Hm! That is one hell of a quote- and you've got a very good point. I can see why this shook your faith.
What _relevance_ does proprietary anything have except in the context of either a controlling government, or some other entity capable of taking your money, time or life?
It just seems very strange to say 'I need to get more FREEDOM which I will call FLERBAGE because it is the ability to place other people in danger of losing money, time or life for not obeying what I say!'
running slower than what PCs at the cutting edge can do
with third party games discouraged through bundling arrangements
and the hardware problems are stoutly denied! There is no hardware problem, despite what you have read!
...at up to twice the price of a mainstream PC?
I think we can quit worrying about X-Box at this point. Hell, this type of desperation move suggests we maybe can stop worrying about _Microsoft_ at this point. For them to switch to full-on cash-vacuum mode THIS EARLY in a new market is horribly revealing. It's not about arrogance, either.
We are viewing the spectacle of a Microsoft desperate for money.
I'd love to see an audit of what they _really_ have. I would lay 50% odds that right now their liabilities exceed their assets- and 60% odds that their much touted cash reserves are a _lie_. Look at their actions! Are these the actions of a company that can afford to dump product to gain a new market against stiff competition? Since when was Microsoft stupid about competitive threats? This isn't about arrogance at all. This is desperation, and they are in trouble. And not competitive trouble- _cash_ trouble.
I wonder at what point will they be unable to meet payroll and their financial obligations except by accounting trickery- or perhaps this has already happened?
That's happened, you know. In the early part of the century, mining corporations hired private security forces and armed them with weapons as heavy as Thompson machine guns. Montana has been a 'company state' at some times (dunno the current situation on that).
Another good question is how much scope the corporations have to _act_ as police themselves: for instance, unexpectedly raiding companies and looking for pirated (sic) software (gee, who is acting more like a pirate there?) and, if any is found, turning the victims over to the 'real' police. If the raiders get the capacity to cuff the victims themselves, they _are_ police to all extents and purposes, just a sort of 'feudal' police with their own agendas.
Yes, but in accordance with the original point, since when have they _listened_ to the courts? At some point they still have to obey. I don't think that is ever going to happen. Microsoft's culture is very similar to a cult. They are beyond considering themselves subject to (human?) law. To them it is just input to be worked around.
This suggests a possible remedy, though: leave Microsoft just as it is, but _jail_ every single leader and 'culture setter' in the place. Gates, Ballmer: everyone giving the orders.
The Allies did something similar with Volkswagen after WWII: they kept the factory, had it attempt to build cars (the British loved the early Volkswagens and fought like tigers to protect the factory from scavengers and seekers of war reparations!) and a British Army officer was de facto head of the company until they brought in Heinz Nordhoff as CEO- who promptly got busy and built Volkswagen into what it was today. But the point is, Volkswagen was effectively run by the British Government for a brief period after the war, because the people originally in control of Volkswagen (the Nazis, obviously) were criminals and removed from that position.
It's worth noting that _in_ the context of Volkswagen, the Nazis were primarily concerned with bringing a 'people's car' to Germans, though they also set up a rather nasty payment plan (hardly consumer friendly- didn't even guarantee you got a car after paying in all the money, just a 'certificate of ownership'). Their crimes were not directly related to Volkswagen, but they were still removed from society and from the leadership of the company.
It is possible that the specific _acts_ of Ballmer, Gates etc. directly relating to Microsoft are not all totally evil and wrong. However, the sheer amount of assault they are committing on the legal system and the sheer determination they show to control information technology for the world suggest to me that they still need to be removed from control of the company. Jail the fuckers. Let's have a new breed of Microsoft leadership that aren't megalomaniacal royalty at heart...
This is like a James Bond movie, except for it's in real life. Makes me glad I don't really depend on having the ability to use the internet and computers for everything I do...
What I'd really like to know is, while thinking this shit up, is Bill Gates petting a white cat in his lap?
Absolutely- and thanks for the perspective, it's what I needed to hear.
