On May 23, 10:24pm, you proclaimed:
} Jeez. The irony, here this guy Barry is at NCSA and all ...
Maybe not, after meeting some of the folk from Mosaic project at NCSA
last week :) (just kidding, y'all are doing great work!)
} C'mon folks. A net compilation *tape*? As in, "analog cassette"? As in,
} "yesterday's news", "primitive mechanisms" and all that? Why don't we press
} some 78's ...
}
} Surely we can do better than that.
} Put on your thinking caps. What's the obvious thing?
} Give up? Well, here's the answer: the Virtual Web Compilation.
Okay, here's the scoop. I would LOVE to do this. (btw, my vote definitely
goes with the title "Threads"). A few problems: first off, disk space is
becoming more of a scarcity at t.s.e., but this may change fairly soon.
Secondly, the audio format technology is *almost* there, but not quite, to
make this acceptible. What is acceptible in my mind? 44.1 khtz 16.bit
stereo that can fit into something on the scale of a megabyte a minute.
Supposedly MPEG audio has this capability, but until there are *free*
(freeware or shareware) converters, and players (no, converting to .au
does not count) this isn't something we should back. ADPCM supposedly
holds promise too (Francois I'll get back to you soon) but it needs to
be held to the same standards. 22.1 Khtz *might* be acceptible. Anyways,
once these problems get resolved, this will definitely be something we
can do. I suppose for now we can put the complete songs online in .au
format (not just samples because the musicians will themselves be putting
it online). Bandwidth is still a consideration for many, too.
Brian