MS Silverlight To Stream Obama Inauguration Events 589
Ilgaz writes in to let us know that we will have to install MS Silverlight 2 to watch the US President's inauguration online. Everyone running Mac PPC, Linux, and FreeBSD has been left out, as there are no working Silverlight 2-capable alternatives on these systems. Here is Microsoft's press release announcing the selection of Silverlight yesterday. Streaming of various events around the inauguration begins today at the Presidential Inaugural Committee site, which touts its "inclusive and accessible" coverage.
So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That certainly didn't take long to have the rhetoric fail and the reality take charge.
Oh, they're plenty tech savvy ... they're just not tech willing. Microsoft now owes the Obama Administration a favor.
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure you have this backwards - Micro$oft probably made campaign contributions to Obama and Obama owed M$ the favor....
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I am sure you have this backwards - Micro$oft probably made campaign contributions to Obama and Obama owed M$ the favor....
Wouldn't surprise me. Washington is a complicated, twisted place.
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sorry - I have typed it so many times since 1997 its automatic !
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who spell that company's name "Micro$oft" give me flashbacks to 1997. Firstly because they need to grow up, and secondly because they haven't moved on since then.
On the other hand ... neither has Microsoft.
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Funny)
you know if Bill Gates had a penny for every bug in a Microsoft product he'd be a Billionaire...
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but your sound of reason will fall on flat ears with the Slashdot crowd. After all what is more important than having technology [fill in blank] being accessible?
I was reading in OSNews an article that talked about accessibility and one poster said the following (paraphrasing)
Is it really that bad that only certain operating systems are followed? For if you try to be completely open you will annoy somebody. After all what is to say that somebody using Haiku or some other esoteric operating system?
The point is that you are going to annoy somebody... At least the Obama camp knows that there is an Internet! And that it is not made of tubes....
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The point is that you are going to annoy somebody... At least the Obama camp knows that there is an Internet! And that it is not made of tubes....
Stop making excuses for him. His team picked the wrong choice this time, plain and simple, and it's the job of those who know better to point it out. They could have streamed in multiple formats or done any number of things to make it more accessible, but they screwed up and went the MS-only route.
Stop continuing the bullshit... (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't a screw up. They just placed higher priority on streaming quality than on accessibility -- especially given there are many more channels to see the inauguration live (TV, Flash, etc.) than this one.
Did you SEE how high quality the DNC streaming coverage was? It was phenomenally good, a leap ahead of the typical Youtube quality.
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Insightful)
From these events, it is obvious that the new administration either does not know about or does not care about the passion this community has for free ideals.
A very tiny community, compared to the overwhelming majority who a) don't give a toss about "free ideals" and b) have seen this story for the bullshit it is, in that only one website requires Silverlight to watch the inauguration, whereas YouTube and many others will be showing it in Flash video.
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:5, Informative)
I did find this. [senate.gov] The senate claims that you only need Flash to view the ceremony.
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I mean, sure, the ceremony is important, we once again have a peaceful change in power, and I wish the new president well. He's going to need all the luck he can get.
But, really...I'd think catching a few hightlights on the evening news would be enough if your really interested in watching this at all.
Joost is advertising that they will stream it live (Score:5, Informative)
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[...] in that only one website requires Silverlight to watch the inauguration, whereas [...]
Yeah, it just so happens that the "one website" is the official presidential inaugural committee site, which pompously dares to call it the most open inauguration in history [pic2009.org].
Welcome to the change.
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I'm sure that they meant open as in open access. Assuming that they meant open software is a bit of a stretch.
Oh! the injustice. Having to load a browser plug-in! You think Adobe would handle a monopoly in any market differently than Microsoft? You must not use their products, then.
If you are from the US and voted for Obama because you thought his platform was somehow anti-Microsoft, then, frankly, you're an idiot. This is it though...*this* is what lifted the veil and caused you to see the world for what i
Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure that they meant open as in open access. Assuming that they meant open software is a bit of a stretch.
