Well, really you can pirate CDs worth far more than what you have paid in the levy because they don't have to pay 1. printing 2. manufacturing of the disc 3. for the cases 4. freight to stores 5. any of the middlemen involved in any of these steps
So really, all you need to do is pay levies up to the amount of the royalty... so, maybe a dollar or... maybe? (I honestly don't know what % royalties are in general these days, but my significant point still stands).
Two different technologies - one which has been designed to support the intended effect (ogg vorbis), one which hasn't (jpeg.. as far as I know anyway, the above poster may be wrong on that front too).
I personally believe this would be a fantastic step, putting ogg in front of real (which does stream-swapping) as it would only need to store one version of the file. That said, all indications up to now are that very large peeling will result in lower quality than the equivalent end bitrate encoded itself, so in that case there may be a high-bitrate and lower-bitrate, both being peeled down as necessary. Of course, I don't know the structure of the format so all this may have changed and I just missed it. Either way, peeling is very very cool.
1-3: somewhat true 4: Don't know when you read the OGG faq, because it certainly doesn't say that these days. Furthermore, I have seen no evidence to indicate that ogg is worse than wma (except in the case of some classical music at low bitrates), or any evidence it is worse than any mp3, ever. 5. hardware support is coming, according to (some) manufacturers.
As for compelling reasons, there are a few ogg vorbis may succeed: 1. Technical superiority* 2. Support already coming from hardware manufacturers, which will hopefully become default encoding parameters, which will hopefully lead to mp3 getting less use etc etc. 3. Zealots like me ranting about the greatness of the Ogg Vorbis to all and sundry, convincing them, and having them do the same (believe me, it actually does work)
yes, I am a zealot on this front. sorry.
gnoshi
*according blind tests at low bitrates have established this - conducted by ff123 who may be found on www.hydrogenaudio.org boards (hope you don't mind the mention) Also established at higher (but not exceptionally high) bitrates by another serious listening test, but I honestly can't recall who the tester was. A tech magazine, German I believe. Above 160/192 Kbps, Musepack is king, up until lossless.
As one would expect Thomson to say. What kind of poor-grade PR machines would they have to come up with anything less.
Disclaimer: I am not a Java dev... That aside, there is a project to develop a Vorbis Java SPI, which (from the impression I get) makes Java decoding of vorbis easy, and fits a standard interface. Or something.
I believe that xiph itself did a relatively comprehensive background check to make sure that ogg vorbis was not infringing on any patents. Sure, you may say, they would say that. Then, when AOL wanted to put vorbis support in Winamp, they did their own patent background check to make sure there was no infringements. The fact that Winamp now has ogg vorbis support speaks for the results of that check.
Ha, I switched to Ogg Vorbis months ago, told you so!;o)
More to the point, is your CD player firmware upgradable? I believe SonicBlue are (were?) looking at vorbis support but I am not sure about others.
If you want to get the ball rolling, e-mail the manufacturer of your hardware device, and politely ask for vorbis support. Enough people doing this may push it to critical mass.
If you are really going to transcode your MP3 files, it is probably polite to add a comment to the vorbis tags saying that it is converted from MP3 if you intend on sharing it which is of course against the law and evil and therefore no-one would do it. But just in case...
With the 1.0 release of ogg vorbis, I believe the docs are now quite complete (that was one of the main tasks for the 1.0 release) so while I think at the time many of the points made in the kuro5hin.org article were valid and relevent then, I feel they are significantly less so now.
On the whole.ogg thing, maybe it is 8+3 mentality. Alternately, it could be because Ogg is the container format and Vorbis is the audio compression format. Like.mov,.avi etc not being.mp4.vid.aac.aud or.divx3.vid.mp3.aud.in.convenient.bite.sized.contai ner but rather named based on the container format. I would say the latter is more likely given that I believe most of the xiph ppl are mac and linux users, so are not exposed to 8+3 silliness.
Oh, and I like the name Ogg Vorbis. Someone says to me "what's ogg vorbis" and I say "an audio compression format" and they say "why called ogg vorbis" and I say "cos that's what it is called". Why is a tree called a tree? cos that's what it is called (unless someone has a better reason for me).
I was under the impression they already had the integer decoder done, and were charging some kind of licensing or purchasing cost (not sure how it is licensed) to try to scrape up money to fund continued development (which I feel is quite reasonable btw; anyone else can build an integer decoder if they want to).
Of course, your extensive sample of *one* in this survey of comments gives you a basis for a thorough and well reasoned end result, right? Oh, no, sorry.. you said *further* evidence; but didn't cite the previous evidence. Bad bad boy/girl/dog, even by your own reasoning.
