Day: February 23, 2007

Should We All Move to Ogg Vorbis?

Leave a comment

To what?!?! OK, first let me explain what Ogg Vorbis is:

Wikipedia Ogg Vorbis format entry

“Vorbis is an open source, lossy audio codec project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and intended to serve as a replacement for MP3. It is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is then called Ogg Vorbis. Vorbis development began following a September 1998 letter from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft announcing plans to charge licensing fees for the MP3 audio format. Soon after, founder Christopher ‘Monty’ Montgomery commenced work on the project and was assisted by a growing number of other developers. They continued refining the source code until a stable version 1.0 of the codec was released on July 19, 2002.”

Why do we care? Well, the fact that Alcatel-Lucent won their case against Microsoft (that I mentioned earlier in the Blog) may soon spell “the end” of our enjoyment of MP3. It is encumbered by patents. And, I don’t want to pay for using a file format! So, what if we all switched to Ogg Vorbis… which is TOTALLY FREE and OPEN SOURCE? Do we have the “guts” to do so? Should I use Ogg Vorbis for my Podcast? What about Naomi? (An obscure reference to an old “Electric Company” routine.) Let me know!

Have You Noticed Better Performance?

Leave a comment

That is, of my Blog? I have moved “Dr. Bill – The Computer Curmudgeon” to another server in my server farm here at Dr. Bill Bailey.NET. The difference? Load balancing… and it is now running over the LightTPD web server running on one of my CentOS Linux servers. For more info on what LightTPD offers, check out the link:

LightTPD web server

“Security, speed, compliance, and flexibility–all of these describe LightTPD which is rapidly redefining efficiency of a webserver; as it is designed and optimized for high performance environments. With a small memory footprint compared to other web-servers, effective management of the cpu-load, and advanced feature set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) LightTPD is the perfect solution for every server that is suffering load problems. And best of all it’s Open Source licensed under the revised BSD license.

light footprint + httpd = LightTPD (pronounced lighty)”

I also use LightTPD for my Dr. Bill.TV web site, because it natively supports Flash streaming!

FLV Streaming with LightTPD

Microsoft Fined for MP3 Violation

Leave a comment

Here’s one of the few times I come down on Microsoft’s “side” (I know, the end of the world has come!) But, here’s (as I say often) the thing: Microsoft actually paid for the right to license and use MP3 technology, yet a court awarded Alcatel-Lucent a judgment anyway. This seams unfair to me!

Microsoft slapped with $1.52 billion payout in MP3 suit

“Those federal juries in San Diego do seem to frown on MP3 patent infringement. They just ordered Microsoft to fork over $1.52 billion (yes, with a “b”) to Alcatel-Lucent for infringing on two MP3 audio patents with its Windows Media Player, the largest patent ruling in history. Naturally, Alcatel-Lucent seems to like this turn of events. “We have made strong arguments supporting our view, and we are pleased with the court’s decision,” said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Joan Campion. Microsoft is singing another tune, and is going to ‘seek relief from the trial court, and if necessary appeal,’ according to Tom Burt, corporate VP and deputy general counsel. The irony in all this — if you can call anything in a $1.52 billion case ‘ironic’ — is that Microsoft payed the Fraunhofer Institute $16 million to license the tech in the first place, but since Fraunhofer co-developed the MP3 with Bell Labs, and Lucent owns those patents, Alcatel-Lucent decided to go for the gold, and seem to have done a pretty good job of it. This probably won’t be the last we hear of this case, and it’s only one in a long list of lawsuits between the two companies, but boy is that a hefty sum.”