If you're interested in music on the internet you should know about Ogg Vorbis. Here's the faq.
I've been trying to put together a longer piece to say something about all these "free" and "open" software and file formats I like to push. It's come to my attention that maybe I've never explained it too well. This is turning out to be a difficult thing to write, but maybe just the small version will be enough to get started:
The internet might seem like a "place" (albeit virtual) right now, but I think that soon, as things progress, this idea will disappear. We're going to all live on the internet, except by then it won't seem like some other place. It will just seem like the world. It will be the world. What had previously been this new thing the internet will be micro miniaturized, wireless, and completely built in. It will be so pervasive and constant that it won't even seem like anything. So the fights over "free software" and "open source" aren't about making a "new economy" or somehow challenging capitalism. It's way beyond that. It's about securing fundamental rights for human beings in the new world. We're talking, in the end, over who is going to control the wiring of your brain.
What if a for profit corporation owned oxygen? Or multiplication? Or the color blue? This wouldn't make any sense.
Exactly. To return to Ogg, if I can't stream MP3s from my website without paying someone (Fraunhofer in this case) then unless I have enough money I won't be able to have a voice in the world (audio streams aren't only for songs remember, that's just an early popular application.) So fine, we won't use MP3. We'll use Ogg. It's important for there to be free audio codecs, and not just so that we can get all our music for free, thumb our noses at the RIAA, etc.... It's to protect the notion that all people, regardless of economic position, should be able to have a voice that can be heard. In today's world this is protected in some limited way by the inability of a company to patent the biological system that humans use to produce sound. But in the new world we won't always be using biological systems. We'll be using technological systems that companies are having great success in patenting and keeping secret and charging for and locking you into....
But as I think ogg demonstrates, you can't keep this sort of cat inside the bag. Someone will just design around you.
Right on Jim! Your manifesto is nearing
completion & us followers & surely we are
that are your midwives patiently
awaiting the final push to delivery.
Does not a for-profit corporation already
own oxygen not to mention most of
our noggin's wiring? Is not your
vision for the arrival of humans on the
Earth a prayer that all beings might share
the freedom of the better moments
of Jimness? & ( to be predictably frank here)
are not words what you are going to build
this prayer, if you will, with? The possibility
of free & easy streaming video posting of
real important reality interests me less
than the actual wording of your vision's
manifesto. But hey, I'm a dad, & a newby
at that, & Ren is probably way more
interested in the actual thing your are going
to build than in its pamphlet. That said,
it occurs to me that what Dave's genius
represents to me is the consciousness
that frinkin' Mickey Mouse does own
half our brains & it behooves us to distrust
even our surest solemnities a good part of the
time. It's no easy feat , thank you Dave, I hope
you got some in the Gunks because blogworld
dims without you. & Steve, could you
please descend to the ranks of word
users just a tad more often please 'cus
I miss yer imperial highness.
Here's a great Bob Young (CEO of Redhat) interview where he states some of these things much better than I. The legislators think that by approving longer copyright terms or extending patent
protections to new domains (business methods, software, genetics...) that they are
providing incentives to authors and researchers without causing anyone any harm.
The fact that it is all the future generations of innovators and creators, the public at
large, who are being harmed is completely lost on them simply because no one is
pointing out the problem. Our job is to make our society at large aware of the
problem by (among other goals) raising the profile of the public domain of knowledge,
so that the legislators and others understand exactly what is being damaged when
they next extend the government granted monopolies called intellectual property
rights.
I'm often at a loss for words when it comes to the tree. After reading a great post such as this one by Jim and a response such as yours I usually am just left with thoughts......I've spent 10 minutes on this post so far and it still doesn't quite work for me........Are thoughts words? Or are they feelings I'm left with? ....15 minutes now........I hear Dave snickering.
Love the recent employment of pics on email from nola and drat fink.
Jim, I lost the thread, but that New Yorker article on the online rollplaying game blew my mind, it seems to sum up so much. What would such a game be like without money and realestate?
Read it & run. O what a feeling.
From my rather singed control booth
thinking is words & words hold
meaning. Nothing else depends on
meaning. Pictures, music or a glass
of wine all produce feelings which
require absolutely no meaning to
please us. Seeing is believing . A
picture is not worth a thousand
words; it's worth seeing if it's a good
picture. A picture of an unnamed black
boy eating watermelon conjures up
feelings in me that get me thinking
things like lets raze the Smithsonian.
Who needs action when you got words.
Action camera cut to the chase. When
I finally got the courage to take the truly
heroic dose the pictures ended & there was
just clear white light. I went blind.
I don't mind. I do very much enjoy
your words & those blanks sure get me
thinkinking. Bad art is a GMO.
It inserts meaning where none belongs.
Hit the lights, says Ren, play the songs.
So when you say 'words' do you mean 'voices' ('spoken words')? If not, then isn't there some problem with drawing the line? Maybe that's just a lame philosophical argument trick, but surely it would be hard to make a clear distinction between pictures and written words, especially in the border line cases where either a picture was of some words, or in a graphic design case where written words gain additional meaning from how they look on the page. And that's not even bringing up pictographic langauges where words actually are pictures.
