In a perfect world, that would be true. However, the world is not perfect and has not yet settled on standardized media formats (a situation Xiph.org, the makers of Ogg, Vorbis, Theora, FLAC, etc. are trying to fix). Therefore, end users need to know what format their media is in so they know which program to use to play it, whether their portable media player or set-top box supports it, etc.
Besides,.audio and.video either wouldn't be fully descriptive enough, or would be too descriptive. What if the file has other types of streams, such as a subtitles track or a MIDI (which is really more like musical notation, not sound) track or an animated vector graphics track or a virtual reality track? It seems to me that we'd need.subtitles,.notes (or.midi),.animation,.vr, etc. Either that, or just stick everything into a.media file and let the software parse the container format to figure out what kind of media it is, anyway.
Well, I'm not a Texan, but since it's a bill in the Texas state Senate, I figure you probably ought to contact your state Senator.
Also, since it's going to have to get out of committee before anyone else sees it (unless your state government is unusual), you could contact the other Senators who make up whichever committee it goes into -- which, based on a 10-second scan of the list of committees, I'm guessing is this one. But I could be wrong.
Oh, I'm sure Speex is technologically great; I was just wondering how successful it's been in terms of hardware support (by dedicated encoder/decoder chips, not general-purpose FPGAs or CPUs).
With Massachusetts, bunches of foreign governments, and now Texas realizing the importance of document formats that are Free, future proof, and equally accessible to all citizens (including those who don't use Windows), I think it's about time the other forty-eight states introduced similar bills of their own. I just wrote an email suggesting such to my representative; now it's your turn!
...when we're talking about the file format, that is. In this case, however, we're talking about chips designed specifically to decode the Vorbis audio stream, so "Vorbis" (without Ogg, unless the chip is capable of understanding the container format too) is the appropriate name to use in this thread.
Unless I'm mistaken, just about everything (e.g. Windows Media Audio, AAC, Vorbis) is better than MP3. What's debatable is how the former three compare to each other.
Perhaps Ogg for all internal sounds to a device, and the MP3 capability for sounds the user wants to add so they don't have to use a "weird custom proprietary" format (despite the the fact it's not).
That makes sense, since even if the user has heard of Vorbis he doesn't necessarily want to re-encode (and certainly doesn't want to transcode, as the resulting file would sound worse because the previous encoding to MP3 would have thrown away information that Vorbis would need).
Well, the problem is that you don't understand what "Ogg" and "Vorbis" (and "Theora") actually are. There's actually two different things here: codecs and container formats. "Ogg" refers to the container format; it's comparable to Quicktime, AVI, or Matroska. "Vorbis" and "Theora" refer to codecs (audio and video respectively); Vorbis is comparable to MPEG 1 layer 3 (aka MP3) or Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) and Theora is comparable to MPEG 2, DivX or H.264.
So, when people say "Ogg Vorbis" what they're actually referring to is a Vorbis audio stream inside an Ogg container. Presumably, it's possible to have a file with a raw Vorbis bitstream (without the Ogg container), and it's certainly possible to have an Ogg container without a Vorbis bitstream. This is also why Ogg Theora files have an.ogg extension; they're actually files with a Theora video stream and (probably) Vorbis audio stream, inside an Ogg container.
Many voice mail systems only use 32kbps sampling and achieve fine results for that purpose, and the algorithms are easy enough to render on a 8-bit micro costing 50c.
I'm not sure exactly how lightweight the algorithm is, but Speex would be more appropriate for that than a general-purpose audio codec, and has the same "no license fees" advantage as Vorbis. I wonder how Speex is doing in "the industry?"
The winter I was there, our balmy Seattle weather dropped into the teens for a lengthy period of time, yet I never turned on my heater. The heat being put out by my refrigerator and my Pentium 4 was enough to keep me nice and toasty warm.
Although it's great if the heat produced by appliances as a byproduct is enough to heat the space, it's important to note that you shouldn't run them for the purpose of producing heat, because a heat pump can accomplish the task using less energy. See Wikipedia:
When used for heating a building on a mild day, a typical heat pump has a COP [Coefficient Of Performance] of three to four, whereas a typical electric resistance heater has a COP of 1.0. That is, one joule of electrical energy will cause a resistance heater to produce one joule of useful heat, while under ideal conditions, one joule of electrical energy can cause a heat pump to move much more than one joule of heat from a cooler place to a warmer place. Sometimes this is inappropriately expressed as an efficiency value greater than 100%, as in the statement, "XYZ brand heat pumps operate at up to 400% efficiency!" This is inaccurate, since the work does not make heat, but instead moves existing heat "upstream"; otherwise, this would be a perpetual-motion machine.
