iCast is sponsoring Ogg development in addition to lending legal and promotional resources (not to mention industry push to get it adopted). They've been great guys and have generally 'gotten it' about Open Source and the Ogg project. They embrace the penguin...
(Is the image of hugging a penguin as disturbing to you as it is to me?:-)
>Either they've changed the password from anoncvs >to something else, or the CVS server is >slashdotted.
More likely there was a totally unrelated network problem between you and cvs.xiph.org. Our connection has not been anywhere near saturation for several months (eg, not slashdotted), and there has been no change to the CVS setup recently.
As for build problems, the only problem should have been lack of 'make install'.
Incorrect. ISO allows elements of standards to be covered by patents and that is the case with MP3. Among other things, FhG has patented the MP3 filterbank. It is not possible to make (or play) mp3s without a filterbank; it's an essential element of the format. Thus, Fraunhofer's claim that it is impossible to make an mp3 encoder that does not infringe on their patents.
Ogg Vorbis is an Open (free and beer) alternative to mp3 and other closed streaming formats. We're not at 1.0 yet, but we're in feature freeze for 1.0. The format is stable.
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/
Also, see Kenneth's post from a little earlier for his user-friendlier Ogg Vorbis tools (the CVS at xiph.org has the libraries, example code and plugins, and only an underpowered example encoder. Kenneth has written Vorbize, a better encoder).
>Does this mean that if I use a properly licensed >encoder to create MP3's and I sell those MP3's on >my website, that I'm >supposed to give them more money?
That's exactly it. Now you see why companies are suddenly throwing money and programmers at Ogg Vorbis:-) We'll have mp3 fairly thoroughly replaced within the industry by year's end. Don't worry too much, you *do* have an Open, bulletproof alternative in Ogg.
> What gives? Their patent covers the encoding > process, and if I use an encoder > that properly licensed, they should stop taking > money from my wallet right there.
They obviously disagree, and they have lawyers with sticks.
>Is there a better, totally open format out there? >I've seen vorbis, but worry about its stability >as a format
The format is stable. What you encode now will work from now until eternity. Consider me the horse's mouth.
> as well as its > bitrates (128 is about half what I'd like).
An up-to-256kbps stereo (128kbps per channel) VBR release is in progress now, likely to appear in a few weeks. This release will include low bitrate as well.
Mosaic was open. I still have source for 2.7b5 languishing in my archives.
However, Motif, the widget set Mosaic used was not. There are free implementations of the Motif API, and Mosaic did work with them (even if it originally took some fudging. I dunno how good they eventually got as Mosaic fell by the wayside just as the Motif saga was getting interesting).
I know you'll probably say "do'h!" when you you read it... but I humbly submit the Web itself as a recent example of innovation in the free software community.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's just one of those 'too obvious to remember' kind of things:-)
The Vorbis 1.0 file spec is now frozen; the libs and headers in CVS are compliant. A formal Vorbis 1.0 release will happen as soon as a better encoder/decoder util is in CVS (and a bit more tuning happens that will *not* affect the format). Streams encoded as of now should be immortal. Once Kenneth rebuilds vorbize with/against the updated libs, those streams are the Real Thing.
BTW, the changed codebooks do not affect the bitstream format; the codebooks are packed and included in the bitstream itself. The changes we made to the format recently were more mundane than that.
>It's been said many times by others: if you have >done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid >of.
If you believe that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you. America is currently whipped up into such a 'protect our children' frenzy that it's practically a fetish; one of the few that regularly disturbs me.
I'll state the following for the record: I'm not a pedophile, consumer of kiddie porn, or any number of related horrible things. I don't want to see exploitation or torture of children any more than any sane adult would. I'm planning on having my own kids in the not too distant future (although perhaps slightly more distant than my wife;-) and I want them to grow up happy, healthy and secure.
I am a consumer of net Porn. Not a particualrly rabid consumer, but a reasonably regular one. I see nothing shameful about pornography in general, and I don't care if *you* do. Over the past ten years or so (yes, porn predates the web), I've even had paying memberships at a few of my favorite sites.
