Ogg Vorbis For Hardware Makers

SerpicoWasTaken writes "CNET has a story announcing the release of Tremor. It's an Ogg Vorbis (Vogg Gorbis, Vogg Orbus, or Ogg [unintelligable] as pronounced by the various managers in my office) decoder that does not require a floating point unit and could herald the rise of Ogg Vorbis compatible MP3 players." Update: 09/04 21:00 GMT by T : Sorry -- this story's a dupe.

Comments

Hooray for duplicate stories!

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo!

Re:Hooray for duplicate stories!

[Anonymous Coward]

The summer came and B, in contrast to any hope, remained in St Petersburg. His trip in the south had been canceled but still his case wouldn't come to an end. This case -a trial over a financial dispute- started taking a very bad turn. Before three months it still seemed so simple, almost incontestable, suddenly however everything changed. "I have the impression that lately everything started becoming worse!" This phrase, B, used to say again and again frequently and with malevolence to himself. He had a lawyer worthy, renowed and dearly payed because he didn't spare the expenses. Nevertheless, due to impatience and disbelief, he took the habit of hunting the case and on his own: he would read and write various documents which his lawyer dismissed all, he would run to the competent institions, gather various information and of course upset everything; at least his lawyer grumbled and every now and then advised him to go to the country. But he, neither to the country decided to go. The dust, the unbearable heat, the white nights of St Petersburg which so much irritate the nerves -this is what he enjoyed in the capital. His house was somehwere there near the Grand Theater and it wasn't long that he had it taken, but and in that he was mistaken: "Everything goes wrong with me!" he said. His hypochondria was increasing day by day. Afterall from a while ago he had the predisposition to become hypochondriac.

He was a man who lived a wide and pleasant life. He wasn't young anymore. He must had been 38 or the most 39 and all this "old age" -as he said- came to him "completely unexpected". Nontheless, he felt it himself that he got old probably, not so much from the years, as from the way of life he passed and that althought his inabilities started already, their effect was more internal than external. His appearance showed still that he was fine. He was a fellow tall and courageous, with dense bright-blond hair, and not even one fur white wasn't seen in his head and his long flame-blond beard, that reached almost as the half of his chest. From the first impression he seemed a bit out of shape and like decayed but if one attentively looked at him he would preceive immediately that he had in front him a gentleman excellently preserved, who had received at sometime the most attended breeding. The manners of B and even now were free, brave and elegant despite the fact that with the years he had become crabbed and slow-moving. Even now he was full with that unshaken, the most social, full of impertinence self-confidence, whos extent maybe he didn't even suspect himself, althought he was a man not only smart, but sometimes and reasonable, almost educated and with indisputable gifts. The color of his face, which was merry and ruddy, stood out in the old years for it's female affection and drew the attention of women; but even and now many, when they saw him, said : "What a strong man, as if he was kneaded from blood and milk!" and yet, this strong man had been bout of severe hypochondria. His eyes, which were big and blue, ten years ago also had an expression unrivalled; so bright, so cheerful and carefree these eyes were, that unintentionally excited whoever came in contact with B. Now, at his forty years, almost faded the lucidity and kindness in those eyes, which started already being surrounded by light wrinkles; on the contrary, it showed up on them a certain cynicism of a tired and not entirely moral man; the cunning and even more often the irony and some new expression, which didn't exist in them before; an expression of melancholy and pain -one certain distracted melancholy, a little unjustified but yet possible. That melancholy occured mostly when he was alone. And strage, just two years ago this noisy, so cheerful and enjoyable man, who narrated so pungently so many funny stories, he not loving anything else now but living in absolute lonelyness. He turned aside on purpose from a heap of his acquqintances, whom could still even now socially contact, despite the total disaster of his financials. Of course, to all this added and his vanity : with his suspiciousness and his pride he couldn't put up with his old acquaintances. However and his vanity started slowly changing into isolation. Not that it grew less, on the contrary as a matter of fact. But he started taking a special form of vanity, which he didn't have before. Now he started getting hurt at times by completely different causes than the usual; he was teased by causes completely unexpected and which before didn't imagine at all, by causes "much more higher" than until today -"If anyone can express it like that, if indeed there are causes higher and lower..." that thought he made it himself.

Yes sire! He had come up to this point; he tossed now between some higher causes, for which before he wouldn't spare the faintest thought. In his consciousness and with all his frankness, he named higher all the "causes" which, for that wondered and himself, was impossible to make him laugh in secret -there's something that never happened till then! Only in himself; naturally that in society he was completely different. He knew it very well, that the appearance of favourable occasions was enough -and tomorrow already, being indifferent for all the mysterious and devout decisions of his consciousness, he would disavow them with absolute serenity all these "higher causes" and first him he would contempt them, he would laugh, not wanting to admit anything. And so it was, despite the some, singificant in fact, dose of independance of his thought, which he gained that last time, from all these "lower causes" that had overwhelmed him totally. Besides, how many times didn't he get up in the morning from his bed feeling shame for the thoughts and the feelings, that tortured him the hours of his insomnia! -and B suffered lately from terrible insomnias. From quite some time he observed that he had started becoming excessively distrustful to everything, so much in the serious and as in the little things, and for that he took the decision to trust himself as less as he could. However facts came up that were the impossible of impossibles not to be admitted by somebody in reallity as existant. Now latelly, at times the nights, his thoughts and his feelings mutated almost completely and the most of these had nothing to do with the others, that took place during the day. That stunned him and in fact he went to consult an eminent doctor, whom the truth was he happened to know. They naturally talked in a jest; he got the answer, that the event of his alternation and whatsoever of the discord of his thoughts and feelings at nights -as long his insomnia lasted, and as a general rule that happened at night- is a fact very habitual among people "who think a lot and feel a lot", that the beliefs of all life at some time change suddenly under the state of melancholy which causes night and insomnia. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, the most critical decissions are attempted; but all these happen, of course, to a degree. If, in the end, the subject is feeling too intense inside it that discord, as to eventually suffer, it is then undisputable proof that it's illness has already been manifested and consequently it is necessary to receive as soon as possible some measure. And the most preferable of all is for someone to change radically way of life, change diet or even attempt a trip. It's for the good, of course, and a cathartic.

B didn't want to listen to more; but his illness had been displayed completely.

"So, all these were only illness, all these "higher causes" were just illness and nothing more!" he exclaimed at some time with malice in himself. He had however no mood to admit it.

Soon, nontheless, it began repeating and in the mornings what used to happen exclusively at nightly hours, but with more bill, than the night, with malice instead with regret, with sarcasm instead of emotion. In reallity to his memory came more and more often, suddenly, "and god knows why", various incidents from his past life, but these memories came with a special way. B, for example, from quite some time now complained that he was losing his mnemonic : he forgot the faces of the people he knew. And they, when they met him, felt themselves offended. A book he had red six months ago, was forgotten in this interval completely. And so what happened? With all the apparent daily decay of his memory, something that a lot worried him, all that was about the passed, all that had taken place ten-fifteen years ago and were in fact completely forgotten, all these came back sometimes suddenly in his recall, but with such an amazing precision of impressions and details, as if he was living them again from the start. Some of these events were to such an extent burried in his memory, that and just this seemed like a miracle -that he recalled them. But it wasn't just that. Afterall and as if who, of the people who lived intensively, hasn't his own memories? But, the thing was that all these memories came back now as if prepared by somebody, with a totally new, unexpected and unprecedented perception for every thing. For, why some of these memories seemed to him now like pure crimes? And was it just because his mind condemned them? Definatelly he wouldn't have much trust in his dark, lonely and ill mind. But, these sentiments brought him almost tears, if not visible, then tears covert. Most definatelly, two years ago he wouldn't believe it, if they told him that some day he's going to cry!

And first of all he recalled not so much incidents of his sentimental life, as much those that hurt him. Came to his memory social failures and humiliations. He remembered, for instance, how "an intriguer slandered him", and how after that they stopped accepting him in a friendly house; that, for instance, and that hadn't happened long ago, he was found entirely humbled in front of everybody, and yet he didn't invite his insulter to a duel; that some time they humiliated him with an ingenious epigram in a circle of the cutest ladies, and he lost it and didn't know what to answer. He recalled again as a matter of fact a couple of unpaied debts, the truth is that they were unimportant, however they were debts of honor and in fact to people with whom he had stopped having dealings with, and he had already started talking bad about them. He was also tortured -but that only happened in his worse moments- by the memory of his two fortunes, which he spent with the most idiotic way and where each one was quite significant. However soon he started remembering and from the "higher".

For instance, all of a sudden, "for no apparent reason" it would come to his memory the forgotten -and in fact to the highest degree forgotten- figure of a naive old-man civil servant, a grey-haired and funny little man, who at sometime in the old years he had insulted in public just to put on airs, and actually without being punished for this action of his; just and only so he wouldn't miss a joke and a successful pun, that made him famous and which afterwards everybody repeated. That incident was so long forgotten, that not even and the name of this old man he couldn't remember, despite the fact that at once the entire scene of the incident appeared before him with unimpressive clearness. He recalled very intensively, how the old man then stood up for his daughter, who lived with him and was single and for whom various rumors had started spreading. The old man was going already to answer and get angry, but suddenly bursted in sobbing in front of everybody, something that actually caused a one certain impression. The result was to get him drunk, just to have fun, with champagnes and have a hell of a good time. And when B remembered again "just like that", how the old man was crying with sobs and hide his face with his hands, like a little child, it seemed to him suddenly as if he had never forgotten this incident. And weird: all these back then seemed extremely amusing; now though, on the contrary, all these details and the covering of the face with the hands, broke his heart.

Then again, he recalled how sometime, to make a joke, he ridiculed one cute wife of a teacher, and the slander had reached the ears of her husband. B very soon left that small town and didn't learn what end had the consequences of his scurrility; now, though, he began suddenly picturing in his mind the ending of this story. And god knows up to where his imagination would go if another, much closer memory didn't come to him: about a girl, from a simple middle social class, and who actually he didn't exceptionally like, but for whom to be frank, he was ashamed for his involvement with her; until they had a child, without himself knowing why, abandoned her along with the child, without even saying goodbye -it's the truth that he didn't have the time for that- when he left for St Petersburg. Later, he looked for that girl an entire year, but it was impossible to find her again. Afterall, he noticed that such memories came to him in heaps, and each one of them as if dragged a dozen of others along with it. Gradually his vanity started getting hurt.

We said before that his vanity had taken a special form. That was right. At times, very seldom though, he reached to such a point of inconsciousness, that he wasn't ashamed for not having a car of his own and for wandering on foot in the public offices, that he had started neglecting his appearance -and if by chance anyone from his past looked up to him with an ironic look on the street, or just came to him to pretend he didn't recognised him, then, by all, he would have plenty of arrogance not to even wrinkle his face. To remain soberly apathetic, and do that just to show off. Naturally that happened very seldom. The moments of insensibility and indignation were very few. However his vanity started slowly going away from it's previous causes and concentrating around one question that kept coming ceaselessly to his mind.