I'd be more interested to see the power consumption differences between an off she shelf Best Buy computer of 5-10 years ago compared to one of today.
Ten years ago, I had a Packard Bell 486 desktop (yes, purchased at Best Buy). I don't know how much power it used, exactly, but what I can tell you is that the CPU was passively cooled by a heatsink machined with cubes -- not fins -- about 2mm on a side. On my newer computers, even the RAM has bigger heatsinks (and therefore dissipates more energy) than that, let alone the chipset, GPU, or CPU.
Microsoft seems happy to be helping drive this trend towards ridiculous power consumption.
Of course! The vast majority of Windows licenses are sold via OEMs. If people stop buying new computers (because the current ones are fast enough), how would Microsoft make any money?
...it seems there's a fairly reasonable chance that almost any dell (and possibly hp/compaq too) with a Core Solo or better has a TPM and has it enabled.
How does it know that you used AES-then-Blowfish encryption? Because it tries all of the schemes one by one. It tries AES alone with the password you gave. Doesn't work. Tries Blowfish alone. Tries about half a dozen other single-encryption schemes. Then it tries the multiple combinations: Blowfish-Serpent, then AES-Blowfish, etc., going down the list until something works. If nothing works, then it concludes that you entered the wrong password.
It's not a perfect solution...
No kidding -- that algorithm you described runs in factorial [ O(n!) ] time! I guess TrueCrypt must not support all that many different encryption algorithms, then...
Explain to me how point 4 is feasible? A convicted monopolist suing non-customers. Yes they could technically do it but is it worth it to Microsoft? And what would be the government's response? Could higher courts overturn a favorable Microsoft decision?
That depends on whether the Federal government were currently pro-big-business or not.
SCO looks like they may pretty much end when their assets are frozen due to a preliminary injunction filed by... Novell.
Indeed, which has the benefit of keeping SCO's assets away from IBM. Note that that injunction came after the Novell-Microsoft deal, and everything becomes considerably less confusing.
I don't see how Novell would be solely unable to distribute because of their beliefs.
If Novell believes that the Linux kernel is encumbered by patents, then it must believe that it no longer has the right to distribute the kernel (because of section 7 of the GPL). Since it is continuing to distribute, it's deliberately choosing to engage in activities that it believes violates the license. In my opinion this constitutes an act in bad faith and should be actionable regardless of the fact of whether the kernel is actually patent encumbered or not.
But GPLv3 code cannot be distributed with GPLv2 code. The two licenses are not compatible with each other. So most likely, what will happen is they will either continue to be dual licensed or forked. But without a kernel, i guess the question remaining might be why fork it if it can't be used any more?
GPLv3 code cannot be distributed with GPLv2[-only] code in the same piece of software. In contrast, distributing separate GPLv2 and v3 software in the same package (as would be the case in a Linux distribution shipping a v2 kernel and a v3 GCC) is perfectly OK because it constitutes "mere aggregation."
In other words, your last sentence is wrong because the forked software can be used. To further demonstrate your error, if you were right then stuff like Cygwin couldn't legally exist because its GPL license would conflict with the proprietary license of the NT kernel. Yet Cygwin does exist, so you must be wrong. QED.
Ahh i know, your going to get uptight because you purchased a device that does a specific thing for a specific purpose in a specific way and was manufactured for those specific reasons and don't have the ability to change it easily. Well, buy something that can be changed.
The fact that the software used in the TiVo is GPL is supposed to ensure that it can be changed. The intent of the FSF and most other people who license their software under the GPL is that if someone (like TiVo) wants to make a closed product, then they should write their own damn software without the benefit of the community.
A software license shouldn't regulat[sic] how hardware does something. That is just selfish and bullheadedness.
No, that's just the conditions under which the software is distributed. If TiVo doesn't like it, then TiVo can simply choose not to use GPL software!
Here's the bottom line: if someone distributes GPL software, they're supposed to give everyone else the same rights they had. TiVo and Novell aren't doing this, so they should lose their right to distribute the software. It's that simple.
And the seems to be mostly a FSF problems. It is as if they are on recess in third grade and looked at novel and microsoft playing and said "wha wha what! I thought we were friends, You cannot be friends with microsoft and us at the same time. So we don't like you anymore if your going to hang out with Microsoft. Whats it going to be novel, Us or them". It is sad really.
No, it's not. It's an issue of the fact that the GPL is supposed to ensure that anyone who distributes the software gives everyone the same rights they had. Novell's patent agreement breaks this arrangement, so the FSF is right to fix the license to prevent such abuses in the future.