Perhaps I'm sharing too much, but I happen to go for the really 'soft' stuff; hardcore action is just... kinda strange... Closeups of genitals and any number of other things that the mainstream porn industry thinks is oh-so-hot is a major turnoff. I like neutral, not particularly sexual poses of healthy, happy women. Pretty, happy women are a turn on... as they should be for practically any healthy het male! For this reason, I also like nudist photos (and generally am a believer in nudism myself). So far, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Feynman himself had more interesting tastes;-)
For some reason though, alot of naturist and nudist sites also advertise themselves (often hidden in meta tags) as 'kiddie' 'illegal underage' or 'lolita' porn. Why? Heck if I know. I think the whole net-porn industry needs a major dose of truth in advertising, but whatever. So it's the case that naturist sites often run hand in hand with fake (or real) kiddie sites. You can't tell until you visit.
Is someone logging the sites I go to? Am I gonna get a knock on my door at 7am because some asshole Yahoo who thought he was doing us all a major service saw I went to a site with 'kiddie porn' in a META tag and handed it to my local Police department? You might even find a pic or two in my Netscape cache from a site where I only hit the front page, (or more likely a banner ad). It almost makes me want to pull this stunt as a hoax ('turn in' a co-conspirator) in order to discredit the whole idea before it gets started.
When Megan's Law first started being enforced here in CA, several men were *PLACED ON THE SEX OFFENDER LIST ERRONEOUSLY*. One poor guy's neighbors noticed before he did, tried to burn down his house and in general sent alot of nasty death threats. Of course no one believed him when he claimed to be innocent! Who would trust someone on a Police list as a pedophile?
I don't know what it is about groups of people and mob mentality. Admit it: all we're looking for here, rather than a legitimate way of protecting children, is a new excuse for a witch hunt. Don't you just *love* that rush of righteous indignation? That justified feeling of hate for another human? That burning desire to wipe out the evil and ask questions later? The number of times folks in this comment lists have referred to the third-person, evil 'them' is disturbing.
If *I* got on a list by accident, could I trust all of you to stop and think for a second before tearing me to shreds?
...there's no document yet (although the only reason for that is lack of time). However, the code for the psychoacoustics is not totally impenetrable; check out the CVS code on the new_acoustics_pending_merge_20000328 branch and look at vorbis/lib/masking.h and vorbis/lib/psy.c
Hee hee. Let's ignore everything even remotely having to do with the format and it's implications and flame about names. This is more fun:-)
The name of the format is 'Ogg'. Just 'Ogg'. It has less unique characters than 'mp3' and can be pronounced in one syllable. Where I come from, that counts as pretty easy. Try it.
"Fish"
"Cat"
"Ogg"
Vorbis is the name of a CODEC that Ogg uses. Just like 'Sorensen' is one of 'Quicktime's' video codecs. 'Ogg' is much easier than 'Quicktime' too.
...and the file extention is *also*.ogg. In the future when you get an ogg file, you know an.ogg player will handle it. How could you get simpler?
But wait! There's More!
...well, no, actually, there isn't. Anything more would make this harder, and we're all about 'easy'!
I'm taking time to answer a few questions as it seems a number of vocal folks have started posting without looking at the Vorbis web pages first. Practically every question and musing here is addressed there...
First off, I wasn't ready for this. Vorbis is not at release, although I hope that will be soon. I'm not releasing before it's ready.... and it isn't quite ready. Most of the fun stuff has been going on on a CVS branch; the mainline is only a functional, stable, dull, unimpressive version for starting application work. That way when Vorbis *is* released, all the Sonique, XMMS, Winamp, kmpg and Freeamp folks will have to do is recompile.
Second, the name 'Xiphophorus'; the organization is a democracy and I was outvoted. I personally like to emphasize 'xiph.org'. I rather Like 'Ogg' and 'Vorbis' though. Oh, and it's not Jesus spanking a snake. It's Thor, Mjollnir and Jörmungandr. I have a page about the names/logos; go read it.
Lastly, distributing hacked up encoders right now is fine, but keep in mind, that as soon as the new psychoacoustic engine is merged into the CVS main branch the bitstream format will change. The change is minor, but it will break existsing streams. That will happen this week, so you don't need to contain your enthusiasm too long:-)
I haven't been an active roof & tunnel hacker in over 10 years. But I'll say this to other [more current] MIT folks who may be reading:
Please don't elaborate. We don't want the attention. Real hackers don't brag, and if you do, two things will happen:
1) More losers who 'w4nt t0 b3 c00l d00dz!' will show up and demand to be taken hacking. MIT is now in the news because an outside student was hurt hacking. A single example of such an incident could be enough for MIT administration to preemptively bend over and lube up for the national media again. Please don't give the media something juicy; they have no sense of balance, proportion, context or control.
