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Viacom Launches Podcast-Only Radio Station
prostoalex writes "Figuring out it couldn't get any worse, Viacom is turning an underperforming talk radio station in San Francisco into podcasting central. KYOU Radio performed so poorly in the ratings that it would not even show up on the official Arbitron radio rankings for the city of San Francisco. Now the Web site of the station owned by $56.5 billion corporation features a hip young look and claims to be the Open Source Radio. Visitors can upload the podcasts of their own in MP3, AIFF, AVI or WMA formats (no OGG support by someone who's so accepting of open source)."
I thought Microsoft had abandoned the .WMA format earlier this year.
Mp3 may be better than ogg, but shouldn't this open source radio support all popular formats? This is a great idea, however although the exclusion of the ogg vorbis format is insignificant, it is troubling. Why would they leave this format out when it would be easy to include it?
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
"By uploading your content, you agree that Viacom is the sole owner of your soul, mind and any future creations."
Radio that's just as good as your local public-access TV channels. Won't that be awesome.
Wrong. MP3 (last I checked) can only do dual-channel audio, while Ogg Vorbis can do multi-channel audio, Also, Ogg Vorbis can store the same music with a higher quality/size ratio. Then you have the fact that the MP3 format is patent-encumbered while the Ogg Vorbis (and Theora video codec) are Free for anyone to use for any purpose (Theora is a reworking of On2's VP3 codec. It _is_ patented, but it's patented so that everyone can use it freely.)
From a business perspective this is genius. Content costs nothing because it's created by users and everything they make is pure profit. People will tune in to see if their content was picked or not.
Of course, it will probably end up being just as crappy as local public access channels. Except, instead of seeing teenagers prank call McDonald's it'll be wannabe Art Bells ranting about how George W. Bush is hiding Osama bin Laden on the dark side of the moon.
If it was ogg, it'd be an "oggcast"
;)
"podcast" was originally something to be listened to on your iPod. The iPod doesn't play ogg (by default)
"oggcast" would sound like a wild caveman anyway.
Yeah, I mean... who wouldn't want a free codec with better compression and more features. You probably think GIF is better than PNG, too.
yeah, well can i animate a png???? NO??? I THOUGHT SOOOESS!!one
It's called MNG.
"shouldn't this open source radio support all popular formats?"
.avi files, they might as well include it.
Yes. But regardless of how good it is, ogg is definitely not a popular format. Although if they're allowing
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
shameless plug for my podcast: theWatt Weekly - energy news and discussion in mp3 format
How about instead of Howard Stern going to satellite he does a podcast-only show? That way he can still work for his buddy Mel Karmazin.
You hit the nail on the head. They support all popular formats. Whatever the merits of Ogg, it still doesn't have the kind of penetration of the other formats. To call Ogg popular is ludicrous. Even among the technologically minded community, it isn't that popular.
Call me crazy, but I fail to see what all the hubbub is about podcasting (I also dislike the name). I think it is kind of neat as an idea, but I just don't see any financial strategy behind this that is in anyway sustainable. This isn't meant to be flamebait, I am really curious.
Can anyone explain this to me?
Does anyone know any relevent links about this topic?
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
How popular is it? I honestly have no idea. How does it compare to AAC or the rest of the proprietary formats? Also, what would they define as popular?
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Don't worry we will get around to suing you eventually. But in the meantime you have those MP3's lying around....
mind if we use them for something that we can turn a profit on?
SlashDot supports open source, but they don't let me submit articles in PHP. You don't see me crying about it.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
If only I had a freecall number...
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
That analogy is all wrong. You should point out that Slashdot claims to be about open source, but refused to switch to PNG over GIF.
Please take the sentence above and insert "the web" where "podcasting" is currently placed. You could say much the same thing about the web lacking a financial strategy for content-oriented sites, especially back in 1999. But it evolved, at least somewhat. The same thing will happen to podcasts.
Of greater importance, though, is that something can be totally paradigm-shifting but not generate a lot of cash. If 20 million people soon do most of their "radio" listening by podcast, the implications to society are enormous regardless of how much money is being made.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
It's popular among people who care about quality. The hipster with his custom-engraved iPod filled to the brim with Green Day and Linkin Park will likely stick to whatever popular media dictates him to. You always hear about "MP3 players", not Ogg players.