Articles like this always tend to freak me out. I'm one of the more autistic geeks out there- couldn't finish school, couldn't keep a normal job because of 'Asperger's Syndrome', a sort of communication-enabled autism. Nobody knew what the hell it was when I was growing up. I developed an ulcer and tried everything from pizza cook to inventory and stockroom for a guitar pickup company, continually getting 'fired in sorrow' by people who knew that I was killing myself _trying_ to do what they wanted, but something was just not fitting somewhere. I turned to drugs (BAD F**KING MOVE) which helped stave off suicide for the time being. I ended up in debt, in a homeless shelter, from there to a psych ward (voluntarily- beat the homeless shelter as long as I behaved well enough to be legitimately allowed to refuse psych meds) and it was there that I found an advocate that got me on social security Disability.
That has meant a lot over the last 6 years or so. I'd never been able to live free from fear of homelessness or hunger before. Your mention of 'skiing holidays' was wonderful because it put things in perspective- I live on about $6K a year. No car (I don't consider myself fit to drive), no DVD player, no cable TV, yada yada. And yet being free from hunger and the destruction of my former life is such a blessing that I feel guilty when reading the harangues of people with ten or twenty times the income and resources of me!
I used to be lazy- or something that looked like it but was more like being stressed into immobility. Once I had the ability to define things on my own terms for a while, it turned out I wasn't lazy, and now I even court RSI (;) ) doing things that I like, or things that I mostly like that seem to be a path out of Disability towards a niche I can actually handle. For instance, I'm doing things related to costuming and finding there are actually people out there who'll pay money for that. Great! And so I do that for 12 hour days, alternating with days where I can't face it and sit back and don't do it anymore. I always liked audio and sound engineering, and one thing I taught myself over the last couple years is programming (in 'REALbasic'- sort of RAD language like a cleaner VB), and I now maintain an audio mastering program that I wrote for my own use- but GPLed.
*ramble* sorry for the ramble. All this strikes _very_ close to home. The upshot is, actually, that I don't have total sympathy for this reporter. I think it's great if she gets SSI and is allowed to live on about 6K a year (trust me, one can) to provide a space for her to learn what else she can do. I _don't_ think she is entitled to stick to what she _thinks_ she 'is' in life. At different times, I've thought I 'was' a cook, a stockroom person, a writer for The Absolute Sound (got several articles published actually), a Mac tech, etc. I don't believe any of these things really were so suitable that I should have been allowed to _stick_ myself in that role permanently. I'm glad I moved on from those things, and can draw on all of it as I continue in life.
I think the biggest reason this woman deserved to lose this particular case is because life changes, seemingly faster and faster, and you can't put down an anchor. The most you can ask for is a damn good life raft. I have that, I use it- I don't bitch that the government doesn't give me more money or expect it to under-write the possible paths _away_ from disability for me. It'll take longer for me to chisel out a niche in society this way. That's okay. By the time I do, the niche may not last, but I'll have got good enough at chiseling out niches that I'll no longer fear anything.
My advice to this reporter would be: can you sit back and take stock without fear of homelessness and starvation at this point, and what other roles in life could you see yourself filling?
So, Monty: why would Ogg be playing back at the proper pitch but slower _tempo_? Have we got any hope of a fix for this, and have you seen it in any other circumstances? Or perhaps it's specific to the Quicktime input filter?
Nick D'Amato strikes again- turns out OggDrop _is_ his doing. It does need CarbonLib but seems to not explode when operated, even so.
This is in contrast to the commercial product N2MP3, which faw down go SPLAT! Complete failure in proprietary land. Go get a newer computer, kid. (Yeah right...)
And as a result I have, for the first time, encoded several files into Ogg Vorbis and been able to play them back on a proper set of mastering-ready speakers in an acoustically suitable room... sorta. So, here's my observations so far- some good and some 'whoa! what the heck is that?'.
First of all- Ogg Vorbis DOES NOT lack bass. Trust me on this one. I have some projects being worked on that used my GPLed mastering software to fill in extremely low bass, and I used that to audition Ogg Vorbis. The highs are pleasingly uncolored, a bit 'whiter' than the original recording but it actually seems to help synthetic cymbals. Bright recordings lose absolutely nothing, it's quite impressive really. The lows go down forever, I'm speculating that people are used to some type of midbass wooliness that you get with mp3s? I flat guarantee that the _extreme_ lows get through uninhibited. Almost to a fault...
Here's the joker in the deck: every tune I encoded and played back was somewhat choppy- and VARI-SPEEDED.