"So there", he began wondering at some time malevonently, because almost always when he bethought about himself, he started from irony. "So there, that someone in there is taking care for the improvement of my ethics and is sending me all these damned memories and "the tears of regret". The hell with it! All these are blank shots! As if I don't know it for sure, and something more than sure, that despite all these tear-wet regrets and self-judgements, inside me there is not even one drop of independance, instead all my stupendous 40 years! As if tomorrow already, if a temptation occured to me, say, if the occasion happened again and I had to gain by spreading that the teacher accepted gifts from me... Doubtless I would do it without the slightest hesitation, and the whole thing would be even worse, even more disgusting, because it would happen for second time and not for first. And that little prince, that only son who 11 year ago I smashed his foot with a bullet, he could only attempt to pretend insulting me again, and instantly I'd challenge him and put his foot in the mould again. It means that not all the shots are blanks and that something comes out of them! And why do I have to remember, since I'm not worthy to make it through with dignity with myself!"

And although the incident with the teacher was never repeated, although he didn't put noone's foot in the mould, nevertheless and just by the thought that without doubt this ought to be repeated, if the occasion brought it, almost killed him... sometimes. He wouldn't oppress afterall forever by memories!... He could also take a rest and get off in the intermissions.

And that's what B did: he was just about to get off in the intermissions, but instead, as time passed the more unpleasant his life was becoming in St Petersburg. July was already coming. Inside him there was born suddenly the decission to abandon everything as they were, and even the trial, and to leave for some place far and don't look back, some place random, suddenly, unpremeditated, even down there to the Carribean, for example. But, usually, after one hour he had contempted his decission and he was laughing with this thought of his. "These bad thoughts", he said, "won't stop wherever I go, once they've started; and if I am even one bit a decent man, I have no reason to avoid them. Afterall, it would all be in vain".

"And where to go?" he kept philosophising from his grief. "Over here there is so much dust, so much heat, this house is so dirty... In all these procedures where I'm wasting my time, among all these competent clerks; one can see so much vain labour, so much futile bother. Inside all this crowd that stayed in the city, upon all these faces which come and go from dusk till dawn; is painted with so much naivety and sincereness all their selfishness all their simplistic rudeness, all the cowardness of their humble little soul, all the smallness of their heart, that, I'll be damned, here is the paradise for a hypochondriac! Everything is clear. Nobody thinks it's neccessary to hide, like our ladies do in the country or in European sites. Therefore all these deserve, and more, our deepest appreciation, and even just for their simplicity and their sincereness... I'm not going nowhere! I'm sticking around, but I'm not moving from this place!..."

Re:Hooray for duplicate stories!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the third of July. The heat was choking and unbearable. That day was full of troubles for B; all of the morning he had to run here and there, then it was an indispensable necessity to visit the same night a great gentleman, a businessman and Councellor of the State, in his villa, somewhere there in the Black River, and meet him unexpectedly in his house. At about 6 B entered at last in a restaurant -very questionable, but french though- in avenue 54 near the bridge of the police; he was seated in his usual corner, at his table, and ordered his daily food.

He was spending every day $1 for his food and for the wine he payed extra, something which he considered a sacrifice that he did with a lot of prudence, taking into account his devastated economics. Wondering and himself how could he eat this pitiful food, he devoured everything though, up to the last bits of crumb -and every time with such an appetite, as if he hadn't eaten for at least three days. "That here is sickness!" he mumbled sometimes observing his appetite. But this time he sat in his table thoughtful and very moody; he threw angrily his hat in a corner and leaned his head over his elbows and sank into thoughts.

They brought him his soup. He took the spoon, and suddenly, before he had the time to take a spoonful, he threw it at once on the table and almost jumped from his chair. An unexpected thought flashed in his mind: at that moment -and God only knows by which sequence- came at once the explanation of his particular sorrow that tortured him for some days now, and only God knows how it got to him; but now, all of a sudden, he could see everything clear and evident like his five fingers.

"For everything it's that hat!" he faltered as in an extacy. "Only that damned round hat with that awful mourning crape is responsible for everything!"

He began thinking; and the more he thought, the more he became gloomy, and the more astonishing seemed in his eyes "all that incident".

"But.. is there an incident?" he wondered once again disbelieving against himself. "Is there anything in this story that looks like an incident?"

This is what this story was: About two weeks ago -he really couldn't remember very well, but it seemed to him it was two weeks ago- where he met for the first time in the street, somewhere in the crossing of avenues 36 and 67, a gentleman with mourn in his hat. The gentleman was like everybody else, he had nothing special on him, passed him quickly, but starred at B with a look extremely insistant, and, unknown why, drew immediately all his attention. At least the face seemed familiar to B.

It was apparent, that sometime and somewhere he must had met him. "Afterall, how many such faces didn't I meet in my life? like I can remember them all!". And after he moved about 20 steps, one would say he had forgotten already about this encounter despite the initial impression it had upon him. Nevertheless, the impression remained with him for the whole day, and something very strange: it was taking the form of a certain unjustified and particular hostility. And today, after two weeks, all these he remembered with total clarity; he recalled moreover that then it was impossible for him to explain where this hostility was born from -and so much he didn't understand that, so he couldn't not even once combine and compare through that night his bad mood with the encounter of the morning. However, that gentleman rushed himself to remind him of his existance. The very next day, he fell upon B, in avenue 54 again, and starred at him bizzarely. B spit on the ground, but immediately he was astonished with his action. The fact is that there are faces that generate at once an unjustified and deepest loathing.

"Without doubt, I've met him before somewhere" mumbled B deep in thought, after half an hour had passed from this encounter. And again the whole night he remained terribly moody; he had as a matter of fact and a bad dream that night; nevertheless it didn't occur to him, that the cause of all this new and special depression was only the mourn-dressed gentleman he saw the morning, despite the fact that that night he remembered him several times. In fact he was enraged a little, where "such a son-of-a-bitch" dares to bother his memory all this time; and to render all his tension to him, certainly he would have found humiliating, and simply if such a thought crossed his mind. After two days, they met again in the crowd, as they were coming out of a boat in Nevas. That third time B was about to swear that the gentleman with the mourn in the hat recognised him and started to run near him, but he was swept and blocked from the crowd; it seemed to him in fact that he "dared" to stretch his hands towards him; maybe he even yelled and called his name. The latter B, didn't hear very well, but..."who is he anyway, that canaille and why then he doesn't approach me, if he really knows me and if he so much wishes to talk to me?" wondered in anger, as he was climbing on a carriage, wanting to go towards Shmolini monastry. In half an hour he was arguing and shouting with his lawyer, but the night he was again furrious and his sorrow had no limits. "You wouldn't say my bill has broken?" he wondered with suspicion, as he looked in the mirror.

That was the third encounter. Then, for five days "absolutely nobody" came in his way, and as for the "canaille" not a sight. Nontheless, all the time it kept returning in his mind the gentleman with the mourn in the hat. B halted upon this thought with some perplexity: "What get's me with him? Hmm... It seems though that he also has many affairs in St Petersburg. But why is he wearing mourn? It's obvious that he knows me, but do I know him... And why these people should wear mourn? How bad it looks on them... I think that if I looked at him a little better I'd recognise him..."

As if something started creeping inside his memories, and some very familiar, but suddenly, for some unknown reason, forgotten word, that he was trying with all of his strength to remember again. "You know this word very well, and you also know that you know it; you know exactly what it means, you have it at the tip of your tongue and yet, by no means it won't come to your mind, no matter how much you try with it!"

"It was... It was a long time ago... It was somewhere... Here it was... Here... Umf, the hell with it!... What it was and what it wasn't!.." he shouted suddenly in anger. "Is it worth it tearing apart and making a fool of myself for this canaille?..."

He was outraged. But the dusk, when he suddenly recalled his morning anger and remembered how was he "outraged", he felt extreme discontent: as if somebody caught him doing something improper. He was sounded and wondered:

"So there, there are motives that make me get so angry... Just like that... And just by coming in my mind..." He didn't finish his thought.

Nevertheless, the next day, he was outraged even more but this time it seemed to him that his anger had a reason and that he was absolutely right. "His cheek was unexampled" the thought. It happened, sort of speak, the fourth encounter. The gentleman with the mourn in the hat reappeared, as if he popped in front of him. B had just managed to spot on the road that Councellor of the State, who was so useful to him, and hunted him up to that moment to get him even by chance, at his villa.

That government clerk was remotely familiar to B, but he needed him for his business; and then, as and now, he always escaped from him and it was obvious that he was hidding, trying to avoid the encounter with B. Very happy B, who finally ran into him, started walking next to him, in a hurry, starring into his eyes and strained all of his powers to get the witty white-haired to a subject, a discussion, that would force him maybe to utter without his will one little word, which from a long time he seeked and expected; but the witty white-haired also had his mind, he listened silently and all the time giggled -and then, up on this so critical moment, B's look fell suddenly in the oposite pavement, on the gentleman with the mourn on the hat. He was standing still and looked from there stubbornly both of them. It was apparent that he was surveilling them and maybe even was laughing up his sleeve teasingly.

"Damn it!" was rilling B, accompanying at the same time the clerk and rendering all his misfortune in the sudden appearance of this "impudent". "Damn it, so he's spying on me! It's obvious that he's going after me! Like he's instigated by someone and... And... By God, he was laughing! I'll be damned, I'm gonna beat the shit out of him... It's just a pitty I moving around without a cane! I'll buy a cudget!... I won't let this pass like this!.. Who could he be! I want definatelly to find out who is he!"

Finally, exactly three days after that -the fourth- encounter, we find B in his restaurant, as we already described, overtaken completely by a tremendous agitation and in fact almost shaken. That not even himself couldn't avoid admitting it, despite his uplifting. In the end, he was eventually forced to feel it, combining all the incidents, that the cause of all his gloom, all his particular sorrow and all his agitation, that lasted two weeks now, wasn't anything else but this gentleman with the mourn "despite his nothingness".

"So let's admit it that I'm a hypochondriac then" bethough B. "And of course that I'm ready to turn a fly into a camel; however, do I rest with the idea that maybe all these are just fantasies? Certainly, if such a rascal is in position of upsetting totally a man, then it is of course.. Then it is..."

Really, in that -the fifth- encounter of today, which so much shook B, the camel presented almost like a fly; because this gentleman while, as it happened otherwise, slipped in front of him, but this time passed without looking inquiringly at B anymore and without acting as if he knows him, like before; on the contrary, as a matter of fact, he passed lowering his eyes, as if he seeked not to become perceived. B turned and shout with a loud voice:

--"Hey you! With the mourn on the hat! Now you are looking to hide? Hold on! Who are you?"