I rip all my shit to Ogg Vorbis at ~250 kb/s.
This is supposed to be "citizens media" finally being recognized for the inexorable power it is, huh? Now we'll finally hear from "real people"? So, I suppose the DJs doing their shows before weren't citizens. But will we all of a sudden want to listen to those same DJs were they to put their schtick on an MP3 and accept no pay? Arguably not, but the podcasting cheerleaders seem to think that we'll certainly want to hear from some people with no training or prior interest in broadcasting. Yeah, that makes sense.
This is only considered a big deal by those folks who are so politically overcharged with their own bullshit that they buy into the notion of "corporations" vs. "us", as if corporations are somehow staffed by evil robots and the only real people are living in San Francisco working for software startups.
My prediction: to the extent podcasting becomes successful, it will begin to approximate the media it supposedly replaces. Just look at the blogs: the most popular ones are now owned by corporations, and are essentially traditional media outlets.
Return the airwaves to the public. We could use those frequencies more efficiently with muni wifi !
Get rid of the FCC. Pure shills for monopolists.
Those aren't hipsters you're describing, they're Upper East Side fratboys. Hope this helps.
Supported by what major browsers?
Supply us with your programming for free, we'll intersperse it with ads and put it on our site. I wich I could come up with schemes like this. :0)
winamp has been doing this for years but instead of hosting the content themselves they allow anyone who wants to run their own tv or radio station
by the way I knew ogg vorbis was open source but I don't think MP3, AIFF, AVI or WMA are open source...so why is the podcasting stuff open source is it like viacom can steal it and air it all it wants or something
Some people believe 1-1=3 and for the sake of being politically correct, we should respect their differences
Does EVERY fucking article concerning compressed audio have to stick this little jab into each headline?
Slashdot's open source... "no WC3 conformity by someone who's so accepting of open source"
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Shirley and Spinoza have been doing this for at least a couple of years:
205.188.234.67:8004
What happens when someone says "fuck" in one of their podcasts?
My favorites: bbc's fighting talk, cbc's quirks and quarks, the laporte report, benjamin walker's theory of everything. Thanks to these, audiobooks and NPR my daily commute is almost bearable.
Yes I know I didn't link, how about adding linking as a feature to slashcode?
I think it's a Meta-definition: talking about what it does rather than how it does it.
OGG isn't popular in the slightest.
Did you read the article? Or even read the summary? This *is* radio. A real radio station that is broadcasting people's podcasts *over the airwaves*.
I agree about the possiblity of being very profitable but what about commercials? The station needs to broadcast them:
1. Will they just slice out content and insert commercials? If so, who decides what gets cut?
2. Will they require producers to adhere to standard breaks and limit content time to something like 22:30 minutes per half hour with 3 breaks?
3. Could the broadcaster insert an ad for a bbq shack during a pro PETA show (unlikely, but could happen)? Will the producer be allowed to insert their own ads?
4. If the podcaster says one of the "seven dirty words" and it's gets broadcast couldn't the producer get hit with law suit from an injured third party (like an advertiser)?
Yes, there could be a lot of profit in it but IMO it will be a rocky road in the beginning. While some podcasters will adapt I hope that's the exception to the rule. I like podcasts the way they are.
Of course, it will probably end up being just as crappy as local public access channels. Except, instead of seeing teenagers prank call McDonald's it'll be wannabe Art Bells ranting about how George W. Bush is hiding Osama bin Laden on the dark side of the moon.
If that part was posted by alone it would get a +5, Funny. =)
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Have you by chance caught the first couple of pocasts of "Revenge (or Return) of the Bleep" with Leo/Patrick/Kevin? The first week was just mp3, but after receiving a fair bit of email, they offered both mp3 and ogg the second week. And they made a point of mentioning that it's probably only one percent, albeit a vocal one percent, who want ogg format.
If you're in the position to offer up content in mp3 format, it's trivial to make another ogg copy.
Hate to break the news to the _supposedly_ technically literate slashdot user, but if it in in FM band, and can be listened to on my car radio system, it's most likely radio.
I see they're also going for the whole "Emo" demographic with that "cool" confused, collage-type layout.
