anything you want, from more net services to reinstating Tracker.
--
I haven't seen a P100 for sale in a long time. You must not have been looking very hard. Like I told the other guy, I've got a huge stash of these right here. I could supply Be's production myself!
sup
-David
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Be in Your Senses
That sounds like a good idea, but what is so great about BFS is that the implementation was pervasive. You don't have to go to the shell to add, remove or change attributes.
That said, I would happily welcome this sort of change as a fundamental addition to the UI of Windows.
--
It would be sweet if I could use the Be unit as a central place to store my music. Plug my empeg from the car into the network and copy all the songs down.
I did read that, yes. But the quote is inferring the cd data will be written to the hard drive in 2 minutes... (encoding will take place after, and may take a much longer time)...
I just ripped 12 discs, each took 45 - 60 minutes.. I'm looking for ways to save time on this process.. (seeing that I have another 400 discs to rip, any time savings would help)
. . . maybe Be will buy Corel's Linux? Or maybe they'll be the next lucky owners of WordPerfect?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'd be more interested if they'd even mentioned Ogg Vorbis...
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Imagine a centralised MP3 server networked (both 802.3 and 802.11 - thats ethernet and wireless for the young ones) to other appliances around your house. Choose a MP3 track and listen to it from your Hi-Fi / TV / Refrigerator / PC / backyard hammock on a internet appliance etc. Listen to a streaming MP3 server, and immediately download more songs from the same group. Little Johny listens to kiddie MP3's from the bedroom, Mrs Jones listens to a hip song in the kitchen while Mr Johnes listens to a blues song in the garage - all songs are streamed from one box. Stick a new CD in, convert the audio to MP3 (with online lookups) and all networked devices in the house have access to the new songs. With MP3 storage space reaching double gig digit storage sizes (>10G) it becomes more and more cumbersom to issue searches, as well as a problem of duplicating data. I think that this custom built MP3 box on steroids provides so much more than anything I can muster myself. This appliance will be idiot proof to operate, and you'll be able to buy it at your local electronics shop. Nice.
Revolution = Evolution
The difference here is: the BFS doesn't index its files centrally to some index. Each file has a variable amount of attribute data that can be extended as the user/developer wishes. That attribute information is stored directly in the file system info tree, although if it gets really big its stuck into a hidden file [or extra node/block actually].
This is super-slick because the file system info tree is structured mostly in places where the head of the drive can get to fast, and usually right next to tons of similar information about all the files in a directory or group of directories. This way you can read a couple blocks of file attribute information without ever having to actually skip to the files themselves and search that, thus acheiving a great savings in head movement. Its similar in basic concept to the BSD Fast File System and the Linux Ext2fs, in that they do the same for filenames, sizes, and other attributes. But the BFS has extensible attributes.
So extensible attributes mean: I downloaded a file from somewhere, besides just a filename=foo.tgz, I could put a from_URL=ftp://ftp.foo.org/pub/foo/src/tgz/ attribute there. All mail messages have their subject, from, to, reply to, and all that stuff stored as attributes, and all mp3s have their ID3 tags (and possibly more) stored as attributes. So you can just grab stuff that matches the attributes you want. This happens really quickly because the head only has to skip to the general inode information, better yet, any smart OS will cache all that in memory, so a large portion of your search is done without drive head movement.
Large attributes exist too. For example some drawing programs store a scaled down preview in an attribute... fair enough, that is in an extended attribute node/block, but that node/block doesn't have to be searched or then cached unless it's known to contain the key that is being searched for.
So sure, any OS could go ahead and index mp3 id information, cache it, maintain coherancy between it and the fs, and search through it, but for Mac OS, that would take a seperate indexing phase, an extension that pays attention to fs changes and updates the index, and a special extension to a special searcher (the BFS search is just an fs feature with a gui interface) that looks through the special index. And that is just as feature rich, but it lacks the performance considerations that were taken into account when building such things directly into the fs.