The question, and all the yell, was very pointless. But B understood that only after he had shouted. With that yell the gentleman turned, hesitated for a minute, was at a loss, smiled, went to say something, do something; for a moment he rested in visible and tremendous perplexity and suddenly turned around and started running, without looking back. B was watching him astonished.

"But really if..." he thought. "But really if he's not a leech on me, but instead I harash him every little while? What then?"

Having finished his lunch, he set out in a hurry for the villa of the clerk. But and again he didn't find him at his house. They told him that "He hadn't returned since the morning, and it was unknown whether he would return tonight before three or four after midnight; because he had stayed in the city at somebody who had his birthday"

That whatsoever seemed to him "humiliating" to such degree that, the first moment of his fury, decided to start and go to the one who had his birthday, and indeed he said to the coachman to head this way; in the course though he understood that he had overdone it a little, desisted the coach and headed on foot for his place, towards the Grand Theater. He felt the need to move to calm down his upset nerves; he had to definatelly sleep well the night, despite the insomnia that tortured him, and to be able to sleep he had to, at least, get tired. And so he got home just at half past ten, because the road was enough -and really, he felt very tired.

His house -which he had rented since May and with so much malevolence said bad things about and swore at, while on the other hand he tried to justify, by saying that all this is temporary, like a campain, and that he "stuck" in St Petersburg without wanting, because of, "this goddamn trial"- wasn't at all so ugly nor uncomfortable, as he said. The entrance was, indeed, a bit sombre and "dirty", under the dome of the gate. But his apparment, which was at the second floor, had two big, clair and high-ceilinged rooms that were separated by a dark anteroom, and consequently the one had a view to the street and the other to the yard. Next to the room with the view on the yard, there was a small office that could also be used and as a bedroom. B however had it filled with books and papers scattered irregularily here and there, while himself he slept in one of the big rooms, the one watching the street. They made his bed on the couch. His furniture, although they were second-hand, were however presentable and among them there were in fact a couple of valuable things -leftovers from his passed magesty: porcelain and bronze bibelots, big and original Bouahara rugs and there were also two not-bad paintings saved; but all these were thrown with a terrible disorder, nothing was at it's place, and everything was covered with plenty of dust, ever since the girl that served him, Pelagia, left on vacation to Novgorod to her relatives and left him alone. That exceptional event, serving a girl a bachelor and social gentleman, who at the same time wanted to preserve his aristocratic habits, made B a lot of times almost blush, despite the fact that he was satisfied from this Pelagia. The girl got in his service when he first took this appartment, on spring. He took her from a knowm family that were leaving abroad and ever since she did his household. But, since Pelagia left, B wasn't making the decission to take another girl. Then again, taking a male servant for such a little while, wasn't worth it. Besides, he didn't like male servants at all. Because of that, now the sister of the doorkeeper, Mavra, was coming and arranging the rooms to whom in fact left the key when he got out. She however didn't do absolutely nothing, she took his money, and as it seems, robbed him. But he had taken the decission and actually he was happy, that now he could stay all alone at his house. But everything has it's limits -and sometimes his nerves rebeled, when he had a bad day, and by no means they didn't tolerate statding all this "dirt". And even this way, every time he got home B, entered with a sensation of disgust in his appartment. This time though, he barely gave himself the time ti take off his clothes, fell on the bed and decided exasperated not to think anything and definatelly sleep "at once". And the funny thing was, that instantly he fell asleep, as he touched his head on the pillow. That was something that hadn't happened for months now.

fp

[designBureau]

fp!

Duplicate

[streak]

Well, we saw this story yesterday,
here

Re:Duplicate

[rosewood]

Still on the first page none the less

yet, they wont post that video games are banished in greece?

Re:Duplicate

[SailorFrag]

They did already in the last slashback.

Re:Duplicate

[jhines0042]

I was forwarded that story by a friend too and nearly posted it. But I also figured that it would have already been a dup or someone else would beat me to the punch so I didn't...

I'm disappointed that the video games banished in Greece didn't make Slashdot yet.

Re:Duplicate

[Milalwi]

Still on the first page none the less

Man, you got a lot of stuff on your front page... or you've got a lot hidden. ;-)

yet, they wont post that video games are banished in greece?

It was in a Slashback

Milalwi

Re:Duplicate

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because no-one gives a shit.

What is ogg vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why should I care what your managers call it?

Re:What is ogg vorbis?

[Luke Skyewalker]

ogg vorbis is a new compression technique that rivals that of mp3 and wma. unlike mp3 and wma, however, ogg vorbis has been patented under the gpl, which will allow developer, manufacturers, and end users to avoid the licensing fees normally associated with compression/encoding technologies.

ogg vorbis is less lossy of a format than that of mp3, and it also has been shown to yield an output file 10 - 17% smaller than that of mp3 and wma, without significant loss of fidelity.

Hey Tim

[NeMon'ess]

Tim must've been talking on his cell phone while posting this duplicate article.

News* for Nerds.

[Anonymous Coward]

News is defined as recycled stories that we have already posted to /.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they stick to doing only one repost once a day or so...

Let it begin!

[SkulkCU]

repeat.

Re:Let it begin!

[Mournblade]

Weird. The original story SkulkCU referenced does not appear in the "older stuff" slashbox for my login. Anyone else have that problem?

Re:Let it begin!

[Zathrus]

Maybe you're blocking stories from michael?

Considered doing it, given how much editorializing he does. Particularly since it's usually wrong.

Re:Let it begin!

[Mournblade]

Nah, I'm only blocking Katz. I figured it out - the original story was so new that it was still showing up at the bottom of the main page - hadn't yet tripped over to the "older stuff" section.

not so fast...

[Longinus]

"could herald the rise of Ogg Vorbis compatible MP3 players."

Wouldn't that make them Ogg Vorbis players?

Re:not so fast...

[m2pc]

Well, OGG Vorbis/MP3 Players... I don't think they're talking about *replacing* the MP3 decoder with an OGG Vorbis decoder, but rather encouraging hardware manufacturers to consider adding support for OGG. Besides, there are already players that play both MP3 and WMA. OGG is just another format from a hardware standpoint.

Re:not so fast...

[Longinus]

Yes, I realize that, I was just poking fun at the mislabeling of mutli-codec audio players as "MP3 players."

Re:not so fast...

[Archfeld]

If there is a cost on the MP3 decoder I would assume that going forward they would drop the license for it and proceed with the OGG only ?
I wonder if the cost savings is worth the effort to rewrite all my music ?

Re:not so fast...

[sys$manager]

Try going into Circuit City or Best Buy and asking for a "multi-codec audio player." :)

Re:not so fast...

[_Swank]

isn't it just as big of a mistake to then call them "Ogg Vorbis players."

Re:not so fast...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

To correct both of you. If it is only a "player", it wouldn't be an audio enCOder/DECoder. So what you would want to ask for, is a multi-format audio player. Probally want to specify that wish support for lossy audio compression formats, just so they don't get confused.

Re:not so fast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to install the sarcasm filter on their browser!!!

Re:not so fast...

[Longinus]

Not neccessarily, it depends on what you mean by "them." If a piece of audio hardware plays only Ogg Vorbis, then one could say it is an Ogg Vorbis player, but if said hardware also plays, say, MP3s and WMA (blech!), then it would perhaps best be called a digital audio player, or multi-format audio player, or something like that. Since neither exist as of yet, it is not possible to make the mistake of calling "them" Ogg Vorbis players. But I see your point.

Re:not so fast...

[The_Dougster]

What the heck is WMA? No, wait, I bet it is some fantastic new Microsoft-only audio format which will do for music what BMP did for images! Heck I guess I better format my hard drive and go get WinXP or else I will be left behind, hey everybody jump on the WMA bandwagon! Look, everybody's doing it!

Why, oh why, must they always reinvent everything. Reminds me of the Serious Sam Easter Egg where the Old Man Murray guys are riding around in a little car with square wheels...

Oggs are great. I don't share my music with anybody else anyways, so I couldn't give a rat's ass what everybody else uses. Yessir, I like 'em.

c'mon

[lamp77]

could at least just put it in a slashback.

Re:c'mon

[Snowgen]

could at least just put it in a slashback.

They will.

Twice. :-)

Re:c'mon

[Anonvmous Coward]

"could at least just put it in a slashback."

Sorry about the temporal incongruity folks, my Tardis has been acting funny since I spilled carrot juice on the console. I'd fix it if some AC wasn't trying to kill me.

--Doc

This was posted yesterday....

[puppetman]

What else can I say?

DUPE!

[da3dAlus]

Yes, I'm lame.

Leave it to the folks at /. to make traking dupes the new "First Post" game...

Re:DUPE!

[Anonymous Coward]

gay homo with banner ads on your web page...

In Soviet Russa...

[Your_Mom]

...Stories Repeat you!

Oh this isn't Fark.com? I'll get my coat.

Re:In Soviet Russa...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you on Fark?

Re:In Soviet Russa...

[Disevidence]

Your Mum

Re:In Soviet Russa...

[Your_Mom]

Just a lurker, I never comment.

Heard this yesterday

[jeeryg_flashaccess]

Repost!

Older Stuff block?

[Knightmare]

Are the posters on slashdot not allowed to have this block on their page? Because a quick glance over there would have kept this from happening and taking up one of the 14 story slots for today.

Repeat...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least they have got the interval of repeated stories down to one a day...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/03/174020 3&mode=nested&tid=100

Can someone PLEASE explain

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do the slashdot editors refuse to acknowledge that douple posts are a problem? Just admit it and do something to fix it. It's really not that hard problem to solve.

Timothy sucks

[Laplace]

There isn't much more to say about that. Timothy sucks. Boo!

oops

[Anonymous Coward]

the original story is still listed on the front page under "older stuff" even. c'mon.

I want one . . .

[JWL-23]

. . . because .ogg files sound better than .mp3 anyway.

Ogg...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ogg Vorbis is going to be limited until it changes that stupid name

Re:Ogg...

[EvilBudMan]

How about Egg Orbit?

Re:Ogg...

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare the names of Betamax and VHS. Note which one went on to dominate the market. Discuss.

Re:Ogg...

[The_Dougster]

Or Oof Vommit?

or how about o99 v04b15? Make it l337 like mp3.

If you wanna find out what OGG means, just catch this football and stand there.

w00t for what?

[RebelTycoon]

Many manufacturers have said they are playing it safe and are waiting for Ogg Vorbis to develop a large following before they devote any development work to the format.

Just like Linux on the desktop... Let's face it, everyone has paid the MP3 licensing fees who are going to. Ogg is relatively unknown, hell, MP3 was unknown until Napster popularized it.

Its going to be a long while before we see iPod with Ogg capabilities... because there just isn't enough critical mass.