You want to know what I think? I think they did a couple of surveys and found out that "OSS" is "hip", "happenin", and "where it's at". Shit, just add the prase "Open Source" infront of anything you want to get a huge fan base. "Open Source Chicken", "Open Source Gas Station", "Open Source Mr. Big".
Anyways, is submitting your own music collection to be played "OS"? It's pretty much just the equivalent to taking in requests. I hate advertising firms (or at least just shitty ones), if you haven't noticed.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Yeah I really want a bunch of pimply faced teenagers writing kernel drivers or ppl that aren't even getting paid to write code. 'Professionals' won't get involved because they love being a pent up newscaster 24/7.
Whatever.
Radio involves actual broadcasting of electromagnetic waves on rf frequencies, normally at substantially high power levels.
Which is clearly an insufficent definition, since that would include television. Radio in this usage is clearly audio-only.
This whole fad of calling various forms of digital audio distributed over the internet 'radio', just goes to emphasize the technical illiteracy of the current crop of 'nerds'.
Or it emphasizes how languages change and grow to fill new-found gaps by extension of existing words. Radio, from a simple reference to electromagnetic broadcasting, came to refer to sound broadcasting*, and now that there is non-electromagnetic sound broadcasting, it has clearly, in many contexts, been divested of its original connection to the electromagnetic spectrum.
* OED 2ed: Radio, 2b "[...]; sound broadcasting considered as a medium of communication or as an art form."
BTW, someone this year filed a trademark claim on "PODCAST", something that I'm sure will get disputed by someone.
I just think there has to be a better name out there.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
I doubt you could use the FM frequencies for WiFi, since that would require re-working entire WiFi standard and getting it out of 2.4 GHz range.
Canada's CBC radio supports OGG streams.
Just check out Quirks and Quarks, a weekly science show broadcast on Saturdays.
I would love to see this chap explain to us how to define "same music". same for whom?
HAD
Yeah, but why waste the time to appease 1% of your audience simply because they whine loudly? I'd rather lose 1% of the people simply because I don't have the time to waste producing a second copy of something that exists already in a perfectly good format. Even if it's just one second of effort on my part, it's one second that is used up simply to shut up the religious nuts out there that can't stand proprietary products.
bah. listen to another radio station or podcast and whine to someone else. ogg folks are in the noise, and always will be.
Man, you guys are retarded. The whole point is that they are broadcasting podcasts over the radio. You can already download these podcasts somewhere else! This makes podcasting into real broadcasting. It doesn't take anything away.
Does anybody listen to AM radio in cities? It's useful for covering big open spaces, but an AM radio station based in San Francisco seems pointless.
Folks, at its best Podcasting is supposed to break us free from the crappy world of FCC filtered, Clear Channel backed pablum that has been hoisted on us. Podcasting is the RESPONSE to years of having our airwaves taken away from us by govermental force and used by a few corporations to tell us what and when to listen to the music they want to seel us or to listen to the news they demand we belive.
Podcasting, heck any methodology that subverts the traditional communications paradigm of "We own you, you listen to what we tell you to" is a great and glorious thing. It gives us the possibility of finding our own voices, of putting out our own content and of sharing in these things across the whole of humanity.
But now those same tradionalists who took the airwaves from us want to join in the revoltuion against them? Something smell fishy to you yet?
Lets break the KYOU thing down
Infinity looses its biggest ever cash cow (Stern) and is DESPERATE for a new "thing". So whats new? (not much you..that should get the nprheads)
Podcasting, which is just mp3s passed around via automated apps (bashpodder being imnsfho the best) goes from 0 to Hyperspace speeds in under a year...
Many podcasters are living on the steam that they are changing the course of history, that each and every days recounting of thier lunch choices is a signal to the world of paradigm shifting import that EVERYONE needs to hear..(ok so some podcasters are not into this ego shit eating contest and yes some podcasts are just that fucking damn good and should be listened to... but enough fit this description that the idea holds.)
SO here is Infinity DESPERATE for Something New
SO here are some Podcaster DESPERATE to be heard
Hey look, linkup synchup dontcha just wana throw up..because...
INfinity pays NOTHING for the content, they sell ads and make the revenue, and the content is filtered to FCC cleaness standards to boot.
So the Podcasters have to be FCC filtered, thier works make revenue for Infinity alone, and man does this begin to sound like some radio execs wet dream or what?
