What do you mean, there's little reason? There's little reason for the consumer, because the consumer doesn't give a monkey's: if people really cared about the sound quality, Kazaa and Gnutella wouldn't be flooded with 128kbit MP3s. MP3s encoded at a higher bitrate can be used as a solution to all of MP3's audio problems, and storage is cheap, so yes, it's unlikely that there'll be an instant switch to any better format, and if there is, it won't come from the consumer.
Well, where do all the mp3s come from? Right: From people who rip CDs.
Many people don't know ogg and will just continue to rip mp3s, but many will try ogg and will find that they sound better *and* have a smaller file-size.
Those will start to rip oggs and will share them. Then when some Joe-consumer finds it on Kazaa and finds out that it "just plays" in Winamp without any additional plugins, he might also start to rip oggs from newly ripped CDs.
It will take years, but once you rip oggs there is just no reason to go back to mp3, so I guess in a few years all new songs will be oggs...
To get the full benefit from Ogg, you need to re-encode everything. That is what I'm talking about.
You don't need to reencode anything. This is completely optional. Your mp3s don't stop working when you have an ogg on your harddisk. (Believe me, I tried it.)
In a situation like that, you have to have a pretty damned good reason for going through all that - and as of yet, for the common man, there isn't such a reason.
Going through what?
All mp3players (minus WMP AFAIK) play ogg just fine, so when you trade your oggs with a friend's mp3, he'll be able to play them just fine.
The only problem is when you got a mp3-hardware player, but not that many people do and they will be ogg-compatible soon. (And ogg will double the music-capacity at the same quality, not too bad, eh?)
Nobody has to switch, a slow painless transition is what makes sense.
Just rip everything in ogg and keep your mp3s, what's the problem?
One song might sound great at 64kbps while another might need 128 or even more.
ogg comes with a quality setting, which will encode the music in the quality you need. You won't throw away disk-space for easily encodable files and you won't have difficult songs that sound bad.
I have the magazine (with the detailed test results) right beside me and ogg was the best codec in both 64kbps and 128kbps tests.
And on the 128kpbs tests ogg was found to be identical to wav (Wav: best to worst: 21%/17%/15%/13%/13%/11%/10%, Ogg: 21%/16%/15%/13%/13%/12%/10%)
The percentages are interpreted so:
21% thought that ogg sounds best of all 7.
16% second-best
15% third place
etc.
So at 128kbps, ogg was the only codec that was pretty much identical with the wav, all other codecs were much worse. (For example WMA was the best of the rest with: 13%/14%/15%/14%/16%/17%/11%)
At 64kbps, the difference is even higher: 41% found.wav to be best, 25% ogg-vorbis and only 11% mp3pro, 10% wma, the rest below 10%.
If you can't convert from MP3 to Ogg without losing sound quality (which you can't) then I think you'll find an extremely large number of people (that is, the 99.9% of people out in the world that don't read Slashdot) reluctant to change.
Did you digitalize all your vinyl and burnt in on CD when the CD came around?
Absolutely false. Some information is lost when converting to the CD master. More information is lost when converting from the CD audio --> OGG. How could the OGG possibly be closer to the original than the CD? By definitiion, no matter what bit rate it's encoded at it contains less information than the CD audio.
Who was talking about converting to the CD master?
I said "with a HIGHER sampling rate" - this is impossible once you did your standard CD master.
If you could do ogg directly, you could forget all those 12cm CDs and use 8cm CDs, have more music on it and more closely to the original.
... the "original" wav. (The wav was at 3rd place, ogg first, mp3pro second)
(No, I did not know which sample was which. I also know not enough about those codecs to recognize artifacts etc.)
Actually c't has conducted listening tests some years ago (but only with mp3, they were interested in CD-music vs. compressed) and mp3 was found *better* than what is on the CD.
It's probably the annoying frequencies that are filtered away in compression...
My point?
Well, there are a couple:
ogg is better than mp3;-)
There is no such thing as the "original", the material on CD is also a digitalized, sampled version of the real thing. A 256kbps ogg created with a higher sampling rate would probably be closer to the real "original" than what is currently shipped on CD.
Whatever is on the CD is not sacred, if my ogg that takes only 1/20th of space sounds better for me, I don't see the slightest problem. Who knows, maybe some bands run their stuff through a codec before it is put on CD to make it sound better? (Oh my a can feel the hatred of audiophiles against me right now...)