Dupe

[VTg33k]

Do the guys that work at Slashdot actually READ Slashdot?

Re:Dupe

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Do the guys that work at Slashdot actually READ Slashdot?"

Did the 4,000 people who commented on the dupe story read the comments?

Re:Dupe

[aardvarkjoe]

Did the 4,000 people who commented on the dupe story read the comments?

The more that we express our displeasure with the obvious fact that the editors don't care, the more likely they are to start paying attention. At this point, with there being generally a repeat every day, the number of complaints often outweighs the number of comments on the subject. I keep hoping that someday one of the "editors" will look at the comments and realize that there's a problem. (Of course, maybe they really don't care that thousands of people think that they're lazy idiots because they can't even glance at the front page before posting a story.)

The fact that the stories repeat isn't so bad in itself, but it's a symtom of the bigger problem that the editors simply don't care about slashdot. Until they either start working, or get a clue and step down, they deserve all the derision we can heap on them.

Re:Dupe

[Anonvmous Coward]

I doubt that's really why people are posting the obvious. I think it's karma whoring, personally. Half-assed attempts at +1 Funny's and so on.

If you really want to complain, send an email to the Slashdot staff. If an article drives 400 comments, then 400 people have seen the ads. Think about it. You'll just encourage errors to happen.

Personally, I think the real reason that not much attention is paid to spelling is that it drives the eyeballs up. (that and it's hard to be nice to people who are impolite about it.)

Re:Dupe

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, as far as advertising goes -- I recommend that anyone that dislikes the attitude of the slashdot staff block the advertisements. (I just turn off images when coming to slashdot, though of course there are better ways of doing it.) If they're going to treat the slashdot readers as mindless consumers, I'm certainly not going to waste my bandwidth in order to help them make a profit. They've done nothing to earn my loyalty.

Re:Dupe

[Anonvmous Coward]

" If they're going to treat the slashdot readers as mindless consumers, I'm certainly not going to waste my bandwidth in order to help them make a profit"

Replying to my post didn't do anything to help that. It's another comment, therefore more participation in the thread. You should be emalling them about it, not me.

"They've done nothing to earn my loyalty."

Is loyalty really an issue here? It's not like you're paying anything to view the news.

"I recommend that anyone that dislikes the attitude of the slashdot staff block the advertisements."

0 effect. Don't like when Slashdot does something? Complain directly to the editors so they know what the problem is. I seriously doubt they're paying a whole lot of attention to the comments. I wouldn't. People who complain about /. in the least tactful way. Blocking the ads will only lower /.'s ability to get money, which could lead to shutdown of the site. If all you want is a minor fix, then you're going about it in the least direct and most painful way.

Re:Dupe

[aardvarkjoe]

I have. Others have too. However, it doesn't make any difference. On the other hand, if slashdot can't earn any money, their jobs are suddenly at stake. That might be enough to make them do something.

The reason why compaining in the comments is important is because it lets everyone -- not just the editors -- see the complaints. If everyone just stuck to e-mail, then they could just claim, "Not too many people are bothered; we don't need to do anything." (If you don't believe they'd do that, recall their response to page-widening.)

its pronounced as hog without the h

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbasses.
Thats the problem with geeks. They make words that no one can pronounce like
linux (lin-ucks)
GNU (Guh-new)
KDE
ogg (ogg)
Slashdot (/.)
1337 (One thousand, three hundred and thirty seven)

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[grumpygrodyguy]

Dumbasses.
Thats the problem with geeks. They make words that no one can pronounce like
linux (lin-ucks)
GNU (Guh-new)

I thought this too, but then I wondered if it's an intentional "freudian slip" in the backs of our minds. By making our top-secret geek tools unpleasant to say, it will stay out of the mouths of people who like to "nip things in the bud" before they get a chance to grow.

Most RIAA and MPAA execs are pampered babies who don't like to hear ugly things...how many times do you think the word "Ogg" will float around the RIAA boardroom? They are too egotistical and full of themselves...

So this is pretty cool, it's like geekcode for the verbal "word-of-mouth" space.

Once OGG is locked solid and working...we can always rename it to something more appealing later. So the theme is...first we built the lawyer-proof tanks, then we release them into the public domain...I love it!

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad no one knows the format name is Vorbis...

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, it is a dumb name. MP3 just sounds cooler. It has a nice high tech ring to it, and I'm sure most non-techies think it stands for "Microsoft Product 3", because as we ALL know, it takes Microsoft until version 3 to get something right.

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't even think about calling them "OV's".

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[Suppafly]

Once OGG is locked solid and working...we can always rename it to something more appealing later. So the theme is...

Actually, there is no reason that the file name or extension has to be the same as the decoder..Word files aren't mydocument.wrd.. kinda like how .avi format movies could use a multiple of several decoders.. why not just call them .mp3 and expect people to upgrade to the new version.. (that would be mean :) ) or more seriously just call them song-name.music to imply that they are music.. i think that would probably catch on..

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[Anonymous Coward]

You might describe Windows 3.0 as 'getting it right', but I beg to differ.

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[memfree]

just call them song-name.music to imply that they are music.. i think that would probably catch on..

Stop right there! I WANT different file types to have different extensions. I want to filter for them -- and I certainly don't want my 'JPEG's and 'BMP's both labled 'PIC's just because less tech folks would catch on.

IMO, intentionally promoting one extension for multiple formats is WORSE than Microsoft's technique of hiding file extensions (resulting in people clicking the readme.txt.exe embedded in their emails). It'd also be hell to extension mapping.

Re:its pronounced as hog without the h

[eno2001]

Hmmm... what about an extension to filesystems that allows for a "dummy descriptor". HFS on the Mac has metadata (or whatever the hell they call it) that lets the OS display filenames with NO extensions, but it still knows the type. It also looked to me like the Nautilus people were doing the same type of thing with MIME types.

to all duplicate story whiners, clue in

[stratjakt]

This isn't a duplicate of the story about hardware based Ogg Vorbis decoders you read about yesterday.

This is a story about CNET doing a story about the hardware based Ogg Vorbis decoders you read about yesterday.

Jumped-Up-Joey-Jeremiah, pay attention, will ya?

Okay Timothy...

[Ziviyr]

Sit in the corner for five minutes!

Re:Okay Timothy...

[Ziviyr]

It was the first one I saw at score 1. Still was after the sickeningly long time it took to bang out on my new dvorak and submit.

repeat? but hope it catches on

[ehudokai]

Well this is a repeat of yesterdays story, but I hope that this catches on with hardware makers. My one reason for not buying a portable audio player yet is the the lack of support for other formats. I know there are a few companies currently releasing ogg players, but competition is needed.

Just my $.02

Video Games banned in Greece

[SkulkCU]

I've submitted that story... I can't imagine that others haven't. Maybe they think it's a joke?

MSNBC article

Re:Video Games banned in Greece

[Ctrl-Z]

Are you referring to the ban mentioned in this Slashback?

Re:Video Games banned in Greece

[Anonymous Coward]

I did too - "2002-09-04 19:45:54 Video games banned in public places in Greece (articles,games) (rejected)"

Instead we get a duplicate story. w00t! Let's talk about the Greek (or Grecians or whatever Bush called them) thing instead just to bring down the wrath of the karma gods.

Re:Video Games banned in Greece

[SkulkCU]

Ah, so it is. Thank you.

I didn't remember seeing an article about it. I just assumed that a law against playing games would be worth a story - as opposed to "the gaming ban in Greece" in a Slashback.

At any rate, I'll go away now.

battle is over, go home

[guacamolefoo]

Some people don't use ethernet. Some won't use mp3. Making ogg vorbis and mp3 play nicely won't yank the thousands of diamond rios out of people's hands or get them to upgrade. As a practical matter mp3 is the de facto winner of this round of music standards, technical or legal merits notwithstanding. I don't have to like it, it just is.

guac-foo

Re:battle is over, go home

[AlgUSF]

Winner, what round. .ogg just reached 1.0 not to long ago. I personally want a player that plays .ogg, and won't buy one unless it does!

Re:battle is over, go home

[guacamolefoo]

I've enjoyed having my MP3 player for a few years now. It's this new device that plays compressed digital music files. Oh? You want an ogg vorbis music player? Well, it's only almost 2003 -- keep waiting.

Listen. I'm sympathetic. The next MP3 player (digital/compressed music player -- wait: GNU/digital/compressed music player) I purchase, I will look for o.v. compatibility. The device I have right now works just dandy, however.

GF

Re:battle is over, go home

[Archfeld]

I've got an mp3 player that is flashable. I will happily switch to OV as soon as I can. I have both formats now, and play vorbis via winamp with no real problems. But for the day you are correct.

Re:battle is over, go home

[spd_rcr]

nice troll but i'll bite, i mean, hell, as a practical matter windows is the de facto winner of this round of operating systems technical or legal merits notwithstanding. i don't have to like it, it just is.

fortuneatly, i don't have to run windows, i can run linux or freebsd. fortuneatly, my nex II is flash upgradeable, and according to tech support they're working on ogg vorbis support, so soon i won't have to be stuck w/ crappy old mp3s. variety & choice are nice, that's why i buy hardware that doesn't lock me in.

My god!

[Anonymous Coward]

People complain about stories posted twice, but how about the same story posted yesterday, and it's still visible on the front page even!

Clairvoyance

[Anonym1ty]

Wow I just hate it when I see the future and then I go to slashdot and it's like I already read everything.

I hate Deja Vu

deja vu

[Tellarin]

oh my, not again!!!
another glitch in the matrix?

This comment is a dupe.

[Multiple Sanchez]

This comment is a duplicate of another one in this thread. Why don't you posters read the other posts before hitting "submit"? ... While you're answering that question, I'll go get a soft drink. Ahh -- diet doctor pepper. Who would have thought they could improve on the original? But they did!

Re:This comment is a dupe.

[tunah]

This comment is a duplicate of another one in this thread. Why don't you posters read the other posts before hitting "submit"? ... While you're answering that question, I'll go get a soft drink. Ahh -- diet doctor pepper. Who would have thought they could improve on the original? But they did!

For more details

[eldimo]

Check yesterday discussion

Realistic?

[Spazholio]

When you get right down to it, MP3 is now a recognized and (mostly) accepted medium. Despite the fact that Ogg is a superior format, and open source to boot, I think it's going to be an uphill battle. Manufacturers aren't going to rush to develop for it, because there's always a fear of doing something new and innovative in a realm where there's already a clear and established niche. And people aren't going to want to get a portable Ogg player, because it's not what they're used to ("Ogg? What's that? A new virus?"). Not to mention ripping all their CDs AGAIN. And that's even assuming they owned them in the first place. If not (most likely), they'll be encoding from lossy to lossy. Most people I know aren't audiophiles, and only get 128, maybe 160 if it's available, so sound quality from a 128 MP3 to even a decent quality Ogg will be bad. It's a wicked circle, and it's a damned shame. I have a Zaurus, but it doesn't have NEARLY the battery life to double as a portable Ogg player. Here's to hoping someone in the portable music industry has some balls and decides to take a chance.