Folks, this is fishy at best and a subversion of what indipendent media is suppose to be about at worst. I say no thanks.
Burn Radio Burn
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
A real radio station that is broadcasting people's podcasts *over the airwaves*.
Goddammit. It's not a podcast if it's not wrapped in RSS. It's just an mp3. This is a *shoutcast* server that lets people submit mp3s to be broadcasted.
It has *nothing* to do with podcasting. The word "podcast" shouldn't even be used here.
It's also nothing new. Many shoutcast servers allow people to submit mp3s, many even allow you to "guest DJ" with winamp.
The survey you reference also noted that using XML tags to denote your comments on a web page is also "hip", "happenin", and "where it's at". (And wouldn't it be more efficient if the few non-ranting Slashdotters used the XML tags?)
People are forgetting that Open Source doesn't just mean using OSS communications protocols and software.
It can also imply opening existing processes to a wider range of participation, which is what they're doing here. Letting people submit content to be broadcast in ways that are typically only available to licensed individuals and other people of higher status is an embracement of an "Open" philosophy.
As for the exact term, think of "source" as meaning "origin", not "source code."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
So basically, they're trying to do for radio what Current is doing for video. The difference is no one is going to listen to what KYOU puts on the air, because there's already similar content all over the Internet. Current actually seems like something new and innovative, rather than a way to save a dying radio station.
Regardless, the advancements that have been made in the digital age have lowered the barrier to entry for being a content creator. Personally, I think the next decade of audio and video is going to evolve similar to the blogging revolution. Sure, there's going to be lots of crap out there, but there's also going to be good stuff that we'd never be exposed to otherwise.
Actually I think the whole point is to have people submit there podcast. As in you can download the podcast on the submitters website but by submitting it they will play it on the radio and actually broadcast it. So they are braodcasting peoples podcasts that you can go and download off the net on another site. So technically they are podcasts that are being broadcasted. The radio station doesn't actually claim to be a podcasting or anything but, I will say it again, are taking peoples podcasts and broadcasting them. Obviously the broadcast isn't podcasting but what they are broadcasting are actual podcasts that you can get on the net like all the other podcasts. See I have repeated it 3 times for you. Count em that 1, 2, and 3. Thats right 3 times for love of god I think about 5 people have already said it and I have said three times myself.
Finally, some sense in this thread.
They're basically just using the PODCASTING buzzword to be trendy and attract more peeps. Not to say that their project is bad, but it's unfortunate that they'll distort the meaning of podcasting for the sake of their marketing scheme.
The equally meaningless "open source radio" tag is bad enough.
Eh.
"If you believe everything you read, and who doesn't, podcasting is being championed as the great equalizer. " What is that!? Who believes everything they read? Apparently aiming at the "gullible" slice of the demographic.
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
And, no, you can't download the material submitters post to them from some other site ...
It's NOT podcasting. They shouldn't be calling it podcasting, any more than Microsoft should have been calling Windows9x a 32-bit operating system, or anyone calling budweiser a real beer.
Have fun with your 100Mhz wifi. Bet that will get great data rates.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The top radio station in SF is KGO-AM 810.
If you wish, you can read my short article on the future of podcasting. I got to thinking about podcasting and was comparing it to some other internet distribution models. I could be way off, but I fear for the financial stability of this grassroots based format. No one has a good answer for this sort of model yet...
I decided I should write this stuff down and then reflect more on it later. Your feedback is very welcome; I am very interested at this topic right now.
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
All three people who use ogg vorbis (I exaggerate, but only to make a point) will cry and moan about how their allegedly superior (morally and technically and technologically) format, but no-one will care, or even notice, because we're all too busy listening to our iPods.
This one is going stale.
Live365? I have to admit for a full fledged tech geek the pod-cast revolution has slipped right past me. Whats the difference between a podcast and a regular shoutcast/icecast/etc stream? Is it just that it downloads itself to a proprietary piece of hardware or is there really something different?
I ask this as someone about a month away from launching a full-fledged 24/7 net radio site.
I mean is it really as simple as the fact that the radio shows are pre-packaged and can be listened to at the users discretion? Indieradio.org used to have guest DJ's upload 60 minute spots, is that basically (assuming it was made downloadable) what a 'podcast' is?