"Linux, meanwhile, continues to creep into IT budgets. Among the respondents, 29 percent said they owned Linux servers, and 8 percent are formally considering buying them. On an informal basis, 17 percent of the CIOs said they were considering Linux servers."
These are incredible numbers, a lot more than "nothing".
Well, Windows only has one desktop (D'oh, adressed in KDE and finally copied by Microsoft in XP)
Well, Windows didn't support themes (D'oh adressed in KDE and finally copied by Microsoft in XP)
Well, Windows only supports MacOS-style copy-paste. (Adressed in KDE: It supports both)
Well, Windows does not have session-management (except for Non-Internet Explorer). (Adressed in KDE, when you log in, everything is just like it was when you logged out.)
Well, Windows does not support multiple menubars (Adressed in KDE)
Windows does not support scrollbar-jumping with the MMB (in KDE)
Windows does not have even nearly as many menubar-applets.
Shall I continue? There is more. What about fish: audiocd: and camera: ioslaves in Konqui?
So, yes, KDE did adress problems of Windows. Which of course does not stop ignorant trolls who never really used KDE from saying it wants to "ape Windows"
Heh, I was all set to rip you a new one for spouting anti-Microsoft rhetoric, but it turns out they do claim that
The funny thing is that WMA is much worse than ogg and MP3pro, so if you could get CD-quality with 64kbps on WMA, you could probably get it with 50kbps or even less with ogg....
Well, if they can run stuff like X11 and StarOffice (!) on it, I'm pretty sure everything on your list is supported (assuming there is no problem with the NIC)
But what if they ever want to export software? Aren't they scrod?
Come on. Forget it.
Software is ruled by backwards-compatibility. Once a company has the majority of a market, network effects will make it a de-facto monopoly (see Windows, Photoshop, Quicken, etc.)
There are only 2 ways to break that and both are not possible for Venezuela:
Actually I think Sun knows damn well that Linux will become the "Unix-standard" (please post irrelevant comments about Linux not being a "real" Unix to/dev/null), that's why they are making Solaris Linux-compatible and start to sell Linux boxes.
I don't see why they can't live on as a hardware-vendor.
Re:I wonder what slashdot's percentages are....
on
Netscape 7.0 is Out
·
· Score: 2
That might be nice on single-desktop GUIs like Windows and MacOS, but on a real GUI it's not really a substitute to Konqueror.
Re:Please, AOLTW, switch to NS from IE for AOL..
on
Netscape 7.0 is Out
·
· Score: 2
Earth to iamsure: the browser war is over. We lost.
Earth to guttentag: The browser war is not over and we will win.
How many millions will use Mozilla on AOL?
How many millions will use Mozilla on Playstation3? (Sorry, no IE there.)
How many millions will use non-IE browsers on their PDAs, set-top boxes and embedded devices?
IE will not be able to hold it's dominating position as many non-computer devices access the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, where do all the mp3s come from? Right: From people who rip CDs.
Many people don't know ogg and will just continue to rip mp3s, but many will try ogg and will find that they sound better *and* have a smaller file-size.
Those will start to rip oggs and will share them. Then when some Joe-consumer finds it on Kazaa and finds out that it "just plays" in Winamp without any additional plugins, he might also start to rip oggs from newly ripped CDs.
It will take years, but once you rip oggs there is just no reason to go back to mp3, so I guess in a few years all new songs will be oggs...
You don't need to reencode anything. This is completely optional. Your mp3s don't stop working when you have an ogg on your harddisk. (Believe me, I tried it.)
Geeez.
Going through what?
All mp3players (minus WMP AFAIK) play ogg just fine, so when you trade your oggs with a friend's mp3, he'll be able to play them just fine.
The only problem is when you got a mp3-hardware player, but not that many people do and they will be ogg-compatible soon. (And ogg will double the music-capacity at the same quality, not too bad, eh?)
Nobody has to switch, a slow painless transition is what makes sense.
Just rip everything in ogg and keep your mp3s, what's the problem?
One song might sound great at 64kbps while another might need 128 or even more.
ogg comes with a quality setting, which will encode the music in the quality you need. You won't throw away disk-space for easily encodable files and you won't have difficult songs that sound bad.
And on the 128kpbs tests ogg was found to be identical to wav (Wav: best to worst: 21%/17%/15%/13%/13%/11%/10%, Ogg: 21%/16%/15%/13%/13%/12%/10%)
The percentages are interpreted so:
21% thought that ogg sounds best of all 7.
