the available web browsers have problems with some content
I'm glad to hear somebody phrase it in those terms. I've long been of the opinion that the web content standards body is largely irrelevant; IE's dialect of HTML is the de facto standard, for better or worse, and when a browser fails to render a page the way IE does, unless there's a really great reason for it, it's the browser's fault.
Standards are all fine and good, but only to the extent that they're used in the real world. There's nothing more useless than an un-adopted standard.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic, already in progress.
This reminds me of something funny-and-true I read a while back. Only one software tool has been used on every feature film since the advent of digital production. It's the single most popular tool in Hollywood. And the name of that tool is... vi.
In other words, no matter who you are or what you do, you can find somebody who has used your product in making their film. Remember last winter when everybody and their sister was bragging about how Weta used their software or hardware or whatever to make LOTR? That's because Weta used one of everything to make LOTR.
That said, the bit about using ``1384'' (i.e., FireWire) to capture uncompressed video sounds fishy to me. Although lord knows the bandwidth is there-- uncompressed serial digital video only needs 270 Mbps, while FireWire can handle up to 400-- I've never heard of anybody using FireWire for that yet. I'll bet the Dell boxes were capturing DV-compressed video at 25 Mbps over FireWire, just like you get out of your camcorder at home. No facts here, just an educated guess on my part.
Having those numbers, as well as some solid cost-benefit analysis should help speed corporate adoption.
You're making a huge assumption there. Have you ever given any critical thought to what the real TCO of Linux is? It's not too bad on the server side; discounting the NRE of hardware and server software, the TCO for a Linux server is about the same as the TCO for any other Unix server. Once you add the hardware and software back in, you end up with a package that's nice and cheap.
But on the desktop... whew! The TCO of Linux is huge. There's support costs, training and re-training costs, application development costs... it's just a killer. When-- or, more accurately, if-- Linux reaches the point where the cost of re-training your staff and acquiring the needed software is less than the cost of Windows plus Windows applications, then it makes sense-- from a TCO standpoint-- to run Linux on the desktop. But that's a long way off.
If anything, looking at the TCO for desktop computer systems will probably benefit Microsoft more than Linux.
First of all, I think you need to look up the words ``competition'' and ``monopoly.'' I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Apple's competition is Dell, IBM, and other makers of Windows PCs, and to a much lesser extent, SGI and other makers of Unix workstations. Nothing Real isn't Apple's competition.
And a monopoly is a situation in which only one source exists for a class of product or service. It's not meaningful to talk of monopolies on single products. You could say that Apple now has a monopoly on Shake... but that would be a meaningless statement. If every other compositor-- including things like After Effects and, hell, Photoshop and Microsoft Paint-- ceased to exist, then Apple would have a monopoly on compositing tools. But that's not the case, and it's not bloody likely to happen.
And as far as.mac goes, I for one would rather see Apple stay solvent and profitable (I'm a shareholder). They were losing money big-time on iTools, because it was far more popular than they expected it to be. It was either turn it into a for-pay service, or dump it entirely. I agree completely that the current situation isn't wonderful, but I consider it the lesser of two evils.
Taking a look at the tech specs for Shake, reveals that a 3 button mouse is required on the Mac platform... now where can I find one of those on the Apple store?;-)
Shake is a compositor. It's kind of like Photoshop at 24 frames per second. Kind of.
You start with a collection of images or sequences of images; these may come from any number of sources, but they usually come from a special type of scanner called a ``datacine'' (or ``telecine,'' if you're old-fashioned). When you scan film, each frame is stored on disk as a separate image file (usually in DPX or Cineon format) and given a number, so you end up with nastytroll.0001.dpx through nastytroll.0048.dpx.
You import these sequences-- and other elements, like stills-- into Shake, where you can do things like key out the background behind this green-screen shot and put the result on top of that background plate, and add that character who was also shot on a green-screen, but paint out the wires holding him up and add a glow around his shoes, then add some CG spaceships and stuff (provided as sequences by the animation group) to the background.