2) The more visible hacking is, the more the CPs will be charged to 'do something about it'.
This is part of *MIT* culture. Sharing with the world is not a good idea and is very likely to end one of the parts of the MIT experience I enjoyed the most (and would like curious, responsible students to continue enjoying in the future).
Rob, et al, I'd personally appreciate if MIT hacking stories don't appear on Slashdot in the future. I know your heart was in the right place, but MIT students lose becuase of the attention.
>Seriously, has the term "hacking" become that generic?
No one is paying attention... do you only *post* or do you actually *read* too? (Sorry, not just directed at you, Dear Poster).
Hacking == Exploring/Pranks is the *original* definition. Not the new one. Computer Hackers borrowed the term from the roof and tunnel hackers, not the other way around.
Cal Tech folks don't call it hacking because that word isn't part of their culture.
The word 'hacking' applied to exploration and practical jokes (with an engineering bent) predate computers by nearly a century. Hacks, called as such, have been a tradition at MIT for nearly all of its ~130 year history.
The early computer hackers (many of whom were at MIT) just borrowed the MIT term in its engineering sense.
>and yes, I have read the jargon file to get the >definition of a hacker. I just think that >prowler/sneak != hacker)
Sorry, it was our word for 100 years or so before you came along.
Actually, this isn't a battle over 'the right to copy'. This is a battle over 'the right to distribute'. If the RIAA wins, and SDMI is the only allowed mass music format, who do you think will be handing out the keys (backed by Congress and other industry Big Hitters)? They're already trying to plant their meme: "You use mp3? You must be a criminal." You've already swallowed it. I expect a great deal of America to do the same.
I'm a small-time artist (or was not too long ago anyway). I don't pirate CDs. I really *do* delete mp3s I download if I don't plan to buy the album (and I've bought many albums after getting to hear a few more of the songs on it). When the predecessor of the RIAA tried to stop DAT, it hurt *me*; it took away a tool I needed to record and distribute my music. The industry tried to stop the VCR, reel to reel, and the compact cassette, all tools I needed and used to their fullest. When the RIAA bans mp3 (not that I think they'll succeed) it prevents me from distributing my own music (and trading legit amateur music with my friends). "You want to distribute music without a contract? You must be a criminal."
To drive the point home: Heard much from Joan Osbourne recently? No, because her recording label hasn't liked her second album attempts (she wanted to go in a different direction), refuses to release the music and yet retains rights to it all. Her only option is to not record again. Same with XTC (whose contract recently expired), Prince (who is so pissed at Sony he's planning to rerecord *all* of his hits from the 80s). Don't give me *any* line about the RIAA or the music industry having anyone's interests at heart; their own musicians won't come out to back them.
The RIAA represents corporations with a big fat cow of money at stake. It's common sense: They will act in their own interests. They'll try the easy ways and go for the biggest pot of cash first. That in itself is not greedy or evil (although it is amoral). The tactics they've decided to use are the worst kind of FUD. "You don't believe in the Free Market and Capitalism? You must be a criminal."
The RIAA wants to turn a battle for artists' rights (that's right; I'm on the artists'-- my-- side) into a piracy story. It is not in their interests for artists to have any freedom. That will cut into their profits, so what do you expect them to do? The DVD Forum (which doesn't particularly like Linux or OSS; they want you to play on platforms they can strike Deals with) are turning a battle entirely about interoperability into a battle about piracy. "You want to watch DVDs with unapproved software? You must be a criminal."
Actually, there are several people actively developing in the backround, we just moved person-to-person discussion mostly off the main list once we got settled.... perhaps that wasn't so hot an idea:-) It gives the impression not much is happening.
Anyway, we have working not-release-ready code in CVS (the bitstreams are mostly uncompressed, that's the unfinished part), an XMMS plugin, sample encoders/decoders and are currently finishing up the bitstream format by integrating the just-finished VQ code.
