Yup. That is why for EBay I only accept USPS Money Orders, sent through the USPS, with USPS priority shipping. Oddly enough, for a government organization, they never fuck around.
The United States Postal Service is not a governmental or federal organization, and they haven't been since July 1st, 1971. Prior to this date they were a government agency (known as The Post Office Department), but now they're an independent agency.
Operational authority of the USPS rests with a Board of Governors and Postal Service management, instead of Congress. The US President is responsible to appoint nine of those Governors. So, there are still ties to the US Government, but they're independent.
One thing that hasn't been discussed here is that a lot of people feel that Vorbis is transparent at something like quality setting 4. Other people think it's transparent at quality setting 3. Others think it's great at 1. I release my stuff at 4, but bitrate peeling will let people peel those down to what sounds good to them. Maybe they want to monkey with it, and maybe they don't, but the option to do this without re-encoding is sexy.
It's not just a 'chop it down for modem folks' thing, it's also a letting people choose for themselves situation that I think is more important.
Features are cool, but features that give people options apart from 'use it or not' are even cooler.
This is a weird subject, really. GPL is good, but when you really think about it, source code for government software isn't really something that should fall into the wrong hands...
Software doesn't kill people, people kill people.
Okay, maybe that's too glib, but the song remains the same. Anything that would be considered a serious security threat would be classified as such; The mechanisms to do this with governmental data already exist.
I would hate for something as artistic as software to fall into an anti-terrorist mantra, because there's a forest-for-the-trees problem. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes an MTA application is just an MTA application, even though it could be used to deliver mail with contents that aren't in the best interests of the commonwealth.
The problem with the 'wrong hands' argument is that we need to trust whomever is entrusted with the definition of 'wrong hands.' If that is a large, bureaucratic judicial system, it's probably inefficient, if it's an efficient corporation, the chances of ever seeing the code is nearly non-existent.:)
There are a lot of people out there mailing hardware manufacturers to let them know about Ogg Vorbis, asking about Vorbis support, etc. Here's an excerpt from a customer service mail from SonicBLUE that was passed to me last week:
Information for future upgrades to newer formats is not available at this
time. Please continue to check our website for further information.
Please note that almost all current Rio players support the WMA format, this
codec that will provide digital quality sound at 64k encoding rates. The
newest WMA codec WMA9 is by far the best audio compression codec in the
world and is supported in all of our players that offer WMA support.
In the words of the Filthy Critic: "Hey, whore! How's the whoring?"
That's funny, because your ruling on your channel was that as long as people didn't trade on the channel, they could talk about what they pirated and that they have pirated.
That was *YOUR* ruling, in public, Emmett.
That's also supporting piracy, even if you don't do it yourself, you're saying it's perfectly okay that people talk about their own acts.
Absolutely correct. I do not condone copyright violation, but people can talk about anything they like. See, the problem here is that you think that I am 'supporting piracy' for letting people 'get away' with talking about violating other people's copyrights, and that is absolutely ridiculous.
Claiming that someone is 'supporting piracy' by allowing people to discuss copyright violation is like claiming that a crime reporter 'supports murder.'
So Xiph has come to this, eh? If you talk bad about Xiph, you get lawsuits?
No. You have come forth and accused me of committing a crime, i.e. supporting copyright violation. I am not a collaborator or accomplice to crime, which is your accusation. I'm just letting you know that it's a serious accusation to make, and can cause you a lot of problems if you intend to keep this stupid jihad going.
If you really think I'm an accomplice to crime, you have a moral obligation to report it to the police. Please do so; It would be wonderfully damning to have your ridiculous accusation as a matter of written public record.
Emmett Plant distinctly stated that he supports piracy, but you can't trade it on their channel. You can talk about trading, you can talk about what you pirate, and the Xiph people are usually in the discussions with them.
You're lying. I've never said that. Ever. If I have, quote me and prove me wrong.