Once you do all that artistic stuff, you end up with a result, which gets rendered out into a (you guessed it) sequence of images. That sequence can then be used with other software, or it can be printed to film using a laser film printer.
That's basically what Shake does, in a nutshell.
Oh, and they used it on movies like Fight Club, The Matrix, and LOTR.
Apple is doing nothing for FireWire? Since when? It's everywhere. I have a FireWire CDRW and two FireWire hard drives on this computer, all three bought at the local CompUSA. FireWire products are everywhere.
Coolest application of FireWire ever: the iPod has no socket on it for an AC adapter. The AC adapter has a two-prong plug on one end, and a six-pin FireWire port on the other. To charge your iPod from the wall, you plug the AC adapter into the FireWire port. I've seen FireWire connections that carry data but no power, but this is the first instance I know of a connection carrying power but no data. Cool!
If you're actually doing any prepress color-sensitive work you're using a CRT if you know what's up.
Actually, if you're really doing prepress work, then you don't give two shits about your monitor. Every print artist worth his salt knows that it's impossible to judge color accurately on-screen, no matter how closely you calibrate the display. In fact, having an expensive, closely calibrated device is worse than having one that's way off, because you're more likely to trust-- mistakenly-- a ``close'' monitor than a ``way off'' one.
Color calibration between displays and presses is a myth. What you see on the screen means nothing. That's what proofs are for.
It's only hyperbole if the exaggeration is apparent to the reader. If I said, ``CRTs are a billion times less expensive than LCDs,'' that would be hyperbole. If I said, ``CRTs are half as expensive,'' that's not hyperbole, because it's not clear whether it's exaggeration for effect, or just a surprising fact. To use your example, ``This book weighs five pounds'' is an exaggeration if the book weighs, in fact, three pounds. But it's not hyperbole, because it's not clear to the reader that it's intended to be exaggeration for effect.
The issue is further complicated by the use of the phrase, ``an order of magnitude.'' That's a very precise term, which implies a statement of fact, not exaggeration for effect.
CRTs are nearly and order of magnitude less expensive
Forgive me if I'm being overly anal, but I see the phrase ``an order of magnitude'' misused far more often than it's used correctly. An order of magnitude is a multiple of 10. For example, 1,000 is one order of magnitude bigger than 100, and two orders of magnitude smaller than 100,000.
Do you seriously mean that LCDs are ten times more expensive than CRTs? I don't have any specific information one way or the other, but that doesn't sound right to me.
Gee whiz. Talking of arrogance. I asked, very plainly and calmly, why Ogg would be important to a guy who doesn't broadcast and who isn't affected by patents. I'm sure there are more people out there like me than there are like you. I heard last week that 14 million people have downloaded iTunes since Apple released it.
My point is just that it's kind of disappointing that people would spend their time and energy working on an audio codec that's not necessary and that doesn't offer significant advantages over existing codecs. They could have been working to improve MP3 instead, or on something new that we don't have yet. Instead, they just decided to reproduce work that's already been done. That's disappointing, because it smacks of wasted opportunity.
First, read Kysh's comment. It's better than mine.
But the short answer is that it's possible to compile a Java program that will exit due to an uncaught exception. For many exceptions, Java forces you to have an exception handler, otherwise the code won't compile. But not for all. Runtime exceptions can send your code straight out the window.
The idea behind Ada-- I've never done much Ada programming myself-- is that it's not supposed to be possible to compile code that can throw an uncaught exception. The compiler is supposed to prevent you from doing such a thing.
This doesn't mean that Ada code is always perfect, but it does give you a degree of freedom that you don't get with other languages.
I did some work about four years ago on a flight simulator project for the DoD. The first stage in the project was to build an unclassified demonstration version of the new sim. Some code related to weapons-- in this case, the AIM-120 missile-- is classified, and can't be demonstrated in an unclassified environment. So what did we do? We just didn't link in that code. (I may have my terminology wrong; I was doing HSI, not code, so I'm just going by what my friend on the other side of the hall told me.)