Things are moving right along. Expect a public shakedown cruise of the first cut later this month (January 2000). By then, I hope to have some free time to 'freshen' the web pages a bit. Right now, hacking HTML is too seductive to risk;-)
Ricochet works well. I've had mine for three years of constant use now, and had only one two-hour period of downtime in that entire time. It's actually the most reliable access I've had in the Bay Area. Every time my PacBell DSL goes out (weekly or daily occurrence depending on my karma), my Ricochet keeps my CVS reporitories connected...
Only one gotcha- some of the PPP endpoints on the Metricom side don't seem to play nicely with Linux's concept of compressed headers. Don't use them and you'll be all set.
Slashdot Mirror
(Is the image of hugging a penguin as disturbing to you as it is to me? :-)
Monty
>Either they've changed the password from anoncvs
>to something else, or the CVS server is
>slashdotted.
More likely there was a totally unrelated network problem between you and cvs.xiph.org. Our connection has not been anywhere near saturation for several months (eg, not slashdotted), and there has been no change to the CVS setup recently.
As for build problems, the only problem should have been lack of 'make install'.
Monty
There is an Ogg input plugin for Winamp in the main Vorbis CVS repository at xiph.org.
Monty
Incorrect. ISO allows elements of standards to be covered by patents and that is the case with MP3. Among other things, FhG has patented the MP3 filterbank. It is not possible to make (or play) mp3s without a filterbank; it's an essential element of the format. Thus, Fraunhofer's claim that it is impossible to make an mp3 encoder that does not infringe on their patents.
Monty
Ogg Vorbis is an Open (free and beer) alternative to mp3 and other closed streaming formats. We're not at 1.0 yet, but we're in feature freeze for 1.0. The format is stable.
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/
Also, see Kenneth's post from a little earlier for his user-friendlier Ogg Vorbis tools (the CVS at xiph.org has the libraries, example code and plugins, and only an underpowered example encoder. Kenneth has written Vorbize, a better encoder).
Monty
>Does this mean that if I use a properly licensed
:-) We'll have mp3 fairly thoroughly replaced within the industry by year's end. Don't worry too much, you *do* have an Open, bulletproof alternative in Ogg.
>encoder to create MP3's and I sell those MP3's on
>my website, that I'm
>supposed to give them more money?
That's exactly it. Now you see why companies are suddenly throwing money and programmers at Ogg Vorbis
> What gives? Their patent covers the encoding
> process, and if I use an encoder
> that properly licensed, they should stop taking
> money from my wallet right there.
They obviously disagree, and they have lawyers with sticks.
Monty
http://www.xiph.org/
>Is there a better, totally open format out there?
>I've seen vorbis, but worry about its stability
>as a format
The format is stable. What you encode now will work from now until eternity. Consider me the horse's mouth.
> as well as its
> bitrates (128 is about half what I'd like).
An up-to-256kbps stereo (128kbps per channel) VBR release is in progress now, likely to appear in a few weeks. This release will include low bitrate as well.
Monty
http://www.xiph.org/
Mosaic was open. I still have source for 2.7b5 languishing in my archives.
However, Motif, the widget set Mosaic used was not. There are free implementations of the Motif API, and Mosaic did work with them (even if it originally took some fudging. I dunno how good they eventually got as Mosaic fell by the wayside just as the Motif saga was getting interesting).
Monty
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's just one of those 'too obvious to remember' kind of things :-)
Monty
BTW, the changed codebooks do not affect the bitstream format; the codebooks are packed and included in the bitstream itself. The changes we made to the format recently were more mundane than that.
Monty
http://www.xiph.org/
>It's been said many times by others: if you have
;-) and I want them to grow up happy, healthy and secure.
;-)
>done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid
>of.
If you believe that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you. America is currently whipped up into such a 'protect our children' frenzy that it's practically a fetish; one of the few that regularly disturbs me.
I'll state the following for the record: I'm not a pedophile, consumer of kiddie porn, or any number of related horrible things. I don't want to see exploitation or torture of children any more than any sane adult would. I'm planning on having my own kids in the not too distant future (although perhaps slightly more distant than my wife
I am a consumer of net Porn. Not a particualrly rabid consumer, but a reasonably regular one. I see nothing shameful about pornography in general, and I don't care if *you* do. Over the past ten years or so (yes, porn predates the web), I've even had paying memberships at a few of my favorite sites.