I can't begin to imagine what would be causing that. It's really being done pretty damn well! It sounds very, very much like the original recording, with a bit of interference and choppiness, except the tempo is _significantly_ slower. Like more than 10 bpm slower. This is a pretty serious problem... and I don't believe it can be part of Quicktime because Quicktime has been able to avoid that sort of thing for many, many years.
A 300mhz G3 machine with 128M of RAM ought to be able to deal with this- if Ogg Vorbis is truly that processor-destructive that's a serious objection to it. It'll never work in embedded apps or portable players if it has to eat that much CPU. I'm hoping it's a bug. Actually I _know_ it is a bug, because dropouts are one thing with inadequate (ha!) CPU, but _varispeed_ should not be happening. There's no excuse for that as a reaction to inadequate CPU.
So, all told, I am delighted with what I've learned. And even with the problems I encountered, I can confirm that Ogg Vorbis _does_ have bass, deep bass, and that its tonal character, even at 128K, is quite impressive. If I was mastering for it I'd master stuff for soundstage depth knowing it would drag all the highs and lows out that it could, that it would make things 'whiter' and zippier kind of like Fraunhofer MP3 encoders, but in a less intrusive yet more effective way.
At the same time, this port of it is still 'freaky bizarre demo' quality and could not be used professionally. I'd love to know if this varispeed is happening strictly on playback- that would mean I had a commercial-quality free Nick D. _encoder_ and just didn't have a playback mechanism that worked properly.
Believe me, guys, I'm rooting for you. But I can't do this work for you, because I'm not a C-slinging programmer gunslinger. If I was, I'd have been trying to help out loooooong ago. Best I can do for now is state unequivocally: yes, Ogg sounds better than MP3 if you like clarity and wide-range frequency response. I look forward to when it grows up and can support platforms such as mine. I can't really give it a full-on audition, or include it in the mp3 study I did, because it's just plain not ready and not working reliably, but finally, at long last, it's working unreliably and that is enough to give me a taste. And I like where it's heading.
WOOHOO! "Wilbur I think it worked"! This is a milestone for me and my studio, and I am honestly very excited. I'm going to go hunt down some ogg files on ampcast.com, which lets people use 'em for downloads. Soon I should be able to have a serious mastering-engineer-type opinion on some of the sound issues I've been hearing about.
That said... AAAIGHGGGHHHH!! F**KING HELL! I am beginning to hate DropOgg with a passion! This is because nobody at Xiph is deigning to support pre-Carbon MacOS8 (bad oversight!) and _I_ am not good enough to do so and the only people who _are_ making encoders aren't good enough either! They're all writing for 8.6 and up and Carbon. And that's bad! There's a lot of people out there with _hardware_ that won't accomodate the microsoft-style upgrade treadmill. I'm downloading OggDrop (like DropOgg, only backwards) and the N2MP3 demo, those being the ONLY options available- and N2MP3 cooperates with Gracenote.com and is strictly commercialware _and_ is bloated and, if I remember correctly, wants to operate as a big system extension (nooooo!).
*quiver, wring hands* dammit.
So this time I'm gonna post this _before_ daring to try and run these damn things, seeing as DropOgg still has the capacity to lock the system up so tight you can't even drop into Macsbug (how the hell does it manage that?)- and, Nick D'Amato, first of all bless you and second of all, seeing as your 'alpha-quality hack' performs flawlessly where NOTHING else does, can you do another alpha-quality hack as a Quicktime export filter? Your alpha-hacks might be all I'll ever need...
-Chris Johnson
Re:The Great Microsoft Problem
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Windows in 2020
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· Score: 2
"Rambus only succeeded because they gave people what they want" is insightful? o_O
Call me evil-minded and cynical, but I would not be at all surprised if Microsoft wrote the _hostile_ worm- perhaps even actively propagating it.
Don't they _want_ to render the existing Internet unworkable so they can sell people an 'upgrade' solution based entirely on proprietary protocols that tie in with.NET?
Don't they _need_ the current Internet to grind to a halt with as much damage as possible so their stuff looks good by comparison?
I'm sorry, but Code Red may turn out to be their baby all along. If that is true, then they _meant_ it to cripple the Internet. With.NET coming along, Microsoft desperately want and NEED to cripple the internet. Otherwise, who will buy.NET?