Quack, quack.
There are two main reasons why Ogg/Vorbis is used by the small number of people who use it. One is that the format is open source, so people can write all kinds of software for it without worrying about patents or licensing fees. Another reason (which is less of an issue since portable players are now available with storage that would put even a high end PC from five years ago to shame) is that the codec is much newer than mp3 and gives higher quality in a comparable file size.
One of the reasons that Ogg hasn't been widely adopted yet is that companies like Apple prefer to make their players support proprietary formats that are more friendly to DRM than open source codecs. That's the only real technical obstacle preventing people who don't know about it from hearing about it. Distributing content solely in mp3 format that is destined mainly for playback on a computer is mostly just ignorance, since EVERY well known player comes with a vorbis decoder by now. MP3 was the first breakthrough audio format, and the closest and digital audio format has come to a household name, so it will continue to dominate for quite some time.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
Get your amateur radio license and read the ARRL handbook cover to cover, and then come back and explain to us exactly how that is supposed to work.
Like it or not there has to be frequency police out there. The EM spectrum is a limited resource -- consider that the twenty MHz allocated to the FM broadcast band would be swamped by three TV channels, and then consider that the entire AM band is about 1.2 MHz wide. There simply isn't the room to "return the airwaves to the public" -- the FCC is having enough trouble with what it's currently licensing.
If you want to see the end result, get yourself a CB and monitor for a while (assuming you're in the US). It's absolute bedlam -- the Friendly Candy Company almost completely gave up on enforcement long ago except for the odd token action against people selling illegal equipment. It's very hard for a legal operator in some areas when rednecks with more batteries than common sense are putting out as much RF as some small commercial radio stations. Would you really want to see the airwaves ruled by political/religious extremists with megawatt transmitters and ongoing signal wars?
What the fuck, exactly, is wrong with PHP again?
-----
jonathan barket
"be heard" sounds a bit familiar, in fact it was part of the jingle of an australian youth IT show: "Radioactive.net.au, Don't just listen, be heard!". What I'd call an example of interactive radio. It teamed conventional radio, internet radio and IRC to create a community. Its the first radio station I've heard where a song was pulled off halfway through because nobody wanted to listen to it - thats interactive. Shame it had to come to an end, no commercial stations wanted a youth IT show (but they wanted the technology, funny that). This is only rebranding a radio station that nobody wanted to listen to in the beginning and trialing it in another project. No net loss, and they get to throw in a lot of buzz words too. In Australia (again), the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) has not only been streaming its radio live (Radio National, Triple J and Radio Australia to name a few) but has its own internet radio station "Dig". They're not doing some work and trials with podcasting with Dig, RN and Triple J Those are real stations that people actually listen to (and get ratings), instead of a pathetic station that nobody listens to.
I always wondered where this setting was...
sure, they're plundering the podosphere for content.
i assume the figure the global pool of podcast "talent" is greater than the local pool of amateur radio enthusiasts.
The one trouble I see for them is that most of the really good podcasts are chock full of profanity, crudity, drug references (hell you can hear our producer toking down in the background on ours), and talk about sex.
Not so great for broadcast.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
For real?
but shouldn't this open source radio support all popular formats
It does. Ogg isn't popular. It's used by, what, 14 people worldwide?
yeah, for the footy and news (in the case of the spousal unit)
Not Free SF Reader
Anyways, is submitting your own music collection to be played "OS"? It's pretty much just the equivalent to taking in requests.
We have ONE station and HOW MANY pod casters?
Pick a number - it doesn't matter. The fact is this is just the MegaCorp's attempt at co-opting the podcasting social algorithm. Podcasting is NOT revolutionary or even all that progressive, so it doens't matter that much. But this is just a typical attempt at a cash in.
giant corporation looks at what the "Kids" are doing and wonders how to turn a buck on it.
40 years ago, it was "let's sign hundreds of rock music acts" now, it's "let the podcasters in" - it's still bullshit.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
A shoutcast server does not use AM radio so I don't really see how it is the "same thing". In one case you are broadcasting over the Internet to a certain set of listeners (mostly people sitting at their computers). In the other you are broadcasting over the airwaves (e.g. to people in cars).