The point is, when i download a kernel, it is distributed with CP and everything else.
No, it's not. The kernel and the GNU file utilities (including cp) are entirely separate pieces of software. In fact, they are also separate from GCC, which is separate from X, which is separate from bash, which is separate from emacs, etc.
When I comile[sic] it...
With what? GCC, which is separate from the kernel?
...and have a working kernel, CP is there.
cp is there because it and the rest of your operating system were there before you downloaded the new kernel. You can't download a kernel tar archive onto a completely blank PC and expect to be able to do anything with it, you know!
The tools will need to be installed seperatly[sic] or they will be v2 in the kernel. Any distribution will not be able to install GPLv3 tools in a v2 kernel and distribute it.
These statements make no sense. There's no such thing as "installing tools in the kernel," regardless of what license they use. Tools (like cp) are separate programs that run in the userland.
And this is for the same reasons nvidia had the problem with their closed source drivers.
No, it's not the same reason at all. nVidia's drivers actually are installed into the kernel, which is the opposite of the situation here.
Anyway, the point people are trying to make here is that even though Novell could continue distributing the kernel itself and old versions of GNU software (e.g. cp, GCC, emacs, etc.), the FSF will see to it that the GPL prevents it from legally distributing new versions of GNU software. Because of this, SuSE will be stuck with more and more obsolete versions, and will become less and less viable as a product.
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In a perfect world, that would be true. However, the world is not perfect and has not yet settled on standardized media formats (a situation Xiph.org, the makers of Ogg, Vorbis, Theora, FLAC, etc. are trying to fix). Therefore, end users need to know what format their media is in so they know which program to use to play it, whether their portable media player or set-top box supports it, etc.
Besides, .audio and .video either wouldn't be fully descriptive enough, or would be too descriptive. What if the file has other types of streams, such as a subtitles track or a MIDI (which is really more like musical notation, not sound) track or an animated vector graphics track or a virtual reality track? It seems to me that we'd need .subtitles, .notes (or .midi), .animation, .vr, etc. Either that, or just stick everything into a .media file and let the software parse the container format to figure out what kind of media it is, anyway.
Except, of course, for the fact that free speech (not to mention all speech) is itself copyrighted -- by the person who spoke it.
...Or did you mean to write something more precise?
From RFC 2606:
(Next time, try the webserver -- that's how I learned this.)
Well, I'm not a Texan, but since it's a bill in the Texas state Senate, I figure you probably ought to contact your state Senator.
Also, since it's going to have to get out of committee before anyone else sees it (unless your state government is unusual), you could contact the other Senators who make up whichever committee it goes into -- which, based on a 10-second scan of the list of committees, I'm guessing is this one. But I could be wrong.
Oh, I'm sure Speex is technologically great; I was just wondering how successful it's been in terms of hardware support (by dedicated encoder/decoder chips, not general-purpose FPGAs or CPUs).
With Massachusetts, bunches of foreign governments, and now Texas realizing the importance of document formats that are Free, future proof, and equally accessible to all citizens (including those who don't use Windows), I think it's about time the other forty-eight states introduced similar bills of their own. I just wrote an email suggesting such to my representative; now it's your turn!
...when we're talking about the file format, that is. In this case, however, we're talking about chips designed specifically to decode the Vorbis audio stream, so "Vorbis" (without Ogg, unless the chip is capable of understanding the container format too) is the appropriate name to use in this thread.
Unless I'm mistaken, just about everything (e.g. Windows Media Audio, AAC, Vorbis) is better than MP3. What's debatable is how the former three compare to each other.
That makes sense, since even if the user has heard of Vorbis he doesn't necessarily want to re-encode (and certainly doesn't want to transcode, as the resulting file would sound worse because the previous encoding to MP3 would have thrown away information that Vorbis would need).
Well, the problem is that you don't understand what "Ogg" and "Vorbis" (and "Theora") actually are. There's actually two different things here: codecs and container formats. "Ogg" refers to the container format; it's comparable to Quicktime, AVI, or Matroska. "Vorbis" and "Theora" refer to codecs (audio and video respectively); Vorbis is comparable to MPEG 1 layer 3 (aka MP3) or Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) and Theora is comparable to MPEG 2, DivX or H.264.
So, when people say "Ogg Vorbis" what they're actually referring to is a Vorbis audio stream inside an Ogg container. Presumably, it's possible to have a file with a raw Vorbis bitstream (without the Ogg container), and it's certainly possible to have an Ogg container without a Vorbis bitstream. This is also why Ogg Theora files have an .ogg extension; they're actually files with a Theora video stream and (probably) Vorbis audio stream, inside an Ogg container.