Re:Realistic?

[sporty]

Two-words. Maybe one ;) -- Beta-max.

No matter where ogg might go, mp3 has a foothold. There's a difference though. Using Ogg for your music collection is easy since the medium you rip from is the same as mp3. Most of my music collection I own. I don't get my mp3's from friends either. I just borrow their cd's. So using Ogg won't be hard. And being opensource, it'll stick around until something blows it and mp3 out of the water :) As for the hardware players, give it time, we'll have devices that support wma, mp3 AND ogg.

Re:Realistic?

[Suppafly]

Despite the fact that Ogg is a superior format

From a hardware design standpoint, thats highly debateable, especially considering that until yesterday (or today if you didn't read /. yesterday) there wasn't a decoded that could work on non floating point processors. Portable Ogg players will never come close to beating mp3 players until they cost the same or less to produce.

Re:Realistic?

[Dionysus]

WordPerfect doc format were a recognized and accepted medium. Lotus 1-2-3 doc format was a recognized and accepted medium. UNIX was a recognized and accepted high-end server. Things change, and so does defacto standards.

Re:Realistic?

[Jeremi]

Two-words. Maybe one ;) -- Beta-max

Nah, it's a completely different scenario, because it's cheap and easy to build an audio player that plays both mp3 and ogg. Compare that with the difficulty involved in building a VCR that plays both VHS and BetaMax.

Re:Realistic?

[sporty]

Two points to think about:

Today it's cheap to build beta-max, no? So producers have a choice to sell onto customers.

Plus, people who had the master copy of a video could choose beta-max or vhs. Unfortunately, copies available to the consumer market was usually vhs. With Ogg, mp3, wav, wma, we have the hardware already so we get to choose the format.

Re:Realistic?

[Baconator]

A more realistic comparison might be to the current crop of DVD players, for example APEX players. Most of them play DVD, SVCD, CD, CD/R, and CD/RW, including MP3s on CDR. And they still only cost about $100 new. The reason is simply that for the cost of a little extra logic you can support lots of different (but similar) media.

Digital music players are even easier. There's no physical carrier to worry about, so once you build a machine capable of playing MP3s, you already have the hardware to play WAV, OGG, WMA, VQF, whatever. The hardest part is the licensing, and since OGG is free, no biggie there.

Re:Realistic?

[sporty]

That's very true.

Well, here's the big question. Supplying that your encoding alg has become outdated, but you wanna use it, would you conform to popular opinion or stick with what you like? With Ogg, there's that choice since the software will be around forever. With beta-max, there isn't. :)

Mp3 is in a similar position as ogg, except it has popularity.

Re:Realistic?

[Baconator]

Well, I suppose the simple answer is that you can go against popular standards, but ya gotta be prepared for the difficulties you'll face.

For example, I store my digital music with lossless compression (formats like Shorten or FLAC). Hardly anyone does that, so obviously there is much less support for such things. But hey, what do I care? As long as there are a couple of good players out there, I'm gold. And, as it happens, there are XMMS plugins for both formats.

Personally, I would like to see an environment where all the major media players support all the free codecs, and as many of the commercial ones as they care to. Let me have a mixed collection of OGGs, MP3s, WAVs, FLACs, etc., and don't make me worry too much about which is which.

Re:Realistic?

[Jeremi]

The point was, a videotape consumer in the '80s was willing to buy either a VHS recorder, or a Beta recorder, but not both. In the near future, consumers will be able to buy players that plays both .ogg and .mp3, for about the same price as an .mp3-only player. So there is little danger of .mp3 "crowding out" .ogg (or vice versa) the way VHS crowded out BetaMax.

Re:Realistic?

[fishbowl]

You don't work in a law office or a state legislature, do you?

If not, then you probably don't realize that
WordPerfect is still in widespread use.

Re:Realistic?

[sporty]

More importantly, you can use the format without any hardware.

Re:Realistic?

[ActiveSX]

You can decode oggs in your head? Neat LAN party trick!

Re:Realistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

until yesterday ... there wasn't a decoded[sic] that could work on non floating point processors

Sure there were. Last May Nicolas Pitre released a free integerized libvorbis based on the Beta 3 code. It did have some problems, but it worked for pre V 1.0 Vorbis streams. Tremor was also available before yesterday, but required a license and paid fee to use.

Ogg Vorbis compatible MP3

[renehollan]

Am I the only one that thinks this is analogous to frog-compatible fish?

The editors have learned the awsome power of the..

[dalurka]

slashdotting. They just want to get CNET down...

Simple decision

[McCart42]

Well for me the choice is simple--if iRiver decides to make their players OGG compatible, then I'll buy one (I've certainly been drooling over it long enough)--if not, I'll stick with my Nomad II MG, which is none the worse for wear, considering it's going on 2 years old now.

I am fairly sure that they will add support, considering how friendly the people at Xiph are being with offering help to put the format in their players...

this is old new...

[bob@dB.org]

this site already broke the story. the slashdot editors should check it out sometime...

Repost from yesterday!

[eldimo]

This should really belong to moderators-are-you-reading-tour-own-website dept.

Already...

[athlon02]

have ogg hardware... called a laptop :) ... just wish I had more than 10GB total HD space

Stop this open source nonsense qjkx

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait for the patent to expire in 20 years. Stop hurrying everything. We need to go back to church, baseball, and mom. The old ways work best. OP.

Huh.

[oval_pants]

Does anyone else think that this release was timed especially well, especially with the release of the much published MP3 "negative" and unfounded press? Right on the heels of that article the sarcastic response.

Exceptionally paranoid or well played media match set?

fixed point decoder not new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, hate to disappoint everyone, but a fixed point Ogg Vorbis decoder is already available. Hardly news.

Breaking NEWS *** Breaking NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just submitted it to the slashdot editors, linux has been banned in IRAQ. Another reason to kick saddams ass then.

Re:Additional Words for 'vagina'

[Anonymous Coward]

The Great Divide

If it only came with a 3-button mouse ...

[burgburgburg]

I figure at some point, iPods will get mentioned. Then OS X (Jaguar, roar!) and then someone would complain about the 1 button mouse (ignoring that whole "I can just use my own 3 button USB mouse and it will work right off the bat!" thing). I'm just getting it out of the way.

Greece is old news

[los furtive]

It was first mentioned way back on March 25th, and more recently in Slashback. Don't feel dumb though, I submitted the MSNBC story too but only later realized that it had been covered. Still, you'd think a place like Slashdot would give it a bit more press.

I guess that's why it's 'news for geeks' and not 'news for greeks'

Re:Greece is old news

[Ctrl-Z]

...and considering that it had already been posted twice, it should have been a good candidate for timothy to select again.

CNET == Old News ;)

[Suppafly]

CNET has a story announcing the release of Tremor.

And Slashdot.org a top notch tech news site had the story yesterday. I wish that for once CNET would find their own content instead of always stealing it a couple days late from other news sites.

Re:CNET == Old News ;)

[MagusX]

Stealing news a couple of days late? Isn't that the mission statement of Slashdot?

No Risk

[Jason Earl]

As long as the hardware device continues to play MP3s there is little risk to the manufacturer. They'll pay no royalties to use either the format or the Tremor software, all they need is a tiny amount of extra space.

Personally I am in the market for a portable Ogg player. In fact, I considered purchasing the Zaurus simply because it is the only portable device that I am aware of that plays Ogg files. However, I already have a PDA that I am happy with, and if I could get a less expensive gizmo that still played Ogg files I would snatch it up in an instant.

In short, the Ogg format wouldn't cost much to support, and it might swing potential buyers towards your device instead of a competitor's player.

Re:No Risk

[Ziviyr]

In short, the Ogg format wouldn't cost much to support, and it might swing potential buyers towards your device instead of a competitor's player.

Yeah, having the "Jesus beating the crap out of a snake" logo or the "rotating fish" logo on the box will certainly be a competitive advantage!

Ogg orifice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirrored here...

[Richard_at_work]

Briiliant article with great comments, much recommended. They always have the best news first (apparently)

Well they can repost, so why cant i?

timothy scooped by michael!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensational!

Can I have a job...

[powerlinekid]

Seriously... you guys don't care anymore (the "editors"). We're getting repeats almost every day or at least every other day. If you guys aren't going to read slashdot anymore, then hell hire someone who can. Or maybe they'll do it volunteerly like you used to do in the old days. I don't want to bitch about slashdot. I like slashdot, always have in the roughly 2 years i've been on here. It just sucks to see the creators of something so damn cool stop caring. *sigh*

Re:Can I have a job...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a girlfriend.

Re:Can I have a job...

[powerlinekid]

have one asshole.

Re:Can I have a job...

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I'm full already.

Re:Can I have a job...

[eno2001]

One? If you worked with some of my previous bosses you'd have more on the order of twenty or so.

New Poll

[Nos.]

What punishment should a slashdot editor receive for posting a duplicate story?

• Stand in corner for 5 minutes - we want this on a webcam so we can see it!
• A lashing with a wet noodle
• Read all comments in the duplicate story (at -1 of course)
• Install WindowsXP on unsupported hardware
• Some lame CowboyNeal option

Re:New Poll

[DaytonCIM]

Make him sit and upgrade a single machine from DOS to 3.1 to 95 to 98 to NT to 2000 to XP. That's about 8 hours of sheer "insert next disk" hell. :)

evil...

Re:New Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that even work?

Re:New Poll

[eMilkshake]

Don't complain about the lack of options!

Re:New Poll

[swb]

I think the parent poster meant "Win 3.1 to Win95" and not "Dos 3.1 to Win95". I did a Win 95A install on a full-install DOS 6.22 machine many moon ago; I was left with a dual-boot scenario, not specifically an OS upgrade.

Other than that, I think the upgrade path he mentioned (Win 3.1, 95, 98, NT4, Win2k, XP) is actually possible on paper at least. It would probably be worthwhile to tack on Win ME in there someplace just for the sheer Sisyphean enjoyment.

An equally annoying scenerio would be a series of Redhat upgrades, like from 4.x to whatever the current Redhat release is. The funny thing is I would have more faith in the Windows upgrades actually working.

Re:New Poll

[DaytonCIM]

Yup yup it works... sometimes. It's kind of tricky to "upgrade" from DOS to Win 3.1, but doable. After that, it's all about sitting in front of your monitor and pressing the NEXT button several hundred times.

Has anyone *heard* Tremor?

[stratjakt]

Before everyone rants about how superior the *format* is, has anyone actually heard what Tremor can *output*?