I think you'll find this is use of AlbumWrap (http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/) which allows you to have a full CD in a single MP3 file but easily extract it back to the individual tracks. (That said, I always felt mp3cue was a better idea).
I actually called optus the other day (wanted to download redhat 7.3 ISOs) and asked them if they had any such FTP servers etc which I wouldn't get metered from. The answer was (paraphrased) 'no, all traffic to your cablemodem is metered'. Wish AARnet was unmetered. Then I would be happy.
Now, for all those who feel >3GB = pirates or pr0ners; I use more than 3 gig a month, and I don't pirate. I mean, those redhat ISOs knocked over about 2GB in one day. Add to that a little bit of streamed video, streamed audio, and big big images over the course of a month. 3GB is not that much. Really.
Well, here's an example of what a small business does pay in the CBD of Melbourne, Australia.
The company for which I work has an SDSL that the ISP purports to be 1.5Mbps either way.
We are not charged on upstream, per month get 2GB and then 0.19c/MB
This all for the sum of AU$500 a month. On contract for 12 months.
Oh, and we get two static IPs with that.
And the best bit.... that ISP will not give us a Service Level Agreement; the connection goes down for average 2-3hrs a fortnight.
Just because somthing has free market principles doesn't make it the best option.
Australia (in which I live) has a public health system, and thank god for that. It means that everyone can (eventually) get treatment for most things they may need (other than dentistry if I recall correctly).
I think that one's view on whether or not people should pay more or less on health insurance based on whatever often (not always) shows whether they live for themselves, or for society.
I feel that it is ok to live somewhat for onesself, but unless you are willing to make some sacrifices for society itself then things will fall apart.
ie. I might feel like beating up some guy on the street. I may be sure I can beat him to death and that no-one will see me; that I'll never get caught. But I don't... not because I don't want to but because I have a responsibility to society itself.
Same idea.. in my head at least.
If you have no respect for your fellow human just because they are your fellow human, you will probably not agree, because the basis of society is respect for your fellows. This respect carries responsibility. This is just an example of where the responsibility kicks in. I think.
gnoshi
Slashdot Mirror
Condoms are exempt from the GST here in Australia - therefore not taxed.
Alcohol is subject not only to GST, but significant levies as well.
Remember back when it was promised that the GST would be the only sales-type tax..? Then the levies started moving in.
gnoshi
Well, really you can pirate CDs worth far more than what you have paid in the levy because they don't have to pay
... maybe?
1. printing
2. manufacturing of the disc
3. for the cases
4. freight to stores
5. any of the middlemen involved in any of these steps
So really, all you need to do is pay levies up to the amount of the royalty... so, maybe a dollar or
(I honestly don't know what % royalties are in general these days, but my significant point still stands).
gnoshi
Two different technologies - one which has been designed to support the intended effect (ogg vorbis), one which hasn't (jpeg.. as far as I know anyway, the above poster may be wrong on that front too).
I personally believe this would be a fantastic step, putting ogg in front of real (which does stream-swapping) as it would only need to store one version of the file.
That said, all indications up to now are that very large peeling will result in lower quality than the equivalent end bitrate encoded itself, so in that case there may be a high-bitrate and lower-bitrate, both being peeled down as necessary.
Of course, I don't know the structure of the format so all this may have changed and I just missed it. Either way, peeling is very very cool.
1-3: somewhat true
4: Don't know when you read the OGG faq, because it certainly doesn't say that these days. Furthermore, I have seen no evidence to indicate that ogg is worse than wma (except in the case of some classical music at low bitrates), or any evidence it is worse than any mp3, ever.
5. hardware support is coming, according to (some) manufacturers.
As for compelling reasons, there are a few ogg vorbis may succeed:
1. Technical superiority*
2. Support already coming from hardware manufacturers, which will hopefully become default encoding parameters, which will hopefully lead to mp3 getting less use etc etc.
3. Zealots like me ranting about the greatness of the Ogg Vorbis to all and sundry, convincing them, and having them do the same (believe me, it actually does work)
yes, I am a zealot on this front. sorry.
gnoshi
*according blind tests at low bitrates have established this - conducted by ff123 who may be found on www.hydrogenaudio.org boards (hope you don't mind the mention)
Also established at higher (but not exceptionally high) bitrates by another serious listening test, but I honestly can't recall who the tester was. A tech magazine, German I believe.
Above 160/192 Kbps, Musepack is king, up until lossless.
As one would expect Thomson to say. What kind of poor-grade PR machines would they have to come up with anything less.
Disclaimer: I am not a Java dev...
That aside, there is a project to develop a Vorbis Java SPI, which (from the impression I get) makes Java decoding of vorbis easy, and fits a standard interface. Or something.
gnoshi
I believe that xiph itself did a relatively comprehensive background check to make sure that ogg vorbis was not infringing on any patents. Sure, you may say, they would say that.