With any other environment, C or Java or whatever, that would have resulted in a fatal runtime error. But Ada doesn't let you have runtime error situations without exception handlers, so when it encountered the missing chunk if AIM-120 code, the sim just dropped into the exception handler-- which basically said, ``never mind, everything's fine''-- and kept right on going. The sim dropped a couple of frames every time you fired a missile, but other than that, no problem.
I've gotta say that I found that pretty cool. I mean, the sim just kept on going, after it found that a huge chunk of important code was simply missing! Neato!
I thought I understood Rendezvous, but now I'm all confused again. What would be the advantage of using Ethernet to connect your keyboard to your computer? The ``only one plug'' idea is nice, but wouldn't there be a significant cost associated with putting a NIC and a TCP stack in every computer keyboard?
I had the impression that we were just talking about computer-to-computer communication here, not computer-to-peripheral.
I wasn't scientific about it, but I did a quick test. I encoded a song with VBR and again at CBR at 160 Kbps. I could hear encoding artifacts with VBR, and not with CBR. For me, that was the end of the matter.
Open standards are not supposed to have intellectual property licenses. Period.
I think I understand your point-- you believe that ``open standards'' (whatever that means) should not have IP licenses-- but I'd still appreciate a smidgen of clarification. Are you suggesting that there's some rule or standard or principle that supports your opinion?
DAMN IT. I previewed and everything. Please replace the last paragraph of the above with the following.
If you ever used Mac OS n (n < 10) on an AppleShare network, think ``Chooser'' for IP networks. The ``Chooser'' was the greatest network human-computer interface ever. Plug the computer in, and poof.
I'm amazed by how many posts there are talking about single-protocol-this and single-protocol-that. My favorites are the ones talking about how having a single protocol leads to licensing fees and restrictions, and the one about how a single protocol is insecure.
Didn't you losers even read the article? Rendezvous is basically two things: self-assigned link-local IP addressing, and automatic service discovery. In other words, you computer can automatically assign a local IP address to itself, then discover services available on other computers via particular UDP packets. Get two computers in proximity to each other, and they'll be able to ``see'' each other's shared volumes. Get one computer connected (wirelessly or wired-ly) to a printer, and the computer will be able to ``see'' the printer.
Freedom from risk. There will be no threat from submarine patents, sudden license fees, or forced Digital Rights Molestation.
I already posted this point elsewhere. I hope I'm forgiven for repeating myself. I can't imagine any rights management scheme that would make my current collection of MP3s unplayable on my current computer using my current software. I mean, unless I have a deep misunderstanding of how computers work, it's just not possible to flip a switch and suddenly stop iTunes from working any more.
It is concievable that you may not be able to play your old MP3s, and especially not be able to create new ones, due to DRM.
I'd be fascinated to learn how, exactly, somebody could climb inside my computer (which isn't even connected to the Internet, at least at the moment) and make iTunes 3 and my MP3s suddenly not work any more.
Of course, it's conceivable that somebody might pass a law that makes playing previously encoded MP3s on previously bought or otherwise legitimately acquired software illegal... but that's not likely.
Re:Those must be some short CDs...
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
·
· Score: 2
The number 400 is a bit of a round-up. I don't remember exactly, but I believe I have about 3,900 separate MP3s. Of course, about 20% of my collection is classical music, where each CD has as few as two or three tracks.
Bitrate peeling does sound cool, but that only matters to broadcasters. If broadcasters used Ogg, I'd be interested in getting an Ogg player. But I'm asking from the perspective of me, the average user person.
Same thing with free-form tags. Again, they sound neat in the abstract, but they don't really give me the ability to do anything that I want to do but can't. Once again, I'm average-user-guy.