Just because it can playback .ogg, doesn't mean it can do so well. Espescially since it took this long to be possible at all on a non-FPU device.

I'm thinking of mp3 playback on a 486 downgraded to 11khz mono so minesweeper still has a few cycles left over.

Yeah, I'm questioning the quality of an open source project, and I'll get modded down for it. Big deal.

Re:Has anyone *heard* Tremor?

[TitaniumFox]

This is the same non-FPU decoder that has been in use on the Sharp Zaurus handheld from TheKompany.

It was coded by the author of Vorbis with assembler for ARM processors.

I think it'll work. ;)

Crackhead

[Anonymous Coward]

Get off the crack pipe.
Your short-term memory is fried. This story was posted the other day.

Damn crack smokin hippies.

Pay no attention to the troll behind the parent

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post ACTUALLY makes a good, albeit vulgar, analogy. If you check your history, the popular Philip Morris Marlboro brand cigarettes were originally known as "Mild as May Morlboros" - a WOMAN'S CIGARETTE! It's amazing how much the popularity of a product can change once a more masculine name is chosen. OGG just sounds childish.

Fantastic!

[Jonny Ringo]

Now I have more reason then ever to burn all of my mp3 to regular cd format then re-rip them into OGG-Vorbis. Lets see I have a little under 5 gigs of mp3's, so hmmm does anyone where I could buy a thousand cd spindle?

Re:Fantastic!

[powerlinekid]

I know you're probably kidding but anyway... It only takes 8, i had to do this before. Along with that the reripped oggs will probably be shittier quality because you're gonna lose quality going from wav to mp3 to wav to ogg.

Re:Fantastic!

[EdTheCzar]

You sir, are an idiot. First, as many have already said, there are very, very many decoders for MP3 files. The general consensus is that the Lame boys have the best one. After that, you have your WAV files, and encoding is easy. The next reason you are an idiot is the 5GB's becomes about 7 CD's which would cost you as little as 50 cents, if you bought the CD's in a large pack.

you really gotta love that BSD license

[Drakonian]

I know that everyone is down on the BSD and up on the GPL, but we owe a tremendous amount to the BSD license.. Companys (like microsoft) took up stuff like the TCP/IP stack, BIND, etc..

and I believe OGG will achieved the same popularity and extension that it's other BSD Licensed bretheren enjoy. It's gotta be the freedom of the BSD license that encourages companys to pick up on this stuff, rather than re-inventing the wheel with yet another standard because they don't like a particular clause or so in the license.. Deja vu? This is a test to see if I'll get credit for yesterday's highest modded post. The real credit goes to TechnoVooDooDaddy.

Re:Additional Words for 'vagina'

[Anonymous Coward]

My Happy Place

Serious Question

[MisterBlister]

Do the editors read Slashdot, ever?

I ask because I'm a fairly casual reader. I load up Slashdot every couple of days and scan the headlines. My total time spent 'Slashdotting' is maybe 20-25 minutes a week. Despite all of this, I am quite aware of the INSANE amount of story repeats that go on here. Say all you want about the fact that there are multiple editors and each might post without knowing what the other one did (even if it was the same day or the day before!!??), but if they spent only the limited amount of time I do actually reading (just the headlines even, not even user comments!) Slashdot, they'd see these obvious repeats... Wouldn't they? And if they can't be bothered to spend 20-25 minutes per week actually reading the site, then why the hell are they editors here?

Just askin'. I mean, I slashdot for free so I don't feel the editors "owe" me anything, but I don't understand why they'd be so willing to make asses of themselves on such a widely known public site by not doing simple duplicate checking.

Re:Serious Question

[CarrionBird]

It's odd, because some stories get duped, while some relevant stories get blocked for fear of the RIAA lawyers.

Well, considering it's free, we're still getting more than we pay for.

Re:Serious Question

[Anonymous Coward]

some relevant stories get blocked for fear of the RIAA lawyers.

Like what?

A new high for Slashdot

[writertype]

Duplicate stories on the front page! Why not just solicit readers to Paypal money? Yeesh.

absolutely fantastic

[balog]

have the editors gone blind?

repost after repost,
have you guys stopped reading the site or what?

I'm gonna go out and buy an MP3-ONLY player!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause Slashdot won't fucking shut up about OGG. This site is like a small child when it comes to OGG. "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we there yet." "No. OGG sucks! It fucking sucks goat nuts. It will NEVER have hardware support cause it has a stupid name and no one gives a fuck about the minute royalty associated with MP3 anyway. Not to mention have you EVER seen an OGG on KaZaA Lite, WinMX or eDonkey? NO. So shut the fuck up about OGG. By the time anyone ever takes OGG seriously, the patent for MP3 will have expired so long ago, no one will still be speaking the language it was written in."

Slashdot Repeat Idea

[DarkHelmet]

A couple ideas to think over.

• Instead of just having moderator points, assign Operator rating points based on karma. This way, the boneheadedness (or admirability) of the operator can be determined.
• When a news story is submitted, change slash to have an "Are you Sure" page, which would do a fulltext search to try and find matches within the past few days. This'll give them one more chance to see if the story is a dupe. If it's done, Operators won't have to actually READ Slashdot. Fancy that! More time to work on Everything2 articles!
• If an Operator submits too many duplicate posts (Hi CmdrTaco!), make him strip down naked, and run through the streets with only a Plush Tux Penguin to hide his/her genetalia.
• Make the HREF for the poster point to goatse.cx for two days whenever they post a dupe.
• Give karma points for being a troll when responding to a duplicate article... Fringe Benefit: The Trolls will only come out from under their bridge when the Ops pull a boner.

I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

Re:Slashdot Repeat Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

... make him strip down naked, and run through the streets with only a Plush Tux Penguin [sourceforge.net] to hide his/her genetalia.

Think again, sport. You could hide it with a Tic-Tac.

Let's take a poll...

[NanoGator]

... how many of you that posted observations about the dupe story actually thought you were the first to notice?

I was going to post a "First Post" post

[night_flyer]

but since this is a duplicate story it really wouldnt be now would it?

Where to download encoder?

[simetra]

I was able to download and use an ogg encoder on my home pc, but can't find on one their site today. Can someone provide a valid url? Yes, I've checked their download pages. This would be for Win2000 Pro.
Thanks, really, I mean that.

Re:Where to download encoder?

[EdTheCzar]

http://www.vorbis.com/download_win.psp Get "vorbis-tools", located under the Encoders/ Jukeboxes header. The encoder itself is oggenc.exe, but included in the package is a number of other programs for using the encoder.

Ogg Vorbis

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a runny, hot shit full of sturm, drung and corn Certainly not good enough for rubbing in the hair of the girl you secretly have a crush on. One Finger.

Dupes are better than anti-open source articles?

[doomdog]

I guess so... The editors keep rejecting my article on how open source is hurting small software vendors -- and instead, they prefer to re-post the same drivel of "open source will save the world" that they post every day...

Just like good little communists, slashot always manages to supress the alternate view...

CNET?

[tweakt]

CNET has an article, and suddenly it's news all
over again? What I'm wondering, is why are people
submitting stories for third party articles about
stories or events were already linked to from
slashdot?

Don't the submitters even look at the stories here
anymore? Are people blindly submitting any new
tech story on CNET, TheRegister, or Wired?

Correction

[Lindril]

I recommend a revision to the article's originating department.

Old:
Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 04, @04:07PM
from the iriver-are-you-listening dept.

New:
Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 04, @04:07PM
from the timothy-are-you-reading dept.

refund?!

[kennedy]

hey i think i'm entitled to be credited for the subscription page i wasted loading up this duplicate story.

but i doubt that'll happen.

Betamax?

[steveha]

Not a useful comparison. VHS beat Betamax for several reasons:

Betamax VCRs cost more. Many companies made VHS VCRs, and competition drove prices down, while only Sony made Betamax.

VHS allowed 6 hours of recording per tape, and consumers considered the quality adequate. Betamax had better quality, but much less time per tape (under 2 hours, IIRC).

VHS VCRs could not easily be made that would play Betamax tapes. Choosing VHS meant not choosing Betamax.

Now let's compare Ogg Vorbis and MP3:

MP3 costs money, and Ogg never does. "More expensive" will not apply to Ogg ever.

Ogg can fit as much music, or more, as MP3 into a similar space. Yet Ogg has the better quality. (Consumers consider MP3 quality to be adequate, though.) This one is a wash.

Players can be easily made that will play either MP3 or Ogg. When Ogg players are available, buying one will not mean choosing not to be able to play MP3s; and consumers might buy a player wanting to use it for MP3s, and wind up using it for Ogg.

So I don't think the Betamax comparison is all that useful.

It will cost engineering time and testing time to add Ogg to players, but it will not cost any licensing fees. It isn't free to add Ogg to a player, but it's darn close, and Ogg adds nothing to the all-important "cost of goods". Given this, it is inevitable that at least some players will be available that will do Ogg.

steveha

Re:Betamax?

[sporty]

My point isn't why beta-max isn't used nor if ogg will never see players. It's more of ogg being in a similar position as beta-max. None-the-less, I believe the outcome will be different. It will be more of a cult thing that will stick around for a long time vs beta-max.

Two points you bring up which are relevant to why ogg will stick around at least as a cult thing:

You say mp3 costs money. I've never paid for winamp or iTunes. Neither will ogg. It's a popularity race in that case. Will I use ogg to encode? I doubt it, I like my mp3 collection. Space is cheap. My time isn't ;)

You bring up quality. Ogg may or may not have a better audio quality. I can encode with mp3 to match ogg, just at different bitrates to make them sound mostly alike. With betamax, we had no choice since it never hit the consumer... much if at all. We were spoonfed.

Re:Betamax?

[fishbowl]

"Betamax VCRs cost more."

You gave other reasons, but, speaking as someone
who was there at the time, I feel compelled to
point out that this was *THE* reason.

Beta cost a *LOT* more. VHS recorders went from
almost affordable to essential very, very quickly.
Beta was always expensive, and only really made sense if you were into buying a camera.

It looked to me as if Sony bet the farm on the idea that people would be into making their own movies, that replacing super-8 was the killer app. But the real killer app was taping tv shows. Home video was secondary, and super8 was
already dead because it was starting to cost too
much. The last 8mm film I made cost $2.75 PER MINUTE to process, in 1977, and about that much to buy the film. 20 minutes was considered a lengthy home movie. But the whome home movie fad had pretty much faded away before vcr's hit the scene. It was taping movies off cable, and also movie rentals, that drove the sales of the VCR.

And the customers in the electronics stores had a choice. And they bought the one that was cheaper.

Re:Betamax?

[jotaeleemeese]

You may not be paying for winamp or iTunes, the companies that provide the software did or may have to do in the future. No issue with Ogg.