I do like the Mac, unfortunately Be sucks for not keeping developers more PPC aware, even if Apple forced them out of developing for G3 [not that that has stopped NetBSD or linux even]. It's a real shame because the BeBox was one of the coolest ideas in a long time, especially because of the OS, but not solely... the PPC is a cool chip (literally too).
-Daniel
P.S. The guy who developed BFS presented it as a talk at WPI (cause he graduated from there), and the guy who developed Ext2 came to talk to the linux group a few weeks earlier over how it worked and what may be done differently for Ext3. Both were very informative
Be will be releasing the sound card drivers sometime next year that allow you to listen to it.
Will this thing be able to log onto Napster servers?
FYI, NTFS has had a somewhat obscure
feature since its very birth that was named
STREAMS. NTFS streams allow you to insert an
unlimited byte stream and assign a name for that stream which will accompany the file as long
as it stays on NTFS.
For example: copy con: > a.txt:$mymp3data
And one more thing: NFSv4 will also have support
for the same style of metadata (called attributes
in NFS).
Your enlgish was fine, if not better than most native English speakers- don't worry about it :)
Cool. My CDTV is my coolest piece of kit now that my Vectrex is dead. (And if you don't count the Video Toaster). I love Be, but the Amiga still rules. Somewhat.
Get my free Hitchhiker's Guide Tribute Novella:
For those of us that may have forgotten, check out the specs on the Indrema Console. Yes, this is being marketed as a game box. BUT, it also includes TiVO like features AND (wait for it) an mp3 server. And, it will be priced at US$299. Check it.
Why will this win? It's open. The OS is a collaboration with RedHat to build a multimedia Linux. The fact that the OS is open source alone puts it ahead. Not because people can open it up and hack it apart. I hardly see that as an advantage. But because development will be driven (hopefully) by something larger than a single company. Also, this system will truly be a multimedia device, capable of storing not just mp3 but such quirky things as digital video. Just think of the possibilities.
2 things I'd like to see from indrema: 1.Firewire support. Call it whatever you want so you don't have to pay Apple that US$1, but you gotta have it. 2. A non-game console. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I would be in the market for this thing. Hell, half the reason I stood in line at 3:00 in friggin morning for a ps2 was because it plays DVD's! Keep the non-gamers in mind. Scale down that "next-generation nVidia GPU" to something a bit cheaper and more reasonable. Upgrade the hard drive to 30GB.
Is Linux a better "mediaOS" (whatever the hell that means) than Be. NO! But it can be. It's open and it's getting there. Rapidly.
One nice offshoot that may come of all of this is that Be as a corporation utterly fails. There's just not enough room in the OS market for Be, IMHO. Maybe THEN they'll open source their OS and the linux crowd can have some REAL fun.
My other computer is your Windows box
So your big alsaplayer advantage is shot...
:) .. There's no advantage to it, it's just funny. Oh, and alsaplayer was the first GPL player to play stuff backwards, so there! :)
:) would venture a little outside their OS domain...BeOS is loosing its uniqueness every day (boy was it cool, back in 1996!)
Really, I implemented this backward playing just to see if I could
Oh yeah, on most Be systems soundplay can play about 30 mp3's backwards, forwards, and at different speeds... simultaneously, and without skipping.
How about 36 simultaneous songs *without* skipping backward/forward on my Trident NX using alsaplayer and ALSA on Linux? Of course this multiple simultaneous song playing is TOTALLY useless in real life, but hey, it's nice for articles right? I wish Be people (I was one once
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
VAGINAS!!!!!!!! YAHYHAHAHYHYHAHA!!!
Do-ta-dodaa-ti-tidda-ti-tu-tutu-ti-da-duhmmm!
Al along the watch*()&* VAGINAS!!!!!!!!!!
What will the RIAA think of this? I would imagine that they will only allow this technology on the open market if they get a piece of the profits in the form of a licensing fee. If the RIAA wants money that badly, then I feel that they should pursue other avenues, and leave this innovative idea alone.
