Xiphophorus helleri is a small aquarium fish (the commonSwordtail). What's special about it? Not much, really. The Xiph.Orglogo doesn't even look anything like a real swordtail, but it's a logothat's been in use a long time.
What the namedoes have is the minimum requirement of one letter 'X' for a technology-related organization. That fact that it's impossible to spell is an added bonus.
The Xiphophorus name was later shortened to Xiph.org. English speakers tend to pronounce this [zɪf] (short /i/) while non-English speakers favor [ksif]. Either is acceptable.
The Ogg project began with a few-weekend-attempt at a simple audiocompression package as part of a larger project in 1993. At the time,the software was called 'Squish'. The project and the general problemof music compression became a personal fascination, and Squish took ona life of its own far beyond the proportions of the original digitalmusic studio project of which it was to be part.
A few months after the first Squish webpage, I received a polite butfirm letter informing me that Squish is a registered trademark (for amail transport system). Mike Whitson, a contributor to the cause inthe early days, suggested the name 'OggSquish' as a replacement.
An 'Ogg' (pronounced [ɑg], [ɒg], or [og]) is a tactical maneuver fromthe network game 'Netrek' that has entered common usage in a widersense. From the definition:
3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of thedrain on future resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem setthat's due tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a sec andalmost ogged that oncoming car."
(see therest of thedefinitionfor the original Netrek usage.)
At the time Ogg was starting out, most personal computers were i386sand the i486 was new. I remember thinking about the algorithms Iwas considering, "Woah, that's heavyweight. People are going to needa 486 to run that..." While the software ogged the music, therewasn't much processor left for anything else.
These days, Ogg has come to stand for the file format that developed from that early compression work and is part of the larger Xiph.org multimedia project; Squish became just the name of one of the Ogg codecs.For that reason, we usually just refer to it as Ogg when there's noNetrek context nearby. The Ogg project has nothing to do with thecommon surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from theTerry Pratchett bookWyrd Sisters.
The 'Thor-and-the-Snake' logo is drawn somewhat from Norse mythology;the real symbolism is the sine-curve shape of the snake. Thor ishefting Mjollnir about to compress the periodic signalJörmungandr... See, it all makes sense.
Vorbis, on the other handis named after the Terry Pratchettcharacter from the bookSmall Gods. The name holds somesignificance, but it's an indirect, uninteresting story.
Ogg Vorbis (pronouned [vōr'bĭs]) was the first CODEC indeveloped as part of the Xiph.org multimedia project, begunimmediately afterFraunhofer issuedits 'Letter of Infringement' to freeware MP3 encoder efforts.Vorbis is intended to go head-to-head with MPEG codecs like AACand has historically achieved comparable or better quality.
Paranoia IV is the upcoming release in the logical progression ofParanoia, Paranoia II, Paranoia III... Release IV is a cross platformlibrary project that combines a portable SCSI packet commandinterfaces with platform-independant code to find specific hardwaredevices. On top of these it places specialized interfaces that wrapthe hardware in an error correcting layer to make up for deficienciesin specific device examples. Paranoia IV provides the CDDA and errorcorrection engines to cdparanoia series 10.
Cdparanoia is the error correcting compact disc digital audioextraction (CDDA DAE) tool built using Paranoia III (currently, up torelease 9) and Paranoia IV (release 10, to be announced).
The name should be somewhat self-explanatory; the logo is a bitweirder. Dubbed 'the All-Seeing Laser Playback Head of Omniscience'it's a takeoff of the eye-and-pyramid symbol of wisdom. Think you'veseen it before and can't quite place where? Look on the back of a USone dollar bill.
An interesting note on the 'eye-in-the-pyramid' symbol from Nathan Myers:
In the [this] page, you can explain the"eye in the pyramid" symbol as indicating that whichexists solely because people believe it exists.(Money and gods are examples, so it being on thedollar bill is appropriate.)
The eye is placed on a starburst pattern emanating from the hub areaof a compact disc.
The Xiph Fish Logo and the Vorbis.com many-fish logos are trademarks (™) of Xiph.Org.
These pages © 1994 - 2012 Xiph.Org. All rights reserved.
