19-10-2003 16:00									#151
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quote: Sad and pathetic isn't he.

Thanks for the input, Captain Obvious.

	19-10-2003 16:08									#152
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten quote: Sad and pathetic isn't he. Thanks for the input, Captain Obvious.

Well I just wanted to make it clear that you were caning him.

Anyway, Windows users shouldn't be listening to music on their computers, they should be at Microsoft's site, busy downloading todays twenty-seven urgent security patches.

	19-10-2003 16:16									#153
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If patching security holes was the top priority of any of us(no matter the OS), we'd do nothing else.

	19-10-2003 18:31									#154
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quote: Originally posted by Asher Mr Nice Guy: I've told you months ago AAC was Dolby's, it's actually a slightly modified Dolby Digital 2.0. All of this talk about AAC being really advanced is weird, it's older than MP3 by a few years. Just requires more computational resources to encode and decode.

http://www.vialicensing.com/product...c/standard.html

"The MPEG-4 AAC standard incorporates MPEG-2 AAC, forming the basis of the MPEG-4 audio compression technology for data rates above 32 kbps per channel. Additional tools increase the effectiveness of MPEG-2 AAC at lower bit rates, and add scalability or error resilience characteristics. These additional tools extend AAC into its MPEG-4 incarnation (ISO/IEC 14496-3, Subpart 4)."

Older? Yes, but recently upgraded.

Who cares about the additional resources AAC uses, anyway? With the much more powerful computers available these days, it doesn't really matter.

	19-10-2003 18:34									#155
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Here's more ammunition. Evil psychopathic Apple did not develop Fairplay; it was developed by a company called Veridisc http://64.244.235.240/ and licensed by Apple.

Well, there you go! Apple doesn't look as "evil" after all now, do they.

	19-10-2003 18:38									#156
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Bye guys. Gotta go to church now.

	19-10-2003 20:10									#157
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quote: No. All a company would have to do is license the AAC and use their own DRM.

that's precisely why it's not an open standard. they have to pay a licensing fee to get the aac standard in the first place. the only audio codec i know of that's truly open is ogg.

quote: By the way, everyone here keeps talking like AAC belongs to Apple, but in reality the company that invented and patented AAC Audio is not a part of Apple at all, but an independent subisidary of Dolby Technologies.

did you read my post, and my conclusion of aac? "apple cannot license what it does not own" is what i said, paraphrased.

quote: This sures makes me wonder why all the tech articles I've been reading on the subject refer to AAC as an "open" standard. Of course, even people who write about this stuff for a living can't be right if Asher says they aren't...

AAC is not an open standard, but was developed by the MPEG group, which includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia. As a result any software or hardware that uses AAC has to pay a license fee. As AAC is realtively new, support may be sporadic for the format in other players.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...tid=187&tid=188

can i see some tech articles? most of them say that it's open in that you can look at parts of the standard free of charge to study them. there are parts protected by patents that you must pay for to obtain the license to. thus, it's not truly "open", like ogg vorbis.

quote: Anyway, Windows users shouldn't be listening to music on their computers, they should be at Microsoft's site, busy downloading todays twenty-seven urgent security patches.

actually, this week there's only four, if you keep up to date.

quote: Who cares about the additional resources AAC uses, anyway? With the much more powerful computers available these days, it doesn't really matter.

(sigh) and this is why we have programs that are horridly programmed. sure, we have more powerful computers. that doesn't mean we should try to squeeze every last drop from it. the ideal is to increase capabilities while trying to maintain as small and elegant of a codebase as possible, using as little memory and resources as possible.
microsoft doesn't subscribe to that, unfortunately, and neither does apple.

quote: Evil psychopathic Apple did not develop Fairplay; it was developed by a company called Veridisc http://64.244.235.240/ and licensed by Apple.

you do realize that doesn't matter if nobody else is licensing it... better technology does not always win. what wins is what is easy to use, transparent, best-marketed, and cost-effective. aac, alas, is not as cost effective as wma, which isn't as cost effective as ogg. ogg is not well marketed, but wma and apple's aac are. all three are easy to use. so it's still any format's game.

	19-10-2003 20:16									#158
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quote: that's precisely why it's not an open standard. they have to pay a licensing fee to get the aac standard in the first place. the only audio codec i know of that's truly open is ogg.

You're definition of the term "open" is incorrect, Q Cubed, which is leading to all this misunderstanding. When referring to audio compression formats, "open" simply means that the format is available for licensing to anyone who can pay the fee. AAC is this type of format. "Open and free" formats are available to anyone (hence the "open") and have no licensing fee (the "free"). Ogg Vorbis is this type of format. WMA is , of course, neither open nor free, which is why any move away from it is a good thing.

	19-10-2003 20:22									#159
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quote: You're definition of the term "open" is incorrect, Q Cubed, which is leading to all this misunderstanding.

it's not just my definition, drake. i didn't write that /. review.

quote: When referring to audio compression formats, "open" simply means that the format is available for licensing to anyone who can pay the fee. AAC is this type of format. "Open and free" formats are available to anyone (hence the "open") and have no licensing fee (the "free"). Ogg Vorbis is this type of format. WMA is , of course, neither open nor free, which is why any move away from it is a good thing.

open does not mean anybody can license it. open means that the format is availible for study to all who wish to use it. that's why pdfs are open, but docs aren't. that's why html and xml are open standards, but asp is not.
because aac keeps certain parts of it locked away under patents, like mp3s, it's not an open, but proprietary format. anybody can look at how the basic format of mp3s works--that's how we got id3v2 tags--but because one technically has to obtain a licensing fee, it's not an open standard.

	19-10-2003 20:25									#160
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quote: can i see some tech articles?