As an Author of an umm.. "Hack Mp3 player", I'd like to know how and why Be's mp3 player is much more greater than anything else out there. Sure a while back they were advertising that they had a mp3 player that can play mp3's backwards, but now alsaplayer and several others do that. And also the post seems a bit clueless in the regard that be having a better mp3 player cause of it's journaling file system. Try installing a JFS on your linux box and running alsaplayer baby.
There are, however, better file systems in the minicomputer market.
.exe, .inf? Gimme a cocksucking break! I swear to god, everybody claims taht MS has the most talented programmers.. Well, they don't. They hire fucking college kids that graduated like 2 days before and expect them to code masterpieces to be used in "mission-critic" environments.
Seriously, NTFS? AH AH AH! it is probably the FUCKING worst file system, if you call it that, in existence. I mean,
Then they fire all their experienced people, 'cause BllG is a fucking cheapskate who won't pay his slaves fucking decent living wages.The result? well, the result is fucking crashes, freezes, headaches, etc. i can't figure out why do people even bother to defend them. Is their self-esteem so fucking low that they have to rely on some cocksucker with bad hair, no fucking innovation or anything wothr while in the goddman pC industry who leads a fucking company with fucking terrible ass products, which, somehow become the goddamn industry fucking standard, just BCAUSE SOME PIECE OF SHIT SUIT AND TIE MOTHERFUCKER DECIDED HE WAS GOING TO BASE HIS FUCKING BUSINESS ON "STANDARDIZED PLATFORM NETWORK INFRASTRUTURE" DONKEY PISS, SO THEY FUCKING PUT FUCKING WINDOZE "NEW TECHNOLOGY' THAT SUCKS MY HAIRI ELEPHANT TESTICLES. CAUSE THEY THINK THEY'RE ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS, WHEN IN FACT THEY ARE THE WORST KIND OF FUCKING SHEEP, THE KIND THAT DON'T DESERVEVE TO LIVE, EXCEPT TO MI SHIT THAT GOES DOWN THE TOILET !!!!!
"Modern". "Feature rich". "unix is 30 year old technology". They are so fucking full of shit, those cocksuckers, they don't fucking know waht the fuck they are talking about. Or they're just telling waht you fucking braindead sheep want to hear. "go with us. yes. Microsoft. We hire shit programmers, who make shit rograms, and we sell it to you for 90% profit margin. And keep buying the updates to fix all the bugs in our products. It will keep introducing more bugs, so we'll keep releasing updates. THen we'll be everywhere. windows everywhere. And you'll have no choice but to pay us for the priveledge seing the name "microsoft" in the CD case.
I see... because I
A) voice a concise opinion
and
B) get flamed
that makes my post flamebait.
HAHA ahahahhah!!!!
AAhahahahha!!!!
Thats hilariuos!!!!
Ah haa ahahhah!!!!
Look at my MBe3 player.
I love you Scotty. I need a lover with a 3 inch cock, 'cause my ass can't take these 9 inchers no more. Your little thingie would be perfect for me.
What do you say, me and you?
Install Soundplay on BeOS, and throw in a CD - you can play CDs backwards on the fly. Now *that's* cool.
:)
Eeps, I think alsaplayer covers that one too! I just haven't had time to make a nice CD interface. And my Plexwriter 8x (SCSI) used to crap out at -300% (seeking was sloooow) so I didn't bother with it much
I wish Linux folks would venture out of *their*little OS domain
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Also, no point in getting too excited about the `audio/video capabilities`, or at least the audio ones. Due to lack of commitment from Be, all major audio companies (Steinberg, Emagic etc) have abandoned support for Beos.
Windows 2000 is too slow too, so it looks like professional audio work is still going to be done on w95/98.
The convergence between computer system and plug it into the stereo systems is rapidly approaching. My guess is they are targeting manufacturers of stereo components who will be building and marketing this as a stereo system component. Sure its guts will be a computer but its outward appearance will be a stereo component. 90% of the population won't care what's inside or how it works. They just want to plug it into their existing stereo and play mp3's. The other 10% will want to tweak it and modify it. Sure you can do a lot of this now and build your own box. But then you are probably in the 10% category.