And as for 'freedom and low cost,' it's already here! I have iTunes 3.0 running on my iBook right now. It's 100% free. Anybody can download it and run it, straight from the Apple web site. No strings attached. Even if Apple stopped giving away iTunes, I'd still have my copy, and I'd still be able to do everything that I can do today. I'm not dependent on anybody for anything in that respect. So I'm afraid you're mistaken. Open source is 100% irrelevant in this instance. If iTunes and/or the MP3 codec were open source, my life wouldn't change a bit.
And finally, I don't think you're right when you said, ``you're actually a criminal because you didn't pay for an MP3 license.'' I got iTunes from Apple, and Apple doesn't seem like the kind of company who would turn their users into criminals. I have absolutely no reason to think that anything I'm doing is anything less than perfectly legal.
That sounds cool and all, but I don't think a 2:1 savings in library size is a good enough reason for me to spend hundreds of hours re-encoding my CD collection. 10:1 might be, but 2:1 isn't a big enough deal to me.
- Flexible
I'm listening to an MP3 stream right now. (Limbik Frequencies at 128 Kbps, if you're curious.) I haven't heard a skip or a blip for at least three hours. So I don't see how Ogg could make it easier to stream audio over the Internet.
And as for free-form tags goes, that's also not very interesting to me. I mean, I can't think of any metadata that I'd want to store that I can't already. Can you give me a good example of a practical use for free-form tags?
- Open Source
Doesn't matter to me one bit. I listen to music; I don't write software. (Actually, I do write software. But not audio software. And that's not my point, anyway.)
- Not Patented
I didn't have to pay anybody when I downloaded iTunes from apple.com. It's free. It encodes and plays. So this doesn't affect me, either. I know some people have strong opinions on patents and make decisions based on principle, but I'm just not one of 'em. If it doesn't affect me, I'm hard-pressed to care.
Slashdot Mirror
the available web browsers have problems with some content
I'm glad to hear somebody phrase it in those terms. I've long been of the opinion that the web content standards body is largely irrelevant; IE's dialect of HTML is the de facto standard, for better or worse, and when a browser fails to render a page the way IE does, unless there's a really great reason for it, it's the browser's fault.
Standards are all fine and good, but only to the extent that they're used in the real world. There's nothing more useless than an un-adopted standard.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic, already in progress.
This reminds me of something funny-and-true I read a while back. Only one software tool has been used on every feature film since the advent of digital production. It's the single most popular tool in Hollywood. And the name of that tool is... vi.
In other words, no matter who you are or what you do, you can find somebody who has used your product in making their film. Remember last winter when everybody and their sister was bragging about how Weta used their software or hardware or whatever to make LOTR? That's because Weta used one of everything to make LOTR.
That said, the bit about using ``1384'' (i.e., FireWire) to capture uncompressed video sounds fishy to me. Although lord knows the bandwidth is there-- uncompressed serial digital video only needs 270 Mbps, while FireWire can handle up to 400-- I've never heard of anybody using FireWire for that yet. I'll bet the Dell boxes were capturing DV-compressed video at 25 Mbps over FireWire, just like you get out of your camcorder at home. No facts here, just an educated guess on my part.
Having those numbers, as well as some solid cost-benefit analysis should help speed corporate adoption.
You're making a huge assumption there. Have you ever given any critical thought to what the real TCO of Linux is? It's not too bad on the server side; discounting the NRE of hardware and server software, the TCO for a Linux server is about the same as the TCO for any other Unix server. Once you add the hardware and software back in, you end up with a package that's nice and cheap.
But on the desktop... whew! The TCO of Linux is huge. There's support costs, training and re-training costs, application development costs... it's just a killer. When-- or, more accurately, if-- Linux reaches the point where the cost of re-training your staff and acquiring the needed software is less than the cost of Windows plus Windows applications, then it makes sense-- from a TCO standpoint-- to run Linux on the desktop. But that's a long way off.
If anything, looking at the TCO for desktop computer systems will probably benefit Microsoft more than Linux.
