On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 13:48 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: This reminds me, when do the MP3 patents expire? Because at that point, we'll have to switch everyone back to MP3... Lee

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 15:23 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: Hmm, can they really do that? At least I don't think US patent law allows it, otherwise the pharmaceutical companies would do the same thing to block generic drugs. And if so wouldn't an MP3 implementation based on the original expired patents be in the clear? Lee

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 17:18 -0800, Kevin Cosgrove wrote: Bwahahaha, you mean the "Sonny Bono Copyright Act"? The one that Congress slapped their recently deceased colleague's name onto so they could pass it? I don't think you're the cynic here... Lee

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 16:33 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: I'm not entirely sure but there was a case that was mentioned on Groklaw where the patent holder kept adding minor changes to lengthen the duration of the patent. Luckily, in that case, he was defeated in court. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 17:14 -0500, Dave Phillips wrote: Install a random Linux distro, simple MP3 *playback* is usually not enabled OOTB (Mandriva seems to be the exception). They make you deal with external package repositories to get the packages needed for MP3 support which means editing /etc/apt/sources.list or whatever. Every time there's a Linux story on /. this is one of the complaints that comes up. And rightly so, MP3 playback is up there with email and Web browsing, they can't believe that any system where this does not Just Work could be worth a damn. Many of them give up at that point, and we've lost a potential Linux user for good... If there were a "New Linux User FAQ" I suspect "I just installed Linux, why can't I play MP3s?" would be in the top 2 or 3. Lee

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 23:33 +0100, Cesare Marilungo wrote: They don't have to ship it, they just have to set up their installer so it goes on the Net and downloads the MP3 packages from a server in a non software patent country. For example (not to beat a dead horse) the distros can't ship the Nvidia binary driver, as this would violate the GPL (GPL code cannot be linked with proprietary code) but some have a package where if you "apt-get install" it, it will go and grab the driver from nvidia's site, compile the wrapper and link it to the kernel you are running. It's still a GPL violation, but the individual user is violating the GPL, not the distro. Lee

On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 17:38 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: Damn good point! Unfortunately, with the latest US Supreme Court ruling on contributory infringement I doubt if any US distro could get away with this. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sunday 15 January 2006 20:13, Kevin Cosgrove wrote: And that is indeed good news, Kevin. But can we make mp3 irrevelant by the time the patents expire? That should be the goal. And yes, the pro audio folks are well aware of ogg from my observations. Now we just need to figure out a way to get that message out to Joe SixPack & friends. We, or better yet FOSS/Vorbis, need some sort of a "new, and improved, and better than mp3" label and logo that can readily be identified by Joe to be used in ALL publicity. OTOH, very few seem to understand that the lack of the Phillips owned "compact disk digital audio" label on a cd should mean other than squat to them. Phillips hasn't exactly spent more than pocket change to tell the public about that. Education, education, education. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

Hi Kevin Just taken a look at the site, I see Ogg isn't used or mentioned as a format. Nice page though and I would love to hear the DVD sometime. Do you know if it's available in the UK? cheers Bob Kevin Cosgrove wrote:

Lee Revell wrote: http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html c. www.cesaremarilungo.com

On Sunday 15 January 2006 14:22, Lee Revell wrote: The difference in the audio is that we DO have a choice, and in case you've never done an A-B test, a megabyte a minute ogg is far less tiresome to listen to than a megabyte a minute mp3. Also, I was in on the negotiations if you could call it that, for an mp3 license for a web music site several years ago. For a startup site, built with linux on a 500 dollar machine they also built, the fees they wanted just for them to be able to serve mp3's were so onerous they went ogg only. They started out asking for $25k. In the case of the video, the choice is to run an ati card, but then I'm not a gamer that needs 400 frames a second, so this ati 9200SE works very well indeed here with the inkernel drivers, and beaucoup faster than the budget nvidia that went before it. Unforch, the nvidia shorted out something on the buss and blew the motherboard. When I bought a new motherboard, I was so upset with nvidia that I was bound to buy something, anything, else but another nvidia. And getting the nvidia driver to work was such a hassle that I don't think I ran it for more than a week all told, the nv driver, while too slow for tuxracer, was stable and did everything else I needed to do on a 1600x1200x32 bit screen. Tuxracer plays fine on this ati, which is no doubt faint praise, but it at least works. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

Lee Revell <rlrevell(a)joe-job.com>om>, on Sun Jan 15, 2006 [02:22:45 PM] said: Hi; There is some possibility of having mp3 'just work' after Fluendo licensed the mp3 'tech'. I dont know how much of a practical effect this will have for the various distributions, however: http://lwn.net/Articles/165985/ Paul set(a)pobox.com

Florin Andrei wrote: Hi I think you missed the thrust of my post, (or I didn't express myself very well), ogg players aren't the secret I meant - the open source coolplayer is not very well known. I know that Winamp can play ogg & you can get a plug in for media player too. The point is that coolplayer is a very small - small enough to email even on dial-up & is open source & can be given out freely with your oggs, I have done this. They do not have to install it to use it. Ogg made easy. hope this clears things up Guy ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com