FSF Award to Brian Paul & Get The Stream

During LWCE last week, LinuxWorld Paris was also going on. RMS ^[?] was there, and gave this year's award to Brian Paul. Brian is known for his amazing work on the Mesa 3D Graphics library - and deserves lots of credit. They took a *really* big video shoot of it - you can grab the video and a player from our servers at SourceForge.

Comments

School Trip

[Anonymous Coward]

Our school class just took a trip to the Mesa 3D Graphics Library. It was just breath taking! It took all day for us to get through the whole place. If you're ever in the neigborhood, I highly recommend it.

I get paid a nickel for every email I read!

Slashdot desperation?

[augustz]

Are the editors of slashdot getting a little antsy trying to slashdot servers?

I my download dialog box is correct, you just posted a link on the frontpage to a 1,000 Meg file (aka 1G). Ignoring the cost (which if people DO deceide to download this would be considerable), this doesn't seem like a terribly nice thing to do. And anyone willing to download a 1G file just to watch an award being given is really out of their minds.

Why not post a file 1/10th this size? Consider this a call for someone to shrink this down to something that makes sense.

Re:Slashdot desperation?

[selectspec]

I'm sure source forge has this file hosted on a SGI fiber storage server with DS5 backbone access.

Re:Slashdot desperation?

[selectspec]

DS-5 Frame Rates range around 850 Mbps and are practically only working on fiber. Coax can get up to DS-4 with its 274 Mbps. Serious backbone.

Memo: Corporate X-promotion.

[augustz]

The story of this story. Tim Purdue is on the secret VA Linux corporate phoneline to the Slashdot geek compound:

TP "Hey there guys, been working on doing some cross promotion."

Hemos "No way dude, these open source freaks get all high and mighty when they see the hand of money meddling."

TP "No problem, I was looking over the alogrithem we use to determine which projects are hot and which are not. An important component of the matrix is number of bits downloaded"

Hemos "I see, let me what I can do."

Seeing as this is the only explanation other than insanity, you KNOW it must be true.

Re:Memo: Corporate X-promotion.

[technos]

Seeing as this is the only explanation other than insanity

Insanity? Naw, there are plenty!

1. Hemos didn't check the link.
2. Hemos checked the link, but cancelled the transfer without noticing the size.
3. Hemos has his own OC-192, and he never noticed. One paltry gig does tend to fly by, y'know.
4. Hemos has a grudge against the guy running the server.
5. Hemos is doing the guy running the server a favor; After all, nothing like a slashdotting to get your hardware budget increased!
6. Hemos is drunk.
7. CmdrTaco is drunk, and posting as Hemos.
8. There's a pool running on how many downloads there will be, and Hemos has his money on "150"
9. The upstream provider is offering a PlayStation 2 to the first customer to exceed 20,000Gb/s for a sustained period, and Hemos wants one.

Mesa3D is good stuff

[__aawwih8715]

I'm glad to see that SGI has not tried to do anything to stop or hinder the mesa3d project. SGI has allowed him to succeed where others have hindered. Anyone remember 3dfx getting pissed off when creative labs made a glide wrapper for their tnt card?

As i have heard, SGI has done nothing but help this guy and the project. I'm very glad to see that.
Chalk another one up for sgi.

Re:Mesa3D is good stuff

[tolldog]

Yes but the difference is that OpenGL is just that... and open standard. If SGI got all upset about it, then they would no longer have an open standard.

Part of SGI owning the highend GL market for such a long time was that they had a spec that they created and extended and hardware that rocked on it. By keeping it open, others could learn it and program for it, always wishing for that day that they had an SGI box to *really* play with it on.

Closing the standard would have been worse for SGI then had IBM squashed all the IBM compatables.

Re:Are FSF Prizes to be encouraged?

[CaseyB]

Yeah, eventually it'll end up like those fistfights we see every year between the Nobel candidates.

what format is this?

[Trepidity]

Would you mind reposting the movie in a compressed streaming format that is not platform-specific? Apart from the fact that a 1 GB uncompressed (or at least badly-compressed; you can fit over 3 hours of DivX in that size, and i doubt this is a 3-hour presentation) stream is rather crappy to begin with, having it being only playable on some non-standard player available only on the Slashcode servers and not ported to anything other than Linux is even worse.

Re:what format is this?

[Mike Hicks]

AFAICT, it's an MPEG2 video stream. It should play with any DVD player software on Windows or Mac. Linux, OTOH...I'm not sure if this vlc program works or not. I can get audio, but I don't seem to get any video. I'll try a few things, but I suspect this thing will just sit around on my HD for a while.