Here's one. Not as good as the one I saw the other night, but Google is getting filled with new articles on iTunes and I've lost track of the ones I was looking at. Should've bookmarked them when I had the chance.

http://faac.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=AAC

quote: Worldwide ISO/IEC open standard (as opposed to proprietary closed standards e.g. from Microsoft, see also MPEG-4 Systems for an example).

	19-10-2003 20:26									#161
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quote: open does not mean anybody can license it. open means that the format is availible for study to all who wish to use it.

That too. I forgot to mention it, because I'm an idiot.

	19-10-2003 20:27									#162
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bruce perens, computer guru, says this on his site.

http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html

No Royalty
Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may involve a fee.
aac requires a fee to implement.

No Royalty
Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may have a fee. Thus:
Patents embedded in standards must be licensed royalty-free, with non-discriminatory terms.
Certification programs should include a low or zero cost self-certification, but may include higher-cost programs with enhanced branding.

now, wma is very clearly proprietary according to that page's definitions. aac and mp3 are as well, but less so. the only codec that sufficiently fits all the defintions is ogg vorbis, and thus it's the only "open" standard.

	19-10-2003 20:28									#163
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It seems the definition of "open" is very different depending on who you ask. Kinda makes this whole argument pointless, doesn't it?

	19-10-2003 20:34									#164
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btw: just because it's a standard on the iso/iec website does not make it "open".

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CombinedQu...ueryString=jpeg

jpegs show up there, too, but jpegs are proprietary. they just happened to have an owner who didn't care at all about maintaining their patents.

	19-10-2003 20:43									#165
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Found one of the other articles. Decent analysis of the effect iTunes and AAC might have on Microsoft's plans for WMA.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-998880.html

And the obligatory quote to bolster my side in this probably pointless debate...

quote: Apple's open-standard alternative needs market momentum to gain traction that would ensure content creators would stay on board.

	19-10-2003 20:52									#166
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http://whatis.techtarget.com/defini...i212705,00.html

	19-10-2003 20:55									#167
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quote: In information technology, a product or system is described as open when its workings are exposed to the public and capable of being modified or improved by anyone. The alternative is a proprietary product or system. Also see open source.

What do you think AAC is? It's an open standard that was "modified and improved by" Apple.

	19-10-2003 22:11									#168
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A good article that lays out the case for Apple allowing its competitors to use the iTunes AAC/Fairplay format.

http://arstechnica.com/w ankerdesk/03q2/i-tunes-1.html

edit: ****ing censor...

If you want to see the article, you're going to have to remove the newly inserted space from the word "wank".

	20-10-2003 00:07									#169
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itunes has the best sound quality of any of the media players that I've downloaded so far

The sound is sooo much clearer

	20-10-2003 00:16									#170
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You're fighting a losing battle, Drake.

Think of it like this:
Is Open Source when you can look at the code and use it for free, or is it when you can license the code from someone and use it in your program?

The same is true for Open Standards -- if a consortium of private companies develops a standard and the only way you can use this is to contact them and pay them a license, this is identical to how proprietary software works.

So unless you're claiming that Windows is open source, I'd suggest you cut your losses while you're only several laps behind. It's the same principle behind Open Standards.

	20-10-2003 00:30									#171
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quote: You're fighting a losing battle, Drake.

If you say so, although I have a feeling this is as accurate as most of your others statements.

	20-10-2003 02:09									#172
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quote: Originally posted by Asher You're fighting a losing battle, Drake.

Battle?

If that's what you like to call it then you're almost out of ammunition, my friend. Have you ever heard the saying "losing can serve just a good a purpose as winning?" It's time for you to lose a debate Asher, but if you're gonna lose, you'll always feel a lot better if you lose with style.

	20-10-2003 02:11									#173
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You guys are simply out of your minds...

I am speachless.

	20-10-2003 05:31									#174
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quote: I am speachless.

Wonders never cease...

	20-10-2003 05:35									#175
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You just gotta love techie threads between Asher and the MacHeads

	20-10-2003 05:41									#176
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That's a good one, Spiff.

quote: Originally posted by me BTW, congrats to everyone involved in this thread. NASA computer benchmarks to bestiality in two pages? Good show!

I stand by my words.

	20-10-2003 05:44									#177
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Even though I saved this thread on my comp and read it frequently, I continue to laugh histerically in front of my computer each time :loll:

	20-10-2003 06:16									#178
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Ah yes, when Cloud9 posted a thread of a dual 2GHzG5 getting its ass beaten by a single 2.66GHz old-version P4, then when someone points this out to him he starts to ask questions about colleges and GPAs...

	20-10-2003 06:48									#179
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quote: Originally posted by Spiffor You just gotta love techie threads between Asher and the MacHeads

Yeah - I gave up on that one. After all it's just so utterly unreasonable to wait and see what real world performance is like, rather than relying on (possibly) cooked SPEC benchmarks or articles published by deranged lunatics who think pedigree pets are racist.

The bestiality stuff was fun though. And this:

quote: You provide no grade point average ... you provide NOTHING ... and yet you want people to stop discussing their anal virginities in a techie thread? You criminal.

Anyway, this thread is getting silly. I'm glad Ted likes itunes. Who else has installed it?

	20-10-2003 07:11									#180
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Yeah - I gave up on that one. After all it's just so utterly unreasonable to wait and see what real world performance is like, rather than relying on (possibly) cooked SPEC benchmarks

I told you there wasn't any point, and all of the benchmarks that have come out since have only backed me up.

The SPEC benchmarks were clearly cooked, as anyone with a pair of functional eyes could see by looking at all of the independent benchmarks which puts the G5 well behind P4s and Athlon 64s.