It isn't open access. I'm running Linux and I can't use it. Therefore it is excluding me based on OS usage. I'd gladly use Adobe Flash (they make it for Linux)
Oh! the injustice. Having to load a browser plug-in! You think Adobe would handle a monopoly in any market differently than Microsoft? You must not use their products, then.
Adobe isn't Microsoft. M$ does this because Windows is competing with other OSs and M$ doesn't want Silverlight to work there. If Silverlight didn't exist Flash would still work on Linux. It's just that then we wouldn't have any compatibility issues since everyone would be using Flash. Finally, I'd gladly install the closed-source Silverlight plugin, but M$ won't let me.
If you are from the US and voted for Obama because you thought his platform was somehow anti-Microsoft, then, frankly, you're an idiot. This is it though...*this* is what lifted the veil and caused you to see the world for what it is. Silverlight. When there are lots of other options available, no less (maybe that's what they meant by "most open"?) Your trolling needs work.
If I had been old enough to vote and I had voted for him, it would have been because I expected him to take a sterner line against blatantly anticompetitive measures such as Silverlight. And about the "other options": What if e.g. Congress decided its website would only work on Windows? Certainly people using Linux/Mac/whatever can get the information via news sources etc. right? The problem is that it becomes impossible to get the information straight from the horse's mouth (Why should I have to rely on The New York Times when their photojournalism is blatantly biases?).
Anti-competitive my rear. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod me down if you must, but what, pray tell, is anticompetitive about Silverlight? How does it block competition? If anything, it is anti-anti-competitive in that it forces Adobe to improve.
More important, and more pro-competition is that it forces the luddites at the W3C to get their act together and produce something useful for once. For too long W3C has been able to produce crap because they assumed that developers had no choice but use HTML and CSS. Having two plugins that run on the majority of ta
Re:Anti-competitive my rear. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's anticompetitive because it doesn't run on Mac PPC, Linux and FreeBSD? RFTS.
Firstly, Apple don't support Mac PPC anymore, why the fuck should anybody else?
Secondly, Linux and FreeBSD account for less than a single percentage point of the desktop market. Even so, you have people working on it. [mono-project.com]
Thirdly and finally, you don't have to watch at the official site. There's probably a hundred places online you could watch it. If you don't want to use Silverlight - don't.
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Silverlight has a very tiny installbase right now.... The fact that many *could* install it if they wanted to isn't terribly important.
The same argument is used against making sites that use modern css features and sending out files in opendocument formats and such, only in this case an even larger percentage of users *could* install supported apps if they wanted.
Linux and BSD may have a small percentage of the desktop market, but what about the sub desktop, ie mobile phones, small tablets (like nokia's), s
Re:By that definition (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to inform you, but your definition of "open" isn't in line with the RMS/FSF party line. Pretty much MPEG* has all kinds of patents [kuro5hin.org] that would exclude it from use. Theora [theora.org] and Vorbis [vorbis.com] are the only video/audio codecs that would most likely pass the RMS/FSF smell test.
You still need a way to either offer a second stream or embed the Vorbis/Theora stream into a browser. And you would have to require Windows and most likely Mac users to install both codecs.
Kids these days... (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, you choose to use an operating system built by essentially hobbyists in their spare time. Not everything is gonna work--that is a feature not a bug. And while I hate to say it, if you dont like that, perhaps you could dedicate some of your time to Moonlight so that you *can* use Silverlight stuff. Don't expect people to use their non-free time to develop software for a free operating system.
And yes, I do contribute to the free operating system I use in production environments--FreeBSD. I've contributed many ports to build and install CPAN modules. If something isn't in the ports tree and I need it, I don't just expect somebody else to put it there nor do I bitch, moan or cry--I take the time out of my day and write the damn port myself. That is how open source works--you give back to it and everybody benefits. If I didn't give back, I'd be a leech. That is also one of the biggest flaws in open source, you have to have the skills *to* give back, and not everybody does.