The current list of apps available for BeOS is at 2883! and growing daily. get use to it.
...a really kick-ass IRC client that takes advantage of the multithreaded BeOS to let users chat in multiple channels at once.
I love the idea of this. I pine for the day that I can buy a cd (hear that RIAA), bring it home, sitck it in my multimedia console, encode the thing to vorbis, and have the tracks available to any other mulitmedia device in my house.
However, I'd also like to see the system be very, very OPEN. First of all, dump MP3 encoding. Support MP3 playback for my 2 gigs of already encoded stuff, but stop encoding this locked down codec. Move to Vorbis for all encoding. It's just better. Also, make it accessible to anything with an IP address. I want to be able to access this multimedia thing with my computer while I'm working or from my slimmed down multimedia module in my kitchen while I'm cooking. It sounds like Be has considered this, which is a good sign.
I think Be has a good product in their OS and I'm sad that it never really took off. Their filesystem kicks ass. They've got great multiprocessor support as well. I was really sad to see them drop support for the PowerPC, a move that I never really understood. I'd like to see this work, in a bit more open way though. If Linux had some of the technical capabilities that Be has, it'd be the winner.
My other computer is your Windows box
The article mentions that "a device like this (without screen) could be sold for around $500 retail." That's fine, but at that price, with all of the stuff (read features) that are in the box, someone would be taking a loss on the hardware.
So, what's the business model for this thing?? Are they going to do like TiVo - sell the box at a loss and treat the whole thing as a 'service'? If I choose not to pay a monthly charge for the service, is the box essentialy a brick? Or, can I just use this as a front-end, with all my MP3's (>9GB) continuing to live on the server in my closet? Will I have to reencode everything (again)?
Ok, more than one question.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
Sigh...try looking up "B+ Tree" & "Database"
Kids these days...
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
It's kind of like the registry in Windows NT where every key may have a multitude of permissions and policies. When you have over 100,000 keys in the registry, it becomes extremely tedious to go in there and change permissions, ownerships, access privledges, etc.
The UNIX permission scheme work well for 99% of applications. It follows the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle. You don't really need Access Control Lists or metadata for standard UNIX files.
Got friends?
"Just look at Be`s stock price ($1.375 that down 99% from this year`s high), isn`t it a little too low if it really has some big unannounced partners."
The way it is supposed to work, AFTER a company announces something good the stock price goes up. If it goes up before the announcement people can go to jail. (Unless you write a check to the Republican Party and the Supreme Court steps in and saves you.)
My understanding is that it doesn't actually encode at this speed. What happens is that the audio files can be copied off to the hard drive very quickly as there's no "ripping" involved per se - BeOS can mount an audio CD & show each track as a .WAV file. The user can then play the orig tracks while they're being encoded in the background.
I run Win98 (for games), FreeBSD and BeOS, but always go back to Be for MP3 stuff. The "mount a CD and show tracks as .WAV files" is just too handy, and my favorite encoder (LAME) compiles and runs just fine under BeOS. It also handles "multimedia" tasks very fast & cleanly from a user's perspective (e.g. the "listen to a track while encoding in the backgound" thing mentioned above).
Your sig needs correcting: it should read "affected" not "effected".
are you sure? i'm not grammar expert, but my father was an English teacher and i was under the impression that it was effected
it's funny you should mention it, because the very same sentence has started a controversy on another web-board about which it should be.
Webster's has this to say about it:
perhaps this is one of those cases where the 'topic is psychology,' but honestly, i don't know. any comments anybody?- j
1) I am not a Linux hater (though I don't understand why anyone would want to use Linux as a desktop OS when BeOS is in the world). 2) The article had nothing whatsoever to do with Linux. 3) The section you mention had nothing whatsoever to do with any OS. The technique I described could be used by any OS and has absolutely nothing to do with BeIA.