I saw in a few articles about this that they claimed to be the first podcasting radio station. I DON'T think so. Heck, here in Alaska a for profit radio (currently/barely) station Whole Wheat Radio http://wholewheatradio.org/ has been going for years. True, they call their podcasts are ALSO called Audio Magazines, but they are going out podcast style.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Okay, I'll bite. What's the mental image you had?
This is a serious question:
What happens when someone uploads another's music as their own?
it encourages web developers to write code
That is probably the most pathetic attempt at making a website look hip and edgy. The marketing execs probably thought they were being clever when they suggested
Bob: hey lets turn the K into a K with a fist coming out of the top, like the K is defiant.
Jim: Yes, Brilliant! A defiant K, our focus groups show that MTV watching youth identify with the defiant K.
Come on what a total joke. Viacom being the leader of the new revolution, and claiming to be the Open Source Radio yet there is nothing overtly open source about the whole thing. Where is the Source in this anyways?
Possibly those interested in alternate views could check out kboo.fm and wbai.org, which do not pledge allegiance to Viacom or ClearChannel.
Nothing to hear here folks, turn the dial.
"The contents of this Site, including all software, design, logos, graphics, artwork, images, photographs, audio clips, video clips, and other material, including the selection and arrangements thereof, copyrights, trademarks, service marks and trade names (the "Material"), are the property of Infinity Broadcasting Corporation ("Infinity") and/or its parent company Viacom, Inc. ("Viacom"), its subsidiaries, affiliates, assigns, licensors, the Site's design, hosting, programming and contest management/prize fulfillment vendors (collectively "operational service providers") and/or the Site's advertisers, sponsors, and promotional partners (collectively "Advertisers"). The Material is protected, without limitation, pursuant to United States and foreign copyright, trademark and other applicable laws and treaties. Unauthorized use of the Material may violate such laws and treaties."
So clearly licenced under extremely open terms then! Perhaps they've been taking advice from the Microsoft dictionary definition of 'Open'.
Gits.
KYOURadio will even let you stream their radio station, if you are on Windows. Mac, Linux, need not apply.
But they do support OCG and PNG
...we shouldn't forget what makes "radio" great.
Radio will always be in the forefront. My fatether, a program director for a local (but nationaly owned) FM radio station, puts this all perspective. He has said to me many times that "...listening will always be what we can do best..."
He is an amazing man. He has oftem mused that "...Joe six pack wants 'meat and potatos'". By that he means that we will all see what we want to see.
Be it podcast, or whatever, he and I am a firm believer in the "Orchestra of the mind". Dirty words this, subject matter, anything that "turns us on". The human mind is always captivated by the enamuration of charecter.
With that, I leave you with a question: Is it not where you found the source but how you found the source?
We are all, to some degree or another, "story tellers". Our stories in text/audio are dramatically "better" if told by voice or reading.
In simpler terms: We will always want MORE of what we cannot SEE. Radio (audio mostly) will always spark the creative instincs inside of us to imagine what is possible beyond our other sences.
The impression I get here is "Big company finds a venture of theirs dying, and says "Eh, what the hell, we'll "open-source" it.""
Increasingly, it seems like open-source/free software/similar stuff are "where failed commercial projects go to die." (See also: Blender) It is depressing to me as a free software advocate. Yes, it's better to open-source/open-source-alike software/services when they die than to simply let them die... However, if this sort of thing becomes more prevalent, Pointy-Haired-Boss types will eventually become convinced that "open-source" (as a verb) is simply a buzzword meaning "put out to pasture"... and that would be a Bad Thing(TM).
Couple this trend with the impression anti-OSS/FS folks already have of OSS/FS-- that it's "nothing but a bunch of cheap knockoffs of Fine Commercial Products"-- and this sort of "end-of-life open-sourcing" could be really bad news in the long run.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
It's called advocacy and it's been a part of Slashdot from the beginning. OGG deserves a chance because it's open and it's good. Both of these things are good for you, even if you don't realize it. (Which a great many people don't.)
:)
From my perspective I see lots of sites on the web that always ignore ogg.
Does ALMOST EVERY fucking article concerning compressed audio have to ignore ogg?
Works both ways and there are more sites doing it your way than mine right now, so go read those or lighten up. I would rather you just lighten up and stay here though
Blogging because I can...
so that podcasters could legally include material, they'd have something hot.