Silverlight exists, it is an amazing platform, and soon enough it will become widely adopted. Accept it as fact, and either either get used to being left out or get started working on Moonlight or something like it. Calling me a "Microsoft fanboy douche" will not result in the open source faeries giving you Silverlight support. You have to make it work!
Getting shit to work is what Linux is all about (or at least was all about). Back in the day, your only reward was the pride you got by getting $IMPOSSIBLE_DEVICE to work on Linux! Now I guess Linux is all about the politics of getting something for nothing. Sad. ...Now get the hell off my lawn!
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WTF is this about: http://silverlight.net/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=34139 [silverlight.net]
Microsoft is probably paying you to spam Slashdot with your bullshit.
I hope you burn in hell.
Re:Anti-competitive my rear. (Score:4, Insightful)
90% of the remaining 20% will not watch any of it over the Internet (Perhaps TV!!).
90% of the remaining 10% of 20% will watch a stream from a major media outlet (CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS...)
99.9% of the remaining 10% of 10% of 20% will be using Windows or OSX (Intel-Mac)
The President elect would like to extend his heart felt apologies to Chuck in Ohio.
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Oh! the injustice. Having to load a browser plug-in! You think Adobe would handle a monopoly in any market differently than Microsoft? You must not use their products, then.
Unless, of course, you haven't paid the microsoft tax.
Then you're simply excluded from "the most open inauguration in history".
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Which is still not truly available to everyone. Where is that Flash plugin for my PPC system? Where is the non-patent-risk FLV codec for my PPC system? What do people who do not have an up to date computer do (yes, there are still a lot of them, and their computers can play an
You
Okay (Score:3, Interesting)
But understand that they are probably using Silverlight because one or more of the following:
a) Their staff was familiar with C#/WPF and not Flash
b) They could have had licenses for all that Windows Streaming stuff.
c) The tech guys handling the streaming stuff knew the Microsoft stuff, not the Adobe stuff.
d) Something else.
Bottom line is follow the money. For whatever reason it was cheaper to use a Microsoft stack over an Adobe stack. My hunch is most of their visitors can install Silverlight. I would im
Re:Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the most likely reality is someone really cheap (as in how much he was paid by the political party versus how much he was paid by 'er' someone else) came in to do that part of web site and made some choices that where motivated less by their loyalty to the future administration and more by their loyatly to silverfish. A political web site is a political web site, everything about it is part of the message not just the content.
So the Obama camp is already starting to learn some lessons of how it can be manipulated to promote greed based corporate ideals. Of how it's message can be hijacked to promote some deceitful corporations agenda.
It is a major flub, a demonstration of being exploited by corporate intrests right at the very beginning of their term, a painful lesson to be learned but one they need to remember. Not all of their staff, will in reality be their staff and many of them will be their to serve other peoples interests and not the interests of the government they claim to be serving.
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I'm curious what they should be using beside Silverlight? Flash is just as "non-free" as Silverlight, isn't it? Keep in mind a requirement has to be "embeds in the web-page, runs on a good chunk of browsers, and works like youtube".
Having some kind of text-link that you click on to open up a non-embeded browser doesn't cut it (which is what CSPAN does). Most people get confused by that stuff. Whatever your alternative is, bottom line is it has to work like youtube.
A wise person would note that I'm askin
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You really don't get it. This is the introduction to their term of office, it should be seen to be unbiased, putting a link on that page to a commercial web site immediately implies a preference by the administration for the product they are now directly advertising and promoting. It has very little to do with M$ and everything to do with demonstrating political maturity and independence, especially right at the very beginning of their term of office.
'Seen to be clean' should be a priority especially aft
Re:Okay (Score:4, Informative)
Flash has an open spec available: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ [adobe.com], silverlight does not.