BeOS' networking wasn't broken.
When BONE is released (the new BeOS network stack) and the filesharing isn't based on WON (World of Networking, also broken) it should have a lot going for it.
---
Silence is consent.
Possible loss of monetary funds approaching!
Warning! Warning!
Warning! Warning!
Extreme loss of monetary funds likely!
Warning! Warning!
[Shall we take evasive manuevers sir?]
[Negative, it's too late!]
[Prepare for a Crash Landing!]
Warning! Warning!
{Dub-in: Assorted sounds of screaming wrenching metal}
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Journaling, Schmournaling. Be's filesystem keeps information about files in a metadata database. You can add arbitrary information types to this metadata, and you can search the filesystem for files.
For instance, you can add Artist, title, album, live/recorded, and bitrate to the information on the file. Then you could search for all live recordings by Tori Amos or Limp Bizkit, at a datarate above 128 kbps, sorted by title.
All without writing but one line of code (the search query)
-
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
Keep the networking, go after TIVO...
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Like Intel? (Which owns a lot of Be stock) The BeOS stock price is more a factor of lack of profile (Be who?) and the very tightly closed development system Be uses. (They don't even announce release dates. Releases just "happen")
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hello,
/. Aura is nothing more than networked mp3. Lot of people have done it. And also as mentioned above this has nothing to do with the journaling filesystem (which just happens to be the default fs on Be). When articles like this are posted people are incited to point out the holes in the article and thus create FUD towards Be. I understand Be is not a free OS. But we here in France have a strong Be following and are faithful Be users. I would really like right information on Be posted here, instead of FUD and things that anyone could point fingers at. Sorry for my bad english.
As a Be user, I find it frustrating when I see things twisted around and posted as news on sites like
Because BFS queries don't have to iterate over every file like Mac, Windows, or Linux queries do, search results would be instantaneous.
The MacOS has had index-based searching for years. Just now, it took me all of 5 seconds to search the contents of over 3 GB of files on my Mac for a certain keyword. I don't have a particularly fast system, either.
The whole basis for using Be for this seems to be that it's a "multimedia" OS, whatever that means, and that they have almost no other markets, so they will have to give all their attention to this one.
Actually, I hear the best possible CDROM ripper/writer you can get is the Philips VeloCD. Its blue, it rips at 32X, and it writes at 12X (or 16X, I forget) And it actually does that in real tests!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
...
-Psyiode
You are correct that most of the things i have stated are gimmicky. Thats because i was replying to a post that mentioned playing mp3's backwards. But the combined load of all those things at once not effecting the system, (and without custom plextor hardware burnproof tech) is the main point i was making.
Desperate times have not arrived for Be. I think they are actually more successful now than they ever have been, and I would predict profitability in the next year or so. How are linux companies doing again...?
As for not getting more technical than viewing the source code... that has nothing to do with my point. My point was technical competence. If the BeOS sourcecode is better coded, faster, more efficient, and more elegant than the linux source code, but you can read the linux source, that does not make the linux code more technically competent. I have not seen the source for either, so i cant really compare the actual code, but the main point stands.
What about all the legal mumbo jumbo?
The important lesson here is that Be is not calling the shots on this. Be's OEM customers will decide what kinds of protection mechanisms an Aura device should have, and Be will tailor the technology to that
this worries me...it has been proven that many times it is not the customer (read:ME) who drives the market, but the lawyers (who "know" what problems a device like this could cause - eg litigation from the RIAA) and marketers (who think it'll need to be eXtreme or be some cool green color of thermoplastic.)
this device looks ready for primetime "secure" music methods...send in the lawyers.
other than that...can i have one in all black with orange lights to match my amp??
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Sounds cool. I'd definitely use it, if it wasn't dependent on ALSA, which is a Linux-centric product, unless I'm mistaken. I don't run Linux, I run FreeBSD, and have since around 96 or so - tried Linux and was less than impressed. This is kind of what I mean about people tending to forget about anything other than the main OS player in the field...similar to a certain large corporate OS developer and many of the people that write apps for it.
