New screenshot

Ya know, I just love showing these things off. I am sure that none of you actually care about this but..




-Tsyko

I am not going to post about...

I am not going to post about certain news items from Florida. And I will not point to to this site that has a very good unbiased look at the action. Really.


Nothing to see here blogizen. Move along.

Gimme my Ogg!

A friend and I were talking, when I brought up the topic of using Ogg files instead of MP3's. As his iRiver supports Ogg, I chided him on his use of MP3's.

He asked what was wrong with MP3's. I explained that the format was encumbered by patents and costs. He responded 'So?'

So? I was at a loss for words.

So, I decided to find out why.

I will start with the social issues, and then wander towards the technical issues.

Digital technology and network distribution has removed the middleman between the artist and the music listener, but the content industry wants to put the middleman back in place. They can do this with the help of a proprietary music format and software that they can control, with artificial restrictions to limit its potential.

(From Daniel James)

It's all about the bucks. The content providers make a ton of money right now off of audio CD sales. They are not going to if the artists can interact directly with the consumers.

All of the money advanced by the record company to the act has to be paid back by the act from it’s small percentage of the CD returns. This percentage can be as low as 5%. Consequently, record companies are always in profit a long time before acts are, if they ever are.

(From ABC Australia)

With the advent of digital music, the content industry thinks that it can massively increase profits by eliminating the costs associated with conventional music distribution on physical media.

(From Daniel James)

Another advantage over MP3 is that Vorbis sounds better, and its smaller. There's two sides of that scale - either it's smaller or it sounds better. Vorbis can get a little smaller and still sound better than MP3, or it can get a lot smaller and still sound pretty good.

(From Jack Moffitt)

I'm a music fan. Why should I be interested?

Because Vorbis provides a high-quality format for you to listen to your music.
For a given file size, Vorbis sounds better than MP3. This means: You can keep your music collection at about the same quality level, but it'll take up less space or you can have your music collection take up about the same amount of space, but have it sound better. Vorbis already enjoys widespread player support and work is underway to play Vorbis files on portable hardware.

(From Vorbis)

I am ripping at an Ogg quality of 8, and I am getting about 6 megs per song. Sammy Hagar's Heavy Metal is 6.07 megs in size. I am going to set it back down to 6. I ripped that song at 8 and at 6, and I could not hear a difference.

Dare to compare the difference between the formats.

-Tsyko

Andre MIA

WVLT VOLUNTEER TV :

Science fiction author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular 'Witch World' series of books, died today at her home in Murfreesboro. She was 93.

Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died of congestive heart failure."

From Justus for All..

Passing of a legend...

Zombie-Fest

Official Survivor Congratulations! You scored 69%!

Whether through ferocity or quickness, you made it out. You made the right choice most of the time, but you probably screwed up somewhere. Nobody's perfect, at least you're alive.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 94% on survivalpoints

Link: The Zombie Scenario Survivor Test written by ci8db4uok on Ok Cupid

Gee thanks for another waste of time Dave

Linux is insecure, unscalable

According to the Agility Alliance,

From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment

and

We are concerned about security on an open standard environment like that. We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis. Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix – it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there. We think Linux has the possibility of going the same route

and

If you test Red Hat against Solaris 10 against whatever else… we would say that Solaris 10 beats it hands down on functionality and everything else

(all from this article ad ZDNet)

So, these guys are saying that Linux is not scaleable, and insecure, and we should use Sun's Solaris instead.

I found it funny that the Members of this "Agility Alliance" include Sun and Microsoft, both companies that would profit greatly from the demise of Linux.

I also found it funny to find the following article just two above on OSNews:

The homegrown Linux operating system has come a long way from its origins as a college kid's pet project and computer hobbyist favorite. Refined in recent years by professional computer programmers at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Novell and Red Hat, Linux now has become so technically powerful that it lays claim to a prestigious title--it runs more of the world's top supercomputers than any other OS.

Also - guys, Sun does not own Unix. There are several flavors of Unix still out there - AIX, HP/UX, BSD and (shudders) SCO to name a few..

Get your facts "straightified" before you start to pop off with stuff like this.

So - who we gonna trust? Sun and Microsoft or Forbes?

-Tsyko

I want one

of these.

New definition of Drive Offensivly :)

Obiligatory Nose Photo

Don't Panic!

Just Read the book



Thanks, Becca!

F/OSS vs Commercial development theories

Eugenia posted an article a few days ago, and then another was posted and the lists started up and another etc...

The short and long of the entire thing is that Eugenia feels that F/OSS developers are not as open to feature requests as Commerical developers. I tend to agree with her. F/OSS developers tend to 'scratch their itches' and not mine or yours. They are not paid for their efforts after all.

If you want a customer centeric experince, look into customer driven software. One where the developers have a vested intrest in developing for their clients. KDE and Gnome are good examples. Many of KDE's developers are employed by SuSE and Novell. Many Gnome devlopers are employed by Novell and Canonical.

But, wait, those are F/OSS software, right? Right!

Most major F/OSS projects are sponsored by large, paying companies. If you support those companies, you support those projects. You gain a more powerful voice with the project to see your goals met.

So, the moral of the story is as follows. If you love using F/OSS software, and are happy with it, great. Support the companies that support the software, or donate.

If some very important feature is missing, add it yourself, or support one of the companies, and tell them what you want.

As an aside, The Open CD is a good thing. Go, download it and check it out. Some really cool F/OSS software for windows there. Go - get it!

-Tsyko