14.09, Saturday 13 May 2000

I've been educated (cheers Nick): LAME (notlame Linux binaries) is a better mp3 encoder than BladeEnc. Smaller, compressed faster mp3s which will hopefully let me encode at lower than a bitrate of 128bps (I haven't tried yet). Incidentally, my continuing exploration of the Linux universe has led me to find that hating Microsoft ain't the half of it. You also have to know about:

  • patents | Patents are stupid! Patents are evil! Of course, it is possible to argue that some are, and some certainly are, but would you innovate if there was no way to protect what you'd created? The problem with patents is not patents themselves but what is being patented, and the things that are around to be patented -- well, that's a product of the times.
  • licenses | Compare and contrast, but never take Ask Slashdot or you'll never get out alive.
  • distributions | All these different distributions! Which to choose? Hey, I don't know - I use Red Hat because that's what I was given first.

I've got a long way to go. MacOS X is just going to make it more difficult, I can tell.