-lx
But the combined load of all those things at once not effecting the system, (and without custom plextor hardware burnproof tech)
:) FYI, burnproof is not needed at all since playing Q3A (yes I actually tried it just now :) while burning a CD has resulted in the buffer being at least 79% full. That was with burnproof(tm) off, burning at 12X ,and reading the ISO over Samba from my main server in the next room(100MBit).
:) It was mucho fun, but I grew tired of all the incompatibilities, sucking network support (200K/sec when Linux is getting almost 1000K/sec), missing drivers, missing apps, lack of PPC support more recently, and all that. I came to the conclusion that the only thing BeOS was really useful for was managing and playing your MP3 collection. And even that stopped when I found out there was ZERO support for my new soundcard (Trident NX). But more importantly the spirit in the user community has gone from Fun and Supportive (1996-1998) to Mindless Drivel and Zealotery today, and that's probably the main reason I left Be/BeOS for what it was. Unless you jumped into BeOS before it went to x86 you will not known what I'm talking about.
:( :)
:)
Huh? What, so you're saying I should sacrifice hardware assisted burnproof in my drive, just to prove a point? Hahaha
How are linux companies doing again...?
Much better than Be for sure! Single Linux companies have received investments that come close to the market value of Be ($50 million). Oh, and most Linux only companies actually have a revenue stream! BTW, does IBM qualify as a Linux company? Seeing they are ready to invest about $1 billion dollars in their Linux operations next year? So please...comparing BeOS/BeIA business to Linux business is silly at best, idiotic at worst.
I have not seen the source for either, so i cant really compare the actual code, but the main point stands.
I'm the lucky owner of an *unsupported* BeBox (the 16th BeBox 133 in Europe if you'd like to know). So I do know BeOS, even programmed for it a while. My wish is still to get a pervasively multithreaded X toolkit some day. Yes, I even have 2 Be t-shirts that are worn out
Oh, BONE is coming you say? Not to my BeBox
OpenGL support for my GeForce2 GTS? Not according to NVidia. These are all things Be can be forgiven for, but it's reality today. And Linux, technically incompetent as it's perceived to be, provides me with all this and much more, today. Yes, yes I can almost hear someone screaming it's based on 1970's technology! Woehahaha, that would make BeOS... ancient
The only Be related thing I'm going to do is get me some BEOS stock at $1 next week and hope someone will buy out Be (next year) so I can make a nice profit....
-adnans
PS. Yes I'm a bit biased since Linux puts some money in my bank account these days. What's your excuse? Oh right, running a BeOS news site
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Two points:
:)
:)
:-) Yes, the point I'm trying to make is that this is a nice hack, nothing more, nothing less.
:)
First off, the first GPL player thing... So what?
Exactly! Noone bloody cares about backward playing, except perhaps Be evangelists like yourself. Get over it dude!
And for your 36 songs... are they just playing backwards/forwards?
It really doesn't matter since the overhead of playing backwards is minimal, just check out the GPL source code of alsaplayer to see how it's done
Can you play 12 of em at 72% speed backwards?
Uhm, yeah, 12 songs backwards at 72% would actually consume less CPU cycles than 12 songs at normal speed, since you'll be decoding 28% slower
Can you run 3 different tracks of the same CD at once, some backwards some forwards?
If the seektime of my CD would allow it sure. Have not tried it because...well, it's kinda useless no?
And oh yeah, while you are doing that can you map 6 mov files to a software rendered realtime 3d cube?
I would if the software 3d cube existed. Noone has taken the time to write it for Linux. I'm sure it would exist if one of Linux's main jobs was running cool demo's at a computer booth on a trade show or something *grin*
If that isnt enough, you could always burn a cd while you were doing it...