First of all, I think you need to look up the words ``competition'' and ``monopoly.'' I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
.mac goes, I for one would rather see Apple stay solvent and profitable (I'm a shareholder). They were losing money big-time on iTools, because it was far more popular than they expected it to be. It was either turn it into a for-pay service, or dump it entirely. I agree completely that the current situation isn't wonderful, but I consider it the lesser of two evils.
Apple's competition is Dell, IBM, and other makers of Windows PCs, and to a much lesser extent, SGI and other makers of Unix workstations. Nothing Real isn't Apple's competition.
And a monopoly is a situation in which only one source exists for a class of product or service. It's not meaningful to talk of monopolies on single products. You could say that Apple now has a monopoly on Shake... but that would be a meaningless statement. If every other compositor-- including things like After Effects and, hell, Photoshop and Microsoft Paint-- ceased to exist, then Apple would have a monopoly on compositing tools. But that's not the case, and it's not bloody likely to happen.
And as far as
And I woulda got away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those nosy kids!
Bwa-ha-ha.
Okay, you and I posted exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. That's just plain creepy.
Taking a look at the tech specs for Shake, reveals that a 3 button mouse is required on the Mac platform... now where can I find one of those on the Apple store? ;-)
Right here. There are several available.
Shake is a compositor. It's kind of like Photoshop at 24 frames per second. Kind of.
You start with a collection of images or sequences of images; these may come from any number of sources, but they usually come from a special type of scanner called a ``datacine'' (or ``telecine,'' if you're old-fashioned). When you scan film, each frame is stored on disk as a separate image file (usually in DPX or Cineon format) and given a number, so you end up with nastytroll.0001.dpx through nastytroll.0048.dpx.
You import these sequences-- and other elements, like stills-- into Shake, where you can do things like key out the background behind this green-screen shot and put the result on top of that background plate, and add that character who was also shot on a green-screen, but paint out the wires holding him up and add a glow around his shoes, then add some CG spaceships and stuff (provided as sequences by the animation group) to the background.
Once you do all that artistic stuff, you end up with a result, which gets rendered out into a (you guessed it) sequence of images. That sequence can then be used with other software, or it can be printed to film using a laser film printer.
That's basically what Shake does, in a nutshell.
Oh, and they used it on movies like Fight Club, The Matrix, and LOTR.
You know, ``Flamebait'' and ``Informative'' are, like, right next to each other. I'll just assume it was a simple mistake and get on with my life. ;-)
Apple is doing nothing for FireWire? Since when? It's everywhere. I have a FireWire CDRW and two FireWire hard drives on this computer, all three bought at the local CompUSA. FireWire products are everywhere.
Coolest application of FireWire ever: the iPod has no socket on it for an AC adapter. The AC adapter has a two-prong plug on one end, and a six-pin FireWire port on the other. To charge your iPod from the wall, you plug the AC adapter into the FireWire port. I've seen FireWire connections that carry data but no power, but this is the first instance I know of a connection carrying power but no data. Cool!
If you're actually doing any prepress color-sensitive work you're using a CRT if you know what's up.
Actually, if you're really doing prepress work, then you don't give two shits about your monitor. Every print artist worth his salt knows that it's impossible to judge color accurately on-screen, no matter how closely you calibrate the display. In fact, having an expensive, closely calibrated device is worse than having one that's way off, because you're more likely to trust-- mistakenly-- a ``close'' monitor than a ``way off'' one.
Color calibration between displays and presses is a myth. What you see on the screen means nothing. That's what proofs are for.
It's only hyperbole if the exaggeration is apparent to the reader. If I said, ``CRTs are a billion times less expensive than LCDs,'' that would be hyperbole. If I said, ``CRTs are half as expensive,'' that's not hyperbole, because it's not clear whether it's exaggeration for effect, or just a surprising fact. To use your example, ``This book weighs five pounds'' is an exaggeration if the book weighs, in fact, three pounds. But it's not hyperbole, because it's not clear to the reader that it's intended to be exaggeration for effect.
