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[bogus at does.not.exist.com]

will be released when it's done and that's most likely not in the very
near future. On the other hand, RC3 is said to be released "real soon
now".

IMO, RC2 has gotten pretty "old" meanwhile, and I currently use the
Garf-tuned encoders/libraries (except for Oddcast DSP, which makes cute
RC2 streams for me :) ). According to what will be better in RC3 (e.g.
fixed reencoding problem), and since beta4 was ready for the masses
already IMO, RC3 definitely will be good as well plus the masses can't
complain about anything anymore. ;)

But, I see another problem with Ogg Vorbis advocacy. Check out the
following Ogg-relevant paragraph from an article about audio compression
formats in the german computer magazine "CHIP" (01/2002).

<snip>
Noch besser [als MP3Pro] sieht es mit der Unterstützung von Ogg Vorbis
aus, dem einzigen Open-Source-Format. Zwar wurde erst im Sommer dieses
Jahres der Release Candidate 1 vorgestellt, aber WinAmp, Sonique und Co.
kommen mit dem Format zurecht. Auch qualitativ überzeugt Ogg Vorbis. Das
große Problem ist wie bei den meisten Formaten der Kopierschutz. Nicht
nur deshalb wird es wie die meisten Open-Source-Projekte bestenfalls ein
Nischendasein fristen.
</snip>

This totally sucks. But let me translate first ...

<snip>
Even better [than for MP3Pro] is the support for Ogg Vorbis, the only
open source format. Even though the Release Candidate 1 wasn't
introduced until summer this year, WinAmp, Sonique & Co deal with it.
Ogg Vorbis is also convincing in quality aspects. The biggest problem,
as with most other formats, is the copy protection. Not only because of
this is why it will exist in niches at best, like most open source
projects.
</snip>

Things that disturb me: Copy protection wasn't mentioned in the
paragraph about MP3Pro that preceded this one, and which was concluded
as "this format definitely has future". "Nicht nur deshalb..."/"Not only
because of this is why..." ... because of what? What does this have to
do with the fact that it's open source? This article definitely is
biased. Funny enough, after all that blah about copyprotection and how
MP3 is full of compromises and how better AAC (the industry's pet) is
and that it will 0wN us all some day, it suggests to stick to MP3 until
then. Ogg wasn't mentioned in that conclusion at all ... or was it?
"..., die meisten anderen Formate werden genauso verschwinden, wie sie
gekommen sind." -- "..., most of the other formats will vanish like they
appeared."

Then, like every 'decent' computer mag, they need to make a colorful
table to give their readers the ultimate overview. I'll just translate
the line about Ogg:

Format: Ogg Vorbis (.ogg)
Developer: Ogg-Project (Open Source)
Quality: at 128 KBit/s compareable sound quality like MP3
Perspectives: the only actually free format, besides good quality, it
will stay something for freaks similar to Linux

Urrrgh. So Xiph has been renamed to "Ogg-Projekt" (to quote correctly),
and Ogg's for freaks? Linux is for freaks? 'k...

Besides, that's not the only bullshit in this article. It spends a half
paragraph on MP+, for example, concluding that it doesn't even offer
better quality than MP3 and has no future. D'uh, whatever 928374
problems MP+ might have and whatever its future might look like (I don't
claim to be a visionary), quality surely isn't one of the issues.

I'm not really sure how one/I should react to this thing ... I've
written a mail to the author already but didn't send it yet. Any
suggestions?

The actual problem with this article is, the CHIP magazine, although
scorned and proscribed by the more tech-savvy people, is pretty popular
and has quite some readers. This article, spanning two whole pages (+
being announced on the front cover of the mag), sounds like a report
about beta3 with only oggenc available when it talks about Ogg... so,
how can we prevent such things from happening? Tools like Oggdrop are so
incredibly easy to use, I really don't know where the freakyness is ...
double-clicking in_vorbis.exe or double-clicking the Sonique icon or
whatever ... sheesh, using ICQ is more complicated. This really startles
me, because in every software test they weight ease of use more than any
other category (including things like quality and speed).

In successful advocating, we have to address three different groups:

1. The "informed" people, they can be of any kind - coders, musicians,
users or else. They want technological details and they know why open
source and freedom is very important, especially when it comes to
multimedia standards. I don't think there's much trouble dealing with
those, but this group is rather small.
2. The "hybrids" (heh, couldn't think of a better word, sorry :) ).
Those are the Windows "power users", people that like buzzwords and
spend much time in front of their computer without understanding too
much of it. They propably like ads and complicated tools like a ripped
Sonic Foundry Vegas Video to make WMA files, because it's cool. On the
other hand, this group also has the people that simply use their
computers as a tool without acting silly, also including musicians for
example. Trustworthy ads, pointing out the strengths of Ogg Vorbis
without going into too much technological or philosophical detail might
be best for this group. The problem I see here is that we have to
compete with buzzy ads from the "cool" companies that bring us MP3Pro,
AAC etc.
3. The "dumb" users. Not necessarily dumb people, but swamped with
computers - they use computers either because they have to, because it's
colorful or they don't want to look dumb in front of their kids. This is
definitely the largest group out there and also the hardest group to
deal with. Everything freak/geek related scares them to death and they
won't even look at it. They need a hand with everything, propably even
something like a step-by-step guide on how to use Oggdrop with
screenshots, plus it should be in their mother language (not necessarly
english). This is exactly why the freak rumoring in the CHIP magazine
made me so angry. "Huh, Linux, that's that thing where you have to be a
programmer to use it, right? I also heard that it's un-american. And all
this 'community' stuff ... nah, I won't use anything commie-wanker
related." -- What they need is total simplicity. Freedom is not
important, but "for free" could bait them. Since they also fear h4Xx0rZ
('coz they're everywhere, magically deleting the MS Word documents they
forgot to save to disk), Ogg may in no way be related to evil deeds like
"pirating" (arrh, matey! set sail to that RIAA boat over there!) or it
will be banned by the MS sponsored journalists that happen to know
exactly how to talk to the "dumb" users.

There's a huge conflict between group 1 and 3 ... advocating for the one
repectively scares/pisses off the other. Most of Ogg's true fans reside
in that small group no. 1, though, so it'd be a bad idea to neglect
them. On the other hand, for the bigtime success we need group 3. Group
2 should be fine, I guess, as long as there's still some "1337ness" left
to Ogg after we're done with group 3. ;P

One last thing about group-3-compliant guides to Ogg, I will look a
little into this ... maybe I get a nice idea and make a German and an
English version. I can't promise this, though, because I really suck at
design-related stuff. Maybe I can find someone to give me a hand with
the graphics when I get to it.

Moritz


--
_______________________________________________________________________
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
deserve   neither   liberty   or   security"  -  Benjamin   Franklin

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