As a writer, as a musician, I don't support 'piracy.' I release everything I do under open and/or free licenses, and for those licenses to count for anything, copyright law must be enforced. People who use and support Open Source and Free Software must respect other people's copyrights, lest the licenses on the copyrighted works they release be ignored.
I have had enough of your childish and ridiculous behavior, and I am tired of your personal attacks. If you want to debate law for hours on end, maybe we should start with defamation of character, where you have publically accused me with aiding and abetting criminals on this forum and others.
I will not hesitate to use the legal power and authority at my disposal to stop your intended harm to myself and the companies with which I am affiliated. Consider yourself warned.
I've found that it's made life a pain in the ass not necessarily because of the government, but because of companies that react stupidly to the government.
Case in point.
I was on an Amtrak train to Washington, DC. I walked down the corridor, down the steps, onto the train. I hung out in my chair, and when I was asked for my ticket, I said, 'I'd like to buy one please.' We were already well on our way, and I'd bought tickets before on the train, not a big deal, there's like a three dollar surcharge or something.
Nope.
I was informed that I needed to get off of the train in Wilmington, purchase a ticket, and wait for the NEXT train to come by. This made me kinda late, and extremely irritated.
I asked why I had to get off of the train.
I was told that company policy had changed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, I had to present photo ID, buy a ticket, and get on the train, I'm not allowed on the train without a ticket.
I was already on the train. It was already moving. It was already about 30 miles out of Philadelphia. Let me make this point very clear. I WAS ALREADY ON THE TRAIN.
I said to the guy, 'I'm already on the train. It's already moving.' He said I still needed to get off the train at the next stop, buy a ticket, and wait for the next train.
I looked him square in the face and said, "Let's say I was a suicidal bomber or a terrorist, and I wanted to kill people or blow up the train. I could do it if I wanted to, because I am ALREADY ON THE TRAIN."
"We don't like to hear things like that, sir."
Sigh.
I was already on the train. It was already moving. I sure hope everyone on that train felt safe.
Ogg Vorbis is a patent-and-royalty free alternative lossy audio codec designed for compressing music, more information is available at http://www.vorbis.com. More information about the Xiph.org Foundation (the non-profit that produces it) is available at http://www.xiph.org.
It's a free, open source alternative that's been out-performing mp3 for years now.
Many thanks to all of the Ogg Vorbis enthusiasts posting in this thread!
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Re:OPN/freenode has it's priorities wrong
on
#debian & IRC Politics
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I agree with you wholeheartedly here, speaking as someone who has felt that the current goings-on at OPN/Freenode (actually, the goings-on between the last goings-on and the current goings-on) was enough to justify moving our project off of OPN/Freenode.
While it's certainly true that Open Source projects benefit from autocratic 'benevolent despots,' the simple fact is that while Robert has preached his 'philosophy' in one hand, but his actions have proven to be quite the other. If you agree with him, you're an asset to the network, but if you don't agree with him, you're told that you have 'anger-management issues' and that you're 'trolling.'
OPN/Freenode is his network, and his to do what he wishes. One part of the equation that seems to escape the current administration is that without those Open Projects hanging out on that network, that network is useless. Say what you want about projects 'using' OPN/Freenode; When people come to look for our projects online, they often go to OPN. In other words, it's our work, it's our projects, that bring people to OPN/Freenode.
We work like hell to raise money for our projects, and our code has proven quite useful to a lot of people. I suspect that our code is a lot more valuable to our userbase than the administration of OPN/Freenode. Should OPN/Freenode be free to solicit for money? Absolutely. But should people who come to that network to specifically to find us be subjected to that panhandling? I don't think so, and that's a large part of why we moved. It's hard enough keeping interest and support (two of Open Source's most valuable resources) in a project, and if we can do anything to clear anything that might clutter that, we have a responsibility to do just that.
As far as going to OFTC or SlashNet; They're both great networks run by really good people, and I would recommend both to anyone looking to find people to work on their Open Source projects. We felt it would be a good opportunity to 'strike out on our own' and try our own thing; If anyone's got a problem with our IRC server, we need look no further than ourselves, and so far, we've had very few problems. It's just one server, we're not out to start a 'network,' we just want to do our own thing, and treat our volunteers with care and respect.