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Re:what format is this?

[wowbagger]

having it being only playable on some non-standard player available only on the Slashcode servers and not ported to anything other than Linux is even worse.

Does anybody else see this as amusing? Normally, it's us Linuxen who are left to complain about "no players for our OS".

Re:what format is this?

[Mike Hicks]

Thanks! I actually have an updated package (gcc-2.96-69), but I guess that wasn't enough.

Unfortunately, the video is out of sync, and it crashes with a segfault shortly after Stallman actually starts talking...

the terminal window shows all sorts of errors like this:

vpar error: premature end of picture
vpar error: Invalid motion_vector code
vpar error: Invalid motion_vector code
vpar error: Invalid motion_vector code
vpar error: premature end of picture
vpar error: DCT coeff (intra) is out of bounds

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Is it just me?

[SymLink-Dyn]

Does this smell slightly political? Posting in high quality VOB format (DVD encoding, no?) when a smaller/lower quality compression would clearly be more appropriate makes it look like some foundation is being laid. "Look Your Honor, all these nice open source hippies use DVD video to freely distribute their videos! And on Linux!"

Mind you, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but it seems kind of silly to try and sneak this in the back door.

Then again, I could be just crazy.

Re:Is it just me?

[Trepidity]

Of course the problem is that MPEG2 is a rather crappy format, as the low quality of this enourmous 1GB file will show you. An equivalent-quality DivX ;-) encoded file would be more in the range of 500MB.

Re:Is it just me?

[Sloppy]

Mind you, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but it seems kind of silly to try and sneak this in the back door.

Silly? Hm.. IMHO, it's brilliant (except for the file size issue). Embracing the format is a good step toward the goal of "commoditizing" it.

If you want to get into the realm of silliness, then do this: CSS-encrypt it and then supply a second (much smaller) file containing the keys. Then whoever owns the video could sue all the DVD player manufacturers under DMCA for the "crime" of being compatable. ;-) Just cut and paste MPAA's arguments, and if you can get the same judge, then you'de get the same decision, right? EFF would have to rush to MPAA's defense!

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Re:What does that F stand for?

[nebby]

You might be interested in reading my rant on half-empty.

I think you're a little off-base here

[StandardDeviant]

DirectX is an absolute piece of shit from a programmer's standpoint. The API could only be described as "grotty" on the inside (c.f. library versions and context pointers, or the gawdawfulisms that are inherent in win32 to begin with like the code needed to open the simplest window). By comparison OpenGL's api is incredibly well laid-out. The two offer a similar set of features (OpenGL works just was well with 2d or isomorphic setups, linear transformations being what they are), but DX puts you through a lot more pain to get at them. If you were a programmer and you just had to use a DirectX-like API to feel happy, see SDL, which provides many of the gruntwerk features of DX and is much cleaner (and is cross platform). (NB: SDL doesn't do 3d or drawing primitives itself but there are many, many addon modules to accomplish this stuff; OpenGl rendering contexts are provided, see the SDLization of the NeHe tutorials on the sdl site.)

WRT speed, well, OpenGL on linux is an interesting question. At best it's second fiddle to mature OpenGl platforms like SGI. But if you have an NVIDIA card or one of the DRI-supported cards you're probably set to play most games. True, many games are coded in DX, but OpenGL is far from dead (Q3 is native opengl, as are all the Q3-engine-using games; UT works very well in opengl mode, etc. (I like FPS games so that's where my examples are coming from.)).

Anyway, linux already has the beginnings of pretty good DirectX support in the form of the recent developments from the Wine camp. For me the litmus test is "can I play StarCraft on Linux?", and the answer is "yes." :-) (Now if I could just find my fscking StarCraft disk :-/ moving sucks.)

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Fuck Censorship.

Re:I think you're a little off-base here

[CaseyB]

DirectX is an absolute piece of shit from a programmer's standpoint.

If only that mattered.

Re:Thanks for posting the .vob(non sarcastic)

[heroine]

I thought we consumers were supposed to buy things because they're novel and trendy, not because they're useful. Isn't that why everyone got rid of their radios and now listens to 8kbit AM quality streaming audio? Isn't that why everyone got rid of their TV's and now watches thumbnail video streams?

Re:What does that F stand for?

[technos]

creating nothing more than a system by which they may exploit the rights of genuine coders who wish to make their work truly free

And they do this how?