I have no MP3 collection, not for lack of CDs (my collection includes around 200 CDs) but because MP3 licensing was bound to be an issue. I did not want to build a collection around something that would probe troublesome in the future.

As soon as the first Ogg players appear then I can do my collection with the confidence that I am the owner of the data and that I will never face patent bullshit when the only thing I want is to listen to my own music using the means of my liking.

Re:Betamax?

[sporty]

What about all of the GPL players that don't use the patents? They won't ever go away, so why not stick with mp3's?

Re:Additional Words for 'vagina'

[BestNicksRTaken]

Badly packed keebab

check the Older Stuff box in your preferences

[Mr. Daemon]

Hey slashdot editors, how about marking that checkbox in your own preferences and try to read it before posting stuff?

that's two duplicates in two days you could've avoid by doing that...

oggdropxpd

[yerricde]

I was able to download and use an ogg encoder on my home pc, but can't find on one their site today. Can someone provide a valid url?

I use OggDropXPd.

Portable GPL language learning!

[retostamm]

With a .ogg enabled iPod and LingoTeach you could make custom language .oggs files (like, replace those expensive language learning tapes) and listen to them on the way to wherever!

Floppy Disk...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I remember hearing the same thing about Floppy Disks. Every computer has a 5 1/4 drive, why spend money on a 3 1/2 ?

If the people get something better, they will Switch(TM) eventually. Long live Ogg.

ogg on WinMX

[yerricde]

It will NEVER have hardware support

The freeing of Tremor should change that.

cause it has a stupid name

Is "em-pee-three" any better?

Not to mention have you EVER seen an OGG on KaZaA Lite, WinMX or eDonkey?

I have seen .ogg files on WinMX. The main reason you don't is that WinMX by default shares only files named "*.mp3".

By the time anyone ever takes OGG seriously, the patent for MP3 will have expired

Not if Unisys, Thomson, Lilly, and Pfizer get together and lobby for a Cherilyn Lapierre Patent Term Extension Act.

Could be a matter of the name.

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 has a catchy name. It's been RAMMED into the
culture consciousness. Ogg? Vorbis? Sounds like
nonsense to American ears, and, Vorbis is in the
form of a Latin modifier. Consciously or unconsciously, this is working against the format.

MP3. Somebody who has never gone near a computer can instantly relate to the phonetic similarity between MP3 and MTV.

Perhaps if "Ogg" were pronounced "Oh Gee", it would bet more acceptance. Nobody wants a Vorbis.
They probably think it's a name of a moped or a disease old people get.

Nig nOgg Vorbis

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever watch the MTV Video awards or any show on MTV for that matter, it really is like watching "Tarzan". However, Tarzan was raised by apes so gradually he started to mimic the apes as far as behavior. These white kids obviously weren't raised by apes but you would swear they were whenever you see them acting (or better yet pretending) as if they were a bunch of niggers with their ridiculous speech patterns and hand gestures.

It really is laughable. It is as if the evolution of the human race is going back to apes instead of the other way around. Another thing why do niggers always thank god in their acceptance speeches. If god is so good why the hell did he make these nigger's so damn ugly and stupid?

The lie was that forced equality would elevate the black race and not damage the White Race. The obvious truth is it did not elevate the black race but dragged the white race down to nigger level.

Clairvoyance

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Wow I just hate it when I see the future and then I go to slashdot and it's like I already read everything.

I hate Deja Vu

Some revisions to make it meaningful

[swb]

• Stand in corner facing life-size printout of the Goatse.cx image.
• Lashing with wet towel, rat-tail style
• Post at -1 for one month
• Support Windows XP at Stumblefuck, Alabama call center for one month
• Blow Cowboy Neal

All of the above should take place on webcam and best stills should be interspersed with the normal banner ads.

Mazda

[Anonymous Coward]

With all of the hype surrounding Ogg, does this mean that the Mazda MP3 will soon be renamed to the Mazda Ogg Vorbis? Yech!

Re:Additional Words for 'vagina'

[Anonymous Coward]

lecherous stink pit

Church is more important than music qjkx

[Anonymous Coward]

This Ogg Vorbis thing is subversive. Patents are here to slow things down. We need to stop all this change and go back to the old ways. Stop all this coding and go to CHURCH. OP.

Someone thinking ogg support in iPod

[superangrybrit]

Then add radio tuner. After that it's perfect :)

Whats the deal with floating point?

[ironfroggy]

Seriously, whats so tough about doing floating point math that these devices can't do it? It isn't difficult to see that floating point operations dont have to be so special.

I dont see why hardware needs to recognize floating points at all. Look at the following example.

4.5 + 0.5
0100.1000
+ 0000.1000
-----------
0101.0000

The only thing to handle is that the fractional part of the value must be converted from its decimal to the binary by the ratio of 16/10. Multiply the "binimal" by 16 and then divide by 10.

whats so difficult about that? At the least, these float-less processors could include support for floats in their compilers can then just do the conversions in software. Tough, tough, a whole 3 or 4 instructions!

Re:Whats the deal with floating point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you must just be trolling; but show me how
simple it is to do a multiply and a divide in your
system. Be sure to use at least a 16 bit number.
For extra credit, show how this design can be
implemented using "and, or" gates.

Re:Whats the deal with floating point?

[fishbowl]

Your example is of fixed point addition.

Educate yourself a bit:

Floating Point Tutorial

Even Microsoft can help.

Re:Whats the deal with floating point?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you did is called fixed-point arithmetic. That is what the article talks about using. Floating point arithmetic is special because the point "floats" and you don't have to decide where to put it ahead of time. That way you get maximum precision.

Re:Whats the deal with floating point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, 3 or 4 instructions versus 1. That makes your decoder 3 to 4 times slower.

Re:Whats the deal with floating point?

[ironfroggy]

Thanks for the help and sorry for the ignorance. But, still, it wouldn't be that difficult to have a compiler build floating-point operation code that runs on processors that don't support it. Yes, it would be slower, but it would still work.

you burned your MP3s to encode them?!?!

[Jerf]

You actually burned your MP3s back to CD to convert them to OGG?!??!? Convert to wav and then re-encode directly, or find an encoder that can read MP3 directly, like lame!

This works better even if you think you have space issues, because most rippers copy the whole CD to the hard drive to rip (650MB). A quick shell script would allow you to convert MP3->wav->OGG one at a time, requiring only enough extra space to hold your biggest file as MP3, WAV, and OGG all at once.

Bad name

[Moridineas]

The person who wrote in raises a good point--the name hurts Ogg. MP3 is a good name--it's simple (short), easy to say, easy to type, and catchy. Ogg Vorbis is none of those. I'd personally like to see a new name for Ogg.

Re:Bad name

[Yosho]

Yes, "Ogg Vorbis" is more complex than "MP3." And "MPEG Layer 3" as much more complex than "Ogg." What's your point?

Re:Bad name

[blueroo]

What's so difficult to remember or say about "Ogg". Heck, Ogg and Ug were the vocabulary staples of the cavemen. If it was good enough for cavemen, its good enough for you!

Re:Bad name

[Captain Large Face]

Say "Vorbis" then. That sounds good, and that is the name of the Sound encoding.. Ogg is the group of media products.

Compare with Real[Video|Audio]..

Re:Bad name

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did that shit get modded up?

Re:Try pronouncing "Lamborghini Murcielago".

[Anonymous Coward]

But do it properly. As they do in St.Agata Bolognese.

Doesn't look that this even weirder name puts
anyone off from wanting that gadget, huh?

Rich

Need a new icon for "duplicate story"

[gosand]

This seems to be happening more recently, but at least the editors are admitting it. Maybe it is time for a "duplicate story" category and icon.

Re:Dupes are better than anti-open source articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Then start your own website, jackass.

Do your job.

[GiorgioG]

Come on folks. This repeat bullshit is crap.

Are you on crack?

[Inoshiro]

It's only a "bad name" because no one recognizes it. Go back to 1997 and try saying MP3 to people in the street -- they'll give you funny looks.

As for your lies about how "hard" it is to type, yeesh, try counting it. 2 unique keypresses using 2 fingers (with one repeat motion) vs. 3 on 3 separate fingers ends up being the same -- 3 motions.

Maybe the name doesn't make sense to people who can't count, but for the rest of us, we'll keep using it.

Re:Are you on crack?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a "bad name" because it sounds ugly. "Ogg" sounds like a grunt, "vorbis" sounds like a disease. Someone once suggested Open Voice and it's not bad; it even corresponds well with Open Source.

Re:Are you on crack?

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 sounds ugly. You can't even pronounce it, you just end up rattling off a string of letters and numbers.

Re:Are you on crack?

[Moridineas]

Wow, do you have some personal stake in the name? I didn't mean to upset you so much, bottomline is unless you designed the name and have emotions caught up in it, this shouldn't be a debate that brings out such harsh emotions.. Let's take it calmly.

My point is simple and you didn't address it. MP3 -- letter M, letter P, number 3. em-pee-3. Instantly recognizble. Ogg Vorbis. What the hell is that? Ogg well that's not a word..Vorbis? That's not a word either. It's just a string of nonsense syllables. Sure, plenty of names are, but this one isn't particularly snappy (to my ear, or my friends at least, sorry if you disagree) and isn't even typical of english phoneme arrangment.

Incidentally, mp3 is so much easier to type that ogg vorbis--3 characters versus two words with a space.

Re:Are you on crack?

[frause]

So 'MPEG 1, layer 3' is easier to type than 'Ogg Vorbis'? Since when?

>Incidentally, mp3 is so much easier to type that ogg vorbis--3 characters versus two words with a space.

Handheld ape players?

[joesknnr]

Slightly OT.. anyone know of .ape compatible players now or in the near future?

Re:Dupes are better than anti-open source articles

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great troll there, son.

It's deja vu all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also in the news, Xiph released a free integer vorbis decoder. Now that should have made the front page of slashdot.

Real conversation at Slashdot HQ!

[The Real Chrisjc]

Slashdot Mod 1: "Oh damn! We're running out of news stories for Slashdot because none of the submissions are up to scratch. What will we do??"

Slashdot Mod 2: "I know, lets repost a story from yesterday!"

Slashdot Mod 1: "Sounds like a great idea! If anyone starts asking questions, lets just call it an accident, that'll keep those slashdotters busy!"

Slashdot Mod 2: "Perfect! Now, where are my donuts?"

Now we know who doesn't read /.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad when the "editors" can't be bothered to read their own web "publication."

Is it just me?

[deek]

Or does the slashdot crowd appear to be one of the most unforgiving groups on a news discussion board?

For heavens sake, it's just a duplicate article!! Timothy's apologised, and recognised his mistake. Just accept that and move on, people!

Reading the "outrage" from this article, you'd think that this was a crime akin to mass murder. Geez! The guy is just human. Cut him some slack!