16% second-best
15% third place
etc.
So at 128kbps, ogg was the only codec that was pretty much identical with the wav, all other codecs were much worse. (For example WMA was the best of the rest with: 13%/14%/15%/14%/16%/17%/11%)
At 64kbps, the difference is even higher: 41% found .wav to be best, 25% ogg-vorbis and only 11% mp3pro, 10% wma, the rest below 10%.
Did you digitalize all your vinyl and burnt in on CD when the CD came around?
Who was talking about converting to the CD master?
I said "with a HIGHER sampling rate" - this is impossible once you did your standard CD master.
If you could do ogg directly, you could forget all those 12cm CDs and use 8cm CDs, have more music on it and more closely to the original.
I don't see the need to create any non-ogg CD rips anymore. What's the problem with having both formats?
(No, I did not know which sample was which. I also know not enough about those codecs to recognize artifacts etc.)
Actually c't has conducted listening tests some years ago (but only with mp3, they were interested in CD-music vs. compressed) and mp3 was found *better* than what is on the CD.
It's probably the annoying frequencies that are filtered away in compression...
My point?
Well, there are a couple:
On my Athlon 650 I can play videos in fullscreen under Linux while in Windows most are only playable without skipping in windowed mode.
Simplified, the more users a platform has, the better it becomes for all users.
So even if somebody is not giving anything back in terms of code or money, he helps Linux.
"Linux, meanwhile, continues to creep into IT budgets. Among the respondents, 29 percent said they owned Linux servers, and 8 percent are formally considering buying them. On an informal basis, 17 percent of the CIOs said they were considering Linux servers."
These are incredible numbers, a lot more than "nothing".
Well, Windows didn't support themes (D'oh adressed in KDE and finally copied by Microsoft in XP)
Well, Windows only supports MacOS-style copy-paste. (Adressed in KDE: It supports both)
Well, Windows does not have session-management (except for Non-Internet Explorer). (Adressed in KDE, when you log in, everything is just like it was when you logged out.)
Well, Windows does not support multiple menubars (Adressed in KDE)
Windows does not support scrollbar-jumping with the MMB (in KDE)
Windows does not have even nearly as many menubar-applets.
Shall I continue? There is more. What about fish: audiocd: and camera: ioslaves in Konqui?
So, yes, KDE did adress problems of Windows. Which of course does not stop ignorant trolls who never really used KDE from saying it wants to "ape Windows"
The Winlots might say that it's not so bad or it's only for their own good (having always the same version) some other market-speak.
But there are 2 scary facts:
1: With the new licensing scheme, Microsoft is taking the power to decide away from the user.
2: Microsoft showed that they don't hesitate long to change EULAs and licensing schemes the way they see fit.
Even if it were not more expensive (but it is!) it would be hated.
KDE with different settings.
The funny thing is that WMA is much worse than ogg and MP3pro, so if you could get CD-quality with 64kbps on WMA, you could probably get it with 50kbps or even less with ogg....
But you still need the modchip ?!
Actually I would get one if it can play DivX movies with it without modchip (Linux or no Linux)
Well, if they can run stuff like X11 and StarOffice (!) on it, I'm pretty sure everything on your list is supported (assuming there is no problem with the NIC)
Winamp supports OGG out of the box for quite some time now.
Come on. Forget it.
Software is ruled by backwards-compatibility. Once a company has the majority of a market, network effects will make it a de-facto monopoly (see Windows, Photoshop, Quicken, etc.)
There are only 2 ways to break that and both are not possible for Venezuela:
Bundle it with Windows (See Office and IE)
or
Give it away for free.
Mandrake and SuSE are very polished and EVERYTHING can be done with a GUI.
But how should you know, you probably have never used any decent and recent Linux distribution like most of the other Linux-bashers.
I don't see why they can't live on as a hardware-vendor.
That might be nice on single-desktop GUIs like Windows and MacOS, but on a real GUI it's not really a substitute to Konqueror.
Earth to guttentag: The browser war is not over and we will win.
How many millions will use Mozilla on AOL?
How many millions will use Mozilla on Playstation3? (Sorry, no IE there.)
How many millions will use non-IE browsers on their PDAs, set-top boxes and embedded devices?
IE will not be able to hold it's dominating position as many non-computer devices access the internet.