Looking forward to 3G/UMTS: better sound!

▼ A long, long time ago, someone decided that an 8 kHz sampling rate was good enough for phone conversations. That's pretty crappy. And cell phones use last century's compression to make it sound even worse. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: AMR-WB on UMTS!

Around 1998/1999 cell phones were cool. At least, to me: I just got my first one, and three new cell networks were being built in the Netherlands. On February 4, 1999, the strangely named mobile operator 'Ben' started, and I signed up with them that day.

In the intervening years I stopped following cellular technology and I only got a new phone in 2004 (or was it 2005?) because I got fed up with the inability to sync contacts between my Mac and my old phone.

But after all the rumors about 3G iPhones I started reading up on 3G (UMTS) a bit, and it turns out that 3G has something really good in store: the AMR-WB codec. Originally, GSM used a pretty pathetic full rate codec, but even its enhanced replacement sounds significantly worse than uncompressed audio. And there's still the issue that all frequencies below 300 and above 3400 Hz are thrown out.

With AMR wide band, the frequency range is from 50 to 7000 Hz, which is a lot better: listen to the samples on this page.

AMR-WB uses only 12 - 13 kbps like HR and EFR, so there's really no reason for UMTS networks not to use it. However, because the higher quality audio obviously doesn't survive conversion to/from standard 8 kHz encoding, you'll only hear the higher quality on calls between AMR-WB capable phones on networks with AMR-WB capable interconnects. So it's going to take a while before the majority of calls will sound better.

But it's a start and I'm now actually looking forward to having a 3G phone. Preferably an iPhone.

Permalink - posted 2008-05-04

Geert Wilders' movie Fitna

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A few days ago, Dutch politician Geert Wilders finally released his 17-minute movie Fitna online. He chose the service LiveLeak for this, which I hadn't heard of before. The movie loaded very slowly and didn.t play on my Mac. Fortunately, it's also available on Google Video, where the video plays just fine and, nice for those like me who don't like watching video embedded in web pages, it can be downloaded in iPod-compatible format. Apparently there were threats of an unspecified nature against LiveLeak employees which prompted them to remove the movie.

So, what do I think of the movie?

Many people have complained that it's all images we've seen before. That's true. The first half of the movie consists of parts of koran verses and images of violence done in the name of the islam, such as the september 11, 2001 attacks. It's easy to dismiss all of this, but it's the simple truth that a lot of violence happens in the name of the islam. Where does this hate come from?

In the movie, the word 'allah' is used throughout. That's strange. This is simply the Arabic word for 'god', and the god of islam is the same god that christians and jews believe in: the Abrahamic god. There is also a number of factual mistakes.

The second half is very different. Here, Wilders argues that the islam intends to turn Dutch (western?) society into an islamic one. This is laughable. Maybe there are a few people that are interested into pursuing this agenda, but in neighborhoods like transvaal and the schilderswijk in The Hague and similar ones elsewhere where immigrants make up most of the population, voter turnout barely tops 10% in some elections.

At the end, a hand takes a page from the koran, the image goes to black and we hear a ripping sound. Then a title tells us that the sound we heard was a page being ripped from the phone book. This is cheap theatrics. Wilders didn't have the guts to rip the actual page from the koran but still hints at it. I wonder what would have happened if he had. But it's probably for the best that he didn't, even now much of the reactions are about how 'insulting' the movie is, rather than address its message.

About the message and the reactions: interestingly, they both have a point. The koran, like the bible, does preach violence under some circumstances. And a good number of believers take its content to be the literal word of god. So the only thing that protects society against the proscribed violence is the ability of said believers to maintain cognitive dissonance. It's also true that most muslims are non-violent, productive members of society, and putting them in the same class as suicide bombers is insulting.

In my opinion, all of this is an issue of fundamentalism. A fundamentalist follows his or her doctrine all the way to its logical conclusion, no matter what the consequences. A good example is the animal rights activist who killed would-be politician Pim Fortuyn. He believed that Fortuyn's views were so harmful that he had to be stopped at all costs. In this way, it looks like Geert Wilders is also very close to being a fundamentalist. He certainly seems to understand the fundamentalist mind set quite well, assuming that all muslims will stop at nothing to make Holland an islamic theocracy. However, most people are much more pragmatic than that. My one time Algerian brother in law wouldn't dream of eating pork, but he had no trouble drinking wine. Both are equally disallowed by islamic law.

Of course pragmatists don't understand fundamentalists on either side any more than those understand each other. As such the debate that started as soon as Wilders announced his movie won't go anywhere and will only serve to install fear, uncertainty and doubt and hurt many, many feelings.

Permalink - posted 2008-03-30