A week full of big chunky topics requiring big chunky time to discuss. We cover Sony’s history of failed proprietary formats (including the MiniDisc), then discuss the future of advertising on the web, the 1.06 Billion Euro Intel fine, and finally finish up with a three course meal of Windows 7. Fear not though! Despite being almost an hour and a half long, we managed to save you 5 bytes by keeping the show title short.
Here’s how the audio file breaks down:
| 0:00:30 | Intro |
|---|---|
| 0:04:27 | “Sony”- article |
| 0:27:18 | “Adverts” – article |
| 0:47:48 | “EU Fines Intel” – article |
| 0:59:22 | “Windows 7” – article |
| 1:24:47 | Meta |
| 1:27:48 | (Total Time) |
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That won’t nessesarily save anything since the packets are usually padded to a much larger size. Use titles freely, people! We only live once.
No. But a Speex feed would. No doubt they’ll wait ’til the rationing starts, OSNews being ever on the forefront of web innovation and all that.
Edited 2009-05-18 14:05 UTC
What the heck does that mean? We’re ALWAYS open to new ideas and constantly experimenting and changing the site. Why would you throw out some trendy, BARELY USED buzzword and then be snide about us not dropping everything to implement your wish to appease the three people who might care about it today?
Then why are you taking offense and insulting Xiph’s very useful and effective open format for encoding voice by calling it a “BARELY USED buzzword”, rather than considering the advantages, to yourselves and your listeners, of providing a Speex feed?
The oversensitivity of OSNews staff to criticisms, and suggestions (which often seem to be taken as criticism) can become annoying at times.
Edited 2009-05-18 16:29 UTC
For the same reason we don’t provide an OGG podcast, because we can’t accommodate every single request for every single format, we don’t implement every single web extension or support every single standard. No one has *ever* requested Speex support before, yet you’re leaving a trollish comment incredulously ranting about why we don’t support it, as though it somehow diminishes the site experience.
You know what’s really annoying? Users who hijack the comments to whine about how we’re not stopping in our tracks to work on their immediate wishlist (which may benefit ~4 people).
>99% has an .mp3 codec installed.
<0.1 percent has this codec installed.
So, there has to be one hell of a set of advantages to justify asking of our users to install some obscure codec no one’s ever heard of.
And Speex doesn’t offer anything that would justify asking our users to install it.
Look, OSNews is not some obscure blog with three visitors – we have hundreds of thousands of people visiting OSNews, and we have to make sure as many of those can readily access our content. Idealism is nice and all, but at the end of the day, we have a large website to run.
Edited 2009-05-18 16:38 UTC
Whoa there Thom, ego.
Compete says 50k/month- http://siteanalytics.compete.com/osnews.com/
Google trends says 15k/month, optimistically- http://trends.google.com/websites?q=osnews.com
And as anyone knows these kinds of figures are all ridiculously inflated. Judging by the average amount of comments per story, I’d say a coupe thousand regular readers at most.
Edited 2009-05-18 16:49 UTC
I think it was just poor communication. We do several million hits a month, obviously not all uniques. Our internal stats easily confirm tens of thousands uniques though.
Edit: fixed weird grammar
Edited 2009-05-18 16:50 UTC
Yeah you’re right, hundreds of thousands is nonsense of course, I meant it as a hyperbole, but it didn’t come through very well.
Still, your figures are way off, it’s a little more.
Speex is actually probably the most popular open voice codec. I completely disagree with the suggestion to use it, however. Speex is more for use in situations that need to do low latency, high quality VoIP transmission. It is completely inappropriate for this sort of distribution, because no general purpose audio player worth mentioning can play it. Not to mention that MP3 (or AAC) is basically a requirement for podcasts, else you’ll no longer be able to play it in iTunes or on your iPod.
If you’re really looking to cut bandwidth usage, this MP3 could easily have its bitrate cut in half and remain listenable. 24-32kbps is common for spoken word podcasts and internet streams.
We’re actually not looking to cut bandwidth usage. Kroc was making a joke about the length of the podcast. No one is worried about about bandwidth.
That said, I’ll mention the bitrate cut to Kroc.
Talk talk talk BOOOM blowing into the microphone. Kroc, please. I appreciate the better sound quality, but put the microphone next to your mouth, not in front of it.
And why am I getting the impression that Kroc stands next to the well in which Thom is sitting? The sound levels are uneven. Either Kroc is too loud or Thom is too quiet.
If you remove the useless comments in the generated page (What is this? <!– Arrrr! Hess! Hess! –> ??? ), filter the page to remove \t \n and why not \r, if you use those kind of systems, would get better savings without quality lose.
Also those ads waste bandwidth…
I’m not sure where the misunderstanding is here, but no one is actively trying to save bandwidth. The podcast is long, Kroc made a joke, the end.
No misunderstanding, I just wanted to note the comments in the page source, some are funny, and was making a joke.
btw, did you really remove the “Arrrr! Hess! Hess!” and keep the “If blood and lust taste so sweet, then we should give them what they want”? LOL
🙂
I *LOVE* that anyone sees them, let alone laughs at them.
Edited 2009-05-18 17:11 UTC
that this episode was well done and, at least for me, the sound volumes and quality were perfect… and for once, it appears Garage band actually cooperated too.
Keep up the good work, you two and, of course, everyone else behind osnews.
Now, to all the complainers out there: Remember, these guys aren’t getting paid to do this Podcast, and whether you like it or not, MP3 is the most widely supported and used codec. If you really feel the need to complain about lack of ogg/speex/whatever codecs for a podcast that needs to be as universal as possible, either go get a life or, by all means, role your own. It’s a wide wide web out there, and you are free to do your own podcast in whatever codec and format you wish. Why not just appreciate what is being done here? They don’t have to do it and, if this kind of bitching keeps up, I wouldn’t blame them for saying “screw this” and having done with it.
Finally… trolling that your preferred format isn’t available when you had never even made a request for it is just stupid. The last time I checked, none of us on this wonderful rock we call home were telepathic.
So, good job Thom and Kroc, and to the trolls… go hide under a bridge or something.
Garageband DID crap out… Kroc just cut it out
. Garageband on MY PowerMac continued to function properly, as always 
.
Power to PPC, people.
Nice editing job on that one, I didn’t even notice a drop in the sound.
It didn’t crash, we merely paused and restarted to avoid GarageBand ’06 crashing at 1:06:00 and cut it together.