"Today, we've switched Joe Programmer's normal license with the GPL. "
"Shhh.. Let's see if he notices.. "
"Joe can't tell the difference!"
" GPL, now with Flavour Crystals!"
(apologies to Folgers).

They wish to spread the evil practice of licensing, and even attempt to say that such licensing will aid in giving software freedom! How ridiculous is that!

That's like saying that you shouldn't grab your guns and pop off a few enemy soldiers when the Canadians decide to conquer Buffalo, because then "you'll only serve to further the spread of war and violence, which are bad, mmmkay?". Software companies fight the freedom of code and users with onerous licenses, we fight back with licenses.

There is only one way to truly free content[snip]

Sure is! Let each programmer freely choose his license, and let him be secure in the fact that someone else isn't going to flame him for it. That's freedom.

So, uh, does it play in anything?

[Mike Hicks]

Um. I hate to say it, but this vlc program appears to be a piece of junk. However, it's the only program that I've tried so far that decodes anything. I tried xine, and it has messages flying by about some demux error. OMS, well, I can't even figure out if I'm getting oms to run, nonetheless play this thing.

I'm an utter moron when it comes to a lot of this video stuff. I can run ./configure, etc, but there's no way in hell I would be able to debug it.
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Re:What the hell is that...

[Alien54]

What the hell is that thing in the lower left corner of this picture? "Cousin it" from the Addam's family? Or is it the back of somebody's head,

DING!

There you go.

What you are missing, though, is the fashionable black beret being worn, see against the black curtains, and the black shadows.

It is covering about two thirds of the head of hair you are looking at.

anyone seen it?

[friscolr]

before we get all crazy about how Ridiculous it is to post a link to a 1+ Gig file in such a manner...

Has anyone actuallly seen this video???
Maybe it's Really Good!
i bet it includes the director's cut, comments from the award givers, alternative endings, and maybe even an interactive first person ceremony at the end!

i can't wait (the 2 hours it'll take) to see this! i'm as excited with anticipation as when i stood in line 30+ days for Star Wars tickets!

-f

not platform specific ? that's what it is !

[Sam H]

This is an MPEG2 stream. Yes, it's huge. And it's very bad quality. But at least, it is platform independant. DivX isn't OpenSource, and isn't even platform independent (x86 only), while there are MPEG2 players for almost all platforms. As for the player, it runs under Linux, but also all flavours of Unix, as well as BeOS and even Hurd ! Talk about non-standard player. Tsk.


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file(1) doesn't know it

[harmonica]

file(1) only says it's data ;-(

Re:Are FSF Prizes to be encouraged?

[Bruce Perens]

The problem with giving people an award is that you can't award everybody at once. The judges were tied and one person ended up having to be the tie-breaker, which was indeed a difficult choice. But I think everyone concerned took it in the right spirit.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Mesa is BSD-licensed; nontheless FSF awards it

[Bruce Perens]

Mesa is under a Free Software license, why would FSF not like it? It is an MIT license (BSD without the advertising restriction). FSF accepts that as a Free Software license. Yes, the GPL is preferred because it keeps software free, but the MIT license is free as well.

Thanks

Bruce

You have the US specific version of Xine

[Nailer]

I tried xine, and it has messages flying by about some demux error.

That's my fault - I'm the Xine documentation guy and I'm still hacking my SGML. The reason for the demux error is you live in the United States, where the legality of non MPAA licensed DVD players is undertain. Therefore, the version of xine you downloaded off sourceforge is not able to work with the content scrambling system used on most DVDs.

Those of us that live elsewhere in the world can download binary packages and source from non-US countries

Re:What does that F stand for?

[Black Parrot]

> Sure is! Let each programmer freely choose his license, and let him be secure in the fact that someone else isn't going to flame him for it. That's freedom.

Yeah, but what if you're a multiclass "troll/hacker" and you chose the license as flamebait? Shouldn't freedom allow flaimbaiters to get flamed when they want to?

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Zealot, troll, vat is difference?

[technos]

Good one. You actually sounded like a vicious license zealot. May I suggest next time, you base the troll on the premise that "FSF? Communist? They're just enforcing Christian sharing morality in an increasingly immoral and cut throat society." Early enough, it should get you a +5 Interesting..

DS5?

[sulli]

If you want to go above 100 Mbps (as described below) you would almost certainly buy an OC3 (Optical Carrier, 155 Mbps), OC12 (622 Mbps), or above. DSx facilities aren't in common usage due to the much higher capacity of fiber.