Open Source TV

Lish writes "Everyone's favorite tech prognosticator, Robert X Cringely, is going to do a TV show called 'NerdsTV.' It will be available on the web and playable on pretty much any system. The cool part is, they will provide three video versions: one geared at techies, one for suits, and one with all the raw footage so you can edit your own version to your heart's content. There will also be audio-only versions in Ogg and Mp3. All of this is freely redistributable."

Comments

Educational?

[capt.Hij]

It [Nerds 1] is aimed at the education market, not homes,...

I enjoyed the show a great deal and I'm willing to ignore the shameless promotion filler at the top of Cringley's article, but... is this something that has much educational value for our schools? There hasn't been enough time past to make it valuable for a history class and the technological info in the series is surely way to low to be of any value.

Moreover, I doubt that the pictures of geeks making millions will be enough to stop the school bullies from beating the snot our of nerds. In fact it may make it worse!

This is great

[bjb]

I love Cringely's tech reporting, and this show can only be enjoyable to me. The fact that you can also get the raw takes is perfect for someone trying out Adobe Premiere, iMovie or Windows Movie Maker for the first time; you can splice together your own show.

I can't wait to see this.

Time for a Cringely topic icon?

[ekrout]

I've said this before, but I'll say it again [a little extra karma never hurt anyone] -- we need a Cringely topic icon.

Why, you ask?

Basically, some of the best discussions come from the Slashdot community after we collectively read a piece from Cringely. His ideas are often fairly original and interesting, which makes for a nice "vacation" from the usual OS Wars, Text Editor Wars, and Software Licensing Wars.

I'd even be happy to make the icon for the Cringely topic.

So, editors, care to give a little feedback on this? There are several other topic areas that we could certainly do without, but I feel that a Cringely area of the site would be well worth it.

Thanks for listening.

Re:Is GPL best license for this purpose

[LMCBoy]

I think the "open source" part comes from the fact that he's releasing all of the unedited footage that was shot for each show. So anyone can cut their own version and redistribute it.

Not sure how useful that's going to be, but it's a neat idea.

Why is he reinventing the wheel?

[gsfprez]

QuickTime Streaming Server and Quicktime Brodcaster are already OSS solutions for Cringley. He could save even more money.

If he really wants to make it a download - then even as a MPEG-4 instead of the /. fav - Sorenson - there's not reason why it can't be viewed on ANY operating system if they work on software to decode what's being streamed by the open source streamers - and since it would be QuickTime - it could be watched the second it stared downloading.

what does this all mean...?

Apple needs to get off their ass and make QuickTime player for Linux and BSD unix - or just OSS the fscking player and charge for the Pro player.

Damnit Apple - you are always so close - yet so far.. you have drawn in tens of thousands of linux geeks with Darwin and a real Unix operating system, and you don't realize what its buying you? The alternative when Microsoft really starts to screw people with rentalware is going to be Apple - and if you have the love of the OSS community - you'll have the love of all...

oh well, at least you aren't installing DRM in your products - so i'll keep buying.

Frontline has a similar, but different, approach..

[freeBill]

...raw footage is not made available, but much of the material not used in a particular show is put on their web site.

For instance: If a number of experts were interviewed for a show, with excerpts from those interviews included in the actual broadcast, the web site not only includes transcripts of the broadcast but also transcripts of the complete interviews. This is very useful if you're wondering if the excerpts were taken out of context.

I think it's the future of broadcast-related web sites: all the info from the show...and more.

I have my doubts about the usefulness of the Cringely experiment, but it is interesting. At the very least.

Is this gonna be something like TechTV?

[Ectropy]

I wonder if this is going to be like TechTV, or just like one of TechTV's shows. Althogether I was not to impressed by techtv because the lack of depth they covered some stuff, and even on their most geeky show, the screen savers, nothing would get more complex than installing a hard drive in your computer, etc, and hardly ever any tips on doing anything outside windows. I hope this show not only showcases more "geekiness", but also greater attention to detail on open source projects and open source operating systems.