The issue is further complicated by the use of the phrase, ``an order of magnitude.'' That's a very precise term, which implies a statement of fact, not exaggeration for effect.
CRTs are nearly and order of magnitude less expensive
Forgive me if I'm being overly anal, but I see the phrase ``an order of magnitude'' misused far more often than it's used correctly. An order of magnitude is a multiple of 10. For example, 1,000 is one order of magnitude bigger than 100, and two orders of magnitude smaller than 100,000.
Do you seriously mean that LCDs are ten times more expensive than CRTs? I don't have any specific information one way or the other, but that doesn't sound right to me.
Gee whiz. Talking of arrogance. I asked, very plainly and calmly, why Ogg would be important to a guy who doesn't broadcast and who isn't affected by patents. I'm sure there are more people out there like me than there are like you. I heard last week that 14 million people have downloaded iTunes since Apple released it.
My point is just that it's kind of disappointing that people would spend their time and energy working on an audio codec that's not necessary and that doesn't offer significant advantages over existing codecs. They could have been working to improve MP3 instead, or on something new that we don't have yet. Instead, they just decided to reproduce work that's already been done. That's disappointing, because it smacks of wasted opportunity.
First, read Kysh's comment. It's better than mine.
But the short answer is that it's possible to compile a Java program that will exit due to an uncaught exception. For many exceptions, Java forces you to have an exception handler, otherwise the code won't compile. But not for all. Runtime exceptions can send your code straight out the window.
The idea behind Ada-- I've never done much Ada programming myself-- is that it's not supposed to be possible to compile code that can throw an uncaught exception. The compiler is supposed to prevent you from doing such a thing.
This doesn't mean that Ada code is always perfect, but it does give you a degree of freedom that you don't get with other languages.
I did some work about four years ago on a flight simulator project for the DoD. The first stage in the project was to build an unclassified demonstration version of the new sim. Some code related to weapons-- in this case, the AIM-120 missile-- is classified, and can't be demonstrated in an unclassified environment. So what did we do? We just didn't link in that code. (I may have my terminology wrong; I was doing HSI, not code, so I'm just going by what my friend on the other side of the hall told me.)
With any other environment, C or Java or whatever, that would have resulted in a fatal runtime error. But Ada doesn't let you have runtime error situations without exception handlers, so when it encountered the missing chunk if AIM-120 code, the sim just dropped into the exception handler-- which basically said, ``never mind, everything's fine''-- and kept right on going. The sim dropped a couple of frames every time you fired a missile, but other than that, no problem.
I've gotta say that I found that pretty cool. I mean, the sim just kept on going, after it found that a huge chunk of important code was simply missing! Neato!
I thought I understood Rendezvous, but now I'm all confused again. What would be the advantage of using Ethernet to connect your keyboard to your computer? The ``only one plug'' idea is nice, but wouldn't there be a significant cost associated with putting a NIC and a TCP stack in every computer keyboard?
I had the impression that we were just talking about computer-to-computer communication here, not computer-to-peripheral.
I wasn't scientific about it, but I did a quick test. I encoded a song with VBR and again at CBR at 160 Kbps. I could hear encoding artifacts with VBR, and not with CBR. For me, that was the end of the matter.
Open standards are not supposed to have intellectual property licenses. Period.
I think I understand your point-- you believe that ``open standards'' (whatever that means) should not have IP licenses-- but I'd still appreciate a smidgen of clarification. Are you suggesting that there's some rule or standard or principle that supports your opinion?
I'm not arguing. I'm just curious.
DAMN IT. I previewed and everything. Please replace the last paragraph of the above with the following.
If you ever used Mac OS n (n < 10) on an AppleShare network, think ``Chooser'' for IP networks. The ``Chooser'' was the greatest network human-computer interface ever. Plug the computer in, and poof.