I love reading Slashdot every day, and I really appreciate it. I also think that tech people are one of the nicest groups on the planet. Please don't change my opinion.

DeeK

Re:Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love reading Slashdot every day, and I really appreciate it. I also think that tech people are one of the nicest groups on the planet. Please don't change my opinion.

Most of us have jobs that involve much more difficult tasks than updating a web page with a blurp and a link several times a day. If we were too lazy to do something as simple as run a search before posting a story, it's highly likely we'd be at SERIOUS risk for losing our jobs.

Re:Is it just me?

[Winterblink]

This phenomenon can be attributed to massive communal angst from having our story submissions rejected. :)

Re:Is it just me?

[deek]

Most of us have jobs that involve much more difficult tasks than updating a web page with a blurp and a link several times a day. If we were too lazy to do something as simple as run a search before posting a story, it's highly likely we'd be at SERIOUS risk for losing our jobs.

And it's exactly this elitest attitude that really annoys me. Since I assume you're not a Slashdot editor, I'm going to assume you have very little idea of the work involved. In other words, you're talking out of your arse.

Horses for courses, Mr. Anonymous Coward. You can't compare a job posting news stories, to a job that is a little more sensitive (i.e handling credit card numbers).

I'm not saying that you shouldn't point out Tim's mistake. Something like "Hey Timothy, this one's a duplicate, buddy" ... says what you need, without inferring that the editor is the reincarnation of the devil. Just please don't jump up and down in a rampage, declaring that "my life has been ruined because Timothy has posted a duplicate story".

DeeK

Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[dmaxwell]

If this lame name whinging is the best Ogg's detractors can do then it should go like gangbusters. Incidentally, the audio codec is simply Vorbis. Ogg is a container format like Quicktime. In time we will be able to speak of Ogg Theora and in lotsa time Ogg Tarkin. If I'm not totally mistaken it can contain the Speex speech compression codec as well.

The name whinging is really lame. Kleenex most certainly "isn't a word". The name certainly doesn't make me think "something to blow my excess snot into". It ACQUIRED that meaning. Think about it.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[Moridineas]

What makes me a detractor? I comment soley on the name (I made no mention of the obvious technical merit [well, maybe not so obvious when compared to next generation codecs]) which I think is lame and a bad thing for the projects success.

Think about the word kleenex--think of the first phoneme. Also, please reread the last sentence of my second paragraph, a point which you clearly missed.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[Daniel Phillips]

If this lame name whinging is the best Ogg's detractors can do then it should go like gangbusters. Incidentally, the audio codec is simply Vorbis. Ogg is a container format like Quicktime.

Well said. I just call it "ogg", and that to me sounds... compressed.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[horza]

If this lame name whinging is the best Ogg's detractors can do then it should go like gangbusters.

You misunderstand... it's the Ogg advocates that are frustrated when they think something so great is being held back by something so simple as an unattractive name (and unfortunately these things DO make a difference). MP3 is not a great name, but it rode on the back of the well known standard MPEG. Again, I would like to see "MP5" as an alias for Ogg :-)

The name whinging is really lame.

I disagree, I think you underestimate the effect something as simple as a name can have on Joe Public (ie non-techies)

Phillip.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[radish]

Hoover
Fanta
Coca Cola
McDonalds
Disney
Mars
Pepsi
Compaq
Matr ox
Shell
Texaco
Nike
Adidas
Reebok
Sony

These are all globally recognised brands (OK so some of them are domain specific, others are not). Most of them are made up words, some are random names of unrelated things (Reebok, Mars, Shell etc). None of them (to my mind) indicate anything about what they represent, has this stopped any of them becoming popular? No. Case closed.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[Moridineas]

I say again (quote) "Also, please reread the last sentence of my second paragraph, a point which you clearly missed" and clearly missed again.

Secondly, examine those names in your list--most are two syllable. And mant of them are actually pre-existing words. None of them have spaces (coke has a dash). I never said a name had to represent what they are either.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[radish]

Yawn.

You say it doesn't sound like an english word. I disagree, "Ogg" sounds a lot like "bog" or "fog" or "cog". "Vorbis"? Not a million miles from "morbid", "anxious", "compass". I'm not trying to be an english scholar, but hey, this is a really stupid argument, so what the hell.

Besides, lets look back at my examples - it's my guess that "McDonalds" isn't typical of a Chinese word, does that stop it being recognised and used by chinese speakers? Nope. English isn't the only language in the world.

I never said a name had to represent what they are either.
err...

Ogg Vorbis. What the hell is that? Ogg well that's not a word..Vorbis? That's not a word either. It's just a string of nonsense syllables

I think most people (myself included) take this to mean that you want Ogg Vorbis to mean something to people who have never heard of it before. It doesn't. Neither does Coca Cola. That is my point. Any word is "just a string of nonsense syllables" until it is taken to mean something and introduced into the language. I mean Linux, what the hell is that? Just a string of nonsense syllables.

And as for your stuff about syllables, I think the main problem you have is again one of understanding where mp3 comes from. It's actual name is "MPEG-1 Layer 3", but that's a mouthful, so people refer to it by mp3, which was the file extension. Guess what? I bet people will start calling Ogg Vorbis "ogg" or "vorb" or something like that. If a name is too long people will abbreviate it, or come up with an common alternative, they will NOT completely eschew the thing this name refers to. McDonalds have a product called a "Quarter Pounder with Cheese" - that's a longass name. Their staff have to say it a lot during the day. Do they pretend the product does not exist, do their customers refuse to buy it? No. But some of them use an abbreviation (like "QPC").

Anyway I'm nored of this. What it boils down to is you don't like the name. So go and write your own codec and call it whatever the hell you like.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ogg Vorbis. What the hell is that? Ogg well that's not a word..Vorbis? That's not a word either. It's just a string of nonsense syllables

I think most people (myself included) take this to mean that you want Ogg Vorbis to mean something to people who have never heard of it before. It doesn't."

There's a certain intangible quality to the words that "just say" something negative, and I am not even going to try to characterize the problem for you. If Vorbis succeeds, it will be despite the name, not because of it. I can see the name being brought up by a focus group in a marketing department, but I can't see it being chosen. It's not one of those things that's easy to list reasons why it's not the best trade name, but it
"just isn't."

"Anyway I'm nored of this. What it boils down to is you don't like the name. So go and write your own codec and call it whatever the hell you like."

Yes, of course. But the discussion is all about why OV isn't taking the world by storm like MP3 did. I'm saying it's in part because the NAME is unattractive to American ears, for subtle reasons that are very difficult to explain.

If we called it "O.G." as a nickname for Ogg, it would have more appeal. It's just my opinion of course. But I have a sense for this kind of thing, being a consumer.

Re:Vorbis doesn't have much to worry about.

[Moridineas]

Wow, what a pedantic response. I really appreciate you using a line-item understanding on what I say.

I am ready to buy an Ogg Vorbis player

[lingenfr]

Yes I have read the commentary. Let me be specific. I would purchase an Ogg Vorbis only player (not MP3). I think that when manufacturers see that there is a market for open source based products, there will be a better selection. Further, when patent holders see a significant decrease in revenue, maybe they will pull their heads out of their fourth point of contact. I am planning to email a couple of my favorite hardware vendors and lobby. I would suggest that like-minded individuals do the same.

It is so disappointing to have to page through off-topic, redundant crap (i.e. Hey dude, this story is a duplicate) in order to get to some discussion about the topic. A year or so ago, you could browse at +1 or +2 and rise above the toilet rim, but now, the manure rises as high as +4. I think that /. better increase the number of ads because this baloney is cutting my visits from daily to weekly. The current metamoderation system does not weed out for those who overrate. Oh well...

CNET.. research?

[rsax]

Ogg Vorbis does not use patented technology, allowing it to be offered under an open-source license. This means that developers can have free access to the software and its original source code and can modify and redistribute the software, as long as any modifications are returned to the community.

*insert game show buzzer sound here*

Wrong! Gotta love how anything opensource automatically implies a GPL-like license now. Unless the author was referring to other parts of the Ogg Vorbis suite which aren't released under the BSD license, but I doubt it since the article mentions hardware players, ie. Tremor.

Re:Realistic? - see frontier labs - nexII

[spd_rcr]

to quote my most recent email back from them, they're definately looking into adding ogg support to the players, and i know that the flash upgradeable firmware was one of my big decision makers when purchasing it.
that 'n' the standard cf slot, & aa batteries

RIAA For the UK?

[BrookHarty]

I listen to mp3 radio, Digital Trance/Techno from the UK, alot of stuff you cant find on tv/radio. I have to order the cd's for the mixes, but you can find unknown mixes on gnutella (if popular)..

I wonder, since I'm buying imported music, does the RIAA still make money off it? Are there main guntella connections for the UK?

And speaking on encoding, I love how an Ogg Vorbis encoded cd has no skips between the tracks, really annoying with mp3s.

Enough Duplicates!

[Bytenik]

Is it really too much to ask that the editors of /. take 5 minutes each day to at least give a cursory glance over the headlines of the last day or so? It greatly reduces your credibility.

BTW, I realize that this comment is somewhat of a duplicate of other comments, but since I'm not an editor, I'll side-step any potential hypocrisy.

Dupe n.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. An easily deceived person.
2. A person who functions as the tool of another person or power.
3. Fool or hoax.

Bullshit....

[jotaeleemeese]

Several of the players out there (Sony is particularly guilty of this) are using other even more propietary formats and most people do not notice the difference.

Most players can play at least another format along MP3. New players could play both MP3 and Ogg with view to acustom their customers to the new format before dumping MP3 for good.

UNIX *was* ....????

[jotaeleemeese]

You don't know what you are talking about.... at least regarding UNIX....

Re:Dupes are better than anti-open source articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read a book on objectivism -- it should dispel that socialist protectionist crap about how giving something away for free hurts vendors. Sure, the vendors can't compete, but the other 99.9% of the popn saves money. If they can't compete, then they can go plead their case to adam smith for all i fucking care.

Yep

[manitee]

It's already been covered, but the names is really stupid. You can try and tell me it's not, or that plenty of other products exist with stupid names, but I will still tell you this:

The name is really, really stupid.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?

[eno2001]

Fag smoker. That's actually appealing? Maybe if you are gay, but if you're straight (and you live outside of England) you wouldn't want to call yourself that. I think smokes became popular because they have addictive additives put into them.

Compatible players?

[ReelOddeeo]

....and could herald the rise of Ogg Vorbis compatible MP3 players.

How about...

....and could herald the rist of MP3 compatible Ogg Vorbis players.

Dupe?

[MoogMan]

So is the other one, but I dont see any bloody warning there...

Why should we corner ourselves?

[jotaeleemeese]

Patents eventually bite.

Now that all these technologies are in their infancy it is the time to promote standards that are good for most people.