Flash is available for linux, silverlight is not
Flash is available for PPC macs, silverlight is not
Flash is already installed on most systems, silverlight is not (i have an intel mac and never even thought about installing it)
Flash is a tried and tested, mature technology with years of usage and any large websites using it, silverlight is not and does not.
Flash is available for some embedded devices such as nokia internet tablets and the nintendo wii, silverlight is not
So Flash is clearly a better option than silverlight on so many levels, even if it isn't an ideal option. If you have to make tradeoffs, why make unnecessary ones?
I do (Score:3, Informative)
Silverlight runs on Intel Mac's (PPC's are legacy... if you have a problem with that go talk to Apple, not Microsoft. Apple is notorious for pulling stuff like that).
It doesn't run on Linux or FreeBSD (does Flash run on FreeBSD? Never tried, actually).
The solution, provided you are willing to bear the cost (i.e. taxes) would be to offer the stream in a secondary format. Keep in mind though, you dont know what backend they are using, so it could either be easy to have two video streams, or it could be a m
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I prefer silverfish, mainly because of M$ being such a marketing driven company it is bound to niggle at them and I find the thought, well, to be blunt quite humorous. Also I feel that my very mild poke at the M$ marketing team is still far less than the years of M$ abuse at the FOSS movement ie. a cancer, terrorists use it, hackers prefer it et al, and, those where not from some random poster's on a forum (that has funny mods) but from the senior executives of the company and spread in every commercial ma
Or alternatively (Score:5, Informative)
You can watch it using flash video here [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Or alternatively (Score:5, Informative)
There's another list available here:
http://newteevee.com/2009/01/14/where-to-watch-obamas-inauguration-online/ [newteevee.com]
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Interesting that the UK has this and US doesn't.
It's day one, so maybe there should be a little slack granted. But he needs to be careful. I think a LOT of people who did vote for Obama did so on the ideas he presented with a we'll see how he does. Otherwise the Republicans will lay waste to the Democrats in four years.
I would welcome a third party.
Re:Or alternatively (Score:5, Funny)
There's another alternative, too. It turns out that streaming coverage will also be available using a wireless, thin client protocol.
I've set up my wireless client gear, and it's pretty sweet. For only a few hundred bucks, I got a 34-inch diagonal screen, WXGA resolution, and stereo sound. It streams video over a new protocol called "ATSC" in the ~500MHz band. And it all works for free without needing a subscription!
This event in particular will be delivered by multiple, simultaneous video streams that they call "channels". I encourage anyone who's not familiar with this technology to check it out.
Re:Or alternatively (Score:5, Informative)
Humm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's see. Wants to renew Bush's tax cuts, says it will take a while to figure out how best to close Gitmo, and picks a Windows only solution for streaming....
So far so good.
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says it will take a while to figure out how best to close Gitmo
Most reasonable people would acknowledge that it's going to take awhile to close down Gitmo. Many of the people held there are simply too dangerous to let go. Many of the others who aren't have no where to go -- their home countries won't accept them. It should be obvious that you can't just close the facility down and give everybody there a bus ticket home. Obama has committed himself to ending torture and finding a safe way to closing down Gitmo. What more do you want?
Wants to renew Bush's tax cuts
And? Do you really think raisin
Re:Humm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the people held there are simply too dangerous to let go. Many of the others who aren't have no where to go
The US Department of Defense operates many military prisons. They can all easily be transfered to a military prison within the US. They were only held offshore to avoid jurisdiction, and that point's been rendered moot.
Re:Humm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that sort of the point of closing gitmo? To try them in a court of law, as opposed to hold them illegally and indefinitely without trial?
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Re:Humm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most reasonable people would acknowledge that it's going to take awhile to close down Gitmo. Many of the people held there are simply too dangerous to let go. Many of the others who aren't have no where to go -- their home countries won't accept them. It should be obvious that you can't just close the facility down and give everybody there a bus ticket home. Obama has committed himself to ending torture and finding a safe way to closing down Gitmo. What more do you want?
Call me a woolly-minded old liberal, but they could always, y'know, try them, and either bang them up legitimately or let them go as appropriate.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Huh? What? (Score:5, Informative)
The actual copy from the references story is...
Microsoft's Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site...
Nowhere does it say that all the networks will be using Silverlight exclusively.
Re:Huh? What? (Score:5, Informative)
To enlarge upon your point, that would be a committee that Obama is NOT heading up. He probably won't be personally supervising the mowing of the White House lawn either. I suppose people will be blaming Obama if the D.C. dept of Sanitation doesn't provide enough waste baskets as well.
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Doesn't mean much to me ... (Score:2)
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For the rest of us there is Hulu (Score:2, Informative)
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For the rest of you in the US, that is, who can already watch it live on television...
WRONG! (Score:5, Informative)
The story *DOES NOT* say that Silver light will be used exclusivly accross all channels. It says:
Microsoft's Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site
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So you are forced to use Silverlight on that website, which is just wrong and is what the guy is complaining about.
Re:WRONG! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WRONG! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are computers 3 years old outdated? Even back in 1998, sites could provide 3 alternatives (Qt, Real, Wmedia) on same page. What happened to that magnificent technology? Is such a historical event suited for another DRM framework install advertisement? I am not for flash too. It is giving user (citizen) the choice. It is possible, even basic pages on shared hosts can do it. Apple, Real, VLC and Adobe guys will happily install their servers too.
Linux Moonlight PRE ALPHA is not Silverlight 2. I was always wondering if anyone would fall into that trick and there we go. Microsoft doesn't support YOU, your OS. It supports Developers to make a clone of the real Silverlight. Just like Windows Media Codecs for Quicktime, even while excellently coded, can't replace a full feature Windows Media Player. E.g. it can't do DRM streams/music store. You know why they exist? So they can claim unofficial support when a media companies IT guy asks about "What about multi platform support? Mobile support?"
and that's what happened to that (Score:3)
Are computers 3 years old outdated? Even back in 1998, sites could provide 3 alternatives (Qt, Real, Wmedia) on same page. What happened to that
Real and MS started making exclusivity deal, forcing to install Real, which then took over all media types on your computer, even those it couldn't handle.
And then there was sadness.
But some day flash came along, at first it was just a huge waste of electrons, serving only to make pointless "intro animations" which were annoyances that had to be suffered only long enough to find and click on the "skip" button... until youTube made popular a way of embedding video in a page using flash that made it usable.
An
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...on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site, which states at the top of the page, "The Presidential Inaugural Committee, at the direction of President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, will organize an inclusive and accessible inauguration..."
There, fixed that for you.
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Uhuh. Linux users are essentially the paraplegics of the OS world. Nice try, troll!
A Linux user might need a wheelchair, but it's probably because he sawed his legs off due to patent concerns over the relevant genes.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Exclusively Silverlight? (Score:2)
It's not encouraging that the committee's website will stick to this proprietary format, which is mainly designed to kill JavaScript and launch Microsoft's conquest of the free and open Internet.
However, is this really exclusive? Will the inauguration be streamed in other formats from other sources? Presumably. In which case, this is really not a problem. It's MSFT getting some marketing.
The marketing won't work. Silverlight will die, and pretty rapidly. I predict MSFT will stop pushing it early 2010.
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Good luck with that, since it's going to happen the second people stop using Netflix (their Silverlight-only "Watch Instantly" software is in Beta, and will at some point replace the old version entirely).
Moonlight...? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html
Oops, bad link (Score:2)
meant that. I somehow got to the parent mono download link instead. Feel free to mod parent down.
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Same bullshit as the convention (Score:2)
Moonlight ? (Score:5, Informative)
moonlight roadmap [mono-project.com]
Hopefully the W3C will compete (Score:3, Interesting)
My hope is by using Silverlight (or Flash), I can send a message to the W3C and friends to get their damn act together and make my life easier. It seems the W3C guys think we developers want yet another pile of semantic tags (like anybody uses the existing ones...). They'd be better severed by generously ripping off XAML and adding useful things like stylesheets. HTML should be more layout oriented, not "semantic" oriented.
Semantic languages work fine for a describing the contents of a book (or creating
The story is crap, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Silverlight is one of the few things Microsoft got right. I've been using Silverlight quite extensively on my Mac since Netflix switched to it, and it's rock solid. This kind of got me interested into looking into the programming aspects of it, and it's pretty darn easy if you know .NET Framework and WPF already, and if you don't, the learning curve is not that bad. I wanted to write a multi-file uploader for one of my apps, and I was able to do so in just a couple of hours, end to end.
Re:The story is crap, but (Score:5, Insightful)
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Since you are so cool (Score:3, Informative)
Point to a good mutli-file uploader that supports a mod_perl2 backend, not either PHP or ASP.NET? Make sure the said uploaded can be customized to make it easy to send meta-data along with the file upload. Make sure it is free and doesn't suck too.
Like the parent, I too was able to crank out a (rather ghetto) multi-file uploader that bolted right into the same backend hooks as the original form based one. In fact, the upload widget was my first dive into Silverlight because honestly, that is where improv
May I respectfully suggest the damn TV? (Score:4, Insightful)
Submitted to change.gov (Score:3, Interesting)
It's what you get. (Score:4, Funny)
I use Ubuntu at home, and I use it by choice. We all now that if we're running FreeBSD of a PowerPC Mac there are certain things that aren't available for us either. It's the price we knowingly pay for the choices me make. We're the exceptions, not the rule.
MS has pulled this stunt before (Score:4, Interesting)
Msft pulled the same stunt for the Democratic National Convention:
http://ixnotes.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/democratic-national-convention-against-gnulinux-or-bought-by-microsoft/ [wordpress.com]
And for the Olympics.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080623-nbc-olympics-on-the-go-download-service-is-vista-only.html [arstechnica.com]
Must be nice to able to buy so much influence.
Cross-Platform (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't like it, write a letter. (Score:3, Insightful)
The bottom line is that the person who made the decision to use Silverlight was probably the same person who made that decision for the Democratic National Convention. Most likely, the guy/gal was hired because he/she had Microsoft Certs and experience. I know a lot of very smart people who could very well have been tabbed for the same thing that are Microsoft people, and they probably would have made the same decision because they don't think beyond "this is a cool technology and it makes it easier for me to do what I want".
If you think it's a money thing, you don't know crap. Microsoft gives to both the Democratic AND Republican party. I know a lot of very hardcore Republicans who work for them. Yes, I know, I know a lot of people that I'm painting in a really bad light here. Apple, however, gave a lot as well. So did Google. And they tend to support Democratic and Independent causes more often than Republican.
Look, one thing you have to know is if Barack Obama had a whole lot less on his plate...after all, the economy is going down the tubes, followed by the environment, we've got wars that we're fighting and we don't really know why we're still fighting them...costly occupations...our schools are going to pot and good jobs are getting really, really scarce. If that stuff wasn't all on his plate, and he knew that Apple and Linux people wouldn't be able to stream the inauguration, he'd be upset and ask to talk to whoever made that call. As it is, it was probably some guy that was hired that was probably held over from the DNC stuff. Maybe it was one of his paid staffers.
Write a letter. Get your feelings out there and make it known. Don't just whine silently to yourself. If they get word, then some staffer might get a talking to. Really now...if you wanted this to be streamed using more open/cross platform technology, you should have started complaining about it when their tech team would have had some time to offer an alternative.
I wonder ... (Score:3, Informative)
...what antics will ensue when all the Windows users with older systems (sans Silverlight 2) get the message to download and install it as the inauguration begins?
How many prerequisite patches and service packs must be downloaded and reboots must be performed? And how much of the ceremony will be left to see once the install is done?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"All hail Pres Bush the 3rd"
That would have been McCain. Obama is Clinton the Second, to judge by his cabinet.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
He's Bush the 3rd with Clinton's cabinet, talking like Clinton, acting like Bush
The AC is right, we're screwed either way
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Whoops [slashdot.org]
Re:Stupid submitter (Score:5, Informative)
I did very well. Mac PPC means Macintosh PowerPC. You know, not everyone switched to Intel and MS left out PPC users on release of Silverlight 2.0 without any kind of explanation. Mono Silverlight 2.0 support is in pre-alpha stages and there is no guarantee it will do a trick like that (live streaming).
There should be another way of doing it and if I was Mr. Obama, I would really check that committee's ties with that convicted monopolist as this is not the first time they do this trick. It doesn't really give a good image. Even MS themselves offer Flash or at least WMedia alternatives on their own site.
Re:Stupid submitter (Score:4, Insightful)
Those running Windows 9x are out in the cold too.
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I'll bet there are more windows desktop machines that can't run silverlight than linux ones. That's my point.
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I did very well. Mac PPC means Macintosh PowerPC. You know, not everyone switched to Intel and MS left out PPC users on release of Silverlight 2.0 without any kind of explanation.
PPC on the desktop is a small market getting smaller by the day. Sorry, but thats the way it is.
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The slashdot summary clearly states "Mac PPC". Apple switched to intel CPUs only a few years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
I just installed silverlight 2 on my mac, so obviously someone didn't do their homework before submitting.
They mentioned PPC Macs - that's PowerPC-based Macs. In other words, if your Mac is several years old you are starting to be left behind with regards to newer tech - at least if you were hoping to watch the inauguration from one specific website.
While the lack of support for PPC Macs bothers me somewhat in principle, from a practical standpoint I don't think it's all that significant. Unfortunately there is a lot of new software that doesn't support PPC at all; so this is just one more example of that.
Re:False, false false... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is Intel only. Lots of people , especially G5 home/business users excluding big time gamers didn't upgrade to Intel yet. Apple knows this fact very well as they still ship iLife/iWork 09 as Universal binary. Adobe Flash 10 for example is both universal binary and recently SMP enabled for PPC dual G4s etc.
Like the dotcom boom days, MS can air a "exclusive Madonna concert" via silverlight, to make it popular and make people install it but this event isn't a Madonna concert or a Hollywood trailer. They couldn't convince their own OS users yet.
Re:Hulu? Youtube? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
I think it's because it's an easy place to slam Microsoft.
Silverlight handled the Olympics which is an amazing feat. People who make decisions like to have previous successes to look at when choosing between similar options.
"You have two options
1) You can use a proprietary Adobe Flash based system which will work on 99% of all computers and used used by companies like Youtube.
or
2) you can use a proprietary Microsoft Silverlight based solution which will work on 98% of all computers. It was used in the U
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Open, Free Codecs that work everywhere are surprisingly non-existent. I'd like to see that change!
Last time I checked, Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] was open, free and cross-platform. It was also proposed as the standard for HTML5 precisely for these qualities.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, should be redundant.
You can watch in silverlight, or you can head over to youtube, or turn on your television. There are dozens of places to watch this thing. Article is misleading, parent is mislead.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the TV option is still available, but this team has not given it much attention. This team is setting a precedent in streaming the proceedings, and future presidents will follow this example. My biggest concern is that, over the next decade, the ability to record a TV program will only be available to those who pay for "DVR service," likely locked down to prevent users from keeping copies without paying, and that if that happens, and these proceedings are streamed by websites like YouTube, people will lose their ability to keep personal copies of government proceedings. Most people will just shrug, but for some activists, the ability to record the government is important and should not be lost because of misguided efforts to be "tech savvy."