I'm amazed by how many posts there are talking about single-protocol-this and single-protocol-that. My favorites are the ones talking about how having a single protocol leads to licensing fees and restrictions, and the one about how a single protocol is insecure.
Didn't you losers even read the article? Rendezvous is basically two things: self-assigned link-local IP addressing, and automatic service discovery. In other words, you computer can automatically assign a local IP address to itself, then discover services available on other computers via particular UDP packets. Get two computers in proximity to each other, and they'll be able to ``see'' each other's shared volumes. Get one computer connected (wirelessly or wired-ly) to a printer, and the computer will be able to ``see'' the printer.
If you ever used Mac OS n (n poof.
RTFA, indeed.
Freedom from risk. There will be no threat from submarine patents, sudden license fees, or forced Digital Rights Molestation.
I already posted this point elsewhere. I hope I'm forgiven for repeating myself. I can't imagine any rights management scheme that would make my current collection of MP3s unplayable on my current computer using my current software. I mean, unless I have a deep misunderstanding of how computers work, it's just not possible to flip a switch and suddenly stop iTunes from working any more.
Am I missing something here?
It is concievable that you may not be able to play your old MP3s, and especially not be able to create new ones, due to DRM.
I'd be fascinated to learn how, exactly, somebody could climb inside my computer (which isn't even connected to the Internet, at least at the moment) and make iTunes 3 and my MP3s suddenly not work any more.
Of course, it's conceivable that somebody might pass a law that makes playing previously encoded MP3s on previously bought or otherwise legitimately acquired software illegal... but that's not likely.
The number 400 is a bit of a round-up. I don't remember exactly, but I believe I have about 3,900 separate MP3s. Of course, about 20% of my collection is classical music, where each CD has as few as two or three tracks.
Bitrate peeling does sound cool, but that only matters to broadcasters. If broadcasters used Ogg, I'd be interested in getting an Ogg player. But I'm asking from the perspective of me, the average user person.
Same thing with free-form tags. Again, they sound neat in the abstract, but they don't really give me the ability to do anything that I want to do but can't. Once again, I'm average-user-guy.
And as for 'freedom and low cost,' it's already here! I have iTunes 3.0 running on my iBook right now. It's 100% free. Anybody can download it and run it, straight from the Apple web site. No strings attached. Even if Apple stopped giving away iTunes, I'd still have my copy, and I'd still be able to do everything that I can do today. I'm not dependent on anybody for anything in that respect. So I'm afraid you're mistaken. Open source is 100% irrelevant in this instance. If iTunes and/or the MP3 codec were open source, my life wouldn't change a bit.
And finally, I don't think you're right when you said, ``you're actually a criminal because you didn't pay for an MP3 license.'' I got iTunes from Apple, and Apple doesn't seem like the kind of company who would turn their users into criminals. I have absolutely no reason to think that anything I'm doing is anything less than perfectly legal.
- Quality/Size
That sounds cool and all, but I don't think a 2:1 savings in library size is a good enough reason for me to spend hundreds of hours re-encoding my CD collection. 10:1 might be, but 2:1 isn't a big enough deal to me.
- Flexible
I'm listening to an MP3 stream right now. (Limbik Frequencies at 128 Kbps, if you're curious.) I haven't heard a skip or a blip for at least three hours. So I don't see how Ogg could make it easier to stream audio over the Internet.
And as for free-form tags goes, that's also not very interesting to me. I mean, I can't think of any metadata that I'd want to store that I can't already. Can you give me a good example of a practical use for free-form tags?
- Open Source
Doesn't matter to me one bit. I listen to music; I don't write software. (Actually, I do write software. But not audio software. And that's not my point, anyway.)
- Not Patented
I didn't have to pay anybody when I downloaded iTunes from apple.com. It's free. It encodes and plays. So this doesn't affect me, either. I know some people have strong opinions on patents and make decisions based on principle, but I'm just not one of 'em. If it doesn't affect me, I'm hard-pressed to care.