Then, when AOL wanted to put vorbis support in Winamp, they did their own patent background check to make sure there was no infringements. The fact that Winamp now has ogg vorbis support speaks for the results of that check.
Still, there are never any guarantees. ever.
gnoshi
Ha, I switched to Ogg Vorbis months ago, told you so! ;o)
More to the point, is your CD player firmware upgradable? I believe SonicBlue are (were?) looking at vorbis support but I am not sure about others.
If you want to get the ball rolling, e-mail the manufacturer of your hardware device, and politely ask for vorbis support. Enough people doing this may push it to critical mass.
gnoshi
If you are really going to transcode your MP3 files, it is probably polite to add a comment to the vorbis tags saying that it is converted from MP3 if you intend on sharing it which is of course against the law and evil and therefore no-one would do it.
But just in case...
gnoshi
Well, for low bitrates: ff123's low bitrate test might be what you are looking for.
gnoshi
With the 1.0 release of ogg vorbis, I believe the docs are now quite complete (that was one of the main tasks for the 1.0 release) so while I think at the time many of the points made in the kuro5hin.org article were valid and relevent then, I feel they are significantly less so now.
gnoshi
On the whole .ogg thing, maybe it is 8+3 mentality. .mov, .avi etc not being .mp4.vid.aac.aud or .divx3.vid.mp3.aud.in.convenient.bite.sized.contai ner but rather named based on the container format.
Alternately, it could be because Ogg is the container format and Vorbis is the audio compression format.
Like
I would say the latter is more likely given that I believe most of the xiph ppl are mac and linux users, so are not exposed to 8+3 silliness.
Oh, and I like the name Ogg Vorbis. Someone says to me "what's ogg vorbis" and I say "an audio compression format" and they say "why called ogg vorbis" and I say "cos that's what it is called".
Why is a tree called a tree? cos that's what it is called (unless someone has a better reason for me).
gnoshi
I was under the impression they already had the integer decoder done, and were charging some kind of licensing or purchasing cost (not sure how it is licensed) to try to scrape up money to fund continued development (which I feel is quite reasonable btw; anyone else can build an integer decoder if they want to).
Still, I could be wrong, and have been before.
Of course, your extensive sample of *one* in this survey of comments gives you a basis for a thorough and well reasoned end result, right? Oh, no, sorry.. you said *further* evidence; but didn't cite the previous evidence. Bad bad boy/girl/dog, even by your own reasoning.
Hate to generalise...
gnoshi
I think you'll find this is use of AlbumWrap (http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/) which allows you to have a full CD in a single MP3 file but easily extract it back to the individual tracks. (That said, I always felt mp3cue was a better idea).
I actually called optus the other day (wanted to download redhat 7.3 ISOs) and asked them if they had any such FTP servers etc which I wouldn't get metered from.
The answer was (paraphrased) 'no, all traffic to your cablemodem is metered'.
Wish AARnet was unmetered. Then I would be happy.
Now, for all those who feel >3GB = pirates or pr0ners; I use more than 3 gig a month, and I don't pirate. I mean, those redhat ISOs knocked over about 2GB in one day. Add to that a little bit of streamed video, streamed audio, and big big images over the course of a month. 3GB is not that much. Really.
gnoshi
Well, here's an example of what a small business does pay in the CBD of Melbourne, Australia.
The company for which I work has an SDSL that the ISP purports to be 1.5Mbps either way.
We are not charged on upstream, per month get 2GB and then 0.19c/MB
This all for the sum of AU$500 a month. On contract for 12 months.
Oh, and we get two static IPs with that.
And the best bit.... that ISP will not give us a Service Level Agreement; the connection goes down for average 2-3hrs a fortnight.
gnoshi
Just because somthing has free market principles doesn't make it the best option. Australia (in which I live) has a public health system, and thank god for that. It means that everyone can (eventually) get treatment for most things they may need (other than dentistry if I recall correctly). I think that one's view on whether or not people should pay more or less on health insurance based on whatever often (not always) shows whether they live for themselves, or for society. I feel that it is ok to live somewhat for onesself, but unless you are willing to make some sacrifices for society itself then things will fall apart. ie. I might feel like beating up some guy on the street. I may be sure I can beat him to death and that no-one will see me; that I'll never get caught. But I don't... not because I don't want to but because I have a responsibility to society itself. Same idea.. in my head at least. If you have no respect for your fellow human just because they are your fellow human, you will probably not agree, because the basis of society is respect for your fellows. This respect carries responsibility. This is just an example of where the responsibility kicks in. I think. gnoshi