The torch of 'IRC for Open Source projects' has been firmly passed to SlashNet and OFTC, and I think that's excellent. Best of luck to them in the future, and I'll continue to recommend them to people starting/running Open Source projects. If you're interested in talking about Ogg Vorbis or other Xiph projects, come visit us on irc.xiph.org! We'd love to hear from you.
Slashdot Mirror
The United States Postal Service is not a governmental or federal organization, and they haven't been since July 1st, 1971. Prior to this date they were a government agency (known as The Post Office Department), but now they're an independent agency.
Operational authority of the USPS rests with a Board of Governors and Postal Service management, instead of Congress. The US President is responsible to appoint nine of those Governors. So, there are still ties to the US Government, but they're independent.
No one's gonna read this, but them's the facts. More information is available at http://www.usps.com/history/his3.htm. Enjoy.
Emmett Plant
Use Vorbis to listen to my music!
One thing that hasn't been discussed here is that a lot of people feel that Vorbis is transparent at something like quality setting 4. Other people think it's transparent at quality setting 3. Others think it's great at 1. I release my stuff at 4, but bitrate peeling will let people peel those down to what sounds good to them. Maybe they want to monkey with it, and maybe they don't, but the option to do this without re-encoding is sexy.
It's not just a 'chop it down for modem folks' thing, it's also a letting people choose for themselves situation that I think is more important.
Features are cool, but features that give people options apart from 'use it or not' are even cooler.
That's it for me. Please donate to Xiph.org, and then go listen to some tunes. Enjoy!
Software doesn't kill people, people kill people.
Okay, maybe that's too glib, but the song remains the same. Anything that would be considered a serious security threat would be classified as such; The mechanisms to do this with governmental data already exist.
I would hate for something as artistic as software to fall into an anti-terrorist mantra, because there's a forest-for-the-trees problem. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes an MTA application is just an MTA application, even though it could be used to deliver mail with contents that aren't in the best interests of the commonwealth.
The problem with the 'wrong hands' argument is that we need to trust whomever is entrusted with the definition of 'wrong hands.' If that is a large, bureaucratic judicial system, it's probably inefficient, if it's an efficient corporation, the chances of ever seeing the code is nearly non-existent. :)
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Information for future upgrades to newer formats is not available at this time. Please continue to check our website for further information.
Please note that almost all current Rio players support the WMA format, this codec that will provide digital quality sound at 64k encoding rates. The newest WMA codec WMA9 is by far the best audio compression codec in the world and is supported in all of our players that offer WMA support.
In the words of the Filthy Critic: "Hey, whore! How's the whoring?"
Emmett
That was *YOUR* ruling, in public, Emmett.
That's also supporting piracy, even if you don't do it yourself, you're saying it's perfectly okay that people talk about their own acts.
Absolutely correct. I do not condone copyright violation, but people can talk about anything they like. See, the problem here is that you think that I am 'supporting piracy' for letting people 'get away' with talking about violating other people's copyrights, and that is absolutely ridiculous.
Claiming that someone is 'supporting piracy' by allowing people to discuss copyright violation is like claiming that a crime reporter 'supports murder.'
So Xiph has come to this, eh? If you talk bad about Xiph, you get lawsuits?
No. You have come forth and accused me of committing a crime, i.e. supporting copyright violation. I am not a collaborator or accomplice to crime, which is your accusation. I'm just letting you know that it's a serious accusation to make, and can cause you a lot of problems if you intend to keep this stupid jihad going.
If you really think I'm an accomplice to crime, you have a moral obligation to report it to the police. Please do so; It would be wonderfully damning to have your ridiculous accusation as a matter of written public record.
Emmett Plant
You're lying. I've never said that. Ever. If I have, quote me and prove me wrong.