You've got that backwards. Vorbis is a better codec (in terms of sound quality at a given level of compression) than MP3.
I'm not sure exactly how lightweight the algorithm is, but Speex would be more appropriate for that than a general-purpose audio codec, and has the same "no license fees" advantage as Vorbis. I wonder how Speex is doing in "the industry?"
Perhaps the chip can decode both Vorbis and MP3.
Although it's great if the heat produced by appliances as a byproduct is enough to heat the space, it's important to note that you shouldn't run them for the purpose of producing heat, because a heat pump can accomplish the task using less energy. See Wikipedia:
Ten years ago, I had a Packard Bell 486 desktop (yes, purchased at Best Buy). I don't know how much power it used, exactly, but what I can tell you is that the CPU was passively cooled by a heatsink machined with cubes -- not fins -- about 2mm on a side. On my newer computers, even the RAM has bigger heatsinks (and therefore dissipates more energy) than that, let alone the chipset, GPU, or CPU.
Of course! The vast majority of Windows licenses are sold via OEMs. If people stop buying new computers (because the current ones are fast enough), how would Microsoft make any money?
Also [newer] Macs and Thinkpads.
No kidding -- that algorithm you described runs in factorial [ O(n!) ] time! I guess TrueCrypt must not support all that many different encryption algorithms, then...
At this point, that's really the only safe option.
That depends on whether the Federal government were currently pro-big-business or not.
Indeed, which has the benefit of keeping SCO's assets away from IBM. Note that that injunction came after the Novell-Microsoft deal, and everything becomes considerably less confusing.
If Novell believes that the Linux kernel is encumbered by patents, then it must believe that it no longer has the right to distribute the kernel (because of section 7 of the GPL). Since it is continuing to distribute, it's deliberately choosing to engage in activities that it believes violates the license. In my opinion this constitutes an act in bad faith and should be actionable regardless of the fact of whether the kernel is actually patent encumbered or not.
GPLv3 code cannot be distributed with GPLv2[-only] code in the same piece of software. In contrast, distributing separate GPLv2 and v3 software in the same package (as would be the case in a Linux distribution shipping a v2 kernel and a v3 GCC) is perfectly OK because it constitutes "mere aggregation."
In other words, your last sentence is wrong because the forked software can be used. To further demonstrate your error, if you were right then stuff like Cygwin couldn't legally exist because its GPL license would conflict with the proprietary license of the NT kernel. Yet Cygwin does exist, so you must be wrong. QED.
The fact that the software used in the TiVo is GPL is supposed to ensure that it can be changed. The intent of the FSF and most other people who license their software under the GPL is that if someone (like TiVo) wants to make a closed product, then they should write their own damn software without the benefit of the community.
No, that's just the conditions under which the software is distributed. If TiVo doesn't like it, then TiVo can simply choose not to use GPL software!
Here's the bottom line: if someone distributes GPL software, they're supposed to give everyone else the same rights they had. TiVo and Novell aren't doing this, so they should lose their right to distribute the software. It's that simple.
No, it's not. It's an issue of the fact that the GPL is supposed to ensure that anyone who distributes the software gives everyone the same rights they had. Novell's patent agreement breaks this arrangement, so the FSF is right to fix the license to prevent such abuses in the future.
Wow, you really are "sumdumass!"
No, it's not. The kernel and the GNU file utilities (including cp) are entirely separate pieces of software. In fact, they are also separate from GCC, which is separate from X, which is separate from bash, which is separate from emacs, etc.
With what? GCC, which is separate from the kernel?
cp is there because it and the rest of your operating system were there before you downloaded the new kernel. You can't download a kernel tar archive onto a completely blank PC and expect to be able to do anything with it, you know!
These statements make no sense. There's no such thing as "installing tools in the kernel," regardless of what license they use. Tools (like cp) are separate programs that run in the userland.
No, it's not the same reason at all. nVidia's drivers actually are installed into the kernel, which is the opposite of the situation here.
Anyway, the point people are trying to make here is that even though Novell could continue distributing the kernel itself and old versions of GNU software (e.g. cp, GCC, emacs, etc.), the FSF will see to it that the GPL prevents it from legally distributing new versions of GNU software. Because of this, SuSE will be stuck with more and more obsolete versions, and will become less and less viable as a product.
Effectively, they want society to regress to the Dark Ages. What could possibly be more conservative than that?