"A windows box can be just as secure as linux box if the administrator knows what he is doing."
Ha!
Prove it. Let's see the code. The _real_ code, the code that actually ships inside the binaries.
Evidence would tend to suggest you couldn't be wronger... and the ability of the admin has _nothing_ to do with it. What else is out there waiting for enough damage to justify a 'patch'? What evidence do you have that the 'patch' does what you expect and want?
Technically, the artist fails to get paid in advance for the CDs that are placed in the bargain bin. The contract will specify that of the CDs that are shipped, the artist will only get paid on a certain percentage of them on the assumption that the rest will wind up in the bargain bin or go unsold. Standard practice.
Re:Typical lifecycle of any industry...
on
The End of Innovation?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"What's it going to be, folks? How are content providers supposed to protect their works? Unbreakable encryption is a myth, and once your encryption is broken, the hack can be distributed to millions within hours."
But that's exactly the point: digital copying is a new thing, compared to physical world stuff. The cost of many goods and services are based on not simply the IP, but also production, printing, distribution costs which can be very significant. When you obliterate those costs, it's unreasonable not to expect prices to drop radically in line with the new lower cost of distributing the IP. The whole 'everything must be free' thing is simply an overshoot of a shift in value that DOES need to happen.
Yup, absolutely. So these merry bozos are idiots on even the most primitive, financial level. Never mind the techie obnoxiousness of taking a well-designed thing and making it worse on purpose for God knows what reason, it's "Whee, let's also throw away kilobucks in resale value and make something that is worthless to get on slashdot and amuse ill-behaved children!":D
Funny as hell, but I hate to say it guys- this is laughing AT rather than laughing with. You lusers:)
Let them nationalize it, make the code for all versions public domain, have 10,000,000 geeky hackers comb through all the security holes and release a version with NO time-bombs or buffer overflows or stupid techniques for virus writers to play with and THEN tell me IE is fine:P
You have no idea how bad off you are compared to if there was a functioning market happening there...
Hey, if anyone gets to be considered 'longterm injured' by MS practices, it'd be me. I use a Mac and write GPLed open source software for it, so most of what they've taken from, or starved out of, the market has come from me and people like me. Have them give me, oh, $10,000:)
People have been trying to do THAT for more than a decade;) go ahead and try! The trouble is, the Mac market is essentially an adult market, not a kid market or gamer market etc. People don't buy Macs because they haven't been yelled at enough, or because they have never heard of a PC and need to be enlightened *laugh!*. People spend the extra (?) money for Macs because they _have_ the information, information that might have little to do with what seems important to you. Information like 'ships ready to make CDs out of MP3s and vice versa and edit together home movies off the digital camera', or 'plug in two wires into the only places you can plug 'em, and go' or 'the failure modes for this are known and easily worked around and I can fix it up myself if it gets sick'- a variety of reasons. Being 30% faster at quake framerates isn't necessarily one of those reasons.
Re:Learn the lesson of design...
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Mac Rants
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· Score: 2
They DID try to beat Apple at their own game. Well, um, some of them like Daewoo tried to outright copy Apple's game and stick a PC inside of it, but there were some PC makers who did try to come up with striking new designs etc. The trouble was, they were stupid clumsy ugly designs that sucked, and they failed horribly:)
Do you remember the difference between the (easy, pop-open) Mac II, the old (easy, pop-open) Apple II and the (sealed up, impossible to open) original Macintosh designs?
Oh dear, the clue plane seems to have opened up an original Macintosh to poke around in it, and ELECTROCUTED itself on the HIGH VOLTAGE MONITOR PARTS inside...
In other words, damn right they were hard to open, and that is a GOOD thing. Probably saved the lives of many happy idiots who wanted to poke around in there with metal screwdrivers. If you couldn't get the thing open, you SHOULDN'T. Besides, don't tell me you were too dim to get the screws out with just the right size of bent-up T-shaped hex wrench?:) some geek you are;)
Re:Ignorant (micro-)benchmarking practices, redux
on
Mac Rants
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· Score: 2
You hardly have to write 'beautifully crafted assembly' to use PPCs effectively. Maybe if you want to use the vector registers or something- possibly not even then. Writing a compiler for PPC is _easy_ compared to trying to support something like Pentium 4. There's loads of general purpose registers- it's nothing like as tweeky and specialised as cutting edge x86.
This is why PPCs do well at photoshop- heavy number crunching on moderate numbers of variables many of which can just sit in registers, unlike x86 that screams 10x as fast but spends most of the time twiddling its architecture >:)
The trouble with what's happening to Star Wars is this: Star Wars is meant to be space opera.
Space opera isn't necessarily kid fare. It needs to be done as if it is a _masterpiece_. Yes, everything is overblown and exaggerated- that's the point. But it can't be the slightest bit tongue-in-cheek- and the merchandising machine increasingly makes it tough to do that.
"Defeats the big evil villain who turns out to be his father, and, dying, reforms and looks upon his son with his own eyes" is an opera.
"Wins the big race" is an Elvis movie (and a video game).
Lucas has the _chance_ at great space opera, still. To show the corruption of Anakin is potentially great space opera. But there is definitely a risk that he'll completely blow it- too many computerized extras, too many merchandising tie-ins affecting the scanty plot of the movies, which won't stand much of that treatment. Space opera plot is _cheesey_. Hijack a bit of it for use as a video game or something, and you risk losing all of it by losing the thread and not being able to pick it up again.
At least it ought to wind up an absolutely great issue of 'Cinefex';)
Slashdot Mirror
So, you insist on the right to have a controlling government fine or imprison people if they do not obey you?
What _relevance_ does proprietary anything have except in the context of either a controlling government, or some other entity capable of taking your money, time or life?
It just seems very strange to say 'I need to get more FREEDOM which I will call FLERBAGE because it is the ability to place other people in danger of losing money, time or life for not obeying what I say!'
Whaaaaat??
I think we can quit worrying about X-Box at this point. Hell, this type of desperation move suggests we maybe can stop worrying about _Microsoft_ at this point. For them to switch to full-on cash-vacuum mode THIS EARLY in a new market is horribly revealing. It's not about arrogance, either.
We are viewing the spectacle of a Microsoft desperate for money.
I'd love to see an audit of what they _really_ have. I would lay 50% odds that right now their liabilities exceed their assets- and 60% odds that their much touted cash reserves are a _lie_. Look at their actions! Are these the actions of a company that can afford to dump product to gain a new market against stiff competition? Since when was Microsoft stupid about competitive threats? This isn't about arrogance at all. This is desperation, and they are in trouble. And not competitive trouble- _cash_ trouble.
I wonder at what point will they be unable to meet payroll and their financial obligations except by accounting trickery- or perhaps this has already happened?
Another good question is how much scope the corporations have to _act_ as police themselves: for instance, unexpectedly raiding companies and looking for pirated (sic) software (gee, who is acting more like a pirate there?) and, if any is found, turning the victims over to the 'real' police. If the raiders get the capacity to cuff the victims themselves, they _are_ police to all extents and purposes, just a sort of 'feudal' police with their own agendas.
This suggests a possible remedy, though: leave Microsoft just as it is, but _jail_ every single leader and 'culture setter' in the place. Gates, Ballmer: everyone giving the orders.
The Allies did something similar with Volkswagen after WWII: they kept the factory, had it attempt to build cars (the British loved the early Volkswagens and fought like tigers to protect the factory from scavengers and seekers of war reparations!) and a British Army officer was de facto head of the company until they brought in Heinz Nordhoff as CEO- who promptly got busy and built Volkswagen into what it was today. But the point is, Volkswagen was effectively run by the British Government for a brief period after the war, because the people originally in control of Volkswagen (the Nazis, obviously) were criminals and removed from that position.
It's worth noting that _in_ the context of Volkswagen, the Nazis were primarily concerned with bringing a 'people's car' to Germans, though they also set up a rather nasty payment plan (hardly consumer friendly- didn't even guarantee you got a car after paying in all the money, just a 'certificate of ownership'). Their crimes were not directly related to Volkswagen, but they were still removed from society and from the leadership of the company.
It is possible that the specific _acts_ of Ballmer, Gates etc. directly relating to Microsoft are not all totally evil and wrong. However, the sheer amount of assault they are committing on the legal system and the sheer determination they show to control information technology for the world suggest to me that they still need to be removed from control of the company. Jail the fuckers. Let's have a new breed of Microsoft leadership that aren't megalomaniacal royalty at heart...
What I'd really like to know is, while thinking this shit up, is Bill Gates petting a white cat in his lap?
Articles like this always tend to freak me out. I'm one of the more autistic geeks out there- couldn't finish school, couldn't keep a normal job because of 'Asperger's Syndrome', a sort of communication-enabled autism. Nobody knew what the hell it was when I was growing up. I developed an ulcer and tried everything from pizza cook to inventory and stockroom for a guitar pickup company, continually getting 'fired in sorrow' by people who knew that I was killing myself _trying_ to do what they wanted, but something was just not fitting somewhere. I turned to drugs (BAD F**KING MOVE) which helped stave off suicide for the time being. I ended up in debt, in a homeless shelter, from there to a psych ward (voluntarily- beat the homeless shelter as long as I behaved well enough to be legitimately allowed to refuse psych meds) and it was there that I found an advocate that got me on social security Disability.
That has meant a lot over the last 6 years or so. I'd never been able to live free from fear of homelessness or hunger before. Your mention of 'skiing holidays' was wonderful because it put things in perspective- I live on about $6K a year. No car (I don't consider myself fit to drive), no DVD player, no cable TV, yada yada. And yet being free from hunger and the destruction of my former life is such a blessing that I feel guilty when reading the harangues of people with ten or twenty times the income and resources of me!
I used to be lazy- or something that looked like it but was more like being stressed into immobility. Once I had the ability to define things on my own terms for a while, it turned out I wasn't lazy, and now I even court RSI ( ;) ) doing things that I like, or things that I mostly like that seem to be a path out of Disability towards a niche I can actually handle. For instance, I'm doing things related to costuming and finding there are actually people out there who'll pay money for that. Great! And so I do that for 12 hour days, alternating with days where I can't face it and sit back and don't do it anymore. I always liked audio and sound engineering, and one thing I taught myself over the last couple years is programming (in 'REALbasic'- sort of RAD language like a cleaner VB), and I now maintain an audio mastering program that I wrote for my own use- but GPLed.
*ramble* sorry for the ramble. All this strikes _very_ close to home. The upshot is, actually, that I don't have total sympathy for this reporter. I think it's great if she gets SSI and is allowed to live on about 6K a year (trust me, one can) to provide a space for her to learn what else she can do. I _don't_ think she is entitled to stick to what she _thinks_ she 'is' in life. At different times, I've thought I 'was' a cook, a stockroom person, a writer for The Absolute Sound (got several articles published actually), a Mac tech, etc. I don't believe any of these things really were so suitable that I should have been allowed to _stick_ myself in that role permanently. I'm glad I moved on from those things, and can draw on all of it as I continue in life.
I think the biggest reason this woman deserved to lose this particular case is because life changes, seemingly faster and faster, and you can't put down an anchor. The most you can ask for is a damn good life raft. I have that, I use it- I don't bitch that the government doesn't give me more money or expect it to under-write the possible paths _away_ from disability for me. It'll take longer for me to chisel out a niche in society this way. That's okay. By the time I do, the niche may not last, but I'll have got good enough at chiseling out niches that I'll no longer fear anything.
My advice to this reporter would be: can you sit back and take stock without fear of homelessness and starvation at this point, and what other roles in life could you see yourself filling?
THEY are fine ones to ignore "worse is better". ;)
So, Monty: why would Ogg be playing back at the proper pitch but slower _tempo_? Have we got any hope of a fix for this, and have you seen it in any other circumstances? Or perhaps it's specific to the Quicktime input filter?
Nick D'Amato strikes again- turns out OggDrop _is_ his doing. It does need CarbonLib but seems to not explode when operated, even so.
This is in contrast to the commercial product N2MP3, which faw down go SPLAT! Complete failure in proprietary land. Go get a newer computer, kid. (Yeah right...)
And as a result I have, for the first time, encoded several files into Ogg Vorbis and been able to play them back on a proper set of mastering-ready speakers in an acoustically suitable room... sorta. So, here's my observations so far- some good and some 'whoa! what the heck is that?'.
First of all- Ogg Vorbis DOES NOT lack bass. Trust me on this one. I have some projects being worked on that used my GPLed mastering software to fill in extremely low bass, and I used that to audition Ogg Vorbis. The highs are pleasingly uncolored, a bit 'whiter' than the original recording but it actually seems to help synthetic cymbals. Bright recordings lose absolutely nothing, it's quite impressive really. The lows go down forever, I'm speculating that people are used to some type of midbass wooliness that you get with mp3s? I flat guarantee that the _extreme_ lows get through uninhibited. Almost to a fault...
Here's the joker in the deck: every tune I encoded and played back was somewhat choppy- and VARI-SPEEDED.
I can't begin to imagine what would be causing that. It's really being done pretty damn well! It sounds very, very much like the original recording, with a bit of interference and choppiness, except the tempo is _significantly_ slower. Like more than 10 bpm slower. This is a pretty serious problem... and I don't believe it can be part of Quicktime because Quicktime has been able to avoid that sort of thing for many, many years.
A 300mhz G3 machine with 128M of RAM ought to be able to deal with this- if Ogg Vorbis is truly that processor-destructive that's a serious objection to it. It'll never work in embedded apps or portable players if it has to eat that much CPU. I'm hoping it's a bug. Actually I _know_ it is a bug, because dropouts are one thing with inadequate (ha!) CPU, but _varispeed_ should not be happening. There's no excuse for that as a reaction to inadequate CPU.
So, all told, I am delighted with what I've learned. And even with the problems I encountered, I can confirm that Ogg Vorbis _does_ have bass, deep bass, and that its tonal character, even at 128K, is quite impressive. If I was mastering for it I'd master stuff for soundstage depth knowing it would drag all the highs and lows out that it could, that it would make things 'whiter' and zippier kind of like Fraunhofer MP3 encoders, but in a less intrusive yet more effective way.
At the same time, this port of it is still 'freaky bizarre demo' quality and could not be used professionally. I'd love to know if this varispeed is happening strictly on playback- that would mean I had a commercial-quality free Nick D. _encoder_ and just didn't have a playback mechanism that worked properly.
Believe me, guys, I'm rooting for you. But I can't do this work for you, because I'm not a C-slinging programmer gunslinger. If I was, I'd have been trying to help out loooooong ago. Best I can do for now is state unequivocally: yes, Ogg sounds better than MP3 if you like clarity and wide-range frequency response. I look forward to when it grows up and can support platforms such as mine. I can't really give it a full-on audition, or include it in the mp3 study I did, because it's just plain not ready and not working reliably, but finally, at long last, it's working unreliably and that is enough to give me a taste. And I like where it's heading.
-Chris Johnson
That said... AAAIGHGGGHHHH!! F**KING HELL! I am beginning to hate DropOgg with a passion! This is because nobody at Xiph is deigning to support pre-Carbon MacOS8 (bad oversight!) and _I_ am not good enough to do so and the only people who _are_ making encoders aren't good enough either! They're all writing for 8.6 and up and Carbon. And that's bad! There's a lot of people out there with _hardware_ that won't accomodate the microsoft-style upgrade treadmill. I'm downloading OggDrop (like DropOgg, only backwards) and the N2MP3 demo, those being the ONLY options available- and N2MP3 cooperates with Gracenote.com and is strictly commercialware _and_ is bloated and, if I remember correctly, wants to operate as a big system extension (nooooo!).
*quiver, wring hands* dammit.
So this time I'm gonna post this _before_ daring to try and run these damn things, seeing as DropOgg still has the capacity to lock the system up so tight you can't even drop into Macsbug (how the hell does it manage that?)- and, Nick D'Amato, first of all bless you and second of all, seeing as your 'alpha-quality hack' performs flawlessly where NOTHING else does, can you do another alpha-quality hack as a Quicktime export filter? Your alpha-hacks might be all I'll ever need...
-Chris Johnson
Only on slashdot..
That is a really stupid place to optimise. I bet it barely shows up on profiling at all, compared to memory management and offscreen bitmap drawing :)
Don't they _want_ to render the existing Internet unworkable so they can sell people an 'upgrade' solution based entirely on proprietary protocols that tie in with .NET?
Don't they _need_ the current Internet to grind to a halt with as much damage as possible so their stuff looks good by comparison?