Yeah, Burnproof(tm) technology rocks in the new Plex121032A. I betya I could play QuakeArena and burn a CD at the same time. Try that on BeOS!
But honestly, this was just to point out that mp3's backwards came from Be, and is not some great alsaplayer thing.
Great! Just wish they'd sell some more copies because of this. I think desperate times have arrived for Be.
Assuming you judge on technical competence and not a great socio-political belief structure about the nature of the software.
Go RMS! He's my hero... Oh, and you can't get more technical than viewing the source code
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Ummm... is there something about BeOS/BeIA you don't like? Is there something about me you don't like? Am I ever anything but civil? Do I get my facts wrong? Is BeOS anything but incredible? What exactly is your beef?
free.be.com
You know, most companies don't understand how successful Be will become!
I have been following AudioRequest forever. I even gave it full coverage in the MP3 book I wrote for O'Reilly. I did not in any way imply that Be was the first company to do something like this.
Why not? If that's what the vendor wants it to do, then that's what Be will make it do. It's a simple equation.
He's in fact working over at http://www.adamation.com I enjoy his articles as they're very uplifting. You'll find articles by other people as well, but they seem unable to capture Be's ideas.
"The Aura prototype is able to rip and encode an entire CD in two minutes flat."
..
Hrm.. What cdrw units should I look into to get this kind of speed ? I've got a memorex 1622 that rips at 1.1x and if I'm lucky it'll burn at 2X
which is a Linux-centric product, unless I'm mistaken. I don't run Linux, I run FreeBSD
:)
Oh, it should run fine on FreeBSD. That is if they fixed the silly pthreads bug that was preventing the player to run correctly. It has been ported to just about any UNIX variant out there including IRIX, Solaris, SCO, and NetBSD. If you can run esound you can use it. Yes, the name is a bit misleading, but it is not tied to ALSA
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Hi,
I tried Aura a few weeks ago on BeIA developer forum. But I must say that it's nothing as mentioned here. I mean the mp3 player bit is just a normal mp3 player. It's got networking (sort of like the way most people host mp3's on nfs mounted partitions). The default filesystem (Be Journaled fs) just takes care of all directory work. This could be easily implemented in almost anything else. Also it has nothing to do with Be's mp3 player.
I saw one such implementation with a LDAP and NFS. A script goes and constructs LDAP entities for all songs. It's tiresome if you dont have the stuff in the mp3's to begin with. But the LDAP imeplementation is magnitutdes faster. I dont know why the author of the article missed this altogether. And maybe some reaserch before posting the article on slashdot might have stopped all the trolls here today!
Enjoy
Beed!
Hahaha! WHile you bastards were rushing to bash and defend BeOS, you all neglected to get FP, so I do posthumously declare First Post.
However, since I am in no hurry to compose this particular first post...
Desktop Linux is UNRESPONSIVE. It's great on the server end, because it neglects the end user. BeOS caters and pampers the end user.
"Power users" tend to eventually sift into two camps: those who desire convenience, and those who desire power. BeOS is the ideal nexus of UNIX command line and silky Mac GUI, but with thread handling that puts everything else to shame.
I think Linux d00ds don't like BeOS because they can't run seven different incompatible desktops on it. Most of the people who bleat about Open Source (tm) don't seem to actually write code themselves. Or are there really that many kernal hackers around here? If you think *you* can debug BeOS, give them a call. JLG will put you on in a heartbeat. I don't really see any mention given to how much more difficult it is to program for Linux than it is for BeOS.
There are a few very interesting projects underway right now, including an effort to acquire the rights to do a Black and White port, which seems to have fallen through with the former coders.
Six months from now, Linux is going to look really weak next to BeOS...
It already does, to some of us.
BeOS - Free, Open, Better
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Ah. That wasn't immediately obvious :)
What's the pthreads bug? I remember I was having some problems with pth a while back...I assumed it was cause I was dumb. I should probably put a soundcard that works into my BSD box at some point. Nobukazu Takemura is cool.
-lx
Yet Another Clueless Be Story