As a writer, as a musician, I don't support 'piracy.' I release everything I do under open and/or free licenses, and for those licenses to count for anything, copyright law must be enforced. People who use and support Open Source and Free Software must respect other people's copyrights, lest the licenses on the copyrighted works they release be ignored.
I have had enough of your childish and ridiculous behavior, and I am tired of your personal attacks. If you want to debate law for hours on end, maybe we should start with defamation of character, where you have publically accused me with aiding and abetting criminals on this forum and others.
I will not hesitate to use the legal power and authority at my disposal to stop your intended harm to myself and the companies with which I am affiliated. Consider yourself warned.
Emmett Plant
Case in point.
I was on an Amtrak train to Washington, DC. I walked down the corridor, down the steps, onto the train. I hung out in my chair, and when I was asked for my ticket, I said, 'I'd like to buy one please.' We were already well on our way, and I'd bought tickets before on the train, not a big deal, there's like a three dollar surcharge or something.
Nope.
I was informed that I needed to get off of the train in Wilmington, purchase a ticket, and wait for the NEXT train to come by. This made me kinda late, and extremely irritated.
I asked why I had to get off of the train.
I was told that company policy had changed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, I had to present photo ID, buy a ticket, and get on the train, I'm not allowed on the train without a ticket.
I was already on the train. It was already moving. It was already about 30 miles out of Philadelphia. Let me make this point very clear. I WAS ALREADY ON THE TRAIN.
I said to the guy, 'I'm already on the train. It's already moving.' He said I still needed to get off the train at the next stop, buy a ticket, and wait for the next train.
I looked him square in the face and said, "Let's say I was a suicidal bomber or a terrorist, and I wanted to kill people or blow up the train. I could do it if I wanted to, because I am ALREADY ON THE TRAIN."
"We don't like to hear things like that, sir."
Sigh.
I was already on the train. It was already moving. I sure hope everyone on that train felt safe.
Emmett
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
It's a free, open source alternative that's been out-performing mp3 for years now.
Many thanks to all of the Ogg Vorbis enthusiasts posting in this thread!
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
While it's certainly true that Open Source projects benefit from autocratic 'benevolent despots,' the simple fact is that while Robert has preached his 'philosophy' in one hand, but his actions have proven to be quite the other. If you agree with him, you're an asset to the network, but if you don't agree with him, you're told that you have 'anger-management issues' and that you're 'trolling.'
OPN/Freenode is his network, and his to do what he wishes. One part of the equation that seems to escape the current administration is that without those Open Projects hanging out on that network, that network is useless. Say what you want about projects 'using' OPN/Freenode; When people come to look for our projects online, they often go to OPN. In other words, it's our work, it's our projects, that bring people to OPN/Freenode.
We work like hell to raise money for our projects, and our code has proven quite useful to a lot of people. I suspect that our code is a lot more valuable to our userbase than the administration of OPN/Freenode. Should OPN/Freenode be free to solicit for money? Absolutely. But should people who come to that network to specifically to find us be subjected to that panhandling? I don't think so, and that's a large part of why we moved. It's hard enough keeping interest and support (two of Open Source's most valuable resources) in a project, and if we can do anything to clear anything that might clutter that, we have a responsibility to do just that.
As far as going to OFTC or SlashNet; They're both great networks run by really good people, and I would recommend both to anyone looking to find people to work on their Open Source projects. We felt it would be a good opportunity to 'strike out on our own' and try our own thing; If anyone's got a problem with our IRC server, we need look no further than ourselves, and so far, we've had very few problems. It's just one server, we're not out to start a 'network,' we just want to do our own thing, and treat our volunteers with care and respect.
The torch of 'IRC for Open Source projects' has been firmly passed to SlashNet and OFTC, and I think that's excellent. Best of luck to them in the future, and I'll continue to recommend them to people starting/running Open Source projects. If you're interested in talking about Ogg Vorbis or other Xiph projects, come visit us on irc.xiph.org! We'd love to hear from you.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation