I actually think that should be AtheOS which has the best filesystem in that case (minus any bugs or lack of optimization in current implementation due to lack of serious longtime testing, but the architecture is there).
Kurt Skauen (who designed AtheOS) read loads about BFS (especially the Author's own book on filesystem design) and in the end decided to do his own modified (and incompatible) version of it due to stupid short commings and design flaws.
I don't remember all the details but it all came out during a filesystem discussion on the AtheOS developer mailing list, so check their mail archives for more info. Here is a part by Kurt from the rather long thread that I managed to dig out:
"I did weight for and against this when I started on AFS and came to
the conclusion that making AFS 100% compatible with BFS whould be to
restrictive to make it worth while. The reason is a few shortcomings
in BFS, and the fact that it whould lock the design 100%. First, BFS
use linear list's for duplicate keys in B+trees that slows it down
dramaticaly when indexing a lot of attributes with the same value, and
makes indexing of attributes like file-type to slow to be
practical. Seccond, at least when I designed AFS, BFS had problems
handling deleted but still opened files when the machine crashed or
lost power. The space used by these files was lost (This has AFAIK
been fixed by now). Another thing I noticed was an alignment bug that
wasted a bit of the very limited "small data" attribute space in the
inode. The current journal system in AFS is quite different. from the
one in BFS. The first version was much more similar but was very hard
to make work in conjunction with dynamic cache size (something BeOS
still don't have)."
Come on! That must be the most stupid Top50 and Top10 ever listed. The least influential movies can't be listed! They had so abysmal influence on the viewer that he/she forgot them as soon as possible, therefore not being able to list them years later.
If you remember it, it has most likely had some influence on you.
On the other hand, the list can be quite fun to look through for a joke anyway!;)
Because of all the english in computer manuals, computer magazines and programs I learned English much faster and easier than I otherwise would have done. It complemented and motivated my English classes in a very symbiotic way.
A fun detail is also that many European Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon users learned quite good German since the Atari was very big in Germany compared to the rest of the world, leading to a flood of good literature and programs in German that only got translated to English as an afterthought, months later.
Even The Netherlands had a large and active userbase. Since written Dutch to a large extent is a mixture between English, German, French and the Scandinavian languages, making it very easy to get a grip on if you allready understand a few of those, a few of us also learned some Netherlands at the end of the Atari era, when programs and documentation got scarce due to the decreasing marketshare.
I know this is a bit redundant, but just to sum up the situation and make it all clear:
1. Quake III for Linux was released after the Windows version.
2. Whoever bought the Windows version could also buy the Windows version and download the Linux binaries when they appeared and that way get the game earlier, cheaper and for both platforms (use at home and at work). If you bought the Linux version, could you then get the Windows binary as well???
3. The situation for 3D Gaming on Linux is still terrifying with terrible driver support and all kinds of tweaks and downloads to just get it to work. Granted, it's improving quickly, but the situation was even worse when Q3 was released. Linux users are not stupid and I think many decided to buy one of Loki's 2D games instead.
4. The Windows version was everywhere, the Linux version was almost nowhere. That combined with point 2 probably made most dualbooters buy the Windows version.
If Quake III despite this situation covered the cost of conversion, I'm not worried. The 3D support is improving rapidly (expect all new distributions to ship with XFree 4.0 with DRI drivers for the most popular cards) and the retail channels are improving with Linux's continued growth.
Expect Linux conversions of the more popular Windows 3D games to be good business (unless the company has a serious shortage of competent programmers) within a year. 2D Game conversions will get there even faster...
For approximately the same price you can get a Raite DVD player which can play DVDs/VCDs/CDs and MP3s directly from your CDs.
A friend of mine has one of these and although the player feels a bit cheap (the CD-bay is for example an ordinary computer CD-bay with a nicer front) and the DVD playback quality doesn't match that of more expensive systems (OK for me though) it does play (non VBR) MP3s very nicely from the CDs without any problems with what I found to be good quality after some listening (no serious testing though).
Unfortunately I don't have a link to them, www.raite.com seems to be in the hands of a domain squatter:(
With this box you get your mp3 collection accessible from the same place as your stereo, without having your computer and monitor in the same room (produces noise and heat, looks ugly and reminds you about work that you need to do...). If my PC is placed in another room it's easier to ignore it even if I know it's involved.
Just want to second vherva here and say that the disk subsystem is very unlikely to be the bottleneck.
Get a lot of memory instead and linux will give you a big diskcache after the first compile, making disk speed mostly irrelevant for a the second or third compile.
If your harddisk sounds like a rattlesnake during your second or third build (some minor disk activity is always present though) you need more memory, otherwise it's more juice in the CPU (and a faster FSB) that is needed.
"You can already do that with mpg123. Just be sure to make the buffersize large enough, and then it will already start decoding the next track while it is decoding the previous track, with an (almost) unnoticable skip during playback. Works perfectly for Pink Floyd CDs at least."
(shamless plug comming up)
And that "(almost) unnoticable skip" is truly gone if you use the latest unstable version of BladeEnc with the recently implemented -nogap switch.
Believe me, that "all tracks in the same mp3" idea isn't such a good idea as it sounds. It's better to make sure that the ripper takes care of pre- and postgaps (paranoia can do this), the encoder doesn't add any gaps (bladeenc with -nogap) and that the player plays multiple mp3s as one stream (mpg123). That way we have the best of both worlds.
Just wanted to add in that future versions of BladeEnc will support OGG as well as MP3.
Support will be handled by simply including their LGPL:ed library so there will be no quality difference. From the same version, MP3 support will be optional during compile time, giving us an OGG-only version of BladeEnc that might be used in all countries and a OGG & MP3 version that may only be used in patent free countries or if you have a special contract with Fraunhofer.
Of course, there will probably not be any particular advantage in using BladeEnc for OGG compression compared to other tools that will appear, but by doing this I hope to be able to leverage some of BladeEnc's popularity onto this new, free format and at the same time give Fraunhofer/Thomson a kick in the ass.
I know this is a very delicate question and maybe I'll take this suggestion back later if a reply or two convinces me that it's a bad idea:
We all know that it's OK to bring free software to platforms like MacOS, BeOS and Windows, despite the fact that the underlying APIs and libraries (which the programs must be linked against) are proprietary.
Can't the same apply to Qt?
After all, Qt is a kind of system library, providing a common platform for all supported architectures (UNIX with X, Linux on framebuffer and Windows), so I don't think it's wrong to see it as a platform of its own, although it might be more of a "virtual platform", running "emulated" on the host platform.
I know we all want this problem to just go away and by acknowledgning Qt as a programming platform and not just a toolkit (as I understand it, Qt contains much more than just the graphical elements in order to make Qt code independent of other libraries so that it can be ported to all supported platforms, making it more of a platform than a toolkit) it could just happen.
...the ISO code had NOTHING to do with the patents!
It's a common misconception that different MP3 encoders are affected by the patents since they are based on the ISO code. That is NOT correct.
Patents deals with technology and procedures, copyright deals with the source code!
The reference code is provided by ISO to help people understand MP3 encoding/decoding and they have nothing to do with the patents (except that they accepted patented or patent pending technology into the MPEG Layer 3 standard, which they should have a big kick in their butt for).
Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Consumer Electronics owns a lot of patents on technology used in MP3 encoding/decoding and they will demand a license from any encoder that uses their patented technology no matter if it's based on the ISO reference source or NOT.
Personally I don't know why the LAME team always have taken the approach of not distributing the entire source but only a patch, but I guess they decided to play it safe. Distributing the ISO reference source doesn't breach any patents, but it might possibly be a copyright infringement against ISO.
Take a look at their page, does that say anything about the patents not being enforceable against compiled versions of LAME anymore? No it doesn't, it just says "All ISO code removed!" among the new features, which of course is a nice milestone to reach (no possible copyright infringement, having complete masterhood of the code, having replaced all old bug-filled code with new clean code etc.), but doesn't affect the patent situation.
Technically it should be possible to create a completely patent free MP3 encoder by carefully reviewing all the patents (17 patents in total, unless their lawyers have "forgotten" to send me some) and then making sure that whatever implementation you go for doesn't use any of those specified processes, which is bloody hard since these patents were designed to intercept any attempt like that. Then if you succeed you would probably still have to go to court since they would sue you anyway, hoping that your implementation is close enough to get you stopped.
Also, very few people knows this, but there is a ticking bomb hidden in all this. Fraunhofer and Thomson don't have all the mp3 related patents, they are just the ones who have decided to demand a license for the use of their technology and pulled their patents into a common pool that you can license. More companies are claimed to have patents on mp3 technology (they are listed in the ISO documentations), but they are currently not enforcing them. What if they suddenly start to demand licenses for the use of their technology? Then it doesn't help that you have Fraunhofer/Thomson's permission, you also need another license to go on...
Also, I think that Slashdot should have checked this a bit more throughly before posting it (like checking with one of the LAME developers), the fact that they say "No more patching! Full souce code distribution since all ISO has been replaced!" and nothing about patents should have raised warning signs alone...
Also, the last time I checked, LAME was GPL and not LGPL...
Yeah, I'm on that list! Right at position 771 AND 772!
What!? They counted me TWICE? Once as tord.jansson@swipnet and then later as tord.jansson... hm... 248447 bytes for each of them... Hm, seems like they somehow counted me twice but with the SAME value or maybe they somehow split it in half.
Let's click on my name and see what projects they have mentioned me participating in, should be just BladeEnc... What!? makeMP3.codd!!! What the heck is THAT program!? Hm, I see... got to be some kind of frontend that has included the BladeEnc code...
Feels a bit odd getting credited for a program I don't know anything about, but still kind of okay...:)
On the other hand, I wonder how they came up with 248447 bytes, the BladeEnc code is about 1.5 meg:-/
But then again, it wouldn't be fair to credit me for more anyway since BladeEnc is so heavily based on the original ISO code and the other BladeEnc contributors haven't gotten any credits since they're just mentioned on the homepage.:(
Guess this shows how far from precise this study is. A good attempt to measure something quite imessurable though. Kudoz to all the people who must have put down an awfull lot of work on this and hope you could get some usefull out of the big picture although the small details are terribly wrong.
"The goal is "Software that doesn't suck". Personally, I don't care who writes it, or what it is. It could be Windows. It could be Solaris. It could be Linux. Who cares? I just want it to work well, without being a hassle."
Sorry if this sounds a bit like a rant, but I just wanted to point out that I totally disagree with that sentence.
For me, the freedom aspects of free software are far more important than having the technically best sollution. Actually, I'm using Linux even thought it's a far worse technical sollution for me and my needs than NT4. With Linux I have to deal with a lot more problems and frustration, for example:
1. I'm really missing a good C Development environment. MS Dev is by _far_ the most comprehensive, feature filled and well thought out development environment I've ever used. When using my current development tools on Linux it feels like I'm puffing along in a tractor when I could have been crusing along in a Ferrari and it actually affects the development time of my projects. KDevelop is on the right track, but still have a lot of things to sort out.
2. The lack of good desktop applications is still quite bad, although it's improving all the time. I sometimes feel like I'm in chains because I know of a tool that will do exactly what I want with only a few mouse clicks, it's there, right outside my reach because it runs on Windows, not Linux.
3. Everytime I buy some new hardware I have to first check if there are drivers for it. Is that scanner/printer/soundcard/camera/PDA supported?
4. GAMES. I'm missing all the games I used to play on my Windows machines!:(
So why do I put up with all this? Windows NT would definitely be a better technical sollution for _my_ personal needs and I would just have to borrow a copy from work and install it and everything would be just fine.
Simply because I value the freedom aspects of free software. I want to use a system and programs that I can tinker with as much as I want. I want to use programs that I can give to my friends. I don't want to be depending on a big software company who technically owns the software I'm just licensed to use. I don't want to pay $$$ every year to keep my word processor up to date so I can read the documents people send me. I don't want to be depending on the "goodwill" of a company for fixing that bug that really doesn't affect their sales but I desperately need to get fixed. I don't want to live in a world where the producers constantly makes two versions of the same program (one that's rediculously expensive and the other one is seriously downgraded) simply because they make slightly more money that way. I don't want to live in a world where developing countries on the edge of having a technological and economical breakthrough are hold back because greedy software companies require them to pay rediculously high software licenses. And I don't want a small number of software companies to be in charge of the infrastructure of tomorrow by holding the right to key software components or software patents since that would seriously degrade whatever is left of our democracy.
Of course I also want software that doesn't suck, but for me the quality of the software is really secondary to the freedom aspects (as long as it's not totally useless) which is proven by the fact that I'm using Linux as my desktop computer even though it isn't the best technical sollution for me _yet_. If Open Source development in the end leads to better software than the proprietary software model (which I also believe it does) that would be great, but it's not my main reason for supporting and taking part in the movement.
Ok, sorry for the rant and sorry if I offended somebody, but I really needed to get that of my chest. Otherwise I totally agree that we should worry less about enemies and concentrate more on getting our programs better.
"Yeah they do allow it but its heavily restricted and give the people no real power to fight an unjust government." I know this is very off topic, but have you ever heard of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela? Both fought and defeated corrupt systems without any weapons.What they had was real power, weapons are just semi-real power. People have also tried to fight unjustice with weapons, but that rarely leads anywhere. Northern Ireland and the Middle East are examples of this. If a large majority (i.e. 90% of U.S. citizens against a possible future corrupt regime) wants to fight for their freedom they'll win with or without weapons. If a minority wants to fight for their freedom they will probably have better luck not using weapons. If they use weapons they will kill people and people will turn against them. Since they're the weaker part they will be defeated. If they don't use weapons, people might listen to their opinions and support their cause. If they are fought with weapons they might gain support from non-involved observers who might be a bigger threat against their oppressors.
[sorry for the AC post, but I'm at work now and don't have my password handy]
"Just curious, if the author is reading this, what made you release it under the LGPL rather than the GPL?"
Two major reasons actually:
1. BladeEnc has allready been out for a while and a large amount of BladeEnc users are using a closed source Windows ripper like Audiograbber, EAC, Easy CDDA Extractor 3 etc. All these programs are distributed as shareware and the authors have helped me promote BladeEnc. Jukka (creator of CDDA Extractor 3) actually created the DLL version of BladeEnc and Jackie (creator of Audiograbber) have been very supportive. It wouldn't be especially nice of me to suddenly turn my back against them and all the users who use BladeEnc in combination with their programs (which is probably half my userbase).
2. I'm fed up with this MP3 patent situation and those extemely expensive licenses. I want MP3's to be an open standard that can be used by both commercial and free packages. By making my code available for commercial products I do help them to keep down the cost (a number of software developers have shown the interest in purchasing the cheaper license (technology only, no code) from Fraunhofer and use BladeEnc's technology) and to make more products support the MP3 standard. I think this is very important since MP3 as a standard constantly is being fought by companies who are trying to push an even more closed format (like MS Audio, Real Audio, VQF etc) which might be better performance-wise, but would leave both the Free Software and Open Source Movement in the cold if they succeeded. Open standards, used both by free and proprietary software is essential for our success.
For another, future product I will most likely use the GPL instead.
When it comes to that person and his article I can just recommend you to check their message board again. Quite a lot of people wrote comments explaining why we shouldn't listen to him and some explained it quite well. He seems to be a quite wellknown troll...
When it comes to your thoughts about MS integrating Explorer into the desktop I can just agree with you, I like it too and it seems to be the way of the future since both BeOS and KDE have done the same thing. The reason it has been so heavily discussed is not some technical facts, but because of Microsofts business tactics. MS did this in an attempt to completely destroy Netscape's market and that way used a monopoly in one area to try to get themselves a monopoly in another area. If Netscape hadn't been there they would most likely have sold their browser as a standalone product instead (and possibly included a much downgraded version with Windows).
If you're looking for a Window-manager that has the refinements of Windows I can highly recommend KDE 1.1. It seems to have *everything* that Windows has, including bult-in webbrowser and e-mail client and some additional very usefull stuff that you don't find in Windows (the normal Unix features for example). The Mandrake 5.3 distribution that comes preconfigured with KDE and was a breeze to set up was what certainly got me to entirely jump the Windows ship and join the Linux crowd. Before that I had been stuck in the position I believe you are in now, looking at Linux and hoping to be able to skip over but finding that it simply doesn't provide you with the ease of use and functionality that you have become dependent of for your daily use.
However, I don't know of a good Illustrator clone for Linux, so it might still be too early for you to jump off the Windows ship...:(
And just too avoid flames: Nope, I haven't tried Gnome yet and that might be a very good environment too, but for the moment I'm using KDE and recommend it for anyone attempting to switch over from Windows since I'm more than satisfied with it. However, I do intend to try Gnome some day in the future and I might switch if I find it to be better for my daily use.
Some people go to extremes when it comes to boycotting MS products, I don't. However, I do agree that many of their products are terribly bloated. But the main issue is that their methods of doing business are more or less criminal, making them a serious threat to most other software companies. When I find a serious alternative to a Microsoft product that I use (at work) I always gives it a try, mostly for the cause.
Just another person saying that you got it right on spot!;)
Most people now and then tends to act a little bit egomanically when they think they're not given the credits for what they have done (and I agree with RMS that he and FSF have not been given the credit they deserve in mainstream articles, although I think that renaming the system is a BAD idea).
The sollution to this is simply to ignore their claims (or even better, think the situation over and give them the credits we think they are worth which not necessarily mount up to what they claim), NOT to try to crush their ego by replacing their code with new one!
If we would do that we would most likely be stuck in an eternal loop where we constantly replace perfectly working code with new one when we think the original creator goes a little bit over the top...
What the world needs now is GEM, sweet GEM
on
GNOME 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Hehe, I couldn't agree more with you. GEM was also the built in Window-system in the Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon series of computers and I loved it! Swift and nice even on an old 8 MHz machine...
However, haven't tried Gnome or KDE yet, maybe I find them to be even better...
Unless I've seriously overlooked something this isn't a bad thing, just good.
It won't stop anyone from using MP3's the way they are used today, it will just give the people who wants to sell their copyrighted music over the net as MP3 files a little more protection and that way the record labels might become more friendly into this kind of distribution and MP3 in general.
Some kind of protection is needed and if we can get an extension of MP3 instead of some kind of new, more closed fileformat it's good for us and everyone else.
I don't think that we will have to worry about hardware mp3 players requiring a watermark and even if they would do it we would only end up with MP3s watermarked liked "RiPpEd aNd eNcOdEd bY Da MaStEr" or something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Kurt Skauen (who designed AtheOS) read loads about BFS (especially the Author's own book on filesystem design) and in the end decided to do his own modified (and incompatible) version of it due to stupid short commings and design flaws.
I don't remember all the details but it all came out during a filesystem discussion on the AtheOS developer mailing list, so check their mail archives for more info. Here is a part by Kurt from the rather long thread that I managed to dig out:
"I did weight for and against this when I started on AFS and came to the conclusion that making AFS 100% compatible with BFS whould be to restrictive to make it worth while. The reason is a few shortcomings in BFS, and the fact that it whould lock the design 100%. First, BFS use linear list's for duplicate keys in B+trees that slows it down dramaticaly when indexing a lot of attributes with the same value, and makes indexing of attributes like file-type to slow to be practical. Seccond, at least when I designed AFS, BFS had problems handling deleted but still opened files when the machine crashed or lost power. The space used by these files was lost (This has AFAIK been fixed by now). Another thing I noticed was an alignment bug that wasted a bit of the very limited "small data" attribute space in the inode. The current journal system in AFS is quite different. from the one in BFS. The first version was much more similar but was very hard to make work in conjunction with dynamic cache size (something BeOS still don't have)."
Come on! That must be the most stupid Top50 and Top10 ever listed. The least influential movies can't be listed! They had so abysmal influence on the viewer that he/she forgot them as soon as possible, therefore not being able to list them years later.
;)
If you remember it, it has most likely had some influence on you.
On the other hand, the list can be quite fun to look through for a joke anyway!
As a Swedish citizen I have to second that.
Because of all the english in computer manuals, computer magazines and programs I learned English much faster and easier than I otherwise would have done. It complemented and motivated my English classes in a very symbiotic way.
A fun detail is also that many European Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon users learned quite good German since the Atari was very big in Germany compared to the rest of the world, leading to a flood of good literature and programs in German that only got translated to English as an afterthought, months later.
Even The Netherlands had a large and active userbase. Since written Dutch to a large extent is a mixture between English, German, French and the Scandinavian languages, making it very easy to get a grip on if you allready understand a few of those, a few of us also learned some Netherlands at the end of the Atari era, when programs and documentation got scarce due to the decreasing marketshare.
1. Quake III for Linux was released after the Windows version.
2. Whoever bought the Windows version could also buy the Windows version and download the Linux binaries when they appeared and that way get the game earlier, cheaper and for both platforms (use at home and at work). If you bought the Linux version, could you then get the Windows binary as well???
3. The situation for 3D Gaming on Linux is still terrifying with terrible driver support and all kinds of tweaks and downloads to just get it to work. Granted, it's improving quickly, but the situation was even worse when Q3 was released. Linux users are not stupid and I think many decided to buy one of Loki's 2D games instead.
4. The Windows version was everywhere, the Linux version was almost nowhere. That combined with point 2 probably made most dualbooters buy the Windows version.
If Quake III despite this situation covered the cost of conversion, I'm not worried. The 3D support is improving rapidly (expect all new distributions to ship with XFree 4.0 with DRI drivers for the most popular cards) and the retail channels are improving with Linux's continued growth.
Expect Linux conversions of the more popular Windows 3D games to be good business (unless the company has a serious shortage of competent programmers) within a year. 2D Game conversions will get there even faster...
A friend of mine has one of these and although the player feels a bit cheap (the CD-bay is for example an ordinary computer CD-bay with a nicer front) and the DVD playback quality doesn't match that of more expensive systems (OK for me though) it does play (non VBR) MP3s very nicely from the CDs without any problems with what I found to be good quality after some listening (no serious testing though).
Unfortunately I don't have a link to them, www.raite.com seems to be in the hands of a domain squatter
With this box you get your mp3 collection accessible from the same place as your stereo, without having your computer and monitor in the same room (produces noise and heat, looks ugly and reminds you about work that you need to do...). If my PC is placed in another room it's easier to ignore it even if I know it's involved.
Probably you get a remote control too...
Get a lot of memory instead and linux will give you a big diskcache after the first compile, making disk speed mostly irrelevant for a the second or third compile.
If your harddisk sounds like a rattlesnake during your second or third build (some minor disk activity is always present though) you need more memory, otherwise it's more juice in the CPU (and a faster FSB) that is needed.
(shamless plug comming up)
And that "(almost) unnoticable skip" is truly gone if you use the latest unstable version of BladeEnc with the recently implemented -nogap switch.
Believe me, that "all tracks in the same mp3" idea isn't such a good idea as it sounds. It's better to make sure that the ripper takes care of pre- and postgaps (paranoia can do this), the encoder doesn't add any gaps (bladeenc with -nogap) and that the player plays multiple mp3s as one stream (mpg123). That way we have the best of both worlds.
Tord Jansson
BladeEnc Maintainer
Support will be handled by simply including their LGPL:ed library so there will be no quality difference. From the same version, MP3 support will be optional during compile time, giving us an OGG-only version of BladeEnc that might be used in all countries and a OGG & MP3 version that may only be used in patent free countries or if you have a special contract with Fraunhofer.
Of course, there will probably not be any particular advantage in using BladeEnc for OGG compression compared to other tools that will appear, but by doing this I hope to be able to leverage some of BladeEnc's popularity onto this new, free format and at the same time give Fraunhofer/Thomson a kick in the ass.
Tord Jansson
BladeEnc Developer
We all know that it's OK to bring free software to platforms like MacOS, BeOS and Windows, despite the fact that the underlying APIs and libraries (which the programs must be linked against) are proprietary.
Can't the same apply to Qt?
After all, Qt is a kind of system library, providing a common platform for all supported architectures (UNIX with X, Linux on framebuffer and Windows), so I don't think it's wrong to see it as a platform of its own, although it might be more of a "virtual platform", running "emulated" on the host platform.
I know we all want this problem to just go away and by acknowledgning Qt as a programming platform and not just a toolkit (as I understand it, Qt contains much more than just the graphical elements in order to make Qt code independent of other libraries so that it can be ported to all supported platforms, making it more of a platform than a toolkit) it could just happen.
/Tord
...the ISO code had NOTHING to do with the patents!
It's a common misconception that different MP3 encoders are affected by the patents since they are based on the ISO code. That is NOT correct.
Patents deals with technology and procedures, copyright deals with the source code!
The reference code is provided by ISO to help people understand MP3 encoding/decoding and they have nothing to do with the patents (except that they accepted patented or patent pending technology into the MPEG Layer 3 standard, which they should have a big kick in their butt for).
Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Consumer Electronics owns a lot of patents on technology used in MP3 encoding/decoding and they will demand a license from any encoder that uses their patented technology no matter if it's based on the ISO reference source or NOT.
Personally I don't know why the LAME team always have taken the approach of not distributing the entire source but only a patch, but I guess they decided to play it safe. Distributing the ISO reference source doesn't breach any patents, but it might possibly be a copyright infringement against ISO.
Take a look at their page, does that say anything about the patents not being enforceable against compiled versions of LAME anymore? No it doesn't, it just says "All ISO code removed!" among the new features, which of course is a nice milestone to reach (no possible copyright infringement, having complete masterhood of the code, having replaced all old bug-filled code with new clean code etc.), but doesn't affect the patent situation.
Technically it should be possible to create a completely patent free MP3 encoder by carefully reviewing all the patents (17 patents in total, unless their lawyers have "forgotten" to send me some) and then making sure that whatever implementation you go for doesn't use any of those specified processes, which is bloody hard since these patents were designed to intercept any attempt like that. Then if you succeed you would probably still have to go to court since they would sue you anyway, hoping that your implementation is close enough to get you stopped.
Also, very few people knows this, but there is a ticking bomb hidden in all this. Fraunhofer and Thomson don't have all the mp3 related patents, they are just the ones who have decided to demand a license for the use of their technology and pulled their patents into a common pool that you can license. More companies are claimed to have patents on mp3 technology (they are listed in the ISO documentations), but they are currently not enforcing them. What if they suddenly start to demand licenses for the use of their technology? Then it doesn't help that you have Fraunhofer/Thomson's permission, you also need another license to go on...
Also, I think that Slashdot should have checked this a bit more throughly before posting it (like checking with one of the LAME developers), the fact that they say "No more patching! Full souce code distribution since all ISO has been replaced!" and nothing about patents should have raised warning signs alone...
Also, the last time I checked, LAME was GPL and not LGPL...
Tord Jansson
BladeEnc Creator
Yeah, I'm on that list! Right at position 771 AND 772!
:)
:-/
:(
What!? They counted me TWICE? Once as tord.jansson@swipnet and then later as tord.jansson... hm... 248447 bytes for each of them... Hm, seems like they somehow counted me twice but with the SAME value or maybe they somehow split it in half.
Let's click on my name and see what projects they have mentioned me participating in, should be just BladeEnc... What!? makeMP3.codd!!! What the heck is THAT program!? Hm, I see... got to be some kind of frontend that has included the BladeEnc code...
Feels a bit odd getting credited for a program I don't know anything about, but still kind of okay...
On the other hand, I wonder how they came up with 248447 bytes, the BladeEnc code is about 1.5 meg
But then again, it wouldn't be fair to credit me for more anyway since BladeEnc is so heavily based on the original ISO code and the other BladeEnc contributors haven't gotten any credits since they're just mentioned on the homepage.
Guess this shows how far from precise this study is. A good attempt to measure something quite
imessurable though. Kudoz to all the people who must have put down an awfull lot of work on this and hope you could get some usefull out of the big picture although the small details are terribly wrong.
Tord Jansson
BladeEnc Creator
"The goal is "Software that doesn't suck". Personally, I don't care who writes it, or what it is. It could be Windows. It could be Solaris. It could be Linux. Who cares? I just want it to work well, without being a hassle."
Sorry if this sounds a bit like a rant, but I just wanted to point out that I totally disagree with that sentence.
For me, the freedom aspects of free software are far more important than having the technically best sollution. Actually, I'm using Linux even thought it's a far worse technical sollution for me and my needs than NT4. With Linux I have to deal with a lot more problems and frustration, for example:
1. I'm really missing a good C Development environment. MS Dev is by _far_ the most comprehensive, feature filled and well thought out development environment I've ever used. When using my current development tools on Linux it feels like I'm puffing along in a tractor when I could have been crusing along in a Ferrari and it actually affects the development time of my projects. KDevelop is on the right track, but still have a lot of things to sort out.
2. The lack of good desktop applications is still quite bad, although it's improving all the time. I sometimes feel like I'm in chains because I know of a tool that will do exactly what I want with only a few mouse clicks, it's there, right outside my reach because it runs on Windows, not Linux.
3. Everytime I buy some new hardware I have to first check if there are drivers for it. Is that scanner/printer/soundcard/camera/PDA supported?
4. GAMES. I'm missing all the games I used to play on my Windows machines! :(
So why do I put up with all this? Windows NT would definitely be a better technical sollution for _my_ personal needs and I would just have to borrow a copy from work and install it and everything would be just fine.
Simply because I value the freedom aspects of free software. I want to use a system and programs that I can tinker with as much as I want. I want to use programs that I can give to my friends. I don't want to be depending on a big software company who technically owns the software I'm just licensed to use. I don't want to pay $$$ every year to keep my word processor up to date so I can read the documents people send me. I don't want to be depending on the "goodwill" of a company for fixing that bug that really doesn't affect their sales but I desperately need to get fixed. I don't want to live in a world where the producers constantly makes two versions of the same program (one that's rediculously expensive and the other one is seriously downgraded) simply because they make slightly more money that way. I don't want to live in a world where developing countries on the edge of having a technological and economical breakthrough are hold back because greedy software companies require them to pay rediculously high software licenses. And I don't want a small number of software companies to be in charge of the infrastructure of tomorrow by holding the right to key software components or software patents since that would seriously degrade whatever is left of our democracy.
Of course I also want software that doesn't suck, but for me the quality of the software is really secondary to the freedom aspects (as long as it's not totally useless) which is proven by the fact that I'm using Linux as my desktop computer even though it isn't the best technical sollution for me _yet_. If Open Source development in the end leads to better software than the proprietary software model (which I also believe it does) that would be great, but it's not my main reason for supporting and taking part in the movement.
Ok, sorry for the rant and sorry if I offended somebody, but I really needed to get that of my chest. Otherwise I totally agree that we should worry less about enemies and concentrate more on getting our programs better.
A quite timely article I must say since I recently started to seriously think about putting together a Dual Celeron machine myself. :)
:(
However, I don't think I'll overclock it, I imagine I wouldn't be able to stand the noise from all those fans...
"Yeah they do allow it but its heavily restricted and give the people no real power to fight an unjust government." I know this is very off topic, but have you ever heard of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela? Both fought and defeated corrupt systems without any weapons.What they had was real power, weapons are just semi-real power. People have also tried to fight unjustice with weapons, but that rarely leads anywhere. Northern Ireland and the Middle East are examples of this. If a large majority (i.e. 90% of U.S. citizens against a possible future corrupt regime) wants to fight for their freedom they'll win with or without weapons. If a minority wants to fight for their freedom they will probably have better luck not using weapons. If they use weapons they will kill people and people will turn against them. Since they're the weaker part they will be defeated. If they don't use weapons, people might listen to their opinions and support their cause. If they are fought with weapons they might gain support from non-involved observers who might be a bigger threat against their oppressors.
[sorry for the AC post, but I'm at work now and don't have my password handy]
"Just curious, if the author is reading this, what made you release it under the LGPL rather than the GPL?"