Perhaps I'm sharing too much, but I happen to go for the really 'soft' stuff; hardcore action is just... kinda strange... Closeups of genitals and any number of other things that the mainstream porn industry thinks is oh-so-hot is a major turnoff. I like neutral, not particularly sexual poses of healthy, happy women. Pretty, happy women are a turn on... as they should be for practically any healthy het male! For this reason, I also like nudist photos (and generally am a believer in nudism myself). So far, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Feynman himself had more interesting tastes
For some reason though, alot of naturist and nudist sites also advertise themselves (often hidden in meta tags) as 'kiddie' 'illegal underage' or 'lolita' porn. Why? Heck if I know.
I think the whole net-porn industry needs a major dose of truth in advertising, but whatever. So it's the case that naturist sites often run hand in hand with fake (or real) kiddie sites. You can't tell until you visit.
Is someone logging the sites I go to? Am I gonna get a knock on my door at 7am because some asshole Yahoo who thought he was doing us all a major service saw I went to a site with 'kiddie porn' in a META tag and handed it to my local Police department? You might even find a pic or two in my Netscape cache from a site where I only hit the front page, (or more likely a banner ad). It almost makes me want to pull this stunt as a hoax ('turn in' a co-conspirator) in order to discredit the whole idea before it gets started.
When Megan's Law first started being enforced here in CA, several men were *PLACED ON THE SEX OFFENDER LIST ERRONEOUSLY*. One poor guy's neighbors noticed before he did, tried to burn down his house and in general sent alot of nasty death threats. Of course no one believed him when he claimed to be innocent! Who would trust someone on a Police list as a pedophile?
I don't know what it is about groups of people and mob mentality. Admit it: all we're looking for here, rather than a legitimate way of protecting children, is a new excuse for a witch hunt. Don't you just *love* that rush of righteous indignation? That justified feeling of hate for another human? That burning desire to wipe out the evil and ask questions later? The number of times folks in this comment lists have referred to the third-person, evil 'them' is disturbing.
If *I* got on a list by accident, could I trust all of you to stop and think for a second before tearing me to shreds?
I think I could not.
Monty
http://www.xiph.org/
This was posted by an outside source. Xiph.org has not yet announced anything.
Monty
Worry not friend, I know this is in good fun :-)
Monty
Also, for references, see the most recent mail archive article on that subject.
Monty
The name of the format is 'Ogg'. Just 'Ogg'. It has less unique characters than 'mp3' and can be pronounced in one syllable. Where I come from, that counts as pretty easy. Try it.
- "Fish"
- "Cat"
- "Ogg"
Vorbis is the name of a CODEC that Ogg uses. Just like 'Sorensen' is one of 'Quicktime's' video codecs. 'Ogg' is much easier than 'Quicktime' too.But wait! There's More!
Monty xiph.org
I'm taking time to answer a few questions as it seems a number of vocal folks have started posting without looking at the Vorbis web pages first. Practically every question and musing here is addressed there...
First off, I wasn't ready for this. Vorbis is not at release, although I hope that will be soon. I'm not releasing before it's ready.... and it isn't quite ready. Most of the fun stuff has been going on on a CVS branch; the mainline is only a functional, stable, dull, unimpressive version for starting application work. That way when Vorbis *is* released, all the Sonique, XMMS, Winamp, kmpg and Freeamp folks will have to do is recompile.
Second, the name 'Xiphophorus'; the organization is a democracy and I was outvoted. I personally like to emphasize 'xiph.org'. I rather Like 'Ogg' and 'Vorbis' though. Oh, and it's not Jesus spanking a snake. It's Thor, Mjollnir and Jörmungandr. I have a page about the names/logos; go read it.
Lastly, distributing hacked up encoders right now is fine, but keep in mind, that as soon as the new psychoacoustic engine is merged into the CVS main branch the bitstream format will change. The change is minor, but it will break existsing streams. That will happen this week, so you don't need to contain your enthusiasm too long :-)
Monty
xiph.org
I haven't been an active roof & tunnel hacker in over 10 years. But I'll say this to other [more current] MIT folks who may be reading:
Please don't elaborate. We don't want the attention. Real hackers don't brag, and if you do, two things will happen:
1) More losers who 'w4nt t0 b3 c00l d00dz!' will show up and demand to be taken hacking. MIT is now in the news because an outside student was hurt hacking. A single example of such an incident could be enough for MIT administration to preemptively bend over and lube up for the national media again. Please don't give the media something juicy; they have no sense of balance, proportion, context or control.