Its words but not print. They might be voiced but the voice
is so familiar I've ceased to hear it. There are occasions where I
hear voices or see streams of coded indecipherable ideogrammic
or pictographic symbols, this I call tripping.There are times I've read in my dreams & those are very cool dreams I usually cannot remeber.
|
I've been trying to put together a longer piece to say something about all these "free" and "open" software and file formats I like to push. It's come to my attention that maybe I've never explained it too well. This is turning out to be a difficult thing to write, but maybe just the small version will be enough to get started:
The internet might seem like a "place" (albeit virtual) right now, but I think that soon, as things progress, this idea will disappear. We're going to all live on the internet, except by then it won't seem like some other place. It will just seem like the world. It will be the world. What had previously been this new thing the internet will be micro miniaturized, wireless, and completely built in. It will be so pervasive and constant that it won't even seem like anything. So the fights over "free software" and "open source" aren't about making a "new economy" or somehow challenging capitalism. It's way beyond that. It's about securing fundamental rights for human beings in the new world. We're talking, in the end, over who is going to control the wiring of your brain.
What if a for profit corporation owned oxygen? Or multiplication? Or the color blue? This wouldn't make any sense.
Exactly. To return to Ogg, if I can't stream MP3s from my website without paying someone (Fraunhofer in this case) then unless I have enough money I won't be able to have a voice in the world (audio streams aren't only for songs remember, that's just an early popular application.) So fine, we won't use MP3. We'll use Ogg. It's important for there to be free audio codecs, and not just so that we can get all our music for free, thumb our noses at the RIAA, etc.... It's to protect the notion that all people, regardless of economic position, should be able to have a voice that can be heard. In today's world this is protected in some limited way by the inability of a company to patent the biological system that humans use to produce sound. But in the new world we won't always be using biological systems. We'll be using technological systems that companies are having great success in patenting and keeping secret and charging for and locking you into....
But as I think ogg demonstrates, you can't keep this sort of cat inside the bag. Someone will just design around you.
- jim 6-21-2001 2:53 pm
Right on Jim! Your manifesto is nearing
completion & us followers & surely we are
that are your midwives patiently
awaiting the final push to delivery.
Does not a for-profit corporation already
own oxygen not to mention most of
our noggin's wiring? Is not your
vision for the arrival of humans on the
Earth a prayer that all beings might share
the freedom of the better moments
of Jimness? & ( to be predictably frank here)
are not words what you are going to build
this prayer, if you will, with? The possibility
of free & easy streaming video posting of
real important reality interests me less
than the actual wording of your vision's
manifesto. But hey, I'm a dad, & a newby
at that, & Ren is probably way more
interested in the actual thing your are going
to build than in its pamphlet. That said,
it occurs to me that what Dave's genius
represents to me is the consciousness
that frinkin' Mickey Mouse does own
half our brains & it behooves us to distrust
even our surest solemnities a good part of the
time. It's no easy feat , thank you Dave, I hope
you got some in the Gunks because blogworld
dims without you. & Steve, could you
please descend to the ranks of word
users just a tad more often please 'cus
I miss yer imperial highness.
- frank 6-22-2001 4:52 am
Here's a great Bob Young (CEO of Redhat) interview where he states some of these things much better than I.
- jim 6-22-2001 1:21 pm
I'm often at a loss for words when it comes to the tree. After reading a great post such as this one by Jim and a response such as yours I usually am just left with thoughts......I've spent 10 minutes on this post so far and it still doesn't quite work for me........Are thoughts words? Or are they feelings I'm left with? ....15 minutes now........I hear Dave snickering.
Love the recent employment of pics on email from nola and drat fink.
Jim, I lost the thread, but that New Yorker article on the online rollplaying game blew my mind, it seems to sum up so much. What would such a game be like without money and realestate?
- steve 7-01-2001 9:40 pm
Read it & run. O what a feeling.
From my rather singed control booth
thinking is words & words hold
meaning. Nothing else depends on
meaning. Pictures, music or a glass
of wine all produce feelings which
require absolutely no meaning to
please us. Seeing is believing . A
picture is not worth a thousand
words; it's worth seeing if it's a good
picture. A picture of an unnamed black
boy eating watermelon conjures up
feelings in me that get me thinking
things like lets raze the Smithsonian.
Who needs action when you got words.
Action camera cut to the chase. When
I finally got the courage to take the truly
heroic dose the pictures ended & there was
just clear white light. I went blind.
I don't mind. I do very much enjoy
your words & those blanks sure get me
thinkinking. Bad art is a GMO.
It inserts meaning where none belongs.
Hit the lights, says Ren, play the songs.
- frank 7-02-2001 9:56 pm
So when you say 'words' do you mean 'voices' ('spoken words')? If not, then isn't there some problem with drawing the line? Maybe that's just a lame philosophical argument trick, but surely it would be hard to make a clear distinction between pictures and written words, especially in the border line cases where either a picture was of some words, or in a graphic design case where written words gain additional meaning from how they look on the page. And that's not even bringing up pictographic langauges where words actually are pictures.
- jim 7-03-2001 5:24 pm
Its words but not print. They might be voiced but the voice
is so familiar I've ceased to hear it. There are occasions where I
hear voices or see streams of coded indecipherable ideogrammic
or pictographic symbols, this I call tripping.There are times I've read in my dreams & those are very cool dreams I usually cannot remeber.
- frank 7-03-2001 7:31 pm