Two major reasons actually:
1. BladeEnc has allready been out for a while and a large amount of BladeEnc users are using a closed source Windows ripper like Audiograbber, EAC, Easy CDDA Extractor 3 etc. All these programs are distributed as shareware and the authors have helped me promote BladeEnc. Jukka (creator of CDDA Extractor 3) actually created the DLL version of BladeEnc and Jackie (creator of Audiograbber) have been very supportive. It wouldn't be especially nice of me to suddenly turn my back against them and all the users who use BladeEnc in combination with their programs (which is probably half my userbase).
2. I'm fed up with this MP3 patent situation and those extemely expensive licenses. I want MP3's to be an open standard that can be used by both commercial and free packages. By making my code available for commercial products I do help them to keep down the cost (a number of software developers have shown the interest in purchasing the cheaper license (technology only, no code) from Fraunhofer and use BladeEnc's technology) and to make more products support the MP3 standard. I think this is very important since MP3 as a standard constantly is being fought by companies who are trying to push an even more closed format (like MS Audio, Real Audio, VQF etc) which might be better performance-wise, but would leave both the Free Software and Open Source Movement in the cold if they succeeded. Open standards, used both by free and proprietary software is essential for our success.
For another, future product I will most likely use the GPL instead.
/Tord
Hi Anonymous Freak,
:(
When it comes to that person and his article I can just recommend you to check their message board again. Quite a lot of people wrote comments explaining why we shouldn't listen to him and some explained it quite well. He seems to be a quite wellknown troll...
When it comes to your thoughts about MS integrating Explorer into the desktop I can just agree with you, I like it too and it seems to be the way of the future since both BeOS and KDE have done the same thing. The reason it has been so heavily discussed is not some technical facts, but because of Microsofts business tactics. MS did this in an attempt to completely destroy Netscape's market and that way used a monopoly in one area to try to get themselves a monopoly in another area. If Netscape hadn't been there they would most likely have sold their browser as a standalone product instead (and possibly included a much downgraded version with Windows).
If you're looking for a Window-manager that has the refinements of Windows I can highly recommend KDE 1.1. It seems to have *everything* that Windows has, including bult-in webbrowser and e-mail client and some additional very usefull stuff that you don't find in Windows (the normal Unix features for example). The Mandrake 5.3 distribution that comes preconfigured with KDE and was a breeze to set up was what certainly got me to entirely jump the Windows ship and join the Linux crowd. Before that I had been stuck in the position I believe you are in now, looking at Linux and hoping to be able to skip over but finding that it simply doesn't provide you with the ease of use and functionality that you have become dependent of for your daily use.
However, I don't know of a good Illustrator clone for Linux, so it might still be too early for you to jump off the Windows ship...
And just too avoid flames: Nope, I haven't tried Gnome yet and that might be a very good environment too, but for the moment I'm using KDE and recommend it for anyone attempting to switch over from Windows since I'm more than satisfied with it. However, I do intend to try Gnome some day in the future and I might switch if I find it to be better for my daily use.
Some people go to extremes when it comes to boycotting MS products, I don't. However, I do agree that many of their products are terribly bloated. But the main issue is that their methods of doing business are more or less criminal, making them a serious threat to most other software companies. When I find a serious alternative to a Microsoft product that I use (at work) I always gives it a try, mostly for the cause.
Just another person saying that you got it right on spot! ;)
Most people now and then tends to act a little bit egomanically when they think they're not given the credits for what they have done (and I agree with RMS that he and FSF have not been given the credit they deserve in mainstream articles, although I think that renaming the system is a BAD idea).
The sollution to this is simply to ignore their claims (or even better, think the situation over and give them the credits we think they are worth which not necessarily mount up to what they claim), NOT to try to crush their ego by replacing their code with new one!
If we would do that we would most likely be stuck in an eternal loop where we constantly replace perfectly working code with new one when we think the original creator goes a little bit over the top...
Hehe, I couldn't agree more with you. GEM was also the built in Window-system in the Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon series of computers and I loved it! Swift and nice even on an old 8 MHz machine...
However, haven't tried Gnome or KDE yet, maybe I find them to be even better...
Unless I've seriously overlooked something this isn't a bad thing, just good.
It won't stop anyone from using MP3's the way they are used today, it will just give the people who wants to sell their copyrighted music over the net as MP3 files a little more protection and that way the record labels might become more friendly into this kind of distribution and MP3 in general.
Some kind of protection is needed and if we can get an extension of MP3 instead of some kind of new, more closed fileformat it's good for us and everyone else.
I don't think that we will have to worry about hardware mp3 players requiring a watermark and even if they would do it we would only end up with MP3s watermarked liked "RiPpEd aNd eNcOdEd bY Da MaStEr" or something like that.