2) The more visible hacking is, the more the CPs will be charged to 'do something about it'.
This is part of *MIT* culture. Sharing with the world is not a good idea and is very likely to end one of the parts of the MIT experience I enjoyed the most (and would like curious, responsible students to continue enjoying in the future).
Rob, et al, I'd personally appreciate if MIT hacking stories don't appear on Slashdot in the future. I know your heart was in the right place, but MIT students lose becuase of the attention.
Monty
>Seriously, has the term "hacking" become that generic?
No one is paying attention... do you only *post* or do you actually *read* too? (Sorry, not just directed at you, Dear Poster).
Hacking == Exploring/Pranks is the *original* definition. Not the new one. Computer Hackers borrowed the term from the roof and tunnel hackers, not the other way around.
Cal Tech folks don't call it hacking because that word isn't part of their culture.
Monty
It's not coincidence; the setting is a reasonably accurate MIT map.
"These MIT kids"?
The word 'hacking' applied to exploration and practical jokes (with an engineering bent) predate computers by nearly a century. Hacks, called as such, have been a tradition at MIT for nearly all of its ~130 year history.
The early computer hackers (many of whom were at MIT) just borrowed the MIT term in its engineering sense.
>and yes, I have read the jargon file to get the
>definition of a hacker. I just think that
>prowler/sneak != hacker)
Sorry, it was our word for 100 years or so before you came along.
Monty
I'm a small-time artist (or was not too long ago anyway). I don't pirate CDs. I really *do* delete mp3s I download if I don't plan to buy the album (and I've bought many albums after getting to hear a few more of the songs on it). When the predecessor of the RIAA tried to stop DAT, it hurt *me*; it took away a tool I needed to record and distribute my music. The industry tried to stop the VCR, reel to reel, and the compact cassette, all tools I needed and used to their fullest. When the RIAA bans mp3 (not that I think they'll succeed) it prevents me from distributing my own music (and trading legit amateur music with my friends). "You want to distribute music without a contract? You must be a criminal."
To drive the point home: Heard much from Joan Osbourne recently? No, because her recording label hasn't liked her second album attempts (she wanted to go in a different direction), refuses to release the music and yet retains rights to it all. Her only option is to not record again. Same with XTC (whose contract recently expired), Prince (who is so pissed at Sony he's planning to rerecord *all* of his hits from the 80s). Don't give me *any* line about the RIAA or the music industry having anyone's interests at heart; their own musicians won't come out to back them.
The RIAA represents corporations with a big fat cow of money at stake. It's common sense: They will act in their own interests. They'll try the easy ways and go for the biggest pot of cash first. That in itself is not greedy or evil (although it is amoral). The tactics they've decided to use are the worst kind of FUD. "You don't believe in the Free Market and Capitalism? You must be a criminal."
The RIAA wants to turn a battle for artists' rights (that's right; I'm on the artists'-- my-- side) into a piracy story. It is not in their interests for artists to have any freedom. That will cut into their profits, so what do you expect them to do? The DVD Forum (which doesn't particularly like Linux or OSS; they want you to play on platforms they can strike Deals with) are turning a battle entirely about interoperability into a battle about piracy. "You want to watch DVDs with unapproved software? You must be a criminal."
Monty
xiph.org
Anyway, we have working not-release-ready code in CVS (the bitstreams are mostly uncompressed, that's the unfinished part), an XMMS plugin, sample encoders/decoders and are currently finishing up the bitstream format by integrating the just-finished VQ code.
Things are moving right along. Expect a public shakedown cruise of the first cut later this month (January 2000). By then, I hope to have some free time to 'freshen' the web pages a bit. Right now, hacking HTML is too seductive to risk ;-)
Monty
monty@xiph.org
http://www.xiph.org
Ricochet works well. I've had mine for three years of constant use now, and had only one two-hour period of downtime in that entire time. It's actually the most reliable access I've had in the Bay Area. Every time my PacBell DSL goes out (weekly or daily occurrence depending on my karma), my Ricochet keeps my CVS reporitories connected...
Only one gotcha- some of the PPP endpoints on the Metricom side don't seem to play nicely with Linux's concept of compressed headers. Don't use them and you'll be all set.
Monty