I'm sorry, but Code Red may turn out to be their baby all along. If that is true, then they _meant_ it to cripple the Internet. With .NET coming along, Microsoft desperately want and NEED to cripple the internet. Otherwise, who will buy .NET?
Ha!
Prove it. Let's see the code. The _real_ code, the code that actually ships inside the binaries.
Evidence would tend to suggest you couldn't be wronger... and the ability of the admin has _nothing_ to do with it. What else is out there waiting for enough damage to justify a 'patch'? What evidence do you have that the 'patch' does what you expect and want?
Technically, the artist fails to get paid in advance for the CDs that are placed in the bargain bin. The contract will specify that of the CDs that are shipped, the artist will only get paid on a certain percentage of them on the assumption that the rest will wind up in the bargain bin or go unsold. Standard practice.
But that's exactly the point: digital copying is a new thing, compared to physical world stuff. The cost of many goods and services are based on not simply the IP, but also production, printing, distribution costs which can be very significant. When you obliterate those costs, it's unreasonable not to expect prices to drop radically in line with the new lower cost of distributing the IP. The whole 'everything must be free' thing is simply an overshoot of a shift in value that DOES need to happen.
Funny as hell, but I hate to say it guys- this is laughing AT rather than laughing with. You lusers :)
You have no idea how bad off you are compared to if there was a functioning market happening there...
Hey, if anyone gets to be considered 'longterm injured' by MS practices, it'd be me. I use a Mac and write GPLed open source software for it, so most of what they've taken from, or starved out of, the market has come from me and people like me. Have them give me, oh, $10,000 :)
People have been trying to do THAT for more than a decade ;) go ahead and try! The trouble is, the Mac market is essentially an adult market, not a kid market or gamer market etc. People don't buy Macs because they haven't been yelled at enough, or because they have never heard of a PC and need to be enlightened *laugh!*. People spend the extra (?) money for Macs because they _have_ the information, information that might have little to do with what seems important to you. Information like 'ships ready to make CDs out of MP3s and vice versa and edit together home movies off the digital camera', or 'plug in two wires into the only places you can plug 'em, and go' or 'the failure modes for this are known and easily worked around and I can fix it up myself if it gets sick'- a variety of reasons. Being 30% faster at quake framerates isn't necessarily one of those reasons.
They DID try to beat Apple at their own game. Well, um, some of them like Daewoo tried to outright copy Apple's game and stick a PC inside of it, but there were some PC makers who did try to come up with striking new designs etc. The trouble was, they were stupid clumsy ugly designs that sucked, and they failed horribly :)
*clue plane landing runway eight, fweeeeeeeeBZZZT!*
Oh dear, the clue plane seems to have opened up an original Macintosh to poke around in it, and ELECTROCUTED itself on the HIGH VOLTAGE MONITOR PARTS inside...
In other words, damn right they were hard to open, and that is a GOOD thing. Probably saved the lives of many happy idiots who wanted to poke around in there with metal screwdrivers. If you couldn't get the thing open, you SHOULDN'T. Besides, don't tell me you were too dim to get the screws out with just the right size of bent-up T-shaped hex wrench? :) some geek you are ;)
This is why PPCs do well at photoshop- heavy number crunching on moderate numbers of variables many of which can just sit in registers, unlike x86 that screams 10x as fast but spends most of the time twiddling its architecture >:)
Space opera isn't necessarily kid fare. It needs to be done as if it is a _masterpiece_. Yes, everything is overblown and exaggerated- that's the point. But it can't be the slightest bit tongue-in-cheek- and the merchandising machine increasingly makes it tough to do that.
"Defeats the big evil villain who turns out to be his father, and, dying, reforms and looks upon his son with his own eyes" is an opera.
"Wins the big race" is an Elvis movie (and a video game).
Lucas has the _chance_ at great space opera, still. To show the corruption of Anakin is potentially great space opera. But there is definitely a risk that he'll completely blow it- too many computerized extras, too many merchandising tie-ins affecting the scanty plot of the movies, which won't stand much of that treatment. Space opera plot is _cheesey_. Hijack a bit of it for use as a video game or something, and you risk losing all of it by losing the thread and not being able to pick it up again.
At least it ought to wind up an absolutely great issue of 'Cinefex' ;)