There's no ogg because how many portable MP3 players support ogg? Only one brand that I know of (iRiver) or possibly two. In any case, MP3 is a standard now, like it or not. If you submit a WAV, they will likely convert it for you. Every time I hear a but they don't support OGG comment, I just roll my eyes. If we want to ever make other people other than geeks aware of podcasting, we have to support the audio formats they know about. MP3's are what people know. When you say OGG and start talking about all of the reasons it's better the MP3, people's eyes glaze over. MP3 is where it's at.
Gorkman
BTW, FCC ISN'T responsible for the creation of Clear Channel and other monopoly like radio. That would be the SEC approving thier purchases.
;) Even if they did, I personally don't think it would work too well.
WiFi operates in the 2.4 GHz band. It likely would not work well in the AM Broadcast band because noone makes equipment for that band yet!
The FCC is a necessary evil. If it wasn't for them, your radio would be useless as well as your cell phone, your wifi and anythng else that uses RF. They exist also to help take care of our side of a international agreement. The FCC is WHY RF works so well now. If it was anarchy, noone would be able to use RF for anything useful.
Gorkman
I disagree with the parent regarding one comment:
I disagree on this point; if those who are concerned want to encourage them to do so, you need to let them know you're interested; bitching about it here doesn't do a damn thing toward getting them to support OGG as well as the more popular formats. People could send them suggestions that they also accept OGG format files as well. Maybe even offer uploads or URLs of OGG supporting music player programs as well as MP3 and other formats so the station can provide them as downloads or include the links.The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
With books and radio, you get your own details built on the aspect and attributes of your own brain. Many screen adaptations of are disappointing because they are DULL by comparison.
Radio adds the mystique of invisible action at a distance. You can be on a small boat in the middle of the South Pacific, turn on the radio, and if things are just right hear, "...KDAY and it's 78 degrees at the beach!". Excited ions congregating in just the right places interact with something, modeled well by Maxwell(but it's still just a model), to bring this to your ears.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine. My sig is my best friend. It is my life.
Amazon who used to let bands simply upload MP3s to their site to see if anyone downloaded it. ... So some genius in marketing stopped the practice!
Amazon probably stopped the practice after copyright owners complained and then Amazon figured out that it was too expensive to have a music expert listen to each song to make sure it wasn't a cover song.
I would like to request NSF and SPC so we can hear some video game music
Which is copyrighted by the owner of copyright in the video game and more than likely available for public performance only under a royalty-bearing license if at all. Or is there a homebrew SPC scene the way there's a homebrew NSF scene?
Using javascript, IE can support png transparency.
I won't link to my source directly, because it's a meltable server.
If he's not using a trend-setting browser like FF, he at least needs to get IE5.5
Changa hates change.
One of the reasons that Ogg hasn't been widely adopted yet is that companies like Apple prefer to make their players support proprietary formats that are more friendly to DRM than open source codecs.
In a sense, digital restrictions management is equally "friendly" to all container formats and codecs. Given suitable hardware, there is no reason that Apple couldn't wrap an Ogg Vorbis stream in FairPlay DRM the way it wraps an MPEG-4 AAC stream in FairPlay DRM. The real reason why the iPod hasn't been made to play Vorbis is that Vorbis is thought more computationally complex than MP3 or AAC; the current best decoder for the iPod hardware runs at only 80% real time when decoding a 44 kHz stereo stream.
I have yet to find something for iTunes on win2k.
This decoder will run in any QuickTime app on Windows, albeit not on your iPod player.
"Why would they leave this format out when it would be easy to include it?"
My take is that ogg support is left out because the people are anti-Free Software. They don't want anything Free taking off and becomming wildly popular or the market leader. That would deny them the use of much of the FUD that is popular.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I agree with a lot of what you said, but part of my original point was that the second one of the grassroots people starts to catch on, they become corporate. This mixing between the two worlds seems to be one of the dominant mechanisms for producing corporate media, in fact. My guess is that relatively few people are as manufactured as Britney. Look at Dave Mathews, for example. He was out there doing his thing for a long time before getting picked up. Either you acknowledge that he is still worthwhile now that he's working for he corporations, or that he never was because he was willing to "sell out". Everybody comes from nowhere, which is why I find this idea of "corporate" media so specious. The problem, if anything, is not the corporations but the masses to whom they market. The corporations are just a reflection of us, and maybe that's what people hate the most.
Blogs are changing the world, but let's not assume it's for the better. The things that make a blog popular are exactly THE SAME THINGS THAT MAKE A MAJOR MEDIA OUTLET POPULAR. The most read blogs are the ones that trade integrity for sensation, and talk to the lowest common denominator. And the idea that it's an enabler of the masses is a joke. People don't have any more time to listen to bloggers than they had to listen to corporate TV or radio. So only a select few bloggers do, and even can, rise to the top to have any significant impact. (And then, of course, they become corporate.)
There is a certain "physics" to all of this, and the only thing we've changed are the names and the channels. The same fundamental properties are always at work, though. You can't change certain aspects of the way people get information from other people.
Just because a billion people COULD read what you wrote on the net is irrelevent. When the billion people on the internet are also contributing a billion of their own blogs, it's not so compelling anymore. What will come from this situation is the same solution that has arisen from EVERY other new form of media that has ever been invented: a corporatization will emerge to promote and profit from the best of what is out there.
How is this a "transformation" of the old station? They're "changing" the format, audience, medium, and content of the old station. Isn't Viacom just shuttind down a losing station completely, and launching an unrelated podcast website? And cranking the hype machine by casting it as "upgrading" a station?
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make install -not war
There's still the politically-incorrect language problem, though, which means they probably will have to pre-screen to avoid having the Republicans fine them gazillions of dollars for using naughty words. I suppose they can outsource that to India or something, as well as doing speech-to-text and pattern matching things. (They also need to keep their advertisers happy - some random soap vendor might not want their advertisements coming right after the "Goatse Hour" show...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Taking back the airwaves for pirate radio is more realistic, especially on the FM channels where distances are somewhat limited.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Italy's radio broadcasting worked on an anarchy-based system for some decades until around the time Berlusconi took over - not for official policy reasons, but simply because the civil service was too incompetent to control it successfully for many years, so the broadcasters had to work things out for themselves, and they did just fine. Berlusconi was a major media mogul, so he finally made them straighten out and take control again. (I don't remember if this was after he became Prime Minister or only once he became sufficiently influential in parliament - it's been a while.) For about 50 years after World War II, the US government was quietly but actively involved in destablizing Italian politics, basically because various Socialist and Communist political parties were fairly popular, and they wanted to prevent them from being successful (though there were a number of Communist mayors and other local government officials.) With most of the government coalitions staying in charge less than a year, it was really tough for the civil service to stay very organized, especially since each new coalition has a bunch of people wanting political favors - so it was a tough job. Eventually the Cold War ended and the US backed off and left them alone.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you go through their registration process and read their terms and conditions, you'd have to be insane to submit programming to them. Look at this from their terms and conditions (only available to registered users):
``Submitter will indemnify and hold harmless Infinity, and its affiliates, parent companies, subsidiaries, officers, shareholders, directors, employees, agents, representatives, successors, and assigns, ("Infinity Entities") against any and all loss, liability, claims, damages and other expenses, including reasonable attorneys fees, arising from (a) Infinity's use of the Material under this Agreement; (b) any act or omission by Submitter; (c) any breach of Submitter's representations and warranties in Paragraph 2 above. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, United States of America, without application of conflict of laws principles. Submitter agrees that all disputes arising under this Agreement will be litigated and adjudicated exclusively in State and/or Federal Court located in the State of New York, United States of America.``
So not only are you giving them free content, you're taking on all the legal responsibilities for that content DIRECTLY ON YOU. Because we wouldn't want a giant corporation like Infinity to get sued. Just some poor little podcast producer. And they'd have to go to New York to defend themselves!
(Viacom owns Infinity in case that's not clear)
Broadcasters had to work things out with each other, but that was OK.
You mean the same way nodes on the Internet were expected to work with each other in the early years?
You see where I'm going with this. It doesn't scale, especially once you throw unscrupulous spammer types into the mix.
It's even worse with radio, on the Internet a spammer might tie up one set of end links, with radio they might make an HF frequency unusable world-wide.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I don't know, but I have yet to find something like the iTunes player on Gentoo.